2014 in L'Alpe di Siusi, fresh from the US and Australia.
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Greetings everyone!
To other news, my wife sent me an email about an exhibit in the local library regarding books that are banned in American schools. Why they would have such an exhibit is a bit beyond me, aside from the fact that Italians seem to be endlessly interested in the United States. Perhaps it is the Sagittarian connection between the two nations. But this exhibit, after a little bit of searching, was found in a little corner of the library, under glass. The exhibit has a link in it directing one to a site called PEN America, which is worth a look. Given the turn we have seen in American politics over
the past years and the tone of the current administration, it is perhaps unsurprising that nearly 23,000 books have been banned in American public schools nationwide since 2021. According to the site, that is a number never before seen in the life of any living American. They go on to say the censorship is being mobilized by groups espousing conservative viewpoints, spreading to nearly every state and predominately targeting books about race and racism or books featuring individuals of color and LGBTQ+ people and topics, as well as those for older readers for books that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence. Well, we are still on a Scorpio theme in this letter after all. I mean, we’re looking at books like A Clockwork Orange, Looking for Alaska, Sold, A Court of Mist and Fury, Forever… By Judy Blume, and even Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. They have made films about a few of those.
Take a guess at which states lead in the American book bans: You wouldn’t be wrong if you guessed Florida (#1), Texas (#2) and Tennessee (#3). I don’t need to tell Americans what those three states have in common. But for those readers who don’t know, those three states are some of the most conservative states in America. The pendulum always swings in societies between the more conservative and the more progressive over time. And in the United States there has been a stronger strain of fascism that has lain hidden for years but has now raised its head. We will come back to that. But after having seen the exhibit, such as it was, my wife commented that Italians tend to see the US as being more progressive whereas here in Italy the Catholic Church keeps Italy in the dark ages. That is the opinion, anyway. Italians who actually travel to the US and go out into rural areas quickly have more appreciation for Italy these days. Friends who recently travelled to the US were struck by the poverty they saw there. On the national scene here in Italy we have seen ongoing protests since September 22, when we had the general strike that led to the government sending a warship to accompany the Sumud Flotilla.
A point of tension: People here in Italy are fed up with the economy, with the inaction of the government on various issues, with immigration, and lately the digital ID the government wants to introduce. There have been large student demonstrations in Torino against the genocide in Gaza, Meloni’s destruction of public education, with Meloni having been denounced by the ICC over Italy’s complicity in the genocide. There were two planned general strikes in Italy at the end of this month on the 28th and the 29th centered in Genoa and Rome. On the dais was Italy’s heroine Francesca Albanese, along with Chris Hedges, Yanis Varoufakis and Greta Thunberg. Hedges thanked Italians profusely and hoped Italy would become an epicentre for a global resistance to reverse the current Orwellian turn that has washed over Europe in recent years. The wider world has come to respect the citizens of Italy for standing up and committing to these general strikes. I have noted it before, but the general strike is the tried-and-true method to bring governments around to the will of the people. But these efforts must be sustained to be effective. And it can be painful to the average person in the short term. However, the long-term benefits outweigh any pain in the interim. That brings us to a theme in this letter, but it will be different from the usual format in past letters. This one is about sustaining a point of tension that leads to liberation. Consider the following to start, published in 1942:
“The powerful thinker or the ambitious demagogue, and the man with a true love of his country (but with his own selected ideas as to the right solution of that country’s problem) are today availing themselves of the general inertia and of the world crisis and depression in order to impose (if need be, by force) those systems of governments and of control which will materialise their interpretations of the ideal. These the masses have to accept, and because they normally take the line of least resistance without thinking, they are easily regimented into compliance.
Attack by one party upon another party in public, national or political life, or of one group of thinkers (advocating their peculiar ideas) upon another group of thinkers with differing ideas, has long been the custom. In this process the more powerful obliterate the weaker, and the masses are exploited and told what to do and to think, with no real effort to bring them into a condition of right understanding…”[2]
Divide and conquer: Is this not the very situation we see today? I will use the US as an example here, but the situation exists worldwide. This divide and conquer technique has been used by the elites in every nation (especially the Gemini nations) for centuries to maintain power. Our primary problem as humanity today is that we recognize certain of our nations in the West are on the wrong track, but nothing we do seems to change the trajectory. That is by design. What we lack as a people is unity. No wayward government can stand against a united populace, whether unified for right or mistaken motives. Likewise any government that has its populace united behind them can and does move mountains. We are approaching a point of unity among peoples of the Western nations, little by little, and little as it may seem at the moment. In the US we just saw such a movement in New York, covered later in this letter, where a group of almost 100,000 New Yorker’s ensured the win of the underdog candidate in the face of very moneyed and powerful interests. But here is the caveat: Such an organized movement has to be sustained and grown to be effective. Such a win is only barely the start of any movement.
We need more Light: We are at a critical phase of what will be a large purge and reckoning across the West as one cycle ends and another begins. This year was ground zero for that change. When these longer cycles reach their turning points (250 years in this case) the world becomes ‘messy’ as some powers decline and others ascend. The last time (1775) swept away the monarchies in Europe and established America. This time around Europe is once again seeing sweeping changes, with America in decline and the rise of Eurasia east of Western Europe. I have seen in my meditations and reflections that Light is flooding onto this planet, at least on the mental plane. But that is where it is most needed. The materialists are being increasingly isolated as dark islands in this sea of Light. And the situation is leading to a major precipitation – a crisis, and thus a great opportunity for Light to be anchored in our physical realities. What we need is a sustained effort to maintain and increase this inflow of Light (meaning increased and expanded spiritual consciousness). The practiced meditators of the world do this on a regular and rhythmic basis. I wrote about this almost twelve years ago[3] as but one example of many practices. But it is worth mentioning again:
The lunar cycle and meditation:
These letters over the years have been based around the full moon each month, which is the peak time for spiritual Light to be accessed for any month. But there are other days in each lunar month which accentuate and add to one’s practice, and those are based in the astrological aspects between the Sun and the Moon as the month progresses. The lunar month relates to the form side of life, with the relation between the Sun and Moon pointing to the interaction and energetic relation between the soul (Sun) and one’s personality (Moon). These days of the month have been ritually observed in Tibet since the 9th century CE, when Padmasambhava introduced and anchored Buddhism in Tibet. Since that time millions of people have observed such a cycle, with today at least hundreds of thousands of people practiced in meditation observing them. What follows is mentioned here in order to widen our understanding of this ages-old cycle – since the dawn of Earth’s humanity – and how it can be utilized in expanding our consciousness in service to the wider world. We have the following astrological bases for these days:
There are other days and relations as well, but the preceding are the best-known and practised days. We especially note those days refer to the more important days of each lunar month, with the Buddhism even removed from consideration. We note that the 1st day of the lunar month is counted as the day after the new moon, as a starting point. So, in going through the quote, we have with the trine on the 10th day “peaceful, enriching, dominating and destructive forms during the four successive quarters of the day, to give corresponding siddhis” – spiritual powers. This is a day of beneficence, as we would expect from a trine between the Sun and the Moon. People who have that aspect in their natal charts are removed from the worst ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. In Buddhism it is the first offering (tsog) day of the month.
The 15th day we need not cover, as it is well known to us, but it is a day for pujas in Buddhism – “stirring the depths of samsara with…compassionate prayer, emptying the lower realms without exception…” In other words, it is a day meant to bring all beings closer to full enlightenment. The opposition is an astrological aspect that promotes awareness. Puja days are used for clearing obstacles to enlightenment. It was recounted to us at the Buddhist center where I was briefly involved that a severe electrical storm had occurred after a particular such puja in Tibet, whereupon the teacher quipped, “Good puja!” Storms have a way of clearing the air and cleansing the earth.
The 8th day of the lunar month is one of particular interest. It is the Medicine Buddha day in Buddhism – a day for healing practices. The square is an aspect that brings with it a dynamic tension, a sort of ‘make-or-break’ aspect. It gives drive, enthusiasm (when well used) and that kind of tension that carries one on to do great things, more so than any other aspect.
The dark half of the moon, so-called, which starts on the 25th day, begins a week-long period of ‘wrathful practice’, wherein the mind is subjected to the most intensive scrutiny and is purged of its ability to ‘slay the real’. This culminates on the 29th day of the month (not mentioned above) which is devoted to protector practices – in other words, shielding oneself from darker emotions and thoughts. All this may give some insight into how to approach each lunar month with greater understanding and potency in one’s practice, regardless of one’s system of practice. Buddhism, after all, gives us the foundation for the graded steps to enlightenment, and which can be practiced in the context of any religion or belief system. Buddhism is a method in distinction to a religion. This brings us to the new moon for November.
The new moon (30th day of the Moon) is another puja day and took place in the Scorpio interval this year on 20 November at 06:47 UTC (5:47 PM AEDT). The new moon – the lunation, that is – forms a Grand Trine with Jupiter on one leg and Saturn and Neptune on the other leg. Opposite the lunation we find Uranus at the anaretic degree of Taurus, the latter highlighting the end and changing of a financial and economic cycle. Uranus forms a link with sextiles to the new moon. So we have the new moon sextile Pluto which in turn is sextile to Neptune and Ceres, with Neptune sextile to Uranus. The implication from all the planetary patterns suggests that there will be surprising developments that will benefit humanity (looking beyond appearances), which initially may appear to be upsetting. However, it is a good figure for expanding one’s insights into matters. The Moon is in lunistice (out-of-bounds), meaning emotions will be running high for the next couple of weeks, leading into the full moon of Sagittarius, which sign the Sun enters a couple of days after the new moon. The other major point to add is that Mars is at the bending of the nodal axis, pointing to tensions or even conflicts in relationships and possible ruptures therein. We will see this in the latter part of this letter. In terms of personalities, this is not a happy figure for Donald Trump, with the lunation and Uranus squaring his horizon axis from both sides. His name has been mentioned quite often in the new tranche of emails that has just been made public regarding Epstein. To cut matters short, we move on to the current events that have taken place since the last letter.
Current events: We have seen the following events since the last full moon and note the acceleration of change over the past few months:
Mars out-of-bounds: We note that Mars began to enter its out-of-bounds (OOB) phase with the last few points preceding (28 Nov), where it will remain until the start of the New Year. Mars OOB almost always produces upswings in violence, catastrophes, tensions and fires. The OOB phase will peak on 16 December and then recede and go in-bounds on 4 January. The last month of the Libra quarter will be very restive. Iran expects to be attacked by Israel this month, tensions are escalating with Venezuela (covered in the next letter), the Israelis are escalating tensions, Cyclone Senyar left a path of destruction and death in Southeast Asia on the 28th (when Mars was exact in its parallel by declination with Pluto) and the Stockton shooting occurred in the US the next day. This OOB is something to keep in mind as the month progresses. However, at the start of this letter mention was made of New York, so we begin our wider look at events with that.
