SVR is one of three Russian intelligence agencies; One of two for foreign intelligence.
[Regnum] The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has published a video message to Americans, for whom love for their homeland and the ideals of freedom are not an empty phrase, reminding them of the two countries' joint fight against Nazism.
“Against the backdrop of the US CIA’s clumsy attempts to recruit Russian citizens with the help of primitive video clips distributed on the Internet, depicting our country in the spirit of hackneyed Hollywood “cranberry movies,” the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is publishing on its official website an appeal to Americans for whom love for their homeland and the ideals of freedom are not an empty phrase,” the agency’s press bureau said in a statement.
It is noted that the destructive efforts of the CIA are futile, and the Russian and American peoples have not forgotten the glorious pages of the history of the joint fight against Nazism.
The department expressed confidence that there are many true patriots in the United States who do not accept support from the corrupt political clique in Kyiv.
“In our video message, we not only recall the past, but also offer options aimed at the future,” the SVR added.
#1
Does the tone of this article and video signal some kind of rapprochement between the USA and Russia? Smells like it, a whiff if nothing else. Also, I mistook the article about the SVR as one about SRV.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
02/07/2025 5:33 Comments ||
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#2
See Mike, you were hoping for 'Texas Flood'.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/07/2025 9:01 Comments ||
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#3
“Dammit, the KGB plot almost succeeded, if it weren’t for those dumb DOGE kids? Quick, Yuri, send out a message congratulating America for winning against the people wittingly and unwittingly doing out bidding.”
That’s the piece we must not forget: the totalitarian bureaucratic deep state, the March Through The Institutions, was literally a Communist plot that they started working in the 1930s, a century ago. So even if former KGB officer Vladimir Putin had turned away from that effort, it was petty clear from posts we watched here that someone over there is still trying to move it along.
#4
At the ultimate strategic level, consider the Kissinger 70's world view of a three-superpower world, and the tactic of changing the triangulation nexus. While the world if far more complex and there are fractures in the old coalitions, the core component still has significant validity. Only now it is the Russians who are the very junior partner, but are very vulnerable to persuasion to limp over to a more Western relationship, with emphasis on shared culture, religion, history, and ethnicity. Not alliance, but peaceful, commercial, co-existence with the West. The Sino-Soviet connection was always flawed and unnatural, driven by necessity, not preference, and now, it is infuriatingly insolent for Russians I suspect. This video may be the opening, soft gambit, and I think it will see it as such.
#5
That’s the piece we must not forget: the totalitarian bureaucratic deep state, the March Through The Institutions, was literally a Communist plot that they started working in the 1930s, a century ago.
Yes, tw. Joe Stalin gave communists a bad name so now they call themselves Democrats. Maybe you can lump RINOs and/or globalists in there too. Ironic, though, that they're the ones who want war with Russia.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/07/2025 13:54 Comments ||
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#6
There is that, my dear. But you are a more complex thinker than I.
#4
In just one example of $4 billion spending on Haiti less than 2% was spent for Haiti. The rest went for analysts, various middlemen, and of course studies.
Most USAID spending stays right here in the US. But it always ends up with organizations run by the "correct people."
Posted by: Difar Dave ||
02/07/2025 20:37 Comments ||
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#5
#2: "It was like SAW 47" Amidst huge amounts of layoffs at the agency, one staff member described to NPR how during a virtual staff meeting on Monday people started leaving one by one as their access was cut off.
The staffer said: 'It was like from a horror film', after the administration ordered at least 8,000 staffers and contractors onto permanent leave or furlough.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/07/2025 20:56 Comments ||
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#6
I hear landscaping is good therapy for that type of PTSD.
#9
They shut the whole thing down, except for about 250 who will probably move to State. Yeah, about 10% of their programs were useful (and will probably continue), but the other 90% was unaccountable graft.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Nikolay Antonov
[REGNUM] The fewer days remain before the "starvation death" of the recipients of USAID grants, the more interesting details emerge about who actually received them. The matter has already reached such monsters as the media company Politico, The New York Times and Associated Press. What can we say about the Ukrainian dog Patron, who sadly admitted on his page in a social network that "my cartoons, comics and books became possible thanks to the support of USAID."
