moneycircus | Zionism has lost its mask; for it is, and has always been, a tool of
globalist imperialism. (We’ll leave the religious aspects until a later
article.)
Readers know well the story. The European empires were
corporate ventures, beginning around 1600. Operating under royal charter
or exemption, corporations carved out territories according to where
the narcotics, textiles, spices, minerals and, later, the oil lay.
First
they drew on the investment of shareholders, and later the lending of
banks which provided a shot of steroids to the business of empire and
war, paying for troops and mercenaries, and greater and ever more costly
wars.
Today there is oil in them there hills, namely the Golan
Heights, for which Rothschild-backed Genie Energy (its board is a Who’s
Who of the deep state) secured a license in 2013.
There is oil off
the shore of Gaza, in the Mediterranean, and lip-smacking plans for
pipelines this way and that, with the potential to flow north to Europe
or east to Asia.
We saw this coming more than a year ago — as an outcome of the Ukraine war — when the NordStream pipeline was detonated. See Europe, Gas And The Endgame (Sep 30, 2022)
Longstanding
plans have resurfaced for a new canal to rival Egypt’s Suez, flowing
from the Red Sea directly to the Levantine gas fields, disappropriating
the residents of Gaza.
The British Empire’s favourite narrative is that as herders and nomads they are transients, having no land, nor rights thereto.
And so there are plans to expel much of the population of Gaza to allow for these projects.
While these economic machinations unfold, the general attitude is one
of compliance, lock step and censorship. UK political leaders and
corporate executives are firing any who call for ceasefire.
Florida has acted against students showing sympathy for Palestinians.
The
U.S., France and Britain may outlaw public critique of Zionism just at
the moment it is being exposed as an extension of globalism and
imperialism.
Such gagging is straight out of the Covid censorship
play book, and that is the connection they do not want you to make:
exposing the lie that governments care about the people whom they so
recently terrorised and poisoned.
For why should the same
politicians who marched in lock step to the dictates of big pharma and
the military care about Israel except for its role as a regional
bridgehead? It is the world’s most-jabbed nation — the laboratory for
Pfizer, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted.
Palestinians were not given the jab. He had other plans for them.
Note: Reasonable people believe that thimerosol and aluminum adjuvants alike are neurotoxic. Much the same way we believe that atrazine causes gender dysmorphia. I was chewing this cud on my way to CT last week, and again on the way back from NYC yesterday afternoon, lamenting the fact that the airline no longer gives away peanuts as a snack due to the congenitally weak fail tails who cannot abide exposure to peanuts. Either these genetically underprivileged feebs let us all down because weakness, or, they were exposed to something early in life which rendered them dysfunctional.
BigThink | Do you have an uncle who believes vaccines cause autism but refuses to study the reams of research showing them to be safe? What about a friend who avoids information about factory animal farming
so they can eat cheap meat guilt-free? Or how about that CEO who claims
their business is ethically minded, yet doesn’t investigate its supply
chain for exploitation of the environment or the impoverished?
Each is an example of what psychologists call willful
ignorance — the intentional act of avoiding information that reveals the
negative consequences of one’s actions. Not to judge: We all have a
place in our lives where we look the other way and pretend everything is
fine. It may be personal, political, or professional in nature, but
just below the conscious surface, we know our actions don’t align with
our stated values.
“Examples [of] willful ignorance abound in everyday life,” Linh Vu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam, said. “We wanted to know just how prevalent and how harmful willful ignorance is, as well as why people engage in it.”
To find out, Vu and a team of researchers performed the
first meta-analysis on the current empirical evidence of willful
ignorance, and it was published in the Psychological Bulletin,
a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Psychological
Association. They compared the results of 22 studies with a total of
more than 6,000 participants. Here’s what they found.
Moral wiggle room
The classic experiment for studying willful ignorance is known as the moral wiggle room task.
It was designed by Jason Dana, an associate professor of marketing and
management at Yale. Participants are randomly assigned the role of
decision-maker or recipient. The decision-maker is given a choice: They
can take either a $5 or $6 payout. If they take the $5 payout, the
recipient will receive $5 as well. If they take the $6 payout, the
recipient will receive $1.
When provided with this information by a researcher, the majority of decision-makers act altruistically. They sacrifice the slightly larger payout for themselves to give the recipient more money. On average, only about a quarter of decision-makers act selfishly.
But this full-information condition is simply the control. The
experiment really begins when the researchers become less forthcoming.
In
the experimental condition, the decision-makers can still choose
between the $5 or $6 payouts, but this time they are not told what the
recipient will receive. There’s a 50-50 chance the recipient will
receive $5 or $1. Importantly, the decision-makers can ask the
researchers what payout the recipient will receive, and they can do so
at no cost to themselves. In other words, while the decision-makers
start out blind to the consequences of their actions, they don’t have to
stay that way if they don’t want to.
PCR | US Representative Matt Gaetz has courage and principles, for the most part good ones.
It was Gaetz who had the courage and leadership ability to get rid of Rino McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
It is Gaetz who understands that hardly any member of Congress in either party represents Americans.Instead, they represent the military/security complex’s power and profits, the profits of the pharmaceutical companies,the
profits of agri-business (ethanol for example), the profits of Wall
Street, the profits of energy, timber, and mining, and so forth.And especially, the US Congress represents the artificial state of Israel and all of Israel’s agendas.
Indeed, Matt Gaetz himself cannot escape having to support an occupier of Palestinians’ land, claiming that it is Israel’s.The
fact that even a brave man like Matt Gaetz has to support an aggressor
against a people abandoned by the “moral” West shows how captured the US
government is at all levels by vested monied interests.
