Given the man’s known proclivities and frequent trips on Epstein’s plane to Little Saint James; given too what we know – corporate media downplaying of this aspect notwithstanding – of his host, friend and fellow sex predator’s penchant for blackmail coupled with extensive ties to the Mossad and senior Israeli politicians, only the most die-hard coincidence theorist can rule out the possibility near certainty that Zionists have serious kompromat on POTUS 47. Whether those Zionists are gentile or Jew, American or Israeli, makes little difference. What matters is that Donald Trump, to an even greater extent than all US presidents, is owned by America’s ruling class.
This does not negate his own Zionist instincts. It simply adds an extra layer of insurance.
I mention this because the notoriously thin-skinned narcissist has, since the criminal US-Israeli aggression on Iran was launched with treachery aforethought on February 28, endured, with but the feeblest show of pushback, levels of humiliation at the hands of the Israeli prime minister he would not have accepted from any other quarter.
For many in the alt community this, with or without the Epstein angle, is seen as confirmation of the thesis that Israel dictates US foreign policy. As I have made clear in numerous posts – such as my four part series, US Neocons & Israel’s far Right, I do not share that view; though when a settler colony is deeply integrated within the elites of its imperial backer – think French Algeria, and Ireland from the 1801 Act of Union through the 1922 creation of the Occupied Six Counties to the present day – the relationship is always more complex, more deeply entwined, than that of master-servant.
While that view of a Washington ‘owned’ by Israel is for obvious reasons music to the ears of unabashed antisemites, it is by no means confined to those circles. Witness such prominent Jewish advocates as Jeffrey Sachs, Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté, as well as non Jews like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt who, whatever my differences with their worldview, are men of principle for whom such an association is hopelessly – or mendaciously – wide of the mark.
The same goes for US Colonel Doug MacGregor, who in addition to the above exemplifies a constituency I often refer to, if you’ll excuse the shift in metaphor, both as gamekeepers turned poacher and by that fact canaries in the coalmine of a dying and ever more desperate empire. He further exemplifies the truth that, with generals and admirals too wedded to the political to break rank (an honourable exception being General Wesley Clark who revealed that as early as the eve of the war on Iraq the US was planning violent regime change in seven Middle East countries culminating in Iran) and lower ranks too far removed from military strategy, colonels have again and again served as guardians of sanity. Think Larry Wilkerson, Karen Kwiatkowski and Jacques Baud, all of whom have featured on these pages.
The bottom line being that we need not share Doug Macgregor’s view, frequently restated in this thirty minute interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, of Israel as dictating US policy to appreciate his informed and level-headed assessment of the state of play vis-a vis the US, Israel and Axis of Resistance in light of Monday’s resumption of hostilities between Israel and Iran.
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I would like to just put in a word of support for text based news items. I almost never watch videos as they are far too time consuming. I can read an article in perhaps a half to a quarter of the time it takes to listen to the same words and I imagine most people can easily do it in half the time. Videos are great for (justified) Iranian mockery of US stupidity, but they are not ideal for transmitting information. (Great too if one is recuperating, of course).
Duly noted, Jams – though you nailed it in your last, parenthesised, sentence. That said, my previous post references two very recent written texts – those of Simplicius and Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith.