Despots, sycophancy and impunity...from their ilk and the rest of us, including state actors

Despots seem to have a fascination with, if not a fixation on, their ‘kind’….almost like dogs who bark feverishly when they see another of their ilk. With dogs, it is both customary and totally innocuous….unless, of course, there is a sense of danger in one or both. A seemingly clashing epithet, about likes-and-likes, comes from the criminal world: ‘there is no honour among thieves’.

A third perspective might read: Despots, being seriously and dangerously weak and blind to their narcissistic spinelessness, need the image of reinforcement in order to continue their heinousness. Their reinforcement might come from sycophantic grovellers, the oligarchs in Russia, for example, or, in America those kneeling at the feet of their ‘God-delivered’ messiah, or in Israel, those in the far right of the Knesset who have determined to block a two-state solution, to perpetuate a war in Gaza (or wherever else they ‘see’ the ‘hand’ of Iran) and also to protect Netanyahu’s hold on power and prevent his being jailed.

Of course, behind both despots and their acolytes, there are a myriad of personal, social, cultural and perhaps even historic and religious motives. Personal self-aggrandizement, the most obvious, is the one the public media focuses on as most reliable and most beyond public dispute. And, such a deeply ingrained and virtually imperceptible and disarming motive, hardly stirs even the most virulent opponents in their quest to unseat those despots, even acknowledging their contempt for them and the serious damage those despots are continue to inflict on their ‘people’. Alexei Navalny’s focus on Putin’s luxurious estate on the Black Sea, at least in western reporting, aroused barely a raised eye-brow of disdain, as if such self-indulgence, where permitted without either public scorn or criminal charge, were not only common, but almost tolerated. After all, weren’t the poisonings and shooting of political enemies much more insidious and dangerous? And wasn’t the illegal, criminal and totally without justification of the invasion of Ukraine not far more reprehensible? And, to be sure, both the killings and the invasion are far more heinous.

However, this glamour of the ‘rich’ exhibited without shame in Putin’s Black Sea estate, is not without merit as a serious symbol for the Russian people whose history has witnessed millions of conversations about those ‘in the inner circle’ and the majority of the rest. In America, the Mar-a-Logo estate of the current Oval Office tenant, is merely the stage for the trump theatre of the absurd, the dialogue and manuscript of which pours into the screens and onto the front pages hourly. Even, by now, calling Obama treasonous for any ‘non-evident meddling in the 2016, as trump has done, while in itself a treasonous act as Robert Reich notes in his recent Substack piece, stirs only a smirk from main-stream media talking heads, along with the scorn of people like Andrew Weissman’s detailing of the abduction of innocent men, women and children within the building in New York city where they appeared for their court hearing, by the trump gestapo, for deportation, without evidence of any criminal wrongdoing except being in the U.S.A. without documentation.

Inured, and bludgeoned and almost etherized against the savageness of the depots’ terror, including that heartless, immoral, illegitimate, illegal and unconscionable protraction of the war in Gaza by the Israeli military, at the insistence and even the bravado of Netanyahu, millions of us have continued to shake our heads, wring our hands and turn our gaze earthward, in personal, political, national and international despondency, despair, disgust and powerlessness. As Rosie DiManno, in her most recent column in the Toronto Star, puts it, ‘Evan those of us who love Israel cannot abide what it has done, and continues to inflict, upon Palestinians.’

And yet, on the same day, we read that Canada continues to send ‘bullets’ (Really?) in shipments to Israel, in spite of a moratorium to which former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Melody Joly refers, when she reports that she blocked 30 permissions for such shipments of weapons that could be used to kill, during her tenure in that post.

 And along the line of ‘inurement, etherization, of the public and the political correctness of ‘diplomatic-speak’, we read this week of three different poses on the question of recognition of the State of Palestine.

First, France declared that she would commit to such recognition at the UN, this week. Unconditional, unequivocal, unambivalent, and perfectly clear in both public vernacular and diplomatic-speak, as well as in legal-speak! Congratulations to France.

