Israel-Gaza - Where do things stand?

Despite its errors (see the article's comments section for itemized clarifications and corrections), I think the following does a fairly good job:

Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and Racialism

P.S. A reminder.

Two Crucial Analyses

In the following interview with Michael Brenner, the key take-away is his explication of a Western behavioral puzzle, a veritable "collective psychopathology" (commencing at 22:55):

Rabbi Feldman

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE from Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE via United Nations Resolutions pertaining to Israel throughout the years.

We study history for a reason

Dedicated to Turdeau and Zelenskiy:

Zoo time at Operation Circe {Asia Times}

Must read:

In classic Greek mythology, Circe was a sorceress who turned men into beasts, a neat trick if you are prepping your country for conflict. Not only are America’s opponents being dehumanized as fierce, bloodthirsty creatures, but to entertain the new barbarism, the population of the world’s most advanced nation is being dragged to new depths by state magicians and their little helpers on bloated budgets who know how to flip everyone’s amygdala en masse.

The more you hate, the less you think.

BRICS+ Onward Ever, Backward NEVER

I am glad to have lived long enough to witness this, even if it is in its early stages and the road ahead is long and treacherous. Here is a major marker to celebrate on that long road:


Find the above video HERE

The world has changed economically and geopolitically, and who better to provide the background than Pepe Escobar:



More on the BRICS Summit here:



...And here:



Key speeches at the BRICS Business Forum:



While undeniably positive overall, it is important to temper expectations:

To be clear, it’s a positive development that a broad range of countries will now participate in BRICS’ countless gatherings each year ahead of its annual summit, but the only thing that they all have in common is their interest in accelerating financial multipolarity processes via their national currencies. That’s not to downplay the importance of BRICS expanding in the way that was ultimately decided upon, but just to inform readers of its newfound limits in order to temper their expectations. At the same time, BRICS also has more opportunities than before in the sense that more countries can now participate in whatever alternative financial architecture their group unveils in the future such as an inclusive non-Western SWIFT-like payment system. These benefits balance out the obstacles and arguably make the latest move worthwhile in the long term, which is the period that they have in mind, not the short- or medium-terms per se.

May you live in interesting times. Yes indeed we are!

The Fascist International

Why would the United States want to cover up the fact that following the Second World War, American intelligence immediately set about the task of rehabilitating the world’s fascists to fight the new war on Communism? (rhetorical question) Didn't the U.S. government at least suspect that such support would come back to bite it on the butt?

As soon as World War II ended and the Nazis were defeated, US intelligence agencies built ties with former Hitler collaborators to work together against the Soviet Union and then Russia. The operation to form an armed underground movement in Western Ukraine was dubbed 'Aerodynamic'. The CIA assembled war criminals and Bandera movement activists from filtration camps, and created an agent network. Their task was to sabotage nuclear plants and dams on Ukrainian territory in an effort to separate it from the Soviet Union. They terrorised civilians and were responsible for at least 35,000 casualties, according to CIA co-founder Frank Wisner.

Information versus Misinformation in the Battle for Multipolarism

There have been some momentous developments since the year commenced, but these have rarely made it into the minds of North Americans. It has been said that what is happening in Ukraine is a hybrid war being fought on multiple fronts, one of which is the sphere of information:

[Eurasia Economic Union’s Sergey] Glazyev: My book, The Last World War, that I already mentioned, which was published as far back as 2015, argued that the likelihood of this happening eventually is very high. In this hybrid war, economic warfare and informational/cognitive warfare are key theaters of conflict. On both of these fronts, the U.S. and NATO countries have overwhelming superiority and I did not have any doubt that they would take full advantage of this in due course.

As far as this informational/cognitive warfare is concerned, professor of philosophy Peter Ludlow at Northwestern University published an article which appeared in the New York Times nearly a decade ago entitled The Real War on Reality. I'll quote it in part:

This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.

Returning to the Ukraine conflict, it is therefore essential that North Americans be made aware of the mythology they are being handed under the guise of "information" or "news":

As we witness the collapse of various mainstream narratives, especially those surrounding the U.S./NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, Americans should begin to reassess their understanding of U.S. national leadership. Most American citizens have no notion of the great disparity between what their government does overseas and the stories they hear from its mouthpieces. As a result, Americans unwittingly support all sorts of foreign operations with little or no understanding of what is actually going on. For years, they have been misled by a non-stop propaganda campaign that is only now beginning to crumble. We are experiencing the death throes of the United States’ unipolar hegemony over large parts of world. Until citizens begin to realize the magnitude of their government’s policy deceptions, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the United States’ changing global position and adjust to the effects of the growing negative perception of our country held by many people around the world.

...Go read the whole thing, especially if you are North American. Most of the rest of the world doesn't need such deprogramming since it is more or less innoculated against the West's mythical narrative.

While the above article from The American Conservative is much more extensive in its coverage (via the various valuable links included), one mustn't forget the particulars of the Ukraine conflict. Perhaps of greatest importance is to understand that the war didn't start in 2022; it started in 2014 with the Maidan coup. A succinct eleven minute summary is given by Jeffrey Sachs in the following brief video:



So where do things stand today and where are they headed? I was actually correct earlier this year when I contradicted many claims that Russia was preparing a massive military offensive in Ukraine's Donbass that could possibly even make its way to Kiev. Why should Russia change what it has been doing when it has been relatively successful so far?, I asked. Rather than explain my view, you cannot do better than listen to Brian Berletic:



Finally, it is essential to keep one thing in mind: This "war" extends beyond what is happening in Ukraine, Poland and Eastern Europe. Check out what is happening in the Middle East, re-baptized as Western Asia:

...the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international system.

Go read the whole thing. And while you're at it, read this, too.

It has been more than one year...

It has been more than one year since Russia initiated its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Although there are many assessments available online, there is perhaps no better assessment than the following by Robert Freeman:

UKRAINE AND THE TUNNEL AT THE END OF THE LIGHT

Since I really can't add much more to it than what Mr. Freeman has written (except perhaps THIS), I will just end by saying that I am in full agreement with the vast majority of what American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, and former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, Scott Ritter says HERE.

The Most Egregious Mistake, by Alistair Crooke

Alastaire Crooke is a:

"...former British diplomat, and is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.[1] Previously he was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy."

I suggest you savour his article, entitled The Most Egregious Mistake, in its entirety. Here is the gist:

"The point here is that Russian Resilience, at a single stroke, shattered the plate-glass floor to western convictions about its ability to ‘manage the world’. After the several western debacles centred on regime-change by military shock-and-awe, even hardened neo-cons – by 2006 – had conceded that a weaponised financial system was the only means to ‘secure the Empire’. But this conviction has now been upended – and states around the world have taken notice."

Bis interimitur qui suis armis perit!

JFK and America’s Destiny Betrayed A Review of DiEugenio’s “Foreign Policy Coup” Theory

“FORGET THE CIA, FORGET LYNDON JOHNSON, FORGET FIDEL CASTRO, THE MOSSAD KILLED JFK.”

Toward the end of Laurent Guyéno's recent article:

Mike Piper filled the gap with Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy (expanded through five editions until 2005). His work has been ignored by most investigators, but in 2013, historian Martin Sandler (listen to him here) mentioned it in his precious edition of The Letters of John F. Kennedy, to introduce Kennedy’s letter to David Ben-Gurion dated May 18, 1963:

author Michael Collins Piper actually accused Israel of the crime. Of all the conspiracy theories, it remains one of the most intriguing. What is indisputable is that although it was kept out of the eye of both the press and the public, a bitter dispute had developed between Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who believed that his nation’s survival depended on its attaining nuclear capability, and Kennedy, who was vehemently opposed to it.

Zionism = Racism = Colonialism

Anybody who had doubts as to whether Zionism is racism and colonialism, need only witness what is currently happening HERE.

Settler Colonialism and the Logic of Double Elimination:

According to the logic of elimination that subtends settler colonial projects, native populations are displaced in order to replace their systems of life, a process that structures invasion in its initial stages as in the present. By looking into the case of modern Palestine in an integrative fashion, in this essay we suggest that settler colonialism targets native populations along with social formations – established ways of life – that nurture native life in various ways. We define this settler specificity as the “logic of double elimination.” Our story shows that in Palestine, Zionism developed and the Israeli state was eventually established by means of (a) the continuing elimination of the Arab-Palestinians and their sovereignty, and (b) the destruction of the social infrastructure and identities that fostered Arab–Jewish shared life and forms of cooperation as they flourished in Ottoman times, and the prevention of these forms as they survived into the British Mandate era.

