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Israel Is Not Our Ally

It is more critical now than ever that we teach our kids and grandkids the importance of our alliance with the State of Israel. They are our most important strategic ally — and they are a dear friend to the United States of America. If we fail to educate our children of Israel’s importance, we risk raising a generation that sees no need to protect our most important strategic ally. Americans must always understand the significance of this land that God has promised to the Israelites; they must respect the Jewish people and the State of Israel; and they must always be on the side of freedom and good, never on the side of terrorism and evil.

Protecting the Promised Land by Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD)

It is very difficult to be an American Republican. I, for one, will definitely not be teaching my children of Israel’s “importance”; instead, I will teach my children that Israel is not an ally of America and that Jews are not the friends of non-Jews.

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Recently, Middle Eastern violence and warfare flared up again. After suffering its worst Palestinian violence after Hamas fighters broke out of the Gaza prison and massacred hundreds upon hundreds of Israeli citizens and kidnapped at least a hundred more on October 7, 2023, Israel has pounded the densely populated Gaza territory for the last few days. Obviously, the violence directed at non-combatants is atrocious and I am one degree separated from Israeli families who are dealing with the losses of their loved ones — or their loved ones’ loved ones. No matter what I say below — and this is not a matter of virtue signaling, I do not condone indiscriminate targeting of civilian men, women, and children. For a gentile, I know more Israelis than the average American — by a longshot. My views are not directed at them as much as they are directed at their country, which is an international menace. Moreover, this is no defense of Islam. I have a very dim view of the Islamic world and Islam itself. It is an ugly and pathological religion that confines its adherents in a glorification of violence against the non-Muslim. That I want to see international law, which itself is a creation of European values, vindicated has little to do with the fact that the victims of Israel’s failure to abide by it are Muslims.

To be sure, I do not wish to overstate what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. Everyday throughout the world, civilians are subject to political violence. It is a terrible thing, but that what happened in Israel is fresh in our minds — as if it is the only place on the planet where such violence happened — is because we have been literally bombarded with non-stop coverage in what can only be described as victim pornography. That doesn’t minimize the horror of what happened in southern Israel that day, but when the editorial choices of what we see and read are dictated by people who want us to focus singularly on Israeli victims, we see that our obtuseness towards political violence in, for example, Armenia or Nigeria is not so much a defect in us as it is a consequence of what we are shown or not shown.

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In the United States, we hear repeatedly and stereophonically that Israel is “our greatest ally and friend.” We hear it in unanimous bipartisan fashion, and we never hear it challenged. Of course, to challenge it, even obliquely, is to be susceptible to the charge of antisemitism, which, in the United States, is no walk in the park. Setting aside antisemitic conspiracy theories, if a realpolitik truism is that you are ruled by those who you cannot criticize, then there can be little doubt that we are ruled by Jews and their gentile enablers. This is a statement of fact — whether I agree with it or not is irrelevant. We live in a country that punishes dissent from this orthodoxy.

Political axioms are powerful things — for the average American, certain principles are assumed. How they became assumed, or why they are assumed at all, is never questioned once the axiom becomes a fixture of American life. In that sense, we are a very dull people, but I am not sure we are much different than any other political community, now or historically. The reality is that it takes courage, intelligence, and, most importantly, imagination to question political axioms — to see the world without the mental crutch they provide. It takes moxie to imagine a world in which those axioms were returned to the arena of discourse to see how, if at all, they would fare in the marketplace of political ideas. America’s reflexive and unqualified support of Israel falls squarely within this axiomatic paradigm. The ugly reality hiding in plain sight of this political axiom is that Israel is not merely not “our greatest ally,” our support of Israel directly contravenes the interests of Americans the world over and contradicts the most basic Anglo-American values we hold. Not only should we not support Israel — militarily, economically, or culturally — we ought to treat it as a political pariah. We are very far from doing that, but Israel has become the international monster it is precisely because of the unqualified support from of the United States. Take that away and Israel is in enormous — even existential — trouble. To understand that is to know why Israel’s supporters are as fanatic as they are — a hole in the dike of American support, no matter how seemingly trivial, is something that must be struck hard by Jewish berserkers because the whole house of cards could fall, and they know it.

But let us return to the political axiom of Israel’s status as “our greatest ally.” Let us probe that just a little. Setting aside all other considerations, an alliance between countries is typically driven by three foreign policy factors: reciprocal benefits, cultural/civilizational harmony and symmetrical values, and economic considerations. At the threshold of any alliance between states lies the proposition that each benefit from the relationship — and that benefit must be predicated upon some mutuality. In normal functioning foreign policy, the concept of quid pro quo is a given. The mutuality between countries needed is tied to the civilizational harmony that exists between them; so, the United Kingdom and United States are natural allies because of the shared history and culture between them. For us, more broadly, Western Europe and the United States share a civilization, which makes an alliance not so much a consideration but an outcome of that shared civilization. In fact, that shared civilization is what makes the similarity of values so predominant. At least historically, we valued the rule of law, relative democracy, freedoms of press, association, and religion — and in each of these political values, the United States and Western Europe were largely inline — so much so that we never needed to negotiate these values in order to strike an alliance. To be sure, I am not defending the Enlightenment civilization without qualification that has grown up over the last three or four centuries but only observing that Americans generally share certain political values with their Western European counterparts as a matter of course. The same is true of Islamic countries and their values, and the same is true of Latin American or East Asian countries and their values. Finally, in addition to securing peaceful relations, economic considerations drive foreign policy — trade and economic development are drivers of whom we see as friends and allies. As will be discussed, none of these considerations favor America’s special relationship — financial, military, and diplomatic — with Israel.

What I have written, however, is a hypothetical statement of foreign policy considerations in a multipolar world — and we do not live in a multipolar world. America’s considerations, at least since the end of the Second World War, are imperial and hegemonic. As the world’s leading superpower, the United States has an additional consideration that animates — indeed dominates — its foreign policy considerations — namely, that its status as world hegemon remains unchallenged economically and militarily. Imperial considerations create different foreign policy imperatives, and the United States has played a pernicious role propping up its hegemonic status — overthrowing unhelpful governments by fomenting revolution and attacking others when it saw fit. America’s current role as Russia’s primary adversary in Ukraine can only be understood in the context of its manic attempt to preserve its hegemony. Setting aside the moral considerations of America’s hegemony and taking it for granted as a goal of American statesmanship, the reality is that America’s slavish support for Israel does not assist it in preserving its hegemony.

Simply stated, Israel is not an ally of the United States in any meaningful sense. It is a drag on the moral and economic wellbeing of the United States. Moreover, by propping up the mendacious policies of the Israeli government, Americans and American interests are made less safe and less prosperous as a result. It is time that this alliance is questioned — and questioned hard.

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Before we even address the putative benefits of America’s support of Israel, we should consider those who support it for nonrational reasons. First, there are American Jews, most obviously. While it is alleged — constantly — that to suggest the dual loyalty of American Jews to the United States and Israel is tantamount to antisemitism, the fact of their dual loyalty cannot be seriously questioned. Indeed, it is not a dual loyalty at all — it is, almost uniformly, a singular loyalty to Israel that trumps loyalty to the United States. In this way, American Jews are very different from every other ethnicity that has immigrated to the United States. Within a generation or two, every other group that has come here has largely become Americans with proportionately less interest in their native homelands in every generation, but Jews, many who have been in the United States for multiple generations are very different. Israel is not merely something they are interested in — Israel is their chief concern, especially at times like this when Israel is engaged in a military crisis. With the exception of a small percentage of progressive Jews, the vast majority of American Jews view Israel — and American support for Israel — as a defining point of political life. While they are a small percentage of Americans, American Jews are vastly overrepresented in the quartet of modern culture-making powers: (i) media and entertainment; (ii) academia; (iii) government and lobbying; and (iv) finance and banking. Jews, through their ethnic monopolies and propensity for groupthink, are able to use their influence to drive the discussion and policy in a way that tilts overwhelmingly and uniformly in a pro-Israeli way. Indeed, AIPAC, an entity that should register as a foreign agent, is the most powerful lobby in the United States — and single-handedly puts Congress in its pocket. The Jews, through their influence and their lobby, are the single greatest drivers of U.S. support of Israel. A recapitulation of this outsized influence is the subject of an excellent survey written by recognized foreign policy experts John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in 2007, The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Foreign Policy. Parenthetically, that book answered two questions: does the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. fuel anti-American sentiments in the Middle East? If the uncritical U.S. support for Israel is not driven by either national interest or moral compass, what explains the reason behind “special relationship”? Notably, both authors were accused of antisemitism for writing it. Even if outdated by fifteen years, the book should be read by everyone because the problems it identifies have only gotten worse.

Second, there are American Evangelical Christians, and many Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN watchers fit squarely in the “useful idiot” category. It is beyond the pale of this essay to address the defective dispensationalist theology that has led a significant percentage of American Evangelicals to become rabidly and often blood-thirstily Zionist, but it is what it is. While I am no Protestant, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, John Wesley, and John Knox would all be very surprised to learn — or even understand — the relatively new Protestant fascination with Judaism and Zionism five hundred years after the Reformation. Suffice it to say, none of the 95 theses nailed to the church door in Wittenberg included a complaint that the medieval Church had been too solicitous of the Jews (even though she was) or that the reformed party believed that a new Jewish kingdom should be formed in the Holy Land. It makes one wonder who coopted them. Thus, a weighty portion of the GOP then is militantly Zionist as a matter of heretical religious dogma, which is not prone to argument.

Third, there is a war party in the United States closely allied with the real-world military industrial complex. It’s a war party that loves Israel because Israel keeps conflict evergreen throughout the world. The ideological component of these people are a subset of mostly Jews commonly known as “neo-conservatives” (like William Kristol, Robert & Donald Kagan, Richard N. Perle, “Scooter” Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot A. Cohen, and Elliot Abrams). Needless to say, these are the vilest people in American civic life and not only do these people provide the loudest and most aggressive form of advocacy for Israel, but they are also virtually singularly responsible for the disastrous American wars in the Middle East and America’s current policy of tempting nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. Unlike an ordinary functioning state — one that wants peace as the normative condition — we have an influential portion of Americans who like war, armaments, and conflict whether it extends American hegemony or not. War hawks, neocons, and Israel sycophants, like the currently insane Senator Lindsay Graham or the deceased Senator John McCain, were not philosemitic on the basis on a religious conviction, but on the basis of their bloodlust.

