Or perhaps he listens in to State Department phone calls.
Putin on Islamic State as a state department proxy:
In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make loud declarations about the threat of international terrorism while turning a blind eye to the channels of financing and supporting terrorists, including the process of trafficking and illicit trade in oil and arms. It would be equally irresponsible to try to manipulate extremist groups and place them at one’s service in order to achieve one’s own political goals in the hope of later dealing with them or, in other words, liquidating them.
To those who do so, I would like to say — dear sirs, no doubt you are dealing with rough and cruel people, but they’re in no way primitive or silly. They are just as clever as you are, and you never know who is manipulating whom. And the recent data on arms transferred to this most moderate opposition is the best proof of it.
We believe that any attempts to play games with terrorists, let alone to arm them, are not just short-sighted, but fire hazardous (ph). This may result in the global terrorist threat increasing dramatically and engulfing new regions, especially given that Islamic State camps train militants from many countries, including the European countries.
Unfortunately, dear colleagues, I have to put it frankly: Russia is not an exception. We cannot allow these criminals who already tasted blood to return back home and continue their evil doings. No one wants this to happen, does he?
Well actually I am pretty sure that the State Department does want it to happen. And that each terrorist incident in Europe and Australia will be preceded and followed by State Department pressure to address the “root causes” – the root causes being insufficient diversity and affirmative action. Observe that the recent Australian government initiative to mend fences with the Muslim Community was immediately followed by a terrorist incident, which proves the urgent importance of mending fences with the Muslim community.
Observe the smooth and continuous transition under way from affirmative action being necessary because the official victims are so weak, to being unavoidable because the official victims are so powerful and dangerous.
The insight that the State Department is waging proxy war through arms length proxies is pretty unique to NRx.
It’s a really interesting case of evolution in action. The Cathedral has adapted to all the pattern recognition of its nature by camouflaging itself:
* Oppressive regimes are at war with “the people” – a mass of the lower classes. The Cathedral instead allies with the lower classes and uses them to wage proxy war on the middle class.
* Corrupt elites make deals that personally enrich them, using state power for personal gain. The Cathedral is pretty strict about direct bribes both in foreign and domestic affairs. Trusted cut-outs are used and the payments and services are decoupled.
* [This part is almost pure myth but] – Oppressive regimes create hostility due to their very evilness. In reality, this is backwards – the Cathedral rewards crime and attacks on the Red empire with money and prestige. The attacks themselves are then used as proof of the perfidy of the Red empire.
Normally I’d say that Putin was reading the same types of analysis of statecraft that NRx has done but identifying the twist that the Cathedral has put on it is quite NRx – on the other hand, Putin was KGB so I’m sure he was well versed in how cooperative the State Department really was with the enemies of the Red empire.
PS – I’m proud to say that I’ve joined you and spandrell on the ban list at Scott Alexander’s place. He did have to eat some crow by listing the reason for my ban as “no reason”.
“The insight that the State Department is waging proxy war through arms length proxies is pretty unique to NRx.”
Not really. There are some hard-leftists who understand what is going on here as well, surprising as that may seem.
Scott Siskind has done more to fuel my anti-semitism than any other living human being.
Why? One of the least crazy liberals out there.
Scott ain’t that bad. It seems to me that “B” is a heck of a lot worse. (More annoying and smug, less thoughtful and courteous. Also spams comment threads with the irrelevant discussion of Biblical and Judaical minutiae.)
B is thoughtful, the talmudism is because he’s been arguing with Jim about the Bible.
That guy in this thread that basically posted
» Israel can no longer bomb Iran
» oy vey, it’s anuda shoah
that’s an example of Jew thinking that should prove everything anti-Semites say about Jews
The problem is not that he spams threads with biblical minutiae. That is largely a response to me spamming threads with Biblical minutiae. The problem is he is that he is a talmudist, which means he tortures the text of his sources till they confess to whatever he wants them to confess to, and especially tortures the text of the bible till it confesses whatever he wants it to confess.
He finds the old testament disturbingly unprogressive, and interprets it in accordance with modern Jewish Orthodox morals, which unsurprisingly turn out to be a lot closer to modern progressivism than the old Testament, or even the Jewish Orthodox morals of a few decades past.
It’s not unique to NRX… there is a broad consensus that this is happening among almost everyone except those who are under the influence of the mainstream American parties.
A random guy off a random street corner of a random Middle Eastern country could explain it to you.
Yeah, people were actually pointing this out from the beginning. And now, a poll has shown that 80 percent of Syrians believe, without a doubt correctly, that ISIS was created and is being funded by America. Even a Catholic bishop from there has come out saying pretty much the same thing. Its quite obvious that the US has been preparing the groundwork for the unleashing of these proxy jihadist forces on the Syrians and Iraqis for a while now. There isn’t any denying it.
“And now, a poll has shown that 80 percent of Syrians believe, without a doubt correctly, that ISIS was created and is being funded by America.”
Sources?
“Its quite obvious that the US has been preparing the groundwork for the unleashing of these proxy jihadist forces on the Syrians and Iraqis for a while now.”
Source?
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2015/09/81-of-syrians-believe-the-us-created-isis-2-3219898.html
that was easy
ok, now my turn to ask you a question.
(1) do niggers have souls
(2) is interracial marriage sacred in the eyes of the Lá´Ê€á´…
(3) is homosexuality a cross to bear? Is pedosexuality a cross to bear? Should homosexuals and pedosexuals be accepted and lauded for bearing their crosses?
(4) is it a sin for a man to look at a woman who isn’t his wife?
(5) if a White couple has a 25% chance of a genetic problem with their child, should they (a) selectively abort (b) break up (c) adopt a White baby (d) adopt a black baby from Africa whose mother can’t take care of it properly
I have never really seen what LessWrong and people like Alexander bring to… well, anything. I don’t use the word often, but ‘cuck’ springs to mind when I consider Scott Alexander. Then again, he’s a Jew, so not even a cuck, something less.
By attempting to engage NRx on the merits of its arguments and not the wrongness of its think, he adds legitimacy to the movement, even if he fails to actually be even-handed.
