The Protection Racket

[kalian]

http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=608

Vintage wine and Belgian chocolates

Israeli and American arms distinguished themselves again last week with the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Coincidentally, the Yassin hit occurred almost exactly a year after the death of Rachel Corrie, a young American peace activist. Corrie was crushed to death by a manned Israeli bulldozer made in America and undoubtedly subsidised with Rachel’s parents’ tax dollars.

In both instances, what strikes us most forcefully, apart from the bad judgement of the people who ordered the murders and the barbarity of their execution, is how expensive both operations were to carry out. Using a bulldozer to kill a girl and a missile to kill a quadriplegic old man are both examples of the uneconomic use of excessive deadly force. But of course Israel is a wildly expensive project in the first place, and once one gets used to spending money freely, it can be hard to stop, a bit like good wine and dark chocolate. Liquidity moments are very addictive.

At the Pentagon, Langley and Fort Meade, they clearly never got over the liquidity moment that World War Two provided, and it has been vintage wine and Belgian chocolates ever since. After the Israeli victory in 1967, America’s flush commanders recognised kindred spirits and brought the Sabra generals into the club. It is an exclusive but international club, occupied by the military allies of the Pentagon in America’s various client states: Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Great Britain and Japan. France and Germany occasionally are invited to club functions, such as the recent coup in Haiti, or the celebrations surrounding Germany’s “donation” of cruise missile capable submarines to Israel, but they have occasionally entertained ideas of establishing their own club.

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:wow: