Shall We Continue?

The deep history of the Jewish mafia and presidential politics, Noah Shachtman and James Gordon Meek, the foreign occupation of Texas, George Tenet and Trae Stephens

A screenshot showing Israeli spy Jon Vein’s link to Christopher Steele. The Steele Dossier was Israeli disinformation aimed at corrupting federal law enforcement, paid for by Paul Singer’s network and published by Buzzfeed Ben. These guys are bad news.

By a majority of four votes this morning, Israel has begun its judicial reforms. A vote like that leaves major legitimacy questions, that’s a pretty thin margin on which to change a state’s constitution. It’s sort of like watching the prelude to the English Civil War, live in the desert. Benjamin Netanyahu has started to get his overhaul, but the state is in a dubious place. “Start-up nation” is in question, Israel’s sovereign credit is in question, the military is on the verge of collapse.

Because of the spyware issue, what’s going on there is related to what happens here in the United States. This is a very wrenching moment for a lot of American Jews, a main reason why lots of Jewish Democrats have tried to stop it, so the last thing you want to do is rub that in.

But because this has happened, President Biden is sort of left with no choice but to act against Bibi’s network here in the United States.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is a very ad-hoc one, very unregulated by the standards of most diplomatic relationships. The cultural ties are real: there are a lot of dual citizens, the Ashkenazi ruling class in Tel Aviv is very culturally American. But one reason this is so chaotic right now is because normalcy has been put off for too long. One trope you see from Israel-connected journalists is “they’re singling us out,” “treat us like any other country.” That’s kind of what this is.

There’s a lot of magical rhetoric when it comes to Israel—congressman routinely talk about how Israel is an important ally. But strictly speaking, this is not true. There is no mutual defense treaty with Israel. So they aren’t an ally. We have cooperation agreements, but no alliance. This is yet another thing where about which the press in Israel itself is just vastly better than in the U.S: you’re seeing papers in Israel running articles about how Bibi has destroyed the U.S.-Israel relationship. I think that’s basically right.

If this relationship could have been regulated, with FARA registration for the main lobby groups, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten to this point. But that’s something the Israel lobby has always resolutely opposed.

There are two ways for this to go: either the U.S. is able to jerk Israel into its orbit, which involves imposing terms, or it is allowed to drift away into pariah status, and the U.S. begins to treat it like an apartheid state. Because the Republican politicians the Likudniks back are uncomfortable imposing any terms on Israel, the Republican Party is not going to be useful in helping to do so in a way that would lead to a stable situation.

What might it look like to jerk Israel into the U.S.’s orbit? And why might we want to do it? I’m not sure if things are too far gone to do so at this point, but it’s worth considering.

The U.S. does not stand to gain much at all from a mutual defense treaty with Israel. It would have to be done out of a sense of noblesse oblige, for the simple reason that Israel drifting into China’s orbit means a world of trouble for American Jews, given the close ties there. But that would mean imposing terms.

The deal would look something like this:

• FARA registration for the main lobby groups

• Serious limitations on spyware and an end to Israel’s nuclear program

• The full weight of DOJ brought to bear against the Jewish mafia in the U.S.

Some of this is probably going to happen anyway. But in exchange, Israel would get:

• A constitution

• A mutual defense treaty

Probably none of this can happen with Bibi in power, and the question of how to handle the occupation is a big one that could tank the whole thing. Things might just be too far gone at this point, and we need to talk about all this messing around in the U.S.

A lot of Jews are hip to what’s going on, and they see why it needs to happen, like the Chabadniks, a lot of Mossad guys, patriotic American Jews, and large swaths of Israeli civil society. A lot of them are sick of this stuff too, and they’re helping. It’s important to understand that. One way I’d conceptualize this is the turn against China happens through Israel. Look at how Haaretz is covering Gal Luft—Luft seems to have been helping China in Israel too.

