Crayons and Pasta

by Lorna Salzman

Robert Fantina, writing today in counterpunch says – seriously – that the tunnels built by Hamas into Israel were for bringing “crayons and pasta”…..but just from whence they are coming and where they are going isn’t clear.

Into Israel from Gaza? That’s where the tunnels are. Supplies from Gaza to the Arabs in Israel? Tunnels into  Egypt?

Well, that’s what you get if you are stupid enough to read counterpunch. In fairness they did publish an piece saying that the election shows that identity politics (race) should be dropped and replaced by class. That’s sort of edging close to the truth but it still has some glue fastening it to Marx that needs to be removed too.

Aside from the trade treaties, infrastructure issues and a couple of other things which unite Dems and Trump, one other “favor”, if you can call it that, that Trump has done for us is to illegitimize Identity Politics and speak the truth about the global threat of Islamism and why we and Europe need to curtail immigration.

But the major victory that the world may be able to celebrate is the definitive rejection of centralized elite governance, whether by Wall St., the banks, the corporations and their toadies like the Clintons and George Soros, or the EU Commission with its determination to force Muslim immigration by the millions onto Europe. This is what Brexit is about, and this is what the revived European nationalism is about.

There may be risks as right wing demagogues, phony populists and anti Semites take hold in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere. But initially these movements will focus on precisely the issues of self-governance, culture,  free speech and nation-state democracy as reasons for rejecting the high handed EU bureaucraticelites who were determined to turn the world over to the same financial/corporate elites to which Hillary Clinton belonged.

In the UK, while Brexit shared the same fundamental opposition, unfortunately it was the right wing neo con free marketeers who deliberately deceived so many rural Britons and now stand to carry out economic changes that will, not surprisingly, reflect the worst of Trump policies: reducing taxes on the rich, shooting holes into Medicare, dismantling environmental regulations and doing their best to accelerate climate change.

The Brits will find out the hard way just what they really voted for when they supported Brexit. Things will be going down the tubes quickly.