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^{Courtesy of OtherWords.org}

Perhaps the most frustrating news to come out of Europe this week is the announcement by France that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, cannot be arrested if he arrived on French soil, as Israel is not a party to the International Criminal Court.

There’s hypocrisy, and then there’s political hypocrisy. This is an obvious political move likely agreed by Israel and the United States, to include Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in the joint agreement for peace in Lebanon, that has so far put a stop to the Israeli-Hezbollah fighting there.

As Russia is not a party to the ICC either, then presumably Vladimir Putin could also visit France without fear of arrest. For that matter, any tuppenny dictator wishing to prevent arrest for his war crimes, could plead similar immunity from prosecution by not being a party to the ICC, or simply withdrawing their nation’s membership.

Benjamin Netanyahu has called the arrest warrants ‘antisemitic’. That’s been the Israeli government’s “Get Out Of Jail Free” card for too long.

Meanwhile the Israeli Prime Minister continues to commit genocide in Gaza, using it as  his very own “Stay Out Of Jail Free” card.

Hypocrisy is alive and well and breeds profusely throughout the world’s political regimes.

Hunter Biden’s “Stay Out Of Jail Free” Card

On the subject of political hypocrisy it would seem Joe Biden’s come in for some stick because he’s pardoned his son, after Hunter Biden failed to admit to drug use on a legal form while purchasing a gun. Well, we’ve all done it, haven’t we? No, not necessarily while purchasing a gun, but who out there can honestly hold up their hand and say they’ve never just missed out ticking a box that they know would disqualify them from something they want? I would guess most of us. I certainly have. And no, I’m not going to admit to what it was.

The hoo-hah has arisen because old Joe had constantly told the world that he would never pardon his son and justice must take its course.  Had he won another term, or if his vice president had won the election, I’m sure Joe would have let run the natural flow of justice.  That was before Trump was elected. Trump has surrounded himself with Democrat haters in general and Joe Biden in particular. There’s a fair chance that son Hunter would not have had a fair trial, left to the not-so-tender mercies of Trump’s forthcoming judicial system. Let’s not forget the next President’s cries for revenge on those who, in his opinion, had done him wrong previously. Ensuring his son spent the next twenty years behind bars would be just the revenge on Joe Biden that Trump could wish for. After all, Biden had taken the 2020 presidency away from him.

So can we say for sure that Biden is a hypocrite for changing his mind? There are enough loonies and misfits shouting their mouths off on social media, apparently convinced he is.

Perhaps they should be asked the question, “If you were in Biden’s position, would you allow your son to go to jail for possibly twenty years just to satisfy the vengeful wrath of a tyrant?”

Joe Biden has done the right thing. He’s given his son a “Stay Out Of Jail Free” card. In his position I would not have hesitated to do the same.

It needs to be said. It’s unfortunate our lily-livered politicians don’t have the balls to have said it, and acted on it, long ago. It’s always been my contention that back in late 2021/early 2022 had NATO thrown everything it had, (none nuclear,) at the Black Sea : warships, planes, tanks and infantry, missiles, then told Putin to piss off or suffer the consequences, Putin would have stuck to his lie about it being just Russian military maneuvers, and high-tailed it back to Moscow.

Why did Putin insist the Russian military were only on maneuvers? To achieve exactly what it did. It threw NATO into a spin, not knowing if it were true or not. They hesitated, waited to see what would happen, Once Putin recognised there was to be no come back, in he went and left NATO looking like the useless organisation it proved to be. 

In the Guardian newspaper yesterday, James Nixey states in his article that it’s not the West escalating the war, but Putin himself.

“Even for a country that has been at war for more than 1,000 days, the past month has been rough for Ukraine: its nemesis, Russia, has acquired 11,000 troops from North Korea and mercenaries from Yemen to assist in its project to delete Ukraine. Russia has also pulverised Ukraine’s energy grid with renewed ferocity as temperatures fall below freezing and fired off experimental intermediate-range weaponry, and it continues to make gains in the east. As if that weren’t enough, Russia’s preferred candidate has been elected as the American president, promising to end the war in “24 hours” – and not in Ukraine’s favour.

And yet after all this, the question I have been asked continuously over the past week is: “Is the west escalating the war?” The question refers to the rescinding of some of the limitations imposed on Ukraine which forbade it from using western missiles to strike inside Russian territory. Far from being escalatory, western policy on the war is in fact best described as incrementalism – a drip-feed release of weaponry, which keeps Ukraine on a lifeline but certainly doesn’t allow it the possibility of pushing Russia out. The reason it has not been given this opportunity is twofold….”

Read the rest of his article HERE:

It needs to be said.

^{James Nixey leads the Russia-Eurasia programme at Chatham House.}

As I’ve grown older I’ve become more aware of what I can best describe as the ‘unrealities of life’. These are the things that we convince ourselves have some real value, whether moral, financial, or intellectual, when the truth is they either have no value at all, or they actually propagate negative values.

There have been many examples of these over time, the latest being what’s become known as the ‘6.2 million dollar banana’. If I take a 40 cent banana and duct tape it to my wall, does that make my house worth $6.2M? No, of course it doesn’t. The idea is ludicrous. It’s equally ludicrous for some egotistical billionaire to spend $6.2M on purchasing this idiocy at an art auction. It’s a good example of an unreality of life, and one with negative value.

Why is this an example of negative value? Because the only person who benefited from this lunacy is the ‘artist’ who had the idea. Maurizio Cattelan, is now millions of dollars better off, but he was hardly poverty-stricken before.

I’m not suggesting Cattelan lacks talent, merely that he uses his name rather than his talent, to make money. Think about it, if an old person with dementia had been persuaded to part with all their cash after being told a banana stuck to their wall with duct tape was worth a fortune, the fraudster would be just that, a criminal con artist.

Perhaps the true perpetrator of this ‘negative value’ is the purchaser of one banana and a piece of duct tape for an obscene sum of money. $6.2M can buy a lot of good in the world, help the homeless, heal sick people, further solutions to climate change.

The purchaser also receives a Certificate of Authenticity from the artist that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce the banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan.

So, if I go out and buy a bunch of bananas and a large roll of duct tape and stick bananas all over the walls of my house, can Maurizio Cattelan then sue me? A wholly ludicrous idea!

The whole concept is just another example of how we human beings create such ‘unrealities of life’, in an attempt to avoid the often less palatable true reality.