Today, we would like to introduce you to The Eurasian Century, a new Webcast endeavor by Misha Voin, whom you all know as “Misha”, one of our most prolific commentators.
To kick this off, Misha granted yours truly an hour of his time for an interview. One reason for reaching out to him was because it’s dang hard to keep up with the news anymore and hear different POVs. So I decided that perhaps I would do us all a favor and engage a very knowledgeable fellow, with a unique POV, in a conversational format.
Anyway, Zoom being what it is, I had to break it up into two parts. I hope you enjoy it.
In Part I, we talk about the geopolitical situation; specifically, the Israel-Gaza situation, Russia’s Special Military Operation, and the electoral situation here in the States. (Once the black screen shows up, click on the bottom and hit “Play”.):
https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aph98mB1OdMmsERH6LDriey580Tq?e=XHvSml
In Part II we talk about the Orthodox Church and where it fits into the international and domestic sphere. (The “Play” button will appear right from the start so you shouldn’t have any problems with this one. Just wait for 28 seconds for it to start.)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Bxgn62ySUgz5BzBd2Vaoi82cUnoEM2e/view
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did talking with Misha. You won’t be bored!
Misha, glad you’re making the leap over to the podcast world! Always great to read your commentary on events. George, likewise, and digging the pipe.
For the second video, is it meant to be open to everyone or do we need to request access to it? It’s asking me to request access when I try and watch.
Folks, several of you have contacted me regarding opening up the videos. With Part I, click on the black screen and the “Play” button will appear.
You shouldn’t have any problems with Part II, as the “Play” button will appear right off the back. Just wait 28 seconds for the actual content to show up.
Forgive me.
No such luck. Google tells me to ask you permission to access Part II
I’m not sure if George put a link to my channels on with the videos anywhere but here they are. One is YouTube and the other is Rumble. YouTube, of course, could ban or censor me at anytime but Rumble likely will not.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcUH7MZDGyiDUsF4WnWn6CA
https://rumble.com/c/c-5122144
I thank George for linking to me at the top of Monomakhos. It is an honor.
Misha, you’re welcome. As we Greeks say: “Kai se anotera!” (“And on to higher things!”)
Thank you, Misha, for sharing your YouTube channel link. I’m wrapping up “End of the Enlightenment” now, and will listen to “Deja Vu” next. I haven’t been able to access the links George posted but will keep trying. I admire many things about how you present your information, and it’s also awesome to finally put a face to a name I’ve been corresponding with for many years on this blog. Thank you for putting yourself out there and sharing your ideas with the world. Many of us don’t have the kind of background and insight that you and other Monomakhos contributors have, and we rely on and need truth-tellers such as yourself. Please keep going with it!
Christine, I am not having any problems accessing the videos. Is anybody else having problems? Please let us know.
I can see the first video but the second link shows me a message saying I need to grant One Drive access to all my contacts. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? With me, it’s usually user error 😕 and I’m the problem.
Can’t see the 2nd video; it says Google Drive, you need access, request access, or switch to an account with access.
Watched the 1st video with no problem.
The videos on You Tube were great; I especially enjoyed the End of the Enlightenment. Just a really well-done overview of where we are now and where we’re headed. Good job!
I also am still unable to see it unless I request access, it looks like its a link to Google Drive
OK, folks looking into it. In the meantime, several of you are contacting me via email asking for access via “share request”. I have granted it each and every time. If however this didn’t work, please let me know.
–Monomakhos, the Long-suffering.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I get a message saying “Video in user’s trash”
Thank you, Christine!
Great stuff, Misha! Thank you for sharing.
One request – could you turn off or silence the new e-mail alert sound or whatever alert sound that is that comes through occasionally when you’re talking – it’s very distracting to be focusing while listening to you but then have that alert sound pop up intermittently.
Thank you
Yes, I noticed it too late. I will see what I can do.
Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Congressman McCaul’s resolution, H. Res. 559, passed on the House Floor declaring it the policy of the United States that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. Clock is ticking.
I am looking forward to more of these podcasts.
It is interesting to explore for a moment what Iran’s endgame might be in the current situation in Israel. It seems as though they are trying to draw as many Muslim countries into the fray as possible. That is why you would approve the type of attack that Hamas executed and then support it with a low level second front. You give Israel the rope with which to hang itself. But then, what do you do? Other countries might pile on – or not. It’s hard to predict. And even if they do, and then what?
I think that the endgame is to push America out of the Middle East and reduce Israel’s power there. The way to do that is to have a peace conference or mediation/negotiation led by BRICS which will attempt to implement a two-state solution, overriding Israel’s and America’s objections. Otherwise attacks like that of Hamas will continue.
That seems doable and a reasonable objective for Iran and given their ascension into BRICS they have just the partners to make it happen. In doing this, they would greatly reduce Israeli and American power in the region and advance Russian power as well as their own – which is always the primary objective.
At this point, I don’t think America has the guts to engage in a full on war with Iran. Too close to an election year. Carriers are too vulnerable. War is increasingly unpopular. Neo-cons can pass whatever resolutions they want. Do they have hard evidence of an Iranian bomb? Not yet. Only trace amount evidence of high level enrichment. I’m sure the neo-cons would try to trick the American people into another war – this time with Iran – but after Iraq and the Afghanistan debacle, it’s a tough sell.
The dirty little secret regarding nuclear weapon development is that once you get to 20% enrichment, 60% enrichment is easy and even high level enrichment suitable for weapons is immanently attainable. And so, in order to avoid incurring the opprobrium of non-proliferation restrictions in international law and national laws, you set that aside since it is a quick simple last step to enrich to weapons grade and instead focus on the delivery systems.
This is precisely what Iran has done. And it is what is behind there hypersonic weapons program. But the hypersonic weapons program pays dividends. Non-nuclear hypersonic missiles are very difficult to destroy and if they zig-zag before their terminal phase, you simply can’t hit them.
