"Donald Trump, campaigning to defeat Biden in the November election, declared in an election statement, reported in full by a Russian military blogger, “this brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender. Three years ago, Iran was weak, broke, and totally under control. Thanks to my Maximum Pressure policy…This attack would NEVER have happened if I was President, not even a chance. Just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the war in Ukraine would never have happened, and we would right now have peace throughout the World. Instead, we are on the brink of World War 3.”
This is how the psychopathic liar now fights the demented on behalf of the genocidalists to trigger all-fronts war in the Middle East."
I like that last sentence - sums up the Presidential candidates well. Correctly tags Trump as a psychopathic liar. How anyone could read that Trump statement and not realize what total bullshit it is is beyond me. But tens of millions of US morons do - and they're going to vote him in.
His grandiosity, obsession with himself, etc. is more indicative of a character disorder. Bill Clinton is a very successful sociopath. DJT does not fit that descripttion.
I'm not sure a clinical distinction is useful in his case. I suspect Helman was more referring to the level of lying Trump indulges in than being clinical. In any event he's a clear narcissist of an extreme level, even more so than Obama (whom Norman Finkelstein referred to as "a stunning narcissist.")
He's also clearly a moron, in my distinction, to wit: Everyone is a moron except me, until proven otherwise.
DJT is part of a long crafted strategy that I see as inextricably linked to the neocon agenda. He is a chimera of the neocon project. A plan B is needed in the event that the neocon swindle of the electorate were to fail and in Biden is a perfect failure. So the race becomes reduced to the crappy moron Trump and the nasty imbecile Biden with so much noise and fury that wannabe's like RFK jr can be excised from the public awareness. Meanwhile RFK jr was nobbled in his youth through his association with Ghislaine Maxwell and the marriage plans of her dad.
All this is ably assisted by the prattle from Tucker who has been carefully positioned to be Trump's megaphone in his hour of need.
Matt Taibbi linked a decent video report today that gives an insight into the detailed and massive resources that are at play behind the scenes just for the Democrats. You can imagine what else the permanent state has going under full steam this year:
Yup. Both sides work for the same people - even if they don't know it and frequently when they do know it. They don't care as long as they benefit. And they always benefit, even if they don't get whatever is their alleged short term goal (being President or whatever.)
Trump, for instance... I've always said the only reason he ran for President is 1) the ego-boo, because he's a narcissist, and 2) the business he'll be able to do with people who swoon at the cachet of doing business with a President (and all the President's connections and influence) which is potentially worth billions.
Bottom line: Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about this country or the electorate. Not to mentuon how many neocons he had around him - and the rest were clown conservatives like Colonel Macgregor (who I'm listening to right now as I type this on Daniel Davis' Youtube channel.) But tens of millions of morons think he does. Even people who supposedly offer "realist" political analysis treat the nonsense Trump says as somehow something we should pay attention to. Or any other candidate's political promises, for that matter.
I refer to RFK as the "leftover Kennedy" and dismiss him completely just as I do everyone else on the scene. He's obviously a cretin based on his Zionism and anti-vaccine stance. No surprise given his family history.
You can't fix stupid, as they say. While the conservatives bitch and moan about the border, the US education system is so broken the entire country is composed of morons, most of whom can't even read and write competently. And this is the way all conservatives, liberals, neoliberals, neoconservatives and even libertarians and Greens, want it.
There's no saving the US. It's done. Put a fork in it. The only issue of relevance for anyone is how to survive it. Which is why I'm writing "The Five Essentials" - to clarify my thinking on that.
That's the key term: "appear". In reality, of course, Biden fully wants a wider war, regardless of any election concerns Jake Sullivan might have. As the article says, it's Biden's nature and the nature of the US Empire. Empires don't admit to limitations in their ability to control the Empire. The recent sci-fi show "Foundation" illustrates the point. And that's why Empire must always fall, however long it takes.
I also disagree with Crooke's title (assuming he chose it and not the editors) of "tragic self-destruction." It may be tragic for the Zionists but for everyone else it's a long-overdue denouement of one of the major mistakes in the history of the last hundred years, at least for the Middle East.
By the end of this, Zionists will be driven out of Palestine, the Zionist dream may live on in other parts of the world (probably in the US where they have the most support from the Christian Zionists), and Palestine will have its borders restored.
As an aside, there is an interesting question: What happens to the Christian Zionist movement in the US when the "apocalypse" they've been praying for happens and only Israel gets the brunt of it? No Jesus returning, no Ascension to Heaven, or any of that other crap. If we're lucky, most of them will commit suicide like the Heaven's Gate cult.
It's "tragic" because others besides the Zionists will suffer as a result. As for the Zionist Project, it exists only in Palestine. Hard to predict what will happen when the Christian-Zionist delusion is deemed dead. Lots of Mega-churches and Televangelists built on that premise. Maybe they'll become Nazis, which seems to be rather close doctrinally.
Yeah... Israeli public appears to be living in their own unique propaganda bubble which reinforces the fear, and anger, and hysteria - to give policymakers a free hand.
Despite this, the situation is straightforward. They just laid waste to a city of a million in the most epic fashion, and their enemies throughout the region, instead of being deterred, only became more motivated. Not totally clear to me why this should be a surprise, but there it is.
Sadly, the path forward will probably involve doubling down, "just to be safe". Some way will be needed to rope in the US, and as is clear, neither Biden nor Trump will be particularly opposed. But it may not be enough. We can forget about attempts within the Biden administration to "come to a stable stopping point" (i.e. lock in the "demographic gains" Israel has "achieved" and take a breather for 6-12 months until the next episode). There are too many different forces, from every corner, who view such a thing as an unfavorable outcome. Will be interesting how serious is the effort from Washington to defenestrate Netanyahu, and in the event that it is serious, how effective would be the reverse effort from Jerusalem to replace Biden.