Mamdani: Not covered in the last letter was the mayoral election in New York which saw a young Zohran Mamdani elected in what was a very heated and ugly campaign by his detractors. There is a blog post on the election itself which you can read here. But here we want to go a little deeper into what he actually faces when he takes office on New Year’s Day. Mamdani was elected on the 50th anniversary of what was a very bad year for New York. The city was bankrupt and needed a bailout. It was the dawn of the neoliberal era and the city requested a federal loan for the bailout. Gerald Ford was President at the time, having taken over from the resignation of Tricky Dick. This was four years after the Nixon Shock. The financiers in the US were looking at doing away with regulations and instituting the Chicago School neoliberal reforms that are characteristic of neoliberal capitalism as soon as the loan was refused. So, in 1975, after having requested a bailout from the Federal Government, the citizens of New York were told by Gerald Ford to “drop dead”. There would be no bailout. There is a documentary that came out last year, called Drop Dead City, which explains a lot in terms of what is going to happen across the US in the next few years. Mamdani has inherited the legacy of 1975 and his stunning victory against the odds was won in part because he promised to reverse the trends that were put in place back in the ‘70s. There is a video from Consortium News listed in the suggested viewing below that goes into all this.
Now, let’s get some context, because it was stated in the Alice Bailey material that the conflict between capital and labor would reach its climax in the United States.[7] We are fast approaching that now. What happened in 1975 was a corporate takeover of New York which would then spread
across the US, much to the detriment of New Yorkers and then Americans in general. At the time David Rockefeller was quoted in an article in Business Week in 1974 that the biggest challenge for corporate America would be to sell austerity to the American people in the next decades. Well, corporate America and the financial class on Wall Street have been doing that very thing by salami slice for the past 50 years. And now we find the nation saddled with almost $40 trillion in debt, massive cuts to social services and the country on the brink of a major societal upheaval and financial collapse. If we took half of the wealth of the richest people in the US and applied it toward social programs (called ‘communism’ in the US), those richest people would still be the wealthiest, but Americans would be much better off and would enjoy a decent standard of living. The DOGE of the present Trump administration was supposed to have done the same thing that Rockefeller was talking about. “It’s all for the general good”. Trickle-down economics (‘Reaganomics’) was part of the takeover. We have the following from that interview from Consortium News:
“It’s for the greater good that we’re going to trim all this fat. But what was the fat? These were fire departments, police departments, teachers, every service that the people of New York needed to have a decent quality of life, an affordable life that made it the greatest city in the world. All that money was sucked out of the basic living conditions for ordinary New Yorkers and made [it] into the highest profit centers in the world…Wall Street threatened Mayor Beame that they were going to leave and that business would do just what they were saying about Mamdani. Everyone’s going to flee the city. Well, you know, don’t let the door slam on your way out is what I have to say. But it was a phoney threat. Do you think these Wall Street guys are going to go to Austin, Texas or even Hoboken?”
So, we are about to see the mettle of Mamdani. Will he carry through or is he yet another example of controlled opposition? There is one particular tax refund that he could get repealed that would flood tax dollars back into the New York economy (see video mentioned) but he has yet to act upon it – the stock purchase tax refund, which remains in place in many US states. New York, being the financial capital of the US, is ground zero for reversing the neoliberal era in the US and beyond. It is also ground zero along with Washington for the resolution of the conflict between capital and labor. The fight will be long and hard and involves some of the richest families in the US, including the Trump clan. Mamdani faces formidable challenges going forward. But perhaps the biggest takeaway from his victory was how it eventuated – organization at the grassroots level.
Mamdani must now keep that organized support active and growing if he is to succeed in his stated agendas during the campaign. If he begins to falter and begins to lose his grassroots support the game is up. He would be yet another talking head instead of a real agent for change. New York is ready for change – real, progressive change. The Left in the US and the West consistently fails because it is disorganized, a lesson the conservative movements have learned well. And they know how to keep the Left disorganized, through financing, the media and infiltration. As the saying goes, Mamdani needs to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. This is probably enough to know about Mamdani at present. We will soon see in the New Year how his administration will fare. It bears careful watching by the American people. We wish the people of New York well. But there was another infamous resident of New York whose ghost keeps hanging around.
Almost unanimously, both houses of Congress have voted to release the files. Trump had no hope of a veto with that kind of Congressional vote. He signed on the release. Epstein’s brother, Mark, stated that the Justice Department used the time during the shutdown to scrub the files. So, what do we really think? Are we going to see everything about Epstein and his activities exposed? I am not a betting man, but even I wouldn’t bet on that. And we can probably expect that the next release will also be heavily redacted, if we see anything at all. But here are some things to consider:
The release of these latest emails showed that Epstein brokered connections between the Israelis and the Russians about the ongoing war in Syria, for example. He had a Saudi passport, which was probably fake, but which allowed him to go in and out of the Persian Gulf region more or less freely. He had connections with people like Macron, Mandelson, Starmer, Nigel Farage (Mr. Brexit) and other government officials, including Tom Barrack in the current administration – in other words people at high places within many states. Barrack is currently trying to sell Syria to Israel and wants to destroy Hezbollah. Further Epstein revelations also stand to do severe damage to the British Royal Family. And he also had connections with Steve Bannon, Big Tech, academia, Hollywood (propaganda films) and various related fields. He played a prominent role in helping advance the Israeli cyberweapons industry. But there was also a less mentioned interest of his, which brings in something even more nefarious, and which people are skirting around in commentary, and that his function as a go-between and advisor between governments and the tech industry, bringing in the idea that he was either personally seeking to or enabling developments in surveillance, media manipulation, and overall use of tech as a means of control. That is where his connection with Noam Chomsky came in, which itself is causing considerable angst among Chomsky’s fans and followers.
