Any time Iran wants, they can over-saturate Israeli missile defenses, turn off the power and destroy the military bases. That was proven this week.
Israel’s ground forces are incompetent and cowardly. They had grave trouble fighting Hamas. Hezbollah whipped them back in 2006 when they dared attack on the ground. Hezbollah’s troops are seasoned war vetrans, and extremely motivated.
What Israel has is airpower, good intelligence, and the USA.
And nukes.
Airpower’s nice, but it doesn’t win wars. And if all your airbases are destroyed or under constant attack, a lot of it goes away. Neighbouring countries have said they won’t base Israeli airplanes.
(I’m running my annual fundraiser. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating. Your donations really do keep this place running.)
The reason that Israel spends most of its time assassinating leaders and mass-murdering civilians is that it knows it can’t actually win on the ground. It can “clear” areas of Gaza, but it can’t hold them, and Hamas has only a shadow of Hezbollah’s strength.
Without nukes, in a conventional war, Hezbollah might win against Israel: by which I mean that invade and conquer the country. It too has tons of missiles and has been holding back. If Iran went all-in, Israel’s defeat in a conventional war would be certain.
The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them.
The time of elite Israeli ground forces is gone. It was gone by 1990 or so.
And military technology has changed. In the old days if you didn’t have an air force, that was it: but drones and new missile tech has changed that.
These aren’t your grandfather’s Israelis, and these aren’t your grandfather’s Muslims.
Jan Wiklund
Let’s not forget that the hard core of the Israeli government are religious fanatics. They may actually think that being annihilated in a generalized nuclear war is better than give up their dream of an Greater Israel between the Euphrates and the sea.
The question is, I think, how does one crowd out these people little by little. I doubt the Israeli public in general would support them if that meant annihilation.
Dan Kelly
“The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them.”
I’m getting really tired of this.
First, though I’m by no means required to say this, I am anything but a hard nationalist. I have the same feelings for the currently not so United States of America that I imagine many Russians have for Russia and many Chinese [人 – rén] have for China. I use those two countries as examples. It applies to every country.
I say ‘many’ because populations within a given area all have different ideas and different strengths of feeling about the countries or areas or groups they are a part of.
Now, that said, the statement:
‘The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them’
should be:
‘The thing stopping this from happening is Israel, its nuke threat, and its stranglehold over America. Israel controls the American political structure, its domestic policing institutions, including most notably the FBI, and its military/intel apparatus.’
Media ownership is also still largely in the hands of Zionists or is heavily Zionist-leaning in order to maintain access to the Israel-occupied levels of power.
Ray McGovern has recently (finally) admitted that there must be at least some penetration into intel. That is very hard for an intel guy to admit, at least one who wants to maintain some semblance of ‘access’ and I believe Ray does.
I don’t think even Phil Giraldi has admitted to subversion of intel. He largely blames the political side.
JFK was aware. He was using a man named John McCone in an attempt to get around the thoroughly Zionized Jesus-Angleton. He was aware of the subversion, though I don’t think he knew how deep it was.
For the record, I am not a Kennedy cultist.
Simply consider that RFK Jr will destroy his own country’s intelligence agency but he’ll bend over backward to defend Israel.
Now, this is not a defense of the CIA. But you do realize that if you were to go after the Mossad or Shin Bet or 8200 or anything Israeli-related whatsoever that RFK Jr will immediately defend Israel to the point of getting angry at you.
When JFK said he was going to ‘smash the CIA into a million pieces’ or something similar – and yes, he did say that – he meant that he was going to arrange it so that it couldn’t be so comparmentalized and secretive.
He wasn’t going to entirely abolish the country’s military-political intelligence.
So why doesn’t RFK Jr tell us this? He could just read from Seymour Hersh’s Samson Option for chrissake:
https://archive.ph/9hRel#selection-4451.0-4451.122
‘In other words, America’s “best Ally” lied to them. Ben-Gurion resigned in May 1963. Following JFK’s murder, Israel resumed testing and faking all through the Johnson and Nixon years. Is is any wonder when the world asks why other countries must adhere to rules ignored by Israel?’
There is ample evidence pointing to Israel as JFK’s killer. Why doesn’t someone in US leadership say this? They will denigrate their own country but not Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qvmzEpSGEw
‘In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.’
-Charles de Gaulle
Again, I am not talking about blindly supporting the US or its political-military intelligence, particularly the way it’s currently structured. I believe Tom Paine’s advice about criticizing a country to make it better.
But that is not what this criticism is about. It is not about making America better, it’s about blindly supporting Israel.
Our entire political-military class can criticize its own apparatus but not Israel’s.
So who has the power here?
Israel and the ‘Jewish issue’ always supersede everything else you’re working on as a nation.
The United States of America is completely occupied in the most important areas of control by Israel and its operatives and sayanim.
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From Seinfeld, the most Jewish show in America: ‘We’ve always got a man there. He may not be our best man…’
Seinfeld was full of inside Jewish jokes that were portrayed through other groups.
JFK was screwing Marilyn Monroe for a time. Monroe’s history is one of complete Zionist control, from her agent to her psychologist. It’s disgusting what they did to her. Her Olmwood Estate – which was originally owned by a Zionist Jew and featured Tony Curtis and Sonny and Cher (and Greg Allman) as owners over the years, among others – this place was bugged just like the more recent Diddy’s place. And so so many others.
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Much of the extraordinary cinema in the US can be traced to a Russian man named Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski. His ‘method acting’ inspired Lee Strasberg who was one of the founders of the New York Actors Studio.
‘The studio is best known for its work refining and teaching method acting. It was founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, and later directed by Lee Strasberg, all former members of the Group Theatre, an early pioneer of the acting techniques of Constantin Stanislavsky that would become known as method acting.
Notable actors and playwrights who have shared their work at the studio include Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando (who joined the studio in its first year), Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.’
https://archive.ph/bwCts#selection-2019.0-2095.2
Elia Kazan isn’s so beloved in hard commie circles. He named names!
Monroe’s agent was John Kahn’s father:
https://youtu.be/kc5NKNpN_-I?t=592
The entire album, produced by Kahn, is brilliant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliments_(album)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Pr3tcyWPQ
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FSaI773Wxg
Ian Welsh
Sure. Zionist power and money has a death grip on American elites.
The only time I was ever told not to write something (other than one idiot who was offended by my use of “you”) was during Cast Lead. Big Jewish donors who gave to the site I wrote for at the time were upset. Seems the other writers didn’t get under their skin: I did. People doing so much evil rarely like being shown a mirror. (Though there are those who glory in it.)
But that grip is a choice. Bush Sr. told the Israelis to bugger themselves and so once did Reagan. Both made Israel back down. Neither of them were “good” men, but they had lines.
Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that the US does stand behind Israel and that’s what makes them viable, plus their nukes.
And that’s the hand that the Resistance is playing against.
Neal Oldham
My observation is different. I’ll grant that Iran makes a good fireworks show periodically, and Hezbollah wins a firefight or two sometimes. There is no credible counterbalance that I’ve seen to the Gaza incursions, the West Bank incursions, the Syria bombings, all the sabotage in Iran, or to the Lebanon bombings. The only effectual group in the mix seems to be the Houthis. Their disruption of the Red Sea is the only real strategic gain that I’ve seen in this wider conflict, but even that doesn’t seem to be deterring Israel to any extent whatsoever.
If one side is eating bunker busters three meals a day, and the other is going home to their own beds at night, then who is winning?
bruce wilder
things have to be pretty damn bad in American foreign policy politics for those who make up “the Resistance” coalition to be anyone’s idea of “the good guys” but that is indeed where we are
the foreign policy consensus has earned its nickname, “the Blob”, for being immune to rational critique or argument and much of this immunity is due to narcissistic moralizing substituting for self-reflective morality in the public discourse
Israeli rhetoric justifying and driving their “escalation dominance” strategy toward genocide and WWIII is a horror show. to me, having nukes is not my worry, it is that a People so rabid and demented may “normalize” nuke use as they have normalized genocide
Also note that the Blob wants to call “Putin’s bluff” on so-called tactical nukes.
Oakchair
Israel has a population of 10 million to America’s 330 million.
Israel has a GDP of 500 billion to America’s 25 trillion.
Israel’s air force and military is dependent on America aid and technology and has been for it’s entire existence.
America has the largest spy agencies in the world and knows intimate details about people from the most isolated countries on earth.
Epstein wasn’t just a Mossad agent he was a CIA one. The FBI and American police protected and aided Epstein.
P. Diddy had contacts with the FBI.
Here’s a possibility. Israel doesn’t lie to America’s government. It and our government lie to the public because PR and plausible deniability are valuable assets. A RAND paper even states this flat out.
Mossad agents who also worked for the CIA and FBI didn’t gain blackmail material on the American ruling class unbeknownst to the CIA and the American government. The CIA and American government not only knew and helped they are the ones who initiated and planned it. They’ve been doing that since Edgar Hoover formed the FBI in the 30’s.
Israel’s not the master here; America’s oligarchy is. Our ruling class isn’t being forced to support Israel because they all raped someone on video at a sketchy illegal party. They want to because Israel functions in a similar way as Ukraine. As a proxy to weaken any group that opposes the American dystopian empire.
“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles” –Dune
People who speak against Israel aren’t canceled because they oppose Israel. They are canceled because people with principles are dangerous to the rulers boot stamping on a human face –forever.
Jan Wiklund
I simply don’t believe that a big organization, like a country for example, does anyting that is not in the perceived interest of its rulers. Whoever these are. I don’t believe that outsiders can “infiltrate” and make the organization do things that are not in its rulers interest. One of which, of course, is to be regarded as legitimate.
Let’s not forget that the US is a deeply Bible-believing country, with up to somewhere betwen a third and half believes that literally everything that is written there is literally true. Particularly the Old Testament.
And let’s not forget that the same people feel a deep kinship with Jewish settlers land land-grabbers because they are descendants of settlers and land-grabbers themselves.
So there is no need of Israeli meddling in the business of US politics. It is as it is because a large fraction of the US people demands it. It is diminishing, however, at least most of the Quincy Institute pundits think so: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/october-7-anniversary-israel/
Soredemos
@Dan Kelly
This is like borderline schizo posting. What does Marilyn Monroe have to do with anything?
StewartM
The end of the Crusader State, Act II?
Israeli’s elites are just as mad as the West’s. Of course, they’re led by Bibi who’s also trying to avoid prosecution. They had a number of other paths to choose from which would have led to (long term) better outcomes, but the dream of Greater Israel-or-bust looks like it’s going to lead to ‘bust’. When the dream itself is rotten, perhaps the ending will inevitably be rotten too.
I can’t think of a worse case of leadership since Germany in WWI under Ludendorf and Hindenburg, where Germany might have negotiated an advantageous peace in 1916 but didn’t because Ludendorf-Hindenburg thought that nothing less than complete and total military victory would lead to democratic (gasp!!) reforms at home.
j
I find it that it is sometimes difficult to understand where the question of jewish people in american money/politics ends and the judenfrage begins. Personally I find many issues perfectly readable without bringing the nationality on the table. E.g. the question of money in US politics is a major one, and the fact that some jewish people buy politics does not add much for me to the general problem topic of US politics is for sale. What’s the important differentiator between the jewish people getting their way in DC, or Blackrock or JP Morgan, or Harvard people for that matter? So when someone starts seeing jews everywhere it puts me a bit on alert.
That being said, I think there are a few things that should be mentioned in the context of the US/Israel question of whether it’s the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog…
First, from the US perspective, Israel is their forward base in the Middle East, to manage their affairs in that part of the world which they consider their own. And to be fair, Churchill sold his part to them in WWII, and sank the French fleet for good measure so that the US could pick up theirs, too. Losing Israel would be a huge blow to the US ability to get their way around the place, so it is to be expected that they keep it alive and kicking.
Second, a good chunk of the US national myth is them being the good guys in WWII, and stemming from that, them obviously still being the good guys. This myth is being used for political profit, and the way to do it is to find more Hitlers, antisemites, and holocausters to fight against, and to distinguish oneself as the good guy on the background of that. All of the US presidential debates having a chapter on who is the biggest Israel supporter is an example of this.
Third, which we kind of barely noticed, and are starting to forget already. A huge chunk of the US elite visited the Epstein island. Epstein was a Mossad asset, and all of what went on on those visits is going to be on video somewhere. To say that this video trove is going to have huge leverage is an understatement at best. So if one wants an actual conspiracy to work with, here is an actual one.
Dan Kelly
As I said, this is not an apologia for these monsters.
Reagan stopped them? That war op invasion lasted three years.. Why did he allow them to start in the first place?
I don’t remember Reagan speaking out about the US-Israel trade deal that led to NAFTA and was celebrated by Zionist operative Martin Indyk. I just posted about that history. It’s very important.
All major US corps were against that ‘deal’ including Sunkist, Monsanto(!), the AFL-CIO, the majority of the Ag industry. Read the history.
So the all-powerful corps were unable at that time to fend off the political-economic machinations that changed the rules in the interest of global investors who took control. CEO pay skyrocketed so that going forward anyone running the companies would be beholden to ‘mammon’ and simultaneously the legal structures in place were destroyed such that no government prosecutions were even possible – this ungodly ‘wealth’ was suddenly the new norm and the legal structures in place to fight it were gone.
And the entertainment apparatus – out of which Reagan crawled – was celebrating this and the kids’ psyches were all inundated with mass superficial consumerism at a level previously never experienced. This when the US was moving from ‘thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from’ to cable boxes with remotes. More shit, easier to view.
Imagine telling people back then about the world we’re living in now. We are literally living in what back then would have been dismissed as something crazy. ‘You’re reading too much sci-fi and watching too many horror films!’
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By the way, that ‘thirteen channels’ is a lyric from Pink Floyd. One of the Floyd’s founding members, bassist and vocalist Roger Waters is a hero on the left who has taken it upon himself to speak for the people of Palestine – among many other world issues. Waters recently had some kind words for Vlad Putin. Uh oh!