Biden's most serious issue are the charges of not performing his presidential duties for which ample evidence is already public that can easily lead to impeachment and Senate trial where the evidence IMO cannot be refuted and a guilty vote the only correct outcome. The big question: Will the Republicans do their duty? Or will being a "war president" somehow protect the extremely unfit Biden? IMO, the next move is Netanyahu's.
True, but the evidence of Biden's dereliction of duty is so massive and then there's the tower of corruption evidence, it would be very hard for Ds to not vote to convict. We shall see soon enough.
Doesn't matter. The trial itself will present evidence to We the People nationwide, openly. If the Senate then votes to acquit, the public will witness that crime too. Biden may not be impeached after the votes are tallied, but some justice will have been served nonetheless by the truth having been openly shared.
But the RINOs almost certainly won't go forward. Because they are there to make sure it doesn't happen of course. They have deliberately not gone into depth into clear and present impeachable offenses, like failing to enforce immigration law which is a no-brainer and should have happened Year One. I don't have words to describe how much I hate the Democratic Party but they would pale in comparison to how much I despise the Republicans!
Why would the Republicans bother to impeach Biden? They're virtually guaranteed to win the next election anyway. Not even Democrat vote tampering - which I don't believe existed in 2020 and won't exist this time - would be able to overcome Trump's massive lead (assuming Trump gets the nomination which on the Republican side is also certain.)
Again, why bother? He's going out in 12 months anyway. Then they can just rewrite the immigration laws (not to mention I consider that whole issue to be total bullshit based on the size of the US population vs the number of immigrants; it's just another conservative obsession like "preserving out precious bodily fluids", i.e., just plain racism.)
Oh, I'd love to see Biden impeached. I just doubt it will either matter or succeed and will just be another circus used by both sides to derail the public's appreciation of the war with Iran and the Israeli genocide. We don't need that.
Immigration is framed in very racist terms. That is undeniable. However, it is simultaneously a "kitchen table" issue for enough voters to make a difference, in that more workers = less negotiating power. Racism, on the other hand, can be "someone else's problem" ... Democrats as I'm sure you know have let down their former working class voters too many times
Agreed. It merely emphasizes how stupid the US electorate is. "more workers = less negotiating power" doesn't even make sense in economic terms since most of the immigrants take low education, low-paying jobs. It's purely a cover for racism.
My father was an example; he despised all other ethnicities, but had little skills himself; basically an example of Archie Bunker. Which is why most of these types are red state conservative Trump supporters.
Or as they said in "Blazing Saddles": "You know...morons."
Crooke's essay was to my mind the epitome of unnecessary obfuscation. A riff. Variations on a theme.
Academic elaborations. His essay and his video.
All time wasting BS. Fiddling while the flames grow higher or the childrens bodies are crushed beneath the masonry.
One thing is constant throughout text and video: that Israel seeks to instill fear. That Israel sees fear as the key. That thread is solidly there.
In which case all talk of eventual Israeli 'victory' is fantasy.
Kiev, Washington, Israel. Barbarians. Stone age anachronisms. Lunatics.
In the history books the West of today will go down as equals with such as Sodom and Gomorrah, I imagine. For we, the population, play our games and eat ourselves to placid obesity while thousands, millions, suffer quite directly and deliberately incredible horrors from warfares we provide, support.
But sooner or later, stupid and comatose as we are there must be an awakening and when it comes the side of the sufferers, the side of those who scream for freedom from oppression, the side of those who plead for fairness and justice and truth and sense is the side we will have to support.
The heart and essence of all this is the Jewish religion of course. NO ONE says that. Even now. Endless bloody stupid 'homeric' prose analysing in minute detail the intricacies of the executioner's axe but a total avoidance of the guts of the matter:
The Jewish religion is sheer transparent obvious stone age hogwash.
The JC thing put it all into perspective, rationalised it, 2000 years ago.
Now the NDE realtime, topical reports reveal the simple truth of the nature of reality as it is and as it has been through the ages.
There is no longer any reason such a lunatic barbaric retarded belief should exist. None.
And by their fruits ye shall know them: true in the secular world as in the sectarian - and we see the fruits of this lunacy we have given space to for too long. We cannot afford to give it safe harbour any longer.
I'd say the same is true of all the Abrahamic offshoots as well. And I'll carry that over to all supernatural-based religions, which are most all of them. Natural, animistic, beliefs are closer to reality. The big problem is the issue humans have with cause and effect and that some entity must have caused the universe and all its natural aspects--Nature doesn't have any agency because it supposedly isn't sentient. I disagree with that reasoning because it's possible for inanimate objects to have behavior because they exhibit behavior AND choice, both of which were demonstrated 40 odd years ago and more so since. Of course, such thinking is beyond the capacity of most humans because they simply don't know what's been discovered about the nature of life and how it arose. Lucas provided an opening in 1999 with the first prequel Star Wars film where Shmi's pregnancy with Anakin was caused by Miticlorians, which was Lucas's cryptic term for mitochondria. The problem arises in trying to figure out where the y chromosome component came from. But then that's fiction. Reality isn't as complex.
"... we, the population, play our games and eat ourselves to placid obesity while thousands, millions, suffer quite directly and deliberately incredible horrors from warfares we provide, support..."
Which is pretty well a description of the life of the middle classes under capitalism. Any system of exploitation requires the re-definition of the exploited as less than human. Under imperialism that has defined the way in which 80% of humanity has been viewed-the lives of villagers in Central America or Africa or Asia being seen as 'timeless' outside of history which drifts into the jungles the way that plastic arrives at an uninhabited Pacific atoll.
The era of decolonisation in all its complexity, with imperialism/neo-colonialism ebbing and flowing in and out of the 'decolonised'world, seems to be realising its purpose in BRICS and other manifestations of the equalising of states, cultures and nations. Not simply in theory but in practice as Yemen, the poorest state in Arabia and one of the poorest in the world, asserts itself as equal to ...the task set for mankind, but left unperformed by those posing as its champions. The R2P crowd who only perform their services for gain, which usually takes the form of a country reduced to rubble and its head hanged or butchered otherwise.
Yemen, it would seem performs its duties for free-which no doubt explains its poverty.
Borrel's 'jungle' vs 'garden' analogy needs adjustment: the "West" is not so much a garden, which is after all the quintessential provision ground of the people, as the grounds or Park of a Stately Home, manicured, landscaped carefully for displays, designed to look good but most of all to make the Palace it surrounds look good.
And that is the "West" today, not a provision ground in which the soil is cherished and carefully reproduced, in which men and women train and protect fruit bearing bushes, orchard trees and strips of vegetables, fertilised, weeded, cleaned and watered, sustaining those who work in it and their families.
It is, on closer examination, just a park, where the wealth of the Stately Home, real or inferred/inherited finds its complement, and is otherwise barren and unproductive.
But I don't go along with defining the problem as 'capitalism' or 'imperialism' or 'colonisalism' or any other 'ism' because when so defined the problem becomes immediately attributable - by design - to a certain group at a certain time in history.
I don't accept that.
For I see it all as part of the inevitable and necessary growing of the peoples of the planet. We are evolving. Passing through all kinds of things as we evolve. Not to see the evolution is to turn away from problem and answer and make a project out of vilifying and perhaps even attacking a group.
Which, of course, is becoming part of the problem.
See the evolution and see where it is going and where it is at now.
Where it is at now with the internet and universal immediate access to it and the wealth of useful programmes on it and we are at where we can begin to manifest democracy for the first time in history.
Until now always practical constraints. Now gone. With bewildering speed. Caught everyone flatfooted.
People still living/thinking/acting like powerless ignorant slaves and wanting to march in the streets and be violent until 'someone' comes and rescues them.
When they have in their pockets and purses a tool whereby they could confront politician, soldier, police, friends, associates - everyone, anyone - and show them 'Look: 85% of us want this: NOW' so DO IT or get out'. And point out to them that if 85% clearly want this then there'll be no problem if part of that 85% begin to take matter into their own hands in whatever way required.
When 85% want then you cannot rely on the army to enforce the wishes of 15%.
Nor the police.
Nor the bureaucracy.
Nor any of the 'arms of power' typically used to force the people into obedience.
Used to work.
Not any more. Or: shouldn't be, any more. Once people wake up. It is not ancient Rome and they are not slaves and they do not have to march in the streets to sort things out.
It is inaccurate as it starts however. I have not said - or at least certainly never have meant to say - that I don't believe in any 'isms'. My position is that I do not believe in blaming the current ills of the world on some favourite 'ism'. I am sorry if I was unable to clearly say that.
So I'm a bit lost then, immediately, when we come to 'many...share... your belief' for I don't know
what belief is meant. Not mine, apparently.
Of course I do believe the cell phone apps are sorely needed. I can agree with you there. I feel they will come. Doubtless with warts and all. The beneficial efficacy that I envisage won't be how they will immediately manifest at all I suppose.
But the power in the world belongs to the masses. Quite incontrovertibly. What keeps the masses down, for instance, is the masses. The oppressors in their uniforms with their guns and their prisons, at their desks with their lists and edicts etc. are all 'of the masses'.
Divided they fall. And the masses are always divided. Aren't they? Aren't we? Don't we - oppress each other?
Communication is at the heart of it. We do not communicate across the divides. How much communication between police and public? How much communication between public and legislature? How much communication at that awful time when the military is called upon to harm the people between the people and the military?
And yet always on both sides of the divide the same thing: the people.
The 'not people' - those above and beyond the common run, escaped from all the ordinary imperatives and necessities of life - they do not get oppressed and they do not don the uniforms and do the oppressing. They swan around in their own circles.
Very interesting. And the internet and the smartphone for the first time in history the people can know the people. I think http://mbccc.com/ perhaps puts it well.
"My position is that I do not believe in blaming the current ills of the world on some favourite 'ism'...."
Any obscurity in the discussion is just s likely to be my fault as yours, perhaps more likely. Imasde theerrorof assuming that you were opposed to 'isms' in the sense of socialism or elitism. In fact you seem to be objecting , rather, to the use of terms like capitalism to characterise a form of socio-economic organisation.
I use Capitalism or imperialism as shorthand for actual systems economic, social and political. So when we blame 'capitalism' for the division of society into two blocs of class, based upon their relationships with the means of production we are both identifying the source of social disfunctions- a small minority of wealthy people has overwhelming power and employs it in its own, and not the general, interest- and suggesting a solution to the problems caused, which would take the form of a society based upon a democratically controlled economy working for the good of all.
The masses may be divided but they can hardly be said to oppress themselves. The division that matters most is that between those who act in the interests of society and those who act in the interests of those oppressing/exploiting society because they see their interests as indistinguishable from those of the exploiters. They identify their own interests with those of the oppressor-and in almost every case they are going to be mistaken. The 'scab' who deserted the Miners' cause for a bonus and promotion profited little when the mine was closed down and he lost his job.
As to the internet and the smartphone, while they open up all manner of possibilities-in teerms of enhanced communications, they are also opening up all manner of dangers- in terms of increased surveillance and supervision.
On the one hand we have watched as the traditional media, employed by its ruling class owners to sustain their power, has crumbled away and the countervailing power of social media has risen up against it. On the other hand we have seen the ruling class asserting its control over social media-again through its ownership of infrastructure and its control over state institutions from the law to passport control.
There has been much change but in the end everything is the same- they rule, yet.
Which is to say that we return, and in my view we always do, to the basic question of ownership of the means of production, (it wasn't long ago that this meant 'the land' and nothing much more), and the means of distribution-the marketplaces and the routes between them.
In one respect I think that we are agreed and that is that given the need for discussion and debate before and during the changing of things, there must be unprecedented opportunities in the development of information technology to realise the crucial question of democratic control over the economy and the institutions it necessitates.
"In fact you seem to be objecting , rather, to the use of terms like capitalism to characterise a form of socio-economic organisation"
No. As I said: I object to it being taken to be the cause of today's ills.
"The masses may be divided but they can hardly be said to oppress themselves"
When a policeman/blackshirt/thug/paramilitary/soldier etc comes and attacks me he is oppressing me and he's not rich, not powerful, not of the 'upper classes' or anything else but of the masses. Hence quite clearly the masses oppress themselves.
"...they are also opening up all manner of dangers..."
quite literally 'beside the point', not the point.
"....we return, and in my view we always do, to the basic question of ownership of the means of production..."
No we don't. You do.
And there I think we are at the hub of the matter. Your intent is not to discuss and expand upon my contentions, my point of view, but simply to denigrate it, erode it away and substitute your own favourite which is that it is all about ' ....ownership of the means of production..'
You would have done well to simply state that at the outset.
The question of the distribution of the Palestine Diaspora came to mind so I took a peek and poke to see what was in the memory stack. This small item popped up from the NYT (which I tend to ignore but) and it is interesting:
"The Palestinian diaspora, more than six million people worldwide today, spans the borderlands of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, together home to nearly a million Palestinians, and includes enclaves as far-flung as Dearborn, Mich., and Santiago, Chile.
The largest proportion of Palestinian exiles, however, is in Jordan, on Israel’s eastern border. One in five people living in Jordan is Palestinian — more than 2.3 million registered refugees in all, a population slightly larger than that of the Gaza Strip. Most of them have full citizenship. Some, including Jordan’s Queen Rania, born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait, have even attained considerable power, but many still reside in Jordan’s 10 official United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) refugee camps or three unofficial camps run with some United Nations assistance. The history of these refugees is a narrative of exile and national aspirations, of longing for a homeland — a palimpsest written and rewritten with each new wave of arrivals."
I am a little intrigued why the usa army is saying that Tower 22 was attacked by Iran proxies when it appears that maybe it was al Tanf in Syria. There are few shia in Jordan so there is no real threat from a sectarian uprising but Palestinians represent approx 20 percent of the population. IMO the USA through both this Tower 22 announcement and the simultaneous sabotage of the UNRWA (with vassals in tow) represents a direct threat to the stability of Jordan. I am fairly sure that is how it will be seen.
Palestinians are 93 percent Sunni but their respect for the shia are likely fairly high given their solid resistance to the outlaw empire and its illegal occupier colony in Palestine.
If the UNRWA service capability is damaged then perhaps that vacuum can be filled by special pledges from the combined Arab and Iran etc regional governments. Whatever the response though, this attack on the UN and capital strike from the vulgar westies presents a magnificent opportunity for the entire east and south system to step up to the challenge and further transition the west asian scene away from the mendacious warmongers.
"In an open letter, 800 officials from the EU, the US and the UK have called on the West to end the policy of double standards towards Israel and to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza."
No doubt the storm troopers of zion including Kier Starmer will pursue them all to an early grave.
I try to avoid ccommenting on this topic, but thank you for illustrating the article. I had made an earlier comment somehwere (here?) to the effect that Isreal would win a military victory in Gaza but suffer a strategic political defeat. Looks like I may have been wrong on the first point but was right about the second. And a widened conflict will do NATO/USA no good whatsoever either IMHO, as the current
impasse with the "rebel Houthis" is showing. Hezbollah and Iran will be no push overs and war with Iran or its proxies will only strengthen the BRICS axis in the long term.
However for the Neo-Con "Hammer" warmongers everything looks like a nail, and there appears only one solution available.
Ash Sarkar at Novara Media gets to the nub of contextualising the Israeli Government's vulgar abuse of the Holocaust memory in service of their genocide against the Palestinian people.
Eight minutes from anger through to a thorough humane and intellectual comprehension. Watch this video and Ash Sarkar comes in midway and eloquently smaks down the hypocrisy. She is a champion.
I sense a bit of Putin Judo: the only way to destroy the Lion King is to get him to destroy himself from within, aka giving him the rope with which he will hang himself. The Israeli refusal to ever admit error or confess wrongdoing means they always, always, always double down. In trying to destroy others they will destroy themselves... And of course this involves much more than Israel per se, but the entire Western socio-political post-war construct.
Just prior to the 2008 financial fraud crisis, I wrote the US Empire was like a giant alligator that's eating its own tail thinking it's its this newest tidbit. And of course being fat and juicy, it tastes good so it takes pleasure in devouring itself.
Thank you karlof1, that was good brain food indeed. Perhaps a colour revolution might emerge in Jordan as that monarchy is well past its use-by date for the Jordanian and Palestine people residing there. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
As an aside, here's is a comment from John Helmer's article over at Unz.com:
The Tower-22 Strike in Jordan Triggers US, Israel Into All-Front War
The Arabs and Iran Are Ready, the Russians Too
John Helmer • January 29, 2024
https://www.unz.com/article/the-tower-22-strike-in-jordan-triggers-us-israel-into-all-front-war/
"Donald Trump, campaigning to defeat Biden in the November election, declared in an election statement, reported in full by a Russian military blogger, “this brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender. Three years ago, Iran was weak, broke, and totally under control. Thanks to my Maximum Pressure policy…This attack would NEVER have happened if I was President, not even a chance. Just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the war in Ukraine would never have happened, and we would right now have peace throughout the World. Instead, we are on the brink of World War 3.”
This is how the psychopathic liar now fights the demented on behalf of the genocidalists to trigger all-fronts war in the Middle East."
I like that last sentence - sums up the Presidential candidates well. Correctly tags Trump as a psychopathic liar. How anyone could read that Trump statement and not realize what total bullshit it is is beyond me. But tens of millions of US morons do - and they're going to vote him in.
Must agree 100% Do watch Larry Johnson's 20 minute podcast, https://sonar21.com/my-podcast-on-the-impending-war-with-iran/
DJT is not a psychopath, for sure, clinically.
His grandiosity, obsession with himself, etc. is more indicative of a character disorder. Bill Clinton is a very successful sociopath. DJT does not fit that descripttion.
I'm not sure a clinical distinction is useful in his case. I suspect Helman was more referring to the level of lying Trump indulges in than being clinical. In any event he's a clear narcissist of an extreme level, even more so than Obama (whom Norman Finkelstein referred to as "a stunning narcissist.")
He's also clearly a moron, in my distinction, to wit: Everyone is a moron except me, until proven otherwise.
Fair point.
The level of lying fits the character disorder. The extreme narcissism does also. Like Biden, he does not care whether what he says is true or not.
DJT is still a PITA, pain in the . . . I cannot stand to look nor listen and have felt that way for decades.
DJT is part of a long crafted strategy that I see as inextricably linked to the neocon agenda. He is a chimera of the neocon project. A plan B is needed in the event that the neocon swindle of the electorate were to fail and in Biden is a perfect failure. So the race becomes reduced to the crappy moron Trump and the nasty imbecile Biden with so much noise and fury that wannabe's like RFK jr can be excised from the public awareness. Meanwhile RFK jr was nobbled in his youth through his association with Ghislaine Maxwell and the marriage plans of her dad.
All this is ably assisted by the prattle from Tucker who has been carefully positioned to be Trump's megaphone in his hour of need.
Matt Taibbi linked a decent video report today that gives an insight into the detailed and massive resources that are at play behind the scenes just for the Democrats. You can imagine what else the permanent state has going under full steam this year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xRYmzANyUg
In the usa they serve hash cookies with the cool aid.
Yup. Both sides work for the same people - even if they don't know it and frequently when they do know it. They don't care as long as they benefit. And they always benefit, even if they don't get whatever is their alleged short term goal (being President or whatever.)
Trump, for instance... I've always said the only reason he ran for President is 1) the ego-boo, because he's a narcissist, and 2) the business he'll be able to do with people who swoon at the cachet of doing business with a President (and all the President's connections and influence) which is potentially worth billions.
Bottom line: Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about this country or the electorate. Not to mentuon how many neocons he had around him - and the rest were clown conservatives like Colonel Macgregor (who I'm listening to right now as I type this on Daniel Davis' Youtube channel.) But tens of millions of morons think he does. Even people who supposedly offer "realist" political analysis treat the nonsense Trump says as somehow something we should pay attention to. Or any other candidate's political promises, for that matter.
I refer to RFK as the "leftover Kennedy" and dismiss him completely just as I do everyone else on the scene. He's obviously a cretin based on his Zionism and anti-vaccine stance. No surprise given his family history.
You can't fix stupid, as they say. While the conservatives bitch and moan about the border, the US education system is so broken the entire country is composed of morons, most of whom can't even read and write competently. And this is the way all conservatives, liberals, neoliberals, neoconservatives and even libertarians and Greens, want it.
There's no saving the US. It's done. Put a fork in it. The only issue of relevance for anyone is how to survive it. Which is why I'm writing "The Five Essentials" - to clarify my thinking on that.
"Biden to appear to be ‘managing’ the conflict"
That's the key term: "appear". In reality, of course, Biden fully wants a wider war, regardless of any election concerns Jake Sullivan might have. As the article says, it's Biden's nature and the nature of the US Empire. Empires don't admit to limitations in their ability to control the Empire. The recent sci-fi show "Foundation" illustrates the point. And that's why Empire must always fall, however long it takes.
I also disagree with Crooke's title (assuming he chose it and not the editors) of "tragic self-destruction." It may be tragic for the Zionists but for everyone else it's a long-overdue denouement of one of the major mistakes in the history of the last hundred years, at least for the Middle East.
By the end of this, Zionists will be driven out of Palestine, the Zionist dream may live on in other parts of the world (probably in the US where they have the most support from the Christian Zionists), and Palestine will have its borders restored.
As an aside, there is an interesting question: What happens to the Christian Zionist movement in the US when the "apocalypse" they've been praying for happens and only Israel gets the brunt of it? No Jesus returning, no Ascension to Heaven, or any of that other crap. If we're lucky, most of them will commit suicide like the Heaven's Gate cult.
It's "tragic" because others besides the Zionists will suffer as a result. As for the Zionist Project, it exists only in Palestine. Hard to predict what will happen when the Christian-Zionist delusion is deemed dead. Lots of Mega-churches and Televangelists built on that premise. Maybe they'll become Nazis, which seems to be rather close doctrinally.
Tragedy as a genre not as an outcome.
Yeah... Israeli public appears to be living in their own unique propaganda bubble which reinforces the fear, and anger, and hysteria - to give policymakers a free hand.
Despite this, the situation is straightforward. They just laid waste to a city of a million in the most epic fashion, and their enemies throughout the region, instead of being deterred, only became more motivated. Not totally clear to me why this should be a surprise, but there it is.
Sadly, the path forward will probably involve doubling down, "just to be safe". Some way will be needed to rope in the US, and as is clear, neither Biden nor Trump will be particularly opposed. But it may not be enough. We can forget about attempts within the Biden administration to "come to a stable stopping point" (i.e. lock in the "demographic gains" Israel has "achieved" and take a breather for 6-12 months until the next episode). There are too many different forces, from every corner, who view such a thing as an unfavorable outcome. Will be interesting how serious is the effort from Washington to defenestrate Netanyahu, and in the event that it is serious, how effective would be the reverse effort from Jerusalem to replace Biden.
Biden's most serious issue are the charges of not performing his presidential duties for which ample evidence is already public that can easily lead to impeachment and Senate trial where the evidence IMO cannot be refuted and a guilty vote the only correct outcome. The big question: Will the Republicans do their duty? Or will being a "war president" somehow protect the extremely unfit Biden? IMO, the next move is Netanyahu's.