Chomsky: Noam Chomsky has long been known as America’s foremost ‘radical dissident intellectual’ and linguist. His work has influenced many millions of people, especially those with anti-imperialist views. He is held up as an icon for the left-leaning in politics. With the recent revelation of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, many in the left have been thrown into disbelief and in disarray, with many comments I have seen to the effect that they have long thought that Chomsky was controlled opposition, a ‘gatekeeper’ or even a fraud. The fact is, we are all human beings. No one should ever be put up on a pedestal or hailed as a hero. To be sure, Chomsky had his biases. There are several things to consider here, for those who may be or are starting to have questions about Chomsky, including many readers of these letters.
With all the previous being said, what was it that drew Chomsky and Epstein together? Whitney Webb wrote a good synopsis on the matter. Now, for anyone thinking Chomsky was involved in any sort of pedophilia, no one is really suggesting that. Chomsky’s and Epstein’s interests were intellectual and financial. But this is where the more nefarious intention comes in. Epstein was interested in Chomsky’s view on linguistics and how those views could be incorporated into tech. Chomsky himself was inclined toward technocratic concerns. He was a professor at MIT, after all. The two met when Chomsky was in his 80s. Epstein had interests in trans-humanism and had contacts with the likes of Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and other tech moguls, as well as his connections with Israeli intelligence. And it is not unknown that people with very high intelligence, such as Chomsky, can often set moral concerns aside when it comes to their interests.
To hear Chomsky tell it, Epstein had paid for his crimes and was starting from a clean slate when the two actually struck up their friendship. We might question whether Epstein actually saw Chomsky as a friend or as an intellectual asset. We will cover this aspect of linguistics, language and tech in the next letter. But for now, all I would say about the relationship between Chomsky and Epstein is to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes. Chomsky has done a lot of very fine work in the past and this is not to be ignored, simply because he had a friendship with someone of obviously dark character. Chomsky’s work started many of us on our journeys toward understanding the imperialist nature of Washington and its darker side, including about how we have all been indoctrinated over the years. There are also questions about how much Chomsky’s 2nd wife had on his meetings with Epstein, something which we will probably never know. It is known that she worked as an investment analyst for a time, which may have had a bearing. The Chomskys may have seen Epstein as useful for attracting funding to MIT. And in case you are wondering, and if it is true, Epstein didn’t kill himself. That would add even more fuel for the fire. But most people believe he was killed, anyway. So, we leave Epstein here for now, but his connection with Israel brings in the next topic.
The Gaza ‘peace deal’: From the bullet point above regarding the UN Security Council vote on the Trump peace plan for Gaza, we enter here into a fuller discussion of what has actually taken place. Comment is turning toward the opinion that Trump is a Shabbos-goy, meaning servant of the Jews. It is more nuanced than that, which will be addressed more fully in the next letter. For Trump it all comes down to business, it would seem. But Trump has other major donors and business interests who are not Jewish. Washington’s and Wall Street’s full-on support for Israel is covered more in a bit here. But we begin with the vote for the plan itself, which upset a great many people.
Secondly, neither Russia nor China are part of The Resistance bloc. Both of them have interests in the Israeli state – noting that does not necessarily mean Zionism itself – but they also have interests across the region. Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015 has led some commentary to believe in effect that Russia was part of The Resistance and opposed Israel, leading to many questions as to why the Russians did not interfere in Israeli airstrikes on Syria over the past 10 years. The reason may surprise some readers but at the same time lead us to a greater understanding of what is going on in the region. On the Russian side it started with the exodus of nearly a million Russian Jews from the old Soviet Union following the collapse of the USSR. Those Jews settled primarily in Palestine. The Russians have many friends, family and business associates among those who fled Russia in those days now residing in Israel. What the Russians have done in the region is to seek to maintain a security balance instead of favoring one faction over another. And if you want to delve deeper into the reasons why Putin has regular conversations with Netanyahu instead of cutting them off because of the genocide, the preceding points begin to explain why. For himself, Putin is in favor of maintaining the Israeli state because of the Russian interests just mentioned. At the same time they seek to uphold Resolution 1397. In effect, it is a poisoned chalice for the Russians, as just demonstrated with the Security Council vote on the Trump plan. There is more to it, to which we will return.
On the Chinese side, their abstention is a little more difficult to understand. But it was recently explained by a Chinese researcher in his analysis of Chinese diplomacy.[8] The fact that many across the West have expressed dismay at the abstentions of China and Russia in this vote displays more of an ideological bias rather than a cold understanding of history and international relations. On the Chinese side, if they veto a measure in the UN, whether the General Assembly or the Security Council, that means they would fight against the measure. But in this case they don’t oppose it 100%. The Chinese want to see an end to the carnage and to see the enactment of the two state solution. The Trump plan supposedly would lead to that.
The Russians have very close and serious economic relations with the Turks, which also amounts to security concerns because of the Bosporus Strait, which allows access of the Russian Black Sea fleet into the Mediterranean and beyond. The Turks had a hand in the Trump plan, as did all the family dynasties of the Arab Gulf states. With the question of oil and gas transport and sales to and from both China and Russia, it perhaps comes as no surprise why the Russians and the Chinese abstained from the vote, because in doing so it would have rattled confidence in all those monarchies and the Turks regarding the Russians and the Chinese, given the current tensions in Ukraine and West Asia. We don’t have to like it, but these are a few of the realities that face the Russians and the Chinese in the current state of tensions in Europe and West Asia.
