Permanently Neutered - Israel Disavows An Attempt At Escalation Dominance

MoA  |   Last night Israel attempted a minor attack on Iran to 'retaliate' for the Iranian penetration of its security screen.

The current exchange happened after Israel, in clear violation of international law, bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

The aim and success of last night's attack is yet unknown:

Israel carried out retaliatory strikes against Iran early Friday morning local time, reportedly targeting locations in the west of the country. Explosions were heard in the city of Isfahan, prompting commercial flights to divert from their routes.

Senior US officials speaking to ABC, CBS and NPR confirmed the strikes.
...
Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported at around 5:30 a.m. local time (10:00 p.m. EST Thursday) that explosions were heard in Qahjaverestan, northeast of Isfahan.

A senior Iranian military official in Isfahan told the Islamic Republic News Agency that the explosions were caused by Iran's air defenses that fired at a suspicious object east of Isfahan. Isfahan's international airport is located just northeast of Qahjaverestan.

Two discarded first stages of Israeli ROCKS aero-ballistic missiles have been found in Iraq. ROCKS, a derivative of Sparrows ballistic target rocket, are air-launched, stand-off, air-to-ground missiles.

They may have hit something near Isfahan or they may have been taken down by Iranian air defense.

No Iranian or Israeli officials have commented the attack. The IAEA said that no Iranian nuclear facility has been hit.

As both sides are currently silent, and as there are no signs of further escalation, the strike will likely conclude the current exchange.

As a consequence of its strike in Damascus Israel has lost its escalation dominance. Iran managed to penetrate its external security screen just like Hamas had penetrated Israel's internal security screen on October 7 2023 when it broke out of Gaza to collect hostages.

Those who moved to Israel because they thought that it could provide them with security should reevaluate their decision.

Israel Cannot Lie About Or Escape Its Conspicuous Kinetic Vulnerability

nakedcapitalism |  Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s missile attack over the last weekend, despite many reports of US and its allies urging Israel to declare their defense against a very large-scale Iran missile barrage to be a victory. The US and Iran both appear united in wanting to stop further escalation. But Israel has a mind of its own, as demonstrated by its stunning attack on Iran’s embassy grounds in Damascus which initiated this crisis.

It’s possible that Israel could use a cyber attack to retaliate. But that seems unlikely given Israel’s long established policy of making hard hits back in response to assaults. It also seems unlikely given what Alastair Crooke has described as the implicit premise of Israel, that Jews in its borders would be assured of safety. That sense of security took a body blow on October 7. Israelis seem almost driven to re-establish their appearance of military potency.

The next question is whether Israel can be herded or coerced into what would amount to a negotiated attack on Iran, as in hitting targets conveyed to Tehran in advance so it could bolster defenses and get personnel and high-value equipment out of the way. There is still a possibility that Israel could engage in deception, as in communicate it would strike certain locations, then hit different ones.

Another possibility is Israel blowing up Al Aqsa mosque. That would be disproportionate and would set the entire Muslim world on fire. From a recent post at NC by Kevin Kirk:

So the Temple Institute Organization, based in Jerusalem (and supported by Henry Swieca, a wealthy New York financier), who are committed to building the 3^rd Temple and restoring animal sacrifice, have swung into action and submitted an application to the Israeli police to use knives to slaughter 5 perfect red heifers as part of a purification ritual elucidated in Numbers Chapter 19 of the Bible. This ceremony, which is taking place on a specially built altar situated on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple Mount, is set to take place in April 22^nd, which is during Passover. Once the purification ceremony has been undertaken then the stage is set for the building of the Temple, leading to the coming of the Messiah and the final battle between good and evil on a hill just outside Haifa called Tel Megiddo, or, as it is called in the Bible: Armageddon.

Some Israelis are already planning their Temple Mount project. Echoes of Israel developers promoting their plans for Gaza post-Palestinians, but with vastly higher stakes:

For now, we will limit ourselves to the focus of Western concern, that of a kinetic attack on Iran. A remarkable story at the Financial Times, prominently places as a “Big Read”, Ukraine’s air defence struggle shows risks to Israel, departs radically from Anglosphere practice of heavily propagandized coverage about both the Ukraine and Gaza (and now Iran) conflict. It’s quite the twofer. It not only admits what until recently has been verboten, that Russia has seriously weakened Ukraine’s air defenses and the West can’t do much to shore them back up. It also provides a detailed description of Iran’s barrage and discusses how despite claims of success, they showed Israel vulnerability, particularly to a sustained campaign by Iran. This is not all that different from what you see in the independent media.