His occasional concessions to NRx-ish thought, as seen in http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/22/beware-systemic-change/ where he challenges the media narrative of the gay marriage “debate”, push such knowledge a little closer to the Silicon Valley economic elite.
Finally, “mentally ill asexual Jewish polygamist” is such a weird fucking identity that it functions as an innate shield against charges of fascism/problematicism/reactionary pig-dogism/shitlordism, and that shield allows him to carry out the first two functions without being sidelined by angry progressives.
>The insight that the State Department is waging proxy war through arms length proxies is pretty unique to NRx.
No, this was a pretty standard USSR line throughout the Cold War.
The only thing “NRx” (actually, Moldbug) added to this analysis was that part of the proxy war involved supporting communists who were killing US soldiers and civilians and the clients of the Pentagon.
Bullshit.
And I won’t bother asking you for a citation, because you will, as usual, make one up.
Oh, for sure. Who could find stacks of Soviet press releases condemning the State Departmen and CIA’s backing of “imperialist mercenaries”?
During the Cold War the pattern was more like CIA pragmatically installing and supporting US-friendly dictators, without regards for “spreading democracy”. The USSR was generally on the side of “the people”, Communist movements financed by Moscow. Although you could give Afghanistan as somewhat of a counterexample, I guess.
Not really. Look at the CIA killing off US-friendly Diem, for instance. He’d lost the confidence of “the people”, you see, and those burning Buddhist monks were really bad for optics. Or their help with the emergence of Gamal Abdel Nasser and other representatives of “the people” of the Middle East, as well as the emergence of Syrian Democracy in the 1940s and 50s, when Syria was freed from French oppression with American help (see: Kaplan’s Arabists.)
Of course, the party line that State and the CIA was feeding the rubes at home was exactly that they were “pragmatically installing and supporting “our sons of bitches,” who would take a hard line and keep those commies out,” but the reality was the opposite. They were busily undermining existing governments and replacing them with leftists, under the rationale that the existing governments (think Batista, Farouk 1 of Egypt, Diem, etc.) were not aligned with popular sentiment, and must thus be replaced with leftists to prevent the USSR from replacing them with leftists who would be further to the left. This is the logic of embracing MLK so that Malcolm X would not come to power. Of course, the US-supported leftists usually either immediately went over to the USSR or were so incapable that they’d be wiped out by the boogeymen extreme leftists preventing whose ascent was the goal of the exercise.
Example: Nasser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_1952#Causes
“The Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB through their agents in Egypt promoted the feeling of corruption on the part of several Egyptian institutions such as the police, the palace and even the political parties, and in turn helped coordinate their anti-British and reformist sympathies with the Free Officers Movement.[citation needed] Public discontent against Farouk rose to new levels.[citation needed] In the American Central Intelligence Agency, the project to overthrow King Farouk – known internally as “Project FF (Fat Fucker)” – was initiated by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. and CIA Station Chief in Cairo Miles Copeland, Jr. (who in his book the Game of Nations boasted that he later had an office next to Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Presidential Palace in Cairo). The CIA was disappointed in King Farouk for not improving the functionality and usefulness of his government and had actively supported the toppling of King Farouk by the Free Officers Movement.”
This is exactly the blueprint for US involvement in the Middle East over the last 15 years as well, by the way. The US needed to invade Afghanistan to keep Al Qaeda out, so they installed the incompetent and anti-US Karzai, and now the country is overrun by Islamists. The US needed to replace the corrupt and reactionary Mubarrak, Qaddafi and Assad, who’d “lost the confidence of the people,” with hipper, more democratic rulers who’d enjoy that confidence and would not be overthrown by Islamists, so now Libya and Syria are overrun with Islamists, and Morsi almost got Egypt (I suspect Sisi came in with Israeli help, but who knows.) It’s the same shit.
Anyway, throughout the entire Cold War, the USSR would call whoever State and the CIA were supporting at the time proxy Western mercenary hirelings etc., so not any different than what Putin is saying. He’s not drawing a line between Red State and Blue State or anything like that.
According to the left the CIA pragmatically installed and supported US friendly dictators. Actually it did not, but regardless of whether it did or did not, the alliances between the dictators and the US were overt and official nation to nation arrangements, like the similarly overt and official alliance between Syria and Russia. That is a very different thing to secretly supporting supposed enemies, which is what the US was and is in fact doing, and what Putin accuses the US of doing.
>That is a very different thing to secretly supporting supposed enemies, which is what the US was and is in fact doing, and what Putin accuses the US of doing.
It is difficult to make the case that Mao, Castro and Nasser, when the US was supporting them, were not obvious enemies of the US. You’d have to do an Owen Lattimore and explain how they were not really Communists but just legitimate expressions of a folk-democracy inherent in the culture of whatever group of oppressed people they were liberating, the embodiment of the national will against oppression and injustice, etc. Well, that’s exactly the Arab Spring rhetoric.
It is difficult to make the case that when the US was supporting Mao, Castro, and Nasser, the Soviet Union admitted it.
The Soviet Union proclaimed whatever regime was resisting their takeover to be a US puppet, and often it was, but they never acknowledged US sponsorship of left wing forces, which sponsorship was usually to the considerable advantage of the Soviets.
The US and the Soviets competed for the affection of the left, but the Soviets never acknowledged that the US was doing the left favors and was overthrowing right wing regimes, probably not even to themselves.
A classic example was the “alliance for progress”, which sought to empower left wing intellectuals at the expense of peasants and landowners. The peasants loved the “land reform” – until they found that US sponsored collectivization came with it, which US sponsored collectivization had similar effects and popularity as Soviet sponsored collectivization.
Revilo Oliver wrote a lot about domestic policy in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, but when he mentioned foreign policy, it was to accuse the US government of secretly collaborating with the communists.
Jim, I suspect the reason you don’t know about how common that analysis was is that people who thought that were accused of tinfoil hattery.
So what? Point is that the US supported them in their rise to power (at least by pulling the chair from under their adversaries.) If the USSR did not condemn US proxies, it was because they were its proxies as well. If the American proxies were not also Soviet proxies and did not show signs of promise in that direction, the USSR would condemn them as imperialist mercenaries (as would its client American organizations.) Which is exactly what Putin is doing today. What’s new?
The fact that you are providing examples such as the KMT shows you have no actual examples.
>they never acknowledged US sponsorship of left wing forces
The KMT was what, monarchist? They were leftists, but not as far left as Mao’s boys. So the USSR called the KMT corrupt imperialist mercenary proxies.
Largely, the US didn’t directly sponsor far left radicals but did so by proxy or by pulling the chair-by sponsoring the radicals’ enemies, but with conditions that made it next to impossible to use that aid to wipe out the radicals effectively, and then by very publicly removing that aid and condemning the radicals’ enemies so that everyone could see which way the wind was blowing. Similarly, in the current war, State/NYT/the CIA aren’t really directly supporting IS. Rather, the conditions they put on the American military and the Iraqi military which is a loose extension of the American military made it all but certain that the Iraqis would disintegrate, leave their American kit behind and book it when IS showed up.
Anyway, Putin is not pro-Assad and anti-IS because the former is right-wing and the latter is left-wing. This isn’t the case. Socially, IS is to the right of Assad-they have a Caliphate, Assad has elections, they execute homosexuals and thieves (in theory, primarily,) Assad doesn’t, etc. Putin is pro-Assad because Assad is his client.
Because the KMT were actually not imperialist mercenary proxies. The US was not backing the KMT. And if they US had been backing the KMT this would be analogous to the US backing the South Vietnamese government, or Russia backing Assad, not analogous to the US backing Islamic State.
I was thinking of US sponsorship of Mao’s forces, US sponsorship of the Sandinistas, US overthrow of Batista for insufficient communism, Aristide, and so on and so forth.
The U.S. was not backing the KMT? Vinegar Joe Stillwell and Claire Chennault were traveling umbrella salesmen, I guess.
The question is, will Putin succeed? I would define succeed as Assad stays in power, the Syrian state retains essentially the same territorial control and integrity, and ISIS has minimal territorial control.
I rather think he will. I notice that he recently destroyed twenty Islamic State tanks. By way of comparison, Britain has about two hundred generals and can field fourteen tanks and two hundred soldiers. (The primary mission of the British army being female equality and gay self esteem, much as the primary mission of NASA is to teach the world of Muslim superiority in science.)
Meanwhile, the total number of Islamic State tanks destroyed by the US in its fierce war against Islamic state is … well actually, most of Islamic State’s tanks were supplied by the US.
If you are ripping up Islamic State military capability at that rate, you are going to win.
1) Assad stays in power
Yes (or whoever Russia chooses to replace him with, but they’re generally pretty loyal to “their sons of bitches.”)
2) the Syrian state retains essentially the same territorial control and integrity
As it does today? Probably, with some consolidation. Reconquering the remainder of what used to be Syria is not in the cards without a massive and sustained Russian/Iranian ground forces commitment. Which would be great (I’d love to see Iran have its own little Afghanistan), but unlikely to happen, unless those two countries lose their minds.
3) and ISIS has minimal territorial control.
See above, plus the fact that IS controls a vast but not very densely populated desert area of Syria, and the rest of the non-Assad controlled territory is controlled by a constellation of Sunni rebels fighting Assad and each other.
@B
I don’t think Syria is at all the goal. The goal is world domination. To do that we in Israel must be conquered. Because to conquer Europa, Africa and Asia one must hold the center. Israel is the center. Both physically and psychologically.
Syria is nothing more than a gigantic excuse to beachhead the Persia-Russo-Sino (PaRaS) forces on the Mediterranean. Who themselves were brought in for the US created ISIS excuse (yes with the aid of their Mossad lapdogs)
The next move is to drop 2000 Spetznatz troops or “advisors” into the West Bank and use them to support the Aravs to engage in 4th gen warfare in Israel itself. Russia already has an old and long history of this. This will not only disrupt the entire country and put us in Israel at the mercy of the world, but it checks the IDF from using the necessary ground forces to invade Iran and blow up their nuclear installations on the ground. Which is essential, because air campaigns, contrary to popular wisdom, are never enough. You must have men with rifles on the ground.
At the same time, Chinese carier supported fighters and based Russian fighters will effectively make the entire northern region a no-fly zone as well as act as a check on any Israeli attempt to bomb the reactors in Teheran. To do a pure bombing run against these fortified targets without ground troops would require nearly the entire IAF in a very sketchy operation. With Chinese and Russian fighters staring right up our ass that is now no longer possible.
What’s more, it’s an open secret that the Russian missile boats are nuclear armed. We can now no longer even use a nuclear strike.
Ron, you can’t seriously believe any of that.
Of course I believe it. I wouldn’t tell you something I didn’t believe.
I could be wrong, or insane, but I wouldn’t lie about what I think.
I’ll extend you the same offer as I did Jim-put a bottle of good whiskey and a NLT date on those dire prognoses. Are we on?
B, as an Israeli, do you feel threatened in any way by what’s happening in Syria? More to the point, what is the general opinion in Israel regarding Russia and its intervention in Syria, and the prospect of Iran actually sending ground troops there?
I don’t feel threatened by the bloody chaos of the Ishmaelites in Syria. It’s their natural condition, punctuated by periods of oppressive rule by jackbooted strongmen and their secret services. Even a victorious IS doesn’t strike me as likely to be more competent or dangerous than the Syrian and Egyptian armies in 1973. Inside reports abound with sodomy, corruption, theft and incompetence-in other words, business as usual.
I do not particularly enjoy the Third Intifada, ongoing for about 18 months now, run by the Cathedral’s Arab pets and just now slowly being acknowledged by the Cathedralized Israeli government. But on the other hand risk and death have never bothered me much, as long as I was where I was for the right reason.
The general opinion on Russian intervention is wary and somewhat more negative than positive, but not overly so. They’re coordinating with us…
As for Iran sending ground troops into Syria, that’s been going on for quite some time. If they ramp up with mass deployments of conventional forces, I personally think that they will get something like Egypt’s long and painful involvement in Yemen’s civil war about 40 years ago. Which is great as far as I’m concerned. Oil is way down, so are Iranian revenues, their birthrates are down (and sex change operations have been legal there since 1979 according to the ayatollahs,) so getting involved in a meat grinder war with no end in sight, with severely extended lines of communication through hostile populations, will probably have the same effect for them as Afghanistan did for the Soviets.
@B
LOL, that’s silly. We don’t need to make a bet for me to share a bottle of whiskey with you. Just contact me and I will be happy to come over.
But seriously, we are speculating.
This is like a game, most of us (at least) are working on imperfect information. And even if the analysis is 100% correct, the game can always change. This isn’t chess, it’s wrestling.
Besides, whatever differences we may have in doctrine, it’s obvious to me that you and I are faithful to God, we both know that His plans and ways are not ours. What to you and me would seem like a cute or charming thing, may in His eyes be the purpose for which He made creation.
A single prayer of regret from a penitent, or the heartbreak of a young man who wishes he could change may be what God truly desires, and for that alone, all the ships, and planes, and soldiers will be overturned.
The purpose of the speculation is not to magically control reality or to show how clever we are, it is to attempt to understand what we are up against. Am I right in my assessment? I think so, it seems very clear to me. But if I’m wrong, it doesn’t change the larger reality, that we are in a lot of trouble, and we have to get ready for it. Trouble is trouble.
Ron, we can grab a drink, of course. It’s just that prognostication is more interesting when there’s something riding on it, even a small bet. It improves the quality of analysis.
I remember in 2008 seeing a US intel shop turning out dire prognoses of Iranian intervention (when the Iraqis cleared out Basra, with minor American support.) It was obvious to me that the prognosis was bad, and that it was bad exactly because the guys running the shop had no disincentive to overweigh spooky scenarios.
@B
Also, I can’t afford whisky right now. But I can afford a cheap bottle of Arak – however if I do get very successful in my work, I’ll be happy to buy a bottle of good whisky.
I would guess, that unless things change dramatically, a NLT of about … 8 months for us to see the Arab intifada gangs becoming very effective, far more than they should be able to be.
A “dramatic change” would include a new understanding among the Israeli populace, for example a merging of the Priest, Warrior (and Merchant) classes in a new way which is something Jim has been talking about for a while. If we see that, and it’s possible, then that would be a dramatic game changer. Alternatively, a third world war breaking out, or a general natural catastrophic event. Those things would not invalidate my analysis.
If the Israelis nuke Teheran, that would NOT be a dramatic change, that would be an obvious indication that I was completely correct in my assessment. i.e., we are in such a position of check, that only an action as dramatic as the authorized release of nuclear weapons was seen as practical. But I don’t see that happening in the current climate.
However if the IAF by itself or in conjunction with the IDF invade Iran, then it would show my assessment was incorrect. That is so whether the Russians are still in this region or not.
Also if the Russians leave the region with most of their assets in say, 5 months, it would show I was incorrect.
However, I’m guessing in 5 months we’ll see a number of reports that Russian advisors have been inserted into the West Bank. In 6 we’ll get confirmation that they are actively training forces, and in 8 we will see the Arab intifada members making life a living hell for us.
Also I think in about 2 months the Arabs will start to really step it up. But that’s a separate thing, and I don’t think they will be very effective at it, just spontaneous and bloody.
Also if by this time next year the Iranian reactors are churning out nukes at a high degree – that is, we know for an open fact that they have tremendously stepped up their nuclear weapons program, and the Russians have settled airbases in Iraq and Syria, then I will also be right about the over-reaching purpose of those military assets.
So basically, if we are still breathing by this time next year and have not been involved in a major war, I will regard myself as obliged to buy you a bottle of Arak or Whiskey depending on how much cash I have.
@B
Also you are forgetting that just because a prognostication or assessment can be accurate it doesn’t mean IT CAN’T BE CHANGED.
We don’t speculate so we can sit around and do nothing.
If I am right, and I think I am, then chances are a lot of other smart effective people are coming to the same conclusions. And I don’t think they are just going to sit around waiting for it to happen.
Let’s make it simple-if by October 2016 there are no signs of Russian military advisors in the Shomron, you owe a bottle of arak, and vice versa.
BTW, that stupid thing about priests, warriors and merchants is inapplicable in our society. Most of the high tech sector is also in miluim in combat units or 8200 or similar. Guys like Shlomo Kalich or Aumann don’t fit in any of the molds. Etc. Just because something was true in India and is sort of applicable to today’s US doesn’t make it the gravitational constant.
If you are talking about Shlomo Kalich, high tech investor, fits the merchant mold. Had money to start with (Merchant). Did a bit in the military (warrior) but remained near the bottom. Did a bit in Academia (priest) but did not make any big ripples. Now he has wealth, having made some money into a lot more money, and some power as a hi tech angel investor. His power and wealth as a high tech investor is unrelated to his warrior connections, and not much related to his priest connections. Israel makes everyone go into the military, and the Cathedral makes a great many people go through the priesthood. But was a waste of time.
Kalich was an F-16 pilot, a job which is the absolute top of the military food chain here and considered more prestigious than the most elite special operations units. Pilots typically keep flying frequently while on reserve duty until their 40s.
The very convoluted nature of your explanation shows how inapplicable the three caste system is to us: well, he was a soldier and then he was a priest and now he is a merchant…is this how castes work? When some of his kids go into academia and some are rabbis and some work in high tech and everyone serves in the military in elite units that require 5 years of active followed by a heavy reserve commitment, what is the use of the caste model? This is the exact opposite of a caste system.
Prestigous, but no authority.
If you look warrior societies, for example Britain before the Crimean, status that facilitated a warrior exercising authority and power in the society came from displaying personal courage and exercising authority in the course of killing off your enemies – you had to be an officer in war to be taken seriously as an influential aristocrat in peace.
Fighter pilots in Israel are personally responsible for, plan and conduct missions of strategic importance.
Insofar as the Israeli military has an aristocracy, they are part of it.
If Israel had a warrior caste, they would be in it.
But we don’t have a caste system.
You do have a caste system. The officers are all Ashkenazi, and you cannot be an aristocrat except you are an officer. Israel is not really Jews in the middle east. It is Ashkenazi ruling a portion of the the middle east. You would rule it a hell of a lot better if your Ashkenazi warriors got the upper hand over your Ashkenazi priests. You should have crowned Sharon King.
>The officers are all Ashkenazi,
Sure, for instance, chiefs of staff Gabi Ashkenazi (it’s right in his name,) Shaul Mofaz, Dan Halutz, David Elazar…all Ashkenazim!
>Sure, for instance, chiefs of staff Gabi Ashkenazi (it’s right in his name,) Shaul Mofaz, Dan Halutz, David Elazar…all Ashkenazim!
Ashkenazi is half Ashkenazi and half Syrian, Mofaz is Persian, Halutz is half Persian and half Syrian, Elazar is a Sepharadi from Yugoslavia. These specific officers are not Ashkenazim but they are not Africans either. Most officers, however, are Ashkenazim.
The Cathedral’s loyalists and its enemies are both Ashkenazi. Socialist kibbutzim are Ashkenazi, but so are religious-Zionist settler communes. Israel is an Ashkenazi enterprise, without which the fate of Mizrahim would have been the same as that of Christians and Yezidis in the Mid-East.
“Most of the high tech sector is also in miluim in combat units or 8200 or similar.”
Ashkenazi to the core, as is the rest of the Israeli Deep State, manned by Ashkenazim, pseudo-Slavic Jews, and non-Maghrebi Mizrahim – though overwhelmingly by the former. These Ashkenazim are increasingly religious-Zionist rather than kibbutzniks, but that’s an ideological rather than a racial shift.
Surrounded by Talented Tenthers, B is ignorant of the actual fabric of which Israeli society is composed. That, or he’s plainly lying when stating there’s no caste system in Israel.
I think Israel is at threat only if Saudi Arabia falls; however, it is true to say that this is looking far more likely after this week’s events than it did before.
But with the House of Saud in control, and with the American protection that comes with that, Israel is as safe now as it has ever been in its post-1947 era.
I don’t get it. Clearly Israel and Saudi Arabia are now de facto allies, but in what way is Israel’s security dependent on the stability of the House of Saud?
@Irving
Saudi oil money, mostly. If the Saudis and their neighbors fall, ISIS controls like a sixth of global oil production.
Of course, the Saudis aren’t going to lose.
— Israeli rat kikes and their American cattle can’t bomb Iran
— oy vey, it’s anuda shoah
I would define Putin’s success as Syria becoming a protectorate of the Russian Empire.
I would define Assad’s success as no “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave”, Syria remaining independent, his family not being raped to death, and him remaining in power.
I would define China’s success as waving their dick around the Mediterranean and proving that they superpower now.
I would define the Cathedral’s success as Assad raped to death and Israel surrounded by weak countries full of terrorism and no economy.
Israel seems to be the big winner here; no doubt this is why the US government drummed this war up in the first place. Israel wants all the Syrian Christians and Alawites to be massacred so Syria becomes a permanent stone-age basketcase country–makes them easier to conquer when they’re ready for the next round of Israel expansionism.
The Sunni Arabs of that region will probably be left with a piece of territory carved out of what used to be Iraq and Syria, but that will only happen, I suspect, after Russia and Iran have definitively laid waste to the area, and have massacred anyone who ever even considered joining or supporting ISIS. Assad will stay in power, but I doubt he’ll regain territorial control over all of the places he formerly ruled.
High tech conventional war in a remote area with a hostile population is costly and difficult. Building and maintaining proxy militias of retards seems like a good plan at first, until you realize just what it involves (usually too late.) Laying waste and massacring is great, but no substitute for governance, as the Soviets found out in Afghanistan and the Americans found out in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The worst, most insurgency-prone parts of Iraq lie right across Iranian lines of communications into IS-land. As for Russia, oil is way down, the Ukrainian thing has turned into a quagmire, and the kind of conventional force commitment required to really lay waste to IS-land from the West is not economically or politically feasible over the time required. This is gonna be longer and uglier than anyone thinks, I believe.
Progressive bullshit.
The British knew how to fight asymmetric wars until World War II, and did so with complete success and a handful of troops.
Just as Israel is really Ashkenazi Jews, Islamic State is really Chechens. Russia defeated the Chechens already.
The Russians lost in Afghanistan as part of their general defeat everywhere. Reagan drew them into more wars than their crap socialist economy could afford, and their logistics failed. Just as the British don’t fight because they are no longer allowed to be men, the Russians did not fight because they were too busy stealing potatoes. Stalin could substitute terror for faith, Khrushchev could not because his men were looking for potatoes instead of dissidents.
While the ultimate cause of the fall of the Soviet Union was loss of faith, the immediate cause was logistic exhaustion. The troops were just too busy looking for something to eat.
Being such a wonderfully insightful military expert, I’m sure you can make some quantifiable predictions for the near term (say, the next year) in Syria and put a bottle of Ardbeg on them? The gay Orthodox marriage thing doesn’t seem to be happening, you might want to use your deep military analysis to hedge your bets.
>The British knew how to fight asymmetric wars until World War II, and did so with complete success and a handful of troops.
Yes, they were wonderfully successful in Ireland and America. And who can forget their complete success in Afghanistan in 1842? Let me guess, it was that whore Florence Nightingale…
>Just as Israel is really Ashkenazi Jews, Islamic State is really Chechens. Russia defeated the Chechens already.
Yes, yes, it will be a cakewalk.
>The troops were just too busy looking for something to eat.