The huge web that ensured US influence, the implantation of the narratives they needed, and the management of public opinion was created over decades through huge budgets. But this was not just a cashbox for distributing money, but a complex system that formed controlled elites, undermined state institutions, and prepared the ground for revolutions.
But how exactly did it work, where did it come from and why is it under attack today - we will figure it out further.
FACTORY OF "COLOR REVOLUTIONS"
When the John F. Kennedy administration created the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1961, the publicly stated goal sounded noble: to help Third World countries combat poverty, develop infrastructure, and improve their quality of life.
But the real meaning was different. USAID was originally a scalpel in the hands of the CIA, a subtle instrument for adjusting the political landscape of the world. The Cold War was in full swing, and the United States watched with alarm as the USSR effortlessly expanded its influence. Former French and British colonies in Africa were becoming independent one after another, and with independence came socialist self-awareness. Latin America was erupting with hotbeds of left-wing radical movements, and pro-Soviet governments were rising in Asia as well.
The Americans needed a means that would allow them not only to counteract these processes, but also to covertly control regimes, pushing them in the right direction. However, traditional methods – coups with the help of the CIA, financing military juntas and political assassinations – by that time no longer always worked. The world was becoming more sensitive to open interference.
Thus, the idea of “soft power” was born in the White House, which would later become the foundation of American geopolitics. The agency was supposed to become not only a donor, but also a curator. To create an environment in which politicians, journalists, activists and businessmen needed by the US would receive advantages over others. And this machine started up with amazing efficiency.
A CLASSIC EXAMPLE IS CUBA.
In the 1960s, the United States failed to directly intervene militarily on the Island of Freedom (the famous “Bay of Pigs Operation”), but this did not mean abandoning subversive activities. The new tool began to finance Cuban media (including illegal radio stations), which reported on the “real” state of affairs under Castro. In the 2000s, the agency went further and launched the “Cuban Twitter,” the social network ZunZuneo, which was planned to become a platform for coordinating protests.
To avoid suspicion, the financing scheme was hidden through Panamanian offshore companies and shell companies in Liechtenstein.
Another example is Chile, 1973. The government of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president, took the socialist path, which enraged Washington. USAID, together with the CIA, began investing in the “democratic opposition”: grants were received not only by opposition politicians, but also by trade unions, entrepreneurs, newspapers, and student movements.
So when General Augusto Pinochet staged his coup, everything was ready for it: the new press had already formed public opinion, the trade unions were divided, the younger generation saw salvation in the military dictatorship.
In Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, the agency worked through networks of NGOs, universities, youth movements, thus creating a “parallel society” that could be activated at the right moment. But the real evolution of USAID began in the 1990s, when the USSR collapsed. America realized: there was no longer a need to play hide and seek, it was possible to enter post-Soviet countries openly, in the format of “developing democracy.”
FAVORITE BRAINCHILD
Ukraine can rightfully be considered one of the main USAID projects, brilliantly adjusted by the “revolutions” in 2004 and 2014, and then finally consolidated by 2019, the year of the last elections. Here, American specialists created a controlled society, where every significant element of the system — from the media and courts to ministries and the president — was somehow connected to the donor structure.
The history of Ukraine's dependence on USAID began long before the Maidan. Already in the early 1990s, the first programs for "democracy development" entered the country through the agency. Grants were distributed generously: first for reforms, then for support of "civil society." And by the early 2000s, the agency was already directly managing entire sectors of Ukrainian politics and economics.
The first big test of the system was 2004 – the “orange revolution”, created, financed and brought to a victorious end by Western structures. By that time, the grantors had already been working closely for several years with journalists, activists and politicians who were soon to become the “face of change”.
In 1999, the agency began supporting Ukrainska Pravda, an online publication that became the main mouthpiece of the “progressive forces” attacking the power of President Leonid Kuchma. Dozens of other independent media outlets, from regional publications to national channels, were formed with money from USAID and the Soros Foundation.
