Unpacking Joe Kent's resignation

The big news, seen via The Dissident?

Joe Kent has resigned as Trump's head of counterintelligence, the guy who runs the National Counterterrorism Center. 

Several thoughts.

First,  per the Tweet/Shit on Shitter by Kent, that link above, even Looney Laura Loomer has enough brains on this one to dig up an old Shit and show him to be more than a bit of a hypocrite, arguably. Go read all the responses; it’s the old chimps eating a human face.

In the letter he does claim "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation." He says that the US had essentially neutralized Iran since Trump's 2020 assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Loomer calls up a September 2024 Shit of his, after the domestic assassination attempt on Trump, in which Kent says:

Iran has been after Trump since January of 2020, when he ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani.

Dead to rights. 

Well, not totally human.

Per his Wikipedia page, Kent is kind of a political whore. If he had really had integrity and less whoredom for political office, whether elective or appointive, he would never have taken the counterterrorism job in the first place. But, he decided to whore himself out.

And, he's obviously not well-read, either. Per James Bamford, Israhell was very much behind Trump's 2016 election, and his 2020 bid for re-election, too. (And surely, 2024, though Bamford's book came out in 2023.) I'm sorry your wife was killed in an arguably stupid war — setting aside whether it was "Israel-manufactured" or not —, but you had five-plus years since then to be reflective, and you still took this job.

And, you still stayed on this job after the start of the war. (That said, contra the Blue Anon yappers, you quit before anybody quit Team Biden after Oct. 7, 2023 and his blank checks to Israel.) 

Now, in terms of the war, pivoting from him to Demented Donald? How does he spin this one? Not very well, I'm sure. 

And, our answer came in quickly. Like Demented Don's wont, it involved no pause for actual thought. 

Before we get to Trump's response, let us note Kent claimed that Trump had been duped by a "misinformation campaign." No mention of names, but we all know he's talking about Satanyahu, the person formerly known on Shitter as Netanyahu, as he did mention "high-ranking Israeli officials." I love it, and am stealing it, while also being pissed I didn't think of it myself. (But, it also includes the self-inflicted wounds mentioned above.)

Now, Demento Don:

Trump later told reporters "it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat. Every country recognized Iran was a threat."

Shock me. Actually fairly low on his bluster scale. (And, per Loony Laura Loomer, Joe Kent claimed Iran was a threat 18 months or so ago, and presumably felt the same way when taking Trump's job offer.)

Meanwhile, at Vox, Zack Beauchamp says we shouldn't align ourselves with other claims in Kent's letter to Trump, either. And, for this, you have to look at Bamford, you have to look at Kent's own background, and take this all in.

You also have to look at what came in Kent's letter after "high-ranking Israeli officials," which was:

[I]nfluential members of the American media ...

Now, that's not necessarily accusing them of being all Zionist. And, it's not antisemitic. Nonetheless, that, plus the other things I mention, lead us to Beauchamp. 

Here's Beauchamp:

In fact, Trump has been hawkish on Iran for decades. Back in the 1980s, he called for troop deployments to the country and a US-led campaign to seize control over Iranian oil. In his first term, he tore up a nuclear deal designed to prevent war and assassinated a top Iranian military leader. 

Moreover, Israeli leaders have lobbied every president in the 21st century to go to war in Iran; Trump is the only one who said yes. This suggests the key variable is less Israeli power over US foreign policy generally than the specific preference set and worldview of this president.

I think he protests a bit too much. But maybe not too too much.

Beauchamp then reminds us that we were in Syria in 2019 when Shannon Kent was killed was under President Trump.

I think a Candace Owens running with this letter is indeed antisemitic. I think that there may be some people already crafting a "framing story" for when the finale of this war indeed turns stupid. I know Kent has himself flirted with white nationalists.

But, I don't think this is all about antisemitism in Republican opposition to the war. Also, whether Kent is right or wrong on his framing, one can say that intervention in Syria was, if not "manufactured" by Israel, then at least "pushed" by it and not be antisemitic. 

Beyond that, Syria under the Assads was long seen as an ally of Iran and a conduit for Iran to work with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Beauchamp either knows that and is protesting too much, or doesn't know that and should shut up. That's rhetorical; I know he knows this. So, why is he doing something that is gaslighting, or at least halfway there? 