What a wonderfully novel explanation. Somehow the dozens of Russian veterans of Afghanistan to whom I’ve spoken in person and whose memoirs I’ve read neglected to mention that they were all starving to death or lacked fuel. Likewise, the Afghans failed to notice that the Russians who were running rampant around their country in heavily mechanized formations, helicopter-borne strike forces with heavy air support and so on, were actually starving and had no fuel or ammunition to fire. One former muj mentioned that a Soviet fuel tanker driver once sold his village a truckload of diesel for a brick of hash. The poor bastards were so hungry they were eating hash, man!
http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/06/the-modern-orthodox-jew-and-gay-marriage/
They are working their way towards gay marriage. At the present rate, probably will get there in late 2016.
And if they don’t celebrate a gay marriage in 2016, they are laying the groundwork for a gay marriage in 2016 right now.
It is amazing the amount of first person knowledge you have on a variety of historical facts from one end of the world to the other. Also amazing how your first person knowledge is usually dead wrong.
The defeat in Afghanistan in 1842 was an early trial of politically correct warfare, in which they attempted to win without the unpleasant nastiness of hurting people and breaking things. After that defeat, the British immediately reverted to old fashioned warfare where you hurt people and break things, and were completely and totally victorious, until the entirely victorious British troops were ordered to withdraw from Afghanistan by British politicians back home.
>Yes, they were wonderfully successful in Ireland and America.
Aren’t those obvious examples of civil war between the Whigs and Tories?
That’s because I spent a decent chunk of my my life participating in history instead of chasing whores and eating barramundi 🙂
The complete success and a handful of troops were neither complete nor a handful, I guess, but who’s counting?
>http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/06/the-modern-orthodox-jew-and-gay-marriage/
>They are working their way towards gay marriage. At the present rate, probably will get there in late 2016.
Do you actually read the articles to which you post links?
Rav Student (who is as left an Orthodox rabbi as you could find) says that homosexual relations are against the Torah, as much as Emily Dickinson might be for them, and that gay marriage is against the Torah, and it doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court says, and that this situation is nothing we haven’t faced before.
You link to this article as a proof that any time now, there will be Orthodox gay marriage.
As I said, i prefer Ardbeg.
And nothing Jews have not dealt with before by finding loopholes to make Torah rules of no practical effect.
His position is that homosexuals are nice guys victimized by the Torah for no sane reason. Which implies you should find a clever reading of the Torah that minimizes the victimization, yet supposedly remains faithful to the Torah – and you have frequently demonstrated impressive agility and elasticity in reading the Torah and other sources.
This is the opposite of his stated position.
Are you willing to make a quantifiable prediction on Syria and put a bottle on it, or not?
I predict that Russia keeps its Syrian naval base, that Syria continues to be undemocratically ruled by a pal of Putin, probably Bashar al Assad or a kinsman of him, and Islamic state gets some desert bordering Iraq, and loses its major city in Syria, Raqqa
And I also predict that no matter what the outcome is in Syria, you will find some ingenious rationale to explain that my prediction has been falsified.
I am not willing to make a bet with someone who tortures sources and reinvents very recent history that we both lived through to suit himself.
You live in a reality of your own, making any bet settlement problematic.
>Islamic state gets some desert bordering Iraq, and loses its major city in Syria, Raqqa
What timeline?
All my predictions for Syria are status quo continues in the face of US efforts to change the status quo, and that Islamic State in Syria suffers the same slow attrition and exhaustion as Chechnya. It is not so much that Alawites will seize Raqqa with flags flying and drums beating, rather it is Islamic State already abandoning Raqqa. Islamic state will find, is finding, its possessions in Syria returning to their natural state as anarchic unpopulated desert that no one cares about.
Chechens still control Chechnya, sort of, yet no one doubts the Chechens have been crushed. There was no specific definite event or date marking the end of the Chechen uprising, and there will not be a specific date or event for Islamic State losing Raqqa.
They are retreating from Raqqa right now today.
Squid ink, and very low quality squid ink at that.
I can tell you exactly when the Russians took Grozny, and when their satrap Kadyrov took his current post. But when the Syrians take Raqqa from IS, it will be in a stealthy, invisible, undetectable way. Raqqa is not Schroedinger’s Cat, ok?
Do you have any quantifiable, measurable predictions with a deadline to make on Syria?
I made a pile of highly specific predictions for Syria that are undeniably verifiable, and with laser like focus you zoom in on the one prediction where events on the ground are going to be sufficiently vague and ill defined that you will be able to dishonestly deny what will have happened and talmudically quibble about the meaning of what will have happened.
You just enjoy talmudism.
Pretty much everything is invisible and undetectable to you when you don’t want to detect it. You cannot detect your fellow Orthodox preparing to sell out on Sodomy. (They are going to say: “Not a marriage ceremony, even though everyone called it a marriage ceremony. We are just solemnizing their love.”)
Islamic state is already today moving its assets out of Raqqa in preparation for the fall, but there is not going to be a flag lowering ceremony, so there is never going to be anything that you will be capable of observing or detecting if you don’t want to detect it.
You cannot see the difference between Orthodoxy assimilating to the Cathedral, and the Cathedral yielding to Orthodoxy.
Sure you can. But if you had had a bet that the Russians would never take Grozny, you would never pay up on the bet because you would argue that they never took Grozny, because they did not exactly march in with flags flying and a drum beating, but rather flattened the place until there was no longer much shooting back, and you would argue that Kadyrov is not exactly their satrap, even though it is perfectly obvious that he is their satrap. The Russians declared victory on a particular day, but that day was a somewhat arbitrary choice, in that the shooting continued with diminishing intensity and capability. And if you had a bet that Grozny would not fall you would find an argument that it was just propaganda. And in a sense it was propaganda, in that the date was chosen because of international events, not because of particular events on the ground in Grozny, in the sense that plenty of shooting remained to be done, and some shooting every now and then continues to happen today, in that Kadyrov not only has to keep the Russians happy but keep the Chechens on side, and lets the Chechens do plenty of stuff that ticks of the Russians.
What a bunch of squid ink.
The only quantifiable predictions you’ve made are a gay marriage ceremony in an Orthodox synagogue by the end of 2016 without mass disavowal from the rest of the Orthodox Jews, and the fall of Raqqa to Assad at an undetermined point.