Don’t worry: Waters owns an island with singer Shakira where they engage in some high-falutin’ artsy-fartsy stuff. The entire thing was set up by ‘Miami-based investor Arturo Rubinstein.’
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/shakira-roger-waters-buy-island-together/XTJYITUALMTAKIA6XS7UAQYRLA/
Bourgeoisie commies!
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The Soviet Union was led to its ultimate destruction by Jeffrey Sachs, David Lipton and Anders Aslund.
Aslund was a Russian-speaking Swedish intel agent. Lipton moved on to the IMF and more global greeen pastures.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/david-lipton-could-be-up-for-imf-office
file:///tmp/mozilla_dan0/9781513549125-9781513549125.pdf
Fascinatingly, Jeffrey Sachs is very well known in left ciricles. In fact he’s become somewhat of a hero to much of the left/alt-right in the US and around the world. He opines on everything under the sun with a happy-go-lucky grin on his face.
Shouldn’t he be in jail or facing a firing squad for his political-economic privatization machinations that led to the suffering and death of millions?
Jeffrey did apologize for his actions. Bad mistake. Sorry.
So an Israeli operative ‘opened up’ the United States and subsequently much of the world – including Russia and China – which was communized by Jews back in the day, a fact celebrated in the Jewish press.
Show me the comparable level of penetration inside Israel. Show me any penetration of the inner workings of Israel.
I have read about Iranian spies inside Israel. They don’t seem to have accomplished much so far. I imagine most were double agents who built trust inside Iran and with ‘the resistance’ nations and their supporters.
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a fact celebrated in the Jewish press.
‘Even when I have been disenfranchised from God and synagogue, I have always been culturally proud to be a Jew. A source of that pride is the Jewish tradition of helping the oppressed, and our involvement in social movements such as labor and civil rights.’
‘In fact, 85 to 90% of the foreigners helping the Chinese at the time of the Communist takeover were Jewish. This included the daughter of the founder of the brokerage firm Goldman Sachs, who left the comfort of her Park Avenue home to assist the Chinese.’
The Goldman Sachs’ daughter leaves the comfort of her Park Avenue estate. How unselfinvolved her!
‘Until I saw the documentary “The Revolutionary” at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, I mistakenly thought that China during the revolutionary period was one country that had not felt the Jewish embrace
‘https://archive.ph/Go0gL#selection-797.1-797.118
Sidney Rittenberg was the first non-Chinese to hold the powerful media position in China. He was a slave-owning Jew from Charleston, South Carolina and the first American to join the CCP. He was a close advisor to Mao, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other prominent CCP leaders, who trusted him with the translation of the Chinese Communist ‘revolution.’
It was Rittenberg who played the key role in transmitting Chinese Communist propaganda for Xinhua and Radio Peking. He became head of the Broadcast Administration – i.e. propaganda production. This was unprecedented, a position that no non-Chinese had ever held.
But then, Sidney was a trusted ‘comrade.’
Rittenberg returned to the US in 1980 to found Rittenberg & Associates, which became a vital go-between for American corporations and China. Just in time for the Zionist-inspired ‘Reagan Revolution’ and its opening to international ‘trade deals.’
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Bush was CIA. He led the fucking ‘company’ for chrissake. The vaunted Bush dynasty and their ties to ‘the Sauds’ and all.
But when he brought Israel’s stranglehold over the US to the attention of the Amreican public, it was all over. He won that round, but spud’s beloved Bill Clinton knew where the true power lies:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/16/remembering-aipacs-last-defeat/
https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/warforisrael.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=jeff+blankfort+on+bush+aipac+and+the+settlements%27
Ian Welsh
Civilian terror bombing doesn’t win wars. Stuff like glide bombs to take out trenches does.
Vietnam says “hi”.
mago
A dog whose nervous system is infected with the rabies virus experiences great physical and mental torment and trauma and becomes divorced from its friendly, loyal and companionable nature, thus becoming instead a mindless threat and danger. The only remedy is to kill it.
Anyway, that’s not a comparison to a certain culture consumed with blood lust because it’s questionable whether said culture possessed all those good canine qualities in the first place. Still it’s sad to see any people become so far divorced from their basic goodness that they’re transformed into demons.
Just saying.
Guy Igcognito
Israel isn’t used to fighting anyone who has an actual military. So now that another nation with an army and other branches of armed forces is standing up to them, they don’t know what to do.
Carborundum
Looking at the totality of this thing, I think the more apt interpretation is that these aren’t 2006’s Israelis and it isn’t 2006’s Hezbollah / Iran. I strongly suspect that the Israelis are going to do materially better out of this than they did in 2006. I *think* I’ve learned never to overlook the potential for the IDF to snatch a crap burger out of the jaws of victory, but this is playing out quite differently than ’06.
