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That is what they all say: Let us go to war to bring about Peace. It is like killing to make life worth living.
Peter Koenig
25 April 2025
War for Peace has never worked in the history of mankind. Those who say War is Peace, know it is a lie. Those who say it, also never go to war. They plan wars – they force young people to the front and fight their wars for naught. Sorry. Not for naught, for profit and power for those who are planning these wars for Peace.
These young men and women propagandized and brainwashed to believe that war makes Peace, help the war industry making profit from killing. They bathe death in a sea of gold. Death is sacrifice, death is shiny, death is good for Peace.
One may legitimately ask, why are people at large still going along?
Propaganda, is certainly one reason. Massive propaganda. Propaganda never talks about killing, about the thousands, millions of deaths wars bring about – no. Wars bring Peace and tranquility.
People at large – the YOUs and the MEs – we want a quiet, peaceful life in harmony, where our children can grow up without fear. And if the media tell them, this WAR is for Peace – after this war there are no more wars – this is the war of all wars – leading to PEACE, their wish for peace is so immense, so deep. they believe it.
So, once more they tolerate the misery, the indiscriminate killing, bombing of humans. Our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered in the name of Peace.
Take the Zionists
They are convinced to be the Chosen People. They have captured Israel, way before Israel was created on stolen Palestinian land – the story has been recorded at nauseatum – but not by the mainstream media – to become the Greater Israel in control of most of the Middle Eastern natural resources, predominantly oil and gas.
Alternatively, will Peace look the other way? [04]
Peace will call for War to protect its integrity
The God of Zion, Yahweh, the God of Israel, will overcome us all – in the Name of Peace. He is part of the “Chosenness” of the People of Zion.
Therefore, Iran must go too. They are the stumbling block to Peace. Muslims and gentiles, who do not bend to Zion, are enemies of Peace.
Once they, the omni-present Zionists, have reached that goal, PEACE for all, they and the (western) world will live in Peace. Because Zionist-Israel will peacefully reign over good and evil – and distribute life-economy sustaining energy to the world as they see fit.
Before reaching this noble goal – Peace for All, massive killing and slaughtering is necessary – in the name of Peace, supported by the warrior leaders for Peace, called the United States and Europe.
Peace be with us. Peace is the objective of War.
Peace costs money. The United States has within the last two years allocated about 200 billion dollars for Peace, supplying Ukraine with weaponry and cash – so they can fight and kill for Peace. This is money from the tax-payers. From the very people who only want Peace, for living in Peace.
They are not saying NO to the allocation of their money for killing to eventually live in Peace. Killing and atrocities are intermediary stages for Peace.
The US Congress has just allocated another 95 billion dollars to Ukraine and Israel – to continue killing themselves and each other into the final stages of Peace. Still, people in the name of Peace do not say NO, as in NO, do not give our money for slaughtering more people – they may hope Peace will come and engulf them all.
Otherwise, it is not fathomable that they let their money being transferred into guns and tanks and bombs – so they may kill – working towards Peace.
The final eternal Peace.
We all want Peace.
But we know Peace does not come without war, so we are told, and so we believe – for generations after generations, after generations. For societies after societies, after ever more societies; and ultimately, for civilizations, after civilizations, after endless civilizations – war will bring Peace. It has always been that way. And it will stay that way, as long as humanity exists.
Unless humanity breaks some rules, seeing Peace not as the result of wars, but as an end in it-self. – Forget it. That would be a dream. Warriors for Peace do not dream.
Rules must be followed. So, we are told. And we MUST believe. We, the People, MUST always believe the higher echelons, our leaders, because we elected them, we gave them our trust, we delegated them our authority, and now we must give them our money, so they will lead us to Peace via wars.
The US government has made its choice in favor of war, siding with evil and supporting fascism, the Russian Ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, recently said.
He commented on the latest massive American military aid package for Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden just signed a US$95-billion foreign-aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine and some US$ 26 billion for Israel and US$ 8 billion for Taiwan. The US Congress voted overwhelmingly for the US$ 61 billion for Ukraine – as Peace in this part of the world is of high priority.
And not to be shamed, Congress also voted an additional US$ 9 billion for humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and other war zones. Of course, humanitarian aid is the grease that lubricates first war and then Peace.
Biden added that within hours the US will send weapons and military equipment to Ukraine. Most likely they will do the same for Israel. Maybe for Taiwan too. Because war with Taiwan over China can turn the world around – into a huge camp of Peace.
What the Russian Ambassador got wrong is that these are not weapons of evil, but weapons for Peace.
For heaven’s sake, they are not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons for building true Peace.
Both Ukraine and Zionist Israel are shooting, bombing, ravaging, and killing their way to Peace.
If this puts the world on the brink of a direct clash between nuclear powers, it means that a final mushroom cloud, or several of them, may bring final Peace to the world. Just in case, if there is no other way to Peace, nuclear may be the way.
We must never forget, no matter how much killing, slaughtering, burning, destruction war MUST bring to finally reach Peace – it’s all worth it. Because this rotting, warring world must be destroyed to be rebuilt in PEACE. No worries, BlackRock is there to help.
And rebuilt it will be, by all those who generously plan war for Peace – but for the safety of future Peace, they stay clear of war. Of course, who else would rebuild the world into Peace, if not the thinkers and shakers of this world?
Those who finance wars, the Military Industrial complex the BlackRocks et al, they know it. That is why they finance wars. They will never stand in the way of wars, nor in the front line of wars, but they are ready to rebuild the devastated world into a glowing new world of Peace.
The world needs these people, generous thinkers of Peace for humanity.
They know what they are doing. We must believe them and support their efforts, equally generously with our tax money. Nothing is more important than war and killing for Peace.
And yes, before its forgotten or overseen, let us remember that the Biden Administration sacrifices the lives of ordinary people for the insatiable but generous war industry which helps us find the way towards Peace.
All great Peace-loving nations must bring sacrifice, lest Peace may not prosper, nor prevail and last. We are talking about sustainable Peace.
People of this world, let us continue vouching for war as Peace is our ultimate goal. Our minds are strong. If we can make war – we must be able to see through the haze that war will make Peace.
Amen.
————
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
The IRGC’s Operation ‘True Promise,’ much like the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Flood before it, is poised to be recorded in history as a pivotal, perhaps even terminal, moment for the brief history of the Israeli occupation state…
By Khalil Harb at The Cradle.
The ‘Isfahan incident’: a nail in Israel’s coffin
Tel Aviv’s underwhelming military counter to Iran’s 13 April military strike has destroyed decades of Israel’s carefully cultivated deterrence posture.
Iran’s Operation True Promise strikes on 13 April have reopened the deep wounds Israel incurred during Hamas’ 7 October attack. While Operation Al-Aqsa Flood shook the occupation state’s security bubble at its core, a single night of Iranian rockets and drones left Israelis straggling to hold on to even a sliver of their famed deterrence posture.
As military spokesman for Hamas’ Qassam Brigades Abu Obeida succinctly highlighted in his 23 April speech:
Iran’s response, in its size and nature, established new rules and confused the enemy’s calculations.
This is the region’s new status quo. And Israel’s mysterious ‘Isfahan attack’ has done nothing to shake Iran’s confidence. In short, the alleged Israeli counter has reaffirmed the regional view – militarily, at least – that Tehran has checkmated Tel Aviv and rewritten the rules of engagement.
After years of provocations, and for the first time in its history, Iran has launched a direct offensive against Israel, confidently claiming that it utilized only a fraction of its military capabilities – many of these “obsolete” missiles within its fast-evolving arsenal.
Iran targeted Israel’s key Nevatim and Ramon air bases precisely, despite the spectacular display of lights from intercepted decoy explosions that lit up the skies. Many, quick to judge, misinterpreted the massive salvo as a sign of a broader strategic offensive from the Unity of Fronts – the Resistance alliance that poses a multi-front dilemma for Tel Aviv – aimed at devastating Israel in one blow.
A slap in the face
In fact, Iran conducted the operation alone, which makes the seriousness of Iran’s “slap” all the more significant.
The night of the Iranian missile attack also demonstrated the limits of Iranian patience and Tehran’s strategic shift from caution to calculated aggression, necessitating the intervention of three western nuclear powers and the “Arab fig leaf,” Jordan, to counteract the assault.
The Iranians backed their military actions with public statements and shared images of their commanders orchestrating the operations. Conversely, Israel’s response to the events in Isfahan was ambiguous and poorly communicated, with only sporadic information leaking to the US and Israeli press in a feeble attempt to project resolve.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian mocked the Israeli response in an interview with NBC News, where he dismissed the Israeli drones as trivial, likening them to “toys that our children play with.”
Israel’s ‘ridiculous’ comeback
Israel’s military counter is now widely perceived as a dud, derided even within Israel itself by figures such as Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who describes it as “ridiculous.”
Despite Tel Aviv’s formidable military arsenal, which includes undeclared nuclear weapons, and its historical posture as a reliable western ally in the region, the events of 13 April have exposed gaping vulnerabilities in its ability to respond to credible threats, especially from Iran.
This ineffectiveness was highlighted amidst the symbolism of Isfahan – home to Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility – where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long positioned himself as a stalwart against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, appeared uncharacteristically passive.
The Israeli PM’s lack of any tangible response was a departure from his usual hyperbole, painting a picture of Israel as unprepared and hesitant – retreating rather than confronting.
Furthermore, Iran’s nuclear program has paradoxically also emerged as a potent tool in Tehran’s strategic arsenal. The explicit warning from the Islamic Republic about possibly revising its nuclear doctrine in response to an escalated Israeli threat suggests a bold new stance, despite Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s fatwa (Islamic decree) against nuclear arms.
“On the Road to Quds”: Artwork depicts a Qassam Brigades paratrooper & motorcycle fighter armed with Al-Yassin 105, a Hezbollah fighter firing an anti-tank missile, a drone of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and Yemeni ballistic missiles all converging on Al-Quds. The sunken British ship “Rubymar” is included off the Yemeni shore.
Is Israeli deterrence dead?
The Isfahan incident did little to bolster Israel’s deterrence posture, which has been eroding since Al-Aqsa Flood and further weakened by Hezbollah’s operations in the north and Iran’s True Promise. These events have deeply impacted the Israeli psyche, challenging the foundational sense of security that underpins the Zionist vision of a “secure Jewish state” established on the lands of Palestine.
Against this backdrop, the conventional rules of engagement that have long governed regional interactions are being re-evaluated. Iran’s bold moves – despite US and Israeli warnings – signal a recalibration of power dynamics, indicating a potentially transformative period in West Asian geopolitics.
The Israeli response, both present and future, must now consider the possibility of a united front from the Axis of Resistance if it chooses to escalate further. This adds a layer of complexity to any military planning against Iran, likely prompting Israel to revert to its characteristic approach of covert operations. These may involve sabotage or targeted assassinations attributed to local agents rather than direct military strikes.
Meanwhile, the US, amid its own internal political issues and upcoming elections in November, is likely to play a dual role. It will monitor its ally’s actions closely while trying to moderate the regional tensions to prevent any significant escalation that could destabilize its broader strategic interests.
A point of no return
Today, it is Iran – not the US, not Israel, and certainly not the Isfahan attack – which has restabilized the regional balance, even temporarily, pending the crystallization of the new rules of engagement.
Tel Aviv’s counterstrike tried hard to mitigate the possibility of any further Iranian retaliation – especially as Tehran’s next move would likely come without warning, involve Iran’s superior missiles, and potentially the mobilization of Iranian allies toward Israel’s borders.
The Axis of Resistance was happy to allow their Iranian ally to take center stage on 13 April and exact revenge for Israel’s miscalculated 1 April bombing of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Damascus. Any further bold moves from Tel Aviv would ensure that the Axis would activate on every front to swarm Israel.
So, for the moment, Tel Aviv does not dare to compromise Iran’s security directly, instead turning their impotent rage toward vulnerable Rafah, where over a million Palestinian civilians are stranded without food, shelter, and water.
The Hebrew media is already spinning for all its worth, promoting Tel Aviv’s “gains” from demonstrating restraint against Iran – whether from last week’s UN Security Council veto of a Palestinian state or the new $26 billion aid package the US Congress just approved for Israel, or obtaining White House support for the occupation army’s Rafah invasion.
Dr Hussein al-Musawi, the spokesman for the Iraqi Harakat al-Nujaba, tells The Cradle that Israel has, in effect, received a blank check for bad behavior from Washington:
It is not surprising that the US supports and defends Israel, regardless of its violation of international norms, and this undoubtedly embarrasses the Iraqi government, which seeks to take a clear position on the US military presence in Iraq.
For these and many other reasons, Israeli leaders are now acutely aware that any overtly aggressive action will not go unnoticed in the current geopolitical climate. The region is embroiled in what could be described as a ‘mini-international-regional war,’ characterized by intermittent flare-ups and periods of relative calm.
True Promise, much like Al-Aqsa Flood before it, is poised to be recorded in history as a pivotal, perhaps even terminal, moment for the brief history of the Israeli occupation state, which now finds itself more isolated than ever and facing an increasingly uncertain future.
Garland Nixon interviews Laith Marouf — Tuesday’s West Asia update.
Israel (and the combined West) can’t go left.
Iran’s exposure of western air defenses was exploited by Lebanese Hezbollah in the last 48 hours. Send swarms of drones to saturate ADs, followed by the pinpoint kamikaze drones/missiles..
Zionists have switched from direct Iran confrontation (for now) to the non-state actors, starting a spade of Hezbollah assassinations in last week and resuming culling Palestinians, in their fine traditional style.
Hezbollah has matched the raised intensity of attacks — jumping to obliterate command bases 25-30 km from the border with high-value targets (at least one general admitted killed, see Salon)
Israel has been totally defeated on all fronts, including intelligence gathering, with secret commands being taken down several times, including those skulking in arab-israeli community centers used as human shields (!). The only remaining card remains: drag in USUK somehow, but now to save their necks from Hezbollah
a tit-for-tat liquidation of Israeli/Hezbollah commanders is underway in last week, with Hezbollah having acquired unprecedented up-to-date surveillance capability of enemy movements, in addition to precision projectiles.
the zionists, supported to the hilt by western elites, will continue to perpetuate massacres and abominations against Palestinians, until physically stopped by the Resistance. That is the only recourse left.
The masks have been dropped by combined West. This war will continue, and intensify, through at least the US Elections.. (he doesn’t anticipate inclusion of Iran again as a direct front, until after elections)
There was a feeble, symbolic response by Israel on Isfahan, driven by US fear of repercussions, given severe depletion in 404. Most likely they used a few quadcopter drones hoisted by MEK terrorists from within Iran, given their ranges.
… instability in CONUS will be driven by fuel prices … and continuing student protests which will continue as Genocide in Palestine will certainly continue, in echoes of Vietnam, with similar hit pieces by the national guard (NG) to soon play their knuckle-dragger roles… the chaos and agony of West Asia comes home.. and will those NG really turn their guns on their own class??
Sunni-Shiite shism, carefully curated by Anglo-Zionists since 2006 Hezbollah victory over Zion, is now kaput. Billions upon billions invested in Hate between sects was exposed by the Shiite led Resistance being sole members coming to defense of Sunni Hamas and Palestinians. The Lie was exposed. Youth are now immunized against these divide et impera lies. The totering criminal compradore regimes are more exposed than ever. The Sunni street can not be tricked now to join a crusade against Iran or Hezbollah or Houthis or Iraqi Resistance — seeing who the real enemies are. The Empire is bereft and isolated in the region.