The Dissident, in his second piece about Kent's resignation yesterday, in large part focusing on Beauchamp, reminded us of what Seth Harp said in the must-read "The Fort Bragg Cartel": 

Washington’s efforts to overthrow Assad, who, like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, was an outspoken and belligerent foe of Israel, redoubled amid the Arab Spring protests. One of the most expensive CIA programs in history, a billion-dollar fiasco code-named Timber Sycamore, plowed thousands of tons of guns and ammo fresh from German and American factories into Syria. ... Chief among the Sunni extremist groups that benefited from the instability in Syria and the flood of black-market arms into the country was the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known by the acronym ISIS.

There's that. 

Also undercutting Beauchamp? Klippenstein weighs in. Re the current war?

It is true that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agitated for war, but the Israeli military is operating more and more of one mind with the U.S. military. The two countries have shared a common war plan against Iran since the Biden administration. That level of cooperation has solidified under Trump, driven more by a true affinity and affection for the technologically and operationally sophisticated friend than anything Donald Trump (or Benjamin Netanyahu) has ordered.

There you go. He doesn't mention what Kent says on Syria, or Kent's odious personal background, but talks about larger objections to the war in both parties.

He does agree with me that this is inside baseball. On that? How Kemp phrases the letter? 

Finally, was this a smear attempt? Max Blumenthal indicates so, noting that Beauchamp was once co-president of "Brown Students for Israel," an avowedly Zionist organization:

Brown Students for Israel aims to be a big-tent community united by the belief in Israel’s right to exist as a state for the Jewish people in all or part of their ancestral homeland. By hosting Israeli cultural events, organizing political programming that reflects a range of pro-Israel perspectives, and commemorating Israeli days of significance, BSI aims to create a place for Zionists — and those curious about Zionism — to connect, celebrate, and engage with one another.

Also, Zack was an intern for Andrew Sullivan (yeah, that guy) when Sully was still at The Daily Beast. Was he forced to intern for him? Probably not. 

As for where Beauchamp stands? Per his own essay at Vox, it would be as a liberal Zionist, I think. But, even before Oct. 7, 2023, one-time liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart realized that modern Israel — and not just Bibi — had narrowed the grounds for that so much as to make it purely aspirational. Beauchamp, assuming he identifies with his essay, obviously doesn't agree, all the more so since it was written after the attacks.

Here's a good critique of his piece, and how unrealistic the idea is given current Israel, not just the middle-aged and older ruling class, but even more, younger Israelis. 

The real, real issue was raised by Beauchamp but not pursued more fully by him — the idea that Trump is an empty vessel.

This is a tool to allow MAGA loyalists, Trumptards, whatever, to maintain allegiance to Trump while calling out specific actions of him. It doesn't have to be Israel who's called out. It could next be Volodymyr Zelensky and the nation of Ukraine, if Trump asks for big new defense spending. It could be the prime minister of Denmark or the EU's Ursula von der Leyen if Trump formally agrees to take his hands off Greenland. 

In other words, you have members of a cult enabling Trump, or the idea of Trump, or the eikon or idol of Trump, because they're still afraid of Trump, and the rest of the cult. 

That said, even Klippenstein may have "bit" a little, or at least not questioned someone else advancing that same idea:

“For a Hegseth who only wants the ‘warrior’ answer, Israeli swagger and combat competence is catnip,” the officer says. 

The source adds that while Trump loves a winner, and he loves action, it is Hegseth and his “impetuousness” that pushes the relentless destroy-the-target, no-rules. no-quarter style of warfare that has unfolded.

Isn't that doing what Kent did? I mean, we all know that "impetuous" is Trump's middle name. Trump has no rules, but will give quarter if you punch back enough and others don't support him. And that's where we are right now.

Is Kent a rat deserting a sinking ship? As of March 11, 17 percent of Republicans said Trump was prioritizing Israeli interests over American ones. Per the Beeb, and other polling a day or two later, 90 percent of self-professed MAGAts were still backing the war.

I otherwise quote from the AP about the reality of what this means:

A special forces combat veteran with ties to right-wing extremists, Kent was considered as much of a loyalist as Trump could have in the government’s top counterterrorism post.

