Pacepa is gone now but his truth lives on.
[Forbes] It took me seven years to track down General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former chief of Romanian Intelligence, after he defected to the United States in the late 1970s. He was the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer to come to the West, and his defection produced the total dismantling of the Romanian service, as well as the identification of a considerable number of KGB "sleepers," intelligence agents operating without official cover or diplomatic immunity.
He has lived in secret ever since, as befits a man who is the object of two death sentences that remain in effect.
It’s safe to say, few living persons know as much about Communist methods as he. No one has taught me so much. Ergo, it behooves us to pay close attention to everything he says, beginning with his worldwide bestseller Red Horizons, the finest account of Communist rule I have ever read. He and Ronald Rychlak have just epublished a short booklet in which he explains why he is very frightened about our future:
It’s required reading, especially for those who have convinced themselves that the presidential campaign is nothing more than a contest to see who can sustain the rudest diatribe against Donald Trump. General Pacepa thinks it’s really about a mortal threat to America’s uniquely successful democratic capitalism, and he provides a detailed history of international Communism to prove his point. He’s all for Trump:
[AmericanGreatness] The recent huge anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonstrations in several U.S. cities and on college campuses, as well as harassment and threats against Jewish Americans, surprised many Americans and the mainstream media.
But the truth is, if you were unaware of the rise in anti-Semitism and hostility toward the State of Israel from some segments of American society in recent years — especially on the Left — you either have not been paying attention or have been looking the other way.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently testified to Congress that Jews make up 2.4% of the U.S. population but have been the targets of 60% of religiously based hate crimes. But this figure was from before the outbreak of anti-Semitism in the U.S. after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel during which more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, many of them women and children who had been tortured and raped. Hamas also took more than 200 hostages from Israel back to Gaza. In the aftermath of this horrific attack, Jews in this country are facing threats to their personal security that can only be described as an emergency.
...Sadly, these hate crimes get very little press coverage, especially in the national media. This probably is because, in the American Left’s worldview of "intersectionality," diversity, equity, and inclusion, they refuse to include Jewish Americans as a protected group because of open anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel, and their alliance with radical Islamists, including radical Palestinian activists. To the Left: Gazan "civilians" are NOT responsible for Hamas and should not be harmed - despite being used as human shields, but American Jews should be punished for "the crimes" of Israel.
The recent pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests in American cities and on college campuses are the result of this leftist-Islamist alliance and their years of work to promote a false narrative of Palestinians as the victims of Israeli oppression. Many of the college students who recently signed letters blaming Israel for the atrocities committed by Hamas are mindless ignoramuses who don’t know where Gaza is and can’t spell the word "Israel." They can spell "ass" without grammarly?
...The recent surge in anti-Semitic incidents in our country did not happen in a vacuum or without warning. This problem has been festering for years in plain view. The media has known about this problem and ignored it. Politicians knew about it too and looked the other way. Democratic Party leaders tolerated supporters who spouted hatred of Jewish people and Israel because they wanted the votes of far-left progressives and assumed that Jewish Americans were a loyal voting block that would never leave them.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/11/2023 00:00 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Petr Akopov
[REGNUM] The global dominance of the United States (and the West as a whole) rests not only on the dollar and aircraft carriers, but also on such intangible things as the conviction of its moral superiority and the rigid setting of pragmatic goals. Americans read morals to the whole world and demonstrate unshakable obstinacy in achieving what they want.
All this was evident during the struggle for Ukraine. America declared that the duty of every freedom-loving country is to support independence and protect it from the bloody tyrant Putin, from Russian aggression, which threatens democracy and freedom not only in Europe, but throughout the world - and all highly moral people and peoples. And she promised to roughly punish Russia, preventing her from winning and depriving her of the opportunity to influence the future of Ukraine, which will be accepted into NATO and the EU, becoming part of the Western world.
Everything is clear and understandable, and no matter how much the rest of the world doubted the sincerity of American moralizing, it assumed that the Americans were seriously going to achieve their goals.