And they are aircraft carrier killers.
You made some strong points about pushing America out of the Middle East and reducing Israel’s power. This needs to be done.
I would like your thoughts (when you have time) about this podcast interview with a historian well versed about Palestine. He offered some speculative points that I hadn’t thought of either. There is so much complex history to digest.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/03/palestines-obituary/
The historical account Cole presents is largely in accord
with that given by Israel Shahak in his excellent book:
Jewish History, Jewish Religion | The Weight of Three Thousand Years
https://ia902604.us.archive.org/10/items/JewishHistoryJewishReligionTheWeightOf3000Years/Jewish.history.jewishReligion-the.weight.of.three.thousand.years.pdf
His prognosis for the future of the Palestinians
is bleak and, sadly, all too likely to come true.
I consider his apportioning of chief responsibility
to Hamas rather than Iran for October 7 is sound;
and his reasons for why they acted are convincing.
His analysis of Netanyahu’s policies
is very similar to that of Scott Ritter,
with which analysis I myself agree.
Listen to what Cole says between 28:00 and 32:10. He’s making my case except for the fact that he does not believe that Hamas shared details of the operation with Iran before the attack because he believes that Hamas would have thought that Iranian intelligence would have been penetrated by the Mossad and would thus give away the game. What he ends up saying at the end is that he doesn’t believe Iran was involved with the final, specific details. That’s pretty thin.
But he fully acknowledges that Iran supplied Hamas and trained them to do what they did. Listen to him. He says it openly.
And as to the operational security, I don’t actually think he has a point. Hamas would assume that Iranian operational security was better than their own. After all, they are in Israel and have been supported by Israel. It is more likely that they would be penetrated than Iran.
And it didn’t matter anyway because the Israelis knew it was coming. There was no surprise. They stood down in order to draw sympathy and an excuse to go into Gaza. Yes they sensed it as soon as Hamas breached the fence. Yes, they likely knew beforehand. And no, it was not too late when they sensed the breach because for several hours after it happened they did very little if anything about it.
Thank you for this info and your thoughts. I will look for articles by Shahak and see if I can get his book.
Shahak died in 2001 as an atheist, which he became
after experiencing Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
His Guardian obituary is @
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jul/06/guardianobituaries.physicalsciences
His book Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994)
is freely available on pdf @
https://ia902604.us.archive.org/10/items/JewishHistoryJewishReligionTheWeightOf3000Years/Jewish.history.jewishReligion-the.weight.of.three.thousand.years.pdf
His book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,
co-written with Norton Mezvinsky (1999),
is freely available on pdf @
https://ia801601.us.archive.org/1/items/JewishHistoryJewishReligion_665/JewishFundamentalismInIsrael.pdf
PS: Here are the opening paragraphs from Chapter One of
Jewish History, Jewish Religion
The Weight Of Three Thousand Years.:
” THIS BOOK, although written in English and addressed to people living outside the State of Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities as an Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a protest which caused a considerable scandal at the time: I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem neighbourhood. Instead of simply publishing the incident in the press, I asked for a meeting which is composed of rabbis nominated by the State of Israel. I asked them whether such behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish religion. They answered that the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously, and backed their statement by referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident to the main Hebrew daily, Ha’aretz, whose publication of the story caused a media scandal.
The results of the scandal were, for me, rather negative. Neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora, rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake. It became apparent to me, as drawing on Talmudic laws governing the relations between Jews and non-Jews, that neither Zionism, including its seemingly secular part, nor Israeli politics since the inception of the State of Israel, nor particularly the policies of the Jewish supporters of Israel in the diaspora, could be understood unless the deeper influence of those laws, and the worldview which they both create and express is taken into account. The actual policies Israel pursued after the Six Day War, and in particular the apartheid character of the Israeli regime in the Occupied Territories and the attitude of the majority of Jews to the issue of the rights of the Palestinians, even in the abstract, have merely strengthened this conviction.
By making this statement I am not trying to ignore the political or strategic considerations which may have also influenced the rulers of Israel. I am merely saying that actual politics is an interaction between realistic considerations (whether valid or mistaken, moral or immoral in my view) and ideological influences. The latter tend to be more influential the less they are discussed and ‘dragged into the light’. Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it. This is especially so if its discussion is prohibited, either formally or by tacit agreement. When racism, discrimination and xenophobia is prevalent among Jews, and directed against non-Jews, being fueled by religious motivations, it is like its opposite case, that of antisemitism and its religious motivations. Today, however, while the second is being discussed, the very existence of the first is generally ignored, more outside Israel than within it. “
Jane,
I haven’t gotten through the whole interview yet, but I can make a few comments about perspective.
Cole is from the Liberal-Left part of the political spectrum and thus is fond of throwing around words like “fascist” quite freely. Doubtless he would consider me a fascist. I’m as hard right as it gets, being a monarchist/authoritarian/dominant party model type guy. This is different than the guys at the Duran or Berletic or Ritter, etc.
I mean, if I had been Nicholas II, I would have executed every last leftist reformer in the empire, bar none. I have nothing critical to say, for the most part, of right wing Latin American dictators during the anti-communist period. Did they commit excesses? Certainly. Communism was that bad. No regrets, no apologies.
Part of what that means is that I’m not that critical of Bibi’s general politics or the politics of the Rightist forces in his coalition regarding their domestic political positions. I’m just critical of them in their treatment of the Palestinians in general. “Right wing” or “ultra-right” is not an insult to me, but a badge of honor. I think Nazism and Italian fascism, for instance, are perversions of classical Rightist thinking but Franco’s politics, for example, are not that far from my own.
