From the Rio Grande to the Sea of Tranquility, Palestine will be free
Sucks for the other astronauts but I hope it hurt for him.
Of the six American astronauts that were on board, all but one (Kalpana Chawla) became astronauts via a career in the US military (Navy or Air Force).
Astronauts are widely viewed as highly commendable. Being reminded of the links to the MIC (Cape Canaveral is now Space Force Base Cape Canaveral), has honestly been a little dispiriting for me. Same holds true for the Soviet and Chinese space programs, though membership in their militaries is more palatable, obviously.
There are still plenty of people who become astronauts by being excellent scientists, but the military is the most common career path, and I find it a little saddening.
A little more on Ilan Ramon: he was also a veteran of the Yom Kippur War, and was one of the pilots for an Israeli air strike against an Iraqi nuclear power plant in 1981. Israel believed Saddam Hussein wanted to make nuclear weapons for war with Israel, and it may or may not have been his intent, but according to Iraqi nuclear scientists, Iraq’s nuclear program simply became covert after that and the attack made Saddam more determined, so it might have made things worse.
This gets to the heart of the issue with Israel’s responses to threats: it is hot-headed, it reminds me of characters that say “fuck the rules, gotta do what needs to be done”, and it often makes things worse. First, Israel invaded Lebanon, because the PLO launched attacks from there. The PLO then moved their HQ to Tunisia. Then, after a killing of Israelis on a yacht in Cyprus, Israel bombed their HQ in Tunisia, killing civilians, which led to antisemitic attacks against what remained of the Jewish community in Tunisia, including an officer shooting up a synagogue. All in the name of keeping Jews safe.
Israel is playing whack-a-mole, it keeps creating new moles to whack, because its very existence, only possible through ethnic cleansing, prevents peace in the region.
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