Tag: politics

Superversivity

An important essay by Tom Simon:

For about a hundred years now, ever since the First World War broke the confidence of Western civilization, it has been fashionable to praise subversion. Art, music, and literature, as many of the critics tell us, are not supposed to go chasing after obsolete values like truth or beauty; they are supposed to shock, to wound, to épater les bourgeois – to subvert the values of society. Here is a fairly typical example, from the literary critic, John Grant: 

It must meddle with our thinking, it must delight in being controversial, it must hope to be condemned by authority (whatever authority one chooses to identify), it must be at the cutting edge of the imagination, it must flirt with madness, it must surprise.

Grant is prescribing goals for fantasy, but the same demand has been heard in every genre and every art form, much to the harm of the arts. Most people don’t share Grant’s ideological preoccupations; they see the arts not as vehicles of propaganda, but as entertainment. Trying to get yourself condemned by authority may be good sophomoric fun while you are doing it, but it makes a dull spectator sport. Considered as entertainment, it has no virtue except novelty; and it has not been novel since about the 1920s. This is one reason why the ‘serious’ arts see their audiences shrinking year after year, until they are only maintained in precarious existence by public subsidy.

Part of the trouble comes from that apparently blank cheque, ‘whatever authority one chooses to identify’. In practice, this always means the same authority: the ghost of Mrs. Grundy, the narrow-minded, puritanical, bourgeois authority that lost most of its power in 1914, and does not exist at all anymore. If you rebel against a different authority – the Chinese Communist Party, or the rulers of militant Islam – you will not find the critics so approving. They will call you reactionary or even neocon, and the hand of Buzzfeed will be raised against you.

For the world of art and literature is largely dominated by the Left, and the Left is dominated by people whose world-view is inherited from their great-grandfathers. In this view, we need labour unions to defend us against the peril of child labour, Big Government to defend us against Standard Oil. America is one false move away from theocracy and Jim Crow; Europe is one false move away from another World War. Nothing can save us except a wonderful new panacea called Socialism, which has never been tried before, and with which nothing can possibly go wrong. These, in the main, are the ideas of the Left even today; and the people who believe these things have the nerve to call themselves Progressives.

They call for progress; but they are still trying to progress from 1914 into 1915. They call for subversion; but the thing they are trying to subvert no longer exists.

Superversivity is an important concept. It is the philosophy of the builder rather the destroyer. It is the ideal of those opposed to the pinkshirts, to the SJWs, to the de facto Chantry Guild that infests every modern institution and organization and pasttime that seeks to disqualify, redirect, and destroy everyone and everything that is insufficiently supportive of their societal subversion.

It is our job to build Western civilization’s intellectual redoubt and ensure that the next generation is even more resistant to the poison than we are. Because eventually, the infestation will burn itself out and collapse due to its internal illogic and inconsistencies.

I have but one criticism of Mr. Simon’s piece. He implies that the neocons are the enemies of the Left. This is not true. Neoconservatism has always been of the Left and is, in itself, a form of subversion.

Systemic decay and the decline of democracy

Since History failed to end, Francis Fukuyama is writing new books. His latest one actually sounds pretty interesting:

Fukuyama’s most interesting section is his discussion of the United States, which is used to illustrate the interaction of democracy and state building. Up through the 19th century, he notes, the United States had a weak, corrupt and patrimonial state. From the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century, however, the American state was transformed into a strong and effective independent actor, first by the Progressives and then by the New Deal. This change was driven by “a social revolution brought about by industrialization, which mobilized a host of new political actors with no interest in the old clientelist system.” The American example shows that democracies can indeed build strong states, but that doing so, Fukuyama argues, requires a lot of effort over a long time by powerful players not tied to the older order.

Yet if the United States illustrates how democratic states can develop, it also illustrates how they can decline. Drawing on Huntington again, Fukuyama reminds us that “all political systems — past and present — are liable to decay,” as older institutional structures fail to evolve to meet the needs of a changing world. “The fact that a system once was a successful and stable liberal democracy does not mean that it will remain so in perpetuity,” and he warns that even the United States has no permanent immunity from institutional decline.