Fourth, without making any judgments of anyone in particular, the recent Jeffery Epstein affair also makes one wonder how many American politicians and powerbrokers are fanatical supports of Israel for the simple reason of kompromat. Needless to say, the idea that Mossad has pictures and videos of such Americans in compromising positions with underage boys and girls is far from wildly speculative and goes a long way in explaining the seemingly inexplicable pro-Israeli fanaticism seen by some American politicians for ostensibly no reason at all. That, and we cannot ignore simple old-fashioned bribery. There is also the less sexy proposition of simply buying politicians in seemingly legitimate ways. Consider the rabid Israel supporter, former South Carolina Governor, and Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley:

Haley stunned Washington by resigning her role in the Trump administration in 2018, less than two years after taking office. A spokesperson for Haley claims that the family financial troubles had “no bearing whatsoever on Ambassador Haley’s decision to leave her position” and points to a section of Haley’s resignation letter in which she expressed support for “rotation in office.” But the same letter also suggested that Haley may have had money-making ventures on her mind: “As a businessman,” she wrote to Donald Trump, “I expect you will appreciate my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up.” Indeed. Since then, Haley’s net worth has ballooned from less than $1 million to an estimated $8 million. How did she make so much money in so little time? By following a tried-and-true playbook for politicians looking to cash in on their fame. Speeches to companies like Barclays and organizations such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs provided more money in a day than Haley had previously earned in a year. It’s not clear how many talks she gave from 2019 to 2021, but Haley hauled in $2.3 million from just 11 events in 2022. She wrote two books after leaving the Trump administration. A 2019 memoir sold more than 100,000 copies. A 2022 title provided more than $350,000 in advance payments. Haley also offered consulting services, generating more than $700,000 in fees. Then there were corporate boards. She became a director of Boeing in 2019, then stepped down the next year, collecting over $300,000 in cash and stock. Haley remains on the board of the United Homes Group, which has provided her with more than $250,000, as well as the promise of earning much more as equity grants vest down the road.

One might argue that somebody paid handsomely for Haley’s vociferous Israeli support. Taken together, there are several groups within American society that treat American support for Israel axiomatically — Jews, Evangelicals, war hawks, and grifters — such that it can never be a subject of debate. There is no point in engaging with them therefore because Israel can never be discussed dispassionately or constructively given their nonrational basis for Israeli support. That said, a wide swath of American Republicans — Catholics, non-Evangelical Protestants, unchurched — all are theoretically open to such a discussion. Moreover, the quixotic strength of Donald Trump’s appeal, even though he himself was extremely pro-Israeli, is a demonstration that an appeal to America’s citizenry (or a significant portion) on the basis of what it best for this country and its citizens still has appeal. “Make America Great Again” — or America First — was seen as an existential threat to all of the Israel Firsters cited above. That Trump still has significant pull is a sign that America’s wake-up call with respect to Israel is possible, which explains why he was vilified as no politician has ever been vilified. Strictly speaking, it is possible to advocate for this message with some hope of its success.

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The façade of Israel’s value can be punctured by the simple asking of questions.

What is the basis for our unqualified support for Israel? Initially, we can ask where is the reciprocity, or, stated differently, what does America receive from its support of Israel? Indeed, Israel, a high-income, developed country, is the single greatest beneficiary of American aid. Why? What do we get for it beyond platitudes from the beneficiary and its American supporters? Nothing of value that I can see, and I challenge anyone to state it succinctly. Setting aside the wisdom of American aid to Third World countries — both in its efficacy and as a matter of thrift — at least American aid that goes to Nigeria or Guatemala to build infrastructure, schools, or industry has a moral component. There is no moral benefit — and indeed an immoral detriment, discussed below — to subsidizing Israel. She has not proved to be a loyal partner — indeed, Israel regularly spies on the U.S. and does not act like an ally in practice. Even ignoring the more toxic allegations of the “dancing Israelis” and their involvement in the 9/11 attacks (presumably to empower the American war party), the plausible involvement of Mossad in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (presumably because of his insistence that Israel not develop nuclear weapons) or the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty during the 1967 War that the Israelis started, what have we gained from the billions of taxpayer dollars given to Israel? If we take those allegations seriously — or even inquire about them, which is more than we can say of the entire media establishment — then we might say that we are subsidizing an undeclared enemy of the United States. And even if we set all of that aside, we obtain nothing of value in return for supporting what amounts to a regime of Jews practicing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for a century and calling it a country.

One might argue that we obtain — at least potentially — intelligence from Israel about our enemies in the Middle East. Israel is, after all, a technological behemoth that has its electronic fingers in everyone’s pie. But that begs a further question: why do we have enemies in the Middle East in the first place? Would the Muslim world, fractured as it is, hate the United States if it did not subsidize Israel in the first place? Would we have Islamic terrorism in the United States at all? Would we need to be subjected to intrusive security examinations to fly domestically but for our support of Israel and the collective ire it creates in much of the world? Whatever residual benefit the United States receives in obtaining Israeli intelligence is offset by the threshold consideration that the need for such intelligence would be mitigated altogether if we did not support a regime that antagonized the Islamic world as it does. To make it clearer, the United States never had colonies in the Middle East like France or the U.K. There is thus no reason for the U.S. to be a geopolitical foe of these people. But we are, and for one reason: because of our unqualified support of Israel. Take that away and we never, for a variety of reasons, need to worry about another 9/11 (no matter who orchestrated it). Israel is an international albatross around the neck of American interests — our support has an exponentially negative impact in every conceivable way in which a state can have foreign relations. Nothing is gained by supporting Israel and much is lost.

Culturally and civilizationally, we have little in common with Israel. That may seem odd — after all, aren’t we a “Judeo-Christian” country? Setting aside religion, what do we have civilizationally in common with Israel? Is it democratic? Does it respect the rule of law? Is it non-sectarian? Does it respect the rights of minorities? Israel is a country that violates international law with impunity — an impunity given to it by the United States’ regular veto in the United Nations’ Security Counci of resolutions critical of Israel or, in the case of the Gaza war, a resolution for a “humanitarian pause.”

In every way, Israel is a very different world from America. It is not democratic if take into consideration that half of the population under its control (the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank) have no democratic rights at all. Israel runs roughshod over the rule of law. It allows settlers to physically remove the native people from their homes and land in the West Bank and has the temerity to call this practice, “the redemption” of the land of Israel. It allows unfettered immigration of Jews to Israel — all with a generous subsidy — while it keeps the it has stolen from Palestinians in successive wars. It has — increasingly — theocratic tendencies such that the Jewish religion is favored at the expense of other religions. And all of that says nothing of the Jewish proclivity to spit — literally — on the Christian pilgrims who visit the holy sites within Israel.

From the perspective of international law, Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty International:

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights, and a crime against humanity under international criminal law. The term “apartheid” was originally used to refer to a political system in South Africa which explicitly enforced racial segregation, and the domination and oppression of one racial group by another. It has since been adopted by the international community to condemn and criminalize such systems and practices wherever they occur in the world. The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system. Apartheid can best be understood as a system of prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group.

Again, one does not have to like the religion of Muhammed (and I don’t) to understand that the modern state of Israel is founded on the displacement and political neutering of the Palestinian people, carried on by an Israeli state that abets Jewish supremacists and religious bigots. Largely ignored in the American press, Amnesty International issued a damning, nearly 280-page report in 2022 that outlined much of what Israel does towards non-Jews in Palestine. “The Israeli government is committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians and must be held accountable.” One need not agree with the politics of Amnesty International, but the reality is that international law should matter for us. International law reflects principles of European civilization that were forged over thousands of years and represent a statement of basic human rights. Millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control effectively as stateless refugees on their own land without the right to vote or travel freely. The Gaza territory, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, is an open-air prison in which the residents live in deplorable conditions. If a concentration camp is a confined geographic space in which a population is compelled to live within with severe restrictions on liberty and human rights, Gaza is a modern concentration camp. At the very least, it is an internment camp. And this is what we are subsidizing?

It is even worse than the report outlined above. In what is one of the most compelling books ever written on Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism and Israel, Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, demonstrates the various and systematic ways that Israel dehumanizes the “other” in law and in other ways. A dispassionate examination of what Israel has done, and is doing, demonstrates that Israel’s values are starkly at variance with American political values in the broadest and most fundamental sense.

There is an argument made not infrequently that America “owes” the Jews support because of the Holocaust. Setting aside the question of the scale and extent of the Holocaust, in what moral universe does harm sustained by one party allow that same party to inflict harm on an unrelated third party with impunity? Whatever we can say about the Palestinians, they have no culpability for the Second World War. Why should they bear the reparations — in land and in human rights — to Jews who were allegedly harmed by another? What is the moral basis for displacing them? More to the point, why should we subsidize that harm? The United States does not owe the Jews anything with respect to the Second World War — not under any calculus. Simply stated, there is zero moral imperative on the part of Americans to support Israel on account of what transpired during World War II. Whatever happened, it was not the fault of Americans, and it was not the fault of the Palestinians.

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Israel is a grotesque country. Not only do we not receive anything in compensation for our support, but American interests are also damaged as a result of our support for Israel. There is no moral imperative to support Israel. There is no shared civilization or values between us. Israel is a pariah state that is propped up by American support. Compromise that support and Israel would face an existential threat given the terrible things that it does and the lack of international support it has sans America. While my own politics tend towards non-intervention generally such that I lament American imperial pretensions, I am not immune to human suffering beyond the borders of my country. To be sure, I denounce the murder of civilians in any conflict — whether they are Israeli or Palestinian or whether they are Rwandan, but it is not my business — or my country’s business — to fix it as a matter of foreign policy. Whether or not it is too late in the game to address the enormous cost of America’s immoral and stupid support of Israel, these things must be said.

Israel is not our greatest ally — not by a long shot.

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Post-Script: The asymmetry between Hamas and Israel militarily — and the showering of bombs and missiles upon Gaza — make one feel as if there is no stopping Israeli power in the Middle East. That is, at least in my opinion, a misreading of the situation. Israel is in very big trouble — and its problems are internal as opposed to external. Israel’s demographics demonstrate that she has already moved from democratic and liberal pretensions to something that is more decidedly religio-fascistic. Israel’s Labor Party, the country’s equivalent to the American Democratic Party, is dead. Likud, its equivalent to the Republican Party, is a now a minority party propped up by outright fascists and theocrats. Within a generation or two, Israel will drop the façade altogether of any commonality with Anglo-American values of political liberalism. The internal restraints on the worst Israeli behavior are breaking down irretrievably. What I predict is that “normal” Israelis are likely to flee the country as it continues down its path towards a Jewish Taliban, which will only hasten its transformation. A Jewish theocracy will be next to impossible to support, even for American stooges, and that theocracy is inevitable as a demographic certainty. In due time, as a matter of when, not if, Israel will become an openly illiberal theocracy that says the quiet parts out load — one that will openly and defiantly persecute non-Jews inside the state. Theodore Herzl’s experiment of Zionist nation-building is not likely to make it a century before it all comes tumbling down.