Gaetz along with the entirely of the US Congress and the President
are purchased by the billions of dollars that American taxpayers are
forced to hand over to Israel each year. American taxpayers are forced to give Israel annually billions of dollars that are used to purchase our government. Israel, considered a rich country, does not need foreign aid, but any member of Congress who does not vote forIsrael’s billions finds in his next election a challenger financed by Israel’s billionsand
himself a victim of Israel’s slander machine. The same thing happens if
you vote against an excessive military/security budget or against the
agendas of powerful organized interests. A government whose election is
financed by interest groups has to represent those interest groups.
So, obviously, the solution is not term limits on members of Congress.The
solution is to take the money that Congress gives Israel to buy our
government out of politics along with the ability of corporations to
purchase the US government, thanks to an unconstitutional ruling of the
US Supreme Court that it is a “free speech right”for corporations and foreign interests to purchase the US government for their own use.
There you have it. The US government is a purchased entity. It has
nothing whatsoever to do with American interests or protecting the
interests of the American people.
What needs to be done?
Matt Gaetz, the conservatives and libertarians naively think that term limits is the answer.This
is another of Americans’ insouciant mistakes. The real solution is to
extend, not limit, the terms of members of Congress and to give Congress
the police powerson which
Congress’ enemy–the executive branch–has a monopoly. The corrupt Justice
Department can frame up and arrest members of Congress, and Congress
has no corresponding powers.
The founding fathers distrusted democracy because of their fear of
ignorant mobs. For this reason they limited the terms of US
Representatives to two years.So
US Representatives and Senators are turned into whores prostituting
themselves for reelection money as soon as they are elected. It is never
possible for Congress or the President to represent American’s
interests.
This is because of money.The
solution is to take out of politics the ability of corporations,
Israel, and foreign interests to purchase the services of the US
Government, which as a result of interest group funding of election
campaigns turns the US government into a whore.The
Founding Fathers should have lengthened the terms of Congress and the
President, prohibited all outside money from financing election
campaigns, and financed at taxpayer expense free speech forums for
candidates to debate their differences. They also made a mistake by creating a legislative body too large for a common interest to emerge. This failure of the Founding Fathers doomed America to the control of vested interests.
The Democrats when they limited the terms of committee chairmen
eliminated legislative power centers that could stand up to the
executive branch and thereby weakened Congress as an institution.
Best ever response to the Zionist propaganda line: ‘why don’t the neighbouring Arab countries want the Palestinians?’@normfinkelstein : ‘you’re smiling but your stupid smirk won’t change the fact the argument you used was used by Hitler to justify the extermination of the Jews’ pic.twitter.com/8UPuNB9pLh
globaltimes | The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is exacerbating. US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken has made four visits to Israel since October 7, but what
he talked about was the US support for Israel instead of a ceasefire.
With
each day that a ceasefire is delayed, Palestinians' animosity toward
Israel deepens. It will definitely create a longer-term and more
devastating disaster in the region already plagued by decades of war.
When
the conflict between Palestine and Israel first broke out, China
immediately expressed its stance, emphasizing that the top priority is
to prevent a broader humanitarian disaster and that the fundamental way
out is to implement the "two-state solution." On many occasions since
then, China has repeatedly stressed the importance and urgency of
returning to the "two-state solution."
However, the US and
European countries have not actively responded to this call of
conscience. Instead, they have been constrained by domestic politics and
wavered, preventing major countries from reaching an immediate
consensus.
It was not until Israel's military operations in Gaza
had caused tens of thousands of casualties, including scores of women
and children, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people that leaders
in the US and European countries seemed to realize the need to return
to the two-state solution. US President Joe Biden and some European
leaders have expressed their stance on this recently.
Although
the current suffering in the Middle East is not directly caused by the
US and Europe, as countries deeply involved in the geopolitical game
there since World War II, they bear a heavy responsibility for the
resumption of the war.
It is precisely because of the US'
unlimited support for Israel and the cowardice of the US and Europe that
led to the failure to take action to maintain peace. Israel marched
into Gaza without any scruples, carrying US-made weapons and equipment.
So
far, the US has not called for shifting the focus to a ceasefire.
Instead, it supported Israel's retaliatory strikes against Gaza and
enhanced the deployment of force to restrain the involvement of other
forces in the Middle East.
off-guardian | There is one thing that’s new about this latest propaganda drive since January, 2020. Whereas the others all united what
we (very loosely) call “the left” (along with certain sectors of the
GOP) against the “far-right” bogey, this one has abruptly split that gross alliance, as both parties—Trump et al. included—and the
“liberal media” have (predictably) swung virulently Zionist, while the
“woke” masses (predictably, and, often, virulently) “stand with
Palestine,” along with some few politicians, movie stars and rappers.
This livid falling-out has only weakened the antagonists, since both
sides are disabled by a common blindness to what’s really happening to them both (and all the rest of us).
“We are the people of light, they are the people of darkness—and light shall triumph over darkness.”
Thus spake Netanyahu two days ago, spelling out the Manichaean vision
that “our free press” has, by and large, been variously pitching since
October 7, and that has Zionists beside themselves with open genocidal
rage, not just at Hamas, and/or its armed confederates, but at the Gazans overall, and, no doubt, all Palestinians.
It was, of course, the “sudden” horror of Hamas’s attack, and the
endless invocation of the Holocaust by the Israeli government (and,
therefore, by “our free press”), that now has Zionists not only cheering as the IDF kills thousands more than
Hamas killed (and forcibly “relocates” many thousands more), but
attacking anyone who isn’t cheering, too, demanding that whoever doesn’t
“stand with Israel” be censored, fired, expelled from school or
otherwise eliminated in a crackdown that makes “cancel culture” seem (almost) benign.