And then October 7th happened. The Israeli operation against Gaza, which began after the Hamas attack, hit not only American positions in the Middle East and the Islamic world - it suddenly caused enormous damage to the reputation and image of the United States around the world.
At first it turned out that all the lamentations of the Anglo-Saxons about the innocent Ukrainian victims of the bloody Putin were completely false: the thousands of Palestinian children and women killed in the very first weeks of Israeli bombing did not evoke any strong emotions among American leaders. “Israel has the right” not only to barbarically hit civilians, but even to refuse supplies of humanitarian aid and medicine that could save the lives of the wounded.
No one even mentions the introduction of sanctions against the Israeli leadership, a boycott of Israeli goods, and even more so sanctions against Israel as such. On the contrary, the Americans are sending weapons and billions of dollars to Israel. Because he is not the aggressor, but the defending party? But even the United States formally admits that Israel is preventing the creation of a Palestinian state. And the world majority simply considers Israel an occupying country that has been pursuing a policy of suppression and violence against the Palestinians for many decades, turning Gaza into something like an open-air concentration camp. And now those who have committed outright genocide there... And Biden won’t even reprimand him for all this?
Because it's different, they say in Washington. Putin and the Russians needed to be punished for their aggression, so that other dictators and bad countries would be discouraged from repeating after Russia and attacking their neighbors. And Israel is an eternal victim. And it doesn’t matter that he has occupied Palestinian territories for 75 years, occupied Syrian territories for half a century, invaded neighboring Lebanon several times, and is still striking at Lebanon and Syria. And he doesn’t face any sanctions for this - neither from the UN (because Western countries block them there), nor from the West. For a fraction of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades, for something like the attack on Lebanon in 2006, any other country in the world would have long ago been subjected to ostracism and sanctions from the West. But Israel’s long-term impunity is not dangerous for world democracy and freedom - it won’t teach anyone anything bad.
It’s not that the world didn’t know about such an American position before. But now its manifestation has very successfully overlapped with the loud song about “bloody Russia destroying Ukraine.” And it turned out that the world cannot listen to two American melodies that are so contradictory to each other at the same time - their ears wither. It is clear that the Americans cannot abandon Israeli motives, but then they will have to finish the Ukrainian tunes. And they don’t want that either. As a result, the whole world is convinced that the moral position of the United States is one big cynical lie.
Thus, nothing remains at all from the status of a moral mentor who has the right to shepherd peoples, and even within their own Western society, many citizens express sincere misunderstanding. Why can’t we protect Palestinian children, why are they worse than Ukrainian ones? Because ten times more of them were killed in a few days than during the entire war in Ukraine? Because they are killed by someone who is allowed to kill?
However, this cognitive dissonance is unique to the Western world. The rest of the world, the Global South, understands everything perfectly and refuses to continue listening to morality from the lips of the United States and the West. Moreover, due to the absolute incomparability of the methods of warfare between Russia and Israel, the non-Western world does not want to hear any more about “Putin’s crimes.” After all, the West has put the Russian president on the international wanted list for the mythical kidnapping of Ukrainian children and is not even discussing the possibility of prosecuting Netanyahu, who already has the blood of five thousand murdered Palestinian children on his hands.
But the collapse of the moral underpinnings of American hegemony is not the only consequence of what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The second blow was to faith in Americans' ability to set realistic goals and achieve them.
The fact that the United States could defeat Russia in Ukraine and bring Russia into NATO was still accepted by a large part of the world, because the West was so powerfully aligned with Kyiv, and calls the defeat of Russia its most important task. This is a clear goal - and the combined power of the West seems to make it, in principle, feasible. Even if not immediately, not soon, the United States will defend Ukraine and take it for itself.
But what goals does the United States set for itself in the case of Israel and Gaza? Only those that Israel sets for itself - to destroy Hamas and make Gaza safe for Israel.