Complicity vs. the long view: After the vote at the UN was ratified and the Trump plan was passed it became a binding resolution. That means it has to be followed through to the full, or fail on its own weaknesses. This is where the major challenges for the plan come in. A few comments I had seen on social media were to the effect that the abstention was complicity in the genocide and the further subjugation of the Palestinian people. After letting my own emotions settle after hearing the result, I made the following comment to a colleague who was questioning the vote regarding the comment just linked:
“Interesting comments. He’s overreacting. It is far more nuanced than that comment. Putin and Xi, representing the governments of those nations, are looking on at what is happening in Washington, the sorry state of Israel now, with Hezbollah almost at the point of war again and so on. Personally I think Bibi wanted them to veto it. Now he has to answer to Trump, to see international forces in Gaza instead of Israeli settlers. The Israelis don’t want peace. They want to finish the job. Well so long as the Trump plan is in place, they can’t. If the motion had been vetoed Bibi could have carried on. Now we will watch over the next weeks or couple of months as the whole peace plan falls apart, as it surely will. There are too many vested interests. Trump’s peace plan throws a wrench in the whole Greater Israel project. And that [wrench] includes the Russian interests in Syria. They just had a delegation tour the southern border. The Russians want to see Syria stay intact. It’s a security matter to them. There are too many variables to say this vote was a simple capitulation. And Hamas is still there and refuses to disarm. The Trump plan means extended occupation. Well, Trump, good luck with that, as the saying goes. You just bought the West another quagmire.”
Behind the hoopla…:There are several factors that are not mentioned in media with regard to the peace plan. For the Western powers, cease-fires are used not for peace, but for rest and rearmament. At the beginning of the cease-fire Netanyahu stated that they needed to rest the army, repair the tanks and so forth. The Israelis have no intention of allowing any part of the Gaza Strip to remain under Palestinian control. And we see that none of the Arab states who supported Trump’s peace plan at the UN vote are very keen to send troops in to face Hamas. American mercenaries will have to be used. Seeing that neither the Americans or the Israelis nor even the Saudi’s for that matter could dislodge Ansarallah in Yemen, and given that the Israeli forces have not defeated Hamas, Trump and the Arab states are looking at spending big money on sending mercenaries – or at least trying to – into the Gaza Strip in an effort to disarm Hamas. Essentially, that will escalate the war into a hot phase instead of the current slow burn we are seeing in Gaza at present. We can expect that in the next weeks.
Gaza real estate: Trumps peace plan is simply a rebranding of Israel’s failure to defeat Hamas. It is also not so much a ‘peace deal’ as it is a real estate deal for Trump and his family. This is just grift. There is an offer to rebuild Gaza with a $70 billion fund which will be routed through a board which Trump chairs, even after he leaves office. The aim now is to steal the Palestinian land and offer compensation and to build only in the Israeli control zones. Trump structured the board so that it acts as an international legal personality, meaning it operates like a corporation instead of a
government agency. Gaza has become Trump’s private economic project. He controls and owns the reconstruction. This is why we see his son-in-law so intimately involved in the project. The Arab states will not send so-called stabilization forces because that means disarming the Palestinians on Israel’s behalf because the Israelis have failed to do so. But the biggest reason they will not send their own troops is because the peoples of those Arab states are boiling mad over what the Israelis and Americans are doing to Gaza. To send troops from their own countries, these Arab states are inviting massive revolts. So, instead of the Saudis sending their troops, for instance, they decided to give the US a lot of money, to the tune of $1 trillion in investments. That lets them off the hook. All of these oil-rich kingdoms will likely follow suit. That leaves the Western powers to send their mercenaries to do the job for the Israelis. Or, the Israelis will have to do it themselves.
There has been no Israeli cease-fire in Gaza. Since the agreement for cease-fire was reached 500 violations have been recorded, with over 300 Palestinians killed in the process as of the 23rd of last month. Israel is still killing 100 Palestinians a day on average. All profits from the reconstruction will go to Trump-connected entities. The Trump plan is about legitimizing Israel’s land grab, privatizing reconstruction for profit, outsourcing occupation to mercenaries and forcing Palestinians to pay for their own ethnic cleansing. And this now has the UN stamp of approval. This is no peace plan. It is a resource and land grab. So, we dig a little bit deeper.
The West and Israel: There are several reasons why Western powers are so keen to keep Israel in place and the Palestinians gone. We have covered some of these matters in the past. The Western economic system needs resources as collateral for loans. There are huge gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, part of which rightfully belong to the Palestinians. This was part of the reason Yasser Arafat was very likely assassinated in 2004, because when the gas reserves were discovered in 2000 he made an announcement to the effect that the sales of those gas reserves would support Palestinians in their cause for many decades. Since his alleged assassination the Palestinian authority has been an Israeli cut-out and vassal. The seizing of resources is also why the US is so keen to go against Iran, not to mention that there is still a strong sentiment in Washington to avenge the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Keep in mind that the 1970s were the decade of the introduction of the neoliberal system, which relies on the holding of resources and assets as collateral for loans.