This ferocious drive against the Palestinians, and anyone who
advocates on their behalf, is wholly based on the Official Story that
“our free press” (as usual) will not question, even though the
Israeli people don’t believe it, since there is overwhelming evidence
against it—evidence that “our free press” will not report, just as it
has long blacked out the agony in Gaza (and those eight years of Nazi
violence in East Ukraine).
And as the Zionists have been disastrously misled by the Official
Story, so have those who applauded Hamas’s bloody raids, voicing
“exhilaration” over what they took to be a righteous counter-blow against the occupying power, like the heroic uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. While Gaza does recall the Warsaw ghetto, Hamas’s “surprise attack” does not recall that uprising, which actually did come as a surprise (and, of course, killed no civilians), whereas “October 7” clearly was an “inside job,” as the Israeli people know—an inconvenient fact for all who now want to see still more people
die, whether Israelis, Gazans, Jews, Palestinians, Muslims or whomever
else they hate, for whatever reason (or no reason).
So let us finally pose the crucial question: Who benefits from the catastrophe that may now sweep us all away, if we don’t break the spell of the Official Story? It’s surely not the
Zionists, since Netanyahu obviously isn’t one, or he wouldn’t have
forced “vaccination” on his people, through what may well have been the
toughest “vaccine” mandate in the world. Despite his reputation, and his
demagogic rhetoric, Netanyahu would appear to be a globalist, not a Zionist.
Certainly this latest melodrama is now speedily intensifying the
repressive trends that started with the rollout of “the virus,” from
ever-tighter censorship, to still “smarter” surveillance, to the
splintering of opposition, to the exacerbation of the refugee crisis,
and so on, as this acute OffGuardian piece makes clear:
Now, let’s return to the only bit of good news in this whole hyper-barbaric episode—that the Israeli people get it,
not just about Hamas’s “surprise attack,” but about the “vaccination”
drive that Netanyahu forced on them, and which now has them “dying
suddenly” week after week, along with other peoples the world over.
Could it be that Netanyahu actually is not the ultimate or only author of “October 7,” and that its purpose wasn’t just to save his hide politically?
Is it not possible that, just as “his” drive to “vaccinate” all the
Israeli people was probably dictated from on high, he organized “October
7,” or okayed it, on the orders of the same powers who’ve been ravaging
the world since January, 2020?
Not only is this crisis serving perfectly to foster still more chaos,
division and economic ruination overall, but, more precisely, it has
(at least for now) completely drowned out the Israelis’ quiet, shared
awareness that “vaccination” is a stroke of democide, imposed worldwide not with the noble goal of “saving lives,” but—on the contrary—to end as many lives as possible, for the purpose of extreme depopulation everywhere (as
Bill Gates once incautiously revealed, when he referred to the eventual
concluding phase of global “vaccination” as “the final solution”).
The last thing that our masters want is for the Israelis’ consciousness of what’s been done to them to spread to other countries, so that enough of us wake up, and unify enough to put an end to these catastrophes at last.
And so those whose eyes are now so full of blood that they just want to see more people die—whether Jews or Palestinians—had better understand, for their own sake, that those behind the “vaccination” drive agree with you, and with your enemy, since they want nearly all of us to die, and the sooner the better.
So if you can’t stop hating any others to the point of
wanting them all dead, go ahead and keep it up. It’s your funeral
(assuming anyone will be around to bury you).
stephensemler |The White House deployed the Secretaries of Defense and State to Capitol Hill this morning to sell Biden’s $106 billion spending request,
which includes billions in military aid for Israel. With rising
concerns that Israel’s ongoing military offensive will amount to mass ethnic cleansing, a bunch of protestors thankfully attended the congressional hearing too.
The Protestors Are Right
As
this newsletter’s resident budget boffin, I want to explain why the
activists were right to protest this specific spending plan. Biden’s
proposal lists up to $23.5 billion in funding related to Israel’s
military offensive: $8.7 billion in direct military aid, $5.6 billion in
potential long-term military support, up to $3.5 billion for State
Department’s migration assistance programs, and up to $5.7 billion for
USAID’s humanitarian aid programs.1
All of it supports the forced displacement of Palestinians. Based on my reading of the tea leaves — and the 69-page PDF from the White House Office of Management Budget detailing the $106 billion request — I believe Biden is prepared to subsidize ethnic cleansing2 on a historic scale. Here’s how.
The
$8.7 billion in military aid would bankroll Israel’s ongoing violent
displacement of Palestinian civilians by sustaining its bombing campaign
and ground invasion. The other $5.6 billion in military spending is
there to support a bloody, protracted invasion of Gaza (which Israeli
military leaders openlyadmit
is a real possibility) by boosting US weapons stockpiles in Israel that
Israel can draw from upon request, and funding the president’s new
authority to send Israel any weapon directly from Pentagon stocks (with
minimal oversight). Biden’s plan would primarily manage the humanitarian
fallout not by securing Gaza, but by financing mass migration. Judging
by how they were written in the proposal, the intent behind the $3.5
billion request for migration assistance is to manage near-term
displacement, and the $5.7 billion in humanitarian relief is to
accommodate the long-term (and perhaps permanent) mass displacement of
Palestinian civilians.
Israeli leaders have expressed interest in ultimately shrinking Palestinian territory and greatly reducing the number of people living in it, and formalizedplans
for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza have recently emerged from
the country’s political establishment. As president, Biden could prevent
Israel from weaponizing mass migration, but he chose to budget for it instead.
theintercept | Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.
On October 7, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.The U.S. Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a “life support facility”: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.
Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing.