Interview: Is Russia Run By Incompetents or Traitors? An Expert Analyst Weighs In

I’d like to introduce Rusty to the Stalkers over at Slavland Chronicles and to anyone else who might pick up and read this story. We haven’t had an interview in a while.Yes, Rusty is a fake name, but the man behind the man is very real. We’ve known each other for awhile, but unlike me, Rusty is a successful, handshake-worthy man making a living working with the Russian government whereas I’m on someone’s bad list, clearly. His specialization is in analysis of military technology and strategy and he has been doing a lot of work analyzing both the real war and the cyber war in Donbass. He also works with specialists in Syria; the Middle-East used to be his particular forte.

The last time that I was in Russia was about a month into the Special Military Operation [SMO], and I was very optimistic that things would be wrapped up sooner rather than later and that all would be well when the dust settled; Ukraine and Russia reunited, the Liberalizers kicked out of Moscow, much-needed political reforms carried out, and that a “Russkiy Mir” cultural renaissance awaited us. He, in contrast, informed me that the SMO was a complete circus and that the situation was very grim indeed politically, economically and militarily for Russia. I remember teasing him for his doom and gloom pessimism in front of like-minded friends. He bore it all with a stiff upper-lip and, irony of ironies, I ended up with the exact same position as he has is but half a year later — the black sheep of the Russia analyst community.

As dedicated fans of the blog know, I only started coming around to the “doomer” view in autumn of last year and now believe that the situation has only dramatically worsened since then. Rusty has access to information that I don’t have, although most of it is technical in nature. That means he knows a lot more about hardware capabilities and shell reserves than I do, but he doesn’t know what Putin had for lunch.

Overall, the interview was definitely worth sharing, even though it re-trods ground that should be familiar for diligent readers of the blog. For ZAnoners though, it should be a wake-up call. But then, these people are mostly lost cases.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

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Welcome and thanks for talking to me. This interview has been a long time coming. So you work for a think tank now? I didn’t know Russia had those. They certainly didn’t when I was around.

Yes, thank you. And yes that is true, this is a new development for Russia. We used to rely simply on government sources of analysis and information gathering, but as the SMO continued, the government started hiring groups like the one I work for now to provide a secondary perspective on things. We provide realistic assessments about Russia’s capabilities and Ukraine’s capabilities and then provide common-sense suggestions.

Sometimes, we are even listened to by the relevant ministries.

Is it fair to say that the private sector was brought in because the Kremlin realized that they couldn’t trust their own bureaus and ministries and employees?

Well, they realized that they needed a second opinion, let us just say that. Also, the Americans use such a system and if the Americans are doing it, then the issue is settled. [He means the Kremlin likes to copy Washington in everything].

Also, we are often told that nothing is done in Russia without a bark [an order]. That Russia has no civil society. The last year is proof that this is not the case. We organized privately around private investors and then secured government contracts for our work. And we are far from the only example. If we are talking about civil society and private initiatives like my think tank, or even private armies like all the NGOs or PMCs [Private Military Companies, like the Wagner Group] that have been created, we have to state that the government does not resist these developments.

In America, they have had this system for a long time, but they have another problem now, which is that they only listen to information that they want to hear. The customer is always right — that kind of mentality. They say what the customer wants to hear.

For example, the Ukrainian counter-offensive in summer.

I remember reading one of the big names, Ben Hodges, on the topic. The analysis was totally wrong, but he continues to get paid very well for spreading it. They claimed that Russia had nothing but demotivated conscripts and that Ukraine had an army of pros. But nothing worked out for them, as we well know.

Not to defend him, but many people thought that [Minister of Defense] Shoigu would give the order to retreat again without putting up a fight. The Americans seemed fairly confident that Russia wouldn’t put up much of a fight. I think that informed their optimism just as much as any faith in the UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces].

Yes, but the Russian army stood its ground. And it is always better to be on the defensive. Even if Russia has not had success with offensives and coordinating combined arms attacks, they still have the ability to defend pre-prepared positions. For once, the Ukrainians were the ones fighting at a tactical disadvantage. And the heroism of the Russian soldiers cannot be discounted. They wanted to stay and fight and to prove themselves and so they did.

I think it is fair to say that the war would have collapsed a long time ago if it weren’t for Russian civil society stepping in, organizing itself and helping out the soldiers. Who paid for our soldiers’ warm clothes, their equipment and their quadrocopters in the early, critical days? Or the info-war initiatives. It was all done by citizen initiatives. By volunteers. Especially in the early days when the Russian army was revealed to be severely unequipped and unprepared.

Hasn’t Shoigu often accused these volunteers of discrediting the army? Hasn’t he threatened arrests, maybe already arrested some in some cases?

I have not heard of this. That it, I do not think it is a systematic policy of suppression. Shoigu and his MoD [Ministry of Defense] may occasionally lash out, but here we have to differentiate between the targets of his ire. There is a difference between volunteering to bring supplies to the front and actively critiquing the MoD and organizing like Strelkov [Igor Girkin] did.

Actually, you sound a lot like Strelkov at times. Who, by the way, was arrested for critiquing the Khan [Sgiugu].

Strelkov? Oh no. He has a kind of nature to him — that is he is a pessimist by his very nature. Maybe I would be as well if I went through what he did. But he was always negative and so yes, he eventually was proven correct. I would say though that his methodology was flawed though. Besides, you can critique the government and provide suggestions, but it has to be done through the proper channels. Public attacks are a different matter. We understand that there are many problems that plague Russia’s war effort, but we are allowed to voice them. So the issue is more complex than you make it out to be. It has to do with politics and how the critique is done, not the content of the critique, which is oftentimes true.

You aren’t a pessimist? Really? Compared to the Western analysts, you sound very dour.

I am neither an optimist or a pessimist. The truth is that we are in a long, protracted war with no solution in sight. Someone like Strelkov would be right to point that out and predict it when he did. There are no clever plans and there won’t be any resounding Russian victory any time soon. But that doesn’t mean that measures aren’t being taken now to prepare for a long war. Strelkov’s claims that Moscow will surrender are more a fear than a reality. From what we can tell, the elites’ backs are against the wall. Western sanctions and rhetoric has painted a target on all their backs. So, increasingly, they are realizing that they have no choice but to resist in some way.

It seems to me that if Russia were serious, they would at least do something about the Western agents of influence who are still active in the country.

Well, we have some improvements with the whole traitor situation. This is also undeniable.

Our economists and technocrats are doing better with the economy. The agents of influence from the West have become less influential. Some have even switched sides because of the sanctions, because they feel like they have no choice at this point, really. We have a lot of civil society stepping up to help the effort and making up for the incompetence in the MoD. You know, even patriots can be incompetent — that is a problem too. It may not be maliciousness in all cases, necessarily.

Are you familiar with the concept of Convergence, whereby Putin and his Liberal occupation government were simply continuing the work started by Andropov to converge with the Western elite into a globalist world government status quo? Do you think it explains the traitor situation?

Well, this is not so much a theory as much as it is history. Putin started his career as a Westernizer. He gave many speeches explaining that he wanted to integrate Russia with the West and his elite is probably more pro-West than even he is. When the Russian government began resisting the West, they were still in negotiations for better terms. This, at least, is the old understanding of the situation. But the SMO has definitely changed a lot in Russia. It does not seem like Convergence is an option anymore. It is an old idea at this point and the sooner the elites wake up to this, the sooner Russia will be able to start effectively resisting NATO.

But if things have indeed changed, why then does the Kremlin continue to pursue such crooked war policies? The bridges remain intact, resources continue to flow and secret deals are made. Why not at least start targeting key Kiev officials?

Look, the situation with the bridges is overblown. Bridges were actually hit in the first days of the SMO, but they were patched up in a matter of days afterwards and traffic was resumed. People think that it is as simple a matter of landing a Kinzhal on a bridge and then, “poof” problem solved. Bridges require sustained bombings and for that you need air dominance and Russian planes have never been able to fly above Ukraine’s skies because of the air defense systems and fears that we would lose many planes and pilots; we did lose some.

In general, large buildings take large amounts of bombs to take out — it’s simply physics, which most people remain ignorant of. Short of using nukes, we cannot simply take out all the facilities that we would like to see gone.

Take the ports — it is impossible to sink an entire port without sustained bombing. And even so, we continue to bomb the Ukrainian-Romanian port. It would take a lot of bombs to totally destroy many key facilities and we do not have that many bombs to spare. We were able to create glided munitions by attaching wings and other such improvisations, which again, proves that we are doing the best we can with the very limited resources that we have. And I know you don’t like the SBU [Ukraine counterintelligence], but we have hit them several times as well. We have hit many official buildings.

The problem is that they are always empty before we hit them.

The Texeira leaks alleged that it was because of spies in Shoigu’s Ministry of Defense telling them where the strikes would hit ahead of time.

It is a war and it is difficult to say such things definitively one way or the other. I would assume that spies are everywhere and on both sides. We get information from Ukraine as well.

You know, many well-meaning Russian patriots have this idea in their head that if Russia wanted to, Russia could easily win the war. They think that Russia is holding back either because of moral considerations or because of traitors in power. They seem to still think that Russia is the USSR, with huge war factories and massive shell arsenals. But those warehouses are long gone. They were sold off years ago. Those factories are rusted-out hulks. We are restoring some of our war potential in manufacturing, this is true, but it will take time. In other words, we are fighting with the means that we have now. The people demanding that Russia ought to stop holding back don’t know what they are talking about. We are at our limit now.

Actually, we are not the only ones with supply problems. With the end of the Cold War, the Americans also scuttled their war production industry. Now they have problems with manufacturing, for example of 155-mm howitzer shells. As a result, they also have supply shortages, and they had to run around the whole world looking for warehouses of supplies to buy and send to Ukraine.

Consider what another mobilization for Russia would entail.

People would have to be pulled out of the economy at a minimum. And what would we equip them with? We struggled to equip the first batch. And the new recruits can’t just be sent in naked. They need support vehicles, artillery support; they also need training and we have a deficit of officers.

This is because the SMO was officer-heavy in the initial days, right? Anyone with a contract was scooped up and sent out leading to severe officer shortages to train new men.