I don’t make a lot of absolute statements as an analyst (or at least I don’t think I do), but this is one: There’s no way on Dog’s green earth that Hezbollah has the combat power to invade Israel and conquer the country. To be clear, that statement depends on neither continued US backing nor on the use of special weapons. Hezbollah is a very accomplished light infantry force and particularly effective in the defensive role, but they are not a combined arms force – and that’s what it takes to invade and conquer Israel.
Similarly, while it’s absolutely a truism that air power does not win wars, that’s even more true of rocketry. Rockets, compared to air power – to put it politely – suck ass. They deliver less tonnage to the target, significantly more expensively. There’s a reason that Western military thinkers look down their noses at them. The thing they are good at, in the absence of being able to deliver special weapons or precision fires, is creating political / psychological chips. Take the observed level of Iranian success and up it by an order of magnitude (e.g., lay 320 hits across Nevatim) and I still don’t think one takes the IAF off the board for more than a few days or a week- double the level and one is up against assessed Iranian stockpiles (i.e., we don’t believe they have that many missiles).
bruce wilder
I am not sure what to make of such an expressed worldview. It might be tautology: rulers perceiving their own interests in whatever way they do, do whatever they do, and what they do, by definition, is pursue their “perceived” interests. What are those perceptions? They are implied in what they do, silly! Maybe that is a little unfair.
I will offer a different explanation based on a different form of explanation, an institutional explanation. I think the policies of large organizations are always shaped by contests for power among various parties with divergent and conflicting interests. When we say “rulers” we acknowledge that some in society have more power and / or more authority in their roles and property claims. But there is no clear demarcation of rulers and ruled, in part because power is just an idea at bottom.
Because this is just a comment, I am not going to write a tome. I will just say if a society is not going to pay good people to advocate for doing good things, but rewards thieves and liars and fools, then, well, that society’s state will tend to do bad and foolish things.
What has gone wrong with Israel is not a simple legacy of its original sin as a settler society. It is a by-product of becoming one of the most economically unequal societies on earth and the corruption that has entailed.
The U.S., too, has become a force for evil because the good people are so politically unorganized. Business and finance are fantastically concentrated. Unions, independent media, mainline churches, fraternal organizations, civic organizations are weak.
Oakchair
If one side is eating bunker busters three meals a day, and the other is going home to their own beds at night, then who is winning?
——
There can be more than 2 sides, multiple members on each side, and a range of winning and losing sides and members.
GAZA isn’t “winning” unless dying as martyr who ends the rule of the tyrant is “winning”. Looking to be similar for Lebanon.
Israel is winning it its goal to kill everyone in Palestine. Israel is winning it’s it goal to slaughter the people of Lebanon. Israel’s economy, standing in the world outside the West, and the perception of it’s military dominance and invincibility however is losing.
Long term what are the odds a tiny nation with a crashed economy, hated by everyone around it, and seen as a paper tiger outside of it’s declining patron going to “win” let alone survive?
History is filled with wars where one side ate “bunker busters” 3 times daily, but still ended up defeating the side sleeping in their beds comfortably at night.
Dan Kelly
There is ample evidence pointing to Israel as JFK’s killer. Why doesn’t someone in US leadership say this? They will denigrate their own country but not Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qvmzEpSGEw
Martin Sandler’s revenge motive is certainly plausible.
But the primary reason they killed JFK is because they knew the US was going to continue to want to inspect Dimona and any other potential clandestine sites. They knew the Kennedy administration didn’t trust them not to continue their nuclear program. Obviously.
Remember, JFK was approached by a Jewish Zionist contingent when his campaign needed money in 1960. They told him they’d give him whatever he needs in return for handing them America’s entire Middle East policy. JFK was furious.
There is also the fact that JFK’s father Joe Kennedy was labeled an ‘antisemite’ and was widely perceived as such in the Jewish community.
Israel set up a false lab for the US to inspect as outlined in the article entitled ‘Trump and the Unspeakable? Part II’ I linked to above. That is a reference to James Douglass’ ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’ which is a good JFK source material book, but doesn’t touch on the clear Zionist motive – which Douglass himself later admitted after the evidence was brought to his attention.
The entire conversation in that link is well worth your time.
The other prominent reason is because JFK and Attorney General RFK (Jr’s Dad) were working to get Isaiah L Kenen’s American Zionist Committee to register under FARA.
To avoid the law, Kenen closed up shop and rebranded…as AIPAC.
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Here is former Green Party congresswoman Cynthia McKinney talking about the power AIPAC has over the entire political process in the United States.
