Author: VD

Mailvox: the nations of Heaven

A longtime regular concurs with my post on identity and expands the indictment to include all the cuckservatives and Churchians who claim to be opposing the Left on various details while submitting to them on the whole.

You are spot on with your identity post.

What infuriates me isn’t the Left and SJWs trying to obliterate the past, but the cucks and Churchians who go along with it. The stupidist part of the whole thing is that they clearly see all of the old institutions have been destroyed, and most large Evangelical churches are now little more than personality cults surrounding popular pastors, BUT they utterly refuse to follow the logic back to institutions because of racism, identity politics, and their love of losing. I’m convinced they love to lose as it proves their piety and dedication.

The Alt-Right is inevitable because it is literally the only alternative going forward.

The worst of the Churchians are globalists who literally want to destroy nations in their vision of a multi-ethnic Christian ideal. When it’s clear from the Bible that God values nations and even mentions people from all nations in Revelations. Think about this: we will no longer be identified by being married in heaven, but WILL be by nation.

If you are treating your wife as if she is the Holy Mother of God and both your nation and your culture as if it they are things which do not merit your pride, then you are taking a very, very perverse approach to life.

Darkstream: identity is tradition

In last night’s Darkstream, I mentioned the way in which the people of Tongling, China, impressed Douglas Adams with the size and speed of their unprecedented, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to save the now-extinct baiji, the Yangtze River Dolphin.

From Last Chance to See:

A little upstream of Tongling, opposite the town of Datong, there is an elbow-shaped bend in the river. In the crook of the elbow lie two triangular islands, between which runs a channel of water. The channel is about one and a half kilometres long, five metres deep, and between forty and two hundred metres wide, and this channel will be the dolphins’ semi-nature reserve.

Fences of bamboo and metal are being constructed at either end of the channel, through which water from the main river flows continuously. A huge amount of remodelling and construction work is being done to make this possible. A large artificial hospital and holding pools are being built on one of the islands to hold injured or newly captured dolphins. A fish farm is being built on the other to feed them.

The scale of the project is enormous.

It is very, very expensive, the committee said, solemnly, and they can’t even be sure that it will work. But they have to try. The baiji, they explained, is very important to them and it is their duty to protect it.

Mark asked them how on earth they raised the money to do it. It had all been put into operation in an extraordinarily short time.

Yes, they said, we have had to work very, very fast.

They had raised money from many sources. A substantial amount came from the central government, and more again from local government. Then there were many donations from local people and businesses. They had also, they said a little hesitantly, gone into the business of public relations, and they would welcome our comments on this. Chinese knew little of such matters, but we, as Westerners, must surely be experts.

First, they said, they had persuaded the local brewery to use the baiji as their trademark. Had we tried Baiji Beer? It was of a good quality, now much respected in all of China. Then others had followed. The committee had entered into . . . Here there was a bit of a vocabulary problem, which necessitated a little discussion with the interpreter before the right phrase at last emerged.

They had entered into licensing agreements. Local businesses had put money into the project, in return for which they were licensed to use the baiji. symbol, which in turn made good publicity for the baiji dolphin.

So now there was not only Baiji Beer, there was also the Baiji Hotel, Baiji shoes, Baiji Cola, Baiji computerised weighing scales, Baiji toilet paper, Baiji phosphorus fertiliser, and Baiji Bentonite. Bentonite was a new one on me, and I asked them what it was.

They explained that Bentonite was a mining product used in the production of toothpaste, iron and steel casting, and also as an additive for pig food. Baiji Bentonite was a very successful product. Did we, as experts, think that this public relations was good?

We said it was absolutely astonishing, and congratulated them.

They were very gratified to know this, they said, from Western experts in such matters.

We felt more than a little abashed at these encomiums. It was very hard to imagine anywhere in the Western world that would be capable of responding with such prodigious speed, imagination and communal determination to such a problem. Although the committee told us that they hoped that, since Tongling had recently been declared an open city to visitors for the first time, the dolphins and the semi-nature reserve might bring tourists and tourist money to the area, it was very clear that this was not the primary impulse.

At the end they said, ‘The residents in the area gain some profit – that’s natural – but we have more profound plans, that is to protect the dolphin as a species, not to let it become extinct in our generation. Its protection is our duty. As we know that only two hundred pieces of this animal survive it may go extinct if we don’t take measures to prevent it, and if that happens we will feel guilty for our descendants and later generations.’

We left the room feeling, for the first time in China, uplifted. It seemed that, for all the stilted and awkward formality of the meeting, we had had our first and only real glimpse of the Chinese mind. They took it as their natural duty to protect this animal, both for its own sake and for that of the future world.

An excerpt from the transcript of the Darkstream.

The main reason that the Chinese commissioners gave for these huge efforts that they were putting forth to try to save this animal was because they felt that a failure to do so, a failure to preserve the animal, was going to shame them in both the eyes of their ancestors and their descendants. You know, they viewed themselves as being part of this great chain of family, this chain of tribe and nation that had a responsibility for the land and the animals in their area, and it really struck me because this is exactly what the Fake Opposition like Ben Shapiro, like Jordan Peterson, stand against. You know, when Jordan Peterson is telling you that you have no right to take pride in the accomplishments of your ancestors, what he’s also telling you is that you have no responsibility whatsoever to your children and your descendants.

You know I’ve said repeatedly that the philosophy Jordan Peterson is pushing is an evil one, and it is, and one aspect of that evil, one way that we know that it is wrong, is that he and Shapiro and all these other Fake Opposition members are saying “oh all that matters is the individual, all that matters is you, you should only pay attention to your own needs, your own standards, you’ve no right to take pride in your legacy, you have no responsibility to instill those traditions and values into your children.” After all, if you have no responsibility to carry on the work of your parents, if you have no right to take pride in the legacy and the achievement of your parents, then neither do your children have any right or responsibility to do so with regards to you! I mean this is a very obvious transitive principle of logic at work, and so I think that it’s so important to understand that when conservatives are coming out against identity politics, you need to understand that they are simultaneously coming out against family values, tribal values, and national values.

You know they don’t want to admit that they’re doing this, but that’s exactly what they’re doing, and it’s also connected to the advice of people like Ben Shapiro to go and chase the young. He’s saying, “well the Republicans need to change their policies, they need to embrace things like gay marriage and they need to embrace things like abortion and whatever else it is that the young are okay with,” but that’s profoundly stupid because the young have no experience. The young don’t understand why the traditions existed in the first place and they don’t understand why the traditions are necessary to provide the very society and culture that they enjoy today.

And of course because these people do not want to preserve the West, you know the people who think that, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and the Weinsteins and all these other fake opposition folks, you know, the Sam Harrises, whatever, they don’t want to preserve the West, they do not want to preserve Western civilization. They’re not Christian, they’re either neutral on Christianity or they’re anti-Christian, they don’t want to preserve the European nations – to the contrast they want to replace the European nations – and so the more that you understand this, the more you realize how evil these people are, how evil their objectives are.

Those who have accomplished something as individuals feel no need to be proud of their race.
– Jordan Peterson

Real cultural appropriation — that’s when someone is proud of his culture despite having done nothing to support it, extend it or transform it: a message to the far right.
– Jordan Peterson

You shouldn’t be “proud” of your culture: you should be honored by the privilege of partaking in it, and grateful for its existence, despite your inadequacy. That is not at all the same thing.
– Jordan Peterson

Q: What’s the goal of the radical right? A: Unearned identity with the glories of the past.
– Jordan Peterson

Now the right-wing identitarians have their panties in a knot about what I’ve said about the pathology of racial pride…. Demonstrating (as if it is necessary) that the mirror reflection of malevolence is also…. malevolence. 
– Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a filthy liar – an absolutely shameless liar – and what passes for his “wisdom” doesn’t even rise to the level of that demonstrated by atheist Chinese communists. Most of the men and women of accomplishment I have known are proud of their race, proud of their nation, proud of their state, and proud of their tribe. Indeed, they often appeal to that pride in order to inspire their children and grandchildren to behave in a manner that is worthy of their race, nation, state, and tribe.

A man has more than a right, he has a responsibility to be proud of his race just as he should be proud of his military unit, his alma mater, or his soccer club, even before he has managed to meaningfully contribute to it or not. Indeed, why would a member of any group be moved to support or extend or contribute to it if one did not feel a sense of pride in belonging to it? These are the petty words of a very small man who has never worn a uniform of any kind, who has never walked into a stadium with the eyes of thousands of spectators upon him, knowing full well that he was not there to represent himself, but rather, all of those whom the colors he was wearing represented.

What this man is teaching a generation of rootless young men is absolute anathema to the core values that were instilled in me by my grandfather, the bravest man I ever knew, a man hailed as “the Marine’s Marine” by the Commandant of the USMC himself.

If you still don’t believe that Jordan Peterson is a sick, evil, and dishonest individual pushing an evil philosophy on the unsuspecting and the unsophisticated, remember, this is a man who claimed that his cousin is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and dreamed about her being killed and cannibalized. Repeatedly.

President Rowboat

Kurt Schlichter points out that Christians are not obliged to give their enemies a free hand in ruling over them. Especially not in a democracy:

There are a lot of people frustrated that Christians back Trump and refuse to let his personal life be used as a wedge to pry off their support. They are mad that Christians are not playing their role as defined by their enemies. Christians are supposed to be scandalized and give up and lose. But they won’t.

Now, let’s understand this basic concept – Jesus was not some sort of whiny wimp who refused to confront the establishment and took comfort in his own righteousness while leaving others to do the heavy lifting. Jesus made people angry, because that’s what happens when you defy bad people. Being a Christian does not mean that you have to shrug and let the likes of Hillary Clinton be elected so she and her minions can fire up her anti-faith pogrom against those of us who dare worship God and not the elite she represents. Maybe you didn’t notice, but they do not accept the concept that we have any legitimate interests or rights. They hate us. And, if we are weak and stupid enough to allow them to take power, they will act on their bigotry and prejudices. Baking cakes is only the start.

Resistance is not merely an option. It is a duty. And resistance to evil – because the desire to suppress our faith is evil – is not somehow unchristian because it can be aesthetically displeasing. Fighting back is not always pretty. Jesus cleared the temple of moneychangers. He made a mess and got people angry. He didn’t sit on the sidelines and write ponderous articles lambasting the people tossing over the tables because “We’re better than that.”

Everyone seems to want to tell Christians that they are obligated to give in. There’s always some IPA-loving hipster who writes video game reviews when he’s not sobbing alone in the dark because no one loves him tweeting “Oh, that’s real Christian!” whenever a conservative fights back. I know that when I need theological clarification, I seek out the militant atheist who thinks Christ was a socialist and believes that the Golden Rule is that Christians are never allowed to never offend anyone.

The more evil the authorities, the more children of the Devil are in power, the more that the genuine Christian who is actually willing to follow the example of Jesus will increasingly tend to run afoul of them. Which is why, as imperfect an instrument as he may be, as imperfect an instrument as he is, Donald Trump is, as Schlichter points out, a rowboat sent by God to an America drowning in evil, both foreign and domestic.

Don’t ever change diapers

Just leave infants lying in their own excrement until they can articulate their consent to have their diapers changed:

Deanne Carson, a “sexuality educator” with Body Safe Australia appeared on the show to talk about establishing a “culture of consent” in the home.

Speaking during the segment on ABC news she said she works with children from birth on issues of consent. When asked to give an example of how parents could establish the culture in their home she said they could ask questions such as “I’m going to change your nappy now, is that okay?”

Deanne Carson said parents should create a culture of consent for their children
She continued: “Of course the baby is not going to respond ‘yes mum, that’s awesome. I’d love to have my nappy changed.’

“But if you leave a space, and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you’re letting that child know that their response matters.”

Many viewers were left confused by this advice.

Twelve years ago, I showed that tolerance is not merely a vice, but is “the sin of Jeroboam” described in the Bible. Experts like this clearly demonstrate the desperate need for not merely revival, but holy inquisition.

St. Torquemada, pray for us!

Is Plan B in effect?

The Saker appears to have correctly predicted the recent increase in hostilities between Iran and Israel in one of his recent articles.

Risks with Israel’s plan “B”

Think of 2006. The Israelis had total air supremacy over Lebanon – the skies were simply uncontested. The Israelis also controlled the seas (at least until Hezbollah almost sank their Sa’ar 5-class corvette). The Israelis pounded Lebanon with everything they had, from bombs to artillery strikes, to missiles. They also engaged their very best forces, including their putatively ‘”invincible” “Golani Brigade”. And that for 33 days. And they achieved exactly *nothing*. They could not even control the town of Bint Jbeil right across the Israeli border. And now comes the best part: Hezbollah kept its most capable forces north of the Litany river so the small Hezbollah force (no more than 1000 man) was composed of local militias supported by a much smaller number of professional cadre. That a 30:1 advantage in manpower for the Israelis. But the “invincible Tsahal” got its collective butt kicked like few have ever been kicked in history. This is why, in the Arab world, this war is since known as the “Divine Victory”.

As for Hezbollah, it continued to rain down rockets on Israel and destroy indestructible Merkava tanks right up to the last day.

There are various reports discussing the reasons for the abject failure of the IDF (see here or here), but the simple reality is this: to win a war you need capable boots on the ground, especially against an adversary who has learned how to operate without air-cover or superior firepower. Should Israel manipulate the US into attacking Iran, the exact same thing will happen: CENTCOM will establish air superiority and have an overwhelming firepower advantage over the Iranians, but other than destroying a lot of infrastructure and murdering scores of civilians, this will achieve absolutely nothing. Furthermore, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is no Milosevic, he will not simply surrender in the hope that Uncle Sam will allow him to stay in power. The Iranians will fight, and fight, and continue to fight for weeks, and months and then possibly years. And, unlike the “Axis of Kindness” forces, the Iranians do have credible and capable “boots on the ground”, and not only in Iran, but also in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. And they have the missiles to reach a very large number of US military facilities across the region. And they can also not only shut down the Strait of Hormuz (which the USN would eventually be able to re-open, but only at a cost of a huge military operation on the Iranian coast), they can also strike at Saudi Arabia proper and, of course, at Israel. In fact, the Iranians have both the manpower and know-how to declare “open season” on any and all US forces in the Middle-East, and there are plenty of them, mostly very poorly defended (that imperial sense of impunity “they would not dare”).

The Iran-Iraq war lasted for eight years (1980-1988). It cost the Iranians hundreds of thousands of lives (if not more). The Iraqis had the full support of the US, the Soviet Union, France and pretty much everybody else. As for the Iranian military, it had just suffered from a traumatic revolution. The official history (meaning Wikipedia) calls the outcome a “stalemate”. Considering the odds and the circumstances, I call it a magnificent Iranian victory and a total defeat for those who wanted to overthrow the Islamic Republic (something which decades of harsh sanctions also failed to achieve, by the way).

Is there any reason at all to believe that this time around, when Iran has had almost 40 years to prepare for a full-scale AngloZionist attack the Iranians will fight less fiercely or less competently? We could also look at the actual record of the US armed forces (see Paul Craig Roberts’ superb summary here) and ask: do you think that the US, lead by the likes of Trump, Bolton or Nikki Haley will have the staying power to fight the Iranians to exhaustion (since a land invasion of Iran is out of the question)? Or this: what will happen to the world economy if the entire Middle-East blows up into a major regional war?