The Europeans have exhausted their reserves and have no real assets as a means of supporting or supplying such collateral. They have also destroyed their economies by means of sanctions and sending their citizens’ tax money to Ukraine. There are gas reserves in the North Sea which is under control of the Norwegians, supposedly, but that’s not enough to keep the Europeans afloat. And now with the Nord Stream pipelines out of service or destroyed, Germany has to rely on supplies from the Middle East for its energy along with inflated prices on American LNG and clandestine shipments of Russian oil and gas. Then there is the old Brzezinski scheme to keep the Russians destabilized through encirclement and the advancement of NATO up to its borders. Southwest Asia is the doorway into the Caucasus and Azerbaijan has recently become a key NATO player in that effort.
With just these few extra factors being added into the mix, perhaps we can see why the Western powers are so adamant that Israel must survive, and why nations like Russia and China have abstained from this latest terrible vote of the UNSC. They know Israel is very weak, as is the US being increasingly in decline and Trump’s plan will ultimately fail as soon as the Israelis and possibly American mercenaries begin trying to disarm Hamas. So, this is a rather complicated situation at the moment and quite a lot of flux, and not to mention the uncertainty regarding outcomes. The Palestinian leadership is under no illusions that the peace plan is nothing of the sort and simply another manifestation of the occupation.
The Gazan agreement: The various factions in Gaza and the West Bank have all come to an agreement about the future government of the Gaza Strip, independently of the Trump plan. Alastair Crooke, who knows the region and all the factions quite well just made the following comments regarding Trump’s plan and the recent pact made between the various Palestinian factions:
“…the important thing is that this was not a Hamas agreement. It was an agreement, a full agreement with the 14 resistance movements of Gaza who all were in accord with the ceasefire and its terms and also in accord in not agreeing to having a technocratic non-Palestinian government imposed on it. They want – and this is a really interesting thing that has come out – they wanted to have sovereignty. They wanted to have not be purely technocratic because they wanted to have some form of sovereignty, Palestinian sovereignty. It goes all the way back to the non-aligned movement. And what Hamas has been saying over the years – I know people will not sort of accept it, but I know this position – that they regard themselves more as a national liberation movement, not as an Islamic movement and as an anti-colonial movement. And so this is also deeply embedded.
I mean, you know, there will be have to be compromises and whatever because there will be all these Turks and Qataris and UAE people intervening in it to try and make it as technocratic and as anti-Hamas as possible. But, you know, Gaza, I know it quite well. I mean, it’s constitutionally Hamas, I mean, and Resistance. I mean there are a few of these elements like as I say the Doghmosh and so on, but these were really sort of criminal gangs more than in any sense had legitimacy amongst the public. And look what’s happening in the West Bank because the West Bank…the Israelis are saying, well the problem is you know the West Bank is becoming Hamas. What are we going to do now with that, especially as the settlers seem to be completely out of control – you know cutting down olive trees, beating up Palestinians, setting fire to their vehicles, driving them off their land? A thousand olive trees have been cut in this period since the 7th of October…”
The tsunami: or new exodus. Israel is facing what has been called a ‘mental health tsunami’, with two million Israelis in need of mental health care as a result of the two years of war (translate from Hebrew). They “will need support from the state, [with] a sharp jump in the number of addicts and the disintegration of entire families and communities” according to Israeli press. There was recently a phenomenon in Israel that saw thousands of Israelis lined up at the Portuguese embassy to apply for Portuguese citizenship. Mizrahi (Sephardic) Jews make up 48% of Israel’s population and a significant number of those applying for citizenship would have family ties in Portugal and Spain. ‘Sephardic’ means from the Iberian Peninsula. Why, one might ask, would so many be applying for European passports if Israel is the ‘Promised Land’? Israel is looking increasingly like the land of broken promises. As it turns out, recent polling showed that over 25% of Israelis are considering leaving the country, citing high living costs, insecurity, politics and lack of employment opportunities. What do we think a fresh rise in hostilities will bring, especially if Israel itself is attacked and blockaded?
Losing the narrative: The right and the left of Americans under 35 are gradually converging in their views, in opposition to Israel and the genocide. Since the Charlie Kirk assassination especially the Zionists in the US are profoundly concerned, because these younger voters will soon be taking the reins of power in the US. We are beginning to see ‘Ceausescu moments’ in the US as younger people begin to ask uncomfortable questions of people in leadership roles. There is a large effort by the more powerful Zionists as a result to take control of all media in the US and to scrub all they can from the internet that shows Israel’s war crimes. This is even to the extent that the FBI are trying to find the identity of the registrar of the archiving site Archive.Today. (link to site) Note: That site is not The Wayback Machine. The same thing is happening in Europe, too. In the US the main concern about loss of narrative (meaning indoctrination) concerns support for Israel. In Europe the main concern is the loss of narrative about the SMO in Ukraine, with Israel running a close second.
The Ukrainian peace offer: Before we even start, it has been well known that Ukraine is without doubt the most corrupt nation in Europe, and one of the most corrupt worldwide. What follows is important for the people of the US, the EU and UK to understand. After the Maidan coup in 2014 the United States installed an anticorruption Bureau in Kiev called the NABU. (See Neutrality Studies video below). It was installed to exert control over Kiev, not to investigate corruption. NABU was not the only organization installed by Washington to control Kiev, but NABU is in the news now. In the past month the United States has ordered this bureau to conduct an investigation into the corruption of the Ukrainian leadership regarding Energoatom, Ukraine’s electricity authority that oversees Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
The Trump factions in Washington do not necessarily want to see this corruption ended, but to use Operation Midas as a lever to pressure Zelenskyy toward a peace deal. And just to be clear, the $48 billion has come out of our pockets as taxes. Meanwhile, the wives and families of these officials spend their time in Western cities in the lap of luxury, all the while their comrades, so-called, are being sacrificed in trenches on the front. Thus far the investigation has claimed a few scalps, with one of the leaders of the racket having absconded to Israel along with one of his associates. A couple of them have been jailed, with a couple of them having resigned. We won’t go into it here. But that brings us to the news of a proposed peace deal.