Cynthia is prompted by Richie Allen asking her about what most surprised her about the power of money and corporations in the US.
Cynthia immediately said what she was surprised by is the enormous power of AIPAC and how they operate. She describes their relentless pursuit on behalf of their tiny postage stamp,
In short: Every congress member has to sign a pledge that they will support Israel’s military and economic advantage and what have you.
If you don’t sign, no money or access. And relentlessly negative press, and money from all over the country funnels into your opponent’s coffers. Like, if you are running in Michigan, your opponent gets money from a ‘garden club’ in NJ.
There are lots of ‘garden clubs’ throughout the country.
As Cynthia well illuminates, compilng an exhaustive list of Zionist entities operating on behalf of Israel in the US is near impossible. They have inserted themselves into the fabric of everything down to these alleged local garden clubs – literally, and Cynthia remarkably elucidates the finer details with a few notable examples:
She tells of a comedian who approached her in the manner of being a supporter of her campaign, and offered to help her. She accepted and they ended up working together for three weeks on a promotional project that would give her necessary access to necessary $ and exposure for her campaign.
She gets a call three weeks in from the guy – remember, they’d been working on this together until this time with no prior mention of this – she gets a call from the guy asking her to sign the pledge. She refuses as she always does, and he immediately hangs up the phone…never to be heard from again.
Essentially the same thing happened when she had gotten hooked up with Tipper Gore to do a meetup with potential donors at someone’s house. This again was worked on for weeks with no mention whatsoever of Israel or the pledge. Everything was set. The invitations had gone out! And then she gets the call about the pledge, she refuses, and the woman whose house they were to meet at – the host – said she couldn’t use her house anymore for the donor meetup and the whole thing was cancelled.
A third important story illustrates how powerful they are even in the face of you being a model representative to your consitutents and what they and you care about.
Cynthia got hold of a letter written by a powerful donor that was to be shared with other donors. The letter begins by plainly stating that they were very impressed with both her ease of access as a representative and how she voted and legislated on behalf of the issues they care about. They gave Cynthia the highest marks for her service.
They ended the letter by writing that despite all that, she isn’t kosher with Israel and their pledge, so they won’t be donating, and obviously you can’t donate either. This then went out to all the other prominent donors.
Please listen to this very important interview. I have cued it to the section on Cynthia McKinney’s torture at the hands of AIPAC.
Cynthia said every oranization is controlled by them: women’s groups, environmental groups, peace groups.
Think about those last two in particular.
She said it’s all a fraud, and those are her words. This is a woman with years of experience in Congress:
https://youtu.be/Lt2jhx8yhgk?t=707
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https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/cynthia-mckinneys-anti-israel-campaign
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2009/former-democratic-congresswoman-cynthia-mckinney-flirts-holocaust-deniers
https://youtu.be/iTm22Y9tJ4Q
[I have been linking directly to youtube because invidious and similar frontends have been unreliable of late. Interestingly, if you have youtube on auto play the next video that it plays is Zionist operative Noam Chomsky droning away in his robotic monotone, spewing his usual BS about Israel being nothing more than a Pentagon outpost]
Cynthia should have a word with Noamie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCghfXDUcW8
https://irmep.com/2023/10/aipac-israel-want-us-to-finish-ethnically-cleansing-palestine/
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‘I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.’
https://archive.ph/K6xrM#selection-2403.137-2403.286
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Nahum Goldmann, founder of the World Jewish Congress, wrote a book called ‘The Spirit of Militarism’ in 1915. Goldmann declared the following:
‘The historical mission of our world revolution is to rearrange a new culture of humanity to replace the previous social system. This conversion and re-organization of society requires two essential steps: firstly, the destruction of the old established order, secondly, design and imposition of the new order.
The first stage requires elimintion of all frontier borders, nationhood and culture, public policy ethical barriers and social definitions; only then can the destroyed old system elements be replaced by the imposed system elements of our new order. The first task of our world revolution is destruction.’
– Nahum Goldmann ‘The Spirit of Militarism’ 1915
Goldmann was a powerful Zionist operative. In his ‘Mein Leben: USA, Europe, Israel’ published in 1981, he reported this about the Roosevelt and his administration, having spent intimate time with them:
‘This weakness of the president (Roosevelt) frequently results in failure on the part of the White House to report all the facts to the senate and the congress, the administration’s description of the prevailing situation is not always absolutely correct and in conformity with the truth.
When I lived in America I learned that Jewish personalities – most of them rich donors for the parties – had easy access to the president.
They used to contact him over the head of the foreign secretary and the representative at the United Nations and other officials. They were often in a position to alter the entire political line by a single conversation.
