#frida ghitis

[blondebrainpowered]

[tomorrowusa]

Amid all the unknowns, there's only one thing we know with certainty about how a war would play out in Ukraine: it would be unpredictable. Whatever happens, it's not going to unfold precisely as military planners predict, no matter how detailed and well thought-out they might be. [ ... ]     It's the geopolitical manifestation of the wisdom famously imparted by former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."   [ ... ]   Wars almost never play out exactly as planned. That is not to say that no war is ever worth fighting. But when disputes shift from diplomacy and politics to shooting on a battlefield, everything changes. As Putin's forces mass along three sides of Ukraine, we can only hope he, too, is a student of history and understands there's a high likelihood that an invasion will not turn out quite as he expects.

Frida Ghitis at CNN. 

Wars may have immediate winners and losers but those who start wars seldom end up with the long term result they had hoped for.

George W. Bush flew out to an aircraft carrier to declare “mission accomplished” seven weeks after invading Iraq under false pretenses.

Of course the invasion destabilized the area and directly led to the formation of ISIS which is still active today. 

Things could end up far worse for Putin if he invades Ukraine. He’d have a stubborn insurgency in his back yard which could eventually have political and economic repercussions in Russia. 

[nocturnals-anonymous]

Corruption is a deadly poison that cripples economies, perpetuates poverty and, as it accumulates, can claim lives – many of them. Not only are political leaders in some cases stealing money that belongs to their countries, to their people, but they may be making policy choices based on how they can benefit themselves, depriving their nations of the right to good government and to smart decision-making from its leaders. The result can be bad government, bribe-taking, tax avoidance and theft from the public’s future for the sake of a more lavish present for a corrupt few.

Frida Ghitis, “Panama Papers a very big deal”

"Right to good government”? No such "right" exists, nor does such a government. Governments sustain themselves on violence and corruption without exception. They are illegitimate monopolies on force in arbitrary geographical areas.

Government is synonymous with and shorthand for “bribe-taking, tax avoidance and theft from the public’s future for the sake of a more lavish present for a corrupt few.” Those corrupt few feed off of the toil of ‘the public’ and, as Ghitis mentions elsewhere, when members of the public are not friends or of the sort to be persuaded with bribes, they are simply imprisoned or murdered, or threatened with such to ensure their compliance.

[ziggythevampireslayer]

When the residents of the south Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikva held a protest last week, one member of parliament, Miri Regev, referred to Sudanese "infiltrators" as "a cancer," stoking the inexcusable outbreak of violence. (She later apologized for using the term "cancer".) Another member of parliament, Danny Danon, turned up the rhetoric, shouting "Expulsion now!" and calling the migrants "a plague."

A night that put Israel to shame

By Frida Ghitis, Special to CNN