The Victories of Russia and China will happen in Palestine. As with Napolean and Hitler, obsession over defeating Russia has severely weakened USUK in West Asia, critical center of global trade and commodities and silk/maritime roads…..
Soleimani’s genius: Bury yourself 70m and you cannot be touched by a casualty-averse Empire with insufficient boots. This has been the secret strategy (in addition to cheap tech precision dronification, patience and attrition warfare) to outlast and beat the Last Satanic Empire, as exemplified by Yemen.
Yemen’s gift to mankind: its resolute chokehold over the Bab El Mandeb has sped up the fall of the thalassocratic Anglo-Zionist Empire.
Geography largely determines fate. Sea-based will lose out to land-based that is immovable. The owners and friends of the Holy Land will move the World (take that Mackinder! This is the real Heartland), not those who in senseless futility went to die in the rich black soil of Novorossiya
The Cradle of Civilization, the Triangle between Iraq, Egypt and Yemen, were the land-based empires and powers. As the USUK collapses, this region will regain its traditional heft and role in relations of nations, as China has regained hers in last decades
Yemen, Iran and the West Asian Axis of Resistance have got China’s back in applying commensurate pressure on USUK’s SLOCs if the deranged dare to shut down Malacca and SCS… China has defeated USUK without a single battle
The bluster of USUK has been called by Iran, shown to be weaker than a spider’s web, which will lead to further dominos toppling in Korea, Monroe-lands, etc…
Of occult, entangling alliances…
“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens – four dowager and three regnant – and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”
“Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey’s neighbors, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped by 98 per cent and her imports by 95 per cent. The cutting off of Russia with all its consequences, the vain and sanguinary tragedy of Gallipoli, the diversion of Allied strength in the campaigns of Mesopotamia, Suez, and Palestine, the ultimate breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the subsequent history of the Middle East, followed from the voyage of the Goeben.”
“SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING in the Balkans,” Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition.”
“in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August
By Yang Sheng at Global Times.
Xi meets Lavrov, reaffirms China’s emphasis on partnership with Russia
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday in Beijing. Chinese analysts said the meeting sends a strong signal that China will firmly develop its strategic partnership with Russia, despite pressure from the West. The China-Russia partnership continues to be key for the global strategic balance and the hope for promoting a multipolar world in which countries of the Global South will have greater roles to play.
Xi asked Lavrov to convey his sincere greetings to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Noting that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, Xi said China and Russia have embarked on a new path of harmonious coexistence and win-win cooperation between major countries and neighbors, which has benefited the two countries and their peoples and contributed wisdom and strength to international fairness and justice, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Lavrov in Beijing, and both sides expressed hope for strengthening practical cooperation in various fields, Xinhua reported.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that China is willing to work with Russia, in accordance with the consensus reached by the two heads of state, to strengthen the synergy of the two countries’ development plans and promote practical cooperation in various fields.
The top diplomats of the two countries held a joint press conference after their meeting. Wang mentioned “five always” at the press conference. For example, he said that the two countries should always follow the strategic guidance of head-of-state diplomacy, and should always adhere to the principle of no-alliance, no-confrontation and no-targeting at any third party.
China and Russia should always stay on the right course on major matters of principle. As permanent members of the UN Security Council and major emerging countries, China and Russia actively respond to the common aspirations and legitimate concerns of the people of all countries, advocate a new path of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership rather than confrontation and alliance, and actively promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, said Wang.
Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the remarks made by Xi and the “five always” raised by Wang provide a “framework and outline” for the future development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.
Yet many voices from the West, mainly from the US as well as some senior NATO officials, insist on depicting the China-Russia relationship as akin to an “anti-West alliance,” which is completely wrong. By reaffirming the principles of “non-alignment, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third party,” China and Russia are refuting those voices with a clear stance, experts said.
Dress down at the dilapidated Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, March 18, 2021.
Multipolar world
China always attaches great importance to the development of China-Russia relations, and stands ready to strengthen bilateral communication with Russia and enhance multilateral strategic coordination in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Xi said when meeting with the visiting Russian top diplomat.
Xi said that the two countries will show more responsibility, unite countries in the Global South in the spirit of equality, openness, transparency and inclusiveness, promote the reform of the global governance system, and vigorously lead the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
China and Russia are trying to promote a multipolar world where developing countries and emerging economies of the Global South will play a greater role, which is the antithesis of the unipolar world dominated by the US, analysts said.
“China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together,” said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University.
This is why China and Russia, as well as other members in the UN Security Council, are pushing an immediate cease-fire and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, even as the US vetoed these attempts time and again, before the Ramadan cease-fire resolution eventually passed on March 25, experts said.
Wang said at the joint press conference that Russia will hold the BRICS presidency this year, and China will take over the rotating presidency of SCO this year. The two sides will support each other’s chairmanship and light up the “moment of South” global governance.
Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the School of Politics and International Relations of the UK’s University of Kent, told the Global Times at a forum in Beijing on March 28 that China-Russia relations are “one of the key axes for international politics, and it’s not only very important but also necessary” to maintain the global strategic balance.
Lavrov said at the meeting with Wang that Russia supports the China-initiated Global Security Initiative, and is willing to deepen cooperation with China on multilateral platforms to promote the establishment of a more just and democratic international order.
The two sides also had in-depth exchanges on the Ukraine issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and other international and regional issues of common concern.
Ukraine crisis and counterterrorism
Wang said at the joint press conference with Lavrov that on the Ukraine issue, China hopes to see a “cease-fire and an end to the war as soon as possible.” China supports the timely convening of an international conference recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation by all parties, and a fair discussion of all peace options, whether it is track one or track two, Wang noted.
Cui Heng, a scholar from the Shanghai-based China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, told the Global Times on Tuesday that “some Western countries have always blamed China for its ‘pro-Russia’ stance, but actually we are just asking for a mechanism that can be accepted by all parties and can treat everyone equally.”
“China’s stance is based on the desire to stop the bloodshed, but the US’ stance is to use the [Russia-Ukraine] conflict to weaken Russia as much as possible. The development of the crisis to some extent depends on the US presidential election later this year,” Cui noted “If Donald Trump is elected, there will be a chance to break the deadlock, but if Joe Biden gets reelected, we might also see some changes, as Washington and its allies might not be able to afford the war anymore.”
Xi stressed at the meeting with Lavrov that China supports the Russian people in following a development path that suits their national conditions, and supports Russia in combating terrorism and maintaining social security and stability.
At the joint press conference with Lavrov on Tuesday, Wang stressed that China must also pay attention to the resolution of other global and regional hot spot issues, including continuing to counter terrorism. “China once again reiterated its condemnation of the terrorist attack in Moscow and its condolences and support for Russia,” said Wang.
“The Chinese people are also victims of terrorism, and terrorism has always been a common threat facing mankind. The international community should resolutely combat all forms of terrorism with a ‘zero tolerance’ attitude, firmly support the efforts of all parties to maintain national security and stability, strengthen international anti-terrorism cooperation, coordinate development and security, and eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorism,” Wang remarked.
“I want to thank China for their condolences in connection with the terrorist attack in the Moscow Region on March 22, and for their support of Russia’s fight against terrorism,” Lavrov said during the meeting with Wang.
All those involved [in the terrorist attack] will be certainly punished, Russia’s top diplomat stated. “Our [Russia-China] cooperation on counter-terrorism will continue, including within the framework of multilateral institutions.”
China and Russia are two major powers in the SCO, and counter-terrorism cooperation between them and other SCO members is significant for regional peace and stability, especially when the threat of terrorism has reemerged in relevant regions, experts said. Apart from the discussion on the diplomatic level, the militaries, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies of the two countries will promote cooperation on combating terrorism, experts said.
As the Ukraine expires, urgent moves are afoot to raise new “Anti-Russias” to maintain Forever Wars on Russia in the European direction. France and Romania make moves
Editorial at KATEHON.COM.
The draft law that the Romanian Ministry of Defense just introduced for allowing the armed forces to deploy abroad in defense of their country’s compatriots raises very serious questions about Bucharest’s geopolitical intentions. The neighboring countries of Moldova and Ukraine have Romanian minorities within them, some of whom have Romanian citizenship such as the 1.3 million in the first-mentioned. Parts of both of them also used to constitute so-called “Greater Romania” during the interwar period.
The polity included all of modern-day Moldova apart from its unrecognized separatist Transnistrian region as well as Ukraine’s Budjak and Northern Bukovina regions. During World War II, Romania also participated in the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa and occupied Odessa Oblast, which was ruled as the “Transnistria Governorate”. That historically Russian city is also at the center of speculation about France’s geopolitical plans nowadays too.
President Emmanuel Macron claimed in late February during a meeting with EU leaders in Paris that a conventional military intervention in Ukraine cannot be “ruled out”, later specifying that his country could take the lead in this respect if Russia advances on Kiev once again or moves on Odessa. France already has troops and tanks in Romania and even signed a security pact with Moldova last month. It’s therefore already positioned to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if the decision is made.
Romania has emerged as a crucial conduit for NATO arms to Ukraine over the past two years to complement routes through Poland, which have become blocked in recent months as a result of farmers’ protests in response to Brussels’ “Green Deal” and the influx of cheap and low-quality Ukrainian grain. Arms and equipment are sent to Greece and then pass through Bulgaria and Romania en route to Western Ukraine. The “Moldova Highway” that’s being built in Romania will facilitate this flow.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said in mid-March that “Troops cannot be sent to Ukraine under NATO’s mandate because Ukraine is not a NATO ally. But in general, if Ukraine has bilateral agreements with a certain state in any sphere, these issues are a matter of bilateral relations. Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine.” Reading between the lines, he essentially signaled that a so-called “coalition of the willing” could intervene there instead of it being a formal NATO mission.
As was earlier written, France is already positioned to conventionally do so via its troops and tanks in Romania if the decision is made. Although Iohannis said that “Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine”, that was before the pro-Western Balkan Insight drew attention to Bucharest’s growing religious dispute with Kiev. Their article titled “Religious Rivalry Threatens Romania-Ukraine’s Close Partnership” was published at the end of last month and is very relevant in light of the latest draft law being tabled.
In brief, the Romanian Orthodox Church announced its support in late February for a separate church for ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. Most of them belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and not Kiev’s newly created schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, and they’ve since come under pressure following a serious of “suspicious incidents” for refusing to defect to that false religious body. The proposed separate church is apparently designed to protect them from further harassment.
The unspoken intent is for ethnic Romanians to physically distance themselves from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and thus avoid more fascist attacks against the latter’s congregation, which Ukrainian radicals carry out due to the former’s ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. The model that could be employed would emulate that which was already applied towards the Moldovan Orthodox Church in basically bribing priests to defect towards that country’s newly created autonomous local diocese.
If the ethnic Romanians’ request to register their proposed religious entity is denied by Kiev and more “suspicious incidents” follow as punishment for their refusal to defect towards its false religious body, then a Romanian military intervention in defense of its compatriots there also can’t be ruled out either. Most live in modern-day Chernivsti Oblast but there’s still a small community in southern Odessa Region’s Budjak region as well, which overlap with the land previously controlled by interwar Romania.
The likelihood of Romania unilaterally intervening in Ukraine is low, let alone intervening only in that country and not in Moldova where a much larger percentage of the local population holds Romanian passports. Therefore, if any military intervention occurs, it’ll probably be a joint operation with France. Paris would try to seize control of the Black Sea coast around Odessa while Romania would seize Budjak and Chernivsti Oblast, or at least the mostly Romanian-inhabited parts of those regions.
The trigger for this scenario could be a Russian military breakthrough across the front lines sometime later this year that would then serve as the pretext for France to lead a “coalition of the willing” of at least itself and Romania to raise the costs of Russia potentially crossing the Dnieper River. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned his French counterpart in a conversation on Wednesday that intervening in Ukraine could cause problems for France itself, thus hinting at immediate retaliation.
That likely isn’t a bluff either since Russia already killed several dozen French mercenaries in Kharkov in late January so the precedent has been established proving that it could also act against French troops too. In fact, some or perhaps even all of those mercenaries might have even been undercover members of the French military, the possibility of which might explain Macron’s reluctance to follow through on late February’s threat since he fears a humiliating military defeat in that event.
Nevertheless, if he decides to go through with it anyhow irrespective of whether it’s intended to preempt the previously mentioned trigger for this scenario or occurs immediately afterwards, then Romania would probably join France in those two Ukrainian regions and Moldova as well. The casus belli that Bucharest could rely on for intervening in Ukraine might be its growing religious dispute with Kiev while the Moldovan dimension could be attributed to alleged Russian threats from Transnistria.
Russia has previously bombed Ukrainian military targets in Budjak’s southernmost Danuban region like the town of Izmail so it would probably also bomb any Romanian military units that deploy there too. Furthermore, if Russia’s peacekeepers in Transnistria are attacked, blockaded, or threatened by Romania and/or France, then that could also prompt Russia to attack the aggressors in Moldova and possibly within Romania itself, which would amount to strikes within NATO territory for self-defense reasons.
Bucharest’s plans to rebuild “Greater Romania”, arguably in joint partnership with France to a large degree, are therefore fraught with danger and should be reconsidered by responsible policymakers. World War III could be sparked by miscalculation since the escalation cycle could easily spiral out of control in that scenario. If the Ministry of Defense’s draft law passes, then Bucharest would regard itself as having the subjectively defined legal pretext for risking this, which raises the chances of a wider war.
L’administration du président américain Joseph Biden a remporté des succès majeurs. Elle a réussi à convaincre la Chambre des représentants
L’article L’aide américaine à l’Ukraine approuvée est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Was Israel Going to Nuke Iran as Pepe Escobar’s Source Claims? | Ray McGovern
Note the day after the controversial F-35 mission, the committed Christian Zionist in charge of the US House of Representatives put to a successful vote the $61 Billion funding bill for both the genocided Ukraine and Genocidal Zion.. on the April 20 birthday of Adolf Hitler
“Political” Absurdity Knows no Limits. The US blocks full UN membership for Palestine – and US Congress passes law depriving Palestine of freedom of speech
Peter Koenig
19 April 2024
Palestine applied to become a full-fledged United Nations member. On 18 April 2024, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted on the request.
The United States single-handedly vetoed Palestine from full UN membership, thereby blocking the world body’s recognition of a Palestinian State.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the US opposed and two abstentions, the UK and Switzerland.
What is largely called Palestine, has since 2012 a non-member observer status. An application for full membership with voting rights must be approved by the UN Security Council and two-thirds of the General Assembly.
The Palestinian Authority slams the US veto as an “aggression”, calling it “unfair, immoral, and unjustified.” – This benign statement is far from reflecting the truth behind blocking the UN-recognized statehood of Palestine. The truth is that Washington under the Democrats led by Biden supports the Zionists thrive for exterminating Palestinians and eliminating the State of Palestine.
Simultaneously with the US veto, a bill requesting additional US$ 26 billion weapons and budget support for Israel reached the US House Floor. The Biden Administration, widely supported by its European puppet leaders, wants more Palestinians killed – especially Gazan inhabitants, or rather prisoners, need to be exterminated, killed by bombs, gunned down, starved to death – and the survivors eventually expulsed – to where?
Probably the Sinai desert, where Egypt already built semi-clandestinely – for sure in agreement with Israel – tent cities to accommodate at least some of the expulsed Palestinians.
Imagine! Who will feed them? Who provides health services and facilities? – Simply, the Zionist intent is to let them slowly and miserably perish.
That is the Zionist extermination plan. In civilized language called “ethnic cleansing”.
The latter, of course, is a crime rather than an absurdity.
Here is absurdity driven to extreme. On Wednesday, 17 April, the US House of Representatives passed a Resolution, condemning the chanting of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Genocidal Congress representatives, either Zionists, or American Congress People coerced by Zionists, are such maniacs that they will not allow the Gaza-imprisoned Palestinians chanting their wish for freedom of their land “From the Jordan River to the Med-Sea, We, Palestine, shall be free”.
If nothing else, the Resolution is a breach on Freedom of Speech, as per the US Constitution’s First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Resolution passed Wednesday is a blatant attempt to abridge the freedom of speech.
It is reminiscent of book burning in the not-too-distant past. Yes, humanity is progressing – fast – but backwards. In more ways than one.
The supporters of the Resolution claim that the chant is “antisemitic”, even though the word Jew never appears in it. It only claims or wishes freedom for Palestine.
Whoever the Congress person was introducing this abhorrently idiotic and contradictory bill – no names shall be named – his or her brain-power was sadly reduced to the size of a chick-bean. Maybe through the multiple-boostered vaxxes?
Looking back at almost forgotten history, on 13 December, 1993, then U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, signed the Oslo Peace Accords. These accords, which have the force of U.S. Law, specified that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank by 1997 and turn their governance over to the Palestine Authority, that is, the State of Palestine.
Remember the famous 1993 picture of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn, both embraced by Bill Clinton.
| Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat (right) shake hands at the White House in front of President Bill Clinton in September 1993. The new play OSLO is a dramatization of events that led to a historic agreement.
David Ake/AFP/Getty Images |
The Oslo Agreements proposed a two-state solution. Had they been implemented then; Palestine would indeed be free from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
However, Netanyahu, leader of the far-right Likud party, never had any intentions to implement the Oslo Accords. He then, as today, played his dirty games of deception, of lying to the public, by letting the Accords being negotiated and signed.
An independent Palestine would have meant that Palestine would sovereignly own the natural resources on or under her soil, especially water resources. Of the combined Palestine Israel territory, pre-1967 borders, some 80% of all water resources belong to Palestine.
This was not acceptable to Israel. Today, Israel is almost in full control of all the water, often building Jewish settlements on or by Palestinian groundwater- and surface water springs.
Here is a testimony, how Netanyahu boasts about manipulating America and derailing the Oslo Peace Process.
The Oslo Agreements were signed by one of Netanyahu’s predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, witnessed and approved by then US President Bill Clinton.
It is not only absurd but an outright criminal act to pass a Zionist-pushed bill in the US Congress that forbids a chant of freedom, which has a full legal basis, the signed Oslo Agreements.
As it looks now, Zionist-Israel does not need a US Law, that prohibits the interpretation “From the (Jordan) River to the Sea, Palestine shall be Free”. Zionist-Israel does whatever she wants, irrespective of signed documents and international laws. They are overtaken by the “rules-based order”.
The would-be sovereign State of Palestine was never allowed the freedom Israel and the PLO signed for in 1993.
See this full report.
The tyrant of then, who is the tyrant of today, Netanyahu, has blocked that freedom for Palestine, with the western world support – largely coerced – by the all-powerful international Zionist lobby.
Netanyahu and his cohorts are doing whatever they can with their indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to wipe out Palestine. However, the way it looks today, with worldwide support for Israel ever-more waning – about 90% of worldwide populations are backing Palestine – Israel may wipe herself off the map.
This concept is echoed ever more around the world. That might indeed be the best outcome – political suicide for a Zionist Israel.
Negotiations could then start for a non-Zionist Israel, an Israel for honest Jews; along and side-by-side with a sovereign Palestine. Equal rights and equal sovereignty shall reign.
Winning a war is insignificant. Everywhere in the world. Wars and conflicts divide. Not only the warriors, but also the public at large, as publicity drives them to take sides.
What counts is not winning, but PEACE.
————
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
From a strategic perspective, Iran achieved all and more of its goals. Iran neutralized US power in West Asia. Impunity reflected in disproportionate savagery is henceforth denied rabid little Zion; USUK will be forced to withdraw from the region. In the larger view, the World System will be remade to reflect the current dominant and multipolar constellation of power in world affairs.
On profound moral loss inherent in the Genocide of Palestine: “The west criminalizes holocaust denial, but denies Gaza genocide happening in plain sight.” The evil doublethink is changing the entire equation of global politics.. the Rest of Humanity flees Psychopathic Generals in their Unreality Labyrinths
Broader implications of Zionist-USUK actions since October 07, 2023, will result in death throws of International Law as a force in international politics:
No body likes US or UK, our embassies are already fortresses and were attacked in the past.. condoning attacking embassies as part of “Rules-based order” in the last weeks will have consequences. [Note the fleeing of zion from 28 or so of its foreign embassies in days prior to Iranian retaliation. This is a Sign and harbinger of Times to come, and already well underway as the French recently shuttered their embassy in Niger … ]A geopolitical sea change in the international system is well underway.
He lapses into habitual imperial exceptionalist contradictions around 35min, regarding China and the Global South. Do they really adhere to International law because they are weaker today? Were these concepts even invented by western “Enlightenment”, or repackaged from several prior civilizations?! One cannot dispense the shared training, weltanschauung and biases of centuries, but he does takes formidable steps in digesting the death of the Old Order.
Depuis 2023, l’Afrique est devenue une destination d’exportation plus importante pour la Russie que l’Amérique du Nord et l’Amérique du
L’article Les exportations russes vers l’Afrique dépassent désormais celles vers les deux Amériques est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
when is it no longer “safe” ?? A free article by Elijah Magnier. Presciently published 2-3 days PRIOR to the Iranian retaliation. Iran moved from Patience to direct Power. Henceforth, there will be consequences for Zio-USUK, as in Novorossiya!
By Elijah J Magnier on 11/04/2024.
In a calculated move of retaliation, Iran has decided to respond to Israel’s actions by earmarking several targets from its extensive list for initial and, if deemed necessary, subsequent more destructive reprisals. Reliable sources reveal that Iran’s strategic planning includes the Israeli Chief of Staff’s headquarters among the range of potential targets. This decision is a direct consequence of Israel’s targeted assassinations of Iranian generals on Monday, 1 April 2024, which targeted the Iranian diplomatic consulate in Damascus, Syria. This attack destroyed the consulate and the death of seven senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers, including a brigadier general and general, his second in command. In the light of these events, Iran has vowed to retaliate.
Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, proposed a joint attack on Israel. However, reliable Iranian sources report that Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, rejected the proposal. Sayyed Khamenei’s refusal is based on a desire to prevent harm to Iran’s allies and a belief that retaliation should be an exclusively Iranian response, especially after the attack on its diplomatic consulate. The purpose of Iran’s planned retaliation is not necessarily to effectively harm Israel by destroying its diplomatic mission but to send a warning. This serves as a deterrent message to Israel and the international community to refrain from similar actions in the future. Iran’s strategy is not aimed at escalating the situation into a wider conflict unless Israel retaliates. Instead, Iran is trying to navigate out of the position it has been placed in by Israel’s actions against its diplomatically and legally protected consulate in Syria.
Israel’s conduct violates essential norms protecting the inviolability of diplomatic premises and representatives, as enshrined in the Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), the Convention on Consular Relations (1963), and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic Agents (1973).
Invoking Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which sanctions the right of individual or collective self-defence in response to an armed attack against a UN member state, Iran is in a position to retaliate against Israel without the option of restraint. This stance is based on the need to protect its diplomatic missions around the world. Iran has notified the United States of its intention to retaliate by international legal frameworks while at the same time preparing for possible further escalation by Israel by preparing additional countermeasures in the event of significant Israeli retaliation.
Delaying a retaliatory strike does not put Iran at a disadvantage, as strategic depth and patience define its approach to conflict. This stance emphasises that time serves Iran’s interests by allowing it to respond to any aggression in a calculated manner and by draining Israel’s resources and nerves in anticipation of Iranian retaliation. The notion that the explicit intent of a “damaging strike” would typically come from the “Axis of Resistance” that aims to underscore a strategy of surprise and direct engagement. On the other hand, Iran’s primary goal isn’t just tit-for-tat but to prevent future provocations and maintain established limits of engagement.
Iran’s decision-making process is not hasty or impulsive but deliberate and methodical. It is based on a thorough assessment of the immediate facts, strategic evaluations, and broader implications on the regional and international stage. This approach instils confidence, as it shows that Iran’s actions are not driven by the clamour of public opinion on social media but by a complete understanding of the potential consequences.
The leadership’s emphasis on strengthening the resilience of the Iranian people, increasing national enthusiasm, and reinforcing ideological cohesion is not just a prelude to military action but a testament to Iran’s commitment to its citizens. The Iranian leadership considers this internal fortification more important than the act of retaliation itself, highlighting the depth of their commitment.
The symbolic gesture of Sayyed Khamenei appearing with a Russian Dragunov semi-automatic sniper rifle during the Eid al-Fitr sermon, an action usually reserved for Friday sermons, is a deliberate display of readiness for conflict. This act is not just a message of defensiveness but a declaration of Iran’s readiness and resolve, reinforcing its strategic position and ideological steadfastness.
In sum, Iran is a nation that approaches the prospect of conflict with caution, strategic planning and a deep-seated commitment to preserving its sovereignty and principles rather than being swayed by external pressures or immediate provocations.
‘Operation Faithful Promise’ written in a red rocket
Iran’s measures
Iran has upgraded security measures around more than 91 Iranian sites deemed ‘sensitive’ as a defensive measure. These measures included its infrastructure, nuclear facilities and military installations, underlining its comprehensive approach to hardening its critical infrastructure against potential Israeli threats. This strategy appears to mirror tactics seen elsewhere, including by Israel and highlights a trend towards multi-layered defence systems that combine physical interception measures with electronic warfare capabilities.
Indeed, Iran’s deployment of anti-aircraft and interceptor missiles at critical sites, including nuclear facilities and military bases, represents a direct approach to countering air threats such as human-crewed aircraft, drones and missiles. These systems range from short-range air defence (SHORAD) systems designed to engage targets at lower altitudes to advanced long-range missile defence systems capable of intercepting high-altitude threats and fighter jets.
Furthermore, the Iranian deployment of GPS jamming systems throughout Iran indicates a significant emphasis on countering precision-guided munitions and navigation-dependent drones and missiles. By degrading the accuracy of GPS-guided weapons, Iran aims to reduce the effectiveness of potential attacks on its territory, particularly on sites critical to its national security and infrastructure. GPS jamming can create a defensive buffer, making planning and executing air strikes more challenging.
By publicly demonstrating the enhancement of its defensive capabilities, Iran seeks to deter potential adversaries from considering direct attacks by projecting a willingness to defend its critical assets. This move reflects the ongoing technology race in military capabilities, where corresponding improvements match advances in offensive weapon systems in defensive technologies. Also, strengthening Iran’s defensive posture may have implications for regional security dynamics, potentially affecting the calculus of NATO, Israel and other regional actors regarding their security strategies and policies.
Using GPS jamming on a national scale highlights the growing importance of electronic warfare in modern defence strategies. It not only complicates adversaries’ operational environment but also represents an investment in non-kinetic means of warfare.
(L): Il Papa kisses the Ring ; (R): Christian Zionist former Vice Prez Pence at Christians United for Israel (CUFI)
Israel measures
Israel’s approach to missile defence is indeed multi-layered and highly sophisticated, designed to counter a wide range of threats from short-range rockets to medium-range ballistic missiles. This defence strategy includes several key components to provide a comprehensive shield. In addition, the involvement of NATO, particularly with naval assets equipped with missile interceptors, provides an international dimension to regional missile defence efforts.
Israel’s missile defence architecture consists of several layers, each designed to engage different types of threats at various ranges and altitudes:
Iron Dome: Primarily aimed at intercepting short-range rockets and artillery shells. It is known to have been effective in intercepting projectiles from Gaza.
David’s Sling: Targets medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles, filling the gap between the Iron Dome and Arrow systems.
Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems: Designed to intercept ballistic missiles at high altitudes, including outside the Earth’s atmosphere, providing a last line of defence against long-range threats.
Role of Patriot Missiles in Israel’s Air Defense: Israel’s inclusion of the Patriot missile system in its air defence arsenal is a significant component of its multi-layered defence strategy aimed at countering various aerial threats. Initially developed by the United States, the Patriot missile system is designed to detect, track, and engage incoming ballistic missiles at high altitudes, as well as aircraft and drones.
GPS jamming and non-GPS-guided threats: The Israeli army uses GPS jamming to mitigate the threat posed by precision-guided munitions, including missiles and drones that rely on GPS for navigation. By jamming or spoofing GPS signals, defenders can degrade the accuracy of incoming threats, potentially diverting them from their intended targets. However, as noted above, not all missiles and drones deployed by Iran and its allies rely on GPS for guidance. Many systems may use alternative navigation methods, such as inertial guidance, which uses gyroscopes and accelerometers to maintain a course without external references. Others may use Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) or optical or radar-based homing technologies that are not susceptible to GPS jamming.
Furthermore, NATO’s deployment of missile interceptors around Israel and in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean demonstrates a high level of cooperation and commitment to Israel’s defence. These ships will likely be equipped with Aegis combat systems capable of tracking and shooting down enemy missiles and aircraft, enhancing Israel’s national missile defence capabilities.
(L): Display of satellite rockets, Khorramshahr missile, and Qiyam-1 missile in the national day parade, 11.02.2024 ; (R): Iran’s missile strikes against Mossad & terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria, 15.01.2024
Countermeasures
However, missile guidance systems, especially those used by countries such as Iran and its allies (Hezbollah, Iraqi Resistance), have evolved to incorporate a variety of technologies aimed at improving accuracy and reliability while evading countermeasures. One such technology is using gyroscopes in the missile’s guidance system. Let’s look at the basics of how these systems work, their advantages and their potential limitations.
A gyroscope in a missile guidance system performs a critical function: it provides inertial navigation data. This means that it can measure and maintain the orientation and angular velocity of the missile without external references. It tells the rocket whether it has rolled, pitched or yawed during flight and by how much.
How it works? A gyroscope maintains its orientation using the principle of angular momentum. In the context of missile guidance, it can provide a stable reference that indicates the missile’s orientation relative to the Earth’s surface. By integrating data from gyroscopes with accelerometers (which measure acceleration), the missile’s inertial navigation system (INS) can calculate its position, orientation and velocity without needing external references such as GPS.
One of the main advantages of using a gyroscopic guidance system is its independence from external signals such as GPS. This makes the missile less susceptible to jamming and spoofing techniques, which are common electronic countermeasures used to disrupt the guidance of GPS-guided weapons. Relying on an internal guidance system allows the missile to be guided to its target even in environments where GPS signals are compromised.
Gyroscopes make missiles more resistant to jamming and spoofing. They do not rely on external updates and can operate in GPS-denied environments. When combined with accelerometers in an INS, gyroscopes can provide precise navigation capabilities.
However, Inertial navigation systems, including gyroscopes, can accumulate errors over time. The longer the missile is in flight, the greater the potential error in its calculated position. Thus, implementing a robust gyroscopic guidance system can be complex and expensive compared to simpler GPS-based systems. Still, it is necessary when facing an advanced enemy with a GPS jamming system. Gyroscopic missile guidance systems offer significant advantages regarding autonomy and resistance to electronic countermeasures, making them particularly useful for countries such as Iran that can anticipate GPS jamming techniques.