Now comes the scary part: both the Israelis and the Neocons always, always, double-down. The notion of cutting their losses and stopping what is a self-evidently mistaken policy is simply beyond them. Their arrogance simply cannot survive even the appearance of having made a mistake (remember how both Dubya and Olmert declared that they had won against Hezbollah in 2006?). As soon as Trump and Netanyahu realize that they did something really fantastically stupid and as soon as they run out of their usual options (missile and airstrikes first, then terrorizing the civilian population) they will have a stark and simple choice: admit defeat or use nukes.

Which one do you think they will choose?

Now, I’m still not convinced that the God-Emperor is doing what most observers believe him to be doing. I have no doubt that the Saker is right about the fact that both the Israelis and the globalists want the US to go to war with Iran, but I am not at all convinced that Trump is actually giving them what they want. As always, my advice when confronted with unknowns and unknowables is to wait and see.

How do you do?

Fellow Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web. Today’s Meme of the Day from the Daily Meme Wars.

Reason interviews I.D.W. member Harvey Weinstein:

Weinstein: So, first, let me just say, “Intellectual Dark Web” is a term coined by my older brother, Eric Weinstein, and it’s a term that makes some people uncomfortable, including me a little bit, because the Dark Web itself is obviously a place where lots of stuff happens, some of which is perfectly horrifying….

 What Eric was saying in coining the term Intellectual Dark Web is really that this is an intellectually unpoliced space, that it is a space outside of what he calls the “gated institutional narrative,” which are the stories that we are supposed to believe. It is a very interesting conversation precisely because nobody involved in it believes in those rules. In fact, I think everybody associated with the Intellectual Dark Web is sort of constitutionally resistant to being told what questions they’re allowed to think about or what answers they might be allowed to advance. So, in any case, the idea of the Intellectual Dark Web is a space that is intellectually free, at a moment in which the mainstream intellectual space is increasingly constrained by things like what we were talking about before.

In terms of the association, there is a very clear focus amongst all of the folks who are associated with the Intellectual Dark Web about the free speech crisis or whatever the proper term for that would be if we were to re-figure it, right? There’s a reason for that, which is that we’re all people who would tend to be shut down by the mainstream that wish to maintain control over the narratives that are central to the way we govern ourselves and the way we interact. So it’s not surprising that, A) people in the Intellectual Dark Web would be prone to being de-platformed, and B) that we would be particularly sensitive to the danger of ruling certain opinions beyond the pale.

 As for the political complexion of it, it isn’t at all what people think, and this has been something that Heather and I have discovered in a very odd way. What happened to us at Evergreen felt and was almost literally like being kicked out of the political left. We had spent our entire lives [there], right? The left told us “You’re not welcome anymore.” In fact, you’re not even left—you’re right, or, you know, if it’s really pissed at you, you’re alt-right, or you’re a darling of the alt-right. These are the things that were said.

None of this was true, right? I’m still as far left as I was before. I’m skeptical that the left knows what to do, I’m very skeptical of what the left advances in terms of policy proposals, but in terms of my values, they haven’t changed at all. The interesting thing, though, is having been effectively evicted from the left, we ran into all sorts of other people who we thought might be a bit right of center, who it turned out were actually also left of center and had also been similarly evicted and then misportrayed. So there is a way in which everybody should think twice about why you expect the people are on the political spectrum where you think they are, because maybe they aren’t. In each case, you ought to just check whether or not you think that for a good reason or you just think that because you’ve heard that somebody’s over there.

The Intellectual Dark Web involves me, it involves Heather, it involves Eric. We’re all left of center. It involves Jordan Peterson—he’s a little bit right of center, but if you actually listen to him, there are certain topics on which he sounds downright conservative, and then there are other topics where he really doesn’t. He’s a little bit hard to peg.

Correction: Apparently that was left-wing Dark Web thought criminal Bret Weinstein, not left-wing Hollywood sex criminal Harvey Weinstein.

Do what EU want

It appears the EU is experiencing a “come to Queen Cersei” moment with regards to the Iran nuclear deal, which is not a treaty and from which the God-Emperor clearly had the ability to withdraw unilaterally.

The European Union has rebuked Donald Trump over his move to break the Iran nuclear deal, telling the US president he does not have the power to unilaterally scrap the international agreement.

In a statement delivered on Tuesday night EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said the US should reconsider its position, but that it was not within the power of the country’s president to end the accord.

Speaking in Rome the EU’s Ms Mogherini said Europe “regrets” Mr Trump’s new policy, but added: “As we have always said the nuclear deal is not a bilateral agreement and it is not in the hands of any single country to terminate it unilaterally.

“It has been unanimously endorsed by the UN security council resolution 2231, it is a key element of the global non-proliferation architecture, it is relevant in itself, but even more so in these times of encouraging symbols on the prospect of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

“The nuclear deal with Iran is crucial for the security of the region, of Europe and of the entire region. As long as Iran continues to implement its nuclear-related commitments as it is doing so far the European union will remain committed to the continued, full, and effective implementation for the nuclear deal.”

President Trump didn’t “end the accord”. He simply took the USA out of the arrangement. The EU, or Cameroon, or the Vatican are welcome to continue abiding by whatever accord they want with regards to Iran. Of course, it doesn’t matter what they do.

Stay away from the math, Jordan

My original meme about the man was spot on. Jordan Peterson reports that his quantitative IQ is between 108 and 123:

I don’t know what my IQ is. I had it tested at one point; it’s in excess of a hundred and fifty, but I don’t know exactly where it lands now. I should, I should, what, qualify that to some degree, you know, as your intelligence increases, the scatter between the different subtypes of intelligence such as there are, there are, increases, so you might say that there’s only one way to be stupid but there’s many ways to be intelligent, and so I’m not overwhelmingly intelligent from a quantitative perspective. You know, I think my GRE scores for on the quantitative end of things for about 70, 75th percentile, which isn’t too bad given that you know you’re competing against other people who are going into graduate school, but there’s a big difference between 75th percentile and 99th percentile, and I think that’s where it was verbally, something like that, so I can certainly see that I have gaps in my intelligence when when I’m discussing things with people who have real, who are really quantitatively brilliant.

You might want to keep this admission in mind when contemplating my original point of contention with the man. My verbal and math SAT scores were very similar, both in the 99th percentile, so while it is certainly not impossible for me to make a mathematical or statistical mistake, the fact that Jordan Peterson has demonstrated himself to be unable to grasp the way in which an excessively high mean on the part of one subset of the population absolutely necessitates an excessively low mean for the majority of the population given the known average for the entire population may be, at least in part, the result of the man being quantitatively challenged.

On the other hand, I would tend to think that even a quantitative IQ of 108 would be sufficient to grasp what is, after all, a very simple mathematical relationship that dictates an intrinsic tradeoff. But I wouldn’t know.

The current state of the IDF

This recent interview of military historian and Castalia House author Martin van Creveld by a French magazine is particularly interesting in light of the recent Israeli airstrike on Syria, to which Iran has threatened to respond. Read the whole thing there.

Can you give us an overview of the actual situation of the Israeli armed forces?

One could argue that, taking a grand strategic perspective and starting with the establishment of the State of Israel seventy years ago, some things have not changed very much. First, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) remain the armed organization of a democratic country, one in which it is the politicians who decide and the military which obeys. Second, the objective of the IDF was and remains to defend the country, a outrance if necessary, against any military threats that may confront it. Third, Israel remains in a state of war with several other Middle Eastern countries; nor is there any way in the world it can bring the conflict to an end by defeating them and compelling them to make peace against their will. Fourth, the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights notwithstanding, Israel remains a small country with very little strategic depth. Fifth, the lack of strategic depth implies a heavy reliance on intelligence to detect threats before they materialize. Sixth, and for the same reason, Israeli military doctrine remains basically offensive, with a strong emphasis on destroying the opposing armed forces.