We may Die of Laughter.

I suppose it's better to die of laughter, than frightened to death by a nuclear holocaust.



The following is worthy of a modern-day Keystone Kops revival:

The EU and US both still appear unable to accept that having failed to kill Russia with their shock and awe sanctions, they are now caught in their own booby trap by reducing access to Russia commodities, particularly ones on which they depend like gas, oil, fertilizers, neon, titanium, aluminum, platinum, palladium…. And then they get pissy when Russia is less than fully cooperative in continuing to supply them, even as they also threaten to stop/reduce buying from Russia (admittedly on largely imaginary timelines).

And as if that weren't enough, here is the Great Leader of Ukraine which the West has been parading all over the media. You just can't make this stuff up!

Seriously, though, this is the reality of the Ukraine conflict:

Suffice it to say that Russia is beating a military trained and equipped to NATO standards [force] over eight year, which had the additional advantage of building extensive, layered bunkers in Donbass. Russia is wearing it down with a peacetime expeditionary force, battle-hardened local militias, the Chechens, the Wagner Group (somewhere between volunteers and mercs) and most importantly lots of ammo and missiles. Russia has depleted Ukraine’s armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and seasoned fighters, as well as draining NATO caches, while reportedly manufacturing ammo and weapons at a rate so high that Russia is keeping up with the usage in the Special Military Operation. Russia has also demonstrated superiority to the West in missiles, missile defenses, and signal jamming. Yet somehow our strategists had convinced themselves that Russia was a military paper tiger, when that is increasingly looking like projection.

...Go read the whole thing.

Iconic Caribbean writer George Lamming died today at the age of 94.

A cultural icon who mentored me through his written works (and in person when Gordon K. Lewis brought him as visiting author to the Institute of Caribbean Studies) passed away today.

Renowned Barbadian novelist and poet George Lamming died on Saturday at the age of 94. He passed away in Barbados four days short of his 95th birthday on June 8. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, in a release following Lamming’s passing, said there would be an official funeral for the writer who was so integral to the literature of the region.

If you frequent my blog you will be familiar with the eternal quote from one of his landmark works at the heading:

"For I am a direct descendant of slaves, too near to the actual enterprise to believe that its echoes are over with the reign of emancipation. Moreover, I am a direct descendant of Prospero worshipping in the same temple of endeavour, using his legacy of language - not to curse our meeting - but to push it further..."

Rest in Power, Giant.

The Conflict between Russia & the West

This conflict is noteworthy for the concerted effort by the West to dominate the narrative and exclude everything the Russians have to say about it. One should always listen to both sides of any conflict if there is to be a fig-leaf of impartiality.



One of the first documents that should be read and confronted concerning the crisis in Ukraine is the following letter signed and published in 1997. It is testimony to the fact that notable diplomats and historians knew back then that NATO expansion would elicit a backlash from Russia, and that U.S. President Clinton's rush to push NATO eastwards would turn a once compliant and reformist Russia into an implacable enemy.:

As for the nature of the situation in Ukraine, the West has pushed back against accusations that there exist significant fascist elements in Ukraine, something which has been documented beyond a shadow of a doubt:

On 16 February 2020, the U.S. State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism arrived in Ukraine.[1] The agenda was not announced. The hope is that he discussed at least some of the issues discussed in this report with his Ukrainian counterparts. Five years ago the threat of ultranationalist-neofascist Ukrainian terrorism (UNUT) should have been clear to all, but it was not.[2] Things have not gotten any better. The threat has grown, and there remains no acknowledgement of the UNUT threat. The threat remains one both to Ukraine as well as Europe, Russia and the United States and is part of a larger ultranationalist-neofascist international movement and terrorist threat. Identitarian violence and terrorism is deeply embedded in the nationalist, ultranationalist, and neofascist strand of Ukrainian political culture. Contemporary UNUT is inherited largely from Galicia and the Nazi-allied Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA) of World War II and thus is a near century-long tradition. Not only did the OUN assassinate officials, including Polish and perhaps more understandably Soviet officials and NKVD officers, OUN members also tried to assassinate US President Delano Roosevelt, according to archival documents.[3] The UNUT tradition is being carried forward by Ukraine’s ultranationalist and neofascist groups, such as Right Sector, the Svoboda Party, Right Sector, Azov, the National Corps (Natsional’nyi Korpus) or NatsKorpus, and C14. This is no coincidence as it these groups that have fostered a cult of personality surrounding Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, the OUN’s and UPA’s respective founders. in the nationalist, ultranationalist and neofascist subculture of Ukraine, helping to establish them as officially recognized national heroes.