I don’t have a reflexive attitude of “that can’t be right because it’s right wing” that tells me that the neo-cons’ belligerence toward Iran means that Iran doesn’t have its own agenda of empowerment in the region. To me, it seems like willful blindness to ignore Iranian funding of Hamas in recent years, the fact that it was likely Iranian training that enabled the operation (Hezbollah would be capable of such an operation and has demonstrated prowess versus Tzahal in the recent past) and the incontrovertible fact that Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, intervened in northern Israel, greatly aiding and simplifying Hamas’ task, the very day after Hamas’ attack.
No matter what anyone tells me, that is no coincidence. Nasrallah did not just wake up the day after the Hamas attack and say, “What can I do to help these heretics whom I don’t like down in Gaza in their operation against Israel?” No. That’s bs. It takes time to arrange for military action. Hezbollah was ready to go. And they have put sectarian differences and past conflicts aside. Listen to what Hezbollah leadership has been saying the last few days. Were it otherwise, Iran would not be funding Hamas through Qatar.
That means to me that Iran was involved. Period. Now, others can believe what they will. But that’s my final answer.
But it is important to realize why everyone and their uncle has an interest in swearing up and down on a stack of bibles that Iran was not involved. Most people want to contain this conflict. Perhaps the neo-cons do not. But the Biden Administration and the Israeli government most certainly do want to contain it and not take on Iran at the present time.
So they lie about Iran’s involvement because if they didn’t, they would be obligated to attack Iran directly just as they are attacking Hamas. To me, it’s that simple.
I will take a look at the rest of what he says, but those are my initial thoughts.
In the meantime, back in the Ukraine, here are three videos that are brutal. In the first one, two American volunteers are shot in cold blood by their Ukrainian compatriots. Their crime? Trying to convince the Ukrainians to not surrender.
https://sonar21.com/meanwhile-back-in-ukraine-desperation-sets-in/
Let us pray..
You have to wonder if the Ukrainian people will be the ones that soon topple Zelensky.
Winter is rapidly approaching, funding for Project Ukraine is rapidly drying up, the U.S is propping up Ukraine so once that’s gone so is Ukraine.
All that being said, once the cold sets in and things get more harsh, it won’t take long for the Ukrainian people to revolt. Zelensky is himself going to be a victim of the Zelensky Curse.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Zelensky and all his doubles disappeared tonight.
On mobile, Part 1 asks me to register for One Drive, and Part 2 asks me to request access.
Could these be uploaded to a proper video hosting site? Even an unlisted YouTube video would work, or an alternative site.
Reading the tea leaves, it seems that the way this drama is going to play out will be analogous to a certain dynamic that played itself out during the Cold War, this being a sort of Cold War II, except that the side destined to win this time is the East. During Cold War I, there was a policy of containment and a policy of rollback. Containment was “stopping the fall of the dominoes” by limiting the expansion of communism. Rollback was actually overthrowing nations already captured by communism. Rollback was much more touchy and tricky than containment.
Both strategies will likely emerge during Cold War II. We can see rollback already in the Ukraine.
Well, that’s good because if Iran get’s involved, Turkey and Russia will get involved.
Yeah, the way I see it, the East (aka The Global Majority/South) is playing the long game. First they’re taking back the Ukraine, which will cause the slow-motion implosion of the EU and then NATO.
Second, they’re going to force a world-wide reassessment of supporting Israel at all costs. While Ziochristianism is a powerful force here in America, I believe it’s at its zenith. American ayatollahs like John Hagee will wind up eating dust at the end of the day.
Third –and this is iffy–, it’s possible that a viable two-state solution can be worked out, forced upon the Israelis by a global consensus. Perhaps along with a peace treaty between Iran and Israel.
These are just off the top of my head.
Assad spoke at the OIC conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScboGWp4t84
Syriana Analysis is the channel I mentioned while you were interviewing me. It is run by a Syrian who is an Armenian Christian, Kevork Almassian.
Anyway, Assad sounds very fatalistic in his exhortation to his fellow Muslims to reject the West and boycott Israel, doing whatever they have to do to stop the current slaughter. Nasrallah seems to want to continue to hold back for the moment. I don’t think he’d make some big announcement if he got froggy and decided to jump, he’d just do it and afterwards perhaps give some rhetorical flourish to the thing.
But what I’m hearing about Gaza indicates to me that the Arabs are making the Israelis pay heavily already and there is only so much of that that they will endure.
The question is what happens after the Israelis withdraw from Gaza? Failing to exorcise Hamas means that Hamas can and will do it again. What I’m saying is that there is now blood in the water. Hamas is feeding. Hezbollah is feeding. And Iranian proxies are feeding on American bases in the region. It’s all at a low boil but the heat is slowly being turned up.
And Assad just added his voice and God knows what else to the mix.
‘…overthrowing nations’ sounds like Soros/Schwab policy.
Oh, it is. “Regime change” is Liberal policy. They know they’re at war. The East knows that it is at war. It’s just some people on either side that haven’t gotten the memo.
The thing to understand is that you are already witnessing a conflcit between what is known as the Axis of Resistance (a name used by the Resistance itself) and the West:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-leaders-meet-assad-damascus-turn-page-2022-10-19/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/25/hamas-restoration-of-ties-with-syria-maintains-interests
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/26/1208456496/iran-hamas-axis-of-resistance-hezbollah-israel
Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas all act in concert. They are autonomous but regarding Israel, they are all committed to the same project.
I believe the Axis of Resistance” was first used by the Libyan daily newspaper Al-Zahf Al-Akhdar in response to American president George W. Bush’s claim that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea formed an “axis of evil.”
Hamas has been a fixture in Syria for decades. There is nothing new here. In 2009, that very topic is what got me on Met. Philip’s %hit list which culminated in the vandalism of my home (under the watchful eyes of private detectives for several weeks). and later my parent’s home, long after Met. Philip went to his reward, as well as the premature retirement of the poor priest who found himself in the middle, suffering a home invasion with a gun pointed to his wife’s head for his trouble.
Assad went to Moscow last week. They’re reporting this visit was his first trip outside of Syria since the fighting began there in 2011 but that’s not true. Just weeks before this Israeli war started, Assad went to China to talk with President Xi. Together they announced the establishment of a China-Syria strategic partnership. It seems Russia and China intend to deal with these terrorist groups themselves.
Assad will do what they tell him to do.
Iran has emphatically said they did not foresee this, they did not plan this, and most importantly, they do not support Hamas in this effort. The same is true of Hezbollah. If Iran and Hezbollah were ever to team up, Israel would cease to exist.
This war was started by Hamas. Not Hamas and Hezbollah. Just Hamas. They caught Israel with their pants down and Israel is not handling it well. They need to back off and someone needs to go in there and come up with a workable solution.
When you read “allegedly by Iran” or the “Axis of Resistance” that doesn’t mean Iran did anything. The fact that China and Russia have jumped into the mix should tell you they don’t want Iran anywhere near this.
Turkey, on the other hand, will probably get involved and as I said before, Syria will let them just walk on through.
The principle in operation here seems to be that:
My enemy’s enemy is [not necessarily] my enemy
[not for the moment, that is].
Another triumph for State Department Diplomacy…
Col. Doug is probably right about this. The Muslim world has been holding back to a certain extent expecting that the US will intervene and reattach Israel’s leash. But Biden is a space cadet and his little entourage has no idea what to do.
And that’s why many people, myself included, expect trouble.
Mike Adams interviews Col Douglas Macgregor
on Our Country, Our Choice, of which he is CEO.
https://www.brighteon.com/b439e406-fcec-46eb-a535-bf4ddc1f9078
[Video – 33:08]
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter interviewed
by Mike Adams on the Israeli-Hamas war
https://www.brighteon.com/e435e6da-02c8-4c89-9105-5998826fb541
[Video – 47:28]
Scott provides an compelling analysis
of what went wrong on Oct 7.
This is Simplicius’ take.
“In short, the U.S. isn’t a monolith—it’s being torn from the inside out by disagreement and partisanship. The sailing of its giant armadas to the MidEast represents a sort of absent-minded, reflexive action of a bygone superpower whose senses push it into making a ‘show of force’ for no better reason than mimicking its own perceived stereotype, like an old Alzheimers patient going through the foggy motions of something he ‘feels’ he should be doing, but no longer quite knows why.
That doesn’t mean there still isn’t danger for major things to erupt, but simply that for the first time, it appears Iran and its axis are in the driver’s seat.”
Thierry Meyssan analyses who got us here in the first place:
Russia declares war on the Straussians
by Thierry Meyssan | 5 March 2022
https://www.voltairenet.org/article215855.html
‘ Russia is not waging war on the Ukrainian people, but on a small group of people within the US power that has transformed Ukraine without its knowledge, the Straussians. It formed half a century ago and has already committed an incredible amount of crimes in Latin America and the Middle East without the knowledge of the United States. This is their story.
At dawn on February 24, Russian forces entered Ukraine en masse. According to President Vladimir Putin, speaking on television at the time, this special operation was the beginning of his country’s response to “those who aspire to world domination” and who are advancing Nato’s infrastructure to his country’s doorstep. During this long speech, he summarized how NATO destroyed Yugoslavia without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council, even bombing Belgrade in 1999. Then he perused the destruction of the United States in the Middle East, in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Only after this lengthy presentation did he announce that he had sent his troops to Ukraine with the dual mission of destroying the Nato-linked armed forces and ending the Nato armed neo-Nazi groups.
Immediately all the member states of the Atlantic Alliance denounced the occupation of Ukraine as comparable to that of Czechoslovakia during the “Prague Spring” (1968). According to them, Vladimir Putin’s Russia had adopted the Soviet Union’s “Brezhnev doctrine”. Therefore, the free world must punish the resurrected “Evil Empire” with “devastating costs”.
The interpretation of the Atlantic Alliance is aimed above all at depriving Russia of its major argument: although Nato is not a confederation of equals, but a hierarchical federation under Anglo-Saxon command, Russia is doing the same. It refuses Ukraine the possibility of choosing its destiny, just as the Soviets refused it to the Czechoslovakians. It is true that Nato violates the principles of sovereignty and equality of states stipulated in the UN Charter, but it should not be dissolved, unless Russia is also dissolved.
Perhaps, but probably not.
President Putin’s speech was not directed against Ukraine, or even against the United States, but explicitly against “those who aspire to world domination”, i.e. against the “Straussians” in the US power structure. It was a real declaration of war against them.
On February 25, President Vladimir Putin called the Kiev leadership “a clique of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”. For the Atlantic media, these words were those of a mental patient.
During the night of February 25-26, President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a ceasefire proposal to Russia via the Chinese embassy in Kiev. The Kremlin immediately responded by setting out its conditions:
arrest of all Nazis (Dmitro Yarosh and the Azov Battalion, etc.)
removal of all street names and destruction of monuments glorifying Nazi collaborators during the Second World War (Stepan Bandera, etc.),
laying down of weapons.
The Atlantic press ignored this event, while the rest of the world, which knew about it, held its breath. The negotiation failed a few hours later after Washington intervened. Only then would Western public opinion be informed, but the Russian conditions would always be hidden from them.
What is President Putin talking about? Who is he fighting against? And what are the reasons that have made the Atlanticist press blind and mute?