Over the past few decades, American political development has gone into reverse, Fukuyama says, as its state has become weaker, less efficient and more corrupt. One cause is growing economic inequality and concentration of wealth, which has allowed elites to purchase immense political power and manipulate the system to further their own interests. Another cause is the permeability of American political institutions to interest groups, allowing an array of factions that “are collectively unrepresentative of the public as a whole” to exercise disproportionate influence on government. The result is a vicious cycle in which the American state deals poorly with major challenges, which reinforces the public’s distrust of the state, which leads to the state’s being starved of resources and authority, which leads to even poorer performance.

Where this cycle leads even the vastly knowledgeable Fukuyama can’t predict, but suffice to say it is nowhere good. And he fears that America’s problems may increasingly come to characterize other liberal democracies as well, including those of Europe, where “the growth of the European Union and the shift of policy making away from national capitals to Brussels” has made “the European system as a whole . . . resemble that of the United States to an increasing degree.”

Fukuyama’s readers are thus left with a depressing paradox. Liberal democracy remains the best system for dealing with the challenges of modernity, and there is little reason to believe that Chinese, Russian or Islamist alternatives can provide the diverse range of economic, social and political goods that all humans crave. But unless liberal democracies can somehow manage to reform themselves and combat institutional decay, history will end not with a bang but with a resounding whimper.

The chart below may show the problem with Fukuyama’s thesis. Notice the big postwar spike in percentage of world GDP as measured in purchasing power from 1940 to 1950; that is the consequence of the USA having the only industrial base unharmed by WWII. Since then, it’s been all downhill, while China appears to be returning to its previous pre-18th century dominance. My sense is that by looking more at ideological systems than at the makeup of the people utilizing those systems, Fukuyama may be missing the more relevant points. But since I haven’t read his new book yet, I cannot say if that is actually the case or not.

The internal invasion

The parasites are fleeing their self-made hellholes and are busily engaged in recreating them in their new residences:

Californians have moved to Colorado and Nevada. Massachusetts natives have moved to New Hampshire. New Yorkers have moved to North Carolina and Virginia — and, of course, have continued moving to Florida.

Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of blue-state America matters as well.

The blue diaspora has helped offset the fact that many of the nation’s fastest-growing states are traditionally Republican. You can think of it as a kind of race: Population growth in these Republican states is reducing the share of the Electoral College held by traditionally Democratic states. But Democratic migration has been fast enough, so far, to allow the party to overcome the fact that the Northeast and industrial Midwest contain a smaller portion of the country’s population than they once did….

Since 2000, the blue-born population in red states has grown by almost a quarter, to 11.5 million, or 12 percent of the states’ total population. These changes aren’t happening simply because the national population has grown over the same period, either. In fact, the red-born population in blue states shrank, to 7.3 million from 8.4 million, between 2000 and 2012.

And thus ends the grand experiment of the laboratories of democracy. This is why the right to free association, also known to its critics as segregation, is an absolute must for any democratic society that wishes to retain its character. In an age of mobility, any system that functions will be rapidly swamped by the invading denizens of those systems that don’t work.

It should never be forgotten that most of the 18th century political principles were developed prior to the age of mass global transportation. It should not be a surprise that not all of them are capable of surviving it.

Another purge?

There are claims there has been another purging of a tech organization, albeit this time with the full knowledge of the founder:

I need for this info to get out. Most of the mods on 4chan have only been in that position for a couple of weeks.

The day after the #ShutDown4CHAN thing happened in july, moot called a meeting with all the mods in a IRC. He said that a girl did atempt suicide and that she had connections and they wanted blood.

Moot demanded that we use everything we can to remove anything wanting to “fuck up sjw shit”. Needless to say alot of mod anons called out moot and were kicked from the chat.

Before one was kicked he told every mod agianst this shit to meet in a 4craft server. We all did and discussed how fucked up this was. Over the next few days our chats about it became emails wich became skype calls. In the end we agreed that the next big fuck up the sjws make then we will let whatever happens happen.

What came next was dashcon.

We let the discussion go on like normal. Some mods did moots bidding and banned. Others were in the threads bumping. What was left was nearly 2/3 of 4chan`s given the boot.

We we’re all purged and outed. We fell on eachother and to bitch and moan. I swear to god our chatlogs the day after must look like mr. meeseeks.

One ousted mod anon was also a mod for 420chan and wizardchan. He said that alot of the mods thier were also exiled.

He gave proof, in the form of a collection of perma banned notices for dozens of IPs. And a list of those same IPs in log records for mod services.