Republicans would love to impeach him, I'm sure, but they don't control the Senate
True, but the evidence of Biden's dereliction of duty is so massive and then there's the tower of corruption evidence, it would be very hard for Ds to not vote to convict. We shall see soon enough.
Doesn't matter. The trial itself will present evidence to We the People nationwide, openly. If the Senate then votes to acquit, the public will witness that crime too. Biden may not be impeached after the votes are tallied, but some justice will have been served nonetheless by the truth having been openly shared.
But the RINOs almost certainly won't go forward. Because they are there to make sure it doesn't happen of course. They have deliberately not gone into depth into clear and present impeachable offenses, like failing to enforce immigration law which is a no-brainer and should have happened Year One. I don't have words to describe how much I hate the Democratic Party but they would pale in comparison to how much I despise the Republicans!
Why would the Republicans bother to impeach Biden? They're virtually guaranteed to win the next election anyway. Not even Democrat vote tampering - which I don't believe existed in 2020 and won't exist this time - would be able to overcome Trump's massive lead (assuming Trump gets the nomination which on the Republican side is also certain.)
It's the immigration law issue that's festered for decades which finally prompted one faction to say enforce the laws you swore to uphold.
Again, why bother? He's going out in 12 months anyway. Then they can just rewrite the immigration laws (not to mention I consider that whole issue to be total bullshit based on the size of the US population vs the number of immigrants; it's just another conservative obsession like "preserving out precious bodily fluids", i.e., just plain racism.)
For me, it's a matter of principle and morality.
Oh, I'd love to see Biden impeached. I just doubt it will either matter or succeed and will just be another circus used by both sides to derail the public's appreciation of the war with Iran and the Israeli genocide. We don't need that.
Immigration is framed in very racist terms. That is undeniable. However, it is simultaneously a "kitchen table" issue for enough voters to make a difference, in that more workers = less negotiating power. Racism, on the other hand, can be "someone else's problem" ... Democrats as I'm sure you know have let down their former working class voters too many times
Agreed. It merely emphasizes how stupid the US electorate is. "more workers = less negotiating power" doesn't even make sense in economic terms since most of the immigrants take low education, low-paying jobs. It's purely a cover for racism.
My father was an example; he despised all other ethnicities, but had little skills himself; basically an example of Archie Bunker. Which is why most of these types are red state conservative Trump supporters.
Or as they said in "Blazing Saddles": "You know...morons."
Crooke's essay was to my mind the epitome of unnecessary obfuscation. A riff. Variations on a theme.
Academic elaborations. His essay and his video.
All time wasting BS. Fiddling while the flames grow higher or the childrens bodies are crushed beneath the masonry.
One thing is constant throughout text and video: that Israel seeks to instill fear. That Israel sees fear as the key. That thread is solidly there.
In which case all talk of eventual Israeli 'victory' is fantasy.
Kiev, Washington, Israel. Barbarians. Stone age anachronisms. Lunatics.
In the history books the West of today will go down as equals with such as Sodom and Gomorrah, I imagine. For we, the population, play our games and eat ourselves to placid obesity while thousands, millions, suffer quite directly and deliberately incredible horrors from warfares we provide, support.
But sooner or later, stupid and comatose as we are there must be an awakening and when it comes the side of the sufferers, the side of those who scream for freedom from oppression, the side of those who plead for fairness and justice and truth and sense is the side we will have to support.
The heart and essence of all this is the Jewish religion of course. NO ONE says that. Even now. Endless bloody stupid 'homeric' prose analysing in minute detail the intricacies of the executioner's axe but a total avoidance of the guts of the matter:
The Jewish religion is sheer transparent obvious stone age hogwash.
The JC thing put it all into perspective, rationalised it, 2000 years ago.
Now the NDE realtime, topical reports reveal the simple truth of the nature of reality as it is and as it has been through the ages.
There is no longer any reason such a lunatic barbaric retarded belief should exist. None.
And by their fruits ye shall know them: true in the secular world as in the sectarian - and we see the fruits of this lunacy we have given space to for too long. We cannot afford to give it safe harbour any longer.
I'd say the same is true of all the Abrahamic offshoots as well. And I'll carry that over to all supernatural-based religions, which are most all of them. Natural, animistic, beliefs are closer to reality. The big problem is the issue humans have with cause and effect and that some entity must have caused the universe and all its natural aspects--Nature doesn't have any agency because it supposedly isn't sentient. I disagree with that reasoning because it's possible for inanimate objects to have behavior because they exhibit behavior AND choice, both of which were demonstrated 40 odd years ago and more so since. Of course, such thinking is beyond the capacity of most humans because they simply don't know what's been discovered about the nature of life and how it arose. Lucas provided an opening in 1999 with the first prequel Star Wars film where Shmi's pregnancy with Anakin was caused by Miticlorians, which was Lucas's cryptic term for mitochondria. The problem arises in trying to figure out where the y chromosome component came from. But then that's fiction. Reality isn't as complex.
"... we, the population, play our games and eat ourselves to placid obesity while thousands, millions, suffer quite directly and deliberately incredible horrors from warfares we provide, support..."
Which is pretty well a description of the life of the middle classes under capitalism. Any system of exploitation requires the re-definition of the exploited as less than human. Under imperialism that has defined the way in which 80% of humanity has been viewed-the lives of villagers in Central America or Africa or Asia being seen as 'timeless' outside of history which drifts into the jungles the way that plastic arrives at an uninhabited Pacific atoll.
The era of decolonisation in all its complexity, with imperialism/neo-colonialism ebbing and flowing in and out of the 'decolonised'world, seems to be realising its purpose in BRICS and other manifestations of the equalising of states, cultures and nations. Not simply in theory but in practice as Yemen, the poorest state in Arabia and one of the poorest in the world, asserts itself as equal to ...the task set for mankind, but left unperformed by those posing as its champions. The R2P crowd who only perform their services for gain, which usually takes the form of a country reduced to rubble and its head hanged or butchered otherwise.