A brief history of the Straussians
Let us stop for a moment to consider this group, the Straussians, about whom Westerners know little. They are individuals, all Jewish, but by no means representative of either American Jews or of Jewish communities worldwide. They were formed by the German philosopher Leo Strauss, who took refuge in the United States during the rise of Nazism and became a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. According to many accounts, he had formed a small group of faithful students to whom he gave oral instruction. There is no written record of this. He explained to them that the only way for the Jews not to fall victim to a new genocide was to form their own dictatorship. He called them Hoplites (the soldiers of Sparta) and sent them to disrupt the courts of his rivals. Finally, he taught them discretion and praised the “noble lie”. Although he died in 1973, his student fraternity continued.
The Straussians began forming a political group half a century ago, in 1972. They were all members of Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s staff, including Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. They worked closely with a group of Trotskyite journalists, also Jewish, who had met at the City College of New York and edited the magazine Commentary. Both groups were closely linked to the CIA, but also, thanks to Perle’s father-in-law Albert Wohlstetter (the US military strategist), to the Rand Corporation (the think tank of the military-industrial complex). Many of these young people intermarried until they formed a compact group of about 100 people.
Together they drafted and passed the “Jackson-Vanik Amendment” in the midst of the Watergate crisis (1974), which forced the Soviet Union to allow the emigration of its Jewish population to Israel under pain of economic sanctions. This was their founding act.
In 1976, Paul Wolfowitz was one of the architects of the “Team B” charged by President Gerald Ford with assessing the Soviet threat. He issued a delirious report accusing the Soviet Union of preparing to take over “global hegemony”. The Cold War changed its nature: it was no longer a question of isolating (containment) the USSR, it had to be stopped in order to save the “free world”.
The Straussians and the New York intellectuals, all of whom were on the left, put themselves at the service of the right-wing president Ronald Reagan. It is important to understand that these groups are neither truly left nor right wing. Some members have switched five times from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and back again. What is important to them is to infiltrate power, whatever the ideology. Elliott Abrams became an assistant to the Secretary of State. He led an operation in Guatemala where he put a dictator in power and experimented with Israeli Mossad officers on how to create reserves for the Mayan Indians in order to eventually do the same thing in Israel with the Palestinian Arabs (the Mayan Resistance earned Rigoberta Menchú her Nobel Peace Prize). Then Elliott Abrams continued his exactions in El Salvador and finally in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas with the Iran-Contra affair. For their part, the New York intellectuals, now called “Neoconservatives”, created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Institute of Peace, a mechanism that organized many colored revolutions, starting with China with the attempted coup d’état of Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang and the subsequent repression in Tiananmen Square.
At the end of George H. Bush’s (the father’s) term of office, Paul Wolfowitz, then number 3 in the Defense Department, drew up a document based on a strong idea: after the decomposition of the USSR, the United States had to prevent the emergence of new rivals, starting with the European Union. He concluded by advocating the possibility of taking unilateral action, i.e. to put an end to the concerted action of the United Nations. Wolfowitz was undoubtedly the designer of “Desert Storm”, the operation to destroy Iraq that allowed the United States to change the rules of the game and organize a unilateral world. It was during this time that Straussians valued the concepts of “regime change” and “democracy promotion.”
Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and Paul Wolfowitz entered the US intelligence community through the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform. They criticized the assumption that other governments think the same way as the US government. Then they criticized the lack of political leadership in intelligence, leaving it to wander into unimportant issues instead of focusing on the essential ones. Politicizing intelligence is what Wolfowitz had already done with the B-team and what he would do again in 2002 with the Office of Special Plans, inventing arguments for new wars against Iraq and Iran (Leo Strauss’ “noble lie”).
The Straussians were removed from power during Bill Clinton’s term. They then entered the Washington think tanks. In 1992, William Kristol and Robert Kagan (the husband of Victoria Nuland, widely quoted in the previous articles) published an article in Foreign Affairs deploring President Clinton’s timid foreign policy and calling for a renewal of “benevolent global hegemony”. The following year they founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) at the American Enterprise Institute. Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky and Paul Wolfowitz were members. All of Leo Strauss’s non-Jewish admirers, including the Protestant Francis Fukuyama (the author of The End of History), immediately joined them.
In 1994, now an arms dealer, Richard Perle (a.k.a. “the Prince of Darkness”) became an advisor to the President and ex-Nazi Alija Izetbegović in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was he who brought Osama Bin Laden and his Arab Legion (the forerunner of Al Qaeda) from Afghanistan to defend the country. Perle was even a member of the Bosnian delegation at the signing of the Dayton Accords in Paris.
In 1996, members of the PNAC (including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) wrote a study at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) for the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This report advocates the elimination of Yasser Arafat, the annexation of the Palestinian territories, a war against Iraq and the transfer of Palestinians there. It was inspired not only by the political theories of Leo Strauss, but also by those of his friend, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of “revisionist Zionism”, of whom Netanyahu’s father was the private secretary.
The PNAC raised funds for the candidacy of George W. Bush (the son) and published before his election its famous report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”. It called for a Pearl Harbor-like catastrophe that would throw the American people into a war for global hegemony. These are exactly the words that PNAC Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used on September 11, 2001.
Thanks to the 9/11 attacks, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz installed Admiral Arthur Cebrowski in Donald Rumsfeld’s shadow. He played a role comparable to that of Albert Wohlstetter during the Cold War. He imposed the strategy of “endless war”: the US armed forces should not win any more wars, but start many of them and keep them going as long as possible. The aim would be to destroy all the political structures of the targeted states in order to ruin these populations and deprive them of any means of defending themselves against the US; a strategy that has been implemented for twenty years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen…
The alliance between the Strausians and the revisionist Zionists was sealed at a major conference in Jerusalem in 2003, which Israeli political figures from all sides unfortunately thought they should attend. It is therefore not surprising that Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s wife, then ambassador to NATO) intervened to declare a ceasefire in Lebanon in 2006, allowing the defeated Israeli army not to be pursued by Hezbollah.
Some individuals, such as Bernard Lewis, have worked with all three groups, the Straussians, the Neoconservatives and the Revisionist Zionists. A former British intelligence officer, he acquired both U.S. and Israeli citizenship, was an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of the U.S. National Security Council. Lewis, who halfway through his career assured that Islam is incompatible with terrorism and that Arab terrorists are in fact Soviet agents, later changed his mind and assured with the same aplomb that the religion preaches terrorism. He invented the strategy of the “clash of civilizations” for the US National Security Council. The idea was to use cultural differences to mobilize Muslims against the Orthodox, a concept that was popularized by his assistant at the Council, Samuel Huntington, except that Huntington did not present it as a strategy, but as an inevitability that had to be countered. Huntington began his career as an advisor to the South African secret service during the aparteheid era, and later wrote a book, The Soldier and the State understanding national security needs.
After the destruction of Iraq, the Straussians were the subject of all sorts of controversies. Everyone is surprised that such a small group, supported by neoconservative journalists, could have acquired such authority without having been the subject of a public debate. The U.S. Congress appointed an Iraq Study Group (the so-called “Baker-Hamilton Commission”) to evaluate its policy. It condemned, without naming it, the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy and deplored the hundreds of thousands of deaths it had caused. But Rumsfeld resigned and the Pentagon inexorably pursued this strategy, which it had never officially adopted.
In the Obama administration, the Straussians found their way into Vice President Joe Biden’s cabinet. His National Security Advisor, Jacob Sullivan, played a central role in organizing the operations against Libya, Syria and Myanmar, while another of his advisors, Antony Blinken, focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It was he who led the negotiations with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of key members of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s team in exchange for the nuclear deal.
Regime change in Kiev in 2014 was organized by the Straussians. Vice President Biden is firmly committed to it. Victoria Nuland came to support the neo-Nazi elements of the Right Sector and to supervise the Israeli “Delta” commando in Maidan Square. A telephone intercept reveals her wish to “fuck the European Union” (sic) in the tradition of the 1992 Wolfowitz report. But the leaders of the European Union do not understand and protest only weakly.
“Jake” Sullivan and Antony Blinken placed Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter, on the board of one of the major gas companies, Burisma Holdings, despite opposition from Secretary of State John Kerry. Hunter Biden is unfortunately just a junkie, he would serve as a front for a gigantic scam at the expense of the Ukrainian people. He would appoint, under the supervision of Amos Hochstein, several of his stoner friends to become other front men at the head of various companies and to plunder Ukrainian gas. These are the people that President Vladimir Putin called a “clique of drug addicts”.
Sullivan and Blinken relied on mafia godfather Ihor Kolomoysky, the country’s third largest fortune. Although he is Jewish, he financed the heavyweights of the Right Sector, a neo-Nazi organization that works for NATO and fought in Maidan Square during the “regime change”. Kolomoïsky took advantage of his connections to take power within the European Jewish community, but his co-religionists rebelled and ejected him from international associations. However, he managed to get the head of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, appointed deputy secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council and to get himself appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Both men would be quickly removed from any political function. It was their group that President Vladimir Putin called a “clique of neo-Nazis.”
In 2017, Antony Blinken founded WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm that brought together former senior Obama administration officials and many Straussians. The firm’s business is extremely low-key. It uses the political connections of its employees to make money; what anywhere else would be called corruption.
The Straussians are still the same as ever
Since Joe Biden returned to the White House, this time as President of the United States, the Straussians have been running the show. “Jake” Sullivan is National Security Advisor, while Antony Blinken is Secretary of State with Victoria Nuland at his side. As I have reported in previous articles, she went to Moscow in October 2021 and threatens to crush Russia’s economy if it ded not comply. This was the beginning of the current crisis.
Undersecretary of State Nuland resurrected Dmitro Yarosh and imposed him on President Zelinsky, a television actor protected by Ihor Kolomoysky. On November 2, 2021, he appointed him special advisor to the head of the army, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The latter, a true democrat, rebelled at first and finally accepted. When questioned by the press about this astonishing duo, he refused to answer and mentioned a question of national security. Yarosh gave his full support to the “white führer”, Colonel Andrey Biletsky, and his Azov Battalion. This copy of the SS Das Reich division has been staffed since the summer of 2021 by American mercenaries formerly from Blackwater.
Having identified the Straussians, we must admit that Russia’s ambition is understandable, even desirable. To rid the world of the Straussians would be to do justice to the million or more deaths they have caused and to save those they are about to kill. Whether this intervention in Ukraine is the right way remains to be seen.
In any case, if the responsibility for the current events lies with the Straussians, all those who let them act without flinching also have a responsibility. Starting with Germany and France, who signed the Minsk Agreements seven years ago and did nothing to ensure that they were implemented, and then with the fifty or so states that signed the OSCE declarations prohibiting the extension of Nato east of the Oder-Neisse line and did nothing. Only Israel, which has just got rid of the revisionist Zionists, has expressed a nuanced position on these events.
This is one of the lessons of this crisis: democratically governed peoples are responsible for the decisions taken for a long time by their leaders and maintained after alternations in power. ‘
For citations and references, click on link
at top to read Meyssan’s original article.
Brendan, although I was aware of the Straussians and their influence, I can’t thank you enough for fleshing out their history. Truly remarkable.
One thing that is telling is the prevalence in the US in particular of the pro-Israel mafia, so to speak. If you want to know who rules you, it’s the people who are supposedly above criticism.
But really the prudent thing, IMHO, is to stay out of it. Jews and Muslims want to slaughter one another? Well, who am I to intervene? Sounds like a personal problem.
And, as the picture unfolds, I think it will become clear that the Muslims are not as defenseless as they appear at the moment and that Israel may be making a mistake of epic proportions.
But we shall just have to see.