So why is the Financial Times making so many admissions against Western interest? It’s not as if these facts are not well known among insiders, particularly the military. My guess is this is an effort to influence Israel loyalists in political circles, particularly the US, as well as private Israel influencers, that escalating with Iran has very high odds of turning out badly for Israel. Nevertheless, it’s surprising to see so much candor while events are still in play.

The Show Must Go On....,

antiwar  |  President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.

US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.

“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.

In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.

Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.

But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.

While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.

Iran Breached And Spec'd The Complete Iron Dome While Hitting Its Targets With Hypersonic Missiles

simplicius  |  Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.

Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km.

Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, which peeled back another layer of sophistication that included such things as possible endoatmospheric interception attempts with Israeli Arrow-3 ABM missiles.

But let’s step back for a moment to state that Iran’s operation in general was modeled after the sophisticated paradigm set by Russia in Ukraine: it began with the launch of various types of drones, which included some Shahed-136s (Geran-2 in Russia) as well as others. We can see that from the Israeli-released footage of some of the drone interceptions:

Israel Absorbs The $1 Billion Price Tag For Last Nights Fireworks Show And Calls It A Day

middleasteye  |  It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran's massive drone and missile attack overnight,  according to a former financial adviser to Israel's military. 

"The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per night," estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with Ynet news.

Aminoach highlighted that the staggering price tag stands in contrast to the relatively low amount that Iran had spent to launch its assault, which some estimates have put at less than 10 percent of what it cost Israel to stop the attack. 

Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles towards Israel on Saturday, in response to an Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria that killed two senior Revolutionary Guard commanders earlier this month.

Israel said its military forces and its allies had intercepted 99 percent of the missiles, but some ballistic missiles penetrated Israeli defences and hit the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. 

"If we're talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we actually bring down mainly with fighter jets," he said. 

"Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a David's Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of 4-5bn shekels."

David's Sling is a weapons system meant to intercept medium to long-range rockets and missiles. The Arrow system was designed to thwart long-range missiles, including the types of ballistic missiles Iran launched on Saturday and of long-range missiles launched by the Houthis in Yemen.

 

Candace Owens Demonstrates Testicular Fortitude To Punk-Azz Mens.....,

Ep. 39 Candace Owens responds to Ben Shapiro.

TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00) Candace is attacked – even when she’s right
(4:27) Ben Shapiro’s comments
(12:50) The emotional response to news out of Israel
(23:05) Nikki Haley vs. free speech
(30:34) 2024 predictions pic.twitter.com/VOThqpQQ48

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 15, 2023

dailycaller  |  The Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing announced Friday that the outlet has severed ties with Candace Owens. Owens hosted a show on The Daily Wire after becoming a prominent name in the conservative movement. The outlet abruptly made the announcement of her departure for reasons currently unknown. “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” Boreing announced without an explanation.

MOSSAD Showed Varadkar His Balls-Deep Epstein Videos And That Was A Wrap....,

apnews  |  Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who made history as his country’s first gay and first biracial leader, announced Wednesday that he is stepping down for reasons that he said were both personal and political.

Varadkar announced Wednesday he is quitting immediately as head of the center-right Fine Gael party, part of Ireland’s coalition government. He’ll be replaced as prime minister in April after a party leadership contest.

“My reasons for stepping down now are personal and political, but mainly political,” Varadkar said, without elaborating. He said he plans to remain in parliament as a backbench lawmaker and has “definite” future plans.

Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach, or prime minister — between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-share with Micheál Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil.

He was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected, as well as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. Varadkar, whose mother is Irish and father is Indian, was also Ireland’s first biracial taoiseach.

He played a leading role in campaigns to legalize same-sex marriage, approved in a 2015 referendum, and to repeal a ban on abortion, which passed in a vote in 2018.

“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern place,” Varadkar said in a resignation statement in Dublin.

Varadkar was first elected to parliament in 2007, and once said he’d quit politics by the age of 50.

He led Ireland during the years after Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union. Brexit had huge implications for Ireland, an EU member that shares a border with the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. U.K.-Ireland relations were strained while hardcore Brexit-backer Boris Johnson was U.K. leader, but have steadied since the arrival of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Varadkar recently returned from Washington, where he met President Joe Biden and other political leaders as part of the Irish prime minister’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit to the United States.