The History of Jewish Organized Crime and Presidential Politics

I’m not even going to pretend what’s going on doesn’t have to do with the settling of old scores, it obviously does if you look closely. The links between the Jewish mafia and the Israeli state go back a very long way, and a lot of this probably needs to be dealt with now. Not with hatred, but with uncompromising firmness, because that’s the only way to deal with a mafia. Lots of diaspora groups have their own ethnic lobbies that have mafia-esque elements, the basic problem is not unique to Jews, but it’s fair to say the Jewish mafia is one of the most powerful. If you know your Machiavelli, you know every regime is founded on force and fraud, so this stuff is par for the course, but the history of force and fraud exercised against the U.S. presidency by partisans of Israel is, to be sure, troubling.

There’s a secret history of the 20th century that bears keeping in mind. President Truman gets a lot of credit with the Israel lobby for recognizing Israel right off the bat in 1947, but the real story is that Meyer Lansky and the Kansas City mob threatened to kill him if he didn’t.

There’s also a substantial Israel connection to the Kennedy assassination—Kennedy forced Ben-Gurion’s resignation over nuclear inspections, which put him on the wrong side of the Israelis. There’s a reason new information about, for instance, Reuben Efron, is coming out now. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. knows about all this. What do you think this is really about?

[Jefferson] Morley said there's one name that's been a mystery all these years, and was made public in the files: Reuben Efron, who worked for the CIA and was intercepting Lee Harvey Oswald's mail in the months before the assassination.

"Ruben Efron died 30 years ago. So they're not protecting the name of a living person. They're protecting the operational activity that he was engaged in, which was reading Lee Harvey Oswald mail," Morley said. "What it shows is that the CIA was running some kind of intelligence operation. We don't know exactly what, around Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, while President Kennedy was still alive."

It will now be up to individual government agencies to determine if and when more documents from the investigation are released in the future.

Did you catch which researcher got that?

And there is of course the time Bibi tried to blackmail President Clinton.

It doesn’t strike me as beyond the pale to imagine that the Democratic Party’s memory about this stuff could be rather long.

People think politics and investing isn’t this interesting anymore, but this stuff hasn’t actually gone away—Scott Banister is connected to the Kansas City mob, Jason Calacanis has mob connections. I’m just not sure about all these mob people funding tech companies, probably not so good.

A lot of the Republican Party and the conservative movement is, sad to say, effectively on the side of the Jewish mafia. It’s hard to make sense of this moment without understanding they’ve more or less been operating with impunity for 70 years. I reject the premise that it’s anti-Semitic or anti-Israel to bring this to heel. You combine a powerful mafia with state-backed spyware and it raises the risk of state capture, and there’s a case to be made that happened under Trump.

The U.S. cannot have a client state throwing elections around the world and blackmailing our politicians. It’s very hard to take our superpower status seriously if the U.S. isn’t able to dictate terms here. Major U.S. interests are at stake.

This is a very complex problem, and if we’re not able to talk about it frankly and with reference to all the elements, it’s hard to see how we’ll be able to solve it. We’ve got Tablet and several former ambassadors to Israel talking about ending U.S. aid there (though the Tablet piece is sort of an upside-down version of reality, you wonder if it’s a clever parody). We’re in uncharted territory, and I don’t think frankness is bad.

Let’s Talk About Noah Shachtman

Noah Shachtman was the Daily Beast editor during much of the Gaetz scandal. He went to school in Israel, and has now bounced to Rolling Stone. He probably knew full well that the Gaetz scandal was an Israeli blackmail attempt, because he knows how these things work.

You can tell he knows how these things work because he was covering for the child porn aficionado James Gordon Meek, the former ABC producer, who has just pled guilty. He added the line to the initial story, "Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus." Meek allegedly wrote at one point, “Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing.” Interesting guy to be covering for, Noah.

Personally I think it’s good that the national-security apparatus takes a dim view of that sort of thing. If only our Israeli reporters and editors agreed. This is a very interesting picture, showing Meek with Cassandra Fairbanks and Alana Goodman. What do they know about him?