Yemen, it would seem performs its duties for free-which no doubt explains its poverty.
Borrel's 'jungle' vs 'garden' analogy needs adjustment: the "West" is not so much a garden, which is after all the quintessential provision ground of the people, as the grounds or Park of a Stately Home, manicured, landscaped carefully for displays, designed to look good but most of all to make the Palace it surrounds look good.
And that is the "West" today, not a provision ground in which the soil is cherished and carefully reproduced, in which men and women train and protect fruit bearing bushes, orchard trees and strips of vegetables, fertilised, weeded, cleaned and watered, sustaining those who work in it and their families.
It is, on closer examination, just a park, where the wealth of the Stately Home, real or inferred/inherited finds its complement, and is otherwise barren and unproductive.
Yep. It's all pretty horrible. There's no doubt.
But I don't go along with defining the problem as 'capitalism' or 'imperialism' or 'colonisalism' or any other 'ism' because when so defined the problem becomes immediately attributable - by design - to a certain group at a certain time in history.
I don't accept that.
For I see it all as part of the inevitable and necessary growing of the peoples of the planet. We are evolving. Passing through all kinds of things as we evolve. Not to see the evolution is to turn away from problem and answer and make a project out of vilifying and perhaps even attacking a group.
Which, of course, is becoming part of the problem.
See the evolution and see where it is going and where it is at now.
Where it is at now with the internet and universal immediate access to it and the wealth of useful programmes on it and we are at where we can begin to manifest democracy for the first time in history.
Until now always practical constraints. Now gone. With bewildering speed. Caught everyone flatfooted.
People still living/thinking/acting like powerless ignorant slaves and wanting to march in the streets and be violent until 'someone' comes and rescues them.
When they have in their pockets and purses a tool whereby they could confront politician, soldier, police, friends, associates - everyone, anyone - and show them 'Look: 85% of us want this: NOW' so DO IT or get out'. And point out to them that if 85% clearly want this then there'll be no problem if part of that 85% begin to take matter into their own hands in whatever way required.
When 85% want then you cannot rely on the army to enforce the wishes of 15%.
Nor the police.
Nor the bureaucracy.
Nor any of the 'arms of power' typically used to force the people into obedience.
Used to work.
Not any more. Or: shouldn't be, any more. Once people wake up. It is not ancient Rome and they are not slaves and they do not have to march in the streets to sort things out.
They only need to use cellphone apps.
The sooner those apps begin to appear the better.
You don't believe in any of the "isms."
Except, naturally enough, your own, Which by definition is not an 'ism' or a theory but an accurate description of the world.
You are not alone. Yours is a very commonly held belief. And probably a large part of the reason why things are so much in need of change.
Good luck with those cell phone apps-they are sorely needed.
I find it hard to understand your comment.
It is inaccurate as it starts however. I have not said - or at least certainly never have meant to say - that I don't believe in any 'isms'. My position is that I do not believe in blaming the current ills of the world on some favourite 'ism'. I am sorry if I was unable to clearly say that.
So I'm a bit lost then, immediately, when we come to 'many...share... your belief' for I don't know
what belief is meant. Not mine, apparently.
Of course I do believe the cell phone apps are sorely needed. I can agree with you there. I feel they will come. Doubtless with warts and all. The beneficial efficacy that I envisage won't be how they will immediately manifest at all I suppose.
But the power in the world belongs to the masses. Quite incontrovertibly. What keeps the masses down, for instance, is the masses. The oppressors in their uniforms with their guns and their prisons, at their desks with their lists and edicts etc. are all 'of the masses'.
Divided they fall. And the masses are always divided. Aren't they? Aren't we? Don't we - oppress each other?
Communication is at the heart of it. We do not communicate across the divides. How much communication between police and public? How much communication between public and legislature? How much communication at that awful time when the military is called upon to harm the people between the people and the military?
And yet always on both sides of the divide the same thing: the people.
The 'not people' - those above and beyond the common run, escaped from all the ordinary imperatives and necessities of life - they do not get oppressed and they do not don the uniforms and do the oppressing. They swan around in their own circles.
Very interesting. And the internet and the smartphone for the first time in history the people can know the people. I think http://mbccc.com/ perhaps puts it well.
"My position is that I do not believe in blaming the current ills of the world on some favourite 'ism'...."
Any obscurity in the discussion is just s likely to be my fault as yours, perhaps more likely. Imasde theerrorof assuming that you were opposed to 'isms' in the sense of socialism or elitism. In fact you seem to be objecting , rather, to the use of terms like capitalism to characterise a form of socio-economic organisation.
I use Capitalism or imperialism as shorthand for actual systems economic, social and political. So when we blame 'capitalism' for the division of society into two blocs of class, based upon their relationships with the means of production we are both identifying the source of social disfunctions- a small minority of wealthy people has overwhelming power and employs it in its own, and not the general, interest- and suggesting a solution to the problems caused, which would take the form of a society based upon a democratically controlled economy working for the good of all.
The masses may be divided but they can hardly be said to oppress themselves. The division that matters most is that between those who act in the interests of society and those who act in the interests of those oppressing/exploiting society because they see their interests as indistinguishable from those of the exploiters. They identify their own interests with those of the oppressor-and in almost every case they are going to be mistaken. The 'scab' who deserted the Miners' cause for a bonus and promotion profited little when the mine was closed down and he lost his job.
As to the internet and the smartphone, while they open up all manner of possibilities-in teerms of enhanced communications, they are also opening up all manner of dangers- in terms of increased surveillance and supervision.
On the one hand we have watched as the traditional media, employed by its ruling class owners to sustain their power, has crumbled away and the countervailing power of social media has risen up against it. On the other hand we have seen the ruling class asserting its control over social media-again through its ownership of infrastructure and its control over state institutions from the law to passport control.
