A Strange Symmetry

Has anybody noticed the strange symmetry between the two events that are now dominating the news?  The eastern Ukraine and the Gaza/Israel situations have much in common.  In both cases tails are wagging dogs. In the case of the Ukraine Vladimir Putin, backed by the now firmly nationalistic Russian people would like to repossess some of  the vast lands that vodka inspired Boris Yelsen let slip away.  Of course the hapless idealistic Mikhail Gorbachev started the whole unraveling process. But greater Russia was still intact when  Gorbachev was forced out.  Now 20 years later the now fossil fuel extraction financed, gangster-capitalist run Russian state would like nothing better than to “reconstitute”  some if not all of the former Soviet Union. Of course the  provocative expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union under Bill Clinton didn't help. NATO expansion along with cannibalization of the former fully socialist economy by the West and by former Soviet apparatchiks led to the rise of an ex-KGBer like Putin.  Recall the terrible collapse in living standards in Russia after the USSR imploded. Things were so bad many longed for a return to the old Stalinist order. Things are better now with rising oil prices such that the Russkies are now 'feeling their Wheaties.' 

But while the Crimea 'repossession' worked out well for Putin & Co, his support of pro Russian separatists  in eastern Ukraine is now becoming a huge embarrassment. The  Russians seem to have created an uncontrollable monster.  Of course the neo Nazi infested pro-West government in opposition  is not much better.  What could possible be gained  by shooting down a Malaysian airliner full of civilians mostly from the Netherlands?   As photos fill the news of  separatist types poking around in the grisly wreckage the stock of the separatist's adversaries, the corrupt chocolate billionaire led pro-West coup installed government in Kiev, suddenly shot up.  If you look at which side benefited politically, one would have to guess that the Kiev government shot it down and made it look like the separatists did it. But so far that doesn't seem like to be the case. Of course the Russkies prefer that explanation.

Then we turn to the never ending brutal misbehavior of the US client state, Israel, and the  US's unwitting involvement.  Of course our clueless AIPAC-funded Congress is overwhelming siding with Israel's war criminal Bibi Netanyahu and supporting the relentless bloodbath he is inflicting on the helpless trapped population of Gaza. With the Gaza's population penned up in essentially an open air prison, for Israel it is like shooting fish in a barrel - last count: 1839 Palestinians mostly civilians vs.  67 dead  Israelis mostly soldiers. Is this a war or some kind of mass martyrdom by the Gazans? By all accounts the  Gazans support the suicidal resistance by the military wing of Hamas. Remember they were essentially under siege already. And to make matters worse Obama & Co is now re-supplying Israel with more armaments since the IDF is running low.  Whereas  in the Ukraine 298 civilians were killed in the plane crash, Israel is now killing that many Palestinians sometimes daily. And how many more are wounded and maimed?  How the US  has increasingly chained  itself to militant Zionism which ironically has morphed into something close to what inspired the Zionist movement in the first place - the German Nazis.  Suffice to say the horror of the Nazi Holocaust has been overwhelming misused as an pretext for creating a racist apartheid state.   Furthermore Hamas is a creature of the Israel anti-Palestinian policies.  Recall the years of vilification of Yassar Arafat and the PLO, which was a totally secular resistance movement. In fact Israel encouraged the emergence of Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO.

Once the PLO was domesticated and co-opted (with US money) and turned into the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority, serious Palestinian resistance activists were forced to turn to the more robust resistance led by radical Islamists such as Hamas.  All the while Israel has never let up in expanding into the West Bank making a Palestinian state ever more an impossibility.

We must not forget that the whole jihadist movement is blowback from the Cold War. Remember the  inception was the CIA financing of Mujahideen in Afghanistan under Carter and Reagan in yet another proxy war with the USSR (which turned out to be USSR's “Viet Nam”.)  For years Israel  functioned as the West's neocolonial  nuclear armed “Fort Apache” outpost.  Now fast forward to 2014 and Israel has metamorphosed into an out of control nuke-armed fundamentalist ultra orthodox religion run state.

The primary problem is neocolonial Israel's perennial intransigence in dealing with its indigenous native population. Unlike the American colonialists the 'locals' couldn't just be genocidally removed although Israel seems to be trying.  The forever festering Israel/ Palestinian conflict has to be a prime factor in provoking ever more enlistments into groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and in the spread of the worldwide militant Islamist movement in general.  This is especially the case in a time when many of the world's 2.08 billion Muslims get to witness via satellite television on a daily basis one-sided slaughter of  their fellow believers by the IDF (and on a lesser scale drones.)  Of course lots of other horror shows and misdeeds by warring factions within the Muslim world vie for their attention. See Iraq and Syria plus daily suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and others.) How much of  that carnage results from the muddled policies of an imperial power losing its grip?

Imperiums in decline (the US) or ones longing for former glory (Russia) are dangerous. They have populations who enjoy or recall the status (and material well being) of an imperial citizenry and who have been spoon fed on visions of nationalistic glory and exceptionalism. This feeding process is known as “manufacturing consent” and it works especially well especially in the US where the population lives in a very ahistorical reality.

Doesn't it seems rather suspicious that once the 'specter of worldwide communism' dissipated it was soon replaced by the 'specter of worldwide jihadist terrorism?'  A conspiracy minded type might suspect that somewhere somehow covert intelligence agencies might be intentionally feeding energy into this whole miserable mess so we can continue to have endless war. Or is all of this it just ineptitude and stupidity by our own ruling class? Whatever it is, it is very ugly.