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'Out of touch with reality' - White House fails to navigate the Israeli Re-calibration

JoeandNeti
© The Beltway ReportIsraeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu • US President Joe Biden
The inattention to reality is not an electorally 'incidental' and irksome issue that needs better PR management by the campaign team.

Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat, well-plugged into Washington, tells us that a frustrated White House finally has "had enough".The rupture with Netanyahu is complete:
The Prime Minister does not comport himself as 'an U.S. ally' should; he severely criticises Biden's Middle East policies, and now the United States has come to understand this fact.
Biden cannot afford any further Israel-affects to jeopardise his electoral campaign, and so - as his State of the Union Speech makes clear - he will double-down on misconstrued policy frameworks for both Israel and Ukraine.

So what does Biden intend to do about Netanyahu's act of defiance against the 'holy grail' of U.S. policy recommendations? Well, he invited Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's War Cabinet to Washington, and wrapped him around an agenda "reserved for a prime minister, or someone they think will, or should be, premier". Officials apparently thought that by initiating a visit outside of usual diplomatic protocols, they may "have unleashed a dynamic that could lead to an election in Israel", Pinkas notes, resulting in a leadership more amenable to U.S. ideas.

It was clearly intended as a first step to 'soft power' régime change.

Hammer

How RFK could smash the two-party system. In American politics, upset has become the rule

rfkennedy
© rheannaisabell.blogspotRobert Kennedy Jr. candidate for US president
The surrender of Nikki Haley — long drawn-out but long expected — has set both of America's major parties on the same course: a limp coronation, conducted through process of elimination. Donald Trump's path is clear, competitors fallen away, while Joe Biden is also slipping through effectively unopposed, happily ignoring token challenges by Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. But the frictionless progress of both candidates through their party's internal processes is concealing a hidden truth about this year's election. Many Americans don't want Joe Biden or Donald Trump. They see the race as a horror-reality show featuring two geriatrics who seem doddery, unwell, and angry at being told so. It is increasingly possible that they support independent candidates who could deprive both Trump and Biden of the votes needed to win the presidency. America could end up with a hung presidential election.

Comment: Author offers a knowledgeable summation of US presidential politics, less explored layers of strategy, what is possible and what is not.


Arrow Up

The state of our nation no one's talking about: Tyranny is rising as freedom falls

fistchains
© UnknownFist of the People
"Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest — forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries." — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Day by day, tyranny is rising as freedom falls.

The U.S. military is being used to patrol subway stations and police the U.S.-Mexico border, supposedly in the name of national security.

The financial sector is being used to carry out broad surveillance of Americans' private financial data, while the entertainment sector is being tapped to inform on video game enthusiasts with a penchant for violent, potentially extremist content, all in an alleged effort to uncover individuals subscribing to anti-government sentiments.

Public and private venues are being equipped with sophisticated surveillance technologies, including biometric and facial recognition software, to track Americans wherever they go and whatever they do. Space satellites with powerful overhead surveillance cameras will render privacy null and void.

Attention

European powers stab each other in the back over Ukraine proxy war defeat

Petit Napoleon
© Strategic Culture Foundation
Europe is rife with treachery in the age-old fashion of imperial rivalry. It's pathetic to watch, but highly instructive about who the real villains of the piece are.

The failure of being abject vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.

Each European power is pushing the other over the abyss to save its own political skin.

France's Emmanuel Macron has emerged to be a little king rat. He has taken to talking up deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to salvage the proxy war against Russia. Macron struts around like a rat in jackboots too big for his feet calling on other European leaders not to be cowards.

The former Rothschild banker Macron then turns around and cancels yet another trip to the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Maybe the French leader got scared by the Russian air strike on Odessa last week when the Greek premier was touring the city along with Ukraine's puppet president Zelensky.

Macron sent his Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné to Lithuania last Friday to discuss with the rabid Russophobic Baltic states the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine. Given the history of the Baltic states aiding and abetting the Third Reich's invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, we can safely posit the same states are an open door for such French-inspired madness.

