https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-nisbet/the-grand-illusion-an-appreciation-of-jacques-ellul/. Our world is entirely directed toward action. Everything is interpreted in terms of action, nothing is more beautiful than action, and people are always looking for slogans, programs, ways of action; indeed our world is so obsessed by activity that it is in danger of losing its life. We know that the great slogan of all dictatorships is this—action for the sake of action. . . .
At the same time our world tends to eliminate, almost wholly, the life of the individual. By the formation of masses, by the artificial creation of myths, by standardizing our living, and so on, there is a general movement toward uniformity, which leads man more and more to forget himself as he is caught up in the general tendency of our mechanical civilization. A man who spends all his time in action by that very fact ceases to live.
Not technology, then, in Ellul’s view, not even industrialism or capitalism, but political action is the ambience within which man is most likely to have his individuality eroded or possibly even destroyed.
_____________»>https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israel-routinely-dropping-us-supplied-2000-lb-bombs-dense-civilian-areas
Proportionally, the rate of damage to civilian buildings in Gaza is already triple what Nazi Germany suffered from Allied bombs in World War II. On Friday alone, Israel reportedly killed more than 90 Palestinians, including women in children, when it leveled two houses in two different areas of Gaza.
One particularly vivid display of the MK-84's sheer power -- and Israel's lack of restraint -- came with the IDF's Oct. 31 strike on Jabalya, in northern Gaza, which obliterated a large residential area. “[That strike is] something we would never see the US doing," Larry Lewis, research director at the Center for Naval Analyses, tells CNN. “It certainly appears that (Israel’s) tolerance for civilian harm compared to expected operational benefits is significantly different than what we would accept."
For perspective, consider that the US military used only one MK-84 bomb during its entire fight with ISIS. However, it's poured an astounding 5,400 of them into Israel's arsenal since the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Defying IDF assurances that it seeks to minimize civilian casualties, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests that Israel has even dropped more than 200 MK-84 bombs in the area of South Gaza where it told Palestinians to flee for safety.
The IDF has brushed aside inquiries about its use of the extraordinarily destructive bombs. "Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage," a spokesman told the Times, adding that the IDF “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/07/israel-us-weapons-secret/. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23 press briefingOpens in a new tab, saying that while U.S. security assistance flows to Israel “on a near-daily basis,” he continued, “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.” A horse is a horse, of course, of course
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