We flipped our shit and began looking for more chans that this had happened to. 7chan, mchan, getchan and even shrekchan had massive mod axeings on the same day as 4chan.u

The next day a mod who wasnt outed contacted us. To our horror he told us that the new mods are complete sjws and openly call for permabans for alot of 4chan “board culture”.

As we dug deeper we found out that the same thing was happening to alot of subreddits. Normally we would say fuck em. But they told us that tons of non sjw mods had thier accounts sieged and them ip banned.

Deeper we dug and found out that dozens of forum mods and website mods were either changed or became rabbid sjw over night.

Currently this is the deepiest we have dug. The girl who attempted suicide was kassie washington, niece of nick denton owner and publisher of gawker media

There is only one answer to this exclusionary behavior, of course. Start your own organization. Build it up. And then POLICE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S DECISION-MAKERS on a regular basis. Any sign of supporting “inclusion” or “outreach” or posturing for PC approval should be grounds for immediate removal from any decision-making responsibilities.

My purging from SFWA was, as I warned at the time, a small harbinger of much bigger things to come. Don’t think you’re safe simply because you’re not controversial. It’s not only the controversy they hate, or even the open resistance, it is the mere fact of failing to kowtow to their dogma.

The return of the Lizard Queen

Speaking of Mitt Romney, Pat Buchanan doesn’t think he has a chance against Hillary Clinton. Nor, he thinks, does anyone else:

Amid rumblings of another Mitt Romney run for the White House, author
and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is advising
the GOP to avoid nominating the first two-time loser since Democratic
presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower in
1952 and again in 1956.

Buchanan made clear that despite Hillary’s recent decline in popularity, she remains the front-runner. “It’s very hard to see if Hillary runs who will beat her,” he
stressed. “I don’t see Elizabeth Warren beating her. I tell people that
if I were a 45-year-old Democratic senator, I would run, and I would
challenge Hillary on issues, so if I lost I would have gained the
opportunity to introduce myself to the American people and hope
lightening strikes.”

Mindful of Bill Clinton’s support of Hillary’s candidacy, he added,
“But I doubt any Democrat wants to take the risk of running against
Hillary, since it means going after the king, and failing to get the job
done might just have disastrous consequences.”

I’m out of the presidential prediction game. Since I don’t live there anymore, it has become clear over the years that my ability to read the electorate has declined. That being said, the one thing we do know is that there is usually at least one surprise challenger who pops up, especially in years where there is no incumbent candidate.

We’re still two years out, so there is plenty of time for someone to make a run. Remember, two years ago, Marco Rubio was still being mentioned as a serious candidate.

Sun Tzu did not approve this message

Although he is vastly unpopular with the pinkshirts due to a combination of his huge success as a SF writer combined with his lack of enthusiasm for homosexuals playing house, Orson Scott Card is no conventional conservative. His political positions are more than a little incoherent, especially those where he appeals to what he claims is Christian theology:

The Republican Party deserves to fail, has chosen to fail, and this death wish continues in full force. They could have elected Mitt Romney in 2012 and stopped the
national nightmare by installing in the White House the most competent
man to be a major party nominee since Dwight Eisenhower.

But the evangelical Christians stayed home in droves rather
than vote for an evil Mormon – thus remaining “pure” but refusing to
govern.

The irony is that these very “Christians,” so determined to be
pure, now have as their single most important test of purity the most
unChristian dogma in present-day politics: No Amnesty!

Card’s first mistake is failing to recognize that the Republican Party chose to fail in 2012 by nominating Mitt Romney. But evangelical Christians were not Romney’s problem. Card simply does not have his facts straight. Not only did evangelicals vote for Romney at a higher rate than Mormons did, 79 percent vs 78 percent, but according to Pew
Research they gave him more support than they gave either John McCain (65 percent) or George W. Bush (63
percent and 67 percent in 2000 and 2004).

If anything, Card should be blaming Hispanic Catholics, whose support dropped five points, from 26 percent to 21 percent, from 2008 to 2012.

There were, of course, other Republican groups who were less than keen on the Romney. Libertarians loathed him. Ron Paul’s supporters despised him as well as their treatment by the Republican machine. Competent or not, the man was nearly as foolish a choice as John McCain, and would be even stupider in 2016. What the Republican party leaders always describe as “electable” has reliably turned out to be the opposite.

Mormons may well be fine, upstanding individuals on average. They still belong to a statistically insignificant religious group that is looked on with some suspicion due to their unusual views concerning what is, and what is not, Christian. Among them, apparently, being the idea that amnesty for criminals is a Christian concept, when that actually goes well beyond heresy into the realm of pure fiction.

Card’s version of Christian theology is as incorrect as his grasp of the 2012 voting patterns. I recommend to him the example of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well. There may be neither Greek nor Jew in Christ Jesus, but at no point does Jesus, or any of the apostles, ever suggest that Roman citizenship belongs to everyone or that the Samaritans should be supported by Jewish taxes.

And as for a Mormon scare-quoting evangelicals and referring to them as “Christians” on the basis of their failure to support an foreign invasion consisting of tens of millions of aliens, well, let’s just say I don’t think that is the wisest choice of theological ground for Mr. Card to fight that particular battle. The fact that evangelicals generally tolerate Mormons these days does not mean they are going to be terribly inclined to having the legitimacy of their Christianity questioned by one.

Especially when Mr. Card simply embarrasses himself with his observable lack of knowledge of the Bible.

These “Christians” would do well to read chapter 18 of the Gospel of
Matthew, where Jesus tells his exact opinion of those who demand “no
amnesty, ever!” for other people’s sins – while they expect to be
forgiven for their own much greater ones.

Card is, theologically speaking, a complete illiterate. Jesus says absolutely nothing about “those who demand no amnesty ever.” Quite to the contrary, he says: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

In other words, Christians are to treat their unrepentant sinful brothers like pagans. Presumably, they need not treat unrepentant criminal aliens any better. As for the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, the three requirements are for the debtor to admit that the debt is owed, be willing to pay it, and beg for patience, none of which apply to invading foreigners.

My suspicion is that Card is sufficiently Biblically illiterate to have confused the reference to gouging out an eye in Matthew 18:9 with Matthew 7:5’s reference to planks and specks.

The death of the White Democrat

From the frozen lakes of Minnesota to the sunny beaches of Hawaii, the non-white populace has finally realized that they have no need to play second fiddle to their white left-liberal masters any longer:

Mr.
Abercrombie, a Democrat, was defeated by David Ige, who began the
campaign as a little-known state senator but capitalized on the
governor’s sinking popularity to win the nomination. The
defeat of Mr. Abercrombie, at age 76, probably marks an ignominious end
to his long political career. He had collected only 31 percent of the
vote, compared with 67 percent for Mr. Ige, by the time he conceded the
race on Saturday night.

Mr. Ige hardly seemed able to believe how easily he ultimately attained the nomination, after overcoming enormous disadvantages in fund-raising and name recognition.

“When we started this 13 months ago, I had people tell me I was crazy,” he said. “No one thought we would be anywhere close to where we are today.”

Another high-profile Democratic incumbent was also in danger Saturday night, in a Senate primary race that remained too close to call. In that contest, Senator Brian Schatz faced a challenge from Colleen Hanabusa, a congresswoman.

It’s not dissimilar to the Minnesota House election where a Somali immigrant is likely to unseat Phyllis Kahn, a longtime carpetbagger from New York City. The amusing thing is that there isn’t a peep about race in the NYT article, even though the two incumbents, Ige and Abercrombie, are whites and Ige and Hanabusa are both Asian.

The lesson here is that the Republican Party should embrace its identity as the white party and stop wasting any energy trying to appeal to other minorities such as Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Jews, and Arabs. All multi-ethnic empires throughout history have been divided by ethnicity, not ideology, and now that the USA is no longer a White Christian Anglo-Saxon nation, the old political rules no longer apply.

Besides accepting the new racial realities, the main challenge for Republicans will be preventing the white activists fleeing the Democratic party due to their lack of opportunity there from claiming leadership positions in the Republican Party.

Failing to note the connection

I thought this passage by Max Hastings about Archduke Franz Ferdinand was interesting for several reasons:

The Archduke’s political and social views were conservative and vigorously expressed. After attending Edward VII’s 1910 funeral in London, he wrote home deploring the boorishness of most of his fellow sovereigns, and the alleged impertinence of some politicians present, notable among them ex-US president Theodore Roosevelt. It is sometimes suggested that Franz Ferdinand was an intelligent man. Even if this was so, like so many royal personages into modern times, he was corrupted by position, which empowered him to express opinions unenlightened even by contemporary standards.

He loathed Hungarians, telling the Kaiser: ‘the so-called noble, gentlemanly Magyar is a most infamous, anti-dynastic, lying, unreliable fellow’. He regarded southern Slavs as sub-humans, referring to the Serbians as ‘those pigs’. He hankered after recovering Lombardy and Venetia, lost to Italy in his lifetime, for the Hapsburg Empire. Visiting Russia in 1891, Franz Ferdinand declared that its autocracy offered ‘an admirable model’. Tsar Nicholas II recoiled from Franz Ferdinand’s intemperance, especially on racial matters. Both the Archduke and his wife were strongly Catholic, favouring Jesuits and professing hostility towards Freemasons, Jews and liberals. Such was Sophie’s religious fervour that in 1901 she led two hundred fashionable women on a Catholic march through Vienna.

The Archduke nonetheless cherished one prudent conviction: while many Austrians, notably including army chief of staff Gen. Conrad von Hötzendorf, detested Russia and welcomed the prospect of a battlefield showdown with the Tsar, Franz Ferdinand dissented. He was determined, he said repeatedly, to avoid a clash of arms. Desiring a ‘concord of emperors’, he wrote: ‘I shall never lead a war against Russia. I shall make sacrifices to avoid it. A war between Austria and Russia would end either with the overthrow of the Romanovs or with the overthrow of the Habsburgs – or perhaps the overthrow of both.’

He once wrote to Berchtold: ‘Excellency! Don’t let yourself be influenced by Conrad – ever! Not an iota of support for any of his yappings at the Emperor! Naturally he wants every possible war, every kind of hooray! rashness that will conquer Serbia and God knows what else … Through war he wants to make up for the mess that’s his responsibility at least in part. Therefore: let’s not play Balkan warriors ourselves. Let’s not stoop to this hooliganism. Let’s stay aloof and watch the scum bash in each other’s skulls. It’d be unforgivable, insane, to start something that would pit us against Russia.’

I find it remarkable that 100 years later, so many people are still more troubled by the idea that one man might consider a group of people to be scum than by the deaths of tens of millions. The notion that progressive politics and equalitarian sensibilities somehow equate to world peace, or even regional peace, simply do not stand up to historical scrutiny.

That “nonetheless” is false. Hastings fails to see the connection between Ferdinand’s racial intemperance and his reluctance to go to war, just as today’s multiculturalists and diversity advocates fail to see how their policies are leading to bloodshed that may make the trenches of World War I look mild in comparison.

It is the idea of inevitable progress that has reliably led to these massive blood-spillings. One notes that presently, in America, it is the neocons and the left-liberals who are keen to start a war with Russia, ignoring the mistakes made by the archduke’s peers a century ago.

Journolist 2

Left-wing activists plotting together. Again:

A low-profile Google Group used by over 1,000 state and national leftwing leaders and activists has been discovered thanks to Wisconsin’s open records law. A Media Trackers inquiry into the actions of a University of Wisconsin professor turned up records and communications from “Gamechanger Salon,” an online community that provides a forum for leftwing activists and leaders to share tactics, strategies and opinions….

The group has the self-described goal of creating a “more coordinated” movement for liberals across the country. Among those included on the membership list are:

Damon Silver, Policy Director for the AFL-CIO
Benjamin Joffe-Walk, Chief of Staff at Change.org
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK
Elizabeth Rose, Director of Communications at the Economic Policy Institute
Philip Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace until earlier this year
Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL
Raven Brooks, Executive Director of Netroots Nation
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Deirdre Schifeling, National Director Organizing & Electoral Campaigns for Planned Parenthood

The group’s policy manual directs members to abstain from forwarding emails to recipients outside the group. It does warn, however, that with 1,000-plus members, anyone emailing the group should not say anything “you wouldn’t want to be subpoenaed by a Grand Jury or broadcast on Fox News.”

Here is the complete membership list in PDF format. I didn’t recognize any names. There are also more groups than you have ever heard of. It is appalling to think about the massive amount of totally unproductive capital that is being misdirected toward these societally destructive wastes of space so they can further interfere with Western civilization.

Is POTUS Bibi’s bitch?

