Information Warfare
Internet Swarms Lead Kinetic Action
Joseph Schumpeter famously said that entrepreneurship, capitalism and human progress produces a perennial gale of ‘creative destruction.’
But the creation part often comes later. Right now we’re stalled in a phase of destruction and chaos. It’s unclear once the smoke clears where the building of new alignments and networks will assemble. Or even if the “next” will be better than the current.
What’s evident is that it’s a very dangerous time. Financially, geopolitically, and socially we are seeing ages-old alignments and structures splinter and combust.
Some of it is welcome.
The profound deterioration and moral corruption that have infiltrated the American university system and media outlets must be completely exposed and eradicated. Similar to battling cancer, sometimes the aggressive intervention of chemotherapy is the only viable solution, even if it brings the patient to the brink of death in the process of eliminating the toxic cells.
At present, the American education system and media landscape are in the midst of undergoing such intensive treatment.
However, this intervention is not a result of internal decision-making, but rather the influence of external forces that have come to recognize the monster they have inadvertently fostered.
And the monsters and corruption don’t just exist in universities; the pervasive rot and incompetence exists in nearly every facet of modern life, from the media, to academia, to public health and beyond.
Balaji encapsulates a theme that has been the focal point of my writings over recent years. The individuals entrusted with our representation, including politicians, authorities, and various experts, have not been serving our best interests for quite some time now. And things will continue to get worse until this cancer is removed and accountability is returned.
Israel, Hamas and Palestinians….
The Israeli-Hamas conflict will remain a near term black hole for global attention.
As previously highlighted, a potential positive aspect of this situation is that it is bringing to light the pervasive anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiments prevalent within a substantial portion of the Left. These sentiments are now becoming unmistakably evident. Regrettably, the individuals who harbor these beliefs are also those in control of many academic institutions and mainstream media outlets.
Remarkably, this is one of the first major global conflicts to be predominantly conducted and influenced through the internet, showcasing a staggering shift in how information is disseminated and consumed, as well as the power dynamics of warfare and public opinion.
The situation in Ukraine served as a mere precursor to the current events, with initial perceptions casting Russia as the sole villain, resulting in widespread support for isolating the country. However, over the past year, this perspective has evolved and become more nuanced. People are beginning to recognize the roles played by the United States and Ukraine in the lead-up to the conflict, as well as acknowledging the efforts of Russia and other nations to negotiate numerous peace agreements and ceasefires. Tragically, these attempts were clandestinely dismissed by the United States and its European allies within NATO.
The Israeli-Hamas conflict is different, as both sides are free to wage a propaganda and info-war in real time. As we saw below during the alleged ‘Hospital Bombing’, propaganda and disinformation can have an immediate real time impact on the battlefield.
Liberal Jews are sadly just finding out just how corrupt and compromised our professional, academic and media sources have become by the very same forces they’ve amplified and allied themselves with over the last 20 years.
It’s a brutal wake up call and it remains to be seen whether it’s too late to reverse the orgy of stupidity, racism and anti-Americanism that pervade these institutions.
Aligned against Israel and Jews are the same forces that have aligned against White Males and American Conservatism for the past 3 decades. It’s a collection of the worst America has to offer on the Hamas-Palestinian side: DEI brown shirts, decolonizers, Marxists, climate grifters, professional intersectional victims, BLM and plenty of actors, artists and musicians.
The bitter reality with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict is that one side has all the power to end it today - just like they have for the last 75 years.
There are 3 simple steps that could lead to peace in the region and a new era of prosperity that began with Trump’s Abraham Accords.
Release the hostages.
Marginalize or surrender the terrorists responsible for the murder and rape of 1400 civilians.
Acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.
That’s it. Do those 3 things and it’s over.
All further violence is solely on the head of Hamas and the Palestinian sympathizers that support them.
But then again, we all know they don’t want land or peace. Because then they’d actually have to govern and rule over their people versus channeling the billions in international and Israeli aid into weapons and lining their own pockets.
The most important takeaway from all of this is that information warfare has become the primary means of fighting in the 5G Warfare space. What happens on the internet is upstream and affects everything that can and will happen on the actual battlefield.
What happens to Israel and whether Hamas and the forces of terror are defeated will have repercussions across the globe. And right now, I can say from my vantage point that Israel is losing this information war.
The Left has had 8 years to buttress and amplify their censorship and disinformation efforts. They’ve built their networks during the ‘Trump Resistance’ and have adapted those efforts to this conflict. The war is less than 2 weeks old and Israel has not even begun their counterattack or efforts to rid Gaza of Hamas and already they are being handcuffed and bludgeoned globally by Hamas supporters, Leftists, anti-Semites and anti-establishment figures on the right.
If they don’t find a way to build their own networks to counter and amplify their own efforts, it will be irrelevant whether they are on the side of truth or righteousness.
As we saw with the Russia Collusion Hoax, Covington, Charlottesville, Kyle Rittenhouse, Jussie Smollett, Michael Brown, George Floyd, vaccines, masks, lockdowns, Hunter Biden’s fake laptop, secure borders, J6 and dozens of other leftist disinformation hoaxes, truth is the first victim in the fog of war.
I’ll end this section with a few examples of the ‘best and brightest’ that liberals elevated to positions of leadership and are now shocked that these monsters have turned on them.
Remember, at its base, communism and Marxism always devour their own. It’s just a matter of who’s first in the pecking order and Jews are currently in the crosshairs. It was just a matter of time as conservatives have warned you for decades.
Here’s Sarah Chowdhury, an Illinois attorney in the state’s comptroller’s office showing her true colors in an attorney chat group.
And UC DAVIS Professor Jemma Decristo threatening to hunt down Jewish journalists in their homes. Using knife, axe, and blood emojis and talking about their addresses being public.
Or Dr. Ayesha Khan, a resident at VUMChealth celebrating the attacks on Israel.
And we’ve all seen the dozens of videos of students and administrators ripping down the posters of hostages taken by Hamas.
There are hundreds of these examples of doctors, journalists and students celebrating the murder, torture and rape of innocent civilians. These are the people who will be attorneys, doctors, politicians, judges and executives in the coming decade. The clock is ticking on time to reverse the clout of these genocidal nihilists.
This ideology is alarmingly prevalent among many on the Left, as well as within academic circles and the media industry. We are rapidly approaching a crucial juncture where we will discover whether it is possible to eradicate this toxic mindset, or if it has become so ingrained and widespread that a Bolshevik-style uprising could occur, potentially making life in the United States untenable for a majority of Jewish individuals and conservatives.
The Hospital ‘Bombing’
The non-‘Hospital Bombing’ in Gaza may be the most important story of the week.
The NY Times and other ‘respectable” media sources ran with the story immediately based on Palestinian disinformation that an Israeli airstrike had destroyed a hospital in Gaza killing at least 500 people.
There was only one problem with the story - none of it was true. It was based solely on Palestinian/Hamas sources and the Times didn’t wait to verify any of the ‘facts’ in the story before running with it.
It turns out in actuality, it was an Islamic Jihad missile that was misfired that struck the hospital parking lot destroying a few cars with limited to no casualties.
In the time it took the NYT to correct their embarrassingly incorrect story, US and Israeli embassies across the Mideast came under siege and the temperature level on the conflict was raised immeasurably.
The Times and other media outlets nearly single handedly caused a dozen Benghazi’s across the Middle East and made attempts at peace and preventing a wider engagement involving Iran, Lebanon and other nations much harder.
This may have been the single most irresponsible piece of journalism and reporting in recent history.
The only thing killed in this attack was the slim remaining sliver credibility that mainstream media sources had.
The obligation of the news media in times of crisis should be to act with more discretion and care, not less. They failed miserably at this most critical task this week. Utterly. And then had the nerve to blame it on ‘fast moving events’ and the ‘fog of war.’
The fog of war hardly explains why they would use photos from an entirely different event and take the word of Hamas leadership on a story.
This instance exemplifies my earlier reference to the information warfare underway. The fact that a completely fabricated narrative has the potential to significantly escalate tensions towards a World War 3 scenario, and substantially alter global perceptions of Israel, Jews and America, underscores the paramount importance of the digital landscape in shaping public opinion.
The gravity of this ‘mistake’ cannot be downplayed. Despite The New York Times issuing an embarrassingly insufficient admission of error, we must address a glaring reality. Is it likely that television, radio, and print outlets in Tunisia, Lebanon, Iran, and throughout the Middle East have retracted the initial story? Were they swift in redirecting blame towards Islamic Jihad? The region is already rife with animosity and division due to prevalent propaganda and misleading narratives. Carelessness by Western media will only compound this problem exponentially.
Regrettably, this problem is likely to intensify as advancements in DeepFake technology and artificial intelligence progress, rendering it increasingly challenging to differentiate between what is true and what is fabricated.
The Palestinians have been widely criticized for allegedly employing civilians as human shields and for reportedly staging dramatized depictions of destruction using dolls and other props to influence global perceptions. When credible media outlets either intentionally or inadvertently perpetuate such narratives, the situation can swiftly escalate into a media-induced kill zone with real world implications.
There are numerous precedents for this, as evidenced by the Russia Collusion narrative that significantly impeded and nearly dismantled Trump’s presidency. This baseless conspiracy was fabricated by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, subsequently adopted and magnified by the media and left-leaning individuals with the intention of kneecapping his presidential term.
Hopefully a bit of good will come of it. It should be a brutal wake up call for liberals that the media can’t be trusted.
If the tragedy in Israel has proven anything about the West, is that honest, fact-based journalism is dead, at least in mainstream media. And that has real repercussions in real lives. So wherever and whenever we can make the general public aware that they should be skeptical of the mainstream media is a welcome development.
Or as Michael Malice likes to say, “You think you hate the media. But you do not hate them nearly as much as they deserve. The job is not finished until the average person sees a corporate journalist in the same way they see a tobacco lobbyist.”
And if you think this is just a symptom of rabid, fringe leftists, here’s Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s tweet which she refused to take down or correct.
Remarkably, in this instance the Democrat with the clearest moral conscience seems to be the one with brain damage.
While many of his own party and the left released morally ambiguous statements, John Fetterman was clear.
Says quite a bit about your party when a stroked-out Yeti is one of the few in your party that seems capable of differentiating between modern, enlightened humans and 7th century barbarians.
Insurrection at the Capitol
As I mentioned above, the info-war is more important in many facets than the actual kinetic action. The outcome of the info-war will likely remain upstream from the outcome on the ground for the foreseeable future.
There will be plenty of collateral damage from this info-war as well. We’re seeing the beginning of fractures in the left coalition as liberal Jews realize the monster they helped create doesn’t particularly care if they’re dead or alive, and gun to head would probably prefer the latter. Prior to the Palestinian terror spree and spontaneous shows of support for Hamas, the wealthy donor class has turned a blind-eye to the orgy of University hate antics we’ve seen over the past two decades.
From this situation, we can discern a shift in public tolerance. When the animosity was directed solely towards whites and males, it seemed to be somewhat bearable. However, the expansion of this hostility to include Jews is crossing a critical threshold. This is somewhat intellectually understandable; while there is a substantial population of whites and males globally, Jews represent a small fraction in comparison and have a historical tendency to remain silent until it is perilously late to voice their concerns.
In the meantime, conservatives—both Jewish and non-Jewish alike—are left shaking their heads in frustration, as their previous warnings about the emergence of a two-tiered system in social credit and justice have been consistently dismissed and discredited over the past several years.
Meanwhile, Pro-Palestinian protestors stormed the Capitol this week interrupting official proceedings.
This is likely one of the final nails in the manufactured J6 narrative coffin.
Through close control of the Executive Branch, Congress, the media, the suppression of information and massive undercover effort by the FBI and other federal agencies, the Regime was able to turn the J6 riot into an ‘insurrection’ (the first unarmed insurrection in history that featured most people strolling casually through the Capitol taking selfies).
Plenty has been written about the J6 Psyop that amplified an unruly crowd of malcontents into “a Day worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11”.
The benefit of the October 18th ‘Insurrection’ is that it depicts what a farce Jan 6 was. The individuals who took over the Capitol with Rashida Tlaib cheering them on likely won’t be charged with anything broader than a desk ticket or misdemeanor. Forget about 17 year and 22 year sentences, or deprival of due process and being thrown into a DC gulag for 18 months without counsel or the other outrageous tactics that were utilized by the Security State.
The next time someone brings up Jan 6th, laugh in their face and ask them when the October Eighteenthers will be facing trial for sedition and insurrection.
And the minimum requirement for whomever the Republican Nominee is in November should be a pledge to pardon all J6ers Day One, along with Douglas Mackey and any other political prisoners.
Douglas Mackey
Douglas Mackey was just sentenced to 7 months in prison for posting a meme mocking Hillary Clinton voters.
In 2016, Kristina Wong posted a tweet and video jokingly trying to trick Trump voters into not voting. Meanwhile, the DOJ just threw Mackey in prison. Wong was never charged with anything, and this tweet is still up.
Besides the J6 vs. Oct 18th incidents, there are numerous examples of the two-tiered justice system that the weaponization of the intelligence community and law enforcement has produced including the 5 contorted cases against Trump.
Elon sums it up best. There are a lot of questions that still need to be asked and accountability for the answers if we’re to save our Republic.
Here’s more on the Mackey case if you’re not familiar with it. Again, he and the other political prisoners should be pardoned day one if a Republican wins the Presidency.
Compromised
This is a longer topic than I have time to research and adequately present, but it aligns with much of what I’ve written over the last year. When you look at the actions of this Administration, do you see rank incompetence, or do you see an administration so compromised by foreign money and corruption, that they are deliberately not acting in America’s best interests?
More and more information and evidence seems to point to the latter. If true, it would mean the end of the Republic if the cancer is not excised fast and thoroughly.
Besides the laundry list of foreign money and bribes that it appears evident Sleepy Joe and his entire family has benefitted from, more and more it appears there are key appointments in key positions that have ugly/questionable ties to hostile foreign states.
Kash Patel broke the story and here’s BizPacReview’s summary:
According to former chief of staff to the Department of Defense (DOD) Kash Patel, three senior Biden intelligence officials have shocking ties to Hamas and Iran.
Speaking to Steve Bannon on Thursday, Patel named Robert Malley, Ariane Tabatabai, and Maher Bitar — three senior-level intelligence officials in the Biden administration.
“The intelligence issues by the Biden administration, reprioritizing away from the southern border, away from terrorists, away from Iran, away from China — do you know who they are being made by?” Patel asked.
Maher Bitar, Senior Director for Intelligence Programs on Biden’s National Security Council, “is solely responsible for prioritizing what collection efforts on intelligence are Tier 1, 2, 3, and 4 for President Biden,” he explained.
Patel went on to describe a recently found photo of Bitar “wearing Palestinian garb, raising a hand, behind a picture that said, ‘We want Jewish apartheid.'”
“This is the guy in charge of intelligence operations for the United States of America,” he stressed.
“Biden’s number one envoy,” Patel continued, is Robert Malley, “the guy who is supposed to be keeping us out of a war in Iran had his security clearance suspended by Chris Wray’s FBI, of all people, just two months ago. You gotta ask, ‘Why?'”
“Because an individual named Ariane Tabatabai, who, by the way, is currently running our Special Operations office at the Department of Defense, was installed there by Robert Malley.”
As BizPac Review reported, Tabatabai reportedly is part of the Iran Experts Initiative, an Iranian-backed influence operation.
“Concerns about Ms. Tabatabai are not new,” thirty Republican U.S. Senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin II earlier this month. “In March 2021, shortly after Ms. Tabatabai was appointed senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Iranian dissidents noted Ms. Tabatabai’s long history of echoing the Iranian regime’s talking points. In April 2021, several House members requested a review of Ms. Tabatabai’s security clearance. In response, the Biden administration dismissed these allegations as ‘smears and slander.'”
“Do you know what she did in 2014?” Patel noted. “She emailed Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and asked for permission as a U.S. citizen to take a trip on behalf of the US government. This individual is still employed at the DOD.”
“The Iranian regime has infiltrated the Biden administration,” Patel stated.
“These people have been installed by our enemies to distract away from protecting against American priorities at the border and taking out the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and Iran,” he said.
“We are so f*****d,” declared journalist Lara Logan.
“This is the most outrageous national security breach imaginable & yet we hear nothing from the Republican controlled House?” she wrote on X. “Nothing except whining about who will be speaker.”
“I saw U.S. soldiers shredded on the Iraqi battlefield by Iranian bombs & interviewed Iranian diplomats who told me how much they looked forward to killing more Americans & this Admin puts Iran’s spies into positions of power inside the U.S. govt?” she continued. “Shame on you. Shame on every leader in this country & every military leader. You are a disgrace.”
“How many more spies are there? How infiltrated is this government? You think it’s just the thousands of military aged males who’ve crossed the southern border?” she asked. “Apparently not.”
Marc Andreesen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto
AZ Co-founder and tech whiz Marc Andreesen released his manifesto this week.
Here’s Lizette Chapman with a cogent summary. It’s worth reading the entire thing yourself:
Celebrity venture capitalist Marc Andreessen issued a call to action on Monday morning, California time. In a blog post titled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” the Netscape co-founder excoriated the enemies of progress (“elites,” “luddites,” “communists”) and celebrated the potential for technology to advance human greatness.
Like many of Andreessen’s big-picture essays on tech over the years, the message ricocheted throughout the industry this week. It drew high praise from executives like Shopify Inc.’s Tobias Lütke and Coinbase Global Inc.’s Brian Armstrong, who called it “a breath of fresh air.”
Microsoft veteran and venture investor Steven Sinofsky, who represents VC firm Andreessen Horowitz on a few company boards, called out his favorite section on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential,” it read.
And recently, the post continues, that technology has not been “properly glorified.”
This frustration will be familiar to anyone following Andreessen’s anger over the techlash of the last decade. The industry, to his dismay, hasn’t been held up as an unalloyed good since at least the 2016 US presidential election. That’s when Facebook — an Andreessen Horowitz investment that had an idealistic goal “to connect every person in the world” — came under fierce criticism for its role in election misinformation, and later, violence overseas. It didn’t help that the scrappy startups beloved by the media in the early internet era gradually became some of the most powerful institutions in the world — and subject to greater scrutiny.
In his 5,200-word essay, written almost like a poem, Andreessen argues that rapid innovation is the best way to fix the world’s problems. His supporting arguments are a rundown of technological progress since the days of hunter gatherers: modern agriculture, vaccines, lightbulbs, air conditioning. And he makes the moral case for developing technologies like nuclear fusion and artificial intelligence.
The narrative has “enemies,” too. These, controversially include “social responsibility,” “trust and safety” and “tech ethics” — essentially regulators and other critics who get in the way of progress. Andreessen has had run-ins with the public sector before. Many of the companies his firm has bankrolled have hit regulatory hurdles, including Meta, Lyft Inc. and Coinbase.
He’s particularly adamant that regulation should not stand athwart the development of artificial intelligence: “We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives,” he writes. “Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.”
The problem, of course, is that unregulated tech booms often end badly. Facebook was forced to rein in its “move fast and break things” ethos, and crypto’s unmitigated excess wiped out regular peoples’ bank accounts, generating a lot of fraud charges along the way. (Andreessen did not invest in the disgraced exchange FTX, but it did back many startups in the now-beleaguered crypto industry.)
The essay — at times inspiring, at times comically overwrought — might serve as an idealistic rallying cry for tech workers. It might also alienate the people Andreessen would like to win over with phrases like, “We believe in the truth” and “Love doesn’t scale,” not to mention a shoutout to Ayn Rand. But ultimately, it fails to make the case that tech doesn’t deserve scrutiny.
The stakes of developing technology responsibly are even higher with AI and nuclear fusion than they were with social media and crypto. (Just ask Sam Altman.) Regulators are unlikely to be dissuaded this time around.”
Few subjects are as critical as envisioning the technological landscape of the next decade, predominantly influenced by our advancements in Artificial Intelligence.
Observing our leaders wreak havoc across the globe in real-time, the E/ACC strategy of recklessly accelerating the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is increasingly appearing to be a viable alternative. This approach harbors the capability to either safeguard humanity, subjugate us, or perhaps lead to even more dire consequences…
History Refresher
There are so many laughable lies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that it’s hard to even seriously rebut. And that’s the point. Overwhelm the information environment with Big Lies (‘apartheid state’) and Little Ones (‘open air prison’) to cloud and confuse the fact that there are not ‘two sides’ to this dispute - there are only modern day humans with Western Judeo-Christian values and terrorists or terrorist sympathizers and those who have turned down their own state, land and peace every chance they get and have chosen genocide because they don’t believe Israel or Jews have the right to exist.
Here’s a brief refresher on the history of the land that modern day Palestinians believe they are entitled to despite the historical, political, and legal absolute claims of the state of Israel.
1)Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
2) Before the British mandate there was the ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
3) Before the ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state .Godfrey of bouillon conquered it in 1099.
5) Before the ayyubid dynasty there was the christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
6) Before the christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state.
8) Before the byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
9) Before the Roman empire there was the hasmonean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state.
10)Before the hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire,Not a Palestinian state.
11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
12) Before the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
In fact in this corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
And here’s the inestimable Victor Davis Hanson on ‘Gaza and the Corruption of Language.’
“Apartheid”. Like most leftist smears, it reflects projection. Arab citizens inside Israel—over half of whom are Muslims—vote, run for office, and have organized political parties. As a fifth of the population, they enjoy more security, prosperity, and freedom than do their counterparts in the surrounding Arab nations.
In contrast, can one envision non-Arab Christian or Jewish residents of Gaza voting, running for office, forming political parties, or criticizing Hamas? This projected charge of apartheid, it applies to Hamas, which considers anyone other than Arab Muslims as inferiors to be kept out of Gaza.
“Ceasefire”. A ceasefire, truce, or armistice rarely ends the conflict for good unless both sides are worn out, and mutually agree that neither can win and the war is thus regrettable—a rare phenomenon in military history. More often, ceasefires are mere breathers for one or both sides to frantically resupply and rearm for rounds two, three, four…
Ultimately, wars—even those that last decades—end when one side loses and the other wins (often most clearly via‘unconditional’ surrender), or both suffer such calamitous losses that each believes victory is unachievable and will in the future continue to be so. Unless the antithetical political agendas that lead to war are resolved, then breathers and truces and time-outs eventually ensure lengthy or multiple wars. Victory leading to the loser’s abandonment of political agendas more often leads to lasting peace.
“Disproportionate”. Can anyone recall a war won by proportionate measures?
When war is proportionate it more often turns into a Stalingrad—or perhaps an Ukraine—until one side finds a disproportionate response that will change endless stasis to victory.
World War II was not won by a proportionate response to Pearl Harbor. And what would be a proportionate response to the murder of a thousand civilians?
Under the logic of “proportionality,” ought the Israeli state then invade Gaza and likewise murder a thousand of its civilians? The whole concept of a “proportionate" response to an unprovoked massacre of women and children asleep in their homes and during a peace is absurd.
“Civilian casualties”. In this war, almost all intentional civilian deaths are due to Hamas. The civilian dead consist of three unfortunate categories:
1) Over a thousand Jewish civilians, at a time of holiday, butchered by invading Hamas killer squads.
2) Gazan civilian shields whose homes and places of work are deliberately used to protect and enable Hamas rocketeers and shooters to wage war with impunity—in the expectation that Israel regards Gazan life as more valuable than does Hamas, and therefore won’t retaliate to missile launches by indiscriminately killing civilian shields. Hamas expects, even hopes, that they will be killed and thus bring them political advantage by their numerous deaths.
3) The general population of Gaza. The charter of Hamas ensures that its apparat will wage perpetual war at any cost against Israel. Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution, lasting armistices, or using billions of dollars in foreign aid to ensure modern power, water, and sewage plants for its people. Instead, it treats its own population as expendable and subordinate to its own tunnel-making and rocket-launching.
“Cycle of violence”. This phrase almost suggests that violence is organic, autonomous, without culpability, and thus not incited by one side. War, however, never works that way. Instead, there is usually definable 51% and more culpability on one side.
In the case of October 7, who invaded the country of another to enact a year-long preplanned plan of savagely murdering and mutilating women and children?
Was Israel intent on violence or was Hamas? Did Hamas call up their intended targets and urge them to flee before they arrived? Is that IDF trait even conceivable within Hamas?
While Hamas spent the year planning the precivilizational massacres of Jewish women and children, Israel—naively convinced that Hamas was concentrating on domestic affairs rather than its usual savage agenda of torching, stabbing, and shooting Jews—was at the time negotiating détente with Saudi Arabia and inviting nearly 20,000 Gazans a day to enter Israel to work and earn a living?
“Innocents”. All collateral damage is tragic, and, for example, children in Gaza are obviously innocent. But, while any noncombatant can be an innocent civilian, not all innocent civilians are created equal. Their collective innocence or guilt may not be absolute, but it can be fairly determined by their support for the agendas of its combatants and government. That is—whether they are empowering something like the SS or trying to stop it.
If bands of Israeli soldiers surprise-invaded Gaza with orders to grab hostages and focus on murdering women and children and then desecrating their corpses in hopes of psychologically devastating Gazans, they would likely be brought up on charges by the IDF or shunned and ostracized by their own people.
In contrast, when hostages were paraded in Gaza, civilians there seemed to enjoy spitting on and striking them. The return from Israel of the Gazan hostage-takers and murderers was met by ecstatic crowds.
The German population, similarly ruled by a “one man, one vote, once” dictatorship, was ebullient over Hitler’s success from 1939 to 1941, but lost their enthusiasm from 1942 to 1945, and feigned innocence (out of alleged ignorance or powerlessness) after the war was over.
So too, Gazans on Saturday, October 7 were enthralled on news of a thousand murdered Jews—only two weeks later to pose as innocent civilians not deserving retaliation for the inhuman violence against the innocent that they had so recently and so eagerly supported and cheered on.
As I said last week, at every moment in time, Palestinians have been offered 99% of what they asked for and could have had one of the most prosperous and flourishing states of their own on 25 miles of prime beachfront property in Gaza and elsewhere.
All they had to do was forsake violence and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. The international community would have given them tens if not hundreds of billions to build a modern day Dubai. Yet their leaders whether they are Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Palestinian Authority chose terror and violence and enriched themselves at the expense of their citizens. Now the leaders of Hamas and PA sit in their mansions in Qatar and condemn their own people to war and suffering rather than peace and prosperity.
They deserve The Wall, and their people deserve better.
Sadly, absent real American and Palestinian leadership, and new leadership in Israel, the region seems deadlocked in a "lose-lose" scenario, where all available strategies or choices lead to a negative outcome for all parties involved and could undo all of the tremendous gains made by the region under the Trump Administration.
What I’m Reading and Watching…
Schools are grappling with how to teach artificial intelligence.
And on that topic, if you aren’t familiar with Rocco’s Basilisk, here’s a rabbit hole you might not want to go down.
Last week I highlighted the podcast between Jared Kushner and Lex Fridman.
This week it is Erik Prince and Shawn Ryan. Erik is the former founder of Blackwater and a brilliant geopolitical thinker. He would make a great SecDef or other cabinet position in the next Trump White House. The show is in 2 parts. Make sure to listen to both.
Disparate Impact strikes again. This time in Oregon. If you’re not familiar with the concept, please read anything by Heather MacDonald. Especially her most recent book.
Oregon high school students won’t have to prove basic mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029, the state Board of Education decided unanimously on Thursday, extending the pause on the controversial graduation requirement that began in 2020.
Fiat News in the Fog of War. Epsilon Theory’s dissection of the NY Times and other MSM’s devastating miss in the ‘hospital bombing’ story.
New Dinesh D’Souza Film ‘Police State’ Is a Wakeup Call for America
If you find the erosion of civil liberties and the rise of authoritarian tendencies observed during the Covid Pandemic troubling, as well as the growing tendency to categorize parents, religious figures, and conservatives as “domestic extremists,” I would encourage you to watch Dinesh D’Souza’s latest film in cinemas.
Much like “Sound of Freedom,” it is crucial to stand behind filmmakers who are shedding light on the disintegration of civil liberties and moral integrity.
Best of Twitter
Memetic Warfare
Parting Words….
That’s it for this week folks! Hope you enjoyed. See you next week. -MK
Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields demonstrates their understanding that Israel holds the moral high ground. They know killing innocent Palestinians gives Israel pause while they have no such compunction.
Nice work yet again! Just wish more people would wake up and get educated about what is happening in the US...very frustrating...