The $35.8 million U.S. troop facility, not publicly announced or previously reported, was obliquely referenced in an August 2 contract announcement by the Pentagon. Though the Defense Department has taken pains to obscure the site’s true nature — describing it in other records merely as a “classified worldwide” project — budget documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512. (The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“Sometimes something is treated as an official secret not in the hope that an adversary would never find out about it but rather [because] the U.S. government, for diplomatic or political reasons, does not want to officially acknowledge it,” Paul Pillar, a former chief analyst at the CIA’s counterterrorism center who said he had no specific knowledge of the base, told The Intercept. “In this case, perhaps the base will be used to support operations elsewhere in the Middle East in which any acknowledgment that they were staged from Israel, or involved any cooperation with Israel, would be inconvenient and likely to elicit more negative reactions than the operations otherwise would elicit.”
Rare acknowledgment of the U.S. military presence in Israel came in 2017, when the two countries inaugurated a military site that the U.S. government-funded Voice of America deemed “the first American military base on Israeli soil.” Israeli Air Force’s Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch called it “historic.” He said, “We established an American base in the State of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time.”
johnhelmer | If we abstract from the versions about the eschatological motives of
the parties to the conflict and various hypotheses about the scenario of
how events developed, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation exposed three
vulnerabilities of the Israelis of a military intelligence nature:
— a failure in strategic intelligence regarding the plans and
intentions of Hamas. Although, based on the received HUMINT [human
intelligence] data, there were warnings from the Egyptian intelligence
services. The Israelis position their technical intelligence
capabilities as dominant [above their human intelligence].
— the discrepancy between the capabilities of the advanced, expensive
Iron Dome missile defense system and the requirements for repelling the
direct and asymmetric threats [employed by Hamas].
— strategic miscalculation in the use of a complex, high-tech,
expensive security barrier around the perimeter of the Gaza Strip. The
construction of the barrier strategically set restrictions on offensive
manoeuvre for the IDF and the ability of the Israelis to anticipate.
Hamas has gained thereby the operational initiative – the mobility of
their forces against the static dispersion of the Israelis. Considering
the barrier impenetrable before the operation, the Israelis had
relocated most of their regular forces to northern-sector control of the
territories near the borders of Lebanon and Syria,and to the West Bank.
The “great Israeli wall” has appeared to be almost totally useless.
Hamas overcame it in a short time, which allowed it to operate almost
unhindered in the adjacent territories. The disabling of [the IDF’s]
technological means demonstrated the lack of the human resources to
respond. In terms of communications, the dependence of the Israeli
forces on wireless data transmission has become a critical
vulnerability.
As in the case of Iron Dome, the Israelis relied on technological
solutions, methods, and thinking, neglecting the principle of war being
waged by people, not by machines (yet). To this is added a doctrinal
and strategic discrepancy with the actual conditions of combat.
Technological superiority was placed at the forefront, but the complex
systems showed vulnerability to a cascade of failures, leading the
system to collapse. A regional conflict would make this catastrophic.
[*] The lead cartoons are, left, by Carlos Latuff in Brazil in 2006 and, right, by Mr Fish in the US (Harper’s Magazine)
also in 2006. They have been reproduced by Evan Jones in a collection
of western media cartoons on the meaning of anti-Semitism as an
information warfare weapon in US-Israeli military operations against the
Arabs until editorial censorship was imposed in both the UK and US. Click to read.
[**] Read the 80-year old story of the German General Staff
plans for the Arab states and Hitler’s failure to implement them,
followed by the plans of Coon, the OSS, and the CIA homicidalists
against the Arabs, which are still being followed in Washington and Tel
Aviv. Click. On Saturday night, October 28,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed his intelligence
services and military staff for failing to warn him of the Hamas war
plan. Under counter-attack from the services and the military, Netanyahu
then apologised and retracted his claims. The Israeli press record of
the episode reveals that the entire Israeli political and military
leadership shares the same racial superiority doctrine.
[***] In a special session of security officials called to discuss the Makhachkala airport incidents, President Vladimir Putin said:
“We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of the
peoples of the Middle East and other regions of the world, who
organizes deadly chaos, who benefits from it. Today, in my opinion, it
has already become obvious and understandable for everyone – customers
act openly and brazenly. It is the current ruling elites of the United
States and their satellites that are the main beneficiaries of global
instability. They extract their bloody rent from it. Their strategy is
also obvious. The United States as a global superpower – everyone sees
it, understands it, even according to trends in the global economy – is
weakening, losing its position. The American-style world, with one
hegemon, is being destroyed, is leaving, gradually but steadily going
into the past…The events in Makhachkala last night were inspired,
including through social networks, not least from the territory of
Ukraine, by the hands of agents of Western special services. I want to
ask myself in this regard: is it possible to help Palestine by trying to
attack the Tats and their families? Tats, by the way, are the titular
nation in Dagestan. Palestine can only be helped in the fight against
those who are behind this tragedy. We, Russia, are fighting them as part
of a special military operation, it is with them – both for ourselves
and for those who strive for real, true freedom.”
timesofisrael | Bias against homelands can hurt minorities in the Diaspora. Prejudices
against Africans (‘primitives,’ ‘hotheads’) devalue Black migrants
around the world. Prejudices against Asians (‘mystical people’)
dehumanize Asian migrants the world over. But propaganda against Israel
hurts Jews in their Diaspora like no other minority. Zionism is to Jews
what feminism is to women. Men who ‘like women but not feminists’ show
they don’t like women; rather, they like being served. Jews and Gentiles
who ‘like Jews but not Zionists’ show they like Jews as long as they
feel scared all the time so that they can be manipulated to serve and
comfort the Gentile powers to be; but not when they are independent and
proud of themselves.
Judaism laid much of the foundation of all Monotheism (One G^d),
Science (One Universe), and Democracy (Equality) in the world. That’s
why hatred of Jews is the ultimate ungratefulness, throwing mud on
Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Einstein, and Herzl. And therefore, the Holocaust
doesn’t compare to any other genocide, Armenian included—though they
are all horrific.