Wait, asks the Global South, but these goals are unattainable: you can kill forty thousand Hamas fighters (and along the way another one hundred thousand civilians), but you cannot deport all Palestinians from Gaza. And Hamas, which, in essence, is a form of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, will be reborn again and will still be just as (and over time) more dangerous for Israel. The result of the massacre will only be even greater hatred of the entire Islamic world towards Israel and its patron, the USA...
Do we understand correctly, they ask in the South, that America's goal is to increase hatred towards it in the world? And in accelerating the decline of its influence both in the Middle East and in the world as a whole? Some strange goal... But why then did the United States so clearly align itself with Israel?
And then a terrible guess begins to occur to the Global South: what if the United States does not have any pragmatic goal of its own in the situation with Gaza? What if they are simply forced to support Israel because they have driven themselves into a dead end with decades of their own Middle East policy? That is, the States have no strategy - and the tail, that is, Israel, is simply wagging the dog?
This conclusion immediately makes us think about what is happening in Ukraine: what if American goals are unattainable there too? Russia is not the Palestinians, not the divided Arab world, or even Iran (which the US is intimidating with its navy, warning it not to help Gaza with the help of pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon and Syria).
It is becoming increasingly clear in the world that for Russia in Ukraine we are talking about a fundamental issue for it - preventing the Atlanticists from seizing its western lands. And its stakes are much higher than the Western ones; the United States will never go as far in the conflict over Ukraine as Russia is capable of going. So, maybe the United States itself does not believe in its ability to hold Ukraine? Maybe they are only instilling in the Europeans dependent on them the need to “stand to the end” against Russia in Ukraine?
Moreover, perhaps the goal set by the Americans in Ukraine (Atlanticization) was initially unattainable? Just like the Israeli goal of “destroying Hamas” that they now support?
That is, it turns out that the Americans have forgotten how to not only defend their positions in the world (for example, they are being squeezed economically by China), but also can no longer formulate achievable goals?
That is, American hegemony is really leaving irrevocably?
Moral bankruptcy due to too blatant double standards and strategic myopia due to attempts to contain the uncontainable - all together will be the death knell of American hegemony. The world now looks at America in a new way. And what he sees inspires him neither respect nor fear. Because this is truly the collapse of the world, American style.
Next year, this collapse will also consolidate a new act of internal political unrest in the United States itself. But that is another story.
#2
In your dreams Petr. Once IDF squashes Gaza, all your Global South (which sincerely believes that Israel is USA sock puppet) will start evaluating their position. Because the only thing that collection of savages & gangsters understands is superior force unhesitatingly applied.
p.s. You Russkies really believe that Russia's Muslims are now your allies?
While good analysis of any major news story should not accept on face value any claims by the participants, it most certainly must not accept the claims of a source known to lie.
[Jpost] Hours after Hamas’s terror attack on the State of Israel, the attack on the Jews of the Diaspora began. Hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestinians took to the streets with the message that the State of Israel is a murderous state that has no right to exist. Swastikas returned to the demonstrations and took us eighty-five years to the Kristallnacht pogrom marked yesterday on November 9. On that date, November 9, 1938, a mob that had been brainwashed for years under the Nazi propaganda machine took to the streets and murdered 91 Jews, burned and smashed 1,400 synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia.
...Nevertheless, there are points of light opposite the enormous darkness and the wave of hatred sweeping through Europe and the United States. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer declared that the call ‘Palestine will be liberated from the Jordan River to the sea’ would be considered incitement to murder and would be a criminal offense. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a sweeping ban on Hamas activity in the country and said regarding the antisemitism that has raised its head in Germany: “In times like these, it should be very clear: antisemitism cannot be tolerated in any way. The antisemitism we see at the demonstrations requires a tough political response. There is no place for antisemitism in Germany.”
These responses are welcome but are not enough. What is needed is a more aggressive and harsh response by Western governments and law enforcement agencies against those who riot against Jews, deface homes, and those who sow fear among Jews on the streets and on campuses. The normalization of calls to destroy the State of Israel must stop now before it is too late. First they came for the Jews - but only first. Muslims in the West exhibit their power
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/11/2023 10:25 ||
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Chirping the talking points from his Obama note.
[Breitbart] Newly-confirmed Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. is pressuring Israel to give up on the idea of eliminating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, claiming a prolonged war risks turning more of the Palestinian population into terrorists.
More? I don’t think that’s possible.
Gen. Brown, whose nomination stalled amid concerns about his “woke” record — including support for Black Lives Matter radicals and racial promotions in the military — expressed skepticism despite rapid Israeli gains on the ground against Hamas.
The Times of Israel reported:
The top US military official indicated Thursday that Israel will have a harder time eradicating Hamas the longer its military campaign in the Gaza Strip drags out and the more civilians that are killed in the process.
…
“That’s why when we talk about time — the faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” he said.
A senior Israeli official retorted to The Times of Israel that if the Israel Defense Forces is forced to work faster, it has less time to carry out operations surgically and in a manner that limits civilian casualties.
At first, President Joe Biden said that Israel had a “right” and a “duty” to respond to Hamas terror. He also visited Israel to show support in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks. But Biden has begun to backtrack amid pressure from Arab- and Muslim-American voters, as well as pro-Palestinian members of his administration. He has demanded longer “pauses” in Israeli military activity, and now members of his administration, like Brown, are hinting at stopping short of eliminating Hamas in Gaza.
For many Israelis, the question of allowing Hamas to persist is a non-starter: the brutality of the October 7 attacks made clear that Israel cannot live alongside a territory run by the terror group. And giving up would send a signal of weakness across the region.
#4
If Israel was smart they should completely eliminate Hamas and turn directly toward Hezbollah…. When the biggest losers in the Mideast since 1979 give you advice I suggest doing the exact opposite for victory.
[BehindTheBlack] Before Israel began its full scale ground assault on Gaza and the Hamas tunnels two weeks ago, the general consensus from practically every expert interviewed or writing about the attack assumed it would be long, hard, and difficult, taking many months before Israeli troops were able to take control of the Gaza strip and render Hamas impotent. Which, IMO, explains why Biden's admin was so slow to constrain Israel - thought they've plenty of time.
...All the experts generally predicted the offensive would take months, and would involve huge casualties on the Israeli side.
I however predicted that the offensive, though not easy, would unfold far faster than these predictions.
...Why did I get it right, and these military experts get it wrong?
Before I answer that question we must also look at one other fact. Since the start of the offensive the mainstream media, including the links above, have consistently accepted on face the high and terrible casualty numbers — numbering so far over 10,000 with 40% claimed to be children — given to them by the same Hamas health organization that had falsely claimed Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 people (Israel didn’t bomb the hospital, it was a Hamas rocket. It also didn’t hit the hospital but its parking lot. The casualties from the rocket are now estimated to be between 10 to 50.)
No reliable news source should even repeat any further claims made by such demonstratively unreliable source, and if they do, the claims should be carefully framed as very unreliable.
That distrust should be underlined by the general absurdity of these Hamas casualty claims. Based on the fighting and the number of Israel casualties and the various reports, it appears no more than 1,000-2,000 people have so far died — from both sides — and it is very likely almost none have been children considering Israel’s never-ending relentless effort to avoid civilian deaths.
The media however has routinely shown little if any skepticism of Hamas’s claims. For example, this is how Reuters reported the numbers yesterday:
Palestinian officials said 10,569 people had been killed as of Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.
No caveats, no sense of any skepticism of the Hamas claims. In fact, the entire Reuters article depends highly on Hamas sources, and takes them all at their word, despite the fact that we know they lie, and their claimed numbers make no sense if you spend even a few seconds thinking about them.
And it is here you have the answer to my question above. Even if we assume the experts and these news sources are trying to do an honest job, they themselves have either been conned or have fooled themselves into accepting Hamas’s claims in all things. Hamas says Israel killed thousands? It must be true! Hamas claims it is a powerful fighting force well prepared to maintain a guerrilla war against Israel for years. It must be true! Hamas has a noble cause and Israel is an occupier. It. must. be. true!