In its short history, the State of Israel often fought and won wars in which it was outnumbered and trapped: is this because of its only technological superiority or is there also a strategic and tactical factor? 

Starting in 1948 and ending with the 1973 war inclusive, the most important factor behind Israel’s victories has always been the quality of its troops. Both in terms of education—Israel, unlike its enemies, is not a third-world country but a first-world one with educational, technological and scientific facilities to match. And—which is more critical still—in terms of motivation and fighting morale.

After 1973, and especially the 1982 First Lebanon War, things began to change. Education, technical skills and scientific development continued to improve, turning this a nation of less than eight million people into a world center of military (and not just military) innovation. There are, however, some signs that, as some of its former enemies concluded peace with it and its own military superiority came to be taken for granted, motivation suffered. To this was added the need to combat terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank—the kind of operations that contribute nothing to overall fighting effectiveness and and even detract from it.

Can the logistic organization represent a decisive factor – militarily -?

Logistics, it has been said, is “that which, if you do not have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as.” As recently as the Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah in 2006, so heavy was expenditure of air-to-surface missiles and other precision-guided munitions that the IDF had to apply for US aid even as hostilities were going on. This situation which has its origins in budget constraints, may well recur.

Furthermore, in all its wars from 1948 on the IDF has enjoyed near-absolute command of the air. As a result, it was able to attack enemy lines of supply whereas the enemy was unable to do the same. The buildup of reliable and accurate surface-to-surface missiles in the hands of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran may very well change this situation, causing supply bases and ammunition dumps, as well as communications-junctions and even convoys on the move to come under attack. This scenario, which is not at all imaginary, is currently giving the General Staff a lot of headaches.

We know that the intelligence is the decisive element to ensure strength to Israeli Armed Forces: can you explain what is this strength?

Israeli technological, tactical and operational intelligence has always been very good. Two factors help account for this fact. First, there exists in Israel a large community of first-class experts (known as Mizrahanim, “Easterners” who know the countries of the Middle East, their language, culture, traditions, history, and so forth as well as anyone does. Many members of this community spend their periods of reserve duty with the IDF intelligence apparatus.

Second, modern intelligence rests on electronics, especially various kinds of sensors and computers. As the famous Unit 8200 shows, these are fields where nobody excels the IDF. Nobody.

That said, it is important to add that Israeli top-level strategic and political intelligence is nowhere as good as it is on the lower levels. Starting at least as early as 1955, and reaching all the way to the present, IDF intelligence has often failed to predict some of the most important events. That included the 1967 war, the 1973 War, the 1987 Palestinian Uprising, the 1991 Gulf War, the “Arab Spring,” and the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian Civil War.

Compared to its actual friends, which are its strengths and weaknesses from a military point of view?

As I said, strengths include a well-educated and highly skilled society, excellent technology, and vast experience in fighting various enemies (though some of that experience is now dated). The chief weaknesses remain the country’s relatively small size and lack of strategic depth—Iran, for example, is eighty times as large as Israel. Perhaps most important of all, there is reason to think that motivation, though much higher than in the NATO countries, is no longer what it used to be.

If the situation between Israel and Iran (or Hezbollah in Lebanon) comes to a showdown, which could be the reactions of some States as Turkey, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or USA?

Hard to say. Iran will use Syria as a forward base for fighting Israel. Assuming the regime stays, Saudi Arabia will probably retain its ties with Israel, at least unofficially. Ditto Egypt. Turkey will probably not engage in a shooting war with Israel, but it will support an anti-Israeli coalition in other ways while at the same time fighting the Syrians (and the Kurds). Russia will try to support Hezbollah and Syria, but without becoming deeply involved. The US on its part will support Israel and against Hezbollah, but without directly taking on the Russians.

In short, while Israel remains stronger than its enemies, its strategic position has weakened somewhat since it became the primary regional power in the 1980s. It cannot defeat Iran or Turkey the way it defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and its two primary non-nuclear advantages – air supremacy and troop quality – have declined over time. It is also aware that its regional monopoly on nuclear weapons has a time limit.