Both of these are unambiguous events: either Assad’s army marches into Raqqa, takes down the black flags, installs its own courts, etc., or it doesn’t. Either two homosexuals stand up in an Orthodox synagogue and the head rabbi says “you two are now married” and the congregation doesn’t fire him and the rest of the community doesn’t say “this place is not an Orthodox congregation,” or not.
Since now that you’re thinking about it, you’re starting to have doubts about the probability of these events, you’re pre-emptively releasing squid ink. If Raqqa falls and nobody hears it, did it make a sound?
Liar
The most recent bunch of predictions being Russia’s successful defense of the status quo in Syria, including retention of russian base, retention of allied government, and rule by Alawites for the lengthy and indefinite future.
You ignore quantifiable and definite predictions for those that you can talmudize to death.
That is not what happened in Grozny. Russia arguably has not installed its own courts etc, (it rules through a satrap in Grozny, not directly and overtly). And since that is not what happened in Grozny, it is not what is going to happen in Raqqa. Russia has promised it will pay some small lip service to Sunni autonomy. Should Assad install his own courts etc, Obama will again announce a Russian double cross. Instead we shall see nominally Sunni courts with Assad breathing down their necks. Islamic State is Chechnya in exile, and Russia intends to do to them what it did to Chechnya.
You focus with absolute single mindedness on those claims that you defeat by the talmudic method of reading up as down and black as white, of denying that words have any meaning other than what you choose to give them, and then you accuse other people of doing what you are doing.
“Status quo” is not quantifiable, and contradicts the prediction that Raqqa will fall.
Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation. Russian flags fly on government buildings, Russian institutions are functioning, etc. There was a definite point where the Russian flag was raised over Grozny and the Russians announced that the battle for Grozny was over. When do you expect Assad’s flag to be raised over Raqqa and for Assad to make the announcement that Raqqa is now under government control?
IS is not Chechnya in exile, any more than it is Bosnia in exile or Algeria in exile. There are a few hundred Chechen fighters. They are better than the average. That’s all.
Whatever happened to that famous Jew IQ?
You are using pretended stupidity as an argument.
America wants to change the status quo to Russia’s disfavor. It was about to succeed in doing so. Russia intervened. As a result the status quo will not change to Russia’s disfavor. Raqqa will fall because the only purpose of holding Raqqa is a stepping stone to change the status quo to Russia’s disfavor – a stepping stone to Damascus. If Damascus is no longer in danger of falling, will be quietly abandoned, probably with extremely loud protestations that it is not being abandoned.
However, Russia will probably let Obama have his promised cookie, in that it will probably allow him to pretend that the majority (sunnis) continue to rule Raqqa.
These are definite, unambiguous, and easily falsifiable predictions. Obama very much wants to falsify him, and his cheerleader press is loudly proclaiming their imminent falsification, as did you.
You are lowering the intellectual level of this blog.
I am going to stop responding to you until you start speaking sense, and if you don’t start speaking sense, I will issue my first ban – for obstinate and determined stupidity, for making arguments based on refusal to read sources and refusal to understand them.
I will allow you to make six more stupid comments to convict yourself of willful stupidity, and then issue my first ever ban. To each willfully stupid comment, I will respond with countdown “n more comments that talmudically torture texts, make up sources, or are willfully stupid allowed”.
Asymmetric wars are only effective when someone prevents the stronger power from crushing the weaker. Britain was defeated in Afghanistan because of their first ever attempt to fight a war without hurting people or breaking things – priests restraining warriors. After that 1842 defeat, the warriors got pissed, immediately returned to their old fashioned methods of war fighting, and utterly and totally crushed the Afghans, until politicians in Britain hauled them out of Afghanistan. The Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan by logistic exhaustion. Reagan drew them into more wars than their crap economy could support, with the result that their army was too busy stealing potatoes to fight, much as today’s British army is too busy with PR operations, improving Muslim self esteem, and emancipating women to fight.
Russia will therefore crush its opponents in Syria.
How is that for a definite prediction?
“Status quo” is meaningless. Status quo means “the way it was before.” Before when? Before 2010? Before Russia’s intervention of 2015?
You used Grozny as an example of what would happen to Raqqa.
Grozny was unambiguously taken by Russian forces. The Russian flag was hoisted over Grozny. The Russians announced this in the winter of 2000. The current situation of Grozny is that it is the capital of a federal republic of the Russian Federation, with Russian institutions flying Russian flags and Russian forces moving uninhibited through the city at will.
The equivalent in Syria would be Assad’s forces taking Raqqa, announcing that Raqqa is now under the control of the Syrian government, flying their flag over Syrian government institutions in Raqqa.
When do you expect this to be the case? Or do you not expect this to ever be the case?
You are, of course, welcome to point, sputter and ban.
(I won’t even ask for sources for your contention that IS is evacuating Raqqa, because I know the answer will be squid ink and not links)
Four more willfully and obstinately stupid comments allowed. All your points were already addressed in the comment thread to which you pretend to reply. Repeatedly. To respond to you again would be even more repetition. The repetitiousness wastes the reader’s bandwidth.
@B
I definitely agree that things are going to get worse, but I actually think that barring some freak event, like ISIS getting their hands on a nuke, Islamism in the Arab world has already reached its peak and from here can only go down. All of this chaos, I think, really comes down to the fact that the Arabs are suffering a terminal, irreversible decline. They’ve done their worst and what’s left at this point is for the major powers, Iran and Israel to sort things out from here.
It seems to me that the end game will be that Iran will basically swallow up southern Iraq and other Iranian/Shiite majority territories outside their borders (Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, etc.). Russia will have their way in their Syria, which will be Alawite rump state which will be a de facto Russian colony. Israel, if it plays its cards right, will be free to sort out the Palestinian issue without interference. I can go on, but I never realized the reason for the hostility between Israel and Iran. Both of you obviously have legitimate grievances against each other, but given the nature of the region, I never understood you two never thought to just get together and just divvy up the region between yourselves and call it a day. In fact, that’s what I think will happen in the medium term, but we’ll see.
Iran needs to play the anti-Israel card for Muslim street cred.