It seems that Intersectionality was designed to promote
Antisemitic. It advocates comparing oppressions and seeing how they are
all interwoven. Because Antisemitism is so unique, and because Jews are
kept hostage by the top level of societies (and blamed for all ills), it
often ends up uniting all oppressed groups against the Jews, the
victims of the oldest hatred.
And so, you see there is reason not to just regard Antisemitism
as one of the forms of Racism. Jews-oppression is too specific. It’s a
special bigotry.
NYPost | Secretary of State Antony Blinken dressed his 4-year-old son as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a Halloween event with President Biden on the White House lawn Monday night.
Biden gave the young “Zelensky,” who wore a dark green sweatshirt, a
box of M&Ms bearing the presidential seal — after asking Congress
earlier this month to give another $61.4 billion for the real deal, on top of $113 billion already appropriated to help Kyiv resist Russia’s 20-month-old invasion.
Blinken was accompanied by his wife, Biden’s White House cabinet
secretary Evan Ryan, and their 3-year-old daughter, who was dressed in
the Ukrainian flag’s blue-and-yellow scheme.
The top US diplomat’s grandfather, Moritz Blinken, was born in
Ukraine’s capital, then part of the Russian empire, in 1900 and
immigrated to the US with his family as a 4-year-old.
Blinken’s ancestors were, like Zelensky, Ukrainian Jews.
catyjohnstone | Propagandists
are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this.
They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and
manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going
on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a
child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are
not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.
Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation
— as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to
a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark
future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.
The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data
coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of
narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its
allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant
glitch in the narrative matrix.
The
longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the
propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The
more people are going to realize that their government is not what it
has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the
truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of
thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda
tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being
brightly illuminated.
By
murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its
true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they
see.
Eyes are opening everywhere. People are being radicalized in record numbers. The streets are being flooded with protesters.
Very inconvenient questions are being asked. Rigorous scrutiny is being
applied in places it was seldom applied before. Light is shining in
through cracks that weren’t there before.
This
is all so, so horrible and so, so painful to watch day in and day out.
But something is moving underneath it all. Something big. The empire has
done irreparable harm to its ability to keep everyone sleeping and
complacent going forward. A healthy world may be in our future yet.
Aurelian2022 | In reality, the relationship between the use of force and the
attainment of a defined political objective is a highly complex, inexact
and uncertain art, and is much easier to explain theoretically than to
do in practice. It implies a whole series of complicated, asserted
relationships that don’t necessarily exist tidily in real life. To begin
with, of course, you need to have a defined political objective, which
is agreed, practicable and measurable. Bombing somebody, or firing off
some shells like the French ship, is not an objective in itself, and is
often indistinguishable from a display of pique to make yourself feel
better. What the military call the “end-state” has to be clearly
distinguishable from the current state, not to mention better than it,
or there is no point in pursuing it.
You also have to be
reasonably sure of how the political end-state will play out, or you
could be in a worse situation than you were at the start. This implies a
realistic knowledge of the political situation you are trying to
affect, and what the political consequences of your military actions
might be. So the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 was
intended to humiliate the government of Slobodan Milosevic by forcing
the surrender of Kosovo, and so remove him from power in the elections
the following year. It was assumed that the government that replaced his
would be grateful to NATO for bombing them, and would adopt a
pro-western, pro-NATO stance. What was not anticipated (well, except by
those of us who were paying attention) was that Milosevic would be
brought down by nationalist agitation, and replaced by a hard-line
nationalist President, Kostunica. And as for the idea that a teetering
Gaddafi, perhaps on the point of being overthrown in 2011, could be
pushed over the brink by western intervention, leading to a stable,
pro-western democratic system … well if there is a stronger word than
“catastrophic” to put before “misunderstanding” let’s by all means use
it. Oh, and let’s not even get into the political fantasies of western
capitals about what would follow the forced resignation of Vladimir
Putin.
So this use-of-force-for political-objectives thing
looks a bit more complicated than we thought at first sight, doesn’t it?
It also means that you might just get your fingers trapped in the
wringer. For example, the US has deployed two carrier battle groups to
the eastern Mediterranean. Now, this is a traditional action of
governments that have no other options really open to them, and not, of
itself, necessarily criticable. In the circumstances there is a
political obligation to do something, whatever
that something might be. And to be fair, carriers are very useful for
evacuating foreign nationals, under military protection or otherwise, as
the French showed in Beirut in 2006.
The problem is that it’s virtually certain that the carrier groups have
been deployed according to this “do something” logic, which is to say
that there is almost certainly no accompanying political strategy: as
often, the US is making it up as it goes along. (Talking about
“deterrence” or “stabilisation” is not a strategy, it’s an attempt at a
justification.) The difficulty with all such deployments, though, is
that they are much easier to start than stop. To withdraw the force is
to send a political message that you think the crisis is over, or at
least manageable, which may not be the message you want to send. So you
keep the force in position, and eventually you replace it, because you
don’t have any choice. The difficulty is that, apart from evacuations,
there’s almost nothing for which the career group can be usefully
employed. Intelligence gathering maybe, but there are far easier and
more discreet ways of doing that. In the meantime, they are large
targets, probably limited to flying patrols and not much else. (I’m
assuming that the US would not be so insane as to join in the
bombardment of Gaza itself.)
In turn, this reflects the
effective impotence of the US in the present conflict. Its historical
attempt to combine the positions of independent facilitator with doglike
devotion to one side was always dubious, but was tolerated insofar as
the country was actually able to have some influence. That’s clearly no
longer true. Nobody in the Arab world is going to be influenced by the
US now, and it has also ruled itself out of any influence over Iran,
Hezbollah and Hamas. Biden’s initial maximalist rhetoric has effectively
given away most of the influence the US might have been able to assert
over Israel as well. Which doesn’t leave a lot, and doesn’t leave a lot
for US military power to actually do, either.