Well, we are making up for the deficit now. We now have enough veterans to train the soldiers instead of having them sit around in the polygons. We also rely on a different system now to make up for the shortfalls of the military. For example, all the PMCs. Why was Wagner called in to take Bakhmut? They didn’t want to be there. The arrangement was that Wagner wasn’t even supposed to exist officially. It is, from a legal perspective, not strictly a legal organization. Here, I want to be careful to not sound like a Western propagandist with what I am saying, but anyway, it was tolerated as long as it operated abroad and did not involve itself in Russia. But then the military showed its inability to defeat the UAF and Wagner had to be asked to come in. They were paid very well for lending their expertise.

That is what Russia lacks the most — expertise and competency.

Say what you will about Wagner, but they had created a structure that was capable of fulfilling the tasks assigned to it. Losing Wagner was a blow to Russia, that is undeniable. But Prigozhin left the Kremlin no choice. They would have killed them all, frankly, back during the mutiny if they could. But then Prigozhin pulled back at the last moment. With the Prigozhin situation — he was given all these resources because there was no one else doing what he was doing. Eventually, he decided that he was stronger than the MoD so he tried to shake things up politically and look what happened to him.

So would you blame incompetence for the mutiny? Specifically Shoigu? It seems to me that the in-fighting was so public and so wasteful. Were there no adults in the room?

Well yes, of course, this is very clear. How was their conflict allowed to reach such public heights with no one stepping in? And then we lost Wagner in the form that it was. What we have now is remnants. All of it a huge waste.

But again, the true reason for this was, at its root, that the military was run very poorly. Wagner was run well and so they started gaining more and more weapons and strength. If the MoD was competently run, Wagner would have stayed in Syria and Africa making deals.

But we can also say that Shoigu got stronger because of the mutiny. Once Prigozhin was eliminated, he was able to consolidate even more strength and resources.

Is it fair then to say that Shoigu simply wanted to steal Wagner from Prigozhin and that this fueled the conflict?

Actually, the situation was more complicated than just Shoigu trying to steal Wagner. Consider the situation where Wagner was just recruiting prisoners (zeks). This was a dangerous situation and an unprecedented one. No one was allowed to do what Wagner did and get away with it. This made many powerful people worry. Wagner became too powerful and stepped over too many lines. Many interested parties did indeed want to tear off a piece of Wagner, leading to its eventual dismemberment. But things were complicated by Prigozhin crossing too many lines himself. He eventually spooked Putin as well.

Didn’t the mutiny prove that the Kremlin was weak and divided? It seems like the West’s plan to foment an elite uprising against Putin makes sense and is viable.

Well, if we look at who did what, we can see that the governors supported Putin. They came out firmly in support of the current leadership during the mutiny. Other members of the elite simply didn’t know what to do. There was confusion and chaos. As for the internal factions within the Kremlin, it is hard to say who is where now. The lines have been blurring more and more as the war has continued. The “economic bloc” of elites [he means the oligarchs and the liberal bureaucrats/politicians and liberal media owned by them] is usually accused of being anti-SMO and pro-West, but they are doing what they are told to do now. The problem for them is that there are no options now. There aren’t really even options for surrender. So they have reinvented themselves and changed their cloaks, many of them. The West simply won’t offer them a deal, so what can they do?

What about Zolotov? I read speculation that he now leads a kind of Praetorian guard around Putin with his newly-reformed National Guard army. They’ve been issued heavy weapons taken from Wagner. It was Zolotov’s personal army that defended Moscow, not anyone else.

Well, this comes back to Wagner. Again, the funny thing about Wagner is that it didn’t really even exist officially. It couldn’t. They wanted Wagner to exist abroad, but had no place for them at home and wanted to make sure of this. So Zolotov was empowered to be a counter-weight to this and to bolster the internal police. But have they become a Praetorian Guard? They were indeed promised heavy weapons, but those may still be in transit or held up by Shoigu. Broadly speaking, this isn’t a new thing actually — the Internal Troops even had their own aviation as well during the Chechen wars. This was taken away from them later and so people have gotten used to the idea that the National Guard does not have heavy weapons and aviation of its own. But because of the needs of the front, they may not get the equipment, so it is pointless to speculate.

I wanted to ask you about whether you think that there will be any offensives from Russia’s side, it seems like the plan is just to hold what they have if they can.

Well, we have a WWI scenario. And we still don’t understand how to fight in these conditions. This is a war in which hundred dollar drones destroy 20 million dollar heavy equipment. No one was prepared for this. I think that any military, even the Americans, would struggle in these new conditions until they figured out how to wage war in a better way. I don’t think that the Russian military performed particularly poorly given this new military reality. Who would perform better?

Look at Kherson and Zaporozhye. There, the Russian army achieved its objectives and did it well. In other parts of the country, the military foundered and was torn apart by the Ukrainians. By the way, this translated into pro-Russian sentiment as well. Where the military performed well, they garnered local sympathy and support. Where they failed, the pro-Russians were marched out of their homes at gun point by the Ukrainians soon after and the locals cooperated with Ukrainian intelligence to give away Russian positions. People always side with the stronger side. So, it wasn’t really a language issue that led to so many problems for our soldiers stationed in Ukraine. In parts of the country where the Ukrainians defeated the Russians, the locals didn’t come out in support of Russia. Why would they? No one sides with the loser.

Syria went well for Russia, so they got complacent. Even American advisors complain that they haven’t been able to prepare the UAF and have any offensive success. Everyone got used to desert wars where you ride around in Humvees and order in airstrikes.

What about Wagner in Syria? Prigozhin said that Shoigu didn’t help, but that Shoigu actually helped the Americans bomb them.

It is true that Wagner was the main ground force. About the betrayal, I can’t say. I would think that it was more complicated than that. The victory wasn’t just achieved by Wagner though, but by Iranian militias, the Syrian army, and support from Shoigu’s MoD. The situation now in Syria is very tough. The economy is even worse than it was during the war. We may see more problems emerge in Syria soon.

Since we are on the topic of the Middle-East, what is Russia’s official and unofficial position on the Israel-Palestine/Gaza situation?

Well, Russia’s position hasn’t changed much. Putin moved the pro-Israel agenda forward a bit by stating that West Jerusalem is Israeli and East Jerusalem is Palestinian. Of course, in reality, this is not a reality. Both belong to Israel and their proxies. And then there is the embassy situation.

Russia isn’t really pro-Palestine. Other countries give more aid and support for Palestine when compared to Russia. Furthermore, some elites in Russia consider Israel their second home. And many others wish that they were part of that club, but they cannot qualify for Israeli passports, sadly. We would never see the Kremlin siding against Israel because of these factors.

It seemed to me that the Russian media came out in favor of Gaza.

No, this is more about addressing the hypocrisy of the West in relation to Ukraine. According to our media, the Israelis have killed more children over the last week than have died in Ukraine because of the war. This is because of how the war is being waged. So it is the hypocrisy that is being addressed by the Russian media. The double standards. Israel can siege Gaza and kill everyone and then demand support and threaten the world with accusations of being anti-Semites. This rankles people. But in Russia there aren’t any rallies in support of Palestine or in support of Israel for that matter either. This isn’t a divisive point in Russian society. Besides, there is a suspicion of refugees and how the situation might unfold.

Putin condemned Hamas and said that they don’t represent everyone in Palestine or Gaza. This is a more nuanced position than what Western officials have voiced when they demand the incineration of Gaza and show the fact that they have no moral ground to stand on when accusing Russia of committing war crimes.

Have you noticed Ukraine’s full-throated support for Israel?

Yes, and there may be several reasons for this. Maybe they want weapons from Israel. Maybe they know that the West expects them to support Israel. They are a beggar-country now. Also, their elite is all Israeli, not Ukrainian.

Ukraine has lost all autonomy. If they have any autonomy left, they will sell that off too. Without Western aid, Ukraine cannot continue functioning. The entire economy and war effort is being carried by the West. Hopefully, the Israel situation will distract some of the West’s attention and resources.

Is that the plan then for winning in Ukraine? Hoping that the West loses interest?

We cannot just sit back and hope that the situation resolves itself. The West is an active agent and they are constantly making moves, but we are just reacting. We need to become proactive. Measures are indeed now being taken, and resolve is building to fight this war out to its end. Suggestions are now being heard and implemented.

Did you hear about Rybar’s head editor dishing it out with Shoigu over basic safety-hangars for exposed Russian aircraft in the field? He demanded Shoigu stop leaving the planes out in the open to be bombed by Ukrainian drones. It seems like many months later, they are taking his advice and building the hangars.

Actually, I would be surprised to hear that rudimentary safety measures like building hangars for aircraft are being taken. As far as I have heard, this still remains a problem.

We should be under no illusions about what to expect going forward.

It will take many years and thousands of lives. Ukraine has many more men to spare and they are even calling on young men and old people to fill in the gaps. Previously, they were lenient towards young professionals and students and allowed them to not be drafted. This is changing now. This is not to say that morale will collapse the army or anything like that, but fatigue is indeed growing. In the early months of the war, the UAF had no shortage of volunteers. They didn’t need to go hunting for recruits because people were enthusiastically signing on to fight the invaders. They were bolstered in this by the early successes of the UAF and the disasters of the SMO offensive in many parts. Also, Washington, which was pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances of holding out for long, decided to fund the UAF and give them a fighting chance because they saw that they were capable of putting up a fight and because of how weak Russia’s military proved itself to be.

Shoigu and others have said that the MoD plan is to weaken the Ukrainians by attrition over many years. They probably hope that the West will get tired of bearing the costs and be dissuaded from continuing the war by Russia’s static defensive lines. But this means many more years of war and many more casualties on both sides. People need to stop believing in clever plans.

This is what victory will look like if it comes.

So the plan really is to just keep the butchery going for a few more years?

Yes, it seems so. What else can they do?

Fine, then I have to ask a burning question that I think cuts to the heart of all this: who lost Ukraine? Wasn’t the FSB tasked with this? How did we get to this point where we are facing a total catastrophe? I think you will agree that hundreds of thousands of Russians on both sides dead is a catastrophe and not a clever geopolitical victory? Just the other week, Lindsay Graham bragged about what a success the war was for Washington. So, again, who is to blame for this?

Well, again, the elites were not thinking in such terms back then. They were more concerned with access to Western capital markets. It is my hope that this war will lead to more competence in the government. We already see progress with this with elites switching sides to defend their own interests if nothing else.

I know you don’t like the FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation].

But the situation is more complicated than you make it out to be, I’ll just say that.