However, with classic elite cowardice, Macron obviously doesn't want to be anywhere near the front line when the action gets hot. Better to hunker down on a comfy armchair in Elysée Palace and bark out your angry poodle orders from there.

Meanwhile, that other bastion of European civility (meaning treacherous deception) the good old British are cajoling Germany to send long-range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russia.

Oscar

Neil Oliver: 'Death By Woke'

Neil Oliver
Neil Oliver
'...not just the Oscars, but if like me you can no longer bear to watch the pantomime because you see the strings and the shadows in the background....you're not alone...'


Putin

SOTT Focus: 'Your Vampire Ball is Over' - Putin to Western Elites

Russian President Vladimir Putin
© Sputnik/Gavriil GrigorovRussian President Vladimir Putin attends an interview with Rossiya Segodnya International Media Group Director General Dmitry Kiselev at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia.
Exploitation of other nations by the so-called "golden billion" is coming to an end, the Russian president has stated.

The era of Western elites being able to exploit other nations and other peoples across the world is coming to an end, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an exclusive interview published by Rossiya 1 and RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

The president stated that over the past few centuries, the so-called "golden billion" has grown accustomed to being able to "fill their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money" as they have been "parasitizing" other peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
"But they must understand that the vampire ball is ending," Putin said.
He added that the citizens of the aforementioned regions, which have been continuously exploited by the West over the past 500 years, have started to associate Russia's struggle for sovereignty with "their own aspirations for sovereignty and independent development."



Comment: The above statement will be remembered for the "vampires' ball" comment, but note also the way he sees the global geopolitical battle shaping up: that Russia's efforts to realize full sovereignty are resonating with desire for such in peoples from Latin America to Africa to Asia. Contrast this with the more coarse, bi-polar understanding in Western capitals that the battle revolves around the dichotomy of 'alliance with the West or alliance with China'.


Comment: On the 2024 US presidential election: "It's absurd that Trump is persecuted because of any connection to me. Their election is becoming uncivilized."

On Polish/NATO troops entering Ukraine: "This will have serious geopolitical consequences. Polish troops will never leave, and Ukrainian statehood will end."


Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Michael Brenner: The West's Reckoning?

Joe Biden, Usa, Israel, Ukraine
The West has set itself on a path of collective suicide — both moral and economic.

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them - unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities. The last are personal as well as political. Therein lies a puzzle. For, as a consequence, the West has set itself on a path of collective suicide. Moral suicide in Gaza; diplomatic suicide - the foundations laid in Europe, the Middle East and across Eurasia; economic suicide - the dollar-based global financial system jeopardized, Europe deindustrializing. It is not a pretty picture. Astoundingly, this self-destruction is occurring in the absence of any major trauma - external or internal. Therein lies another, related puzzle.

Some clues for these abnormalities are provided by their most recent responses as deteriorating conditions tighten the vise - on emotions, on prevailing policies, on domestic political worries, on ginger egos. Those responses fall under the category of panic behavior. Deep down, they are scared, fearful and agitated. Biden et al in Washington, Macron, Schulz, Sunak, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen. They lack the courage of their stated convictions or the courage to face reality squarely. The blunt truth is that they have contrived to get themselves, and their countries, in a quandary from which there is no escape conforming to their current self-defined interests and emotional engagement. Hence, we observe an array of reactions that are feckless, grotesque and dangerous.

Comment: If we consider that the upper echelons of the so-called "elite" consist of individuals resembling humans but exhibiting psychopathic traits, wielding influence and control over key positions in the West, it sheds light on the current state of affairs and their motivations.

Psychopaths lack a conscience and compassion, being driven solely by wishful thinking, power, control, and greed. Unfortunately, neither Europe nor the USA boasts genuine state leaders or politicians willing to dissent and engage in critical thinking.