A separate important area is “civil society.” Grants for systemic development were received by youth movements such as “Pora,” which literally copied the Serbian “Otpor,” the organization that led to the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic.
USAID, together with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Open Society, financed “activist trainings,” taught how to properly organize protests, conduct information attacks, create a “crisis of trust” in the government, and raised opinion leaders. “Independent” media outlets spread scandals about “falsifications,” hundreds of activists organized protests, and special structures provided legal protection for those “victimized by the government.”
Victor Yushchenko, brought to power through street protest, was a convenient figure: a man of the West, an economist with American connections, who worked in the Ukrainian National Bank with the support of international structures. Under him, the US received a completely controlled administration, but all the work had to be started again when Viktor Yanukovych came to power and began to restore ties with Moscow.
This was unacceptable for the United States, and they began to prepare a new coup, which was supposed to be final.
By 2013, Ukraine had created a system of governance that worked like clockwork. The USAID budget in the country at that time amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, which supported almost all leading publications and TV channels. At the same time, the Americans grew “independent” anti-corruption organizations, which after the coup in 2014 would become full-fledged (and parallel) government bodies, like the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
Legal control: In 2013, USAID began funding the DEJURE project, which took control of the judicial system. Through this mechanism, the “right” judges were appointed and those who could interfere were eliminated. An entire generation of future managers also grew up on grants, one of whom, journalist Mustafa Nayem, was the first to call for people to go to Maidan in November 2013. And then he became a people's deputy of Ukraine and deputy minister of infrastructure.
When the protests began in 2014, the US did not even have to intervene much – the mechanism was already in place. “Independent” media created the necessary picture, activists filled the square, controlled courts blocked the government’s decisions, and anti-corruption structures “legitimized” any accusations against it.
The new government in Kyiv immediately signed all the agreements Washington needed, opened the doors to Western corporations, began a policy of breaking with Russia and moving to the rails of a new ideology. And with the departure of USAID, Ukraine lost access to billions of dollars in infusions, the media found themselves on the brink of survival, and anti-corruption structures were left without funding. Panic began in a country built on grants and managed manually.
The only question now is who will be the first to admit that the entire Ukrainian “independence” is nothing more than an artificially created product that was supported by foreign funding.
TRUMP, UKRAINE AND COVID-19
A separate page in the Ukrainian project is how a fully controlled system was used as a tool in the fight against Donald Trump.
It was through Ukrainian grant structures that materials about the “connections” between Trump’s campaign headquarters and Russia were distributed, it was Ukraine that became the main supplier of compromising material for the Democrats, and it was through the hands of its “activists” that the Joe Biden administration dealt blows to its opponent, similar to the neutralization of the head of the Trump campaign headquarters, Paul Manafort.
In 2016, The New York Times, citing the Ukrainian NABU, reported that the name of Manafort was mentioned 22 times in the “black ledger” of the Party of Regions of former President Yanukovych. He allegedly received $12.7 million in cash from the party’s coffers. And now it turns out that the newspaper, the anti-corruption structure, and the “activists” who stirred up the scandal were all on the payroll of USAID.
An amazing coincidence.
And when the world plunged into the chaos of the pandemic in 2020, the American economy finds itself in deep crisis, millions of people lose their jobs, the stock market collapses, and the main victim is once again Donald Trump. His key trump card in the election, a successful economy, evaporates before our eyes.
But the real story comes later. Democrats are using Covid as an excuse to launch mass mail-in voting, a scheme that gave Biden seven million “surprise” votes that ultimately gave him victory.
How is this connected to USAID? Very directly. It was through the agency that hundreds of millions of dollars were allocated in 2019–2020 for “pandemic projects” related to monitoring, control, combating “disinformation” and “educating the public” about vaccination.
Moreover, while the US was engulfed in BLM protests and devastating lockdowns, it was USAID that funded Democrats’ preparations for mass mail-in voting. Through organizations affiliated with the agency, methodological recommendations were developed, tools for digital control of ballots were developed, and activists were trained who would later provide the Democratic Party with the votes it needed.
Now we are told that the agency has been pouring millions of dollars into biolabs around the world. Through grant programs, it has pumped money into projects related to the study of coronaviruses, funding research that was directly or indirectly aimed at manipulating pathogens.
Back in 2009, USAID launched the PREDICT program, one of its key initiatives officially aimed at “monitoring potential zoonotic disease threats.” Under the auspices of combating future epidemics, active work began with biolabs around the world. Among the project’s partners was EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that has donated millions of dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology since 2014.
This money went towards “enhancing the functions” of coronaviruses, which in scientific language means creating new, more dangerous strains.
By 2017, a USAID report clearly states that the PREDICT program had “successfully identified and classified 1,200 new viruses.” Among them were several strains of coronaviruses that, as it now turns out, may have served as the basis for the development of COVID-19.
Interestingly, the PREDICT program was shut down in 2019, a few months before the pandemic broke out. Why? According to the official version, funding for the project was stopped due to “achievement of key goals.” But if you remember that the pandemic began right after that, it seems that the goals were actually achieved — and “monitoring” turned into a real global epidemic.
It is not surprising that one of the first targets of the Republicans was USAID, now openly called a "criminal organization." Obviously, the current US president has every reason to take it under control. And this is far from just the liquidation of one organization. We are talking about dismantling the system of shadow control over entire states, which has accumulated colossal experience in management. So the question naturally arises: will the countries that have lived under his hand for years really be able to gain independence?
In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.
"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."
Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades.
This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.
While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.
"The beautiful thing about payment systems," noted a transition official watching their screens, "is that they don't lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail."
That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.
By 6 AM, Treasury's career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.
Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.
"Pull this thread," a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE's screens, "and the whole sweater unravels."
He wasn't wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point.
This wasn't just another transition. This wasn't just another reform effort. This was the start of something unprecedented: a revolution powered by preparation, presidential will, and technological precision.
The storm had arrived. And Treasury was just the beginning.
THE FOUNDATION
"Personnel is policy."
For decades, this principle, articulated by conservative strategist Troup Hemenway, remained more theory than practice. Previous administrations spent months, even years, trying to staff key positions. Trump's first term saw barely 100 political appointees confirmed by February 2017.
Every delay meant another victory for the permanent bureaucracy.
But this time was different.
While media focused on campaign rallies and political theater, a quiet army was being assembled. In offices across DC, veteran strategists mapped the administrative state's pressure points. Think tanks developed action plans for every agency. Policy institutes trained rapid deployment teams. Former appointees shared battlefield intelligence from previous administrations' failures.
By Inauguration Day, over 1,000 pre-vetted personnel stood ready—each armed with clear objectives, mapped legal authorities, and direct lines to support networks. This wasn't just staffing; it was a battle plan decades in the making.
"This is the new normal," Vice President JD Vance declared from his West Wing office, studying real-time data flows across agency systems. "He's having the time of his life," he added, referring to the President's relentless drive. "We've done more in two weeks than others did in years."
Read the rest at the link. I had to stop here — my heart is racing at serious aerobic levels— I’ll need a nap before I go back to find out how it ends.
[PJMedia] When the defendant entered the courtroom, he was dressed respectably in a blue button-down shirt and dark slacks. When his presence was announced, he stood up, said "Good morning," and gave all present a cheery wave. And thus began one of the most important trials of our age, although everyone involved is doing everything possible to ignore all the reasons why it is so important.
Hadi Matar
...Lebanese-American reared un-Islamicly in New Jersey by a single mother. He went to Hezbollahstan a few years ago to visit his dad and came back primed for Shiite jihad. Despite failing to kill Mr. Rushdie, the government of Iran has awarded the misceant a full quarter acre of farmland to show their appreciation…
finally went on trial Tuesday for attempting to murder the novelist Salman Rushdie back in Aug. 2022. There is little, if any, doubt about Matar’s guilt, even though he has pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." , for he stabbed Rushdie multiple times in full view of a shocked crowd at the Chautauqua festival. Matar was supposed to have gone on trial in Jan. 2024, but Rushdie wrote a book about the attack, and Matar’s defense attorney, public defender Nathaniel Barone, received a delay in the trial so that he could review the book. It’s hard to fathom how what the victim thought about what happened might affect the guilt of his client, but nevertheless, Barone managed to delay the trial for over a year.
Now that it has begun, both Barone and his opposite number, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt, seem curiously intent on preventing any discussion of Matar’s motive. Matar tried to kill the man who, at the time of the stabbing had carried for 33 years the most famous bounty on his head since the days of the Wild West.
It was on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, 1989, that Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie to be killed for supposedly blaspheming against Muhammad in his novel "The Satanic Verses." By 2022, Iran’s bounty on Rushdie’s head was $3 million. Without Khomeini’s death fatwa on Rushdie, Matar wouldn’t have tried to kill him, and there would be no trial. Nevertheless, neither the prosecution nor the defense wants any talk of that as Matar is tried.
Matar himself was upfront about why he stabbed Rushdie. Back in Aug. 2022, he said: "I respect the ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. That’s as far as I will say about that." Of Rushdie, Matar said: "I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person. I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much. He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems." Matar isn’t the most articulate person in the world, but what he said was clear enough to establish that he wanted Rushdie dead in accord with Khomeini’s fatwa.
Schmidt, however, insists all that is irrelevant, saying: "Here, I don’t believe we have to get into issues of Mr. Matar’s religious beliefs, his nationality, and his background to prove an attempted murder charge, which is what we’re doing. The allegation is that Mr. Matar stabbed Mr. Rushdie and stabbed Mr. Reese in an unprovoked attack. Therefore, I think we can prove that without getting into matters that give rise to prejudice of our jury pool."
Schmidt added: "From my standpoint, this is a localized event. It’s a stabbing event. It’s fairly straightforward. I don’t really see a need to get into motive evidence, whether that’s applicable or not applicable and what that consists of. I’d like to avoid all of that."
Well, all right, but isn’t examination of motive ordinarily a staple of murder trials? There are numerous reasons for this, including determination of the gravity of the offense, and the likelihood of similar incidents in the future. But Barone is only too happy to leave Matar’s motives out of the trial, as he wanted jurors screened for dislike of Islam. "They’ve talked about the reason why this alleged crime supposedly occurred was because of this book involving Moslems, all that. So it’s kind of like the barn door’s been opened," Barone said, and he wants that barn door closed.
All this is unfolding just days after Salwan Momika, an Iraqi critic of Islam, was murdered in Sweden for burning the Qur’an. The trial of Hadi Matar carries extraordinarily important implications for the future of the freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the West. Will Western countries defend the freedom of speech in connection to criticism of Islam, or abandon it? Hadi Matar blinded Salman Rushdie in one eye and caused permanent damage to one of his arms because of Rushdie’s criticism of Islam, and now at his trial, both attorneys want to pretend that this was some random and inexplicable murder attempt. The implication is that Hadi Matar was right to want Rushdie silenced, and now the attorneys are joining in the silencing.
[TabletMag] Yesterday, President Donald Trump single-handedly collapsed the most destructive idea of the last hundred years—Palestine. During meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Trump said he was going to move 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza. And just like that, he broke the long spell that had captured generations of world leaders, peace activists, and Middle East terror masters alike, who had paradoxically come to regard the repeated failure and haunting secondary consequences of the idea of joint Arab Muslim and Jewish statehood in the same small piece of land as proof of its necessity.
Palestine was a misshapen idea from the beginning, engendered by an act of pure negation. The Arabs could have gone along with the U.N.’s partition plan like the Jews did, and chosen to build whatever version of Switzerland or Belgium on the eastern Med in 1948. Instead, they resoundingly chose war. That’s the storied "Nakba" at the core of the Palestinian legend—the catastrophe that drove the Arabs from their land and hung a key around the neck of a nation waiting to go home. The Arabs chose the catastrophe; they chose war, based on the premise that they would inevitably win and exterminate the Jews.
Yet despite repeated military failures, and the increasing distance between the first-world powerhouse that the Israelis built and their increasingly war-torn, third-world neighborhood, the global conscience was always predisposed to rebuilding what the Palestinians destroyed. Accordingly, the Palestinian Arabs became a tribe of feral children whose identity was carved out of the relentless vow to eliminate Israel and slaughter the Jews en masse—despite repeated failures, each one more crushing than the last.
Trump said, enough, we’re not rebuilding Gaza. Time for a new idea—the Gazans have to to go, they can try to start again somewhere else, in a land where every building still standing isn’t already wired to explode. Personally, I believe that Arabs shouldn't live outside Arabian Peninsula.
What if they won’t go, or if the Egyptians and Jordanians won’t take them? They’ll take them, said Trump. Ah, he’s talking big, but it’s not real, say the experts—after all, he’s a real estate guy, and he’s pretending it’s just another property deal to pressure Hamas—Mar-a-Gaza. You can’t move a million people just like that, says an American electorate that elected Trump because he promised to deport tens of millions of illegal aliens who crossed the U.S. border in the last four years. He’s nuts says the D.C. foreign policy crowd: He’ll destabilize Egypt and Jordan, and undermine America’s best Arab friends and allies in the region.
Yet Trump is right to see both Egypt and Jordan as paltry constructions with little-to-no ability to project force on America’s behalf, and whose survival depends month to month on American aid. Cairo is useful to the United States only insofar as it, one, makes sure the Suez Canal is open and, two, observes the peace treaty with Israel—i.e., continues its campaign of repression against a populace of 112 million people who can barely afford to buy bread, and many of whose dreams are filled with the same insanity that drives Hamas. The only antidote to this misery that Egypt’s rulers have found is blaming the Zionists next door for the ills of their own society, while torturing religious extremists in their prisons. Maybe when Elon Musk is finished fixing Washington he can conduct an audit of where American money goes in Egypt. Somehow, I doubt he’d get in the door.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s problem is that he allowed Hamas to smuggle arms through the Philadelphi crossing into Gaza, thereby violating Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel—which is what we nominally pay him for.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s problem is that he allowed Hamas to smuggle arms through the Philadelphi crossing into Gaza, thereby violating Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel—which is what we nominally pay him for. From the perspective of Trump, an American president keen to enforce treaty obligations, Sisi has a new chance to prove himself as a friend of America and not a grafting liar by adding a million Gazans—who in the past have been ruled by Egypt and have family names like al-Masri ("the Egyptian")—to Egypt’s existing population of 112 million, amounting percentagewise to roughly the same number of legal immigrants that the United States accepts per year. Sisi can deal with the Hamas members among the Gazan immigrants the same way he deals with Muslim Brotherhood militants in his own society—or he can give them all medals for their service. It’s up to him.
And if not? Well, he might remember that Hosni Mubarak’s regime collapsed not because of Muslim Brotherhood-led street protests during the 2011 Arab Spring but because Barack Obama withdrew his support from the longtime U.S. ally.
With money from the Gulf states, or even Israel, Sisi can afford to absorb Palestinians and might even volunteer to take all of Gaza—the average salary in Egypt at present being the equivalent of $5,000 per year. He can then leave Jordan’s King Abdullah responsible for the rest of the Palestinians in the likely event that Trump, as he did in his first term, encourages Netanyahu to annex the Jordan Valley, or goes a step further and acknowledges Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
Since the CIA has long treated the Hashemite Kingdom as a key asset, we can expect within the next week The Washington Post’s David Ignatius to publish an article based on intelligence sources—i.e., U.S. and Jordanian spies—concocting a story about Trump’s rationale for "destabilizing Jordan." The reality is that the Jordanians, with U.S. help, put down a Palestinian rebellion in 1970. The country of a little more than 11 million is already estimated to be two-thirds Palestinian, the rest Jordanian tribesmen, and it’s hard to see how adding another 500,000 Palestinians will make it harder for Jordan’s notoriously effective security services to contain their neighbors, especially if the offer includes a few dozen more Black Hawk helicopters. After all, no one will expect the Jordanians to allow Hamas to build a giant tunnel-city stuffed with rocket factories beneath their encampments while giving them billions in foreign aid to pay for it all.
Re: Saudi Arabia: Moving millions of Gazans who have repeatedly attacked their Israeli neighbors out of what is now a shattered war zone is a sensible investment in the kind of stability that helps rich people get richer.
Again, the key players here aren’t Jordan and Egypt but the oil rich Gulf Cooperation Council states, especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and of course Qatar. Trump might make Saudi largesse in resettling the Gazans a precondition for the much-hyped prospect of normalizing relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem. Given the fact that Israel regularly attracts nine- and 10-figure investments from Silicon Valley’s biggest funds, the reality is that the Saudis have little to offer Israel except for money applied to exactly this type of local purpose. Moving millions of Gazans who have repeatedly attacked their Israeli neighbors out of what is now a shattered war zone is a sensible investment in the kind of stability that helps rich people get richer.
The Arabs and Democrats are only the most vocal of the many opposed to Trump’s initiative. Left-wing governments from Europe to Australia are lining up to pledge their allegiance to the fantasy of a Palestinian state, in the hopes of propitiating Muslim and Arab constituencies at home—whose understanding of "peace" means eliminating Israel. But even leaving the patent bad faith of those professing "peace" aside, moving Gazans out of Gaza is the only sane option 14 months after they initiated a campaign of rape, murder, and hostage-taking that brought their own house down on their heads.
After all, what’s more fanciful, moving 1.7 million people out of Gaza, a large portion of whom would simply be required to board air-conditioned buses or walk across the nearby Egypt border, or compelling them to live in a giant rubble field booby-trapped by an Iran-backed terrorist group? Estimates vary as to how long it would take to clear Gaza of explosives—half a decade or more? Fifteen years? Twenty? Are the Gazans supposed to live quietly in tents for the next decade or two while their homes are rebuilt next door? Where? In "temporary cities" made of Dwell Magazine-like rehabbed shipping containers built by graduates of Birmingham University? In Hamas’ tunnels?
Regardless, should the Palestinians remain in Gaza, they would invariably return to war no matter how much munificence the Gulf Arab states, the European Union, and perhaps even the U.S. might shower on the toxic sand castle built over the past two decades with billions of Western aid money. Proof the Palestinians can’t and won’t keep the peace is that even after they won a reprieve when Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff forced the Biden administration’s cease-fire on Jerusalem, Hamas and its NGO-supported human shields celebrated in the streets as if the Hamas space program had successfully landed Palestinians on Mars. Even as Israel released jailed murderers, the Gazans paraded Israeli hostages through the ruins of Gaza like trophies of war.
The Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis and others who now rend their clothes while lamenting the likely fate of their ant-farm death cult might well have counseled: Quiet brothers, you have been spared. Don’t bring attention to yourselves. For the winds of Gaza shift on a whim and who knows if you are not next to be swept away by fate—or the American president.
Here is the stark reality: Gazans, not just the enlisted members of the Hamas brigades, waged an exterminationist campaign against Israel, and they lost. At virtually any other time in history, save the last 75 years, they would be lucky to lose only territory and not have their legend and language permanently deleted from the book of the living.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
02/07/2025 09:29 ||
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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.
[TabletMag] Yesterday, President Donald Trump single-handedly collapsed the most destructive idea of the last hundred years—Palestine. During meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Trump said he was going to move 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza. And just like that, he broke the long spell that had captured generations of world leaders, peace activists, and Middle East terror masters alike, who had paradoxically come to regard the repeated failure and haunting secondary consequences of the idea of joint Arab Muslim and Jewish statehood in the same small piece of land as proof of its necessity.