...While good analysis of any major news story should not accept on face value any claims by the participants, it most certainly must not accept the claims of a source known to lie. And yet, the mainstream press and the experts it has relied on have accepted and continue to accept what Hamas tells them, with no skepticism, to the point that several media sources (Reuters, CNN, AP, and the New York Times) allowed themselves to be used by Hamas as propaganda outlets. Their blind passion to get the story combined with their willingness to repeatedly accept the words of an organization not only known to repeatedly lie but to rape, torture, and slaughter women, children, and babies caused them to misread the situation badly.
Others might not be so kind, and will instead say this poor analysis was because many of these news organizations and the experts they relied on have taken sides. They see Hamas as the good guy and victim, and Israel as the bad guy and oppressor. Thus, their analysis is warped because they assume Israel is lying and Hamas is telling them the truth. The Woke are the enemy. Isis, Hamas, and every other pack of Marxist-Mohammedans wouldn't last for 5 minutes without the woke running interference for them!
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
11/11/2023 00:00 ||
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While good analysis of any major news story should not accept on face value any claims by the participants, it most certainly must not accept the claims of a source known to lie.
#5
CIA right up there in the "too good to check" category.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/11/2023 10:22 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Source reliability
Rating Description
A Reliable - No doubt about the source's authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency. History of complete reliability.
B Usually reliable - Minor doubts. History of mostly valid information.
C Fairly reliable - Doubts. Provided valid information in the past.
D Not usually reliable - Significant doubts. Provided valid information in the past.
E Unreliable - Lacks authenticity, trustworthiness, and competency. History of invalid information.
F Reliability unknown - Insufficient information to evaluate reliability. May or may not be reliable.
Information credibility
Rating Description
1 Confirmed by independent Sources - Logical, consistent with other relevant information, confirmed by independent sources.
2 Probably true - Logical, consistent with other relevant information, not confirmed.
3 Possibly true - Reasonably logical, agrees with some relevant information, not confirmed.
4 Doubtfully True - Not logical but possible, no other information on the subject, not confirmed.
5 Improbable Not logical, contradicted by other relevant information.
6 Difficult to say - The validity of the information can not be determined.
[FOX] The Vatican released a document Wednesday affirming that individuals suffering from gender-identity disorders are allowed to be baptized or be named as godparents under specific circumstances.
The document is an official response to a dubia submitted by Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro seeking guidance on the issue. It was propagated by the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Pope Francis.
However, in a somewhat ambiguous clarification, the guidance specifies that in order for individuals with gender-identity afflictions to be baptized, it must not cause "scandal" or "disorientation."
This same stipulation applied to their eligibility to act as godparents or witness marriages, according to the Vatican.
#5
A person created in gods image CHOOSES to pervert the image and can receive blessing. Sounds like the Advesary is winning on all fronts. TRUE Catholics really have a lot to think about on this one.
#8
i stopped giving credence to the RC church when, at age 11, i was asked to give my milk money to a visiting missionary,and i queried why dont you sell some of this (ornaments,cups) stuff and i was struck with a large stick.
If anything, religion exemplifies, and denounces, an ideal behavior. Those religions existing today put forward those behaviors which allowed its followers to survive. Argue about those merits from different angles, but erase the code of conduct and the religion as represented no longer exists.
Even with the bending The Vatican has done, especially recently, I would still not qualify as an honest Catholic, any more than I would qualify as an honest Engineer or Girl Scout, and I'm fine with that. Why are you not?
#13
From another side, what you are saying is that if anyone can be ----------, then everyone already is (that). From my religious beliefs, and I find that highly insulting.
#23
Here's the problem for all the conservative/ traditional Catholics: You DO believe that the Pope is the visible head of the church and that the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church resides in him. So you HAVE to follow his teaching.
If you can't do that, you are a Protestant. Welcome to the party.
Posted by: Tom ||
11/11/2023 18:49 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