There’s something messed up about Rolling Stone. I think of the “Rape on Campus” story about UVA, which was a total fabrication, as the Israelis trying to go after Virginia’s fraternities. What they want is for you not to talk to your countrymen, and get all your news and information through their messed-up publications and compromised reporters. In that case, they messed around, and found out. Virginia will not be trifled with.

Shachtman also didn’t want to blow the whistle on Eliza Bleu’s double game, the anti-sex-trafficking advocate promoted by Elon Musk, Andrew Yang and various others whose backstory is a complete lie. In the anti-sex trafficking PR machine there are a lot of these, some of these people are actually covering for sex traffickers themselves, which is relevant to the Sound of Freedom matter. Sound of Freedom came out of Angel Studios, the Mormons’ end-run around Hollywood, and it has all this Mexican financing. Tim Ballard seems to know something’s up.

The Mormon network, of necessity, has various gentlemen’s agreements with the Mexican cartels, gambling in Las Vegas and other dubious activities, and it’s something to be wary of.

What’s the Matter with Texas?

This sort of thing is unhelpful:

In what universe is it the responsibility of a state governor to do things like this? It’s totally obsequious, and has nothing to do with governing his state. Cruz, Abbott, the Israelis just seem to run these guys. The Israelis need to stop this quasi-diplomacy with governors, it’s clearly unconstitutional, it raises the specter of their participation in tearing this country apart.

All the top Republican leaders in Texas are this type of Republican. They do this swaggering, tough-guy Texan thing but they’re totally obsequious to a foreign power. This isn’t the Texas I know.

Ted Cruz is smart enough to know how unpatriotic the game he’s playing is. He’s a friar-spitter. If the RJC told him to, he’d hock it up and expectorate all over a Franciscan. He’s already done something like that. He chose Israel over Christian victims of genocide nine years ago, staging a ridiculous provocation. Maybe we should talk about his father’s contacts with Cuban intel? I thought you hated socialism, Ted?

Who’s going to primary this guy? Will the real Texans please stand up?

Texas is a very corrupt state. All this cowboy stuff probably needs to be disciplined from time to time.

There aren’t just Israeli problems in Texas, either. One guy that needs to be discussed is Matt Michelsen, an Austin resident and front for China, Russia and the UAE. He was involved in two separate Texas scandals: Curative, the fake COVID test backed by China and the Emiratis, and Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott’s slush fund which is getting a lot of press at the moment. Curative didn’t work, the FDA revoked approval for it, and Michelsen’s fraud may have prolonged the pandemic in Los Angeles.

He lives in an enormous home in Austin, one of the most expensive, and flies around with Governor Abbott. He sometimes lies about his past, and according to one source has claimed to be an Army Ranger. He was involved in the Cambridge Analytica matter on behalf of the Mercers, who have foreign influence problems.

So he gets all these contracts, then kicks the money back to his favorite politicians. That’s how this works. He also for some reason managed Lady Gaga’s social media presence.

George Tenet and Trae Stephens

I have a lot of sympathy for George Tenet, the CIA director during the latter years of the Clinton administration and the early years of the Bush one. He’s famous for calling the intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMDs a “slam dunk.” He ended up as basically the fall guy, even though the neocons had been drawing up Iraq invasion plans for years before.

He seems to have known they set him up:

A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.
 
"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up," Tenet said, but "I am not going to take the hit."

According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the rlght wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exaxperation as, "the Jews."

The headline Jeffrey Goldberg put on this was, “George Tenet, Drunk in Bandar's Pool, Screaming about Jews.” Goldberg, of course, served in the IDF. So the Israelis will set you up as the fall guy, then bury you in The Atlantic, not even letting you take the fall gracefully. Think, for a second, about how treacherous that is. Italians will respect someone who takes the fall. Not so with the Israelis.

One of Tenet’s proteges is Trae Stephens, now at Founders Fund. Founders Fund has a litany of foreign influence issues. Stephens is important to the future of the Likud project on the right, because he’s one of these evangelicals who plays at being part of the defense establishment, when really he’s a dilettante. He’s also involved in Carbyne, which is part of Israel’s attempts to compromise our public data APIs.