Friday, October 13, 2017

The Saker — Trump goes full shabbos-goy


The American Century? Or Twilight of the Empire?

The Vineyard of the Saker
Trump goes full shabbos-goy
The Saker

5 comments:

Tom Hickey said...

There's an article in Wikipedia on it.

Antisemitism in Russia refers to acts of hostility against Jews in Russia and the promotion of antisemitic views in the country since the end of the Soviet Union. In recent years, particularly since the early 2000s, levels of anti-semitism in Russia have been low, and steadily decreasing.[1][2] However, there have still been incidents of antisemitism recorded.[3]

Saker distinguishes between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. I am with him on that. I am not anti-Semitic but I am anti-Zionist. There are plenty of liberal Jews that are anti-Zionist, too.

However, this needs to be qualified as the following shows.

ReformJudaism.org
The Mistaken Equivalency of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism
Rabbi Stanley Ringler , 12/21/2016

Judaism is a religious and cultural tradition that one is usually born into, and those with Jewish heritage are considered Jews, regardless of whether they practice, are atheists, or convert to other religions. Anti-Semitism is generally genetically based.

Zionism is a theologically based political position. Some but not all Jews are Zionists and some non-Jews are also Zionists or support Zionism in some way.

Not all Jews agree with the policies of the hard-right Zionist government of Israel at present.

Neither do all Zionist Jews, a group to which Rabbi Ringler belongs. He opposes the ultra-Orthodox and Likud hard-liners.

So anti-Zionism needs to be qualified.

Personally, I am against the policy of the present government of Israel, and past governments also, to the degree that they suppressed the Palestinian people in the name of what I regard as an absurd position based on the idea that the God of the Hebrew scriptures promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people for all time to come. It's just nonsense in my view. In my view crimes against humanity have been committed based on it, and even fellow Jews have compared it with Nazism.

While this is my major objection, I am also opposed to the concept of religious states in general, which I regard as retrograde and reactionary — in effect, apartheid states. I would not set foot in one. I recognize however, that traditionalism is opposed to liberalism and it is illiberal to try to impose liberalism on others. History has a liberal bias and time will sort this out. However, liberals should actively oppose what many view as an unacceptable extreme of traditionalism.

I am a traditionalist in many ways while also being a liberal with a left libertarian leaning. My position is nuanced. There is room for a lot of political views in the forum of ideas.

What concerns me most as an American is that the US is being dragged into wars and policies in the Middle East by people with undue influence, both American and foreign. This is the real danger that the US faces rather than cocked-up Russiagate. Trump is dangerous not because he is in bed with Putin but rather with Netanyahu. Supporting theocracies like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states against democratic Iran is illiberal and un-American, and I would also say crazy from the political and military standpoints.

It seems that the US learned exactly nothing from all the fiascos since WWII. The only thing that has saved the US is its position of strength after WWII. But that is three quarters of a century ago and the world has changed.


Matt Franko said...

Its the oil Tom....

We are moving towards HEVs and EVs and it has accelerated this year... once we are off the oil it is going to create a situation where our foreign relations with Israel are going to be the sole issue in our relations with the whole rest of the region and it will have to be sorted out at that time for sure...

Tom Hickey said...

Partially true, Matt.

But in the overall context of geopolitics and geostrategy, the US views its only real competitor, hence its chief adversary, as China. Owing to the size of China, the US has a limited window of opportunity to deal with China before China becomes a steam roller on the international scene.

The way the chessboard is configured, the plan is first to remove the "axis of evil," Syria, Iraq, Iran and NK.

The US already controls what happens in Afghanistan. This opens up Central Asia to US penetration, threatening Russia and China.

Russia is next on the list.

With Russia out of the way and the US in Central Asia, the US military would on on the Western border of China, and after doing NK, the US would also be on the Korean border with China with China also hemmed in by the 7th fleet. Then China could easily be picked off if it didn't capitulate.

This may seem like a conspiracy theory to those that don't study international relation and military strategy, but to those that do and know how these people think, it's obvious. Of course, it is obvious to the military strategists in other countries as well. In addition, US experts publish on this. It's hardly a secret. Note in this regard that DJT has been meeting with Henry Kissinger lately.

wilwon32 said...

