Some of you may be aware that in response to a recent post of mine, a vigorous supporter of Israeli apartheid named Eylon has appeared in the comments justifying the practice. To that single post, s/he has posted so far 70(!) comments, quite the feat, and I expect that number to rise. The arguments that s/he gives, such as they are, will be familiar to those who familiar with the politics of the Israel-Palestinian issue and follow a well-worn trajectory but they do provide an insight into how people can defend what, to most people, seems to be utterly indefensible. With Eylon, we get to see in real time how someone tries to justify the unjustifiable.
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The damage sustained by two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman has resulted in the Trump administration immediately claiming that it was a deliberate attack by Iran. As usual, it claims to have evidence supporting its charges but the US government has lied so blatantly and so often in support of war that any reasonable person would wait until that evidence is examined by credible neutral third parties before making any judgment.
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Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has made a plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in her being convicted of misusing public funds, though she will only end up paying a fine and will not go to jail

A Jerusalem court on Sunday accepted a plea bargain in which Netanyahu agreed to admit to a lesser charge than the original fraud accusations. She will pay about $15,000 (£12,000) in fines and reimbursements to the state.

The sentencing ended one of the long-running cases against the family. However, Benjamin Netanyahu still faces the prospect of three corruption indictments later this year that may end his decade as leader and even result in a prison sentence. He denies all charges.

According to the original indictment against Sara Netanyahu, of fraud and breach of trust, she and a government employee were accused of spending roughly $100,000 (£79,000) on catering from expensive restaurants between 2010 and 2013, despite having a in-house cook provided by the state.
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving her job and her statement as to how she wished to be remembered is completely consistent with what she has said and done before in that it is full of lies.

“I hope that it will be that I showed up every day and I did the very best job that I could to put forward the president’s message … to do the best job that I could to answer questions. To be transparent and honest throughout that process and do everything I could to make America a little better that day than it was the day before.”

Given that she has not held a press conference in three months, it is not clear what she has been doing after ‘showing up every day’.

I won’t even bother with her statement that she tried to be transparent and honest. And trying to “make America a little better that day than it was the day before”? Please. As with pretty much everything coming out of the White House, you can take the opposite of what they say as the truth.

The one thing that is true is that she “did the very best job that I could to put forward the president’s message”. That was easy for her since he is also a liar. Mission accomplished!

Samantha Bee says that companies are exploiting women by persuading them to invest in multi-level marketing schemes that do not deliver the income they were promised.

Matt Taibbi warns us that campaign conventional wisdom is dead but that no matter how wrong the pundits have been in the past, they always come back with renewed confidence and certainty that this time they have got it right, though often they never even acknowledge that they were ever wrong. This is because their function is not to analyze dispassionately what the candidates’ polices are and compare them, which would be a genuinely useful service, but to promote the establishment candidates and disparage all the rest. They are particularly vicious towards any candidate that challenges the pro-war, pro-business agenda of the two main parties, immediately declaring them to be unelectable or too extreme.
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