From the Game Theory perspective, this would tend to indicate that another Middle Eastern war is likely sooner rather than later, because the trends suggest the odds of Israeli success are greater now than they will be in the future, especially given the fact that an Israel-friendly US President is now in office following an Arab-friendly one. Of course, since people in general, and politicians in particular, are not logical, and have a natural tendency to want to put off until tomorrow things that can more profitably be addressed today, that does not mean logic will dictate events.

UPDATE: I checked with Martin to clarify what appeared to be a typo, and he confirmed that he did mean the US supporting Israel AGAINST Hezbollah.

Neoconnery 2.0

Ron Unz reacts to The New York Times’s announcement of its list of approved Fake Opposition members. He is, to put it mildly, unimpressed.

Ha, ha, ha… Offhand it looks like something from this week’s forthcoming NYT Magazine, which I always prefer to read in hard-copy. But I glanced over it, and found it very, very amusing.

I was at least somewhat familiar with most of the names, and basically all the “Renegade Intellectuals of the Dark Web” described seem like semi-establishment Neocons. It’s a little like portraying Marco Rubio as a populist-insurgent Republican.

The author, Bari Weiss, is some WSJ Neocon who recently moved over to the NYT, and she’s presumably trying to rebrand some of her fellow Neocons as radical-rightists, thus giving them more appeal to the Daily Stormer crowd. Also, that way future conservative debates can include everyone from Neocon A to Neocon Z.

As an example, one of the most prominent figures is some YouTube psychology celebrity named Jordan Peterson, who first came to my attention when David Brooks described him as perhaps the most important intellectual in America or something like that. I guess that makes Brooks a “renegade intellectual” himself.

I think their “darkest” belief is that there might possibly exist *some* biological differences between men and women. Horrors! And although he’s some sort of psych professor, Peterson is so remarkably ignorant of IQ issues that his recent thing is explaining that the reason Jews control Wall Street, Hollywood, and the US government is because of their astonishing brilliance. I recently needed to jump into a very long comment-thread to set some facts straight.

Here’s the way to think about it. Neocon Robert Kagan was a leading foreign policy figure in the George W. Bush Administration. Then when Obama swept in to totally reverse all Bush’s failed policies, a leading figure ended up being Neocon Victoria Nuland…Kagan’s *wife*

Back in the 1990s, I was quite friendly with the Neocons, and worked closely with them. I remember that Christina Hoff Summers was a leading Neocon feminist-critic back then, speaking at their conferences, and writing for their publications, and she seems to have kept that same role in the quarter century since.

But characterizing her as some member of a new “radical right,” locked out of the existing media landscape is just totally ridiculous.

Maybe the next step is to re-brand Heritage and AEI as the central organs of the rising anti-Establishment Right…

The eyes, they roll. Even Jonah Goldberg, a card-carrying member of both NeverTrump and the previous Fake Opposition set, sees that this is nothing more than rehashed neoconnery:

Having read the essay twice, it seems to me this IDW thing isn’t actually an intellectual movement. It’s just a coalition of thinkers and journalists who happen to share a disdain for the keepers of the liberal orthodoxy. Weiss recounts a bunch of conversion tales where once-respected and iconoclastic liberal types run head-on into the groupthink or party line of the liberal establishment. They suddenly have a revelation about the enforced orthodoxy of their own side, and as they pull on these intellectual threads, they face blowback and reinforcement from unexpected places.

Where have we heard that before? Well, it’s the story of successive waves of neoconservatives in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s the story of former Communists — Burnham, Meyer, Eastman, et al. — who joined the founding generation of National Review. It’s the story Whittaker Chambers tells in Witness. It’s also the story of many of the progressive intellectuals who were disillusioned by the First World War. Are they exact parallels? Of course not — in part because these are different times. Irving Kristol famously said, “a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality.” New realities may create different muggings, but the pattern is awfully familiar.