Author: Hakki Ocal
If it is true that “might make right,” then what does American people’s divorce from the realities of that might make? U.S.-made bombs and American people’s tax money caused the deaths of 45,000 people and left 120,000 people injured and crippled in Gaza in the last 457 days. However, the American people are unaware of anything; they do not know what their government has been doing since Oct. 7, 2023. However, the American people are unaware of anything; they do not know what their government has been doing since Oct. 7, 2023. I think their ignorance of their government’s might…
I am not composing this farewell message to the Year 2024 out of spite. I carry feelings of hurt, jealousy and the desire to lash out, as it has been a year of genocide. A genocide, something we thought was buried in the heap of ashes of history in Europe 80 years ago and in Rwanda and Bosnia 30 years ago, raised its ugly head in 2024 yet again. What makes it even more hurtful is the fact that its perpetrators, this time, are the people of its first victims. What is even more upsetting than that, is that we…
Let’s get some things straight. 1. Syria is not a quagmire. Even if it has not been orderly, what seems to be happening is the ending of a one-party regime and a return to a real multiparty system. The government apparatus, including its army, is cooperating with the people who took up arms against the leader of the one-party regime and against the proxy forces of a foreign country that has been supporting that regime. 2. “A major war in the Middle East” is not inevitable. Nobody in the Middle East is crazy enough to attack a nuclear power. This…
What is your “hopium”? What is the unreasonable and unfounded hope that you cling to? (Whoever invented that term should go to Paradise!) It is like the opium of the masses: Israeli and American people believed that the military could solve the “Palestinian Problem,” and so Israel would be a heaven on Earth for the Jewish people. It couldn’t be because using force against people’s demands would never work. The Israeli army seems to have solved only one problem: it saved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from going into Israeli jail. We’ll see if it still saves him after the Dec.…
We read the major analyses of the international system and heave a sigh of relief learning that in an anarchical international system, great powers, the main actors in world politics, are rational entities; as such, they are capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival in that chaotic setting. But this is a big “but” here; the authors of these analyses, who call their theory “offensive realism,” also say that great powers always try to maximize their powers and crave to dominate the international system simply because they can never be certain of the intentions…
The question is: Could Donald Trump be stronger than the 77-year investment Zionism made in the United States? We call that yield of that high-return, low-risk investment “the greater Israel” today. A genocidal, apartheid regime, Israel is the real force that is pulling all political, financial and diplomatic ropes in the United States. Despite the endless monetary and diplomatic assistance it gets from the U.S., it is not a reliable ally for the American people. It doesn’t face an existential threat from Palestinians or neighbors, yet it receives an incredible amount of military support from Washington. With an air of…
Let others analyze how a convicted criminal who fomented an insurrection and was found civilly liable for sexual assault somehow won another presidential election. For instance, Amanda Marcotte, the senior writer for the Salon magazine, blames it on the “Cat Ladies” who have an “American death wish.” I spent a long time among them, but I have never seen a fellow American, male or female, who had a death wish; but this is not the issue here. Yet, it seems that white women voters did not swarm around the woman candidate as much as that she hoped for. Apparently, new…
He didn’t make America great again. He has no definite plans to make it happen this time either; he doesn’t have a loyal political and bureaucratic team for anything he promised. He promised nothing, either. But Kamala Harris needed a miracle; exit polls showed a grim outlook for her throughout the day. She had a monkey (named Joe) on her back. All political pundits portrayed Biden as an “impedimenta” even though he bowed out of the race. The four ill-spent years the Democrats had would have an impact on the elections. They say there are no winners in elections, only…
O American people, first vote responsibly, later act responsibly! Neither the first nor the second Gulf Wars were in the interest of your country. You didn’t have anything to gain from overthrowing the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Israeli lobbyists, the Israeli government and your own neoconservatives made you believe that he had weapons of destruction. That is, if he were left in charge of Iraqi oil, he would develop nukes and wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Remember, they all turned out to be unfounded. Your own government, fooled by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and then-former…