Category Archives: America

UPDATED (12/17): NEW COLUMN: Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?

America, Constitution, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

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Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come ~ilana

To refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazans—also the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane ~ilana

NEW COLUMN IS “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority“. Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?” It was featured on The New American, at The Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity,” and the Mises Institute’s Power & Market.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

I thank all my publishers.

I did some simple math—whose core truth obtains, although the numbers are already out of date, given the scale of the carnage. My editor provided another ratio, at the end, here  https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/ , which speaks to the proportionality imperative of Just War Theory, sundered by Israel.

Please consider that my last four tracts on Gaza, and that scroll of a blog, “Constantly UPDATED (12/13): ‘Total Warfare’ On GAZA: War Against Civilians Is War On Civilization“—all anatomizing the war on Gazans: These are tremendously painful to write, as a Jew and a former fierce defender of Israel.

But to refuse to bear witness to the war on Gazans—also the defining event of 2023 and the decade, twinned with COVID—is to be inhuman, insane, incoherent. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in such contradiction was to be less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.

Excerpt:

“… Force-fed the fiction of the IDF as the most ethical fighting force in the universe; I set about to conduct a proportional, if limited, comparison. I compare like with like, albeit in limited but significant theatres of war: Israel’s offensive in Gaza against “Hamas,” in late 2023, to America’s onslaught in Fallujah against the Iraqi resistance, in 2004.

The battle in Fallujah is considered “the deadliest battle involving U.S. Marines since Vietnam.” “Eighty-two U.S. servicemembers died during the street-by-street, house-by-house effort to clear Al Qaeda from the city.” Officially, it is described as a “battle to retake the key city of Fallujah from a violent insurgency that was taking root across Iraq after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein.”

Before the American invasion of Iraq, Fallujah was a compact city of about 400,000 people. “Around 700 Iraqi civilians were killed over the course of the 2004 fight for Fallujah.”

Gaza’s population is about 2.4 million strong. The administrative chaos in war-time Gaza would hamper accurate records-keeping. That considered—and not counting individuals buried beneath the rubble—approximately 15,000 Gazans have been killed by Israel. (Haaretz, Israel News, Friday, December 2, 2023)

Let’s extrapolate:

Were Fallujah as populated as Gaza (2.4 million), the United States Marines would have killed approximately 4,200 Iraqi souls. This is a far cry from the Israel Defense Forces’ butcher’s bill of 15,000 civilians dead in Gaza—and climbing.

Were Gaza as small as Fallujah (400,000); the Israelis, befitting their butcher’s bill so far, would still have killed at least 2,500 souls to our Marines’ 700. Ceteris paribus, naturally.

Let that sink in.

On the numbers, I have been exceedingly charitable to the Israelis, given that their victims, buried beneath the rubble, are still mostly unaccounted for, and considering that the IDF resumed hostilities against civilians on December 1.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. militaries come in here for rough treatment. The fulminations of the Israel Firsters stateside aside, however, some American patriotism is owed amid the sorrow over Israel’s barbaric blitzkrieg.

Damning with faint praise though this may be, Americans, in the persons of our U.S. Marines in Fallujah—in the dubious theater of another unjust war—were righteous, compared to the monstrous Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. …

… THE REST is here: “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Barbaric Blitzkrieg Highlights US Marine’s Superiority.” Or, “Gaza Vs. Fallujah: Just How Vampiric Are The ‘Vaunted’ Israel Defense Forces?”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

The complete column is always posted eventually at IlanaMercer’s Weekly Column Archive.

UPDATE (December 17, 023):

These people at ZeroHedge, December 17, 2023, are, well, dishonest. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/4th-generation-devastation-west-has-been-targeted-cowardly-globalist-mind-war

Over the pages of The New American, first, this column mocked the Fourth Generation Warfare categorization—and ostensible benevolence. On December 4, 2023, I applied this the 4th Generation Warfare vs. 3rd Generation Warfare analysis to the current global woke military.

In an intellectually honest America, my iteration of the idea would have been credited on Zero Hedge:

In their recent military campaigns, America and Israel have waged what to the inexpert, keen observer is largely old-fashioned, Third-Generation Warfare—a blitzkrieg, by any other name, against civilian populations.
The ostensible use of “tanks, mechanized infantry, and close air support” to “collapse an enemy’s defenses” are really unthinking, disproportionate shows of brute military force, reliant on massive amounts of materiel.
Yet when military mavens predicted and depicted the next form of warfare; it was the contours Fourth-Generation Warfare that they were tracing. Fourth-Generation Warfare was to be the distinguishing characteristic of the modern military. Boosted by technology, “advanced” armies would be relying on “small, highly mobile elements, composed of very intelligent soldiers, armed with high technology weapons.” These precision units and attendant weapons were expected “to range over wide areas seeking critical targets.”
In addition to technology; predicted and depicted was a military whose central impetus was augmented by ideas. In America, the controversial changing of hearts and minds, historically, has included fomenting coups around the world with the connivance afforded by psychological operations.
Near as I can tell, Fourth-Generation war was meant to be smart; to see Mind dominate and direct materiel.
What is underway in Gaza, at 2023’s end, however, is the very opposite. I see madness for what it is. Dead in the ruins of Gaza is the Israeli collective conscience—together with thousands-upon-thousands of Gaza’s civilians; dead or displaced for decades to come. The razing and ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden, his Uniparty accomplices and a complicit West: This appears to capture the kind of Third-Gen “capability” delivered by the modern, standing, Woke military.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/  (December 4, 2023)

* Screen pic of Gazans reduced to pre-industrial life, scrounging.

Australian Jews: Productive Merchant Class, Mostly. Maimonides Would Have Approved.

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Business, Canada, Capitalism, Communism, Judaism & Jews, Neoconservatism, The West

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Via Rob Stove, PhD., Australian author, editor extraordinaire and accomplished organist, come a few reflections, “stray remarks,” about Jews and Judaism in Australia. This little contextual analysis undermines the pat, crude, crass theorizing, regarding the immutable characteristics of the Global Jew, spewed by provincial ignoramuses like the American Andrew Uglin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores ~Rob Stove

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent in Australia to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home ~Rob Stove

From what I can determine, Australian Judaism is as different from American Judaism as it’s possible for two Jewish groups to be who share the English language.

Whenever I happen to read (or read about) Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Podhoretz, I realize that I really am confronted with a foreign country. I get the same feeling when I read Mordechai Richler describing Canada.

One factor separating Australian Jews from American Jews is that there are very few of the former. Of course Australia’s total population – 23 million or so – is itself tiny by American standards. Yet the Jewish proportion of Australia’s total population is a mere 0.4 percent (approximately 100,000 persons).

There were Jews in Australia from the start of white settlement in 1788 (several of the original convicts are known to have been Jewish). At least one synagogue existed in each of the biggest Australian cities from the 1840s onwards (some of these are still used), which suggests that even before the smallish influx of German-Jewish immigrants after the 1848 revolutions’ defeat, the Jewish community had grown to a size making such things viable.

But (and here’s the second big difference between the Australian and the American situation) Australia never had country clubs. Nor did it have the Ivy League. A numerus clausus (Jewish Quota) against Jews – whether it’s established by law, as with Admiral Horthy’s Hungary, or established by “gentlemen’s agreements”, as with Harvard – is scarcely going to be enforceable in a country like Australia, where (a) Jews hardly exist, (b) most of the few Jews who do exist have no discernible desire to enter universities or the professions in the first place.

I don’t wish to suggest that there was no Australian prejudice whatsoever against Jews. Individual Jews were probably given a hard time by individual Gentile malcontents.

But the number of Jews at the highest levels of Australia’s politics, judiciary, and military from the 1880s until now (Sir John Monash is the most famous instance of Jewish military success) implies overall Gentile apathy rather than overall Gentile hostility. A similar conclusion can be inferred from the fact that even though Australia was hit almost as hard by the Great Depression as any other country in the world, and it had the occasional demagogue (in particular Jack Lang, twice Premier of New South Wales), it never had a Father Coughlin.

The vast majority of Australian Jews have been traditionally involved in small business. They’ve been quite often chefs, quite often café owners, very often chocolatiers, very often jewelers, watchmakers and pawnbrokers; sometimes accountants, sometimes owners of travel agencies, occasionally owners of bookstores and music stores.

What they’ve almost never been, are devoted readers of magazines like Commentary. (The almost total lack of Jewish immigration from Tsarist Russia could account for this.) There’s no equivalent here to the New York Jewish Intellectuals. Any Australian who maintained that John Howard supported the Iraq invasion because the Chief Rabbi of Australia told him to, would be regarded as a candidate for the nearest mental home.

Nor are Australian Jews particularly prominent in the wider culture industry. As far as I can tell, our movie and theatrical milieux are very largely Gentile. Our communist parties did have occasional Jewish leaders – notably the Aarons dynasty – but the bulk of Australian commie activists were former Catholic altar-boys with Irish names!

These stray remarks demonstrate, I hope, that generalizing about the Australian Jewish experience from the example of the American Jewish experience would be a fool’s errand.

***********

Melbourne-based historian and organist R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times and of a forthcoming book (When We Were Kings, scheduled for 2024) about Europe’s monarchist movements between the two world wars. Dr. Stove’s  innumerable disastrous career decisions include a total refusal to regard Rod Dreher* as the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived.

*Image is of General Sir John Monash

Editor: *Barely A Blog has an archive dishing on Rod Dreary. Read the milder stuff before you broach Juvenal Early‘s “The Dissident Right Has An Idiocracy Problem.” You’ve been warned!

UPDATE III (8/8/023) Ukraine Destroyed On The Altar Of The Imploding, Morally and Fiscally Bankrupt American Empire

America, Bush, Canada, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Ilana Mercer, Republicans, Russia

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WIN OR DIE, DUMMIES is what Ukrainians are being instructed by the US, its NATO marionettes and the treacherous leader Zelensky, who is protected by the aforementioned forces ~ilana

The depravity—the immorality—of Ukraine’s America-engineered existential reality … ~ilana

Four minutes and 21 seconds into his YouTube interview with Aaron Mate, John Mearsheimer, a utilitarian political scientist, says this: “Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, made it clear that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO until it had prevailed in the conflict [with Russia].”

Mearsheimer addresses the purely pragmatic, utilitarian aspect of the reality into which Ukraine was thrust. It cannot win the war with Russia. Therefore, deduces Mearsheimer, Ukraine will not be brought into the NATO alliance.

True. This much we all knew.

WIN OR DIE, DUMMIES

UPDATE (8/3/023): This depravity—the immorality—of Ukraine’s America-engineered existential reality was seconded by one Dan Sullivan, Republican representative from Alaska.

Following a recent NATO Summit, which, naturally, determined that US stooge and puppet Ukraine would not be rewarded with NATO membership—the Fix News outpost, another fount of establishment deceit, entertained Sullivan for a comment.

Sullivan—with a demented grin you’d expect to see on a patient with end-stage syphilis (a career-destroying line I used on Genghis Bush in 2003)—offered that Ukraine has not won yet. The question was not Ukraine’s admission into NATO, said this Republican reptile; the question was winning against Russia.

WIN OR DIE, DUMMIES is what Ukrainians are being told by the US, its NATO marionettes and the treacherous leader Zelensky, who is protected by the aforementioned forces.

UPDATE III (8/8/023): August 7 was Joni Ernst’s time to make the fur fly. (Cynicism alert.) Ernst, Republican representative from Red Oak, Iowa, proves, in the end, that it is as Dr. Johnson said: “There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.” Neoconservative or neoliberal; louse or flea, a pest is a pest.

The words of this particular political pest were the as follows:

Once Republicans explain to us, Americans, the nature of the mission to Iraq, oops, Ukraine—yes, where have I heard such GOP Machiavellian talk before? Rhetorical—we The People will get behind the mission.

“Shock-‘n-awe of the old days,” said Ernst, will garner support for the war in Ukraine.

Oh, and, if this following cliche is new to you: Ernst thinks that our “adversaries do not fear us.” No worries, Ernst. On August 5, also on Fox News, Victor Davis Hanson critiques Obama for the few good things 44 did: returning to Iran monies stolen by the American government. Diplomacy with Russia.