It seems to me that the main topic of this interview has essentially gravitated to a discussion about whether or not the elites in Russia are simply incompetent or if they are saboteurs. For the most part, it seems that you are saying that we shouldn’t misattribute what could be attributed to stupidity and greed by concluding that there is treachery afoot.

There are undoubtedly both traitors and simply incompetents. We have both. And yes, many traitors still haven’t been taken down from their posts. But the large bulk of the people with power that we are talking about now are simply incompetents with the wrong set of mental tools who are not equipped to face the new geopolitical reality that we face. But this is changing slowly but surely, and the results can be seen in the economy and war production and the seriousness of the statements being made by officials now.

This is not about optimism or pessimism, but about looking at the facts.

Well, I won’t keep you any longer. You’ve given me a lot of your time. Thank you for the answers and let’s do it again some time.

Thank you, happy to talk to you. Yes, let’s.

*   *   *

Regarding the last point and the main topic of discussion of today’s interview, I figured I’d weigh in and add my last couple of thoughts on it. In my mind, there is no difference between incompetence and treachery. This is because I see the world as a series of actions that are pseudo-explained and rationalized after the fact. In terms of results, there is no difference between intentional and unintentional sabotage — a smoldering ruin is the result of a gas line rupturing by mistake as much as if it were an act of deliberate insurance fraud sabotage.

For me, the debate over sabotage or incompetence is a distinction without a difference. Both types should be put against the wall.

But, if you wanted to get into the hazy and mystical world of thoughts, intentions, and best wishes, then I could also argue that allowing incompetents to staff every single high level post in the government is a kind of treachery and a form of deliberate sabotage as well. After all, through the laws of chance, we’d expect at least SOME competents to make their way into positions of power in what is a high-stakes, high-reward professional sphere that ought to select for such types. Instead, it seems that we either have competent traitors or incompetent patriots,  and the results they both produce are largely the same.

In the end, it all depends on how we define terms and whether or not we believe the sputtering explanations of well-fed ministers and public officials and half-public/half-private oligarchs who happened to accidentally make all the mistakes necessary to end up with pockets full of government money allocated for other things, but also made all the mistakes to totally mismanage the Ukraine crisis for the last three decades.

It begs the question: if they are so incompetent at waging a war, why are they so competent at stealing money? Perhaps this isn’t a competency crisis so much as it is a priority crisis? An identity crisis, maybe? How many ministers, oligarchs, and spooks have Israeli or Turkish or Latvian passports? A relevant question to ask, no?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve stopped believing in accidents and coincidence.

Me, I never attribute to bad fortune and incompetence what can more readily attributed to a coordinated conspiracy. The stakes are too high in geopolitics to believe that anything is left up to chance. But hey, a lot of people seem to prefer comforting lies. This SMO has definitively proven that Western peasants prefer to lap up soothing lies about clever plans and secret patriots and believe that end times prophecies are coming to pass.

Bill Ackman Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

It is said that Jews of a certain vintage would pick up the New York Times at the breakfast table, back when it was consumed in its physical form, and ask “well, is it good for the Jews?”

What is picked up at this morning’s breakfast table — in paper or I-phone format — is most certainly not good for the Jews.

Just when the Jewish people were about to bask in the greatest outpouring of American sympathy since the 1967 war, an idiot named Bill Ackman has seized defeat from the jaws of victory, launching a vicious attack on a bunch of Harvard students for dissenting from the approved Israeli war narrative — a dissent that would probably have been ignored by most but for his attack.

As is well known by this point, early on Saturday, self proclaimed members of Hamas, numbering about 2–3,000, stormed across the (so we are told) lightly guarded border of Gaza into Israel, apparently killing or raping everything in sight, in addition to taking somewhere around 100 hostages, all with typical middle-eastern barbarity.  While some stories, like that of the decapitated infants, are in dispute at this point, see Blumenthal, Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village – The Grayzone, enough appears to be confirmed that the methods — if not the strategic object — of the attacks have been condemned by most Western nations.  In a word, this was far from a “surgical” strike at solely military targets with some inevitable, unfortunate, “collateral” civilian casualties like the strikes the US claims to enact.  It was obviously aimed at creating civilian casualties.

These events of course represent a tragedy for the people involved even if, from a Jabotinskyite point of view, such events were and will remain inevitable so long as Palestinians ring the borders of Israel.  But the silver lining for Israel and its Jewish supporters — if there can be one to such killings — was the huge outpouring of support for Israel from most Americans and most members of the Western block, most of whose knowledge of history terminates with last night’s CNN broadcast.

Of course, not all Americans bought the narrative.   Students at a number of universities, including that university to whom all heads must bow — Harvard — have pointed out the historically irrefutable fact (as is the case in most wars) that there are two sides to the story.  Some even expressed solidarity with the Palestinians and with Hamas, justifying their positions by equally horrific (though differently delivered) Israeli barbarity against Palestinians.

Although the Harvard groups’ letter has apparently been scrubbed from its original site on the internet, the following, taken from a purported copy on a Twitter (sorry, X) post, apparently represents a copy of the letter:

If this is the complete letter, frankly, it seems relatively anodyne.  It expresses no rejoicing at the deaths nor even in the attack itself.  It simply takes the point of view that the fault of this attack — and presumably all the violence of the last 75 years — is with Israelis, the people who evicted (or more accurately, were permitted by Britain and the US to evict) 700,000 Palestinians from their homes through massacres like Dar Yasein.  Although most (though not all) Jews would disagree, the position certainly is a viable one based on the historic record.  It also merely states what undoubtedly is (or is close to) the official position of the various groups representing the Palestinians.  Even a number of (outlier and outcast) Jews, such as Max Blumenthal of Greyzone appear to agree with this analysis, and, in fact, add an edge totally absent from the Harvard statement.

It should be noted that one of the organizations that signed the letter, at least according to the above partial reprint re-posted on Twitter, lists the “Harvard Jews for Liberation,” an apparently Jewish group, composed of persons who will undoubtedly be labeled self-hating Jews.  The letter is certainly more restrained than the bloodthirsty statements by scores of “pro-Israel” commentators, including the Israeli defense minister who labeled the Gazans “human beasts” and who pledged to make the whole Gazan people — more than 2 million — accountable for last Saturday’s atrocities; or former member of the Knesset Michael Ben Ari, who states “There are no innocents in Gaza.  Mow them down.  Kill the Gazans without thought or mercy”;   or Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, the Chief Rabbi of the evacuated Sinai Penninsula settlement of Yamit, waxing Biblical in September 2015:  “If the Muslims and the Christians say from now on no more Christianity and no more Islam … then they would be allowed to live.  If not, you kill all of their males by sword.  You leave only the women.”  All quoted at Information Clearing House.

Wow!  No those are “no holds barred” statements.  Not like the cucky, weakling, soy-boy Harvard “pro-Palestinians”!  Where the hell was Bill Ackman when those statements were made and did he, for example, propose that Congress bar the entry of followers of such people into the United States or warn Wall Street firms not to interview them?  Ho, ho, ho.

In fact, a member of the EU Parliament, Clare Daley, made the same point as the Harvard folks to the head of the EU in a response tweet.

Similarly, such former government officials as Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst who was the Presidential briefer for Reagan and Bush I, analyzes the situation much as does the infamous Harvard letter. “Can you give a brief synopsis of what’s happening in Israel?”; also talking on the “Israel as ally” issue at the National Press Club.  Ray McGovern – Does Israel act like a U.S. ally? – YouTube .

The Jewish Norman Finklestein asked two days ago “What were they [the Gazans] supposed to do?”.  He also agrees with the narrative set forth in the Harvard letter.  The Palestinians Had NO OTHER OPTIONS — Norman Finkelstein – YouTube

To top it off, there are now reports that Israel was warned by Egypt 3 days before the attack and apparently chose to ignore the warnings. On purpose? Rachel Blevins on X: “How did Israeli intelligence miss that Hamas was planning such a massive attack? Well, it appears they didn’t. Reports are now revealing that Egypt repeatedly warned Israel of an attack coming from Gaza, but Israeli officials chose to ignore it and focus on their settlements in the West Bank instead. Also: Simon Ateba on X: “BREAKING: US confirms Egypt warned Israel ‘three days’ before Hamas attack. “We know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”

Why? To create an excuse for a Jewish jihad into Gaza?  This in addition to the fact that most experienced observers believe Israel — and Netenyahu himself — in the beginning helped promote Hamas to counter the then powerful Palestinian Fatah organization.  Ron Paul: Hamas was created by Israel and the US to counteract Yasser Arafat… – Revolver News.

One thing for sure — we will never know.  And if Ackman has his way, we will not be allowed to talk about any of these things either.

So, had the Harvard chicklings been better informed, and had they wanted to be truly nasty, they could have accused Netanyahu of working covertly with Hamas to create an horrific false flag attack justifying the taking of Gaza and its valuable gas fields.  My God, what if they had said that!!

In any case, given that America thinks of itself as a free country with freedom of speech and given that Israel, after all, is not technically an “ally” of the U.S. — the U.S. has never entered into a formal security agreement with Israel such as it has through NATO with the European countries — Americans should be free without consequence to air their views on this difficult and complex subject, free from extortion, whether privately or publicly enforced, on any topic, particularly on Israel.

However, this is definitely not the case for Bill Ackman and a group of like-minded “CEO’s”.

Ackman, a Jewish hedge fund manager, has publicly demanded, on behalf of himself and a number of “CEOs” that he did not initially name, that Harvard release the names of the Harvard students behind the letter quoted above   It appears that among the “CEO’s” Ackman is Abe Renick, the Jewish CEO of rental housing management startup Belong.  In addition a number of other CEOs have followed suit,  including Jonathan Newman, CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen (Newman is married to billionaire heiress Leora Kadisha who is a member of the Nazarian Clan, which is one of the world’s wealthiest Jewish Iranian families; she is the middle daughter of business tycoon Neil Kadisha and Dora Nazarian). Also: David Duel, CEO of health care services firm EasyHealth (David Duel is Jewish and “passionate” about giving back to the Jewish community), Hu Montegu, the CEO of construction company Diligent, Michael McQuaid, the head of decentralized finance operations at blockchain firm Bloq, Art Levy (presumably Jewish), head of strategy at payments platform Brex; Jake Wurzak, the CEO of hospitality group Dovehill Capital Management, and Michael Broukhim, apparently an Iranian Jew now a US citizen.A good number of these appear to be relatively small companies — perhaps a reason Ackman kept the names to himself initially.