Stephen Wise occupied a unique position, not only within American Jewry, but also generally in America…He was a close friend of Wilson…
He was also an intimate friend of Roosevelt and had permanent access to him, a relationship which naturally affected his relations to other members of the American adminsitration.
Goldmann later relays a more personal intimation he was privy to:
“…the president’s car stopped in front of the veranda, and before we could exchange greetings, Roosevelt remarked, ‘How interesting! Sam Rosenman, Stephen Wise and Nahum Goldmann are sitting there discussing what order they should give the president of the United States. Just imagine what amount of money the Nazis would pay to obtain a photo of this scene…
We began to stammer to the effect that there was an urgent message from Europe to be discussed by us, which Rosenman would submit to him on Monday. Roosevelt dismissed him with the words, ‘This is quite alright, on Monday I shall hear from Sam what I have to do’…..and he drove on.”
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This is the transcript of Cynthia McKinney’s interview with Richie Allen:
RA: Talk about just how prevalent and all-pervasive lobbies acting on behalf of big corporations…just how common and ordinary that is in Washington D.C. in and around politics. You were right there..I imagine it was an eye-opener when you first served, your first term.
CM: I’ll tell you what was an eye-opener for me, during my very first campagin, was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Because I had never seen anything like what I experienced with them was sheer torture.
What happened was I received a fax from them and the fax said…it was like a pledge. And I needed to sign my name and send it back to them and they would keep a record that you made this pledge and you were going to support Israel. And it had some stipulations on there: military superiority, aid, Jerusalem as the capital city. And I said, I’m not even sworn in yet. Can you give me a chance to get inside the system and learn the issue and then I’ll get back to you.
RA: Brilliant. Common sense.
CM: Common sense maybe, but not political practice: I was hounded from that moment on. Whether it was a women’s organization, or an environmental organization.
What I learned is that the operatives for the Israeli Lobby, they control women’s organizations, environmental organizations. It really didn’t matter. Peace organizations. Everything is a fraud.
So, I would say okay, I’d like to get your endorsement, from the environmentalist, or the women’s organizations. And I would get a call saying, well, did you sign the pledge?
Now this ostensibly is from a women’s organization.
I’m a woman. I’m the only woman running.
And I needed to sign the pledge before I could even get looked at.
Peace organizations. Did you sign THE PLEDGE? Environmental organizations: Oh, we can’t support you, you didn’t sign THE PLEDGE.
What I learned, and of course I went through and did a whole lot of researching. And I discovered that Gus Savage, member of congress from Chicago, had also been targeted by them before my arrival. And he put his experience on the congressional record. FOR THE WORLD TO SEE, IF THEY WOULD CARE TO READ ABOUT IT.
And what he said is what I discovered. And that is that EVERY ASPECT OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS IS IN SOME WAY OR OTHER CONTROLLED OR INFLUENCED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE AFFILIATED WITH THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY.
So the name of the organization might be the New Jersey Garden Club. But in actuality, it’s them.
So his experience was that his opponent was getting thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars from organizations like the Garden Club…that’s an example that Gus Savage used. And he started investigating why is the ‘NJ Garden Club’ contributing money to my opponent in Chicago?
And then he found the links.
And that’s what happened to me. I had people from all over the United States sending money to my opponent, just at the word. And then we were able to come by a letter where the person who was soliciting funds for my opponent said ‘She’s not friendly to Israel.’
I had one person writing letters all over Georgia and that letter said when we go to her office we are received very well. She always meets with her constituents. She votes very well on our issues. WE HAVE NO COMPLAINTS ABOUT HER REPRESENTATION EXCEPT FOR ISRAEL.
And for that reason this person was writing a letter saying he wasn’t going to support me, and recommending to the people who receive the letter not to support me either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt2jhx8yhgk&t=707s
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Gus Savage’s speech about the power of the Israel Lobby.
Zionist Israel’s power inside the United States is greater now than it was then.
Both candidates are completely beholden to Zionism and Israel. Harris’ donors, inner circle, her husband, brother-in-law, etc. Joe Biden is a Zionist. Biden-Harris. Harris unequivoally supports Israel even in the face of genocide.
Donald Trump’s donors, his trips with Zionist operative child rapist Epstein on both their planes multiple times and the fact he is one of the few names actually circled in the book along with Bill Clinton, as reported by Nick Bryant of Franklin Scandal fame. Trump’s best friend and mentor being the infamous Roy Cohn who trained him in media and politics. Trump called Cohn everyday at least once until the day Cohn died.
Donald Trump unequivocally supports Israel in the face of genocide and has just said that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilites.
