A very thought-provoking article, John.

I was familiar with the details of the history of Palestine but not at all familiar with the situation in Rwanda, so thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I suppose my response to the article would be: Yes, our compassion for those suffering the tragedy of war is selectively directed and I believe this is, mostly, due to the fact that the US media operates in concert with the US Empire.

In this situation, the US Empire wants to remain on top of a unipolar world; other countries such as Russia and China are not keen on that.

Personally, a pretty big part of me sort of wants humanity to just toss the notion of the nation-state onto the top of the historical garbage pile, but if that's too much of an ask, how about we discuss taking away the State's monopoly on violence?

I'm reminded of that bumper sticker commonly seen in the George W Bush era (the last time I lived in the US, forgive my dated reference!), which said, "War is Terrorism." It's true. Put another way: War is allowed because we've made some silly agreement that if the violence is conducted by State actors, then it's okay and we can make rules for it (which, in every single war I've ever read about, including this one, are always violated). Nah, let's just make it the same for groups as it is for individuals: You can't use violence to advance your aims. Period.

Is that too much to ask from the dawning new world order? Am I falling too much into my hippie background? Personally, I don't think we can keep pushing such asks into the "naive" category. Our tech is becoming too powerful for us not to at least have this conversation: Let's toss war onto the same pile of poop that we tossed slavery onto!