Here is a relevant quote from Orthodox Reflections:
Can Christians Support the Intentional Murder of Civilians in War?
https://orthodoxreflections.com/can-christians-support-the-intentional-murder-of-civilians-in-war/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-last-newsletter-total-posts-from-orthodox-reflections_2
‘ … It does not matter if Hamas is a terrorist organization. It doesn’t matter if Hamas would mistreat or even kill its own prisoners. It does not matter if Hamas would happily target civilians, even children. No actions of your enemy can change your obligations as a Christian. Nor can any enemy actions change your obligation to uphold Christian morals when supporting an “ally” fighting a war. If you can’t engage in immoral actions yourself, then you can’t fund or support them either. … ‘
Amen to that!
If you arm both sides, then they are less likely to kill one another, each fearing the capacity of the other side. “An armed society is a polite society.” It is imbalances in military capacity that invite oppression.
But the broader point is that the Israel-Hamas war is Liberal vs. Muslim. If your enemies are going at it, stay out of the way. To me, the only serious consideration is the alliance with Iran and, due to the incorporation of Saudi and UAE into BRICS, with the Ummah in general.
Whatever else may be true, Israel is certainly not my ally.
“…the Israel-Hamas war is Liberal vs. Muslim.”
Here’s another theory:
Guess What The Israel-Palestine War Is REALLY About!
https://theduran.com/guess-what-the-israel-palestine-war-is-really-about/
[Video – 15:35]
Jimmy Dore:
“You don’t have religious leaders
to deal with, you have shareholders.”
“Pragmatic evil is the curse of the modern world.”
As much as I admire the Israelis as a society, I must agree with you, Misha. The only good thing about this nonsense is that it’s exposing the reprehensible Nikki Haley for the shill that she is.
It’s also driving a stake through the heart of the Democrat Party. As for the GOP, I’m not sure what the future holds for them. If America-first/MAGA prevails, then they’re hope for them. Otherwise, they too will go the way of the Whigs.
I think it is time to give my lovely wife some credit. She was 100% right when she said Iran had nothing to do with this. She has consistently framed BRICS as the “new sheriff in town” and what Iran wants most is to be part of the BRICS Alliance. She was right that it was Israel who staged this. She was right that the bomb that hit the parking lot of the hospital was the result of a misfire on the part of Hamas. And she was right about how Hezbollah was not lining the northern border as a second front.
You might want to ask her what she sees in her “crystal ball.” ‘Cause she is generally the one out in front while it takes the rest of us time to catch up.
George,
With all due respect, and no offense to Galinushka, but I don’t believe any of that is true for reasons I’ve belabored here.
To each his/her own.
Thierry Meyssan on what comes next:
The collapse of Israel and the United States
by Thierry Meyssan | 14 November 2023
https://www.voltairenet.org/article219991.html
‘ While our eyes are riveted on the massacres of civilians in Israel and Gaza, we fail to perceive the internal divisions in Israel and the USA, or the considerable change this drama is provoking in the world. For the first time in history, civilians are being massacred live on television.
Everywhere – except in Europe – Jews and Arabs unite to cry out their grief and call for peace.
People everywhere realize that this genocide would not be possible if the United States did not supply bombs to the Israeli army in real time.
States everywhere are recalling their ambassadors to Tel Aviv and wondering whether they should recall those they sent to Washington.
It goes without saying that the United States only reluctantly agreed to this spectacle, but they didn’t just allow it, they made it possible with subsidies and weapons. They are afraid of losing their Power after their defeat in Syria, their defeat in Ukraine and perhaps soon their defeat in Palestine. Indeed, if the Empire’s armies are no longer frightening, who will continue to transact in dollars instead of their own currency? And in that eventuality, how will Washington make others pay for what it spends, how will the U.S. maintain its standard of living?
But what happens at the end of this story? That the Middle East revolts, or that Israel crushes Hamas at the cost of thousands of lives?
We’ll remember that President Joe Biden first warned Israel to abandon its plan to move the Palestinian people to Egypt or, failing that, to eradicate them from the face of the earth, and Tel Aviv didn’t obey him.
The “Jewish supremacists” are behaving today as they did in 1948.
When the United Nations voted to create two federated states in Palestine, one Hebrew and one Arab, the armed forces self-proclaimed the Hebrew state before its borders had been fixed. The “Jewish supremacists” immediately expelled millions of Palestinians from their homes (the “Nakhba”) and assassinated the UN special representative who had come to create a Palestinian state. The seven Arab armies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and North Yemen) that tried to oppose them were quickly swept aside.
Today, they are no more obedient to their protectors and massacre again, without realizing that this time the world is watching and no one will come to their rescue. At a time when the Shiites accept the principle of a Hebrew state, their madness is jeopardizing the very existence of that state.
We remember how the Soviet Union collapsed. The state was unable to protect its own population during a catastrophic accident. 4,000 Soviets died at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (1986), saving their fellow citizens. The survivors wondered why, 69 years after the October Revolution, they continued to accept an authoritarian regime. Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the CPSU, wrote that it was only when he saw this disaster that he realized his regime was under threat.
Then came the December riots in Kazakhstan, independence demonstrations in the Baltic states and Armenia. Gorbachev amended the Constitution to remove the Party’s old guard. But his reforms were not enough to stop the fire spreading to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Ukraine and Belarus. The uprising of the East German Young Communists against the Brezhnev doctrine led to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). The crumbling of power in Moscow led to the cessation of aid to allies, including Cuba (1990). Finally came the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the break-up of the Union (1991). In just over 5 years, an Empire that everyone thought would last forever has collapsed in on itself.
This inevitable process has just begun for the “American Empire”. The question is not how far Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists” will go, but how far the US imperialists will support them. At what point will Washington decide it has more to lose by allowing Palestinian civilians to be massacred than by correcting Israel’s leaders?