Second, Kier Starmer, Prime Minster of Great Britain, stepping his political toe into the same waters, definitely at the ‘beach’ and not in the deep-end, as it were, declared, that Great Britain would recognize the State of Palestine by September, “unless Israel takes substantive streps” on Gaza… “unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza, allows the UN to bring in aid and takes other steps toward long-term peace”…(from the CBC, July 29, 2025). To the layman, reading and cogitating such a statement, it appears meely-mouthed, equivocal, tepid, and definitely anxious about incensing Netanyahu and the Israelis. “Please, Mr. Netanyahu, don’t make Great Britain have to take such a pivotal step as recognizing a Palestinian state, a decision to which you have been unalterably and undeniably and vehemently opposed for all of the years you have been Prime Minister!” is what the Starmer statement sounded and read like to this observer.

And then there is Canada:

From Dyan Robertson, The Canadian Press, in Toronto Star, July 28, 2025:

While Canada is not joining France in recognizing a Palestinian state, it is funding te Palestinian Authority’s preparations to lead a globally recognized country that includes Gaza and the West Bank. Ottawa is also adding $30 million to its humanitarian funding for desperate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip…. “A workable Palestinian state needs legitimate democratic governance that serves all Palestinian people”…(says foreign Minister Anita Anand) …Funding the PLO, by the Canadian government, however, is open to serious question.

From Noria Research, in a piece entitled, “The Palestinian Authority, a plausible post-Gaza solution?” on November 24, 2024, we read:

All indications…suggest that Israel’s destructive campaign will continue on for some time longer. Be that is it may, members of the international community are still devoting much of their energies into planning for ‘the day after’. In these regards, the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, a territory that has been out of its control since 2007, is not infrequently put forward as a viable option. For a number of reasons, this strikes as dubious…..Due to the failures of the process begun in Oslo, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories had been living through a succession of political crises well before October 7^th introduced a rather seismic rupture: 2007’s partitioning of the occupied territories and consolidation of dueling government authorities. Elections forever delayed or canceled. Authoritarian upsurges in the West Bank and Gaza. Intensified colonization The blockade of Gaza. And, as commemorated in the Abraham Accords, regional marginalization….The truth is that the so-called ‘Oslo-Accords’ never envisaged the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Rather, they institutionalized an arrangement whereby the PA was enlisted as subcontractors for the Israeli military administration—and whereby Palestine’s economic dependence on Israel was quietly deepened. Premised upon security cooperation from the very start, the PA was allowed to hire tens of thousands of policemen and civil servants and to exercise a degree of control over the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories. It was obstructed, however, from opposing Israel’s pursuit of colonial ambitions in any meaningful way. In terms of governance and advancing the Palestinian national project, the PA’s record can only be called woeful. It has consolidated a highly securitized fiefdom, its police and intelligence agents eating up one third of annual budgets and numbering 85,000 as of the last 2010’s (one for every 48 Palestinians, a ratio of nearly nine times higher than that of the United States). Fed by counterparts in Israel, these actors maintain a system of surveillance and control designed to prevent the mobilization of a political opposition. As they do, Israel’s construction of settlements continues apace and prospects of salvaging a two-state solution wither on the vine.

So here we are, caught between the unequivocal declaration from France, the ambivalent British statement, and the ‘funding for both humanitarian aid (of course, needed and warranted) , and the PLO by Canada (Why, fund the PLO?) ….

Meanwhile the IDF (Israel’s military) continues to wage military conflict in Gaza, seemingly unabated either by American (trump)pressure, or by international public of official opinion. Subterfuge, deceit, camouflage, colonialization and quiet ‘immunity’ from the despots of the world who, themselves, would gladly entertain similar forays into the incursion, invasion, domination and impunity business of their own chicanery. And all of this is linked with a pallid and tepid, and only meagerly understood cognition of the complexities of the situation, certainly in the West in both media and political circles, only exacerbates the conundrum.