Notice that even the Atlantic Council concurs!

As for the lead up to the 2022 Russian "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monitoring Mission had documented a marked increase in Ukrainian armed forces shelling of the Donbass (Ukrainian territory where there is a predominance of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens) in February of 2022:

...the OSCE’s daily report of 18 February...That same report records numerous violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Ukrainian government in moving heavy weaponry in to menace separatist held areas and in keeping weaponry outside agreed storage facilities. It equally reports precisely the same kind of violations by separatist rebels. None of which balance has been recorded by the same western media which loves to give detailed accounts of troop movements within Russia.

If none of this suffices to convince you that the Russians have a point, then perhaps you should listen to former Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud:

The culmination of "Jazz"

Nothing surpasses this.

The West's "Soft Power"?

Good to see more evidence of the premature end of what was arguably supposed to be the American Century. As far as I'm concerned, its demise couldn't arrive too soon. There were already signs at the beginning of the current century that this was the case, given the inauguration of the infamous "war on terror" following the 9-11 attacks. In my opinion, the USA's "upholding" of human rights was always overblown. How could you lay claim to that after flattening North Korea, or devastating Vietnam to no end? Nevertheless, one of the USA's (arguably) least destructive Presidents made a good case for this being an essential pillar to what has been dubbed the USA's "soft power". Well..., even that has now been jettisoned!

Patrick Armstrong, in a February 4, 2021 column titled The West Is Losing Its Soft Power, explains why whatever "soft power" the USA may have had is fast disappearing. He starts out by delineating the basis for what may have been the USA's "soft power":

I would argue that American soft power stood on four pillars: the attractiveness and excitement of its popular culture, its reputation for efficiency, rule of law and the “American Dream”. Every American could expect that his children would be better off – better off in every respect: healthier, longer-lived, better educated, happier, richer – than he was.

Then Mr. Armstrong proceeds to deal a devastating blow to the notion, with quotes from several articles by formidable analysts, commencing with two by Stephen Walt in the USA's foremost foreign policy journal:

America's History of Luck Is Running Out The Death of American Competence

Next, Mr. Armstrong demolishes the "American Dream" pillar of said "soft power" by citing just one graph. I will leave it to you to read what he writes about inequality in the article. The next pillar Mr. Armstrong aims his guns at is probably the "rule of law", but I deem it "freedom of expression". Here, he cites the Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, James V. DeLong, about Amazon’s decision to deplatform the 'Parler' networking service:

If 6 January was a new Pearl Harbor, extraordinary reactions will be said to be justified. But this is becoming the Western norm: where exactly is the rule of law with Meng in Canada, Sacoulis and Assange in the UK, or Butina in the USA? Will more lawfare against Trump strengthen the image of stability and rule of law? Neither will the 2020 U.S. election and its consequences advance the American reputation of democratic leadership. Some cheerleaders of “American leadership” like Richard N. Haass are quite despondent:

No one in the world is likely to see, respect, fear, or depend on us in the same way again. If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today [6 January].

Wow! Speak about schadenfreude! In summary, Mr. Armstrong points out:

Popular culture, competence, justice and values and the dream of betterment may have been the pillars on which the USA’s soft power was based, but the ground upon which those stood was success. Success made the others attractive; success is the most powerful attraction. The West is losing its aura of success – endless wars, divisive politics, COVID failure, financial crises, debt. And ever more desperate attempts to hold power against ever bolder dissent. It’s just beginning. And not just the USA, the West doesn’t present well any more: protests in Amsterdam, London, Berlin; a year of gillets jaunes in France. The world is watching. Not efficient, not attractive, not law-based. Not successful.

Patrick Armstrong ends by offering some brief highlights of the contrasting success of China, followed by a warning from the USA's "nemesis" from Russia. Go read the whole thing!

Oh! ... and Happy New Year!

As the November 3 Election Approaches, I recall Buckley's "Napalm Love"

"Time catches up with kingdoms, and crushes them..." J.B.

An historical marker:

Letter from #CORONAVIRUS to Humanity