It is a pleasure to see former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, will be going to jail for corruption. A rare event outside of coup governments jailing or killing their predecessors as an insurance policy. Insofar as comparisons respecting ‘democracy’ and the ‘rule of law’ in relation to impunity, this recalls Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez indicted by a Texas grand jury for racketeering and outcome where Cheney didn’t even bother to send a lawyer (he apparently only needed make a phone call, at most) to get the indictment thrown out… it was dismissed with a warning from the judge to the prosecutor to “never” pursue the case again. By comparison, Israeli justice looks pretty good just now with Olmert reporting to Israel’s penal system for incarceration. Even if he gets the ‘country club’ detention, it still says something.
On account of Bibi & company’s rank criminal behaviors, many people from the outside tend to forget Israelis are not entirely made up of dyed in the wool miscreants and it’s always been a habit of people in the west to throw stones from their glass houses, we see this quite a lot in relation to the Israelis. Would I like to see certain Israeli figures jailed for crimes against the Palestinians? Sure. Will that happen? It doesn’t seem likely, but it seem just as unlikely we will see the likes of Bush and Blair jailed for crimes against the Iraqis resulting in perhaps as many as a million collateral deaths due to infrastructure destruction resulting in loss of clean water and consequent disease, among other problems.
Democracy is a beast in its own right where too often it is sociopaths are those most motivated to rise & rule. And when they do, whether Bibi (with an assist from the Americans) outsourcing his assassinations of Iranian scientists to Mojahedin-e-Khalq utilizing hostages & blackmail, or Obama meeting with John Brennan on “Kill List Tuesdays” when deciding who will live or die in a regime of extrajudicial assassinations, it’s clearly a hard fact one is no superior to the other in relation to the rule of law.
Then, we can look at the institutions of law by comparison. In the USA, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts appoints judges to the extra-constitutional FISA court and no one utters a word about it, not so much as any pointed criticism from any fellow Supreme Court justice, nothing from the bar association head, no senator, NO SINGLE PERSON of significance in the machine stands up and says one word. It can’t hurt to mention here Chief Justice Roberts is only once removed from Dick Cheney; Robert’s champion for his nomination and confirmation to the United States Supreme Court had been Cheney’s Vice Presidential legal counsel Shannen Coffin (a close personal friend of Roberts.)
In Israel, on the other hand, rather than a totally co-opted (corrupted) Supreme Court, you have a court that is undermined and often ignored by corrupt politicians (and in some cases my recollection is, by the military.)
The sharp prejudice we see is hardly fair to Israel by comparison to say, Britain or the USA. All are criminally corrupt. All struggle with similar democratic issues. If the shrill left in the USA can be safely ignored (those few sane persons surviving on the right may as well have drowned for all the opportunity they have to be heard), in Israel sane voices are simply not reported on outside of domestic audience. Hardly balanced or fair, but other than to those engaged in self-deceits, life has never been balanced or fair:
“Both the elves and the reindeer made another accusation against Claus: that he discriminated in favor of children from rich families, who invariably got better and more expensive gifts than those of poor families, no matter how good or bad they’d been” (credit to ‘Bill the Butcher’)
My point is, in matters of corruption and relevant impunity, we’re all more or less equal. Olmert goes to jail, that’s a positive, but Bibi’s history is to ignore and undermine the Israeli Supreme Court. In the USA? No one goes to jail and the Supreme Court appears to be in the pocket of the criminal regime when upholding the ‘national security’ and ‘state secrets’ doctrines which determine the most egregious crimes will never be heard before a competent jurisdiction. And no one challenges the criminally complicit chief justice who appoints judges to a patently unconstitutional FISA institution based on color of law usurping constitutional principles.
On top of it all, it seems doubtful democracy can be salvaged in a scenario where the populaces are becoming so radicalized, demagogues bring the greatest appeal to those who’ve yet to disengage (tune out) on the right, or in the alternative, the majority on the left are so self deceived they hold up a 70 years old serial killer of entire nations as the model choice for a first female president (following on the extrajudicial assassinations by the first ‘Black’ or ‘nobel drone’ president who has always been more culturally European than anything else.)
I would offer the following quote to describe the self-deceits of western populace generally…
“Their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound pre-vision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy” -Thucydides
…aside from those Christian supremacist and other knee-jerk anti-Semites who’re actually somewhat a step lower than use of ‘sovereign reason’ in their employ of self-deceits:
“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will” -Yuval Noah Harari
Prognosis for 2016
Worst case scenario
Picture this: Saudi Arabia leads an invasion from the south into Iraq, Turkey from the north into Syria, with USA/NATO backing on the pretext of putting down Islamic State. A large contingent of Daesh is evacuated through Turkey. The Erdogan criminal syndicate funnels the larger portion of ISIS fighters east to initiate operations in Russia’s sphere. However a not insignificant number will, nevertheless, find their way west. This will open opportunity for the NATO deep state apparatus to consolidate a police state and pursue eliminating secular, liberal democratic principles with a likely low intensity guerrilla warfare developing throughout Europe. A second 9/11 type false flag, possibly nuclear, is brought off in attempt by rogue religious right generals at the Pentagon to rule with martial law.
Russia doesn’t dare roll over in the meanwhile, and there is real possibility of escalation to tactical nuclear weapons use when protecting Russian assets in Syria together with upholding the Syrian-Iranian buffer states against NATO and their proxies’ empire expanding east and whatever follows that is likely even less pretty, with a paranoid Israel sitting on the sidelines with nuclear armed missiles targeting all parties.
A reasonable estimation would be, with possible/probable outbreak of WW III, there is a solid chance there will be no next ‘President of the United States.’ That system becomes entirely co-opted. It’s only a matter of when, and under what circumstance, NATO’s deep state perpetrators decide to step out of the shadow to rule openly. Meanwhile, in Europe, democratic institutions are being led like lambs to sacrifice with current developments… and there is (to now) no sign of correcting course back into line with the rule of law. We don’t see 1) sight and 2) courage in any of those holding the necessary positions to force a correction away from a fascist future; with dwindling opportunity with each day that passes.
Best case scenario
An asteroid impact ends the experiment called Western Civilization and attending European cultural mentality before Western Civilization ends all advanced life forms on the planet. Ten thousand years into the future, a mummified Richard Dawkins’ corpse is discovered in the cafeteria at the CERN archaeological site. People marvel at the crude purpose of the Large Hadron Collider, a pointless knowledge quest for ego’s sake, and the destructive nature of the grid used to power it. Shortly after, it is discovered the culture which had created CERN originally derived from a cult practicing ritual cannibalism called ‘Communion’ and the priesthood of a subsequent religion named ‘Empiricism’ applied this cannibalistic attitude to their relationship with the environment sustaining them. The mystery villain of the Anthropocene era’s onset had been solved: Plato.
You all have a lovely 2016
Social-political commentary by Mephisto
Ronald Thomas West 
Loved this post. The compact and sharp humour leads to a much larger introspective question about the inexorable, somewhat rudderless drift of Western civilisation. Its a deeply uncomfortable topic for most. I am no exception.
Fairly convinced that the Sunni army will move to Syria within a year. I think Vlad Putin is a rational fellow and will cut a deal with the West vis-a-vis trade and Iran and NATO movements. That is just my narrow, economics based thinking. Or rather my wish, which as you channel Thuycidides, tells me, that my wish precedes my rational thinking perhaps!
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