And, as if on cue, we have Israel patriot Alan Dershowitz, former professor at the Harvard Law School (formerly the “Dane Law School” at Harvard, named for Nathan Dane, a donor who rescued the Law School in the early nineteenth century; he is long since forgotten, like most of Harvard’s non-Jewish donors). Dershowitz echoed Ackman, saying that students that “support murder and rape” should not be allowed to remain anonymous Students in groups that support rape, murder and Hamas should be named – YouTube   No mention was made by Dershowitz of the many, many Jewish Harvard students that have over the years expressed support for Israel and implicitly its air strikes, use of phosphorous bombs, destruction of Palestinian homes, and use of collective punishment.  Presumably, they’re all Goldman Sachs’ priority hires!

And today we read that a “big law” law firm named Winston & Strawn has just withdrawn an offer of employment to a Black NYU student, Ryna Workman, because of her tweet supporting the rights of the Palestinians. She was targeted specifically by Alan Dershowitz. See:  Students in groups that support rape, murder and Hamas should be named – YouTube .  The totality (apparently) of Workman’s tweet simply echoes the Harvard statement:

“I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression towards liberation and self-determination. Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life. This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary.”

Note that she references the “tremendous loss of life.”  At least in this clip she does not, contra Dershowitz, “support rape [and] murder,” although, if one interprets Dershowitz to say that all Palestinians commit murder and rape (an astonishing charge which could be used to justify the genocide of the Palestinian people), then, perhaps.  In fact, she appears, if anything, to decry the “tremendous loss of life.”  What she says is that Israel’s policies are responsible.  Dershowitz’s problem with her is obviously not that she supports murder, but that she holds the “wrong” party responsible.

Ryna Workman is now unemployed because of a nasty, vindictive Jewish supremacist law professor who is a fixture on conservative media in the US.   She should talk to Norman Finkelstein, who was also pursued by the good professor for Norman’s apostasy on Israel, as well as his accusations that Dershowitz was guilty of plagiarism.  Or ask Sue Berlach, Alan’s first wife, whom he left in the mid 1970’s for an affair with a young law aide, thereafter using his legal skills to get custody of her kids.  She later simplified his life by committing suicide, jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge into the unforgiving waters of the East River 119 feet below. Dershowitz 1st Wife — Tragic Abuse, Divorce, Suicide) ; see also 5 Surprising Details From That New Yorker Alan Dershowitz Profile (forbes.com). So I guess Ryna can’t talk to Alan’s first wife after all, unless she’s a psychic medium and a really good swimmer to boot.

So, from Jews to Blacks:  if you have an independent opinion on world affairs, fuck you.  So much for the “Black-Jewish alliance”!

More recently, Ackman is reported to have doubled down on his demand, as follows:

“If you were managing a business, would you hire someone who blamed the despicable violent acts of a terrorist group on the victims? I don’t think so,” Ackman wrote. “Would you hire someone who was a member of a school club who issued a statement blaming lynchings by the KKK on their victims? I don’t think so.  It is not harassment to seek to understand the character of the candidates that you are considering for employment.”  Quoted at: Bill Ackman: It’s Not Harassment to Name Pro-Hamas Harvard Students (businessinsider.com)

The arrogant implication, of course, is that anyone who disagrees with the Israeli and Jewish opinion on this is of “low” character.    But I guess that is what you get in a nation that now appears to operate on the principal, as E. Michael Jones would say, that truth is the opinion of the powerful.

It is worth noting that American statesmen like George Marshall (U.S. Secretary of State under Truman), the distinguished U.S. diplomat Loy W. Henderson, Ambassador to both India and Iran and Director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern Affairs under Roosevelt and Truman, and George Ball, Undersecretary of State under President Johnson, along with scores of other distinguished Americans, have been smeared with the “anti-Semite” label for raising significant questions about Israel’s activities — not to mention the propriety of its very creation; men who would undoubtedly have views not inconsistent with the letter issued by the Harvard students, having predicted 75 years ago events such as those just occurring.  So, apparently, they would also be judged by the Jewish establishment today to have such “low character” as to be unemployable.  The only Jewish pushback this author has seen is former president of Harvard, Larry Summers.  Former Harvard president Larry Summers thinks Bill Ackman asking for lists of student names is the ‘stuff of Joe McCarthy])

It should be noted that a few radicalized Harvard students are not the only ones in the gunsights of these Jewish gangsters.

The Presbyterian Church of the United States has unequivocally endorsed boycotting and disinvesting from Israel and its products, as has the United Church of Christ, the Methodist Church, and the Quakers.   The World Council of Churches has also called for divestment from Israel.  Other Churches that have at least partially divested include the Alliance of Baptists, Church of the United Brethren in Christ, Mennonite Church USA, Roman Catholic Church, Unitarian Universalist Association, as well as the World Communion of Reformed Churches (a confederation that overlaps some of the above).  Oy Vey, that’s a lot of Churches, bro.  And the Jews thought the Catholic Church was their only enemy!!!  Oops!!

Presumably congregants of these Churches will soon also make Ackman’s “unemployables” list for implicitly “blaming the victims”.

Student opponents of BDS certainly are on a very similar list, such as the list displayed on the so called “Canary Mission website, reputedly financed by Adam Millstein, another Jewish supremacist centimillionaire.

So will we soon come to a point where no member of the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational Church, or the Quakers — the denominations of most of the founding fathers including Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison, a principal architect of the Bill of Rights (Presbyterians) or John Adams or Roger Sherman (Congregationalist) — can ever again be offered a job on Wall Street or, perhaps, by a Fortune 500 company?  Holy shit!  We all better learn the “Hatikva” and throw that old musty painting of the signing of the Declaration in the waste bin if we want to earn a living in the America to come!

But at this point, it is worth noting whom these people pick on.  Not on Max Blumenthal, who would just tell them to “go fuck themselves”.  Not to Ray McGovern, who would just shake his head and smile “what’s new?”  Not to Norman Finklestein, who would intellectually eviscerate them.  Apparently Ackman is too scared even to take on the Harvard administration — adults.  No, Ackman picks on soft targets, college kids, who, with some justification will believe their careers, and perhaps lives, are ending before they have begun.  In a word, Ackman doesn’t dare pick on the strong.  He picks on the weak.  He is a cheap bully.  The lowest form of scum.

And, we must ask, have we come to the point where, to get a degree from Harvard, to get a job, to keep a job, you need to kiss Jewish ass from morning until night?

The blunt fact is that Wall Street, the media, the universities, and the government are all now run by Jewish supremacists.  In fact, it appears that, if the Jews get enough power, they will do to us in the U.S. exactly what they are doing in their other occupied territory to the Palestinians. Or as they did in the early decades of the Soviet Union.  Ackman’s attack is just the start.  Before the phosphorous bombs start raining down on our heads, if Ackman’s attitude is indicative of how Jews behave when acquiring positions of enormous power — and it clearly seems to be — perhaps we should ensure, au contraire, that a certain group should be barred from holding certain jobs, just as Ackman is proposing for people who disagree with his views on Israel.  And that group is not comprised of the signatories to that Harvard letter, or George Marshall, or Loy Henderson, or George Ball.

Here’s some analogous proposals:

If this is how Jews use their power, how about barring them from any job in financial services?
How about barring Jews from holding any position as an officer or director in a publicly traded company?
How about barring Jews from holding any position of authority at any level of federal, state, or local government?
How about barring Jews from owning or operating any media assets?
How about barring Jews from voting, making campaign contributions, serving on juries?
How about offering physical protection to Jews but also preventing Jewish influence on the greater society?

Given the current viciousness of the Jews currently in power — Ackman, Schumer, Garland, are only the most prominent examples — would it be too much to ask for a Constitutional amendment depriving Jews of citizenship, replacing the passports they appear to disdain with residency certificates, revocable at will and requiring that the Jewish nation (both in and out of Israel) be represented by ambassadors rather than lobbyists, political fundraisers, and political hacks?

How would Bill Ackman like that?  Maybe then he could actually go to Israel and sign up with the IDF.  Then he could defend his true country — not the one of which he is a fake citizen, but his real one — Israel.

The proposal to bar Jews from financial service jobs is not so far-fetched as one might assume.  In fact, a while ago, a number of Jews were indeed expelled from their chosen marketplace:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, [13] And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. Matthew 21:12–13

Perhaps the man that kicked them out remembered his earlier words:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. John 8:44

Maybe our Lord and Saviour knew more than we think he did.  Maybe He was actually pretty smart.  Maybe we ought to listen to Him.

Thank you Bill Ackman, et. al. for reminding us — through your vicious, uncalled-for, activities — of that fact.

__________________________

1.  The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit (Fidelity Press), by E. Michael Jones.

 

Britain’s Worst Amendment: The Online Safety Bill

Our new online safety laws will make the internet a safer place for everyone in the UK, especially children, while making sure that everyone can enjoy freedom of expression online.
From the summary of an early reading of the UK’s new Online Safety Bill, 2022.

Matilda told such dreadful lies
It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes.
Hillaire Belloc, Matilda, 1907.

There are doubtless many technical differences between soft and hard totalitarianism, but one of them is surely the nature of power at its point of application. We might call the infringement of power as it impacts the individual “capillary”, after the tiny blood vessels that connect the body’s blood supply with its major organs and without which those organs could not function. Power is nothing without its application. Capillary power under soft totalitarianism does not take the form of night-sticks, tear-gas, and jail cells, but often presents as legislation. You will watch what you say in public if you know it may lead to your door being kicked in at 2am. But you will also be circumspect if the law of the land is engineered to outlaw certain opinions, and which, if infringed, could lose you your job, your bank account, and your credit rating. One such statutory instrument receives royal assent (and thus becomes UK law) this month, and King Charles III could be signing away his countrymen’s freedom of speech.

The Online Safety Bill: Emo

The Online Safety Bill (OSB), in its early parliamentary readings, was known as the “Online Harm Hill”, but re-branding was deemed necessary. (The word “harm” won’t go away, however, as we shall see). Governments have to sell legislation to the public in the same way as companies have to sell their product to potential customers, and there are rhetorical techniques that become familiar over time. Here, the stratagem is a classic advertising maxim: use children. With the OSB, the main point stressed to the British media — now a governmental policy delivery system — is the safety of children, who are thus used as a virtual human shield to make commentators reluctant to criticize the bill. This is the same country that endorses drag queen story hour in infant-school classes.

But the OSB cannot distract us with the little ones; it is aimed at adults. The first intimation of special interest comes 23 pages into a 255-page document, in Section 12, “Adults’ risk assessment duties”, which looks at the following:

5d. The level of risk of harm to adults presented by priority content that is harmful to adults which particularly affects individuals with a certain characteristic or members of a certain group. [Italics added].