Legal approach
The attack on the consulate of a nation, which caused both material damage and fatalities, is a severe violation of international norms, in particular the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which stipulates the inviolability of diplomatic premises and the protection of diplomatic personnel. In response, Iran lodged a formal protest with the United Nations, highlighting the international condemnation by entities such as the United Arab Emirates, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (except Bahrain), Russia and China, all of which emphasised the sanctity of diplomatic premises and condemned the violation of these principles.
The collective condemnation by the 121 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement demonstrates global solidarity with Iran and highlights the significant geopolitical implications of disregarding diplomatic norms. Yet the Western response has been muted, with minimal public condemnation, reflecting a polarised global perspective on the incident.
Iran’s efforts to rally international support to isolate Israel diplomatically, coupled with Israeli Minister Benny Gantz’s call for a coalition against Iran, reflect the complex global dynamics at play. Iran is criticising the United States, Britain and France for not supporting a UN Security Council condemnation of the Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus, which Iran blames on US-supplied weapons. This position is being portrayed as a tacit endorsement of the aggression, risking further instability in West Asia. Iran asserts its right to seek legal redress and retaliation under international law for this affront.
In solidarity, Ansar Allah in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon expressed their unwavering support for Iran and condemned the attack on the consulate. The support of Iran’s powerful allies was manifested during Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s talks in Muscat, Oman, which focused on sending the right message and soft warning to the US administration to remain neutral.
Since 7 October, the United States has already sent four indirect messages to Iran, urging Tehran to remain in control and not to be provoked into joining Netanyahu’s conflict. The messages stressed that the US administration would do everything in its power to contain the conflict. However, Iran perceives that the US has not lived up to its commitments and points to Israel’s actions, which have further antagonised Iran, including the destruction of its consulate in Damascus, as evidence of this failure.
Iran is aware that the US will not abandon Israel, just as Israel and the US know that Iran’s main allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will stand by it. This mutual recognition is what led Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to believe that he could carry out a strike on the Iranian consulate with impunity and expect no retaliation from Iran.
The US is limited to intercepting missiles and drones aimed at Israel and using its diplomatic clout to defuse tensions and prevent Israel from escalating the situation, given the potential for full-scale conflict. The prospect of the US becoming embroiled in a Middle East conflict, especially one it could start but find difficult to end, is particularly unappealing as President Joe Biden faces a presidential election in two months. The US administration, already unhappy with Israel’s conduct in the Gaza conflict, is putting pressure on Netanyahu to cease hostilities and facilitate humanitarian aid. As a result, there is little appetite for escalation, which could only benefit Netanyahu by prolonging his tenure and aiding his domestic political survival while significantly undermining Biden’s re-election ambitions. This precarious situation encourages all parties to remain vigilant and avoid Netanyahu’s potentially dangerous strategies, especially as he faces declining domestic and regional support due to various failures.
‘Anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia.’ And after a millennium of playing catch-up, she now has the dominant military heft and osmotic alliance with Iran and China to help craft new civilizational calculations.
By Pepe Escobar at Sputnik International.
A Holy of the Holies was shattered in the Holy Land as Iran staged a quite measured, heavily choreographed response to the Israeli terror attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus, a de facto evisceration of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.
This game-changer will directly interfere on how the Anglo-American system manages its simultaneous conflagration with Russia, China and Iran – three top BRICS members.
The key problem is escalations are already built in – and will be hard to remove. The Total Cancel War against Russia; the genocide in Gaza – with its explicit policy masterfully decoded by Prof. Michael Hudson; and the decoupling/shaping the terrain against China won’t simply vanish – as all communication bridges with the Global Majority keep being torched.
Yet the Iranian message indeed establishes a “New Equation” – as Tehran christened it, and prefigures many other surprises to come from West Asia.
Iran wanted to – and did send – a clear message. New equation: if the biblical psychopathic entity keeps attacking Iranian interests, from henceforth it will be counter-attacked inside Israel. All that in a matter of “seconds” – as the Security Council in Tehran has already cleared all the procedures.
Escalation though seems inevitable. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.”
Compare it to Iranian President Raisi: “The smallest act against Tehran’s interests will be met with a massive, extensive, and painful response against all its operations.”
(L) July 2019: IRGC Aerospace Force General Amirali Hajizadeh in a meeting with his Russian counterpart General “Armageddon” Surovikin before the Russia-Ukraine war: ‘Help us build our aerospace command force, and I will help you build Russia’s drone command force’ [01] [02] ; (R) April 10, 2024: After Imam Khamenei said Israel must be punished, a subtle smile appeared on the face of General Hajizadeh. [03] ; April 17, 2024: [04]
For Tehran, regulating the intensity of the clash in West Asia between Israel and the Axis of Resistance while simultaneously establishing strategic deterrence to replace “strategic patience” was a matter of launching a triple wave: a drone swarm opening the path for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
The performance of the much-vaunted Iron Dome, Arrow-3 and David’s Sling – aided by F-35 fighter jets and the US and the UK naval force – was not exactly stellar. There’s no video of the “outer-layer” Arrow-3 system shooting down anything in space.
At least 9 ballistic missiles penetrated the dense Israeli defense network and hit the Nevatim and Ramon bases. Israel is absolutely mum on the fate of its Golan Heights intel installation – hit by cruise missiles.
Amidst classic fog of war, it’s irrelevant whether Tehran launched hundreds or dozens of drones and missiles. Regardless of NATOstan media hype, what’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the supposedly “invincible” Israeli defense maze – ranging from US-made AD/ABM systems to Israeli knockoffs – is helpless in real war against a technologically advanced adversary.
What was accomplished by a single operation did raise quite a few professional eyebrows. Iran forced Israel to furiously deplete its stock of interceptors and spend at least $1.35 billion – while having its escalatory dominance and deterrence strategy completely shattered.
The psychological blow was even fiercer.
What if Iran had unleashed a series of strikes without a generous previous warning lasting several days? What if US, UK, France and – traitorous – Jordan were not ready for coordinated defense? (The – startling – fact they were all directly dispensing firepower on Tel Aviv’s behalf was not analyzed at all). What if Iran had hit serious industrial and infrastructural targets?
Establishing an Equation Without Disturbing a Pivot
Predictably, there has been less than zero debate across NATOstan about the sudden collapse of the Fortress Israel Myth – which underpins the larger myth of Zionism offering Impregnable Security for those living in Israel. No more. This narrative spin is D.O.A.
Iran, for its part, could not care less about what NATOstan spins. The shift towards the New Equation in fact was generous enough to offer Tel Aviv a de-escalation escape route – which will not be taken, at Israel’s peril.
For Tel Aviv, everything that happened so far spells out Strategic Defeat across the spectrum: in Gaza, in Lebanon, with the economy tanking, totally losing legitimacy around the world, and now with the added painful loss of deterrence.
All eyes are now on what may happen next: will it finally become clear whether the Hegemon prevails or whether Israel runs the “wag the dog” show?
It’s essential to consider the Russia-China strategic partnership view. The consensus among Chinese scholars is that the Hegemon prefers not to commit too many resources to West Asia, as this would affect the – already collapsing – Project Ukraine and the strategic planning to counter China in the Asia-Pacific.
When it comes to Russia, President Raisi personally called President Putin and they discussed all relevant details over the phone. Cool, calm and collected.
Additionally, later this week Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani – who said Iran will respond “within seconds” to any new Israeli attack – visits Moscow for the Conference on Nonproliferation and will also meet with the top echelons of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
It’s quite remarkable that Iran managed to establish the New Equation without disturbing its own pivot to Eurasia – after the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal – while protecting the complex framework engaged in the defense of Palestine.
The Hegemon’s options are dire. They run from being eventually expelled from West Asia and the Persian Gulf to an unwinnable existential clash against three civilization-states – Russia, China, Iran.
What’s left as the number one feasible scenario is a carefully calculated retreat to an easily controlled backyard: Latin America, especially South America, manipulating new, convenient, sovereign-deprived asset Argentina.
And of course maintaining control over a de-industrialized and sovereignty-deprived Europe.
That does not change the fact that US power projection on the wane, globally, is the way the wind is blowing. The Straussian neocon psycho-dementia is unsustainable. The question is whether they can be progressively purged from the US power structure before they attempt to plunge the Global Majority into their irrational depths of doom.
And Don’t Forget the New BRICS Equation
By contrast, on the Global Majority front, over 40 nations want to join BRICS – and counting, according to the head of the Russian Council Committee on International Affairs, Grigory Karasin.
After a meeting of the chairmen of the international affairs committees of BRICS Parliaments last week in Moscow, Karasin noted how many BRICS member-nations understand that they should not rush to create a rigid charter, “seeing how counterproductive and even provocative the European Union is acting.” The name of the game is flexibility.
Alastair Crooke has touched on a key theme that runs through my new book, Eurasia v. NATOstan: “Anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia. This is the unspoken insight that so infuriates the western elites. And it is also why, in part, BRICS states so evidently look to Russia for leadership.”
The New Equation established by Iran, a sovereign BRICS member, will do wonders to solidify this – multilateral, multicultural – state of cooperation as the Empire and its “aircraft carrier” in West Asia, except in the covert ops department, are increasingly reduced to the role of a paper tiger.
Garland Nixon interviews Laith Marouf — West Asia update — on a seismic week which changed our world. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!
Iran’s retaliation is historic for Palestine, the region, our world. Zio-USUK suffered a strategic defeat, on top of moral defeat of Gaza
the regional war has moved from non-state actors to state-on-state [with the implications of aligned alliances a la 1914]
Iran forced Anglo-Zionist-NATO alliance to reveal their air defenses (AD), including radars, locations, capabilities, occult allies (GCC), tactics, etc. It made clear Franco-Brits are vassals; the combined West is a totalitarian Empire under a single diktat, for those oblivious the last six months of Genocide…
Iran has started bleeding both their budgets/treasure ($3+ BILLION cost in a few hours!) and air defense interceptors/warjets wear & tear/munitions through massive unprecedented swarm of cheap drones
Iran demonstrated, in addition to precision of its older drones/missiles (! Thx Comrades BeiDou & GLONASS), significant deterrence
Israel demonstrated its survival is dependent on combined West – demoted to abject vassal like Bahrain from its former optical strut
even this western defense is proven worthless, as in 404. US funded and part-built air defenses were thoroughly exposed.
as they proved they could take down western AD using older drones and Scuds, in real war they would rapidly degrade airbases and hardware required for the sole remaining advantage of Anglo-Zionists – air power; Hamas has exposed ground war inadequacy and Houthis the lost naval force projection.
Everything in Israel today exists by Grace of Iran (!!!). It can be leveled
Hezbollah today salted the wounded by blasting another “Iron” Dome AD complex in north occupied Palestine
during the Iranian aerial slap, Netanyahoo hid in the Jerusalem bunker of the messianic Jewish billionaire funding the Red Heifer sacrifice, destruction of Al Aqsa Masjid and building of the Third Temple on its ruins. The crazed want Armageddon. The Danger remains
A lesson learned by multipolar Global Majority during this measured & mild Iranian deterrence action: the US will need to bring all its forces for zionazi proxy to have a chance! Thus dominoes will quickly fall everywhere else, whether 404, Korea, etc.. [unfortunately, this INCREASES risk of total West Asian war.. all now have a vested interest in finishing off the Last Satanic Empire in such a distant and predictable weak theater, also given its tenuous logistics and abject emotional messianic devotion. iow, an emotional albatross]
As Houthis have same weaponry as Iran, they are shown to have pulled their punches in Red Sea.. more proof of imperial lunacy to keep fighting a lost war, merely for optics
if USUK persist, they will end up third world countries at the end of this mad devotion to Zion [AHH: actually, a best case scenario at this point]
Jordanian compradore regime will soon cease to exist; its fate is linked to zionism now
the Arab region now plans for the day after collapse of Zion, and eviction of USUK (provided we’re still alive); this is not merely Greater Syria but other natural agglomerations which used to exist prior to arrival of West or even Turks
Garland: the strike on Israel was an Exclamation Point of the [arrival] of the Multipolar World
Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel were not conducted alone. Strategic partners Russia and China have Tehran’s back, and their role in West Asia’s conflict will only grow if the US doesn’t keep Israel in check.
By Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.
A little over 48 hours before Iran’s aerial message to Israel across the skies of West Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov confirmed, on the record, what so far had been, at best, hush-hush diplomatic talk:
The Russian side keeps in contact with Iranian partners on the situation in the Middle East after the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Ryabkov added, “We stay in constant touch [with Iran]. New in-depth discussions on the whole range of issues related to the Middle East are also expected in the near future in BRICS.”
He then sketched The Big Picture:
Connivance with Israeli actions in the Middle East, which are at the core of Washington’s policy, is in many ways becoming the root cause of new tragedies.
Here, concisely, we had Russia’s top diplomatic coordinator with BRICS – in the year of the multipolar organization’s Russian presidency – indirectly messaging that Russia has Iran’s back. Iran, it should be noted, just became a full-fledged BRICS+ member in January.
Iran’s aerial message this weekend confirmed this in practice: their missile guidance systems used the Chinese Beidou satellite navigation system as well as the Russian GLONASS system.
This is Russia–China intel leading from behind and a graphic example of BRICS+ on the move.
Ryabkov’s “we stay in constant touch” plus the satellite navigation intel confirms the deeply interlocked cooperation between the Russia–China strategic partnership and their mutual strategic partner Iran. Based on vast experience in Ukraine, Moscow knew that the biblical psychopathic genocidal entity would keep escalating if Iran only continued to exercise “strategic patience.”
The morphing of “strategic patience” into a new strategic balance had to take some time – including high-level exchanges with the Russian side. After all, the risk remained that the Israeli attack against the Iranian consulate/ambassador’s residence in Damascus could well prove to be the 2024 remix of the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Marco Polo with elephants and camels arriving at Hormuz on the Gulf of Persia from India – Boucicaut Master
And don’t forget the Strait of Hormuz
Tehran did manage to upend the massive Western psychological operations aimed at pushing it into a strategic misstep.
Iran started with a misdirecting masterstroke. As US–Israeli fear porn went off the charts, fueled by dodgy western “intel,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made a quick sideways move, seizing an Israeli-owned container ship near the Strait of Hormuz.
That was an eminently elegant manoeuvre – reminding the collective west of Tehran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, a fact immeasurably more dangerous to the whole western economic house of cards than any limited strike on their “aircraft carrier” in West Asia. That did happen anyway.
And once again, with a degree of elegance. Unlike that ‘moral’ army specialized in killing women, children, and the elderly and bombing hospitals, mosques, schools, universities, and humanitarian convoys, the Iranian attack targeted key Israeli military sites such as the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and an intel center in the occupied Golan Heights – the three centers used by Tel Aviv in its strike on Iran’s Damascus consulate.
This was a highly choreographed show. Multiple early warning signs gifted Tel Aviv with plenty of time to profit from US intel and evacuate fighter jets and personnel, which was duly followed by a plethora of US military radars coordinating the defense strategy.
It was American firepower that smashed the bulk of what may have been a swarm of 185 Shahed-136 drones – using everything from ship-mounted air defense to fighter jets. The rest was shot down over Jordan by The Little King’s military – the Arab street will never forget his treachery – and then by dozens of Israeli jets.
Israel’s defenses were de facto saturated by the suicide drone-ballistic missile combo. On the ballistic missile front, several pierced the dense maze of Israel’s air defenses, with Israel officially claiming nine successful hits – interestingly enough, all of them hitting super relevant military targets.
