Diverse European voices are desperately warning that with the Ukraine project spiralling towards débacle, a humiliated West is left with little choice but to escalate drastically, and bring NATO -- in some form, whether limited or not -- into the fight. 

The former British (Conservative) MP Andrew Bridgen states that this strategic shift (whose speed caught the Europeans unawares), is forcing Europe to face war with Russia. 

In fact, Bridgen warns: ‘We (Britain), are ‘already at war’ with Russia. This is the real reason, he explains, why Rishi Sunak has called an early election -- he refuses to be a ‘war time president’.  He is effectively handing over ‘the baton’ to Keir Starmer (probably to fly away to California after 4 July -- voting day). “The Generals” have warned Sunak that the order ‘had come down’ for war with Russia. And Sunak does not wish to be part of it.

Whether Bridgen is right or not on the specifics, there is undoubtedly a chorus out there saying the same thing. Is this cacophony of sudden war warnings merely that which (Matt Taibbi calls) an example of the ‘Elephant Erasure Project’?  By which we are constantly being instructed not to see the elephants in the room.

And there are a lot of them: Open borders; plunging standards of living; high prices; runaway debt and dropping ratings for Biden. Add to that, the White House is continuing to arm the Israelis and green-light the Rafah military operation -- at the very moment that the ICJ has ordered destruction of lives stopped. A plain oxymoron.

Of course, Team Biden is ‘not for turning’ on its “ironclad” support for the Israelis, yet the only thing that is clear is that the war-warning is not necessarily literally true -- except in wanting to truly scare and divert us from the ‘Elephants’.   

“The 'informing class' now no longer even has the decency to tell us who, or what they are”. When one reads ‘news’, we have no idea whether it is an off-grid White House ‘briefing’, or one of those aggressive releases of intelligence, telling us yet again that truly Russia is on the ropes, and about to collapse. 

The NYT  did warn what might be coming in their pages as “America sought to match Putin and 'beat the master' at his own information warfare game”. That formal Times launch of the “full-fledged information battle,” went so far as to have Jake Sullivan explaining that the problem with the [Iraqi] WMD episode was not that spreading an intelligence-concocted lie “from this very podium” was wrong, but that it was done for the wrong reasons, i.e. to start rather than stop a war:

So which is it?  Is the narrative of being on the precipice of real war with Russia ‘deception’ designed to divert us from the herd of elephants grazing quietly for now, though with their presence likely to loom large as the election campaign reaches full-spate?

On the one hand, the very idea that Europe is equipped or capable to fight a real war is absurd. But equally, there are enough idiots around, hyped on delusions of long-past grandeur, to do something stupid.  Interestingly, former British MP Andrew Bridgen implicitly acknowledges this risk, but adds that thank goodness it is Putin who stands on the other bank!

While on the other hand, everything in the West today revolves around the manipulation of narratives, and crafting the winning meme. The ‘other’ narrative to ‘coming war’ (according to Reuters) is that President Putin wants a Ukraine ceasefire ASAP -- and on current contact line frontlines -- because he is terrified at the prospect of having to launch a further mobilisation to finish the Special Operation.

This is pure disinformation, yet might it serve as the conjunct narrative to the fear narrative of the West resolving to walk the very edge of the precipice of war with Russia? And might this tight-rope policy be allowing the Biden Campaign to assert it is ‘winning’ in Ukraine; Putin is portrayed as trembling before the threat of war versus the Behemoth of the combined economic and military power of the West. A partial western Ukraine will indeed survive, according to this narrative, to become a future NATO and EU member.

What this war narrative isn’t is news. “The information it imparts, if one bothers to sift through it,” Taibbi quotes Walter Kirn saying, “is information about itself; about the purposes, beliefs, and loyalties of those who produce it: the informing class.”

Two questions arise: First, is Sullivan about stopping WW3, or starting it?

And secondly, returning to the Bridgen interview, he says the order ‘has come down’ to the Generals and was conveyed to Sunak.

So which is it?

Netanyahu invoked in a statement on October 28 at the outset of the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza: “Remember what Amalek did to you”, quoting the biblical verse where Yahweh commanded the Israelites to wipe out the enemy nation of the Amalekites down to their babies and animals. (South Africa submitted Netanyahu’s statement at the ICJ as evidence of the Israeli genocidal intent in Gaza.) 

Well, Netanyahu has done it again (on 20 May). He invoked Amalek in response to the news that the ICC was seeking an arrest warrant against him. “This time”, Mondoweiss reports, “Netanyahu is using the same reference to rally the nation against its enemies — which apparently now includes the ICC and the ICJ — using coded language in the Hebrew version of his rant against the Court”.

“The version of the address that he delivered in English (is here). The Hebrew version was different. It ended with a Hebrew phrase — “Netzah Israel lo yeshaker” — which means “the Eternal One of Israel shall not lie”. This was the phrase he directed at “the lies at The Hague,” as he said in the statement. The significance of this phrase will not be apparent to the general public, as it draws upon loaded codes in both biblical and Zionist history and mythology. 

Modoweiss continues: 

“The phrase itself comes from Samuel I, 15:29. Context here is everything. King Saul was admonished by the prophet Samuel for not completely eradicating the Amalekites — Saul had spared their king, Agag, and “the best of the sheep and cattle,” which the Israelites “were unwilling to destroy completely.” According to the Bible, this level of annihilation was not enough - and displayed King Saul’s supposed weakness. That is why the Prophet Samuel admonished the biblical king: 

“The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”

“Saul seeks to defend his actions, but Samuel delivers an uncompromising message: 

“You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!” 

“This was the sentence Netanyahu used at the end of his Hebrew address reacting to the ICC application. He implies the Court order is directed against the entire State of Israel. In other words, he is sending a message that he will not make the same mistake as King Saul - through not completely eradicating Amalek. He will go all the way in Gaza. He will continue into Rafah. He will “wipe off the seed of Amalek,” as Israeli soldiers were recorded chanting back in December.

“‘Netzhah Israel lo yeshaker” forms the acronym, “NILI.” NILI was a Zionist underground spy ring that operated during WWI between 1915 and 1917. It was an intelligence-gathering group that worked for the British against the Ottomans, who still ruled Palestine at the time … Netanyahu’s invocation of “the Eternal One of Israel shall not lie” isn’t just a biblical reference to the dangers of not going all the way in annihilating Amalek (who, in this instance, are the Palestinians that remain in Rafah and the rest of Gaza) — it is also a historical reference to the Zionist movement’s defiance of power when it is unfavourable to the Zionist cause”. 

Just to be clear, what is being hinted at in the above Hebrew quotation about the annihilation of Amalek can only be achieved in a climate of crisis and chaos (Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich said this explicitly some years ago), otherwise the global isolation and attrition of the Israelis will quickly calcify and strangle the Cabinet’s aim to establish the Zionist State across all the Land of Palestine, in a ‘New War of Independence’.

Netanyahu paradoxically possesses more leverage over key institutional power-structures in the US than does the White House to pursue his government’s second “War of Independence”. Is the ‘order going out’ – an order that suggests the Israelis require a wider crisis to pursue its path less noticed within wider mayhem? 

Is spreading the lie that longer-range missiles supplied by the US to Ukraine is a game-changer done to start, rather than stop a war?  Or is it deceptive messaging with an eye on November?  Whichever it is, the consequential harsh response from Russia will upset that election calculus.