This category will soon pull to the front of the pack of priorities, and the criteria for group membership will require close scrutiny as it is not inventoried. The issue of who might potentially be harmed is left vague:

“Section 18, 6b: “A member of a class or group of people with a certain characteristic targeted by the content.”  [Italics added].

Does this mean that if I go to a Morris Dancing Facebook page and tell them they look stupid in those bells and flowery hats, I have harmed them by the criterion above? We are entitled to expect definitions of these groups and characteristics. We do not get them. We’ll look instead at what might harm these characteristic groups, and at what form that harm might take.

It is always worthwhile, in the UK at least, to look at already existing laws which cover the same area and see if the new legislation has extended powers already in place. With the OSB, we can go back to two legislative instruments which both cover much of the same ground, and show that the OSB, in terms of its capability to repress free speech, has had what we might call “gain of function”.

The OSB includes many things that are already illegal, but these are distractions from the online activity the government is actually going after, and how they intend to close it down. Dan Milmo is Global Technology Editor at The Guardian, and in a piece on the OSB he notes that it has been revised from its draft version to make clearer exactly what it is that is being criminalised, or at least having its criminal status aligned with online communication. As he writes;

The DCMS (The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) has published an updated list of … content, which includes: revenge porn; promoting suicide; people smuggling; drug and weapons dealing; hate crime; fraud; encouraging suicide.

They seem particularly keen on suicide, mentioning it twice. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, incidentally, covers four areas which are pure private sector. The government should have nothing to do with them apart from ensuring financial probity.

It seems to me that these categories are covered by the Public Order Act of 1986, which states that an offence has been committed if a person “displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting”.

But it is the second category which introduces what we might call “usable ambiguity”. A new offence, the paper states

…will make it easier to prosecute online abusers by abandoning the requirement under the old offences for content to fit within proscribed yet ambiguous categories such as ‘grossly indecent’, ‘obscene’ or ‘indecent’. Instead it is based on the intended psychological harm, amounting to at least serious distress, to the person who receives the communication, rather than requiring proof that harm was caused [Italics added].

This last sentence dispenses with “proof” of “proscribed yet ambiguous categories” and shifts its ground instead to the even more ambiguous category of “psychological harm”, which does not require any proof other than the perception of the individual.

Again, I thought this was already covered, this time by the Malicious Communications Act of 1988, but in fact this is a perfect example of re-engineering legislation. The 1988 Act finds an offence has been committed if, firstly, a communication has been sent via media which include electronic transmission and containing the following:

i. A message which is indecent or grossly offensive.

  1. A threat, or

iii. Information which is false and known or believed to be false by the sender.

Although the 1988 Act goes on to consider the causing of “distress or anxiety to the recipient”, this reaction is measured against what the OSB is calling “proscribed yet ambiguous categories” fit only to be discarded. The checks and balances formerly provided by legal definition are thus being replaced by the unquantifiable measure of “psychological harm” which requires no proof. As always in these times of destabilization, emotio is allowed to outrank ratio.

The OSB specifically and explicitly does away with defined categories, and we are left in the now familiar situation of the perception of grievance, upset, or threat by the receiver of the communication rather than the weighing of these responses against existing objective categories whose presence can be proved or otherwise in a court of law. What is known as “standpoint epistemology” is now present in legislation passed by the mother of all Parliaments.

The British would be used to this had they paid more attention to 1999’s Macpherson Report on the death of Black London teenager Stephen Lawrence. This report stated that any incident is deemed racist if the “victim” felt it to be so, or any third party. Presumably this third party could be your protective mother or another gang member. It’s all about how people feel about things, not what they are and are agreed to be.

The whole idea of replacing objective evidence of harmful online content with subjective perception and its attendant degree of psychological harm makes meaning rudderless and subject to whim. What if I were to write a barbed email to my ex-girlfriend, rich in expletives and full of truths aggressively expressed, and she read it and snorted with laughter, pausing only to have a good laugh about the email with her new boyfriend before deleting it? As I intended to cause distress, have I committed a crime even though none occurred? Or suppose my email was mild and rather affectionate, although it did inform my ex that I had slept with her sister. Does she then put on her tragedienne mask and go out to look for a police station (if she can find one in the UK) to report a hate crime and online abuse, because she is so upset? If emotio is given precedence over ratio when crafting legal legislation, then the criminal law becomes mere mood music.

The government’s wily use of language throughout the passage of the OSB is, as always, worth forensic inspection. Nadine Dorries, boss of the CDMS during the early stages of the bill and described rather appropriately as “Digital Secretary”, wrote the following:

This government said it would legislate to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while enshrining free speech.

Fitting, really. A shrine is where people gather to remember the dead.

As well as the strategic vagueness of “psychological harm” or, as the press release also phrases it, “ruining people’s lives” (the life of a sensitive plant on social media doesn’t take much to ruin it), there is a very explicit type of online Thoughtcrime which interests the new lawmakers. Here, as well as seeing what worries the government as a narrative-spoiler, we see every ideologue’s old and trusted friend: moral equivalence.

The new communications offences will strengthen protections from harmful online behaviours such as coercive and controlling behaviour by domestic abusers; threats to rape, kill and inflict physical violence; and deliberately sharing dangerous disinformation about hoax Covid treatments.

Just look at the company kept by those anti-vaxxers! Rapists, killers and wife-beaters.

Many on the Right are frustrated that a nominally Conservative UK government should come down so hard on free speech, something that should be a core principle for them. But why should they care about the loss of such a liberty when it is the only luxury they can’t themselves enjoy? Three categories mentioned in the early-stage OSB as beneficiaries of the protection the Bill seeks to afford are MPs, celebrities and footballers. These people have no freedom of speech, far less than we little people do, and the Klieg lights of the media are trained on them at all times for potential gaffes or hasty Facebook posts. Of course, they don’t care if the peons go to jail for voicing an opinion. MPs have to spend every day clinging to the guard rail of the gravy train, scared to death that they might tweet the wrong thing and lose their grip.

Then there is the question of messaging, and the bill aims to end double-ended encryption because, as you have doubtless guessed, this creates “a safe haven for paedophiles”. Won’t someone think of the children? We will be advised to do that while government turns its attention to its real quarry, adults.

Quite apart from anything else, encryption is a feature which attracts users, and if your business niche loses its USP (unique selling point, the grail of marketing), then you are just another provider duking it out with the others, who now have everything you have. But more importantly, encryption is essential for many people in these Stasi-esque times. I use an encrypted service because I have it on good authority that young and zealous social justice warriors frequently work for at least one major email provider, and are not above cancelling accounts for Wrongthink found while they rifle through your private correspondence, or at least correspondence you thought was private.

Media Coverage

British press coverage has been interesting through the course of the OSB’s passage through parliament. Britain’s Daily Mail is one of the leading newspapers in the world now, largely because they adapted to online publishing quicker than their competitors. They are also deemed “Right-wing” by the Left, and always have been. The Mail made some noise about the dangers of the OSB during its early readings in 2022, but the downside pieces tailed off in Spring of this year, to be replaced by features by and about women worried about their children’s potential misadventures online. The last piece the Mail ran on the subject had the headline: “Becoming a mother has convinced me we MUST protect children from the ‘Wild West’ of social media”. The piece was written by Michelle Donelan. Ms. Donelan is not a journalist by trade, but rather Britain’s Technology Secretary, and thus in charge of the OSB. As I said earlier, government has to package and sell legislation like any other consumer good, and the British MSM double as their PR department.

Enforcement

Finally, the government has the problem of enforcement, and for that it has weaponized the Office of Communications (OfCom). This body, among its many other duties, oversees political partiality in broadcasting, which generally amounts to going after the likes of GB News — as I wrote about here at Occidental Observer — while giving the BBC a pass on everything. But now they are free to roam social media looking for suspicious ideas too freely expressed.

Here is confirmation, if such were needed, that big tech are now essentially governmental sub-contractors, very powerful NGOs to which the political class has outsourced enforcement — malicious examples of what the British used to call PPEs, or public/private enterprises. Big tech is now the Man from MiniTru. And the OSB is also a flick of the riding-crop on the rump of big tech to make sure it does what it is told:

Previously the firms would have been forced to take such content down after it had been reported to them by users but now they must be proactive and prevent people being exposed in the first place.

That’s quite a statement. A government is telling private companies not to listen to its audience, but to listen to the government. This is how soft totalitarianism hardens.

It might be assumed that the battle for free speech is being fought on level terrain on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It is not. While America still has the First Amendment woven into the very origins of its founding constitution, the United Kingdom has no such thing, and is about to add to its own body of regulatory law in less libertarian ways. The Magna Carta is often invoked as the British equivalent of the First Amendment, but this is wishful thinking once you see the denuded state of that founding document. Of the original 63 clauses present when King John signed Magna Carta in 1215, 59 have been repealed. The only important one left states that the government can’t throw you in jail without a trial. What the current government is doing to get round that is to widen the criteria of what can land you in court with the Crown as your opponent.

Conclusion

The OSB is a legislative instrument essentially intended, despite its pretensions, to police social media. Policing speech (or writing, if expressed online) is interesting in the UK. The fact that the actual British police are more likely to be found snooping online or participating in a gay pride march than doing any actual policing is duly noted, but this legislation will empower the state literally to act as commissars of what is said online, and by extension what is thought. It’s okay to like the British Blair — not Tony Blair but Eric Blair (aka George Orwell, which was a pen-name), but he must be lying in an unquiet grave.

The OSB is being presented as the benevolent state guarding its children from the predations of malevolent parties, but its own malevolence will be reserved for adults who speak out of turn. And this type of online infraction no longer leads merely to account suspension or deletion, but in some cases to jail.

We are used to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World being held up as a mirror to our current predicament. But there is a third novel in Britain’s dystopian trilogy. In Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, a politician visits a jail to look for a subject for the Lodovico treatment which is designed to cure the offender of the impulse to violence. The reason the minister wants prisoners released safely back into society, and something of the sort is already happening in the UK, speaks to us: “Soon we may be needing all our prison space for political prisoners”.

The Enemy of Your Enemy

The vicious attack by the Palestinians in Gaza is certainly understandable given the apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and essentially establishing Gaza as an open-air prison where supplies allowed in are strictly limited to ensure an essentially starvation-level diet for Gazans. The Western media is replete with images of Jewish suffering and civilians who have been raped, murdered, or taken hostage, but we are well aware that that same media routinely ignores atrocities against Palestinian civilians, as the above-linked article notes—atrocities that have been going on for decades.