Make money, not war: The title of this topic was also the title of a piece in The Wall Street Journal (paywalled, but screen shots here) on the real intent behind the Trump proposal for ending the war in Ukraine. The plan was a nothing-burger from the start. It is not really about ending the war, but instead about enriching his family and associates, using the promise of business deals as a way of hoping to entice the Russians to the negotiating table. The Russians see through it, of course, but at the same time they will look at any serious proposal. At the start if the SMO – and to be clear the Russians see this as a police action instead of a war, a Special Military Operation – a few readers here asked me how long I thought the war would last. I had said at that point that the war would not last for long. That was almost the case, because in April of that year, a mere couple of months into the SMO, the Ukrainians had agreed to a peace agreement with Russia in Istanbul. The war could have – should have – ended then, were it not for the perfidy of the French, UK, US interests (makes for an interesting acronym, those three nations) who wanted to see the war continue and escalate. There was too much money to be made from the conflict, with hopes that Russia would collapse and the three powers just mentioned could resume their plundering of Russia and Ukraine after the fact. The scuttling of that agreement was a crime against all of us, especially the Ukrainians. For the Russians, it led to their rise as a major power, much to the angst of the West.
The Russians will reject such proposals from the US, EU and Ukraine, not because the Russians like war, but because the proposals do not address the causes of the war. To reiterate yet again, the causes of the war were the encroachment of NATO to Russia’s borders, NATO’s arming of Ukraine as an aggressor against Russia, Ukraine’s mistreatment of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine and the neo-Nazi nationalists in Ukraine who wanted to ethnically cleanse Ukraine of any Russian influence. Even more than that, the war was an American corporate land grab in Ukraine, and they hoped further on into Russia. We have been over this and over this for the past four years, but it is only now that articles and reports in Western media outlets are beginning to confirm all these points. Yet, there is still the bias toward the meme in the West that Russia is the aggressor. Why?
Again, over and over for the past four years, if people had bothered to investigate the aforementioned matters, there have been many members of Western intelligence communities and investigative reporters who have uncovered the facts regarding the SMO. They have clearly and calmly outlined the fact that NATO powers provoked this conflict. Many of those talks and articles have been referenced here, such as a few in the Suggested Viewing, below. People will believe or not according to their own inclinations. But the reason for mentioning the preceding is nuanced. It is the upper (crumbling) crust in Western societies who want to see Russia defeated and dismembered, which is also true for West Asia. There is a visceral hatred of Russia in the British, German and French establishments, an obsession about defeating Russia, whereas the peoples of those nations actually rather like the Russians once the unceasing rhetoric from those establishments is silenced and people can actually interact with Russians. I knew a few Russians when I lived in Australia, and they are basically like the rest of us. Good people. Such is the case as recently recounted in an interview on the MOATS show.
The bait-and-switch: As was the case with the Gaza peace deal, what has been proposed thus far from Washington and the EU are not to be seen as peace deals. Thy are business deals as can be seen with the two chief ‘negotiators’ for the US – both real estate men – Kushner and Witcoff. Alastair Crooke has likened these deals to a sort of bait and switch. They are meant to test the Russian waters as to what is acceptable, whereas the same time the Russians have been very clear about what they will accept in terms of a lasting peace or not. The first such deal put forward was a 28 point plan that the Western press tried to pose as a joint US-Russian effort. In fact, nothing has been agreed upon by the Russians, with the truth eventually coming out that the 28 point plan was concocted with Ukrainian input and was leaked by the Ukrainians through American media sources. Most likely the plan was cooked up by Gen. Kellogg with the Ukrainians to see if Russia would bite on any of the points.
For their part the Russians say they will consider any reasonable plan, having been pressured to the negotiating positions by their friends, the latter who want to see the war ended on diplomatic means. This is fair enough. But the fact is the Russian people want to see a proper resolution of the conflict, meaning that the causes of the conflict are removed, with a comprehensive pan-European security agreement firmly in place. This is unacceptable to the Western powers and Washington, especially among the neocon set there, who want to see the war continued.
When we sit down and begin to parse the proposal, starting with the 28 point that was initially put forward, we see that it goes against what the Russians have stated as their desired results for the SMO. It is a very amateurish piece of work. That calls for Russians to freeze a line of contact in the Zaporozhe and all of the eastern oblasts, for Russia to rent (??) the Donbas from Ukraine, $100 billion in frozen Russian assets to be used for reconstruction in Ukraine – again overseen by Trump – along with other points that are not really worth going into. The Russians see the 28 point proposal as having moved the needle a little bit toward Russian concerns, as it were, but still falling well short. Putin appeared at the Russian western front wearing military fatigues in a meeting with the General Staff, where he told the assembled staff that Russia would continue with the SMO until all goals were achieved, and this after the 28 point plan had appeared in the Western press. The Russians would prefer to pursue this to a military victory. It is the other nations that are pressing Russia for a negotiated settlement. And those are nations friendly to Russia. Basically, the 28 point proposal would be a Minsk 3.0 agreement. Putin also said that the Russian people deserve closure, a proper agreement that removes the causes of the conflict in the first place, which was the guiding impulse behind his statements.
The Ukraine sitrep: There has been sudden movement and breakthroughs on the front lines in Ukraine by the Russians, and they are quickly moving through territory to eventually clean up the four oblasts that have gone back to Russia. And as was stated in the last letter, there is very little in terms of defences between these oblasts and Kiev. Kharkov and Sumi cities are within reach of Russian forces. There are withering attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and electricity almost daily, along with rail links. By the time the New Year rolls around Ukrainian fortifications in the Donbas will fall to the Russians, meaning Ukraine’s army will have been soundly defeated. There is talk now about pouring all the foreign forces fighting for Ukraine into the front lines – meaning Colombians, Poles, Americans (yes there are American forces and mercenaries in Ukraine) – in fact mercenaries from many countries. There are reports of North Korean troops in the Zaporozhe front. The North Koreans are there for battle experience, which they lack, as part of the strategic partnership with Russia.
The population of Ukraine since its peak in the early ‘90s to now has been cut almost in half, either from loss of territory, casualties (staggering since the war started), refugees and emigration. The EU saw an influx of Ukrainians since the fall of the Soviet Union looking for work. We have a few friends here among them, as an aside. But returning to military matters, Ukraine’s military has been wrecked. Ukrainian soldiers desert from the front when they can and they surrender to Russian soldiers when approached, that is to say, the soldiers who are dragooned off the streets of Ukraine. The Ukraine’s military morale is in a terrible state. Lucky are the young men who have managed to escape to Europe and beyond. The corruption of the regime in Kiev is exposed for everyone to see. The front lines are manned by one or two soldiers per kilometer along the front. It is to the point where all the Russians have to do is just walk through, were it not for the drones. The Russians have clearly won the war, yet we are told that the Russian economy is foundering, with long gas lines in Russia (there aren’t), and that all we need to do is just keep pouring money and weapons into the Ukrainian black hole and eventually Russia will collapse. Nothing could be farther from the truth. So now we are at a critical point in Europe.
Leadership in Brussels, if we can call it that, is trying to find some way to use the frozen Russian assets to keep Ukraine float, which really means salvaging their own grip on power in Brussels and hiding their own corruption. It is now known that the figure that is been quoted of $300 billion of frozen assets is actually quite a bit more than that. There was recently a meeting of central bankers from the Global South that have confirmed this, with Russia having done their investigations and figures and have found a corresponding number, meaning value of European assets inside Russia that can be seized if Europeans are silly enough to try to steal the Russian assets. (See Mercouris video below for details, toward the end of the video.) The only sane voices in the European Union
appear to be in the Visegrád states minus Poland, who are saying it is imperative to end the war now. Instead, the more powerful states in Western Europe insist that the war continues. A Russian victory on the battlefield, to these leaders in Europe, is to be avoided at all costs. Those costs will be passed on to the backs of the average European, given that seizure of the Russian assets has been stalled by the Belgians, whose company actually holds those assets. The game is up, in other words.
With neither Ukraine, nor Western Europe, nor the neocons in the US able to agree to Russia’s terms – Ukraine demilitarized, a neutral Ukraine with no possibility of joining NATO, and the nationalist regime in Kiev gone – along with the loss of Ukrainian territory, they see the only possibility left to them is to escalate tensions against Russia, which will mean the war will continue until Russia ends the war on the battlefield. Such a scenario would mean the financial ruin of the EU, especially Germany, with an angry European populace demanding answers as to why their hard-won social programs have been gutted and their economies at the very least are in the doldrums. And when the war is over, what about all the Ukrainians who fled the war into Europe, who can no longer be supported by the European states who had taken them in? Will they be told to return to their ruined country? Will they be forcefully removed, deported? How do we really expect this to and? And Zelenskyy – will he flee to Israel or be taken to the UK, or will he be ‘dealt with’ by the nationalist forces who will want to keep fighting on? There is much in the way of speculation going on at the moment regarding the future of the EU, and NATO, with most commentary pointing to the fact that the EU and NATO both will be forced to break up, eventually. The stresses and blaming each other for the collapse will just be too much. Once again, the European nations will be defeated by Russia, diplomatically and politically this time instead of militarily.
In conclusion, What do we do in the meantime, given all the preceding? The next couple of years are going to be very unsettled, mostly in the West. It is incumbent on us to maintain a steady center, for those of us who can in the face of what is coming. We simply need more Light at the moment but it needs to be maintained. I was thinking about all this the other day and after dinner at one of our local Chinese restaurants ago a fortune cookie with the following sage advice appeared: “It is not enough just to know the way-you also have to get there.” In other words, steady progress wins the day. I jest about the fortune cookie. But this is what our spiritual teachers and traditions have told us down through the ages. Practise, practise, above all, (make effort) otherwise there is no progress. But the fortune from the cookie was a good reminder.
Mentioned previously was a surprise regarding Zelenskyy, and it comes down to this, if true: The war in Ukraine may end much sooner than any of us had anticipated. Word through the grapevine (see Macgregor interview at Deep Focus, below) is that preparations are being made to ship Zelenskyy and many of his inner circle off to Israel, where he would not face extradition. He is Jewish, after all, and he has property there, bought via Ukrainian corruption. With him gone, elections would have to be held and the war may end with a neutral Ukraine. We can only hope. But stranger things have happened. His situation is extremely fraught and under increasing pressure by the day from the Americans.
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