Currently, Russia stands as the sole country within modern civilization that upholds respect for humanity and actively opposes the encroachment of pure psychopathic malevolence seeking to dominate our planet.


Bad Guys

Twilight of the Blobs

war of the worlds illustration
© Warwick GobleIllustration from the first edition of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898)
HG Wells concocted a marvelous trick ending to his classic tale The War of the Worlds (1897). Remember: the colossal Martian tripod "fighting machines" swarm all over the planet zapping cities with "heat rays". . . it looks like all-is-lost . . . but finally the darn things just quit marching, stop zapping, and stand down . . . the alien protoplasms at the controls (surprise ending) turn up dead and rotting inside from the action of our tiny invisible allies: the earth's one-celled, disease-causing bacteria, to which the Martian blob creatures have no immunity!

The Gaian overtones in that story resound today as we Earthlings devise ingenious new methods to wreck terrestrial life, including ourselves. The planet seems to have some teleological drive to save itself, a kind of immune system. Notice: in all the ongoing debates about the wonders and dangers of A-I, and Bitcoin, and suffocating surveillance, nobody ever talks about the sketchy condition of the electric grid that all these worrisome phenomena utterly rely on. In our chatter over Peak Oil, there's little awareness of oil production's utter dependence on steady capital flows. In all the guff about centralized control emitted by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, there's no mention of the centrifugal forces driving human affairs to re-localization, dis-aggregation of large states, and down-scaling of many activities. In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.

Arrow Up

Macron irresponsibly increases tensions between Europe and Russia

Macron
© jiss.org.ilPresident of France Emmanuel Macron
Macron's statements show that rationality and strategy are not relevant in Western foreign policy.

Apparently, Europe will continue to engage in its anti-Russian crusade, even knowing that the consequences of such irresponsibility could be catastrophic. In a recent statement, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Europeans not to be "cowards" in the face of the supposed "Russian threat". According to him, if Europe remains inert, Russia will become "unstoppable", which is why measures should be taken to dissuade Moscow.

Macron's words were delivered during a visit to the Czech Republic, where the French leader met with local officials to discuss an action plan to increase military support for Ukraine. The Czechs propose a project for the simultaneous purchase of military material in several countries around the world to overcome European difficulties in producing weapons. Thus, it is expected to reach a satisfactory number of equipment to enable Kiev to continue facing the Russians, while the European defense industry recovers from two years of systematic weapons production.

Macron absolutely endorses the Czech project and is willing to take tough measures to pressure Russia militarily. According to him, there is now a war on European soil that could reach the EU countries at any moment, which is why the bloc should come together in a common plan to "stop" Russia. The narrative endorses the myth of the "Russian plan to invade Europe" and legitimizes the upsurge of European military actions - not only to support Ukraine, but to act directly against the Russian Federation, if "necessary".

Piggy Bank

Germany struggling to fund defense budget

Soldiers
© picture alliance
The country will reportedly be unable to reach NATO's military spending target next year...

Germany's current military budget for 2025 is below NATO's defense spending targets, the news outlet Bild reported on Saturday, citing sources within the Defense Ministry. The bloc's members are committed to spending 2% of GDP on defense annually.

Berlin fell short of the defense spending goal in 2022 and 2023 but reportedly plans to hit the target at some point this year. Nevertheless, according to Bild, it appears set to miss again next year. The current defense budget for 2025 stands at €52 billion ($56.9 billion), but these funds will be almost completely eaten up by operating costs such as soldiers' wages, heating barracks, repairing existing weapons, etc., the report notes.

Thus, with only €500 million remaining for investment in new weapons, the Bundeswehr's list of planned projects will be short of funding. Such projects include the stationing of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania and the acquisition of new Tranche 5 Eurofighter combat aircraft, the report notes. According to calculations seen by Bild, the defense budget would need to be hiked by as much as €6 billion for Germany to fund these and other projects and also to reach the NATO spending goal next year.