That's about right. Nobody on the left should be running Joe Kent up the flagpole and saluting him. He's a 2020 election "truther," palled around with white nationalists and is a COVID semi-denialist or worse.

Would China really buy yuan-denominationed Iranian oil?

The possibility of that is the claim by European Business Magazine, seen via The Bulwark.

A senior Iranian official has told CNN that Tehran is considering allowing a limited number of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz — but only if cargo is traded in Chinese yuan, not US dollars. The condition, if formalised, would represent the most significant challenge to the petrodollar system in its fifty-two-year history, striking at the financial architecture that underpins American global power rather than at US military assets.

Color me HIGHLY skeptical of China actually doing this. For 20 years now, it’s run like hell from any situation, event, or financial control or stipulation that would put the yuan “on the spot” as anything close to a backup global reserve currency. President Xi Jinping may be indulging the Iranians in talk but that is likely all.

It's true, per EBN, that sanctioned Russian oil is denominated in yuan when not in rubles, but that's the exception that doesn't challenge the rule.

On the other hand? This:

Since 28 February, between 11.7 and 16.5 million barrels of Iranian crude have transited the Strait to China via shadow fleet under IRGC protection while every other nation’s shipping is locked out. China pays in yuan. China’s tankers move freely. X The architecture for a parallel yuan-denominated energy corridor already exists and is already operating.

On the third hand, that's why Trump is talking about attacking Kharg Island. I doubt Xi wants directly involved in the middle of that.

In any case, EBN caveats the piece at the end by noting China's financial system isn't ready yet to fully eat this whale anyway. That said, though, if anything close to this happened? Or even if some version of the current situation continues — as we see now what the help is that Trump is begging for from Xi, and he doesn't get it? Yes, it would be the biggest dollar erosion since Vietnam and post-Vietnam inflation mingled with the US going off the gold standard.

German Greens as neo-Nazi kamerads

Per Moss Robeson on Substack?

Don’t let US and Israel Zionazis attack on Iran distract you from Germany above all, with the US and the rest of NATO continuing to coddle Ukrainian neo-Nazis of Azov and other groups. Also note the number of Germans, many of them German Greens, volunteering for service in Ukraine. 

The Munich Security Conference drew many of "the usual suspects" from outside Germany, like David Betrayus Petraeus, Chrystia "no, my Ukrainian ancestors weren't like that" Freeland and Killary Clinton, even, were there.

But, the biggie? This:

Sergei Sumlenny is a German information warrior from Russia who “fights” for Ukraine, and now the “Azov Lobby.” Like many Azov supporters in Germany, he is linked to the Green Party. Last year, Sumlenny arranged a trip to the German parliament for Valery Horishny, a neo-Nazi pagan senior sergeant in the Azov Corps who has written poetry dedicated to Adolf Hitler.

Green parties in Europe in general, as well as Elizabeth May and her one-person band of Canadian Greens, have long been in the tank for Ukraine. (Many of them have been half-squishes on Gaza, even.)

But, the German Greens? I suspect something völkish is part of what we have here. Per Horishny, neo-völkish is indeed a deal. It's usually in the far right, like the original pre-World War I movement in Germany. But, sometimes, that old horseshoe theory is indeed real.

Let's not stop there:

At 11am, a junior sergeant in the 1st Azov Corps and lieutenant from the 2nd Khartia Corps spoke with the Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany and German MP Jeanne Dillschneider (from the Green Party) about “Defining the European way of drone warfare – Lessons from Ukraine for NATO and Europe.”

So, it's official party position. 

Iran War early fallout, plus fearmongering and handwaving

The world currently produces 100 million barrels of oil per day.

Let us say that the Iran War shuts the spigots on 10 percent of that, or 10 million barrels per day.

Trump's release of 172 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve in the US, plus the International Energy Administration's announcement of 400 million barrels of release from global reserves, detailed here, is 57 days of relief. (That's if the two releases are separate; if not, 40 days.)  More on the IEA move here; if you're wondering, that would be one-third of its reserve. If Iranian damage to Gulf Arab refineries is severe enough, that won't be easily replenished. The US reserve has about 415 million barrels, per CNBC. So, this would be about 45 percent.

Is Trump still hoping he can force Iran's ruling regime to collapse? Won't happen. 

The end of the month until the US can escort tankers? That 10 million barrels of damage by Iran might be small. 

UPDATE: The actual amount of oil going through Hormuz is about 20 million barrels of day. Currently, trans-Arabia pipelines, beyond what they already carry, cannot handle more than about 6 million additional barrels at best. See here for more. 

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 "Iranian drones could strike California!" Change "Iranian" to "Japanese," "drones" to "submarines," and we're right back in 1942. Only this is surely Trump Admin rumor-mongering with even less basis in fact, targeting California cuz California.

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As for the fallout? It's more than oil prices, at least in Merikkka. How direct the connection is, I don't know, but mortgage rates are going up in Middle America. Homeowners will notice that soon after gas prices. 

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Since Sen. Mark Kelly has beat the rap on his unlawful orders comment, due to this thing called the First Amendment, does he think Trump has issued unlawful orders to start the Iran war? You're pretty quiet, Mark. Well, you did say something about how the Senate needs to return to Washington and do its duty, but you're otherwise quiet. 

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Meanwhile, the car ramming of the Dearborn synagogue? Without condoning it? Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Blowback, even when indirect, is still blowback. Non-Zionist Jews as well as goys have been warning against this since Oct. 7, 2023. 

Bobby Kennedy, Edith Hamilton and Aeschylus — wrongness compounded, perhaps deliberately

Bobby Kennedy's quotation of Aeschylus on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death is probably one of his greatest known moments. It has flickered in and out of my mind through the years, and came to my starker attention recently. On the divine? It's bullshit, really, whether classical Greece's panoply or Aeschylus going henotheistic, on one hand, or Kennedy's Christian god on the other. 

Anyway, here it is:

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

First, per several sites, the Edith Hamilton translation is "despite," not "despair." Aeschylus is slightly less bullshitting than RFK with "despite." The original idea doubles down on "against our will." Bobby's sounds more poignant.

But, neither is true. In the Christian dual-omni god world of Bobby, this runs straight on into the problem of evil, Aeschylus' original or his misremembered version equally so. A god who can't teach wisdom outside of suicides or homicides is either less than omnipotent or less than omnibenevolent.

That said, of course, Hamilton herself mistranslated the last word. In Aeschylus, it's, to give the whole phrase, "the awful grace of the gods." 

For more on that, and other problems with Hamilton's translation, go here. I quote author Tara Wanda Milligan:

Even more than this, it is perhaps Hamilton’s reconstruction of Athenian tragedy, Americanized to focus on individual “poetically transmuted pain,” that appealed to Robert F. Kennedy. Hallett says that tragedy as conceived by Hamilton, a school headmistress with a master’s degree in classics but no further training, “focused intensely on individual suffering, democratic to the extent that it equalizes, and minimizes differences among, individuals who suffer and exult in their suffering.” A man of forty-two who had witnessed both his elder brothers die unexpectedly (Joe Jr. died while fighting in World War II), Kennedy needed solace and founded it in Hamilton’s writing. “Reading the Greeks was Jackie’s idea but something Bobby was ready for,” writes biographer Evan Thomas, adding that Aeschylus’s words “seemed to be speaking directly to Bobby.”

Going past that, the author notes that Hamilton misconstrues Hellenic Greek tragedy in general. Indeed, the Americanization is tragedy as individualized pathos.  

While that's not "the problem of evil," per se, and it's not "theodicy," it is A problem of evil of sorts.

Go back to World War II, where African-American combat deaths, or service short of death, received less valourous recognition than that of Whites. Or look at "Drunken" Ira Hayes. 

But, that issue goes yet deeper.

And I quote her again:

Donald Lateiner, professor of classics at Ohio Wesleyan, says that Hamilton’s notion of Athenian democracy, which overlooks its oppressive and hierarchical qualities and use of slavery, could serve as a sort of justification for American anti-communist foreign policy during the Cold War. That Robert, who served as his brother’s attorney general and enforcer during John’s presidency, found Hamilton’s depiction of Athens inspiring is unsurprising. “The Kennedys found in Edith Hamilton someone who presented a way of conceiving of American power that gave them some cache of the ancient democracy but also found justification for the use of power in the promotion of an ideology of democracy,” Lateiner says. Kennedy, therefore, was an ideal embodiment and champion of Hamilton’s conception of tragedy, and, conversely, Hamilton’s rendering of Athens provided a template for Kennedy to project his longing on—a nostalgia for an existence that never existed, a sort of left-leaning version of the #MAGA moment that took hold of Americans in 2016.

