Israel Matzav

Monday, September 29, 2014

Obama's double standard

In Syria, the United States military is acting in precisely the manner in which Israel has often been accused of acting. And Obama has condemned Israel for those same actions.

U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in Islamic State-controlled territory in northern and eastern Syria overnight, killing civilians and wounding militants, a group monitoring the war said on Monday.

The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

...

The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.

"These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people," he said. He could not give a number of casualties and it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

...

In eastern Syria, U.S.-led forces bombed a gas plant controlled by the Islamic State outside Deir al-Zor city, wounding several of the militant group's fighters, the Observatory said.

The United States has said it wants strikes to target oil facilities held by Islamic State to try to stem a source of revenues for the group.

The raid hit Kuniko gas plant, which feeds a power station in Homs that provides several provinces with electricity and powers oil fields generators, the Observatory said.

I want to make it clear that I have no problem with classifying grain silos or gas plants as military targets. Depending on how they're being used, that classification could well be accurate. In fact, there's something to be said for targeting an opposing army's sources of fuel and food.

But it's hypocritical for Obama to condemn Israel for doing the exact same thing in Gaza. And it's not the first time Obama has done it.

Let's go to the videotape. Make sure to check out Scott Shane around the five-minute mark. Obama was very unhappy when Israel claimed that all of the male casualties between the ages of 18 and 40 in Gaza were probably terrorists.

Heh.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, drone, Gaza, grain supplies, humor, hypocrisy, Islamic State, natural gas, Pakistan, Predator drones, Syria

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Facts about Egypt

Here's an interesting analysis about the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in a second revolution, as the Communists did after the 1917 Bolshivek revolution in Russia. Tim Rutten cites two interesting facts about Egypt of which I was not aware.

First, Egypt has the largest number of unemployed university graduates in the world. Assuming that the education is decent, one has to wonder why.

Second, Egypt is the world's largest importer of grain in the world, which makes sense, given that the country has almost no rainfall.

In another article, I saw that the West is responsible for the economic conditions from which
Egypt is suffering because by using grain for fuels, it has reduced the world's grain supply, leaving countries like Egypt with no place to turn. Perhaps, if the West is really concerned about Egypt, they can correct that mistake by buying grain on the cheap and reselling it to Egypt at a reasonable price, rather than paying farmers not to plant.

Labels: Egyptian regime change, grain supplies, Russian revolution, unemployed university graduates