MNE commentators may find the following article of interest:

The initial several paragraphs are indicated:

"A crash course on the true causes of “antisemitism”

http://thesaker.is/a-crash-course-on-the-true-causes-of-antisemitism/

This article was written for the Unz Review.

This is a topic which has had so much written about it that you could fill an entire city library with books entirely dedicated to this topic. Marx took a shot at it. As did Sartre. There were, of course, also plenty of good books written on this topic, but rather than list them all, I want to suggest a few simple common sense points and then go to what I consider an authoritative explanation of this thing we call “antisemitism” and which, of course, has nothing to do with Semites.

So first, let’s dump this silly term and replace it by a simple and straightforward one: judeophobia. Just like any other phobia (say, for example, russophobia) the phobia of X is the 1) fear and/or hatred of X. Some people hate Jews, others fear them (think of the “fear of the Jews” in the Scripture), some do both. So judeophobia seems both logical and uncontroversial to me.

Second, it is a truism to say that everything in the universe has a cause. That includes phobias. Including russophobia and judeophobia. For example, I would be the first person to admit that there are objective characteristics of the Russian people which makes other people fear and hate them. Like the fact that all western attempts at conquering Russia have failed. Or that the Russians have always, and still are, rejecting the Papacy. Just these two factors will create plenty of russophobia in the West, for sure.

So, the next thing we can ask ourselves is what is it in Jews which causes judeophobia. Alas, before I look into this, I need to clarify a number of assumptions I make.

The first one is that Jews are not a race or ethnicity. To prove that, I defer to Shlomo Sand’s book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. As I explained elsewhere, Jews are a tribe: A group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or leave (Gilad Atzmon). In other words, I see “Jewishness” as a culture, or ideology, or education or any other number of things, but not something rooted in biology. However, I also fully agree with Atzmon when he says that Jews are not a race, but that Jewish culture/politics/ideology is racist (more about that later).

"

Tom Hickey said...

I had read that. I think that the Saker is a good political and military analysts worth reading. However, when he ventures into other matters, often involving religion, he is not an authority and I find his views less helpful. He does quite a few posts on religious subjects — he is Russian Orthodox — and they are worth looking at from the POV understanding that mindset.

Anti-Semitism is a type of prejudice involving psychological, social, historical and religious factors. Experts in these fields have examined this phenomenon in depth and attempted to explain it and account for it psychologically, sociological, historically, etc.

Prejudice. whether it be racial, ethnic, religious, etc, is based on perceived difference. Bias against difference is an evolutionary trait involved in survival, so its "infrastructure" runs deep. It's in the operating system, so to speak. Various superstructures are built on that infrastructure, often based on geography and history.

Because kinship and bias against difference are evolutionary traits, everyone is subject to bias in some form. Being intelligent, human can rise above their biases and prejudices, but not entirely.

Moreover, psychologists know that phobias are biases that are difficult to overcome. For example, humans naturally recoil from snakes. There is even a biblical story to explain this. But most are not phobic about snakes. Some are and that is problem for people living in areas with a lot of snakes. Some people are likely phobic to snakes also but don't experience it since they are never exposed to them. Biases are latent and relatively benign in the absence of proximity, but proximity triggers them. As the world shrink owing to transportation and communications technology, proximity increases and biases come to the fore.

Anti-semitism, racism, ethnic prejudice, etc, are endemic and they create "issues" for a liberal society, which is in principle based on tolerance. Political correctness masks a lot of this bias, since there are social strictures on expressing it publicly other than in in-groups.

All societies of any size are comprised of a variety of in and out groups. Liberal societies attempt to minimize the social, political and economic effects of this. However, these societies are only successful to a degree since bias cannot be eliminated by either custom or law, even is prejudice is socially deprecated and discrimination made illegal.

A huge problem is arising now with the rise of traditionalist populism, which is challenging political correctness as well as social mores concerning expression of basis. In fact, traditionalists argue that this is illiberal and infringes on their right to free expression.

This is not an American problem, or a British problem, etc. It is now an international phenomenon. This can be viewed as a consequence of liberal globalization.

It is probably good in the long run, since it puts sensitive issues on the table and forces dealing with them instead of being in denial of them. This is not going to be an easy transition to a globalized world based on liberal principles. For this reason alone, the Western elite is foolish to think that liberalism can be imposed.

History has a liberal bias and over time, these now uncomfortable matters will get sorted out. But it is likely to be a painful process.