The whole show had the budget of a mega blockbuster. For Israel – without even counting the price of US, UK, and Israeli jets – just the multi-layered interception system set it back at least $1.35 billion, according to an Israeli official. Iranian military sources tally the cost of their drone and missile salvos at only $35 million – 2.5 percent of Tel Aviv’s expenditure – made with full indigenous technology.
A mural in Palestine Square, Tehran, reads in Hebrew: “The next slap will be harsher”
A new West Asian chessboard
It took only a few hours for Iran to finally metastasize strategic patience into serious deterrence, sending an extremely powerful and multi-layered message to its adversaries and masterfully changing the game across the whole West Asian chessboard.
Were the biblical psychopaths to engage in a real Hot War against Iran, there’s no chance in hell Tel Aviv can intercept hundreds of Iranian missiles – the state-of-the-art ones excluded from the current show – without an early warning mechanism spread over several days. Without the Pentagon’s umbrella of weaponry and funds, Israeli defense is unsustainable.
It will be fascinating to see what lessons Moscow will glean from this profusion of lights in the West Asian sky, its sly eyes taking in the frantic Israeli, political, and military scene as the heat continues to rise on the slowly boiling – and now screaming – frog.
As for the US, a West Asian war – one it hasn’t scripted itself – does not suit its immediate interests, as an old-school Deep State stalwart confirmed by email:
That could permanently end the area as an oil-producing region and astronomically raise the oil price to levels that will crash the world financial structure. It is conceivable that the United States banking system could similarly collapse if the oil price rises to $900 a barrel should Middle East oil be cut off or destroyed.
It’s no wonder that the Biden combo, days before the Iranian response, was frantically begging Beijing, Riyadh, and Ankara, among others, to hold Tehran back. The Iranians might have even agreed – had the UN Security Council imposed a permanent ceasefire in Gaza to calm the regional storm. Washington was mute.
The question now is whether it will remain mute. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, went straight to the point:
We have conveyed a message to America through the Swiss Embassy that American bases will become a military target if they are used in future aggressive actions of the Zionist regime. We will consider this as aggression and will act accordingly.
The US dilemma is confirmed by former Pentagon analyst Michael Maloof:
We have got some 35 bases that surround Iran, and they thereby become vulnerable. They were meant to be a deterrence. Clearly, deterrence is no longer on the table here. Now they become the American’ Achilles heel’ because of their vulnerabilities to attack.
All bets are off on how the US–Israel combo will adapt to the new Iranian-crafted deterrence reality. What remains, for the historic moment, is the pregnant-with-meaning aerial show of Muslim Iran singlehandedly unleashing hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel, a feat feted all across the lands of Islam. And especially by the battered Arab street, subjugated by decrepit monarchies that keep doing business with Israel over the dead bodies of the Palestinians of Gaza.
Sweet coordinated moves in our Juntaland, West African Sahelian branch, among the Axes of Resistance!
Little noticed, just after Niger officially kicked out US troops (turning on the ticking clock, as with Frenchie earlier), and right after Russian advance troops arrived in town, China swooped in to provide sanctions-busting liquidity and lucrative deals. This effectively seals off Plunder Inc from one of most stupendous resource-rich regions on earth, easily to rival Russia itself. And Niger is projected to be Africa’s top growth economy this year….
Niamey, Niger protests against French occupation troops, July 2023.
@Arab_Africa:
The day after Russian troops arrived, Niger signed a $400 million oil deal with China. China asked for $400 million for the sale of crude oil. The official signing ceremony of the agreement between Niger and CNPC took place on April 12. It was attended by the Prime Minister of Niger, Mahamane Zein Lamin, and the Chinese Ambassador to Niamey. |video|
Niamey, Niger protests against French occupation troops, July 2023.
@Africa Intel:
Hundreds rally in Niger’s capital to push for U.S. military departure
Hundreds took to the streets of Niger’s capital on Saturday to demand the departure of U.S. troops, after the ruling junta further shifted its strategy by ending a military accord with the United States and welcoming Russian military instructors.
Marching arm in arm through central Niamey, the crowd waved Nigerien flags in a demonstration that recalled anti-French protests that spurred the withdrawal of France’s forces from Niger last year after the army seized power in a coup. |media|
Oh, the Chinese fan the flames. And the key Junta leaders were trained in the famous USA torture academy AKA “School of the Americas,” located in Georgia, LOL!!!!
Israel, Gaza and West Bank should be seen as the global blueprint for basically how to financialize genocide and destruction. Palestinians will either emigrate or be killed. Exodus or Annihilation.
By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.
In what can be considered the most crucial podcast of 2024 so far, Professor Michael Hudson – the author of seminal works such as Super-Imperialism and the recent The Collapse of Antiquity , among others – clinically lays down the essential background to understand the unthinkable: a 21st century genocide broadcast live 24/7 to the whole planet.
In an email exchange, Prof. Hudson detailed he’s now essentially “spilling the beans” about how, “50 years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn [the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove], Israeli Mossad members were being trained, including Uzi Arad. I made two international trips with him, and he outlined to me pretty much what has happened today. He became head of Mossad and is now Netanhayu’s advisor.”
Prof. Hudson shows how “the basic Gaza plan is how Kahn designed the Vietnam War’s division into sectors, with canals cutting off each village, as the Israelis are doing to Palestinians. Also already at time, Kahn pinpointed Balochistan as the area to foment disruption in Iran and the rest of the region.”
It’s not by accident that Balochistan has been CIA jewel territory for decades, and recently with the added incentive of the disruption by any means necessary of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – a key connectivity node of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Prof. Hudson then connects the major dots: “As I understand it, what the U.S. is doing with Israel is a dress rehearsal for it to move on to Iran and the South China Sea. As you know, there is no Plan B in American strategy for a very good reason: If anyone criticize Plan A, they’re considered not to be a team player (or even Putin’s Puppet), so critics have to leave when they see that they won’t be promoted. That’s why U.S. strategists won’t stop and re-think what they’re doing.”
Isolate them in strategic hamlets, then kill them
In our email exchange, Prof. Hudson remarked “this is basically what I said” in reference to the podcast with Ania K, drawing on his notes (here is the full, revised transcript). Fasten your seat belts: unvarnished truth is more lethal than a hypersonic missile hit.
On the Zionist military strategy in Gaza:
“My background in the 1970s at Hudson Institute with Uzi Arad and other Mossad trainees. My field was BoP, but I sat in on many meetings discussing military strategy, and I flew to Asia twice with Uzi and got to know him.
The U.S./Israeli strategy in Gaza is based in many ways on Herman Kahn’s plan that was carried out in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Herman’s focus was systems analysis. Start by defining the overall aim and then, how do we achieve it?
First, isolate them in Strategic Hamlets. Gaza has been carved up into districts, requiring electronic passes for entry from one sector to another, or into Jewish Israel to work.
First thing: kill them. Ideally by bombing, because that minimizes domestic casualties for your army.
The genocide that we are seeing today is the explicit policy of Israel’s founders: the idea of “a land without a people” means a land without non-Jewish people. They were to be driven out – starting even before the official founding of Israel, in the first Nakba, the Arab holocaust.
Two Israeli Prime Ministers were members of the Stern Gang of terrorists. They escaped from their British jail and joined to found Israel.
What we are seeing today is the Final Solution to this plan. It also dovetails into U.S. desires to control the Middle East and its oil reserves. For U.S. diplomacy, the Middle East IS (in caps) oil. And ISIS is part of America’s foreign legion since it was first organized in Afghanistan to fight the Russians.
That is why Israeli policy has been coordinated with the U.S.. Israel is the main U.S. client oligarchy in the Middle East. Mossad does most handling of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and wherever else the U.S. may send ISIS terrorists. Terrorism and even the present genocide is central to U.S. geopolitics.
But as the U.S. learned in the Vietnam War, populations protest and vote against the President who supervises this war. Lyndon Johnson couldn’t make a public appearance without crowds chanting. He had to sneak out the side entrance of hotels where he was speaking.
To prevent an embarrassment such as Seymour Hersh describing the My Lai massacre, you block journalists from the battlefield. If they are there, you kill them. The Biden-Netanyahu team has targeted journalists in particular.
So the ideal is to kill the population passively, to minimize visible bombing. And the line of least resistance is to starve the population. That has been Israeli policy since 2008.”
And don’t forget to starve them
Prof. Hudson makes a direct reference to a Sara Roy piece in The New York Review of Books, citing a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the Secretary of State on November 3rd, 2008. The cable reads, “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to [embassy officials] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
That has led, according to Prof. Hudson, to Israel “destroying fishing boats and greenhouses of Gaza to deprive it from feeding itself.
Next, it has joined with the United States to block United Nations food aid and that of other countries. The U.S. quickly withdrew from the UN relief agency as soon as hostilities began, doing so immediately after the ICJ finding of plausible genocide. It was the major funder of this agency. The hope was that this would set back its activities.
Israel simply stopped letting food aid in. It set up long, long lines of inspections, that is, an excuse to slow the trucks to just 20% of their pre-Oct. 7 rate – from a normal rate of 500 a day to just 112. In addition to blocking trucks, Israel has targeted aid workers – about one a day.
The United States sought to avoid being condemned by pretending to build a wharf to unload food by sea. The intention was that by the time the wharf was built, Gaza’s population would be starved out.”
Biden and Netanyahu as war criminals
Prof. Hudson succinctly draws the key connection in the whole tragedy: “The U.S. is trying to blame one person, Netanyahu. But that has been Israeli policy since 1947. And it is U.S. policy. Everything that is occurring since October 2, when the Al-Aqsa mosque was raided by Israeli settlers, leading to Hamas’s [Al-Aqsa Flood] retaliation on October 7, was closely coordinated with the Biden administration. All the bombs that have been dropped, month after month, as well as blocking United Nations aid.
The U.S. aim is to prevent Gaza from having the offshore gas rights that would help finance their own prosperity and that of other Islamic groups that the United States views as enemies. And to show the neighboring countries what will be done to them, just as the U.S. has done to Libya just before Gaza. The bottom line is that Biden and his advisors are just as much war criminals as is Netanyahu.”
Prof. Hudson stresses how “the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Blinken and other U.S. officials have said the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling of genocide and calling for it to stop is Non-Binding. Then, Blinken has just said that no genocide is taking place.
The U.S. aim of all this is to end the rule of international law as represented by the UN. It is to be replaced by the U.S. ‘rules-based order,’ with no rules published.
The intention is to make the U.S. immune to any opposition to its policies based on legal principles of international law or local laws. A totally free hand – chaos.
U.S. diplomats have looked forward and seen that the rest of the world is seeing to withdraw from the U.S. and European NATO orbit.
To cope with this irreversible movement, the U.S. is trying to de-tooth it by wiping away all remaining traces of the international rules that underlay the UN’s founding, and indeed the Westphalian principle back in 1648 of non-interference in the affairs of other countries.
The actual effect, as usual, is just the opposite of what the U.S. intended. The rest of the world is being forced to create its own New UN, along with a new IMF, new World Bank, new International Court at the Hague and other organizations controlled by the U.S..
So the world’s protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank – don’t forget the West Bank – is the emotional and moral catalyst to creating a new multipolar geopolitical order for the Global Majority.”
Disappear or die
The key question remains: what will happen to Gaza and the Palestinians. Prof. Hudson’s judgement is ominously realistic: “As Alastair Crooke has explained, there now cannot be any two-state solution in Israel. It has to be either all Israeli or all Palestinian. And the way it looks now is all-Israeli – the dream from the outset in 1947 of a land without non-Jewish people.
Gaza will still be there geographically, along with its gas rights in the Mediterranean. But it will be emptied out, and occupied by the Israelis.”
On who would “help” to rebuild Gaza, there are a few solid takers already: “Turkish building companies, Saudi Arabia financing developments, UAE, American investors – maybe Blackstone. It will be foreign investment. If you look at the fact that the foreign investors of all these countries are looking for what they can get out of the genocide against Palestinians, you realize why there’s no opposition to the genocide.”
Prof. Hudson’s final verdict on “the great benefit to the U.S.” is that “no claims can be brought against the U.S. – and against any of the warfare and regime change that it is planning for Iran, China, Russia and for what has been done in Africa and Latin America.
Israel, Gaza and West Bank should be seen as an opening of the New Cold War. A plan for basically how to financialize genocide and destruction. Palestinians will either emigrate or be killed. That has been the announced policy for over a decade.”
Prof. Hudson discusses his early career with Herman Kahn (the real Dr. Strangelove) alongside Mossad agents.
The roots of current annihilation of Palestinians lies in alliance between Anglo-Americans and Zionists, an alliance of convenience.
An agreed Grand Strategy, developed from lessons of Vietnam, includes targeted assassination of journalists to minimize exposure of extermination; destruction of hospitals to expedite the same; targeting of aid workers, UNRWA, green houses, farms, stores warehouses, fishing boats, etc.. to ensure comprehensive civilian starvation — and so on.
A systematic planning designed decades ago, steadily implemented piecemeal, and waiting for the right opportunity to roll out en masse “to tip over” the captive Palestinian population into absolute collapse.
Key point: USUK is not a hostage to messianic Judaism. The Empire actively ensures and supports implementation of the Policy at all levels. The merciless de-arabization ethnic cleansing objective of the zionists is supported at all costs, both to ensure the hegemonic proxy survival of the settler state (“our aircraft carrier”) and to introduce Chaos into the entire world, rolling back the modern International Law derived from post-Westphalian Treaty norms. And there is no Plan B.
~~~~~
TRANSCRIPT
Gaza: The Strategic Imperative
By Michael Sunday, April 14, 2024
PROF. MICHAEL HUDSON, THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA. – Ania K
ANIA: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Today I have with me for the fourth time, I’m still counting, a very, very special guest, one of the best professors in economics and financial analysts in the world. And I’m very glad we are reconnecting with Professor Hudson again.
I want to start this live stream with asking all of you to check all my links down below this live stream, because being on other platforms, especially nowadays, is very important. So you have my locals there, you have mailing lists, and every other link if you choose to support my work as well.
Also, Professor Hudson’s three links. You have the website (michael-hudson.com), Patreon (patreon.com/michaelhudson), and all the books that Professor Hudson has published so far, you can order. It’s all the way down below this live stream. I’m sure this video will bring you immense value, and I would like you to hit this like, because it helps other people to see it, since YouTube recommends videos with a lot of likes. Leave the comments and also share the video, because the knowledge that you will be hearing today, it’s priceless.
Welcome back, Professor Hudson. Thank you so much for joining me today for this conversation.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks for having me back again.
ANIA: And I would like to say to the audience as well that this video is dedicated to what is taking place, especially in Gaza and Israel. Of course, we will address other countries related to this situation, but Professor Hudson has sent me a very in-depth email after our last live stream a week ago, also on Friday, and we actually decided after we ended that live stream to have this particular topic to be the main topic of this video. So, I give this to you, Professor Hudson, where would you like to start this conversation, please?
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think I should start with my own background, because 50 years ago, in 1974, I was working with the Hudson Institute, with Herman Kahn, and my colleagues there were a number of Mossad agents who were being trained. Uzi Arad was there, and he became the head of Mossad and is currently the main advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu.