 

 

 

Even Old Greazy Ms. Lindsey Knows Better Than That!!!

 

Why Is Chucky Hashing Out Intra-tribal Affairs On The Floor Of The "U.S." Senate?

NYTimes |  Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, on Thursday delivered a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel, five months into the war.

Many Democratic lawmakers have condemned Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership and his right-wing governing coalition, and President Biden has even criticized the Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza as “over the top.” But Mr. Schumer’s speech amounted to the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official — effectively urging Israelis to replace Mr. Netanyahu.

“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”
Mr. Schumer added: “He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”

The speech was the latest reflection of the growing dissatisfaction among Democrats, particularly progressives, with Israel’s conduct of the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians, which has created a strategic and political dilemma for Mr. Biden. Republicans have tried to capitalize on that dynamic for electoral advantage, hugging Mr. Netanyahu closer as Democrats repudiate him. And on Thursday, they lashed out at Mr. Schumer for his remarks.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on the Senate floor that it was “grotesque and hypocritical” for Americans “who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.” He called Mr. Schumer’s move “unprecedented.”

“The Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. “It has an anti-Israel problem.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Mr. Schumer’s remarks “earth-shatteringly bad” and accused him of “calling on the people of Israel to overthrow their government.” And House Republicans, gathered in West Virginia for a party retreat, hastily called a news conference to attack Mr. Schumer for his comments and position themselves as the true friends of Israel in Congress.

Mr. Schumer’s remarks came a day after Senate Republicans invited Mr. Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at a party retreat in Washington. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, asked Mr. Netanyahu to address Republicans virtually, but he could not appear because of a last-minute scheduling conflict. Ambassador Michael Herzog, Israel’s envoy to the United States, spoke in his place and also addressed the House G.O.P. gathering on Thursday.

In his speech at the Capitol, Mr. Schumer, who represents a state with more than 20 percent of the country’s Jewish population, was careful to assert that he was not trying to dictate any electoral outcome in Israel. He prefaced his harsh criticism of Mr. Netanyahu with a long defense of the country, which he said American Jews “love in our bones.”

Are Palestinians Human?

 

BREAKING:
LEAKED audio of Columbia University vice president Gerry Rosberg unable to respond when asked if Palestinians are human.
He stated that this question was “intimidating”.
Acknowledging that Palestinians are human is “intimidating rhetoric” to Columbia admin. pic.twitter.com/T1U2qrOQls

— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) March 12, 2024

Britain's Role In Sustaining The Zionist Entity

thecradle  |  British Defense Minister James Heappey informed parliament that Israeli military operatives are “currently … posted in the UK,” both within Tel Aviv’s diplomatic mission “and as participants in UK defense-led training courses.” This hitherto unacknowledged arrangement amply demonstrates how, despite 

recent calls from officials in London for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to exercise restraint in its genocide of Gaza – if not institute a ceasefire – the UK remains international Zionism’s covert nerve center.

Mere days earlier, Heappey likewise admitted that nine Israeli military aircraft landed in Britain since Operation Al Aqsa Flood on 7 October last year. Investigations by independent investigative website Declassified UK show that Royal Air Force aircraft have flown to and from Israel in the same period, along with 65 spy plane missions launched from the UK’s vast, little-known military and intelligence base in Cyprus.

The purpose of those flights and who and/or what they carried are a state secret. Freedom of Information requests have been denied, Britain's Ministry of Defense has refused to comment, and local media is by and large silent. 

Nonetheless, in July 2023, British ministers admitted that the UK's training of Israeli military personnel includes battlefield medical assistance, “organizational design and concepts,” and “defense education.” It is unknown if that “education” has in any way informed the slaughter of more than 30,000 Palestinians since 7 October.

British military presence in occupied Palestine 

Yet, indications that London has long provided a highly influential guiding hand to Tel Aviv in its oppression and mass murder of Palestinians are unambiguous, even if hidden in plain sight. For example, in September 2019, the Israeli air force participated in a joint combat exercise with its British, German, and Italian counterparts. 

The Israelis deployed F-15 warplanes for the purpose, which have been blitzing Gaza on a virtually daily basis since 7 October, indiscriminately flattening schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes and killing untold innocents.

A year earlier, in October 2022, it was quietly admitted in parliament that London maintains several “permanent military personnel in Israel,” all posted in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv:

“They carry out key activities in defense engagement and diplomacy. The Ministry of Defense supports the HMG Middle East Peace Process Programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The program aims to help protect the political and physical viability of a two-state solution. We would not disclose the location and numbers of military personnel for security reasons.”