It’s always psychologically difficult to be a dissenter from the moral panic that is now gripping all the high ground of Western culture. It’s a moral panic similar to the outpouring of concern for Ukraine even though a Western victory would be the establishment of all the poisonous trends of the West, from mass immigration from the rest of the world to gender insanity.

Most of us want to be seen as the good guys. And we are. I’m fairly used to being condemned as a moral reprobate by now, since writing critical pieces about Jews will definitely bring down a deluge of hatred. But it’s never easy. We’re advocates for our people at a time of unprecedented hatred against Whites throughout the West—hatred that in my opinion can be traced to the rise of a new, substantially Jewish elite in the media, the academic world, and (via donations) politics. Jews are a powerful component of our elite, and in general they are suffused with historical grudges against the West, from the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, to medieval expulsions, to nineteenth-century pogroms in Eastern Europe, to the 1924 immigration law, to the holocaust. It is a group that is utterly incapable of attributing any hostility toward Jews as understandable responses by non-Jews to Jewish behavior.

The current Israeli-Gaza war is yet another example. As always, Jews are innocent victims, end of story. And the result is we are inundated with context-free accounts of Jewish suffering. Such accounts are the entire focus of the vast majority of the Western media. And of course politicians fall in line, knowing full well that departing from this media-manufactured moral consensus would be the end of their careers.

But what I want to emphasize here is that this does not mean that I am a cheerleader for Palestinians. The Palestinians are a typical Middle-Eastern people and all that that entails in terms of non-Western social forms—the clans, the collectivism, and Islam with its long history of hatred against Europe. I recall going to a Palestinian protest at the University of California-Irvine and coming to the conclusion that these people are not our friends.

Let’s frame it at its most hopeful: If the Israel Lobby loses its control of the political process in the US, it would mean that Jewish power in general loses. And that would have major implications for a wide range of issues, from immigration to the legitimacy of assertions of White identity.

One thing that struck me was that almost all the ~150  students who came to [Alison Weir’s] talk were Arabs. The women wore scarves, and almost everyone wore a black anti-Israel tee shirt, so the meeting had the air of a uniformed, homogeneous, almost military group, with a couple of White outliers like me. Her talk was sponsored by the Muslim Students Association. It was preceded and followed by the reading of a passage from the Koran in Arabic, followed by an English translation. The event was held in the campus Cross-Cultural Center which has offices for all the ethnic activist student organizations. Immediately following her talk, the MECHA activists set up their meeting … . (MECHA and all the other student ethnic lobbies and leftist groups are co-sponsors of Israel Apartheid Week [IAW]. [BLM in Chicago is now supporting Hamas.] …

So even though I was cheered by the thought that more people are becoming aware of what’s going on in Israel, it was depressing to think that the anti-Apartheid doings are basically just another ethnic lobby. These students identify with the left, and I rather doubt they would be sympathetic to my view that they really shouldn’t have been allowed into the US in the first place. And they would be rather hostile to the idea that Whites have interests too.

I felt like a foreigner viewing someone else’s show. Outside the lecture hall, I felt like a foreigner even more. Despite the fact that UC-I is in the heart of Orange County (formerly considered a bastion of White Republicanism), spotting a White student was almost a rarity.  Whites officially make up around 23% of the students at UC-I, well below their proportion in the state. UC-I is often called the University of Chinese Immigrants, but Chinese were not particularly noticeable. It was all manner of non-Whites, from every part of the world.

Just walking around campus the percentage of Whites seemed to be far less than what the university says. The official statistics are based on freshman enrollment, and I suspect that a lot of White freshmen decide UC-I is not the place for them and transfer to some other university.

It was actually rare to see a White student. When I got into the student union, there were two or three Whites in a total of about a hundred. Four White guys later came in and sat together–probably at least implicitly realizing that their association was based on their race. But it was eerie how Whites stood out because of their minority status–almost like being in Hong Kong or Karachi and noticing a few stray Americans.

Like the Palestinians, I had the feeling of being displaced. Only I very much doubt that the Arab students who were involved in the Israel Apartheid Week would sympathize with my feelings.

The increasing presence of such people in Western societies is a disaster. And one could be forgiven for thinking that Israel would be happy to export Palestinians to Western countries, as has been proposed for African refugees in Israel. Problem solved.

Two Comments on Israel-Gaza War: Jonathan Cook and James North

Jonathan Cook on the historical blindness and hypocrisy of the Western media.

All the current analysis focusing on Israel’s intelligence “blunders” distracts from the real lesson of these rapidly evolving events.

No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinans were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.

No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.

No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalised as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.

No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.

Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?

After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from Western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively. …

No hiding place

By indulging Israel in its deceptions, Israel’s allies have allowed it to perpetrate ever more outrageous lies. At the weekend, Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “leave now” because Israeli forces were preparing to “act with all force”.

But Netanyahu knows, as do his Western enablers, that Gaza’s population has nowhere to flee. There is no hiding place. Palestinians have been sealed into Gaza since Israel besieged it by land, sea and air. …

There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learnt from what has happened this weekend.

The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains.

They have built a network of tunnels, most of which Israel has located and destroyed. They have fired rockets that are invariably shot down by ever more sophisticated interception systems. They have protested en masse at the heavily fortified fences, topped by guntowers, Israel surrounded them with – only to be shot by snipers.

Now they have staged a daring escape. Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only “in retaliation”, of course. The Palestinians’ craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.

And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West that supports it so lavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalising the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.

The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its Western patrons, still has no incentive to internalise the fundamental truth above. The rhetoric of its current government of fascists and Jewish supremacists may be particularly ugly, but there is a broad consensus among Israelis of all political stripes that the Palestinians must continue to be oppressed.

Which is why the so-called opposition will not hesitate to support the military pounding of the long besieged enclave of Gaza, killing yet more Palestinian civilians to “teach them a lesson”, a lesson no one in Israel can articulate beyond asserting that Palestinians must accept their permanent inferiority and imprisonment.

Already, the “good Israelis” – opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – are in discussions with Netanyahu to join him in an “emergency unity government”.

What “emergency”? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.

Israelis and Westerners can continue their mental gymnastics to justify the Palestinians’ oppression and refuse them any right to resist. But their hypocrisy and self-deceptions stand exposed for the rest of the world to see.


James North in Mondoweiss:

The mainstream U.S. media is using the word “hostages” to describe the Israelis who Hamas militants have captured and taken into Gaza. Analyzing this usage is a good way to introduce how the mainstream is distorting this latest crisis. First, some of the captured Israelis are soldiers, who should properly be called “prisoners of war,” especially as Benjamin Netanyahu has actually declared war on Gaza. But, in fact, other captured Israelis are in fact civilians, and “hostages” is arguably the appropriate description.

But wait. This conflict didn’t start at 6:30 a.m. on October 7. Israel has occupied both West Bank Palestine and Gaza for nearly 60 years, and over that time has arrested and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, often without even show trials. Nathan Thrall, in his impressive, just published book, explains that during the First Intifada (1967-1993) the Israeli occupiers jailed some 700,000 Palestinian men and boys on the West Bank, roughly 40 percent of the entire male population there.

Today, the Israeli occupiers continue to arrest Palestinians, holding them for long stretches without anything resembling a fair trial. But the U.S. mainstream never seems to describe these Palestinian people as “hostages.” …

The double standard perfectly illustrates the U.S. media’s playbook on how to distort the crisis. First, twist your actual reports, with one-sided language and biased framing. But second, and arguably even more important; ignore any of the history in Israel/Palestine, so that the attack from Gaza looks like an inexplicable, unprovoked spasm of violence and Jew-hatred. …

CNN’s color-coded map of Israel/Palestine, which it displayed on screen regularly all week-end, was another instance of slanting. The map showed the entire occupied West Bank as “Palestinian-controlled,” which will be a surprise to Palestinians who every single day have to pass through Israeli military checkpoints.

The Israel-Gaza war and Jewish identity

The war in Israel-Gaza is likely to increase Jewish identification and commitment. In my battles with Nathan Cofnas he claims American Jews are not particularly ethnocentric based on intermarriage statistics. This is wrong for a number of reasons, but at times like this, Jewish consciousness and identity will surely rise. From the revision of CofC:

Jewish identity may emerge among Jews without a conscious Jewish identity as a result of a perceived threat to Jews, as during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war or the rise of National Socialism. Jewish identification is a complex area where surface declarations may be deceptive. Jews may not consciously know how strongly they identify with Judaism. Silberman (1985, 184), for example, notes that around the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, many Jews could identify with the statement of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that “I had not known how Jewish I was” (in Silberman 1985, 184; italics in text). Silberman comments: “This was the response, not of some newcomer to Judaism or casual devotee but of the man whom many, myself included, consider the greatest Jewish spiritual leader of our time.” Many others made the same surprising discovery about themselves: Arthur Hertzberg (1979, 210) wrote, “The immediate reaction of American Jewry to the crisis was far more intense and widespread than anyone could have foreseen. Many Jews would never have believed that grave danger to Israel could dominate their thoughts and emotions to the exclusion of everything else.”
The point is that the Jewish identity of even a highly assimilated Jew, and even one who has subjectively rejected a Jewish identity, may surface at times of crisis to the group or when Jewish identification conflicts with any other identity that a Jew might have, including identification as a political radical.
As a result, assertions regarding Jewish identification that fail to take account of perceived threats to Judaism may seriously underestimate the extent of Jewish commitment. Surface declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading. Consider the following comment on Heinrich Heine, who was baptized but remained strongly identified as a Jew: “Whenever Jews were threatened—whether in Hamburg during the Hep-Hep riots [in 1819 in Germany] or in Damascus at the time of the ritual murder accusation [1840] —Heine at once felt solidarity with his people” (Prawer 1983, 762).

So the ADL coffers will definitely benefit from this.

Depressing to see the talking heads on American media all in for Israel, no mention of the occupation or the draconian economic restrictions on Gaza imposed by Israel that basically make life unlivable for Gazans—presumably all the conservatives and plenty of liberals and liberal organizations. A rebellion had to happen, especially now when Israel was about to make peace with Saudi Arabia at the expense of the Palestinians–definitely off the table now. What I don’t understand is how could Hamas import so many weapons without Israel realizing it. Doesn’t seem plausible Israel would sacrifice so many of its people to have an excuse to obliterate Hamas but that’s what’s likely to happen.


Hertzberg, A. (1979). Being Jewish in America. New York: Schocken Books.

Prawer, S. S. (1983). Heine’s Jewish Comedy: A Study of His Portraits of Jews and Judaism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Silberman, C. E. (1985). A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today. New York: Summit Books.