Roundup: Crooke On Trump 2.0, Scary Houthis, A Catholic Prophet

I may be pretty busy tomorrow so I want to get these stories, or bits of stories, out.

First, Alastair Crooke’s latest article at The Unz Review is pretty interesting. I had Crooke pegged as not a Trump fan. I’m not saying he is a Trump fan, but since the election he has consistently counseled patience and even optimism. In the middle of this article he has a passage that basically encapsulates the uncertainty of what’s going on in the early stages of the transition and tries to frame it within a bigger picture. See what you think—and bear in mind that Crooke, the former diplomat and MI6 operative, maintains contacts both in the West and in the Middle East:

There Are No "Easy Wars" Left to Fight, But Do Not Mistake the Longing for One

Trump’s Team nominations, so far, reveal a foreign policy squad of fierce supporters of Israel and of passionate hostility to Iran. The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way.

The Israel Lobby could not have asked for more. They have got it. And with the new CIA chief, they get a known ultra China hawk as a bonus.

In fact I’ve been listening to Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté. Among other amusements, they played a video clip of an I-24 DC correspondent saying that “in the PM’s office (Netanyahu’s office) they are dancing the hora” after hearing of Trump’s appointments. The guy went on to say that Trump’s top picks—specifically naming Rubio, Waltz, and Hegseth—couldn’t have been better if Netanyahu had picked them himself. Hmmm. At the least, we can say Crooke isn’t exaggerating.

But in the domestic sphere the tone is precisely the converse: The key nomination for ‘cleaning the stables’ is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General; he is a real “bomb thrower”. And for the Intelligence clean-up, Tulsi Gabbard is appointed as Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence agencies will report to her, and she will be responsible for the President’s Daily briefing. The intel assessments may thus begin to reflect something closer to reality.

The deep Inter-Agency structure has reason to be very afraid; they are panicking – especially over Gaetz.

Blumenthal and Maté were having a great time with Trump’s “epic troll”—Gaetz. They’re Lefties, of course, but they’re very anti-Covid Hoax and anti-Russia Hoax, so they see this as righteous payback. It’s a long video (1:47:00), but they have a great time with all the stuff going on.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have the near impossible task of cutting out-of-control federal spending and currency printing. The System is deeply dependent on the bloat of government spending to keep the cogs and levers of the mammoth ‘security’ boondoggle whirring. It is not going to be yielded up without a bitter fight.

So, on the one hand, the Lobby gets a dream team (Israel), but on the other side (the domestic sphere), it gets a renegade team.

This must be deliberate. Trump knows that Biden’s legacy of bloating GDP with government jobs and excessive public spending is the real ‘time bomb’ awaiting him. Again the withdrawal symptoms, as the drug of easy money is withdrawn, may prove incendiary. Moving to a structure of tariffs and low taxes will be disruptive.

Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent – and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees.

No answers, but Crooke says: This must be deliberate. In other words, something’s up. Wait.

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As for the idea of getting into a regional war, consider this article from a few days ago that showed up at Zerohedge (excerpt):

Pentagon 'Shocked' By Houthi Arsenal, Sophistication Is 'Getting Scary'

A top Pentagon official responsible for purchasing arms for America's defense stockpile has expressed 'shock' at the increasingly sophisticated arsenal possessed by Yemen's Houthis.

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante spoke at an event hosted by Axios on Wednesday, where he said that Houthis are displaying and deploying advanced weaponry, especially missiles that "can do things that are just amazing."

He described that Houthis "are getting scary" in terms of their capability on display for more than a year in the Red Sea, where they've gone to war against Israeli and international shipping.

"I'm an engineer and a physicist, and I've been around missiles my whole career," LaPlante said before the summit, called the "Future of Defense" in Washington, DC.

"What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked."

Among the surprisingly advanced capabilities include anti-ship ballistic missiles. ...

I can remember when I was still working (pre-2006) that the Chinese were developing ballistic missiles with which they planned to target aircraft carriers. The “experts” back then pooh-poohed the notion that you could hit a moving carrier with a ballistic missile. Times change.

The Houthis have also routinely scored direct hits on commercial shipping vessels with both aerial and drone boats.

The Shia group has also claimed many times to have scored hits on US, UK, and other allied warships; however, the US has kept a tight lid on the extent of this, or actual damage, perhaps wishing to not give the Houthis a propaganda win.

Remember when the USS Ike seemed to retreat from the vicinity of Yemen after the Houthis claimed they had hit it? Now they say they targeted the USS Abe, which has also been maintaining a discrete distance.

Most everybody says that it isn’t really the Houthis who developed these missiles—they got them from Iran, or they’re knockoffs of Iranian designs that the Iranians are helping them with. That’s not very reassuring, or shouldn’t be for the knuckleheads who want to get us into a war with Iran, since the Iranians are presumably saving their really good stuff for the Big Show. Or the Great Satan. Or something. Whatever the case, there’s almost certainly more and better from wherever the Houthis got theirs.

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Catholics traditionally aren’t real big into prophets, but Bishop Joseph Strickland recently gave a pretty good impression of one. Strickland is the bishop from Tyler, TX, who was removed by Bergoglio for, well, for openly acting like a Catholic. Acting like a Catholic isn’t a great career move for a cleric in the Consiliar Church.

Anyway, I won’t quote from the article itself, just Strickland’s words:

A Prophet Among Bishops

As U.S. bishops gathered at their annual meeting, Bishop Strickland stood outside and decided to pick a fight; he confronted the expanding Babylon.

You gather here today, present-day apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world stand perched on the edge of a cliff. And yet you who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds. Today we stand on the cusp of all that has been prophesied about the Church and the abominations which would come forth in these times, a time when all of hell attacks the Church of Jesus Christ, and a time when the fallen angels of hell no longer seek entry into her sacred halls but instead stand inside, peeking out of her windows and unlocking doors to welcome in more diabolical destruction.

Do you not know that Our Lord will send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those who were called to be His apostles and who have not guarded what He has given unto them?

And yet almost all of you, my brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on Synodality took place, an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith, but to dismantle it, and yet few were the cries heard from you – men who should be willing to die for Christ and His Church.

The Synod’s final document has been released, yet with the sleight of hand which is so characteristic of the Francis-controlled Vatican. By drawing attention to the issues which worried many, they have slipped in what was always their real goal without anyone even noticing. What they were after in the first place was the dismantling of Christ’s Church by replacing the structure of the Church as Our Lord instituted it with a diabolically-inspired new structure of “synodality” which in actuality is a new church that is in no way Catholic.