Ouch. Right?

Well, not so "ouch" for those who know the real RFK. That's especially true for those of us who know that in the 1968 primaries, he threw elbows at Clean Gene McCarthy, and also, in California, in a debate shortly before his assassination, opposed moving public housing in Los Angeles out to Orange County, while McCarthy supported it, noted in the link below. It's also not so ouch for those of us who know, re our current geopolitics, that he was a Zionist (contra overblown anti-Zionist conspiracy theories about Jack's assassination).

And, as far as the Kennedy take on Hamilton's take on Greece, another way of putting it is that "the grandeur of the Fourth Rome" was being covered with the lipstick of "the glory of Greece." 

In other words? American Exceptionalism 101. 

Coming up: One red heifer, without blemish or spot?

Per the old bible verse of Numbers 19:2, Texas Monthly reports on the efforts of rancher Jerome Urbanosky and businessman Byron Stinson to raise just such animals. (Another rancher, Ty Davenport, eventually has his ranch looped in by Stinson, too.)

Stinson is a Christian Zionist wingnut. Urbanosky raises Santa Gertrudis, which caught his eye. The story says Stinson also looked at Red Angus.

The entire red heifer and purification water ceremony is in Numbers 19. Not all Christian Zionists, nor all religiously Orthodox Jewish Zionists, believe the red heifer is necessary to build a new Jewish temple, but many do. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are generally non-Zionist to outrightly anti-Zionist; their stances on temple rebuilding in general as well as the need for a red heifer can vary. Within Christianity, amillennial Christians reject the entire temple rebuilding nuttery as being necessary to bring on the apocalypse. On paper, this is the official stance of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and all mainline Protestant churches. In reality, it's not so clearcut among the laity. Outside of this, postmillennialists also generally reject this.

Shockingly, the Monthly gets several things wrong.

First, technically, it's to enter the tabernacle, not the temple. TM quotes Numbers 19 as saying "temple"; it does not.

Second, as with much of Numbers, there's no indication on how much this was ideal and aspirational vs being real, per Yonathan Adler's book.

Third, it was for general purification as much as anything. 

Fourth, there's no indication in either the Tanakh or the New Testament that it was specifically necessary for temple rebuilding. (The Monthly does note that Orthodox Judaism sees a temple already ready to come down from heaven; see also Revelation.)

Yitshak Mamo, Stinson's partner, is an ultra-Zionist Israel settler colonialist nutter. 

Related to that, the Monthly does tell you this:

Urbanosky told me he knew “doodley-squat” about the significance of a perfect red heifer. “You’re Christian, and they’re Jews,” Urbanosky said to Stinson. “So when the Temple gets built, who’s coming back, Jesus or the Jewish messiah?”

There you go. Millennialist Christian Zionist and Zionist Jews figure that, like other things, they'll fight it out after they kill the last Palestinian and finish making Eretz Israel Arab-rein. 

Cut to the chase: Five heifers eventually got sent to Israel in 2022. (The Monthly and other sites have reported on this before.) Hamas noticed and mentioned this in early 2024, after the start of the current intifada; and the Israeli rabbi who will have the last word on making the purity call says they're not.)

According to [Rabbi Joshua] Wander, Rabbi Azria Ariel, of the Temple Institute, is the world’s foremost authority on the red heifer and perhaps the only figure with the clout to compel the necessary consensus to move forward. Ariel wasn’t satisfied with the candidates. “At this moment, it is unclear whether we have in our possession in Israel a red heifer that is verifiably kosher and suited for the ceremony,” Ariel announced in March 2025. One of the five heifers had sprouted white hairs; another grew warts on the side of its neck.

There you are. Perhaps it's a stall tactic, too. 

It gets nuttier from there, with Stinson eventually finding some Israeli Jews, including an alleged priest raised for this moment, to do a practice red heifer ceremony. From there, Stinson goes MAHA with the ashes.

The author does note that the claims of Stinson and his ilk are rejected by mainstream scholars, but not until the last paragraph.