'Joint activity'

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have openly and repeatedly boasted of their personal role in blocking Palestinian statehood. We are thus left to ponder what these British operatives are truly concerned about – it certainly isn’t protecting “the political and physical viability of a two-state solution,” as that entire project was evidently never “viable,” by design. It could be those “permanent military personnel” who are present under the auspices of a highly confidential December 2020 military cooperation agreement inked by London and Tel Aviv.

British Ministry of Defense officials describe the agreement as an “important piece of defense diplomacy,” which “strengthens” military ties between the pair while providing “a mechanism for planning our joint activity.” 

Its contents are nonetheless concealed not only from the public but also from elected lawmakers. Speculation can only abound that the agreement compels Britain to defend Israel in the event it is attacked. Such suspicions are only compounded by the visible presence of the UK’s elite SAS forces in Gaza today.

As a December 2023 investigation by The Cradle revealed, this apparent deployment is protected from media and public scrutiny by a dedicated Ministry of Defense-issued D-notice, as are other ominous indicators Britain is shaping the theater and setting the stage in West Asia for a full-blown, protracted region-wide war. 

This included an as-yet-failed effort to pressure Beirut into allowing armed British soldiers total, unrestricted freedom of movement within Lebanon, along with immunity from arrest and prosecution for committing any crime.

The monarchy's departure from neutrality

At countless protests the world over in solidarity with Palestinians since last October, demonstrators have brandished banners and signs imploring US President Joe Biden to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, if not order Netanyahu to seek peace. It is a noble demand, yet potentially misdirected. The true power to halt Tel Aviv’s current push to fulfill Zionism’s genocidal founding mission may not lie in Washington DC but in London – specifically, Buckingham Palace.

An extraordinary and largely unremarked upon development since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began has been the British monarchy’s shameless abandonment of “political neutrality” over Israel. 

Queen Elizabeth II, publicly at least, refrained from commenting on current affairs or appearing to take “sides” on any issue throughout her 70-year reign. However, her recently coronated son has apparently, without fanfare, comprehensively shredded that longstanding convention.

King Charles the Zionist 

Within hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s eruption, King Charles openly condemned Hamas, saying he was “profoundly distressed” and “appalled” by the “horrors inflicted” by the resistance group and its “barbaric acts of terrorism.” Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist entity by a majority of countries internationally, while the BBC – which has relentlessly manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza every step of the way – rejects the designation’s use.

In the years immediately prior to taking the throne, Charles made his Zionism abundantly clear, breaking with his mother’s unspoken policy of not visiting Israel, secretly attending the funerals of former Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In the latter instance, in 2016, he also visited the graves of his grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth, in a cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, near the world’s largest Jewish cemetery. Both were Christian Zionists.

The Jerusalem Post approvingly dubbed Charles’ Zionist sympathies and familial connection to the Mount “a problem for Palestinians,” arguing he has a clear view of “who the city and the country belong to.” Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has hailed him as “a friend” to Jewry “with special and historic ties to Israel.” One such “tie” was an intimate friendship with Britain’s former chief Rabbi and President of United Jewish Israel Appeal, Jonathan Sacks.

Channeling James David Manning....,

 NYTimes  |  Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, has for some reason not bothered to take down his old Facebook posts about the Jews.

 “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, wrote in one 2017 post. (The reason was left unsaid, but the scare quotes spoke loudly.) He regularly argued on Facebook that focusing on the evils of Nazism obscured the greater danger: the one represented by the Democratic Party. “George Soros is alive. Adolf Hitler is dead,” he wrote in one post, and in another, “Who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”

 In 2018, Robinson, who is Black, offered some thoughts about what he seemed to see as a Jewish plot behind the hit movie “Black Panther.” The title character, he wrote, was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist,” calling the movie “trash” that was “created to pull the shekels” from the pockets of Black people, whom he referred to using a Yiddish slur. He has refused to apologize for these statements, though he called them “poorly worded” and has denied that he’s antisemitic.

 None of this appears to have hurt Robinson with the Republican electorate in North Carolina, where on Tuesday he won nearly 65 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial primary. (In November, he will face the Democratic state attorney general, Josh Stein, who is Jewish.) Donald Trump enthusiastically endorsed Robinson, calling him “better than Martin Luther King.” We’re in the middle of a wrenching national discussion about antisemitism on the left, and where it overlaps with anti-Zionism. But Robinson is a reminder that in electoral politics, there is far more tolerance for antisemitism in the Republican Party than the Democratic one.