VDH has been avidly cheering for the Ukrainian project—and seems unable to quiet his rhetoric about American foreign-policy Manifest Destiny. His first instinct was to support the Ukrainian endeavor and he holds the most mundane neoconservative views on Russia. Being Neocon, wrong and immoral earns America’s pundits plaudits aplenty.

The tête-à-tête between these two effetes—Fox News’ interchangeable anchor and Sullivan, archetypal Republican—revealed a tidbit that backs my longtime theorizing about Canada: That country is not too serious about tyranny. Canada makes noises about following Uncle Sam. It badly wants to be the USA when it grows up. But it always falls flat. Kudos. Thus, talk aside, Canada contributes minuscule sums to NATO.

In any case, the depravity—the immorality—of Ukraine’s America-engineered existential reality is that, the United States, via its NATO front, has used Ukraine, mercilessly dangling NATO membership before this poor nation, to attempt to dislodge Putin. Putin is a reactionary Russian patriot, natural ally of any sovereign, conservative nation-state. The radical American objective is to make Russia over in the image of America: an abiding Jacobin stronghold at heart.

UPDATE (8/4/023):  As this writer remarked in commentary about “America’s radical, foreign-policy Alinskyites, in March, 2021, “Certain national-conservative governments in East Europe should be natural allies to conservative policy makers, stateside, if such unicorns existed. Vladimir Putin’s, for example. Before his death, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of Russia’s bravest and most brilliant sons, praised Putin’s efforts to revive Russia’s traditional Christian and moral heritage. For example:

In October 2010, it was announced that The Gulag Archipelago would become required reading for all Russian high-school students. In a meeting with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Mr. Putin described The Gulag Archipelago as ‘essential reading’: ‘Without the knowledge of that book, we would lack a full understanding of our country and it would be difficult for us to think about the future.’ …
If [only] the same could be said of the high schools of the United States. (Via The Imaginative Conservative.)

For a long while, the Russian president patiently tolerated America’s demented, anti-Russia monomania. And, as America sank into the quicksands of what Cons call “Cultural Marxism”—I, since the get-go, have framed the new Western dispensation as anti-Whiteness—Putin’s inclinations have remained decidedly reactionary and traditionalist.

He prohibited public sexual evangelizing by LGBTQ activists. He comes down squarely on the side of the Russian Orthodox church, such as when vandals, the Pussy Riot whores, obscenely desecrated the cathedral of Christ the Savior. The Russian leader has also welcomed as refugees persecuted white South Africans, where America’s successive governments won’t even officially acknowledge that they’re under threat of extermination. Also, policies to stimulate Russian birthrates have been put in place by the conservative leader.

The command-and-control US Media have purged any news of peace talks with Russia. “Peace” is a dirty word in the Western Warfare State, for “war is the health of the state.” Ukraine, for its part, is led by a vainglorious fool. “Zelensky is a kept man, his flesh softer than sin under the khaki costume.” For all his Jewish-lineage boasts, Zelensky ought to know that,  “It’s biblical. “A leader who fails to haggle for the lives of his people is a failed leader.”

So, it has been ordained that Ukraine be destroyed on the alter of the imploding, degenerate, morally and fiscally bankrupt American Empire and its European zombie satellite states.

“The US is today running bigger deficits than ever.” According to gold bug Egon von Greyerz, “There is only one buyer of US debt – the Fed.” The last assertion is hard to verify, namely that nobody is now buying US debt. Nevertheless, this is entirely believable.

Articles Archive: https://www.ilanamercer.com/category/ukraine/

Mercer on Ukraine:

1. Neocons, Neolibs And NATO Inch Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, 01/29/2022: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/01/neocons-neolibs-nato-inch-us-closer-nuclear-war-russia/
2. Uncle Sam Still King Of All Invaders: Ukraine, Realpolitik And The West’s Failure: March 3, 2022 https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/
3. True Story: Russia Finds WMD In Ukraine! March 10, 2022 https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/true-story-russia-finds-wmd-ukraine/
4. It’s Biblical, Zelensky: A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People Has Failed https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/
5. U.S. Cancels Countries, Kills Ancient, Civilizing Concept Of Neutrality April 7, 2022 https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/04/u-s-cancels-countries-kills-ancient-civilizing-concept-neutrality/
6. Ukraine’s Azov Battalion: Nazis Or Just Nationalists? May 12, 2022 https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/05/ukraines-azov-battalion-nazis-or-just-nationalists/
7. “The D-Bomb, Realpolitik, Zelensky’s Self-Serving ‘Heroics’ & What ‘Mixed-Race’ Really Means” December 22, 2022 https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/12/the-d-bomb-realpolitik-zelenskys-self-serving-heroics-what-mixed-race-really-means/
8. “Oh, What Wonderful Wars: The West’s Lying Warlords,” March 10, 2023