In any event,
even if a decision were made to use military power, in a political
vacuum, and just to look threatening, what could the US actually do? For
the moment, nothing. Now if a major ground invasion were to start in Gaza, and if
Hezbollah were to react militarily along the northern frontier, then
theoretically the US could target them, but with massive attendant risks
to the Lebanese population, and considerable risk of casualties to
itself, in other places where there are US troops. Put simply, an attack
agains Hezbollah which is large enough to make a difference could cause
massive collateral damage to Lebanon, whereas anything smaller will not
make a difference anyway. The US has invested massively in the
stability of Lebanon in recent years, and is not to going to put that
investment in jeopardy now.
There is certainly every chance
that Iran would consider a large-scale attack on Hezbollah to be an
unfriendly action, and then retaliate. The problem for the Americans is
that the Iranians can inflict far more damage on them and their
interests than they can inflict on the Iranians. This is nothing to do
with the sophistication, or even numbers, of weapons: it’s a lot more
mundane than that. Get out a map, and have a look at the region, and ask
yourself, where could US carrier groups safely go? Which countries
could be expected to provide airfields, ports and harbours and logistic
depots? In the present political situation, the answer is probably
“none.” No doubt an air- and sea-launched missile attack on Iran could
do some damage, but what would be the point? What possible proportional
political objective could be served thereby? No conceivable amount of
damage caused to Iran could compel the government, for example, to cut
off support for Hezbollah, or for the current government in Syria. By
contrast, severe damage to a single carrier, even if it were not sunk,
would be enough to drive the US out of the region.
I think we
can draw some general lessons from these examples, which in turn may
help us understand how the current Gaza crisis may eventually resolve
itself. We can start by recalling that the theory of using military
power to achieve political end-states is important, but primarily as a
limitation. That’s to say that, whilst military action without a
political objective is pointless, the mere fact of starting military
action towards a declared political end-state doesn’t mean that you will
automatically get there. You still have to do the hard work of turning
the one into the other, and it’s that that I want to talk about now.
Consider
a political end-state of some kind. It doesn’t have to be heaven on
earth or for that matter the surrender of your enemy. It can be
something simpler, such as an enforceable decision by your neighbour to
stop supporting separatist groups in your country. So let’s assume you
define that political end-state, which we’ll call P(E). Now the first
thing to say is that this political end-state must actually be
politically (not just militarily) possible. It must be within the
capacity of the other government to agree to, or failing that the
balance of political forces at the end of the conflict must at least
make it possible. It is pointless and dangerous to attempt to force a
country or a political actor do do something that is beyond their power
to do; not that this hasn’t been attempted often enough.
Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1980's: 'We have the US Senate, the Congress and a record strong Jewish lobby on our side. We have a huge influence over them, America won't force us into anything' pic.twitter.com/zQXUEEyae0
strategic-culture | The Biden administration is becoming increasingly edgy about the
crisis in Gaza and what the objectives are for the Netanyahu war camp.
Most of all, its worried that it is being carefully coaxed into a war
between Israel and Iran which even the hapless U.S. president knows is
not somewhere he wants to go, regardless of how far he is away from his
re-election campaign. Netanyahu, for his part, is not even sure himself
if he actually wants to launch a ground offensive and a number of top
analysts are even predicting that he even won’t go ahead with it, given
what’s at stake and the history of such initiatives in the past.
Politically, he is not at all in a good place right now and the attack
on October 7th in many ways, while buying him time in office
and allowing him freedom from corruption investigations, is a
double-edged sword which will dismember him when Israelis’ patience runs
out. Most blame him for the attacks and kidnappings in the first place
so he has a limited amount of political bandwidth to work with.
His strategy seems to be more about playing it cool and letting time
take its toll. Even though he doesn’t have too much time himself, Biden
has much less. The stranglehold that Netanyahu has on Biden tightens
each day, when it is clear that Biden doesn’t have the patent ability to
invoke a ceasefire and do what most U.S. presidents should do: behave
like a superpower. This, apparently will have to be left to the two real
superpowers who tend to do more and talk less: China and Russia. For
the moment both Biden and Netanyahu are both waiting for a miracle to
happen which allows for a ceasefire to happen without Netanyahu losing
face. Biden could simply insist that Netanyahu stops the campaign and
then at least Bibi could say to the world “this is what the U.S. has
asked us to do”. But even in this setup, there would be a price to pay
for Biden and his administration elsewhere.
As more and more Iranian militias build up on the Syrian-Israel border
and the narrative heats up between Hezbollah and Israel, everyone in
fact is looking for a stroke of luck to throw the entire gruesome
slaughter out of sync. Biden could do this. He could be bold and
courageous and show real élan on the world stage. But that’s just not
what he does. Despite being an old school neocon and being a huge
advocate for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, these days he has lost his
mojo. He simply doesn’t know what he wants with Israel, a country which
he always professed to being a great supporter of, but whose present
administration is not where Biden wants U.S. foreign policy to be.
Many experts question what actually is at the heart of the
U.S.-Israel relationship and the 3bn dollars it hands to Israel each
year in military aid? For a long time, it was the special relationship
that Israel cherished while it, Israel, acted on behalf of the U.S. in
the region and was there just in case Arab countries lost their way in
their token allegiance to U.S. hegemony. At the very least it was an
outpost.
thecradle | Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam – be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping? Beijing, via its sophisticated diplomacy, is certainly hinting at it to key players, even before the ground-breaking, Russia-China brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement was struck earlier this year. That by itself won’t thwart the perpetual US neocon obsession to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran. Worth less than zero when it comes to military science, these neocons ignore how Iranian retaliation would – accurately – target each and every US base in Iraq and Syria, with the Persian Gulf an open case.
Peerless Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov has shown what could happen to those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean in case of an Israeli-threatened attack on Iran. Moreover, there are at least 1,000 US troops in northern Syria stealing the country’s oil – which would also become an instant target. Ali Fadavi, IRGC’s deputy commander-in-chief, cut to the chase: “We have technologies in the military field that no one knows about, and the Americans will know about them when we use them.” Cue to Iranian hypersonic Fattah missiles – cousins to the Khinzal and the DF-27 – traveling at Mach 15, and able to reach any target in Israel in 400 seconds. And add to it sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW). As confirmed in Moscow six months ago, when it comes to military interconnection, the Iranians told the Russians at the same table, “whatever you need, just ask.”
The same applies vice-versa, because the mutual enemy is one and the same. The heart of the matter in any Russian-Iran strategy is the Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day. Iran is able to block the Strait of Hormuz in a flash. For starters, that would be some sort of poetic justice retribution for Israel aiming to gobble up, illegally, all the multibillion-dollar natural gas discovered offshore Gaza: this is, incidentally, one of the absolutely key reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Yet the real deal will be to bring down the Wall Street-engineered $618 trillion derivative structure, as confirmed for years by analysts at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as independent Persian Gulf energy traders.
So when push comes to shove – and way beyond the defense of Palestine and in a scenario of Total War – not only Russia-Iran but key players of the Arab world about to become members of BRICS 11 – such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE – do have what it takes to bring down the US financial system anytime they choose. As an old school Deep State higher up, now in business in Central Europe, stresses: “The Islamic nations have the economic advantage. They can blow up the international financial system by cutting off the oil. They do not have to fire a single shot. Iran and Saudi Arabia are allying together. The 2008 crisis took 29 trillion dollars to solve but this one, should it happen, could not be solved even with 100 trillion dollars of fiat instruments.” As Persian Gulf traders told me, one possible scenario is OPEC starting to sanction Europe, first from Kuwait and then spreading from one OPEC country to another and to all countries that are treating the Muslim world as enemies and war fodder.
There aren't that many influential voices who are steadfastly denouncing the massive amounts of resources that are constantly being sent by Washington to other countries to fuel their wars, when there are so many pathologies/struggles Americans face.
responsiblestatecraft | In his recent address concerning the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and U.S. involvement in both, President Biden quoted the famous line
by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that America is “the
indispensable nation.” This is indeed the belief by which the U.S.
foreign and security establishment lives and works.
As
Biden’s speech reflected, it is one way in which the establishment
justifies to American citizens the sacrifices that they are called on to
make for the sake of U.S. primacy. It is also how members of the Blob
pardon themselves for participation in U.S. crimes and errors. For
however ghastly their activities and mistakes may be, they can be
excused if they take place as part of America’s “indispensable” mission
to lead the world towards “freedom” and “democracy.”
It
is therefore necessary to ask: Indispensable for what? Empty claims
about the “Rules-Based Order” cannot answer this question. In the
Greater Middle East, the answer should be obvious. I suppose that a
different hegemon might have made an even bigger mess of the region at
even greater cost to itself than the United States has succeeded in
doing over the past 30 years, but it would have had to put some really
serious effort into the task. Nor is it clear that the absence of a
superpower hegemon could have made things any worse.
In
this time, not one beneficial U.S. effort at peace in the region has
succeeded; few were even seriously attempted. And more than this, the
U.S. has not even fulfilled the core positive role of any hegemon, that
of providing stability.
Instead, it has all too often acted a
force of disorder: by invading Iraq and thereby enabling an explosion of
Sunni Islamist extremism that went on to play a dreadful role in Syria
as well; by pursuing through 20 years a megalomaniac strategy of
externally-driven state-building in Afghanistan, in defiance of every
lesson of Afghan history; by destroying the Libyan state, and thereby
plunging the country into unending civil war, destabilizing much of
northern Africa, and enabling a flood of migrants to Europe; by
repeatedly wrecking or abandoning possibilities of a reasonable deal
with Iran; and most gravely of all, by refusing to take an even remotely
equitable approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and failing
through the greater part of the past thirty years to make any serious
effort to promote a settlement.
Over the past generation, successive U.S. administrations turned a blind eye, not merely while the Likud governments slowly killed
the “two-state solution” and stoked Palestinian and Arab rage through
its settlement policy, but while Prime Minister Netanyahu deliberately
helped build up Hamas as a force against the Palestine Liberation Organization, so as not to have to negotiate seriously with the latter.
This
strategy has now proved catastrophic for Israel itself. It was also
carried out with no regard whatsoever to the interests of the United
States or its European allies in the face of Islamist terrorism.
And what have the American people themselves gained from this? Nothing at all, is the answer; while the losses can be precisely calculated:
More than 15,000 soldiers and contractors killed in Afghanistan and
Iraq; more than 50,000 wounded, and often disabled for life; more than
30,000 veteran suicides; 2,996 civilian dead on 9/11, an attack claimed
by al-Qaida as a reprisal for U.S. Middle East policy; some $8 trillion
subsequently expended in the “Global War on Terror.”
The invasion of Gaza and the intent to destroy Hamas appear to be political aims,
since the former will be extremely costly, particularly in soldiers’
lives to a casualty-averse IDF, and the elimination of Hamas is not
attainable. The point Alex Christoforu made in his show today, that the
US with its much greater resources, has not been able to eliminate Al
Qaeda, is confirmed in a Financial Times comment, Israel must know that destroying Hamas is beyond its reach.