 I don’t want to downplay the problem of left-wing antisemitism or its closely related cousin, a jejune anti-imperialism that treats Hamas as heroes. Both phenomena have shocked me in the months since Oct. 7, and shouldn’t be rationalized as understandable reactions to Israeli savagery in Gaza.

 In an Atlantic cover story, Franklin Foer recently reported on anti-Jewish bullying, vandalism and conspiracy-mongering in Northern California. “In the hatred that I witnessed in the Bay Area, and that has been evident on college campuses and in progressive activist circles nationwide, I’ve come to see left-wing antisemitism as characterized by many of the same violent delusions as the right-wing strain,” he wrote. The fact that this kind of antisemitism more often comes from random civilians than public officials or authority figures is unlikely to comfort most Jews, who’ve inherited a deep fear of the mob as well as the autocrat.

 Still, we should be clear about which political faction is willing to give antisemites power. And even if you believe that the Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib’s use of the anti-Zionist slogan “from the river to the sea” is obviously antisemitic — I don’t — it’s worth asking why it received so much more coverage than Robinson’s apparent Holocaust denial, or for that matter, the promotion of antisemitic websites and social media posts by Republican congressmen like Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Mike Collins.

 According to NBC News’s Ben Goggin, this year, white nationalists had an unusually easy time penetrating the Conservative Political Action Conference, keynoted by Trump. “At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” Goggin wrote. If this caused a national uproar, I missed it.

 There are several reasons that anti-Jewish attitudes on the right — including Robinson’s — often don’t get the attention they should. For one thing, they’re old news. Back in 2022, the scholars Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden debunked the idea that antisemitism is a similar problem on both left-and right-wing ideological extremes, writing, “The data show the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes is young adults on the far right.” Antisemitism at Columbia University, located in a city with the largest Jewish population in the world, is surprising in a way that antisemitism among, say, Trump supporters no longer is.

 And like Trump — who, let’s remember, had dinner with the antisemitic rapper Ye and leading white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2022 — Robinson has many other terrible qualities that can overshadow his history of anti-Jewish rhetoric. Chief among them is his misogyny. The lieutenant governor is in the news for a recently unearthed video from 2020 in which he said, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.” (His somewhat incomprehensible argument was that in those halcyon days, Republicans led on issues including women’s suffrage.) “The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote in 2017.

 There’s also a tendency for some in the Jewish establishment to overlook antisemitism among supporters of Israel. That’s how we ended up with the end-times preacher John Hagee, who has said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their rightful home in the holy land, speaking at a major November rally against antisemitism, and the Anti-Defamation League praising Elon Musk, despite both Musk’s own antisemitic posts and the platform he’s given to virulent Jew-haters.

America's Elite Disconnect

darkfutura  |  The one seeming contradiction is that these elites predominantly “live in zipcodes exceeding a population density of 10,000 people per square mile.” This misleading implies they live in large cities like New York, where they would in fact be forced to endure daily commingling with the peasantry. In reality, we know they sit entrenched in highly sequestered aristocrats’ quarters within these cities—like the Upper East Side in Manhattan, or Kalorama in D.C. Being shuttled in swank car service to and fro, they rarely deign to cross paths with the commoners for whom they have nothing but contempt, apart from some token quick-grab at the corner coffee-and-bun kiosk to reassure themselves that they’re ‘in touch’ with the slipstream of society. 

In many respects, this is an age-old problem: elites have always existed in parallel societies. However, the advent of digital and social media technologies have allowed them to encase themselves in an ever-impermeable confirmation bias bubble like never before. Listen to interviews with top Washington policymakers, corporate bigwigs, etc., and note how they exclusively mainline the most mainstream corporate publications like WaPo, NYTimes, etc. It becomes its own hermetic self-referencing feedback loop increasingly shut-off from the real outside world of human experience.

As the earlier NYPost article described:

If America is to avoid a tailspin into this toxic feedback loop, its elites will need to step outside their bubble, stop conforming in an effort to blend in with their myopic peers and start addressing the legitimate grievances of their fellow Americans.

This explains such things as the elites’ obsession with climate change, as that is one issue that exists solely ‘on paper’—as an abstraction—and is not realistically felt in the common quarters. The aristos who repeatedly reflect their own shrill echochamber alarmism on this issue get increasingly radicalized, particularly given that—as reported earlier—they put far more store in institutions of authority than the average prole. This results in the calcification of their blind belief in specters like climate change, despite their paying only lip service to it, and not acting accordingly in light of such an existential ‘threat’.

The problem is exacerbated by social ills which create divisions along gender lines, disproportionately giving weight to female-centric concerns, as per the Longhouse theory:

The Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.

Women are naturally wired to be more sympathetic—and thus suggestible—to the social engineering imperatives co-opting the current narrative. Men are being increasingly pushed out from higher education, which means that even among the elites funnelled upward, the stances skew increasingly to the ‘Longhouse’:

This feminization of the managerial class can be seen from a variety of vantage points:

As everyone is now aware, unmarried women by far make the most disproportionate jump into Democrat Land, as well as increasingly radicalized hyperliberal policies—which reflects in other interesting ways:

As an aside, one X user had a topically cogent comment about the screenshot below:

Most of the bluecheck unpacking of the collapsing male college enrollment story focuses on how worrisome it is that these men won't espouse elite political opinions

But one of the most revealing disparities in the Rasmussen survey showed just how out of touch the elites are specifically to economic issues which affect the plebs most—as opposed to the airy abstractions of fringe intellectual culture war issues:

 

Who Finally Grew A Pair And Fired This Evil Fat Failtard?!?!

MoA  |  A big fat rat is leaving the ship.

One might interpret this as the State Department's admittance of defeat in the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine:

On the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland - Anthony Blinken / State Department, Mar 5 2024

Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world.
...
[I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.
...
President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.

Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old - too young to retire regularly.

She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime.

That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure.

bigger

Neither was Russia 'weakened' by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe's east.

Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred.

As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:

Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.

As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s.

The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.

Schumer Making Threats Again "Fund Ukraine Or You'll Be Sorry!"

WSJ  |  Democratic and Republican congressional leaders struck an optimistic tone that they would avert a government shutdown this weekend after a White House meeting in which lawmakers also stepped up pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to allow a long-stalled vote on Ukraine aid to go forward. 

Johnson is expected to put forward legislation in coming days that would keep the government fully open, but the details remained uncertain. The Congress has until Saturday at 12:01 a.m. to fund the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy and several other agencies that have been operating on temporary extensions since Sept. 30. The funding for the rest of the federal government expires after March 8.

The main holdup has been in the Republican-led House, where Johnson is managing a rowdy GOP conference that has taken a hard line on spending and is increasingly skeptical of foreign aid, even as the Democratic-controlled Senate has been ready for months to move forward.

Emerging from the meeting, Johnson said he was “very optimistic” about government- funding talks. Leaders think “we can get to agreement on these issues and prevent a government shutdown,” he said. He didn’t take questions. 

The other congressional leaders at the sit-down—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D., N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.)—also sounded upbeat about avoiding a shutdown. 

“We are making good progress,” said Schumer, adding there was some “back and forth on some issues that different people want.” But he said, “I don’t think those are insurmountable.” He indicated that the most likely path was a short-term spending patch to give negotiators more time to complete the full fiscal-year bills. 

McConnell said everyone was on the same page regarding the need to keep the government funded. “I think we can stop that drama right now before it emerges,” he said.

The leaders sat down in the Oval Office, with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris positioned in armchairs near a crackling fire. Congressional leaders sat on sofas arranged around a coffee table.

Those gathered for the meeting, including McConnell, pressed Johnson to allow a House vote on a Ukraine aid package. Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Burns gave a presentation laying out the difficult conditions for Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield, with troops running out of munitions. 

The Senate passed a $95.3 billion package this month that contained a fresh round of aid for Ukraine and funds for Israel and Taiwan. Johnson has declined to put it on the House floor. House Republicans are divided on Ukraine aid, with a little more than half on the record opposing it in the past, including Johnson before he became speaker. The Senate bill would need significant Democratic support to pass.

Schumer said the discussion on Ukraine was “the most intense I have ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office.” He said he told Johnson he would “regret it for the rest of his life” if he blocked assistance for Kyiv.  

Johnson “said he wanted to get Ukraine done, and he had to figure out the best way to do it,” Schumer recalled.

In the meeting, McConnell, a strong advocate for Kyiv, told Johnson the House’s best path forward on Ukraine is to pass the Senate bill, because making any changes would further delay the aid. “We have a time problem here,” he told reporters. 

