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The Banality Of U.S. Foreign Policy Analysis

The author, Jacob Heilbrunn, is an utter mediocrity, the sort who builds a reputation by writing banal opeds in the New York Times, in which he lampoons the people the New York Times wants to see lampooned, while coming across as a serious, responsible person. He built a reputation for himself as a critic of the neocons.

Of course, he never was opposed to the neocons. It was all a piece of theater, rather like the comedians who pretend to be against the Establishment, but crave to be accepted by the Establishment and make gazillions of dollars as reward for having done so.

On the strength of writing a silly, shallow book about the neocons--a subject that has been done to death ever since this group of Israel-Firsters emerged on the scene in the 1970s--Heilbrunn got himself a gig as editor of The National Interest.

This magazine, as the title implies, was created sometime during the 1980s to advocate for a "realist" U.S. foreign policy in opposition to excessive U.S. foreign policy activism. The problem was that the magazine was set up by the neocons. Its founder, publisher and editor was "godfather of neoconservatism" Irving Kristol. And while Kristol had little time for promoting democracy, human rights, global liberalism--or even NATO come to that--he was no non-interventionist. America needed to do whatever it needed to do to get rid of the bad guys and to support Israel.

Kristol was very crafty. He had been knee-deep in all kinds of CIA activities during the 1950s and 60s. He was the founding editor of the Congress for Cultural Freedom's flagship publication, Encounter. However, during the 1980s, he acquired a notoriety by seemingly opposing continued U.S. participation in its most famous post-1945 construct: NATO. Countless neocons would fulminate against Kristol. How dare he betray U.S. principles in this way? Kristol mischievously delighted in this little contretemps that he had caused. Kristol knew perfectly well that there was not the remotest chance that the U.S. would ever withdraw from NATO. What he sought to do--and what he largely achieved--was to get the wormy Europeans to stop criticizing the U.S. and to embrace, with a little more enthusiasm, whatever project Washington intends to cook up.

So, The National Interest was always largely a fraud. Today it's run by the Nixon Center. Ah Nixon! So it must be advocating for "realism"! It must be waxing nostalgic for the great days of masterful U.S. diplomacy. No, it is not. It's the same warmed-over neocon foreign policy stew available everywhere.

That's why its editor is Heilbrunn, a neocon who fooled everyone into believing that he was against the neocons. In this New York Times oped he gets in every cliche known to man about Trump's supposed "isolationism." This after Trump cheered on the latest Ukraine package, and this after Trump has signed off on Israel's maximalist agenda.

Most amusing of all, Heilbrunn berates Trump for his disdain for democracy and his love for autocracy. Wasn't the whole point of The National Interest that Americans should stop fretting about democracy and authoritarianism and instead focus on what is in the national interest of their country?

https://archive.ph/G7V9P

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The Gaggle Music Club: Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain"

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), one of the most distinctive voices in 19th-century Russian music, was a member of the “Mighty Handful” that also included Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The Five’s mission was to break from Western European models and forge an authentically Russian style, drawing on folk melody, native idioms and Orthodox liturgy. Mussorgsky was perhaps the least conventional of the group, and the one whose music most strongly resisted later academic tidying up. His rejection of Western compositional norms, favoring speech-like vocal lines, abrupt modulations and stark orchestral colors, made him seem unrefined to contemporaries, but visionary to later composers.

The piece that is now called "Night on Bald Mountain" was not a single, straightforward composition. The piece audiences are most familiar with is Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1886 orchestration ...

00:13:36
TG 1948: Ukraine Cuts Off Hungary's Oil Supply; Trump Steps In

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss Ukraine's repeated attacks on the Druzhba oil pipeline that lead to cutoffs in Hungary's oil supply, and wonder what Kiev's motives may be in launching such attacks.

00:32:18
TG 1947: NATO's Deceit Over The Ukraine "Security Guarantees"

George Szamuely discusses NATO's attempt to fool the world over the "robust security guarantees" that President Trump and Russia have supposedly signed on to.

00:53:37
August 20, 2025

https://www.rt.com/news/623339-netanyahu-macron-france-antisemitism/

This guy is pure fucking evil!! If that is antisemitic, then I’m damn proud of it. Netanyahu is a poster child for antisemitism .

Why doesn’t Trump and idiot wife write a letter to this scumbag about the children of Gaza. History will not take kindly to the inaction of the US, Europe or Russia to stop Israel and this cretin

August 20, 2025

Obama's NATO Ambassador Admits to British Lords: Trump Just Ended 80 Years of Global Control

Promethean Updates

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Aug 20, 2025 The Midweek Update

Get our FREE newsletter at https://www.PrometheanAction.com — In this episode, Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action reveals crucial insights into the recent shift in US foreign and economic policy under President Donald Trump. Highlighting the testimony of Ivo Daalder, former NATO ambassador, before the British House of Lords, Kokinda discusses how Trump's administration is challenging the post-war rules-based order that has guided Western policies for decades. The video outlines Trump's success in resolving global conflicts, reestablishing national economic sovereignty, and dismantling the strategies of imperial global elites. Subscribe for a deeper understanding of these monumental developments and their global repercussions.

6 hours ago

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abrego-garcia-released-from-jail-returned-maryland-await

THIS IS A JOKE!! So much for Trumps tough on illegal immigrants. This mother -fucker is released from jail, and is protected by a judges order not to be taken into ICE custody after release from Tenn. custody. This enrages me, he is in the US illegally and is protected by US judges from deportation.

And I have a relative who cannot get a US visa to visit, when they have a home, family and business in their country of origin, and I have provided my financial records to guarantee that they would not over stay their welcome. It makes me sick. I hope this scumbag gets deported to South Sudan.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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