Oded Yinon’s plan will continue unimpeded so long as you don’t wake up to what is right in front of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQP8V-kZ2EQ
Jan Wiklund
Bruce: What I mean is that legitimacy is important for someone who wants to rule. Otherwise people may not obey.
bruce wilder
@ Jan
Legitimacy is important, but it is strange and I dare say, that in our present moment, “our rulers” may be willing test limits in new ways. My understanding of legitimacy is that gaining some measure of acceptance of established authority economizes on the costs of coercion, which costs can be considerable and insidious. Historically, ruling classes can be found that were willing to trade off the general welfare of their society and the strength of the state against concentration of wealth and power in their own hands. In other words, rulers are always tempted to become more parasitical or just lazier even though it weakens the society and state which they head. The ruled, dependent and feeling their personal precariousness and individual helplessness, will accept impositions and injustice and incompetence, rather than risk the violence and chaos that come with societal collapse or revolution. The lowly hate the Leviathan and resist in minor ways but also fear its absence. In a different context, if the bosses know their business, a trade union strike will cost the workers more than settling; it requires a willingness to engage in altruistic punishment to discipline the bosses with a strike.
I am sure you know all this. Ian and various excellent commenters make points with regard to these social and political tensions all the time.
My somewhat tangential point was about intent and conceptions of collective self-interest. Conceiving of what one’s self-interest, personal or collective, is and of strategies to pursue it requires thinking. Thinking is a social and political activity, requiring resources and organization, carried out through political association and public and private discourse. If stupid is never challenged, because no one can get or keep a job carrying out that challenge, well, stupid wins. Stupid and corrupt prevails.
Witness Julian Assange serving hard time for the crime of journalism.
Societies and states are driven without any individual or group really intending anything in full consciousness and with critical reflection, because the formation of state policy is the outcome of a contested political struggle. I am saying the quality of state policy deteriorates with the increasing incompetence or predation of elites. And, I am saying that depriving some “political types” (for lack of a better term) of institutional support in the society (aka resources) does shape the quality of state policy.
International conflicts are often driven as much or more by the internal divisions and authoritarian pathologies of hierarchical societies as they are by any “interest” rivalrous states have identified and pursued. We used to know this, collectively, but we forget under the weight of propaganda stories that try to normalize the past into a mirror image of however we understand the present.
The First World War was driven less by the rivalry of the Great Powers than it was by internal political tensions that were undermining the legitimacy of the ruling classes in those individual states. The Second World War was driven by the social and political pathologies deeply embedded in German and Japanese social and political structures, and it was resolved with rare finality because of an Allied policy of deep institutional reforms.
I don’t think we fully realize how truly sick American politics and political institutions are. Most Americans are in denial. Upton Sinclair’s point about the difficulty of persuading a man whose income depends on “believing” a lie applies to the difficulty of getting anyone to express intelligent, well-informed arguments and good will, if there’s no money in it and jail time is the only bonus.
elkern
IMO, Tail Wags Dog.
IMO, this theory is supported by credible evidence of mechanisms for this, *and* the actual results.
The mechanisms are a combination of legal/ethical means (letters to Congress, letters to the Editor) and more nefarious options, mainly bribery (campaign finance or other) and extortion (Epstein, etc).
The results I see are that US support of Israel has seriously hastened the decline of US international power while Israel has gone from a tiny country which barely survived attacks from its neighbors to a dominant Regional Power. The US invasion of Iraq is the best example: US Oil Corps did *not* gain control of Iraq’s resources, but we *did* destroy Iraq, so it is no longer a Regional Power capable of resisting Israeli expansion.
Conversely, proponents of the Dog Wags Tail theory tend to gloss over details of both mechanism and results.
When Israel declared it’s nationhood in 1947, the US “Oligarchs” were almost all WASPs. Ivy League students were like 95% WASP, and that was the pool from which US State Dept diplomats and experts were hired. Truman overruled those “striped-pants boys” to recognize Israel, hoping to please a small but important group of (nominally) Democratic voters. SecState George C. Marshall opposed recognition, knowing that it would lead to war(s) and complicate US policy in the region (spoiler alert: he was right).
People who claim that Israel is “an unsinkable US Aircraft Carrier” are just plain wrong. First, we have more military bases and personnel in most of the other countries in the region than we do in Israel! More importantly, the USA’s real interests in the region are all about Oil, and Israel’s habit of bombing its neighbors has only made it harder for us to keep the oil flowing and the seas “free”. The best example of this was Arab countries’ reaction to US/Western support for Israel in the 1973 war, when OPEC essentially upended the economic (and social) status quo by driving up gas prices.
A full treatment of this question (which wags what) would take a lot more words (and skill). Anybody have links to good arguments for the Dog Wags Tail theory? (I may be wrong…)
mago
It’s Sunday night the 6th going on Monday morning the 7th as these words are written.
Wonder what kind of world will dawn with the morrow.
It’s already in motion.
Going down. . .