English Outsider
Comment lifted from MoA
Moon of Alabama

Russia will just overwhelm Ukraine and then install a puppet government to ensure it remains as a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe/NATO. This could go on for some more years, or maybe Russia will speed things up, surprise everyone, and make it happen sooner.

Yes, the end state of remnant Ukraine will be along those lines, though precisely how it’ll be done is unclear and is still maybe unclear to the Russians themselves. Friendly state (unlikely), neutral state, puppet state or occupied territory. The last decidedly the worst case for the Russians and they’ll avoid it if they can. Also, of course, the worst case for remnant Ukraine.

The position has changed, however, since the early Istanbul negotiations. Paramount now is the Russian need to prevent remnant Ukraine being used by the West for attacks into Russia. These have increased greatly in scale and intensity over the last few years and there is no indication that these attacks will cease unless remnant Ukraine is neutralised in one of the ways set out above.

This is not some rarefied “geostrategic theory” for the analysts to mull over. It is an urgent practical necessity for the Putin administration. How long would any American administration last if the American President had to say to his voters “We’re getting sabotage and assassination missions run in against us from Mexico. Drones and missiles are still coming over. There’s not a lot we can do to close these attacks down entirely so we’re going to have to put up with them for the indefinite future.” Impossibly to imagine an American President saying that and similarly impossible for any Russian President. So the Russians do have to aim for an end state to this conflict that precludes, permanently and entirely, any such threat on their Western border emanating from remnant Ukraine.

English Outsider
Moon of Alabama

The outcome of the war with Iran is still unknown. That of the war in Ukraine is set in stone and always has been.

There's nothing funny here, though it's true that the Western military and political establishments are now pure farce. Nothing funny because the farce has had lethal consequences. The unrestrained carnage in Gaza will be a reproach to the West for ever.

As for Ukraine, "b" summed up, must be two years ago now, what we are putting our proxies in Ukraine through. A "crime", he stated. So it is. Has been since 2014. Worse now, after a million and more deaths and economic and societal ruin for Ukraine to match.

As for the military reality Putin, in the video embedded in the Simplicius article above, sums up the military reality that has been clear to us Europeans since February 2022. NATO, the US and all, is a paper tiger. Even with the substantial manpower of the original Ukrainian armed forces NATO has neither the troops nor the equipment for a ground war on Russia’s doorstep and never has had. All we do have is the nuclear threat and neither Biden, nor, now, Trump, will risk Chicago frying for Vilnius. Nor for Berlin. Nor for London. That accepted, the only puzzle lies in working out what the European politicians hope to gain from prolonging a war long since lost.

John Waters

"[E]ach migrant abroad became as though a mobile force-field of ideological power, which neutralised many of the rights of those into whose former territories it sought to encroach." — John Waters, ‘Bullied Towards Extinction’

I am threatened by the Irish police with prosecution for 'incitement to hatred,' 'racism' and 'anti-semitism,' on the basis of an article containing nothing remotely resembling any such quantities.

On Tuesday last, October 17th, at 17.40, I received the following communication from ‘Don Griffin Detective Sergeant Dun Laoghaire Detective Unit’:

💬 Dear John,

Reference to complaints relating to articles appearing in The Irish Light "The Uncensored Truth”

I am contacting you to let you know that the Gardaí at Dun Laoghaire have received complaints about the contents of two separate articles contained in The Irish Light Newspaper, of which I understand you are the Journalist. The first complaint relates to an article in Issue 16 with front page headline ‘Ireland is full.’ It is alleged by the complainant that the related contents are offensively racist and Anti-Semitic. A second and separate complaint relates to what is alleged to be an Anti-Semitic article on pages 22 and 23 of Issue 17.

It is envisaged that the articles will be submitted by file to DPP to make a direction on whether or not the said articles constitute a possible offence under Section 2 of the Prohibition of the Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989. Prior to the submission of this file I am inviting you to comment, if you wish to do so, on the articles’ potential to offend. For that purpose you can arrange to attend at Dun Laoghaire Garda Station where I could meet you on any date at your convenience. You can contact me by email [here he provides an email address and phone number, which I have omitted here to protect his privacy] if you should require any further information.

Yours sincerely,

Don Griffin Detective Sergeant
Dun Laoghaire Detective Unit

John Waters

"When you rinse it right down, the PC/Cultural Marxist revolution has as its objective the emasculation of the white male and the eradication of all values and power systems which are laid at his door, including religion, tradition and the normative family."

One of the legacies of the 1960s ideological culture to the present is what is called ‘political correctness’ (PC), which the average citizen perceives as a weird and slightly infuriating agenda to stop people talking about certain things, but in an irritating rather than a worrying way. The restricted topics form a pattern of sorts, but it is difficult for the uninitiated to say what it is. There is a general sense that it has to do largely with sexual preferences and ‘gender stuff’, feminist diktats and what is called 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism'.

The phrase 'political correctness’ has tripped off the lips of alleged conservatives for so long that it is no longer a tool of clarity. 'PC' is generally regarded as a prim, precious, faintly amusing obsession with the relentless promotion of 'equality', and ‘rights' for what are called ‘minorities'. Most people are unsure why such areas are subject to a particular regime of untouchability, but don't really worry about it too much because there are lots of other things to worry about already and, without getting into too much detail, they are broadly in favour of things like ‘rights’ and ‘equality’.

A standard meme of modern political discourse is the intellectual who, when challenged that some element thrown up by political activism or activity is ‘political correctness gone mad’, simply grins and shakes his head and says: ‘If I hear one more time this nonsense about political correctness, I'm going to start screaming!’ This manner of implying that PC is simply a perverse and eccentric invention of the enemies of ‘equality' and ‘rights’ is just one of the weapons in the armoury which has been developed to protect the very phenomenon being denied. Similarly, depictions of a continuing orchestrated conspiracy, which allow activists operating under the general banner of what has become known as ‘Cultural Marxism’ to dismiss claims of political correctness as 'conspiracy theory'. The point is that the conspirators are no longer around and are not needed now, having long ago constructed a mechanism that operates more or less by its own momentum.

What is called ‘PC’ is actually a highly disturbing climate of censorship, by which the advocates of an extreme radical programme of social transformation have succeeded in advancing their ideas and activities under its cloak of censorship and inhibition. In truth, what is called ‘political correctness' is actually a kind of force field thrown up around a phenomenon sometimes called 'Cultural Marxism', a mutated version of the original, directed at changing fundamentally the way Western societies conduct their everyday existences in the most intimate areas of their family and community lives.

John Waters

‘Hate speech’ laws are not simply censorship. Their deeper purpose is to terminate equality under the law, so the normative indigenous members of a nation are made to feel like an alien underclass.

Those who have doubted that Western Civilisation is in the process of being dismantled are about to receive their definitive reply. The supposedly ‘unavoidable’ fire-brigade damage inflicted on our freedoms in the Spring of 2020, which has never been repaired or reversed, is about to be consolidated. The shout of ‘Emergency!’ was at that time sufficient to quiet most objections and provide reassurance that this was indeed a temporary imposition.

Now, two and a half years later, the maintenance vans pull up and the workmen start to scrutinise the damage done by the firemen — the windows shattered by their axes, the shards of glass still protruding dangerously upwards, the splintered frames. As we look on expectantly, imagining that they are about to replace the broken glass and repair the damaged frames, another convoy of vehicles pulls up, this time bearing men with sledgehammers, crowbars, pneumatic drills, wonder bars, angle grinders — and, bringing up the rear, a scammel transporter with a large crane and wrecking ball. It becomes clear that what the workmen have in mind is not reconstruction, but demolition. Thus, the ‘emergency’ is signalled as over and the Era of Permanent Despotism begins.

Philip Giraldi

I read in the newspaper last week now the US Chief Negotiator on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Martin Indyk, met with a group of Jewish leaders to brief them on the "tightly held" details of what was being proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry. A few days before, New York’s new mayor Bill de Blasio, who had run for office pledging a new openness and transparency for the city government spoke privately at a dinner hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The gathering was not on the mayor’s public schedule, received no advanced publicity, and was closed to outsiders. A journalist who succeeded in entering was forcibly removed from the premises. At the meeting de Blasio went way over the top even for a New York politician, saying that it is "part of [his] job description to be a defender of Israel" and that AIPAC "would always have a friend and ally at City Hall." He went on to assert that defending Israel is "elemental to being an American because there is no greater ally on earth."

How de Blasio, a lifelong progressive, squares his commitment to undying fealty to AIPAC with his undoubted knowledge that the group is possibly the most virulent advocate of war with Iran this side of the Israeli government itself might best be left to his conscience, if he has one. And if there was any doubt that there is something rotten in New York, the State Senate meanwhile passed a bill by a vote of 56 to 4 rejecting the use of state funds to support any institution that boycotts "certain countries or their higher education institutions." Senator Jeffrey Klein, the bill’s co-sponsor boasted that he would "not allow the enemies of Israel or the Jewish people to gain an inch in New York." The bill is directed against attempts to divest from or boycott Israeli institutions but it clearly in Klein’s view does not apply to those who are taking every possible step to cripple Iran prior to attacking it.

Stephen Lendman

Longtime investigative journalist Seymour Hersh addressed it. More on what he said below.

Others like him did years earlier. They included HL Mencken, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and IF Stone among others. Stone (1907 - 1989) said he

"tried to bring the instincts of a scholar to the service of journalism; to take nothing for granted; to turn journalism into literature; to provide radical analysis with a conscientious concern for accuracy, and in studying the current scene to do (his) very best to preserve human values and free institutions."

He deplored the ascendancy of "right-wing kooks" taking over America.

Ralph Nader called him a modern day Tom Paine. He was "as independent and incorruptible as the come," he said. He was "journalism's Gibraltar." He was a crusader. He was an irritant. He spoke truth to power. He did it forthrightly. FBI agents monitored him for years. They tapped his phone. They intercepted his mail. They amassed a file on his activities threefold their size for Al Capone. He was a journalist's journalist. He was a newspaperman at heart. He said:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins...."

He lectured young students wanting to enter the profession. He told them: "All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed." Media liars reflect the same problem.

Mike James

You are the Scum of the Earth. The vilest of the vile...

Have you ever found yourself sitting on a park bench in the middle of a big city, all alone with your thoughts, only to be asked by a concerned stranger as to why you are weeping, though you had no idea that tears were streaming down the cheeks of your face?

Did it come as a shock to you that you were a human being mourning the loss of something precious, yet now beyond your grasp? Was the embarrassment yours or that of the stranger, for, in your own timid way, you felt obliged to apologise for having given outward expression of something that troubled your soul?

“Nothing to see here,” you say. “Alles in Ordnung.” Heuschnupfen, hayfever.

You may find yourself in Berlin, as I do, or in Paris, New York, Sydney, Nairobi, Zurich, Warsaw, Rome, Mombasa, Florence, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, as I have in the past. You may even be sitting on one of those park benches in England dedicated to some local non-entity whose life was dedicated to making of you nothing more than a municipal statistic after the nature of his own imagination.

There appears to be little point in going on. Nothing changes; everything remains the same. Within you there exists a huge chasm of despair, upon the edge of which you are of faint lest the echo of your questions haunt and hound you during both your waking and sleeping hours.

You know that deep down inside, as a free-born child of England, the future that belonged as of right to you and your children was stolen by conceited men in suits and hard-faced culture-change career-women who strutted unashamedly the power halls of neo-liberalism and Fabian socialism, swapping roles as proponents of fast-food “freedom and democracy” with the abandon of whores, their legs wide open to the penetrating thrust of the international Zeitgeist and the nuances of the script handed down to them by Bilderberger grandees.

Sharmine Narwani

The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”

Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have…rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.

Except of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself – shock - rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence.

What moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel even existing.

What a fantastical idea, this notion that a bunch of rank outsiders from another continent could appropriate an existing, populated nation for themselves – and convince the “global community” that it was the moral thing to do. I’d laugh at the chutzpah if this wasn’t so serious.

Even more brazen is the mass ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population by persecuted Jews, newly arrived from their own experience of being ethnically cleansed.

Alan Ireland

Palestinian Refugees from Lydda and Ramle, 1948

Murray Dixon and the specter of Christian Zionism

PART FOUR - Theology and fraud

Needless to say, it is not that "the Arab" is not an individual, but that the Christian Zionists are determined not to see him as one. As a non-person, as "a naughty child who throws stones", his subordination can be made to seem essential — as can the firm, paternalistic hand that ensures he accepts, but remains relatively harmless in, his assigned role of Ishmael. This is the role of the violent outsider (Gen. 16:12) and wanderer (Gen. 37:25) who, ipso facto, cannot be attached to land, and whose claims of attachment must therefore be a subterfuge. For this eternal reprobate, this sensual antagonist of the more favored, intellectual Isaac, there can be no peace except the peace of capitulation. At every turn, he is to be policed by prurient scholars, draconian bureaucrats and casually callous soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces. Even his awareness of himself is to be shaped by the definitions of others.

But the Christian Zionists have another reason for ignoring the individual: With their eyes on the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Battle of Armageddon and other chiliastic events, they have little time for minutiae. They prefer the panorama — the cosmic, inexorable scheme of things, in which the individual is subsumed. They talk grandiloquently of peoples and "nations": those abstract entities that will be collectively rewarded if they act to Israel's benefit and collectively punished if they don't. (I put the latter term in quotation marks because the biblical idea of a nation is not analogous to the modern concept of a state.)

There is little room for law in all this, because legislation tends to deal with discrete, concrete cases. The last person a Christian Zionist wants to know about is poor, dispossessed Abdullah from, say, Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, who still treasures the deeds of his property in Palestine (as it was until 1948) and the key to his now non-existent front door. So he elevates the whole issue of land ownership in Israel / Palestine to the rarefied level of theology. Hence the reference to the Israelis' and Palestinians' "strong but conflicting theologies of the land" in ITAC's press release, dated July 29, 2006, dissociating itself from the Anglican Peace and Justice Network's call for (among other things) "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from all occupied areas . . . [and] the immediate dismantling of the separation wall . . . wherever the wall violates West Bank land."