So, all of what is happening today was discussed 50 years ago, not only with the Israelis, but with many of the U.S. defense people, because I was with the Hudson Institute, which was a national security agency, because I’d written Super Imperialism, and I was a balance of payments expert, and the Defense Department used my book Super Imperialism not as an expose, but a how-to-do-it book. And they brought me there as a specialist in the balance of payments. Herman brought me back and forth to the White House to meet with cabinet members and to discuss the balance of payments. He also brought me to the War College and to the Air Force think tanks.
So, all of what is happening now was described a long time ago, and Herman was known as a futurist. He was Dr. Strangelove in the movie. That was all based for him on his theories of atomic war, but he was also the main theorist behind Vietnam. And nobody seems to have noticed that what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank now is all based on what was the U.S. strategy during the Vietnam War. And it was based on the “strategic hamlets” idea, the fact that you could cut back, you could just divide all of Vietnam into little parts, having guards at all the transition points from one part to another. Everything that Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere throughout Israel was all pioneered in Vietnam.
And Herman had me meet with some of the generals there to explain it. And I think I mentioned I flew to Asia twice with Uzi Arad. We had a chance to [get to] know each other very much. And I could see that the intention from the very beginning was to get rid of the Palestinians and indeed to use Israel as the basis for U.S. control of Near Eastern oil. That was the constant discussion of that from the American point of view. It was Israel as a part of the oil.
So, Herman’s analysis was on systems analysis. You define the overall aim and then you work backward. How do you do it? Well, you can see what the Israeli policy is today. First of all, you isolate the Palestinians and strategic hamlets. That’s what Gaza had already been turned into for the last 15 years. It’s been carved up into districts requiring electronic passes from one sector to another to go into Israel, to go to Jerusalem, or to go to Israel for jobs to work.
The aim all along has been to kill them. Or first of all, to make life so unpleasant for them that they’ll emigrate. That’s the easy way. Why would anyone want to stay in Gaza when what’s happening to them is what’s happening today? You’re going to leave. But if they don’t leave, you’re going to have to kill them, ideally by bombing because that minimizes the domestic casualties. Israel doesn’t want its soldiers to die any more than Americans do. So, the American form of war, as it was in Vietnam, is bombing them. You don’t want person-to-person contact because people fighting for their lives and liberty tend to be better fighters because for them it’s really essential. For the others, they’re just doing soldier’s work.
So, the genocide that you’re seeing today is an explicit policy, and that was a policy of the forefathers, the founders of Israel. The idea of a land without people was a land without Arabs in it, the land without non-Jewish people. That’s really what it meant. They were to be driven out starting even before the official funding of Israel, the first Nakba, the Arab Holocaust. And the two of the Israeli prime ministers were members of the Stern gang of terrorists. The terrorists became the rulers of Israel. They escaped from British jail and they joined to found Israel. So, what you’re seeing today is the final solution to this plan. And the founders of Israel were so obsessed with the Nazis, essentially, they wanted to do to them what they did to us, is how they explained it to people.
For the United States, what they wanted was the oil reserves in the Middle East. And again and again, I heard the phrase, ‘you’re our landed aircraft carrier in Israel’. Uzi Arad, the future Mossad head, would be very uncomfortable at this because he wanted Israel to be run by the Israelis. But they realized that for Israel to get by with the money that it needed for its balance of payments, it had to be in a partnership with the United States.
So, what you’re seeing today isn’t simply the work of one man, of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s the work of the team that President Biden has put together. It’s the team of Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, Lincoln, and the whole deep state, the whole neocon group behind them, Victoria Nuland, and everyone. They’re all self-proclaimed Zionists. And they’ve gone over this plan for essentially America’s domination of the Near East for decade after decade.
But as the United States learned in the Vietnam War, populations protest, and the U.S. population protested against the Vietnam War. What the Biden administration wants to avoid is the situation that President Johnson had in 1968. Any hotel, any building that he went to, to give a speech for his re-election campaign, there were crowds shouting, LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? President Johnson had to take the servants entrance to get away from the press so that nobody would see what he was doing. And essentially, he went on television and resigned.
Well, to prevent this kind of embarrassment, and to prevent the embarrassment of journalists who were doing all this, Seymour Hersh described the [Mai Lai] massacre, and that helped inflame the opposition to Johnson. Well, President Biden, who’s approved Netanyahu’s plan, the first people you have to kill are the journalists. If you’re going to permit genocide, you have to realize that you don’t want the domestic U.S. population or the rest of the world to oppose the U.S. and Israel. You kill the journalists. And for the last, ever since the October 2nd Al-Aqsa event, you’ve had one journalist per week killed in Israel. That’s part of it.
The other people you don’t want, if you’re going to bomb them, you have to start by bombing the hospitals and all of the key centers. That also was part of the idea of the Vietnam War. How do you destroy a population? This was all worked out in the 1970s, when people were trying to use systems analysis to think, how do you work back and see what you need? And the idea, if you bomb a population, you can’t really hide that, even if you kill the journalists. How do you kill a population passively? So you minimize the visible bombing. Well, the line of least resistance is to starve them. And that’s been the Jewish, the Israeli policy since 2008.
You had a piece by Sarah Roy in the New York Review, citing a cable from 2008, from Tel Aviv to the embassy saying, as part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to the embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gaza economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge. Well, now they’re pushing it over the edge.
And so Israel has been especially focusing after the journalists, after the hospitals, you bomb the greenhouses, you bomb the trees, you sink the fishing boats that have supplied food to the population. And then you aim at fighting the United Nations relief people.
And you’ve read, obviously, the whole news of the last week has been the attack on the seven food providers that were not Arabs. And this was, again, from a systems analyst point, this is exactly what the textbook says to do strategically. If you can make a very conspicuous bombing of aid people, then you will have other aid suppliers afraid to go, because they think, well, if these people, aid suppliers, are just shot at, then we would be too.
Well, the United States is fully behind this. And to help starve the Gazan people, Biden immediately, right after the ICJ finding of plausible genocide, withdrew all funding from the United Nations relief agencies. The idea, again, the hope was to prevent the United Nations from having the money to supply food.
So when the United States is now trying to blame one person, and Biden goes on a television recorded call with Netanyahu saying, please be humane when you’re dropping your bombs, do it in a humane way. That’s purely for domestic consumption. It’s amazing how nakedly hypocritical all this.
And ever since the Al-Aqsa Mosque was raided by Israeli settlers on October 2, leading to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood retaliation on October 7, it was closely coordinated with the Biden administration. All the bombs have been dropped day after day, week after week, with the whole of the US. And Biden has said on a number of occasions, the Palestinians are enemies.
So I think I want to make it clear that this is not simply an Israeli war against Hamas. It’s an American-backed Israeli war. Each of them have their own objectives. Israel’s objective is to have a land without non-Jewish population. And America’s aim is to have Israel acting as the local coordinator, as it has been coordinating the work with ISIS and the ISIS commanders to turn them against targets provided by the United States.
Basically, that’s the duopoly that’s been created.
And I think Alastair Crooke has cited Trita Parsi, one of the Israeli political leaders, saying the objective really in all this, of Israel’s conflict and Biden’s acquiescence to it, is that Israel is engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to destroy existing laws and norms about warfare. And that’s really it.
You have people, you have reporters, such as Pepe Escobar, saying that the United States is a chaos agent. But there’s a logic in this. The United States is looking forward to what it’s going to be doing in the Near East, in Ukraine, and especially in the China Sea and Taiwan. Looking forward, the United States says, how do we prevent other nations moving against us in the international court or suing or somehow putting sanctions against us? Israel is the test case, not simply for what’s happening there in Israel and Palestine itself, but against anything that the United States will be doing through the rest of the world.
That’s why the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., echoed by Lincoln and other U.S. officials, said there’s no court of justice ruling against genocide, that it was a non-binding ruling. Well, of course it was binding, but it has no means of enforcement. And both Lincoln and yesterday, the head of the army said, there is no genocide taking place in Gaza. Well, what that means is you have to go to a court, and that’s going to take years and years. And by the time the court case is over and there’s any judgment of reparations due, then you’re going to, by then the Gazans will all be dead. So the U.S. aim is to end the rule of international law that is why the United Nations was founded in 1945.
And in fact, this international law goes way back to 1648 with the peace of Westphalia in Germany to end the 30 years war. All the European nations agreed not to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. Well, that also was part of the United Nations principle.
And yet you have the United States explicitly advocating regime change in other countries, and most specifically in Russia and throughout the Middle East. So if you can end the whole kind of rule of law, then there’s really no alternative to the United States rules-based order, which means we can do whatever we want, chaos.
And if you look at what’s happening in Gaza is facilitating a transition from a orderly world of the United Nations to chaos, then you’re going to understand basically what the whole, the big picture, the long range picture that’s been put in place really over a series of decades. That’s why the United States, and the United States has no plan B. It only has the plan A to do this. It’s not taking into account the counter reactions and the feedback. Maybe we can discuss that a little later. I’d better leave the questions up to you.
ANIA: Thank you. You actually have already answered many of my questions in that intro, but I want to ask you this now. I will jump a little bit now. I have a question about something that you wrote to me in your email.
I believe looking at many, many situations that are taking place in the world, that sometimes all you really need to do is to follow the money and it will give you a lot of answers. So as you said in your email that, let me check, where is it? The Israeli developers already are planning to turn Gaza into luxury beachfront properties.
So let me ask you here, Professor Hudson, What is really the main goal for Israel’s existence? And in this case, is this really about their luxurious properties, oil? What else is this region really about? Why is it so crucial?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s not just about beach properties. It’s what’s off the beach, the gas, the natural gas that they’ve discovered right offshore the Mediterranean that belongs to Gaza. So the Israelis are after the gas.
But your basic question, you’d sent me a list of questions you were going to go through. And I think if you keep to that sequence, it’s good. What you’re really asking is, you know, what’s the main goal for Israel’s existence? And I think if people don’t really, their sense of justice is so strong that they can’t believe what the original goal was. And the initial goal in the 19th century was formed in a period where Europe was anti-Semitic. The most anti-Semitic part of all was Ukraine. If you read Leon Trotsky’s autobiography of growing up in Odessa, he described the pogroms there. And so the Zionists, the first wave of Zionists, were looking for how can the Jewish people escape from this anti-Semitism.
Here’s the problem. By 1947, when Israel was formed, anti-Semitism was passé. Most Jews in the United States, certainly who I grew up with, they were all assimilated. Of course, they had well wishes for Israel. There was very little talk of the Arabs. But you had two arms of Judaism.
The one arm were the people who remembered with a vengeance what was done for them against them in Ukraine and Russia, and especially by Hitler and the Holocaust. They wanted to be separate and to have just to be protected.
But most of the Jewish population in America and Europe was thoroughly assimilated. And the last thing they wanted was to be separate. They wanted just the opposite. They wanted anti-Semitism to end.
But the Zionists who were in charge of Israel, the Stern Gang leaders, were obsessed with the old antagonisms. And in a way, they were obsessed with Nazism and said, well, we want to do to them what they did to us.
And again, the idea of a land without a people meant a land— we intend to make Israel into a land without non-Jewish people. That’s what a land without people, their slogan, meant. And from the very beginning, they started by driving Arabs out of Palestine, destroying their olive trees, destroying their orchards, taking their houses, and just killing them. That’s why the English threw them in jail before turning around and said, well, it’s true that we’ve thrown all the leaders in jail, but let’s recognize Israel and make Israel a whole country to do what these leaders that we were before throwing in jail were doing.
ANIA: Thank you.
You said also in your email that ISIS is part of America’s foreign legion. Can you please elaborate on that?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, ISIS was organized originally to fight in Afghanistan against the Russians. And al-Qaeda, which was the parent of ISIS, was simply the roster of people who were willing to fight under the U.S. command.
Well, part of al-Qaeda turned against America on 9-11, but most, especially the Sunni followers of Wahhabi theology, were very eager to fight against the Shiites. Islam is divided into two parts, the Sunni Islam of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Republics, and much of the Near East, and the Shiites from Iran and maybe half of Iraq and parts of Syria also.
So you had these two sectarian groups fighting each other, and the United States provided the funding and the organization to them and essentially delegated to Israel much of the organization of organizing ISIS to fight against Assad, to fight against whomever the United States designated as our enemies, meaning we want to take their oil lands. America has taken Iraqi oil and won’t leave, is taking Syrian oil and won’t leave.
So essentially, the U.S. has used ISIS to fight against all of the Shiites on the theory that the Shiite Islam is all controlled by Iran, and they want to essentially wipe out the Shiites as they’re doing in Gaza, even though I think the Palestinians are mainly Sunni, but you should think of the ISIS as America’s foreign legion. They’ve hired them, they pay them, and they recruit from them.
You’ve just seen in what happened in Russia from the Ukrainians, Oregon recruited Sunni terrorists from Tajikistan. You’ve seen the United States trying to use ISIS to recruit, to fight in Russia’s southern periphery in Central Asia and to fight in the Uyghur territories of Xinjiang in Western China. They’re using ISIS to try to essentially attack the integrity of China, Russia, and Syria and any other area where the United States wants a regime change to put in the usual client oligarchy.
ANIA: So interesting, and they sell it under the description that this is the enemy and terrorist, and they are founding it. And the public is still buying this, Professor Hudson. How is this possible?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is hypocritical. Everybody throughout the world is appalled by the cruelty and the barbarism of ISIS. The United States is not going to come right out and say, hey, that’s us that they’re fighting. We’re directing ISIS from the presidential office. We love ISIS.
Well, Biden loves ISIS, and Blinken loves ISIS, and the entire neocons, the CIA loves ISIS because they’re all running it, but they can’t say it to the American public. They have to pretend just like they’re pretending with Netanyahu that, oh my heavens, look at [what] ISIS is doing. We’ve really got to fight against it.
And for instance, when it put in the white helmets in ISIS, these were the American supplied public relations unit to essentially do false propaganda, false images, make false flag attacks. All of these false flag attacks, all of the white helmets and the propaganda has all been coordinated by the United States.
ANIA: I want to ask you now a question that to some extent you actually answered already. Does Israel make any independent decisions that are not consulted with the United States in regards to bombing Gaza?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the question is, what is the United States or what do you mean by the United States? They don’t need official approval. There’s already a broad agreement in principle. Do whatever you have to do.
The United States has given them a free hand saying, we’re not going to interfere. You’re our managers on site. Just as you’re managing ISIS, you can manage certainly your own country. The U.S. has given blanket approval for Israel’s genocide. That’s why it says there’s no genocide there.
And it shares the aim of extending the war to fight Iran. Again and again, what Netanyahu is saying, we’re not going to be safe until we defeat Iran. Well, the United States has, that’s America, that’s the neocon plan outlined in the 1990s. It was spelled out, I think, by General Petraeus of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Syria, and then Iran. All of this was worked out from the beginning. The United States is trying to figure out, how do we do it?
Well, there’s a general expectation that one way to do it is to have Israel mount a false flag attack, something Iran does that is so bad that Israel retaliates and then, as it just bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, that Iran is going to then do something to Israel and the United States will come to protect our Israeli brothers and world peace and prevent the genocide that the Gazans are trying to do against Israel and that Iran is trying to do against the rest of the world and bomb Iran.
Back in 1970s, there were discussions of what do you do? What will Iran do to fight back? Well, there’s one thing that Iran can do, that it doesn’t have to bomb American troops in Syria or Iraq. It doesn’t have to bomb Israel. All it has to do is sink a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. That’s the big strait. You’ve seen what happened, what the Houthis have done with the Red Sea. The big traffic is the Strait of Hormuz. That’s where Saudi Arabian oil and we could call it the oil gulf. It’s called the Persian Gulf, but it’s really the oil gulf. That’s where all the oil trade is. If you sink a ship or two in the oil gulf, that’s going to push oil prices way, way up because that’s going to cut most of the world off for as long as Iran wants from the Middle Eastern oil supply.
