Gaza

Something that annoys me about Libertarians is that there are so many who think they know what is going on in the Middle East, but they've never been there.

Plus, they seem to have blinders on about half of the discussion about the region.

Yes, AIPAC and other such propaganda organs hold a disproportionate share of eyeballs in the policy-making community.

But the policy-making community is notoriously prostitutional in nature, and so the flood of petrodollars from the Arab governments into the American political marketplace ensures the Arab point of view likewise gets an outsized share of attention.

I find it very distasteful to find Libertarians jumping on the anti-Israel bandwagon. There is nothing about Israel that isn't true about a hundred other US allies.

My main concern with Libertarians singling out Israel for our ire and derision is that doing so makes us sound like Nazis who only find fault with Jews.  Yes, there are so-called libertarians who *are* prejudiced against Jews, just as there are libertarians who are bigoted towards women, men, blacks, caucasians, and so on.

A pox on all their houses.

Bigots -- Nazi or otherwise -- should not be allowed to hijack the movement or the Party.

The only real "Libertarian position about Israel" is that we regard them no differently than any other government: We call for disengagement from all foreign conflicts and abolishing all foreign aid, regardless of the recipient.

A recent discussion reminded me of the lack of investigation libertarians are sometimes guilty of.  Specifically, a friend related a claim from WikiLeaks

"... The State of Israel is conspiring to keep their economy at the lowest level of subsistence possible..."

I found this statement to be ridiculous -- regardless of the alleged source being a US Embassy cable.  The Embassy is part of the US government -- and the US government is invompetent at everything it does.
 

The Israelis are no more capable of "keeping" the Gazan economy "on the brink of collapse" than the US government is capable of controlling the flow of guns, drugs, people, counterfeit products, or anything else across the Rio Grande.

Israel was for decades the largest buyer of goods made (or grown) in Gaza. The decline in exports from Gaza and the resultant economic repercussions were primarily a result of the Israeli regulatory boycott on goods which was instituted in response to repeated murders and rocket attacks. I suspect Americans wouldn't want to buy anything from Canada either if it was throwing bombs across the border every day.

There is NO prohibition on Gazan goods going to other countries from Gaza. Slowdowns of trucks (and ships) to accommodate searches for weapons and bomb precursors (as well as to calculate taxes), yes, but prohibitions, no.   As if the USA doesn't have exactly that same policy.  Ever heard of "US Customs"?  Same freaking thing.  Well, except there are a lot more things the US government prohibits from crossing the border (such as foreign medications, etc).

Despite the so-called economic "blockade" nee bureaucracy at the border, Gazans manage to smuggle $3 billion in goods into Gaza every year, and almost that much in exports -- all outside of the normal regulatory trade markets.

Formal trade -- in other words, good NOT smuggled, mainly between Israel and Gaza -- amounts to about $6 billion per year, or about twice the informal sector.  Indeed, formal business between Israel and Gaza & the West Bank together amounted to about $20 billion in 2013.

I suspect the KFC imports from Egypt are no more difficult than it would be doing the same thing across the border from Tijuana into California.  Or even across the border from Windsor ON to Detroit MI.

Americans -- and Libertarians -- need to worry about our own house.

The Bamiyan Moment for America's Bigoted Social Justice Warriors

This is the Bamiyan Moment of America's intolerant social justice warriors and the perpetually offended: Vandalizing monuments.

OK.

Let's destroy them all. Every monument, any flag. We should even turn all the museums with any of that offensive garbage into rubble. Erase everything.

And let's slaughter those who still "cling to their flags and guns".

Screencap of a CNN video of Afghan Taliban doing to
the Buddhas at Bamiyan what the American Taliban
want to do to statues and monuments in America

After all, we have to model our cultural cleansing after what the Taliban did to all of those offensive statues of Buddha at Bamiyan and elsewhere.

But let's not stop there.

George Washington was a slave holder. So was Jefferson. Let's shove their monuments into the Potomac.

Maybe the William Ellisson historical marker in Sumter SC should be taken down, also?

We could spend years figuring out how to get our society completely rid of all symbols that offend someone.

In fact, we could make a "War on Offensiveness", that will last us for generations, like the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs.

Or -- as a much quicker alternative -- we could take all the American Taliban Social Justice Warriors and dump them over Niagra Falls.

Those willfully and stupidly ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. And the worst thing is everyone else pays for their folly. The way Obama and the rest of the idiocracy is poking at Russia and China, one day it will be the USA that will be overrun, demonized and erased from history.

But I guess that will be just fine with the American Taliban leftist swills who will be sucking at the breast of the state in that era.