Johnson said he continued to insist on steps to secure the southern U.S. border before passing any foreign-aid package. The House “is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” on the Ukraine package, he said, but “the first priority of the country is our border.” Earlier this year, Republicans blocked a bipartisan Senate deal linking aid to Ukraine with changes at the border, saying it wasn’t tough enough.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), speaking with reporters after meeting with President Biden and other congressional leaders, said he thought a government shutdown could be averted. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

The White House meeting started shortly before noon and lasted about an hour. Johnson briefly spoke one-on-one with the president after the meeting ended. White House officials declined to say what the two men discussed, other than explaining that the conversation wasn’t scheduled in advance. 

Afterward, Biden told reporters a “bipartisan solution” was needed to fund the government. Regarding Ukraine, he said “the need is urgent” for additional funds. “I think the consequences of inaction in Ukraine are dire,” Biden said.

Such White House summits are high-profile opportunities for both sides to show they are fighting for their parties’ priorities, rather than nitty-gritty policy negotiations. But the moment was particularly challenging for Johnson, a formerly little-known conservative who leapfrogged from the lower ranks of House Republican leadership to assume the speakership in October, after a group of GOP dissidents ousted his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).

Unlike other senior leaders on Capitol Hill, Johnson has almost no pre-existing relationship with Biden.

For months, the Republican House and Democratic Senate have deferred on Congress’s responsibility to set new spending levels and priorities for the federal government for fiscal year 2024, instead passing a series of stopgap measures by repeatedly extending spending levels set back in December 2022.

Johnson has a number of options. none of which will satisfy all House Republicans. He could seal a deal with congressional Democrats and try to pass fresh full-year spending legislation at a two-thirds threshold, bypassing Republican holdouts. Johnson could put it off a few days or weeks with a short-term patch—again with Democrats’ help. Or he could try to rely on his narrow Republican majority to pass another stopgap bill through September, triggering automatic across-the-board spending cuts; such a move would be almost certain to lead to a shutdown because any such measure would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Beneath the surface of the spending fight, a tug of war is playing out inside the House Republican conference between military hawks and conservatives opposed to further spending, with Johnson caught in the middle. The military hawks want to avoid the defense cuts that would be triggered if Congress fails to enact new full-year spending measures by April 30. The critics of more spending benefit from congressional inaction, because it brings them closer to the date when across-the-board cuts would be activated under a provision in last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Some GOP lawmakers have said in recent days they wouldn’t mind a shutdown, while other figures including McConnell have warned that shutdowns are bad policy—and bad politics.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Is Congress doing enough to avoid a partial government shutdown? Join the conversation below.

People familiar with the negotiations between Johnson and Democrats said that a key sticking point is how much money to appropriate for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Democrats are asking for $7.03 billion, more than the $6.3 billion previously sought by the Senate and requested in Biden’s budget. But the GOP-led House passed a measure including $6 billion for the program, which provides food and health assistance.

Another obstacle, these people said, is a provision to block the VA from reporting the names of veterans who need help managing their benefits to a national background-check system used to screen gun purchases. Democrats want the language to be stripped out.

Even if those issues get resolved, Johnson must sell the deal to his factious conference after House lawmakers return Wednesday to Washington. A House Republican meeting is scheduled for Thursday.

A Friday conference call for GOP lawmakers did little to assuage raw feelings as Johnson sought for an hour to manage the expectations of his conference, fielding more than a dozen questions. The speaker told lawmakers not to expect a home run or grand slams in the spending bills, but instead singles or doubles, according to people on the call. Johnson said such expectations reflected the reality of divided government, and that some Republicans’ willingness to block routine procedural votes—essentially paralyzing the floor—had hurt Republicans’ leverage in talks with Democrats.

Some Republicans complained that he had offered little information about the substance of any of the spending bills, raising fears that Johnson was setting the stage for another episode in which he would rely on Democratic votes to clear must-pass legislation through the House.

So far, Johnson has passed five major bills at a two-thirds threshold with the help of Democrats: two previous stopgap spending bills; the annual defense-policy bill; a temporary reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration; and a bipartisan tax bill.

McCarthy’s willingness to pass a stopgap bill with Democratic votes in September triggered the rebellion that led to his removal. The same fate could await Johnson if at least three House Republicans were willing to vote with all Democrats to fire him from the speakership, given the narrow majority in the House.