We don’t have an issue with them otherwise.
Eventually we will have the Euphrates for a border with them (maybe proxy barrier states in between.)
@B
True, but then that won’t be necessary, or at least as necessary, after the Palestinian question is sorted out and political Islam is, at least in the Arab Sunni world, dead. Iran will continue to be ruled by the government that rules it now, but unlike the Sunnis, who believe that territory once governed by a Caliph can never legitimately revert back to non-Muslim control, the Shiite and therefore the Iranians never recognized those Caliphs or their conquests, and therefore the existence of Israel is really not a problem for them, though they don’t like to be too open about it.
I actually used to live with 2 Iranians, one of them devout, who said precisely this to me, adding that Israel, though a little hard in their opinion on the Palestinians, are really their secret allies against the Sunnis. Also, Iranians are profoundly racist, especially against Arabs, so there’s that too.
Anyway, I was just adding to what I wrote about, but I say it again, I think an Israel-Iran alliance is certainly feasible and probably even likely in the not-too-distant future.
As for the Arabs, their brand of dysfunction is remarkably resilient. What we see in Syria now is completely identical to what was going on in Syria during. before and after the Crusades.
The end-goal of the Cathedral and its brigades of diplomats is the complete destruction of the Western societal order. Terrorists infiltrating the West, nuclear war in the Middle-East, and terrorists who are committed to nuclear warfare infiltrating the West, are the means by which they’ll establish the NWO. Leftists use Muslims to realize their objective of dominating the West; everything is proceeding according to plan.
The best case scenario, besides a revival of the West and the complete removal of kebab, is that Muslims will rebel against their Leftist masters sooner rather than later. “Charlie Hebdo” is the way to go.
The Cathedral are short sighted idiots. They have no “end game” except to maintain their position in the pecking order of power a bit longer by being lefter than thou, Crime Stop prevents them from looking more than 2 weeks into the future.
Mr W.,
No, indeed. Some of them are really psychopathic types who do want that global ruling power, yet they’ve dumbed themselves down sort of by ignoring racial differences (ie. brown countries are poor countries) and so in that regard they are much less able than they might be if they were more honest. Still, they do want to realise their long term goal, and they know that the idea of a white race does stop it… Read Mr Whitaker’s book called Why Johnny Can’t Think subtitled America’s Professor Priesthood.
“There can be no white race” – Harvard University Professor Noel Ignatiev
In order to be lefter than thou there are indeed a lot of university professors and diversity councilors who think Whites should be wiped out. This is not some plan for global dictatorship it is just short sighted idiocy as all their power comes from white people. In their deluded minds once all the White Men are dead all the brown people sing jambalaya and live in a hippie paradise with no hierarchy. In practice of course post communist revolution governments secure more and more power to “guard against counter revolutionaries” and without white people the world would be chaos and quickly returning to the Iron Age.
No, it is not a plan as most people would understand it, but it is a plan none-the-less. Remember that the constitution of the Soviet Union stated that “we are a nation of workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals”. Which category of participant would you think that the professor-priests of Political Correctness are angling for? (Obviously, they want the last one)
The Left is not always thuggish and perverted monstrosity, often it is in the Neo-Con version of imperialism and therefore an overextended globalism. One version is the outer party and party and one version is the inner. But, the outer stays outer because they dream of global power.
A.J.P.
Nah, I’d rather fight against it.
A.J.P.
“Jim”,
Why’d you turn off the italics feature again? It was only a few weeks ago when there were abundant pictures and the like in the comments at your blog and now…?
See: https://blog.reaction.la/culture/the-great-cuckolding/
Best regards,
A.J.P.
Did not turn it off.
It is a bug that I do not understand, and which keeps changing with every update.
Despite the good intentions with which it may have been launched, at this point affirmative action has nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with power, as this Christopher Caldwell quote cited by Sailer recognizes:
“One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can’t be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can’t be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong.â€
Do we really still have to pretend that Christian intentions are good intentions?
I doubt he himself reads nrx, but I would put money on a few people connected with his close advisers doing so. First, such analyses are not exactly common, and second, one must remember the philosophers cited often within the sphere are exactly the same ones cited by Dugin and his acolytes. It’s not too much to suggest that Russian officials are aware of the sphere and its geopolitical analysis of current Western actions.
After all, Russians don’t really ‘get’ the West. It’s alien to them. The dissident right lives in it, has grown up with it, and understands how its leaders think, blighted as their minds are by the brain disease known as Modernism.
Eustace Miller comments on the assassination of the anti-communist Vietnamese leader, the refusal to permit Chiang Kai-Shek to send troops to Vietnam, and the “300 billion dollar” boondoggle of he Vietnamese war in The Biological Jew (1967).
So yeah, the tinfoil hat anti-Semities who believe Jews have mind control rays to control Whites and have never heard of economics or a market dominant minority knew about this in The ’60s.
But couldn’t get anywhere because Miller was a cucktian, Oliver couldn’t convince the cucktians and other cucks at the John Birch Society and elsewhere, and William Luther Pierce could only make up some kooky “cosmotheism” nonsense and write the ridiculous masturbatory fantasies The Turner Diaries and Hunter.
The conspiratorial and treacherous character of the Cathedral makes a lot more sense, is a lot easier to understand, if one conceptualizes it as a single alien hostile actor “The Jooz”.
And this model, like the phlogiston model, makes a great many very accurate predictions. Someone who believes in “The Jooz” is going to be in better contact with reality than the typical blue piller.
But it predicts saner behavior and more future oriented behavior than we in fact observe. “The Jooz” plan in centuries. Merkel postures for tomorrows headlines, causing the frog to notice the pot is being heated. Actual Cathedral behavior is less future oriented and more random than is predicted by a model focusing on “The Jooz”. It tends to align with entropy, whereas a vast Jewish conspiracy would be more orderly.
The actual behavior of the Cathedral tends to move society from a highly ordered state to a less ordered state, dismantling Chesterton’s fence, thus the Cathedral, like Murphy, always sides with the hidden flaw.
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Yes! Finally something about strategic independent agents alliance.