The Israeli media apparently has cause to think so:

Israel’s Channel 1 decided to publish a Hebrew transcript of a portion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama’s telephone conversation which took place on Sunday, in which Obama was insistent that Israel unilaterally halt all military activities in the Gaza Strip. As is quite clear by now, Israel rejected, and the bloodshed continued. The transcript, as shown by the Times of Israel was as follows:

The following is an English translation of the Hebrew account of the talk given in the report:

Barack Obama: I demand that Israel agrees to an immediate, unilateral ceasefire and halt all offensive activities, in particular airstrikes.

Benjamin Netanyahu: And what will Israel receive in exchange for a ceasefire?

BO: I believe that Hamas will cease its rocket fire — silence will be met with silence.

BN: Hamas broke all five previous ceasefires. It’s a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

BO: I repeat and expect Israel to stop all its military activities unilaterally. The pictures of destruction in Gaza distance the world from Israel’s position.

BN: Kerry’s proposal was completely unrealistic and gives Hamas military and diplomatic advantages.

BO: Within a week of the end of Israel’s military activities, Qatar and Turkey will begin negotiations with Hamas based on the 2012 understandings, including Israel’s commitment to removing the siege and restrictions on Gaza.

BN: Qatar and Turkey are the biggest supporters of Hamas. It’s impossible to rely on them to be fair mediators.

BO: I trust Qatar and Turkey. Israel is not in the position that it can choose its mediators.

BN: I protest because Hamas can continue to launch rockets and use tunnels for terror attacks –

BO: (interrupting Netanyahu) The ball’s in Israel’s court, and it must end all its military activities.

One can quickly see why the US would quickly disavow any credibility of this report: after all it wouldn’t look very good for the leader of the free world if the leader of another state, one which on top of it all is reliant on the former for continued military and economic support, flat out rejected what amounted to a demand from the US. As expected the denial was prompt with the US administration calling the quotations “fabrications”, “shocking”, and “disappointing”

It took mere minutes for the National Security Council to deny the transcript was even remotely accurate:

We have seen reports of an alleged POTUS-Netanyahu transcript; neither reports nor alleged transcript bear any resemblance to reality 1/2
    — @NSCPress (@NSCPress) July 29, 2014

Shocking and disappointing someone would sink to misrepresenting a pvt convo between POTUS and PM in fabrications to Israeli press 2/2
    — @NSCPress (@NSCPress) July 29, 2014

Sure enough, it wouldn’t look good if only the US denied so Netanyahu had to step in, which he did:

The Prime Minister’s Office says in a statement that the Channel 1 report is false, using precisely the same words as the White House.

“We have seen these reports, and neither the reports nor the alleged transcript bear any resemblance to reality. It’s shocking and disappointing that someone would sink to misrepresenting a private conversation between the President and the Prime Minister in fabrications to the Israeli press,” the PMO says.

Despite the denials, Israel’s Channel 1 refused to retract the leaked statement. Worse, it revealed the source of the leak as a “senior American official.”

Despite rejections by American and Israeli officials, Channel 1?s Or Nahari insists that the transcript leaked to him by a “senior American official” is authentic, but acknowledges that the quotes he published were merely an excerpt from a long conversation.

It’s easy for the administration to prove otherwise. Just release the recording of the conversation. Unless and until they do, they can’t simply claim that it is false and expect anyone to take their word for it. On the one hand, it sounds to me as if a “senior American official” is not at all pleased with Obama backing down to Netanyahu. On the other hand, the language is awfully stilted, which lends credence to the idea that it might be a fake meant to lend cover to Israel backing down sooner rather than later or get back at the Obama administration for Secretary of State Kerry’s performance.

In any event, Israel may as well stop its latest adventure in Gaza as the IDF is already rightly expressing its frustration with Netanyahu’s political dithering. From Debka:

“Senior IDF officer to government: The troops must go forward or quit.”

At this point, they should simply end the military operations. As per 4GW doctrine, they hit too soft and too slow. The IDF is saying go big or go home, but proceeding from this point will likely do more harm than good since Israel has no intention of removing the Palestinians from Gaza and settling it, thereby rendering the entire exercise pointless beyond the short term. At the moment, it appears to have been an exercise chiefly driven by domestic political pressure.

Blowing up a few tunnels and capturing a few rockets wasn’t worth the price of the additional global contempt that resulted from being caught on camera killing women and children. So, it’s just another one step forward, two steps back in the usual Middle East dance.

And as for the State Department’s Jen Psaki saying the leak is a “severe violation of a private discussion”, she might want to recall that she works for an administration that has the NSA spying on every conversation and email exchange in America.