Mercer “Hard Truth” Video Podcasts on Ukraine. Please Subscribe:

https://rumble.com/c/HardTruthPodcast
https://rumble.com/vx058f-true-story-russia-finds-wmd-in-ukrainehtml
https://rumble.com/vw897h-russia-to-us-on-ukraine-pot.-kettle.-black..html
https://rumble.com/vtea18-neocons-neolibs-and-nato-inch-us-closer-to-nuclear-war-with-russia.html
“Ukraine’s Azov Brigade: Nazis Or Just Nationalists?”
“The US Plan To Bleed Russia Dry”
“Steamrolled By The Abrams: Republican Cretins Swallow Classified-Doc Bait”
“Oh What Wonderful Wars: The West’s Lying Warlords”

* Image captured as screen picture, courtesy Latuff, 2022, Global Times, here

NEW COLUMN: Subpar Submersible: Woke Will Implode, On Land And Underwater

America, Conservatism, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Intelligence, Natural Law, Technology

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Truth to tell, the Titan resembled nothing so much as a ‘Hold My Beer’ contraption, assembled with parts as good as you get from Home Depot

…a carbon fiber cylindrical hull, topped and tailed with Titanium hemispheres. Titanium glued to carbon fiber with an epoxy-type resin and fastened with bolts: Just image the iffy quality of joiners that meld dissimilar materials under the pressure of 376 atmospheres! ~ilana

NEW COLUMN is “Subpar Submersible: Woke Will Implode, On Land And Underwater.” It is a feature on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American

You can read it now on IlanaMercer.com.

Excerpt:

… In hiring, Mr. Rush clearly prized the cool quotient over cool-headed competency.

OceanGate—which “sounds like a scam waiting to happen,” quipped engineer podcaster “Two Bit da Vinci”—was an outfit out of Everett, Washington. It had been aggressively marketing the Titan as a vessel fit for deep-sea exploration. Yet, rather than use a metal that withstands compression; for the main composite of their subpar submersible, the anti-white ageist brainiacs of OceanGate chose carbon fiber.

Some reports contend that “NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama helped build the lost Titanic submersible.” Charitably put, it is unclear how involved NASA engineers and the Washington State academic dumbassery were with Titan’s cool kids. Disavowals from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington notwithstanding; on this count, I intuitively believe Titan CEO Rush. Daily Mail alleges that Rush “had hired interns from Washington State University who … boast[ed that] … a PlayStation remote was used to run the Titan.”

Rush chose to use consumer electronics for a high-reliability application! In all likelihood, however, the Sony PlayStation controller would have been the more reliable node in the Titan’s intern-devised electrical network.

For it is quite clear that systemic, institutional rot now defines American institutions, commercial, civic and state. My 2011 book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot; Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa, warned, by way of an example, that ridding Eskom, a South African electricity public utility that once helped power the continent, of the best engineers—experienced white men—would plunge South Africa into darkness. So it has.

What is also clear is that the mission of the white-hating Deep-Sea techies of the Titan is shared by Deep Tech (aka Big Tech) in general: marginalize whites and the attendant issue of competency. …

… Contra Stockton Rush, when engineers in-the-know speak of the Titan; they speak of a lack of mechanical tests, an absence of a locator beacon; an indifference to the operational lifetime—namely cumulative, structural fatigue—of such an inherently rickety tube; all compounded by the submersible’s primary composite: carbon fiber. “Exotic in the world of materials,” carbon fiber is unsuited to the task of withstanding immense pressure.

… THE REST. READ  “Subpar Submersible: Woke Will Implode, On Land And Underwater” on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.