Well, that’s what really terrifies Biden because he’s pretending that there’s no inflation in the United States and that the economy is quite heavy. The inflation that would follow from Iran sinking a ship in Hormuz will essentially be crowning the American opposition to Biden, which is growing.
It’s one thing to be against genocide and killing people, but much more important is if your gas prices go up, the American people think that that’s really much more important than the fact of genocide and crimes against humanity. That’s really what is frightening the US.
The question is right now, how do they make the Israeli provocation against Iran— an excuse for the United States to come in with all of NATO’s and European support and somehow prevent Iran from having the power to close down the Straits of Hormuz. That’s what they’re trying to figure out now. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but when Blinken has said, Israel has not broken any rules. It’s all okay. What the United States really is [saying], if they can get away with this, they can say there are really no rules at all for the whole world. We can do whatever we want. Right now is coming to a peak. It’s the follow-up that was all thought in advance of the whole Israeli movement against Gaza.
ANIA: Thank you, Professor Hudson.
Next question that is about targeting civilians, journalists, and workers. Again, you’ve addressed this already, but I will ask you this. Why is the Israeli army targeting all those groups?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s targeting everyone. It’s targeting all civilians because it wants a land without Palestinian people. It’s targeting the most critical people necessary for a Gazan society to survive. It targets the journalists because it doesn’t want the world to see what it’s doing, because Israel has already lost its standing in the world. The United States tells them, especially, you’ve got to kill the journalists because if you don’t kill them, we, the Biden administration, are going to look bad. We already have the Americans turning against the war.
There’s only one anti-war candidate running in the presidential elections for this November. That’s Jill Stein. Every other candidate is completely backing Israel in the war, but the American people, the majority of Americans look at what’s happening in Israel as genocide and as a crime against humanity. They’re not going to vote for Biden. Biden is going to lose the election or certainly not win it. It may go into the House of Representatives if nobody wins it.
In order to drive the rest of the Gazan populations out, you have to, number one, get rid of the journalists. Number two, you want to get rid of the hospitals. As you’re bombing the people, a lot of them are going to get injured. You want all the injured people from the bombs to die. For that, you have to bomb the hospitals. You especially have to target the doctors for killing. Not only will there not be doctors to heal the wounded people, but other doctors, doctors without borders from other countries, will be afraid to go into Gaza because if you go there, you know that if you’re a food worker bringing aid or a doctor or an aid worker, you’re going to get shot because you’re at the top of the target list.
ANIA: It’s horrible. Just listening to this, you know, it’s very hard to…
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, imagine how I used to feel sitting in meetings and all of this was just said as if this is part of a game and this is how we’re planning it all out. All of this was what was discussed. How do we do evil? I mean, this…
ANIA: Yeah, but those are not humans to me. They are not humans to me.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right.
ANIA: Soulless beings that are not humans. That’s all I say here.
Professor Hudson, next question is about those Israeli developers who, as you said in your email, are already planning to turn Gaza into luxury beachfront properties. So what do you really know about this? They are already planning this? Like they have plans for those properties?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The Americans made a start. They began by building docks. You not only want beachfront property, you want docks for the buyers to have a place to tie up their yachts or their sailboats.
And so the United States is building these piers. One reason it’s doing it is it can pretend that it can say, we’re not building the piers for Israeli property owners to have yachts, we’re going to deliver food. But by the time we finish building the piers, there’ll be no more Gazans. I mean, that’s the whole point. By building the piers, they’ve enabled Israel to prevent the food trucks from coming in from the south. So building the piers is a means of pretending to help without doing anything at all to help actually [deliver] food to Israel.
So yes, all throughout the news, there have been statements by the Israeli real estate companies saying, Gaza could have been a nice place to live if there weren’t Arabs in it. And now if we can clear the land of Arabs, make it a land without those people, then this is a wonderful property. And it has natural gas to help the Israeli balance of payments. So the whole idea is to make this a center of Israel luxury development.
ANIA: Again, absolutely disgusting to me, just listening to this. I want to ask you now about, were Gaza [to cease] to exist completely, what will happen to all the Palestinians who survived?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the land is going to be there, and it’ll be beachfront property. Alastair Crooke has been, I think, the clearest writer. He was one of the negotiators between Israel and the Palestinians. He’s explained that there cannot be a two-state solution anymore.
The Israelis say, we are going to kill all of the Palestinians. The Palestinians say, well, we can’t exist with the Israelis, and we have to defend ourselves. If we don’t kill them, they’re going to kill us. So Israel has to be either Palestinian or Israeli. It can’t be both. That is ended forever. So anyone who talks of a two-state solution, they’re just not looking it up.
So the question is, how is Gaza going to exist? Either it’s going to be all Israeli, and the Gazans will be forced to flee. The Israelis want them to flee by boats and to be sunk, most of them will be sunk in the Mediterranean, just like after America and France destroyed Libya. The Libyans tried to flee in boats, and they were sunk.
So either they will drown, or they will somehow work their way into a prison camp that Egypt and its leader is setting up for Gazan refugees. And then the Gazans will somehow try to gain entry into Europe or other countries. So you can expect a huge influx of Gazans into Europe.
Some people have suggested, well, now that Ukraine is turning into a land without a people, maybe either the Gazans can turn Ukraine over to the Palestinians, or we could give it to the Israelis, saying, well, this is your ancestral land, this is where all of the pogroms that started Zionism began. Now you can go back and there are no more Ukrainians. They have programs against you. Maybe the Israelis should go to Ukraine. One population or the other has to emigrate.
Well, Israelis already have been losing a huge chunk of their population, especially their working age population, especially those who have jobs in information technology or highly paying jobs. So, you’re already seeing a population outflow.
So, Gaza will exist geographically, but we have no idea about what is going to be the demographic composition.
And I think the Israeli Defense Forces Chief, Herzi Halevi, said just last Sunday that Israel, he announced Israel knows how to handle Iran, just as they’re handling Gaza, that they’ve prepared for this. They have good defensive systems. And he said, we are operating and cooperating with the USA and strategic problems partners in this region. So, the US is going to be putting pressure on Egypt to expand the concentration camps that it’s setting up and to pressure the Europeans. Maybe so many Germans are leaving their country now that there’s no more work for them. Maybe the Palestinians will go to Germany and other European countries, and wherever they can find some kind of refuge.
America was willing to give the Jewish population refuge as long as the Jewish population served European imperialist aims of controlling the Near Eastern oil. But what can Palestine offer to be protected? If the Palestinians don’t have anything to offer the Europeans or the Americans, their governments simply do not care. They’ve done absolutely nothing to protect the Palestinians because they don’t care if there’s no money in it for them. And the Arab countries with money, the Saudi Arabians, the United Arab Republics have not really lifted a hand to help this. Even though a large labor force in Saudi Arabia is already Palestinian, they don’t need more Palestinians there. So, that’s basically what’s happening.
ANIA: Thank you, Professor Hudson. You know, before I ask you my last question, you know, people’s beliefs that the governments care about them. This is the most… I don’t understand how people can still believe that any government really cares about them in the world, looking at the situation like this. It’s heartbreaking. Just listening to what you said is a lot for me to take in.
The last question is when the bombing will stop and who is going to rebuild Gaza Strip?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the bombing will stop when there are no more Palestinians to bomb. Israel doesn’t have the money to rebuild it or the intention of rebuilding. And even if Israel wants to rebuild it with nice homes all the way to the beachfront, who is going to do the building?
Well, already Israel has made a deal with India to get a lot of Indian construction workers from the poorest provinces of India coming over there. But again, who’s going to pay them? You can give them work permits, but the answer is who will pay them will be the contractors who are given the contracts to rebuild homes and offices and the new Israeli compound in Gaza, unless the world works and says, no, the Israelis have to give back all the land and it’s Israel that will be a minority under a Palestinian government.
You cannot have an Israeli government that is over the whole region because its policy is to kill the Palestinians. So I don’t see that, again, you can’t have a two-state solution. It doesn’t look like anyone’s supporting the Palestinians right now.
Who would help rebuild it? Well, the Turkish builders might come in and build it. Other Middle Easterners would rebuild it. Saudi Arabia could finance huge developments there. The United Arab Republics could buy land. American investors, maybe Blackstone could help develop there, but it’ll be foreign investment.
And if you look at the fact that the foreign investors of all these countries are looking for what they can get out of the genocide against Palestinians, you realize why there’s no real opposition to the genocide that’s taking place.
And the great benefit to the U.S. of all this is that as a result of this absence of any kind of the moral feeling that you’ve just expressed, no claims can be brought against the United States for any of the warfare, any of the regime change, interference that it’s planning for Iran, China, Russia, and as it’s been doing in Africa and Latin America. So Israel and Gaza and the West Bank should be seen, I think, as an opening of the new Cold War. And whatever you see happening in Gaza after the Gazans are driven out, you see this is really the plan for what the United States wants to do in China, in Russia, in Africa, in the whole rest of the world. You’re seeing a plan for basically how to financialize and make money out of genocide and the destruction of society. And in order to do that, you have to prevent anything like the United Nations of having any authority at all.
And the irony in all this is that the United States is creating just the opposite of what it wanted to do. I mean, obviously, while this is happening in Gaza, most of the global majority that we’ve spoken before, the world outside of NATO, America and Europe, are appalled. And the only way of stopping what’s happening in Gaza happening in the rest of the world is to create an alternative to the United Nations, an alternative to the World Bank, to the IMF, an alternative to all the organizations that the United States has controlled to turn the whole rest of the world into Gaza, if it can.
ANIA: Dr. Hudson, Professor Hudson, I want to thank you for coming back. I want to thank you for telling me after our last live stream to address this, because you shared it with me and with the audience. And I really hope that you will spread this video, guys, you will share it.
So I personally believe that we are fighting evil. And the way that I feel I am in a small way contributing to this is to trying to seek the truth and bring people who have knowledge and understanding and can share the facts and the truth with the world. Because if you don’t know what you’re fighting against, what you’re fighting with, then you’re like Don Quixote. You have to know what is the problem. And I am immensely grateful for guests like yourself to be on my channel and to share your knowledge with the audience. I can only imagine knowing all of this, what you shared with us today, living with this for so many years and watching the [unfolding] of those events in the world. For someone who has feelings and emotions, it’s very hard to bear. I can only imagine. So thank you for your contribution.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I’m on your show, Ania, because you see that this is evil, and it is evil.
ANIA: Yes. Thank you so much. I know you have to go. And I want to invite you again, of course, in the near future. Hopefully, you find time for our next conversation. To everyone who’s watching, make sure to check all the links to Professor Hudson that are already attached down below this live stream. And like I said, please share the video. Hit this like. It’s free of charge, and it helps the channel also. And more people can hear this information in the world. Thank you, everyone. And until next time.
Peter Koenig
14 April 2024
The warning was on the wall. Ever since Israel attacked “out of the blue” on 1 April 2024 the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing 7, including two generals, an Iranian retaliation was to be expected.
The New York Times (NYT) reports “Iran mounted an immense aerial attack on Israel on Saturday night, launching more than 200 drones [other sources talk about 300 drones] and missiles in retaliation for a deadly Israeli airstrike in Syria two weeks ago, and marking a significant escalation in hostilities between the two regional foes.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say there were over 300 aerial threats, including some 200 drones, 100 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles. See this.
Israel and her western friends claim that many of the drones were intercepted by IDF and the help from allied military support. The latter apparently include the UK, France, and Jordan – and most likely also US-NATO forces that have long been stationed in the region.
Nevertheless, according to several RT reports, a large-scale missile and drone attack against Israel has been a success, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said in a statement published by IRNA news agency. The Islamic Republic’s military managed to “hit and destroy” some “important military targets,” it added, without providing any further details.
Short video clips published by Iranian media on social networks, viewing Islamic Republic’s missiles hitting their targets in Israel. Several missiles appeared to have been striking targets in a settlement, RT reports, however without being able to confirm the veracity of the clips.
The Guardian informs, that it was the Islamic Republic’s first-ever direct attack on the Jewish State, a development that brings the two countries to the brink of all-out conflict after more than a decade of shadow war and soaring stress six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, following the Hamas attack last October.
It was reported on Israeli television that Iran had launched more than 100 drones as well as cruise missiles towards Israel, and Iran later said it had fired a “first wave” of ballistic missiles. See this.
This latest war theatre is in full development. At this point it is unclear what exactly happened and to what level the conflict may escalate. A regional war – that could expand to a WW-scenario is a real danger. It depends largely to what extent foreign – non regional – players, will get involved. Arab states have already warned against any “foreign”, meaning non-regional, intervention. Specifically, that means the US / NATO. The latter would include of course almost all of the spineless European nations.
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Iran has many reasons for retaliation. Other than the Syrian Consulate event, the killing of General Qasem Soleimani with a targeted US drone attack on 3 January 2020 in Baghdad. This assassination was still carried out under President Trump, but the question remains, did he act on behalf of Israel – as many analysts suspect?
After a public mourning of Major General Soleimani, Iran launched missiles against US military bases in Iraq wounding at least 110 troops. Deaths were not officially reported.
Over the past several decades Israeli provocations on Iran abounded no end. Israel’s intent is to wipe out Iran as part of its “master plan” towards “Greater Israel”, and control of the Gulf of Hormuz with access to the Arabian Sea – and ultimately Asia. And in the north, where Israel is currently attempting to brutally genociding Palestinians – evicting them from their homeland, an atrocious slaughter supported by most western un-human leaders (sic).
This is not only Apartheid “social cleansing” – it is also taking possession – stealing – of tens or hundreds of billions worth of Gazan off-shore gas reserves.
To be sure, Israel is an illegal state, on Palestinian land stolen through the 1917 UK-sponsored Zionist-initiated Balfour Declaration, with the support in 1948 of the then 52-member young US-dominated United Nations. See this.
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For the past 100 years or so, Washington was – and still is – tacitly as well as openly manipulated by a strong worldwide Zionist movement. Zionists control the world’s – at least the western world’s – financial system, Big Finance, Wall Street, and not least the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in Basle Switzerland, also called the Central Bank of all central banks, controlling about 90% of the worldwide monetary flow. All in Zionists command.
There is a strong symbiotic relationship, an interdependence between the Zionists, today’s Israel, and the US. The Zionists, the self-declared Chosen People, wield the scepter of Big Finance, aspiring for world domination through Greater Israel (see provisional map, below), with the might of military power by the United States.
Iran is the major stumbling block for Israel’s Zionists to achieve their goal. Once Iran is conquered, they dream, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States will fall in place.
Zionist-Israel has been allowed by the discreet influence of the US and UK secret services to become a “clandestine” nuclear power. They know they can count not only on the US tax-payers financial support, but more importantly, also with the Pentagon’s military might. By the way, US tax-payers have been footing a considerable portion of Israel’s budget for its 75-year existence.
Sounds controversial, doesn’t it – with the Zionists in control of worldwide Big Finance.
Israel’s provocations on Iran are openly or tacitly supported or even encouraged by Washington. The Washington war-mongers would love to go to war with Iran, a military and economic heavy weight, way beyond the Middle East.
And now, as a new BRICS member (BRICS-plus 5 [the sixth nation, Argentina, dropped out]), Iran’s strength has expanded almost exponentially, with such heavy-weight allies like China and Russia.