There has been much change but in the end everything is the same- they rule, yet.
Which is to say that we return, and in my view we always do, to the basic question of ownership of the means of production, (it wasn't long ago that this meant 'the land' and nothing much more), and the means of distribution-the marketplaces and the routes between them.
In one respect I think that we are agreed and that is that given the need for discussion and debate before and during the changing of things, there must be unprecedented opportunities in the development of information technology to realise the crucial question of democratic control over the economy and the institutions it necessitates.
"In fact you seem to be objecting , rather, to the use of terms like capitalism to characterise a form of socio-economic organisation"
No. As I said: I object to it being taken to be the cause of today's ills.
"The masses may be divided but they can hardly be said to oppress themselves"
When a policeman/blackshirt/thug/paramilitary/soldier etc comes and attacks me he is oppressing me and he's not rich, not powerful, not of the 'upper classes' or anything else but of the masses. Hence quite clearly the masses oppress themselves.
"...they are also opening up all manner of dangers..."
quite literally 'beside the point', not the point.
"....we return, and in my view we always do, to the basic question of ownership of the means of production..."
No we don't. You do.
And there I think we are at the hub of the matter. Your intent is not to discuss and expand upon my contentions, my point of view, but simply to denigrate it, erode it away and substitute your own favourite which is that it is all about ' ....ownership of the means of production..'
You would have done well to simply state that at the outset.
It is not a contention that I support.
The question of the distribution of the Palestine Diaspora came to mind so I took a peek and poke to see what was in the memory stack. This small item popped up from the NYT (which I tend to ignore but) and it is interesting:
"The Palestinian diaspora, more than six million people worldwide today, spans the borderlands of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, together home to nearly a million Palestinians, and includes enclaves as far-flung as Dearborn, Mich., and Santiago, Chile.
The largest proportion of Palestinian exiles, however, is in Jordan, on Israel’s eastern border. One in five people living in Jordan is Palestinian — more than 2.3 million registered refugees in all, a population slightly larger than that of the Gaza Strip. Most of them have full citizenship. Some, including Jordan’s Queen Rania, born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait, have even attained considerable power, but many still reside in Jordan’s 10 official United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) refugee camps or three unofficial camps run with some United Nations assistance. The history of these refugees is a narrative of exile and national aspirations, of longing for a homeland — a palimpsest written and rewritten with each new wave of arrivals."
I am a little intrigued why the usa army is saying that Tower 22 was attacked by Iran proxies when it appears that maybe it was al Tanf in Syria. There are few shia in Jordan so there is no real threat from a sectarian uprising but Palestinians represent approx 20 percent of the population. IMO the USA through both this Tower 22 announcement and the simultaneous sabotage of the UNRWA (with vassals in tow) represents a direct threat to the stability of Jordan. I am fairly sure that is how it will be seen.
Palestinians are 93 percent Sunni but their respect for the shia are likely fairly high given their solid resistance to the outlaw empire and its illegal occupier colony in Palestine.
If the UNRWA service capability is damaged then perhaps that vacuum can be filled by special pledges from the combined Arab and Iran etc regional governments. Whatever the response though, this attack on the UN and capital strike from the vulgar westies presents a magnificent opportunity for the entire east and south system to step up to the challenge and further transition the west asian scene away from the mendacious warmongers.
I do hold a soft spot in my heart for the dear Alastair Crooke , there is much sound reason in his analysis of the Middle East .
Here is a tidbit that will keep the witch hunt merchants screaming 'anti semitic' for a few years:
https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/2024/ueber-800-offizielle-aus-der-eu-und-den-usa-verurteilen-die-israel-politik-des-westens/
February 2, 2024.
"In an open letter, 800 officials from the EU, the US and the UK have called on the West to end the policy of double standards towards Israel and to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza."
No doubt the storm troopers of zion including Kier Starmer will pursue them all to an early grave.
800 is a good start; ought to be 80,000 though. Plus they need to condemn their own governments.
I try to avoid ccommenting on this topic, but thank you for illustrating the article. I had made an earlier comment somehwere (here?) to the effect that Isreal would win a military victory in Gaza but suffer a strategic political defeat. Looks like I may have been wrong on the first point but was right about the second. And a widened conflict will do NATO/USA no good whatsoever either IMHO, as the current
impasse with the "rebel Houthis" is showing. Hezbollah and Iran will be no push overs and war with Iran or its proxies will only strengthen the BRICS axis in the long term.
However for the Neo-Con "Hammer" warmongers everything looks like a nail, and there appears only one solution available.
The Neocon hammer is now confronted by other, more sophisticated hammers.
Ash Sarkar at Novara Media gets to the nub of contextualising the Israeli Government's vulgar abuse of the Holocaust memory in service of their genocide against the Palestinian people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdgBcqxtPLE
Eight minutes from anger through to a thorough humane and intellectual comprehension. Watch this video and Ash Sarkar comes in midway and eloquently smaks down the hypocrisy. She is a champion.
Great essay, very original, insightful take.
I sense a bit of Putin Judo: the only way to destroy the Lion King is to get him to destroy himself from within, aka giving him the rope with which he will hang himself. The Israeli refusal to ever admit error or confess wrongdoing means they always, always, always double down. In trying to destroy others they will destroy themselves... And of course this involves much more than Israel per se, but the entire Western socio-political post-war construct.
Just prior to the 2008 financial fraud crisis, I wrote the US Empire was like a giant alligator that's eating its own tail thinking it's its this newest tidbit. And of course being fat and juicy, it tastes good so it takes pleasure in devouring itself.
Thank you karlof1, that was good brain food indeed. Perhaps a colour revolution might emerge in Jordan as that monarchy is well past its use-by date for the Jordanian and Palestine people residing there. Nothing would surprise me at this point.