The same problem faces him in Ukraine. The military counter-offensive by Volodymyr Zelensky’s government has failed. Russia is no longer seeking to destroy Ukrainian weapons, which are immediately replaced by weapons donated by Washington, but to kill those who wield them. The Russian armies are behaving like a gigantic crushing machine, slowly and inexorably killing all Ukrainian soldiers who approach the Russian defense lines. Kiev can no longer mobilize fighters, and its soldiers refuse to obey orders that condemn them to certain death. Its officers have no choice but to shoot the pacifists.
Many US, Ukrainian and Israeli leaders are already talking about replacing the Ukrainian “integral nationalist” coalition with the “Jewish supremacist” coalition, but the wartime period does not lend itself to this. But it will have to be done.
President Joe Biden has to replace his Ukrainian puppet and his barbaric Israeli allies, just as First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had to replace his insensitive representative in Khazakhstan, paving the way for widespread challenges to corrupt leaders. Once Zelensky and Netanyahu have been dismissed, everyone will know that it is possible to get the head of a Washington representative, and everyone will know that they must flee before they are sacrificed.
This process is not only inevitable, it’s inexorable. President Joe Biden can only do what he can to slow it down, to make it last, not to stop it.
The peoples and leaders of the West must now take the initiative to get out of this predicament, without waiting to be abandoned, as Cuba did at the cost of the privations of its “special period”. This is a matter of urgency: the last to react will have to foot the bill for everyone else. Many states from the “rest of the world” are already fleeing. They are queuing up to join the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Even more than Russia, which had to break away from the Baltic States, the United States must prepare for domestic uprisings. When the US is no longer able to impose the dollar on international trade, and its standard of living collapses, the poorer regions will refuse to obey, while the richer ones will become independent, starting with the republics of Texas and California (the only ones legally able to do so, according to the Treaties). The break-up of the USA is likely to result in civil war.
The disappearance of the USA will lead to the disappearance of NATO and the European Union. Germany, France and the U.K. will find themselves faced with their old rivalries, having failed to respond when the time was right.
Within a few years, Israel and the “American Empire” will disappear. Those who fight against the direction of history will provoke wars and unnecessary deaths in their numbers. ‘
Really great video from Bryan Berletic.
I too am curious why exactly Newsom went to China and now Xi is visiting Cali….sus
I had some occasion to think it through and I believe I can relate why I’m not pro-Israel in the current conflict in the ME. In another comment, I went on about why I have no empathy for the Muslim Arabs, though I do not support ethnic cleansing. But repeatedly I’ve said things like “Israel is no good either”, or things to that effect.
The Israel-Hamas conflict is really a fight between Liberalism and Islam. The Jews, Secular Israel, are the embodiment of Western Liberalism. Tel Aviv, for example, is known as the LGBT capital of the ME. Israel was founded as a completely secular enterprise. Kibbutzim were often little socialist collectives. It was, and is, progressive European Liberalism transplanted to the ME – a bastion of democracy and human rights (ie, multiculturalism, feminism and LGBT).
Now, it is true that the demographic is changing there. And that may be some cause for cautious hope in the long term. But though the people may constitute an emerging Mizrahi majority, the elites who dominate are still predominantly Ashkenazi European liberals. Hence the resistance to the judicial reforms and the civil strife surrounding Bibi.
Now, many analysts are blaming the “far-Right” in Israel and the Netanyahu coalition. But it was the secular liberals that created the mess with the Palestinians. They have been the ones in charge since the founding. Their religion is not Judaism. It is Liberalism, of the Zionist variety.
And this is doubly true of their American supporters. Religious Jews form only a small fraction of the Jewish community in America. By religious, I mean Orthodox or Hasidim. The rest are just ethnically involved and, again, their real religion is Liberalism.
Now, Liberalism is the devil himself in my book. So in a war between Liberals and Muslims, that’s why I lean toward arming both sides and letting them do that voodoo that they do best.
I want to get out in front of this because some of you have doubtless seen the Reuters article citing anonymous sources in the Iranian govt and Hamas that Iran was taken by surprise about the 10/7 attack and therefore will hold back, at least initially, in the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas denies it; Iran is silent on it. But it is the kind of thing that might be put out to calm the situation down regarding Iran’s own proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and the ones attacking American bases in the region.
Now, one thing seems clear to me, regardless of the verity of this report. Iran was not interested in fomenting a broader war but, if anything, only in starting an internal conflict in Israel that would result in some internationally negotiated settlement of the Palestinian Question, as well as sacking the Israel-Saudi agreement emerging. They want it boiling, but not running over. That explains all the attacks on American bases, Hezbollah in Lebanon, etc.
What I will say is that someone in the BRICS world could look into their crystal ball and see this developing as a result and thus realizing that this benefits BRICS and the Alliance immensely. Someone decided to set Tammany Hall against itself. I’ll leave you all to decide who.
Israel-Gaza war: What are the limits to the principle of self-defence?
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2023/11/10/israel-gaza-war-what-are-the-limits-to-the-principle-of-self-defence
[Video – 12:29]
David Friedman: “When was the last time you were in Gaza?”
Marc-Lamont-Hill: “About eighteen months ago.
When was the last time you were in Gaza?”
David Friedman: “Ahh um… umm…”
Friedman plays the Holocaust card.
Hill rips it up in front of him.
Funny, but sad, interview.
Judge Napolitano: Judging Freedom | Alastair Crooke
(fmr British Diplomat ): Evaluating Israel’s Moral Justifications
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqEgWP2S9M&t=0s
[Video 28:17]
Alastair decries Israel’s complete lack of moral compass
and explains why the US is unlikely to attack Iran…
A Chinese look at the Middle East:
Palestine vs. Israel vs. USA
https://www.brighteon.com/f2da6ec4-8e8b-4c17-9d12-aedbceeeabf7
[Video – 01:35]
An interesting video from Andrei Martyanov: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/11/why-russia-cannot-be-defeated.html