Many military experts, including former Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis,
Douglas Macgregor, and Scott Ritter, have warned that it will be very
difficult for the IDF to engage in this kind of urban clearing
operation, particularly given its scale versus the IDF’s limited
experience and the largely reservist status of the majority of its
forces. Foreign Affairs, the premier US foreign policy publication, just
released a grim prognosis in How Will the IDF Handle Urban Combat?Fighting Hamas in Gaza Will Be Difficult and Costly. Key sections:
A potential ground assault into Gaza…would entail
horrendously difficult tactical conditions, including room-to-room
combat and tunnel warfare that would lead to massive casualties. It
would require fighting on the ground, in the air, and at sea—fighting
that must be done in a carefully synchronized fashion. Combat will be
slow and grinding, and the resulting devastation will almost certainly
test international support for Israel’s invasion…
Urban combat is slow, grinding, destructive, environmentally
devastating, and horrendously costly in human life—especially for
civilians. It involves house-by-house, block-by-block fighting that
soaks up troops and firepower in enormous quantities, as every room,
street corner, rooftop, sewer, and basement must be secured before the
next can be taken. Such combat is particularly dangerous for junior
combat leaders, who must constantly expose themselves in order to see,
communicate with, and command their soldiers…
…for soldiers and civilians in the midst of urban fighting, the
danger, the fatigue, the sense of perpetual threat from every direction,
and the horror of close-range hand-to-hand combat all take an immense
physical and psychological toll. Battles tend to be confused, fleeting
(measured in seconds), and short range, with targets often closer than
50 yards. Troops may be focused on the house or room they are fighting
in, but at the same time they may also be targeted from a distance by
mortar crews, snipers, and drone operators.
There is a lot more along these lines.
Several points seem noteworthy. First, as is evident even from this
short extract, Foreign Affairs acts as if a ground operation is not a
given, when there are reports of large numbers of Israeli tanks and
troops newly positioned nearby and more expected. Second is that it
bangs on about the findings of “NATO researchers” and of creating a
“combined-arms effect.” As we saw in Ukraine, forces trained to supposed
NATO standards were found by the Ukraine military to perform less well
than ones that used what NATO derided as more primitive approaches
better suited to battle conditions.
Third, and perhaps most important, this article does not give much
consideration about how the extensive Gaza tunnel system vastly
complicates this operation. Readers are welcome to correct me, but my
strong impression is that not only has there never been a clearing
operation in this large a setting, there has also never been one that
has had to contend with such an extensive tunnel system.
The IDF may be correct in its belief, or one might say hope, that
bunker busters can destroy most if not all of it and also detonate
stored munitions. There was alleged evidence of that happening, with
Jacob Dreizen posting a video of a presumed bunker buster then producing
successive explosions from below ground a meaningful distance from the
strike site.
Counterpunch | Entitled Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025],
the PowerPoint presentation anticipates: a) scenarios created by U.S.
forces and agencies and b) scenarios to which they might have to
respond. The projection is contingent on the use of hi-technology. According to the report
there are/will be six Technological Ages of Humankind: “Hunter/killer
groups (sic) [million BC-10K BC]; Agriculture [10K BC-1800 AD];
Industrial [1800-1950]; IT [1950-2020]; Bio/Nano [2020-?]; Virtual.”
In the past, “Hunter/gatherer” groups fought over “hunting grounds”
against other “tribal bands” and used “handheld/thrown” weapons. In the
agricultural era, “professional armies” also used “handheld/thrown”
weapons to fight over “farm lands.” In the industrial era, conscripted
armies fought over “natural resources,” using “mechanical and chemical”
weapons. In our time, “IT/Bio/Bots” (robots) are used to prevent
“societal disruption.” The new enemy is “everyone.” “Everyone.”
Similarly, a British Ministry of Defence projection to the year 2050 states: “Warfare could become ever more personalised with individuals and their families being targeted in novel ways.”
“KNOWLEDGE DOMINANCE”
The war on you is the militarization of everyday life with the
express goal of controlling society, including your thoughts and
actions.
A U.S. Army document
on information operations from 2003 specifically cites activists as
potential threats to elite interests. “Nonstate actors, ranging from
drug cartels to social activists, are taking advantage of the
possibilities the information environment offers,” particularly with the
commercialization of the internet. “Info dominance” as the Space
Command calls it can counter these threats: “these actors use the
international news media to attempt to influence global public opinion
and shape decision-maker perceptions.” Founded in 1977, the U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command featured an Information Dominance Center, itself founded in 1999 by the private, veteran-owned company, IIT.
“Information Operations in support of civil-military interactions is
becoming increasingly more important as non-kinetic courses-of-action
are required,” wrote two researchers for the military in 1999. They also
said
that information operations, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff JP
3-13 (1998) publication, “are aimed at influencing the information and
information systems of an adversary.” They also confirm that “[s]uch
operations require the continuous and close integration of offensive and
defensive activities … and may involve public and civil affairs-related
actions.” They conclude: “This capability begins the transition from
Information Dominance to Knowledge Dominance.”
“ATTUNED TO DISPARITIES”
The lines between law enforcement and militarism are blurred, as are
the lines between military technology and civilian technology. Some
police forces carry military-grade weapons. The same satellites that
enable us to use smartphones enable the armed forces to operate.
In a projection out to the year 2036, the British Ministry of Defence says that “[t]he clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be increasingly difficult to discern,” as “the urban poor will be employed in the informal sector and will
be highly vulnerable to externally-derived economic shocks and illicit
exploitation” (emphasize in original). This comes as Boris Johnson
threatens to criminalize Extinction Rebellion and Donald Trump labels
Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists.
In 2017, the U.S. Army published The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare. The report reads:
“The convergence of more information and more people with fewer state
resources will constrain governments’ efforts to address rampant
poverty, violence, and pollution, and create a breeding ground for
dissatisfaction among increasingly aware, yet still disempowered
populations.”
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