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Israel’s assault on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, may have been the spark that lit the fire. The extent of the “fire” cannot be assessed yet, as it will depend on clear-thinking and levelheadedness – or not – of western decision makers – specifically NATO countries.
President Biden has been clear, so western media: “Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad. The United States will stand with the people of Israel and support their defense against these threats from Iran.”
How serious is this American promise? – There is more at stake than words, especially considering Israel’s ever deeper falling within the world’s sympathy for her non-stop onslaught against Gaza and Palestine in general – having killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, about 70% of whom are women and children.
Strategically speaking, can the US afford this “unwavering” support for an outright genocide nation? And secondly, Washington knows that Iran has full support from Russia and China, Iran’s BRICS allies. BRICS association has similar meaning to that of NATO’s: Attack one country means you attack them all – and retaliation may be massive.
Are there still a few clear-thinking western political human strategists left, not to risk total destruction of civilization as we know it? – As President Putin has warned on several occasions, A Third World War, turning nuclear has no winner.
Let us hope reason and the sense for Peace will prevail.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Forgive the young man, radiant and exuding like the Sun. We were all firebreathers once. He doesn’t realize this is round one. Last night, the messianic midgets received the biggest gift of their foreshortened lives; they will run with it now, fully suiciding USUK and the demented Old Order….
War Update with Jon Elmer at The Electronic Intifada
Jon Elmer details the complex resistance ambush that chased the Israeli military from Khan Younis. Nora Barrows-Friedman, Asa Winstanley, Ali Abunimah and Jon Elmer of The Electronic Intifada were joined by independent investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, on the day 187 livestream.
Knocking at the wrong door. Egypt and Qatar can’t ‘deliver’ the Hamas leadership in Gaza
By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.
This week, US President Joe Biden called Egyptian President Abdelfattah as-Sisi and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin-Hamad to press them to threaten Hamas and force it to agree to a ‘temporary’ cease-free to pause the war and exchange captives. Hamas did not reply directly, but hinted the proposal was unacceptable.
The exercise demonstrates the US president’s astonishing degree of ignorance about his two supposed Arab allies, and also about Hamas and the nature of its on-the-ground leadership in the Gaza Strip.
I have been closely following the ongoing negotiations in Doha and Cairo, the roles played by the mediators, and the way Hamas has been handling — and foiling — the plans that emerged from the earlier four-way meeting of intelligence chiefs in Paris.
Several points stand out.
First, Biden and his entourage seem incapable of understanding that it is the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip led by Yahya al-Sinwar that has the final say. They still think certain Arab rulers or former PLO leaders can decide matters on its behalf.
Secondly, the Egyptian and Qatari mediators have no means of putting pressure on the Sinwar’s leadership.
Egypt lost its strongest card — the Rafah crossing — by failing (not wanting or not being able) to open it for humanitarian aid over the past six months, and by opting for ‘neutrality’ regarding Israel.
Qatar and its emir also lost their only card, the $30 million in financial aid they used to provide monthly to Hamas in the Gaza Strip monthly, transferred via Tel Aviv with prior coordination.
Third, the amended US proposal is confined to the humanitarian needs of the Gaza population and offering temporary, not permanent, solutions, aimed at rescuing Israel. It does not address their legitimate demands for freedom, liberation, and a dignified life, but treats them as supplicant beggars.
Fourth, Hamas’ leaders in Gaza do not know the Arab world’s leaders, especially those who revolve in the US orbit, and do not want to make their acquaintance. They decided form the start to keep their distance from them, not trust them, and rely on themselves, with assistance and political support from the Axis of Resistance. Most of them have barely travelled outside the Gaza Strip, other than when being released from Israeli prisons back to their refugee camp homes.
Fifth, by contacting the Egyptian and Qatari rulers to demand they pressure Hamas into agreeing a temporary truce, Biden effectively conceded Israel’s defeat in the war. But he also demonstrated his inability to extract any meaningful concession from Netanyahu. He therefore turned his pressure on the Arab and Palestinian sides.
Sixth, Biden avoided calling for an immediate ceasefire or unconditional access for humanitarian aid for the past six months. The reasons he is now so keen on them is not out of sympathy for the suffering children of Gaza, but to prevent Iran retaliating for Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. He knows a temporary cease-fire might avert or postpone such retaliation, which could expand the Gaza war into a region-wide war.
I hope Sinwar will reject the poisoned US prisoner exchange agreement that is on the table, and hold fast to his demands for a permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces, return of displaced people, and resumption of relief and reconstruction operations.
The US intelligence community, composed of 18 different agencies, conceded in its latest annual report that Israel would never be able to eradicate Hamas and would continue to face armed Palestinian resistance for many years to come.
Netanyahu’s repeated threats to invade Rafah will not make any difference. He may have succeeded in cowing and intimidating Arab leaders, but his methods won’t work with the leaders of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
the main discussion begins around 30 min; the preamble is worthwhile too. He discusses the first glimmers of dawning realization of absolute defeat in the messianic madmen — a Haaretz article from yesterday (paywall). Nothing new to the “Reality-based” but the limits appear to have been reached in saner liberal quarters — beyond the cope of drugs, hedonism and mindless chest-thumping.
What happens when conventional means are no longer sufficient, effective attrition and siege have been laid, and one’s sugar daddy is shown to be a naked, flaccid and geriatric dementia-patient long denied admittance to the padded sanitary homes for the criminally insane?? We are about to find out…….
Israel Has Been Defeated – a Total Defeat
The war’s aims won’t be achieved,
the hostages won’t be returned through military pressure,
security won’t be restored
Israel’s international ostracism won’t end
A Brief History of Bullshit in America – Everything, that is EVERYTHING, is presented counter to reality. There aint NO Money for nothin’ and NO chicks for free. And that’s the whole enchilada …
with thanks from FiveGunsWest and penned by Bones!
Judge Napolitano: “I told Trump, ‘you promised you would release the records of the JFK assassination.’ He said to me ‘If they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have released it either.’ I said ‘Who’s they? What did they show you?’ Trump said “Someday when we’re not on the phone and there aren’t 15 people listening to the call, I’ll tell you.'”
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: “It has been said that after the Kennedy assassination, there has been no president. They have only been factotums of the system since then.”
Lake Flaccid
Notes on the Magic Christian
Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy.
Determined to “make it hot for people,” Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom.
Concocting deliciously perverse mayhem, he throws a million one-hundred-dollar bills into an enormous vat of steaming offal, proving just what people will do for money, and he promotes a new silky shampoo that turns hair to wire and a deodorant that becomes a time-released stench-bomb.
He inserts subliminally suggestive and perverse images into well-loved classic films, takes a howitzer on safari, and brings a panther to a kennel club dog show.
His most elaborate adventure is an ultra-exclusive cruise aboard the S.S. Magic Christian, where elite passengers are treated to a series of madcap indignities.
The Jackal Gargles With Plasma
A Brief Review of ‘A Brief History of Bullshit in America’
Bullshit can be so many things. It could be anything from a degree in Gender Studies to something simple as a three-word campaign slogan, or even something as complicated as our nation’s 6,550-page tax code.
Political speeches, self-help books, marketing, press conferences, tax code, song lyrics, conspiracy theories, many college majors, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the multi-billion-dollar diet industry, medicine, and even the Constitution of the United States itself are all some form of bullshit in one way or another.
Bullshit is everywhere all around us. It influences the clothes we wear, shapes our political views, and even determines what food we eat.
Bullshitters are beautiful highly intelligent individuals, and they play a vital role in our world.
They start almost all of our wars, make our drugs, sell us our cars, raise and lower our taxes, regulate our economy, they tell us what to wear, and in many instances what to believe. You should develop some basic bullshit strategies that you can use in your own life as well.
April is Confederate History Month.
‘Good Foot in Heaven, Bad Foot in Hell’
Musings of a Crippled Writer Concerning Post-Modern Mesmerism with our hero James LaFond
Lori, a physical therapist of 30 years, choked back tears as she told me, “You are strong, but you have a serious injury. We can’t have you do anymore work then you are doing until the spinal specialist examines you… In the mean time, when taking the stairs, remember this, ‘Good foot in heaven, bad foot in Hell.’ It’s easy to remember that way. Put the weight on the good foot.”
In the week since then, as I have crawled, shrimped, crab walked, crutched, used a walker, wall walked and counter crawled around the Brickmouse House, and out at my mother’s house whom I visited in Whitebreadistan, I had a prawn’s eye view of the world passing bye. The news is all positively delusional and has the same exact messages as the ball games, the TV dramas, the movies and the commercials.
Everything, that is EVERYTHING, is presented counter to reality.
Worried about crime?
The news profiles dangerous white supremacists being brought to justice on hate crime charges. The news paints a picture of the last likely type of American violence, Ghost on Gawd, as the most likely.
Back to school shopping?
Well, the commercials depict the most common concerned parent, a black man shopping for his son. Would you like to vacation on a ranch in your four-wheel drive vehicle? Black cowboys will be there wrangling cattle.
Is there a threat to world peace?
No, it is not the nation that has 931 military bases in other countries. It is the nation that is the largest exporter of fuel and grain to less well off nations, ruled by a cartoon dictator, who makes all military decisions based on how mean and cruel the result would be for enemy civilians.
The news broadcast to the people of Goodland, is full of images of tyrannical nations that are utterly evil threatening world peace. Materialism, or utility, having the best most recent gadget, serves as a great handle for inculcating falsehoods, such as most cowboys, combat soldiers, and truck drivers are black and most violent criminals are white.
The Magic Christian is a 1969 British satirical black comedy film directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with appearances by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski. It was loosely adapted from the 1959 comic novel of the same name by American author Terry Southern, who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with McGrath.
Here’s the whole enchilada …
James continued …
… WWII was so expensive, that it cost so much valuable time and material to be spent on wiping out not enough working class Аrуаns to achieve hive stability, that the Plutocrats decided that war on human flesh and artifacts would only be a stage prop in the real war waged to control the human mind.
When I see the ridiculous news that Doctor Evil is targeting, not tanks and soldiers with his missiles, but “blood banks” “hospitals” and “civilians,” it is clear that the phony war is the one where Eastern Europeans are actually getting killed, and the real war is on the TV and the Smartphone.
Tremendous weakening of the combined West in the Holy Land and the Ukraine has already led to unraveling of odious UNSC sanctions and their enforcement against North Korea, ridiculing of unilateral threats vis-a-vis Russia, and pitiful kowtowing to China in order to obtain breathing room anywhere. The Imperial Vampire Ball transitions to the Danse Macabre
A l’occasion du 30ème anniversaire de l’attentat du 06 avril 1994 contre l’avion des présidents rwandais et burundais qui a
L’article Repentance pour le Rwanda: Macron joue encore contre la France est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le président ukrainien Vladimir Zelensky a déclaré que Kiev était prêt à accepter un prêt des États-Unis si le Congrès
L’article Kiev se dit prêt à accepter l’aide américaine sous forme d’emprunts est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
US Ambassador April Glaspie with Saddam Hussein, 1990: ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait…’
Israel is provoking an expanded regional war that it cannot win
By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.
When and how will Iran retaliate?
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a man of few words. When he publicly threatens a harsh response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus — which killed seven people including senior Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commanders — that means retaliation is impending.
The question is whether it will be immediate or postponed for few days; and, also, if it will be carried out directly by the IRGC or by its paramilitary allies in South Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, or both.
If there’s a war, there is no need for the element of surprise, and it may be militarily or politically unwise to defer it. The decision to retaliate was already taken by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council at an emergency meeting convened immediately after news broke of the airstrike on the consulate, according to a source close to the council. This could entail launching hundreds or thousands of missiles at Israeli targets, and even striking Israeli diplomatic missions in the Gulf region or elsewhere.
The demonstrations held by thousands of Iranians in Tehran to condemn the Israeli attack were different to previous rallies held in support of Gaza. This time, demonstrators criticised their own political leaders for their failure to respond firmly and directly to a succession of earlier Israeli assassinations and attacks, and demanded they retaliate decisively this time. Iranian leaders are bound to take account of this growing frustration with their policy of ‘strategic patience’.
Allied resistance groups are likely to play a role in this retaliation. Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has said retaliation is certainly coming. Abu Ali al-Askari of Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah spoke of thousands of armed fighters prepared to cross from Jordan into occupied Palestinian to join the struggle there. As for the Yemenis, they have no need for a call-to-arms. They began their battle against Israeli-linked shipping — and then the US navy — in support of Gaza months ago.
The reference to Jordan was significant. Some weeks ago, tens of thousands of Iraqi Hashd ash-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) members rallied at the Iraqi-Jordanian border and chanted calls for it to be opened so they could reach Palestine and fight in defence of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In the event of an expanded war, US military bases in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and the Gulf region could also be targeted. Washington had reached secret understandings with Tehran not to expand the Gaza war into a regional one. But it did not live up to its side and failed to restrain its Israeli ally. By carrying out a succession of deliberately provocative attacks against Iranian targets, and further escalating the genocidal war against civilians in Gaza, Netanyahu belittled and humiliated Biden, and demonstrated that it is he who calls the shots in the White House.
If the Iranian state join the prospective war directly alongside its Lebanese, Iraqi, and Yemeni allies, I expect that the Syrian army will do to. Shortly after the al-Aqsa Flood operation, the Iranian foreign minister visited Damascus to sound the Syrian president out about the need to join the war on all fronts in support of the Palestinian resistance. According to high-level Syrian sources, President Bashar al-Asad replied: “Syria is a state, not a front. If the Iranian state enters into this war, we will be by its side, without hesitation.”
Iran is a regional superpower with a huge arsenal of missiles, drones, and submarines. It has been a nuclear breakout state for three years and may have already manufactured nuclear weapons. If it enters a war that Israel forced on it by attacking its consulate — a blatant violation of its sovereignty — it may prove to be the region’s last war, and the beginning of the end of the Zionist occupation state in its current form.
It would probably be a rolling conflict, starting with a limited retaliation and escalating into all-out war. The occupation state has been reopening public shelters. Its settlers have been stocking up on food and cash. The military has been placed on alert, air defence reservists have been called up, and home leave for combat units cancelled. Its current leaders want a war and are preparing for one.
But it is a war it cannot win. It failed, despite the full backing of the US, to overcome the resistance fighters of the miniscule and vulnerable Gaza Strip after six months of merciless bombardment. Can it withstand a war against the Axis of Resistance led by Iran?
O Mockers, ‘Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, it tolls for thee!’
Pepe begins ~38th min; Prof Marandi at ~1:19 min.
The entire is worthwhile, especially the introduction putting Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital barbarity into perspective.
Rubicons were crossed on one-way paths…. The absolutely shocking events of last week harken and were last seen during the open Drang of the Third Reich against mankind; Pax Judaica presented its calling card back-to-back-to-back with the annihilation of historic Al Shifa Hospital, the missiling of the sacrosanct Iranian Embassy of Damascus, immediately followed by the measured triple-tap droning of the caravan of the western aid workers. Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi? Urbi et Orbi on Pax Judaica? We are all guilty of lèse-majesté, or are we? We shall see. The Fat Lady hasn’t sung.
Regardless, it is the End of the Line for the Old Order — in every way on every theater of confrontation, internal and external. Note Pepe’s sense of indignities suffered by all BRICS and the SCO through the savage attack on the Iranian Embassy in Syria. Responses are now due from the Axes of Civilization of this joined Global-SMO.
Qui bono?
By Peter Koenig
3 April 2024
The collapse, at about 1 AM on 26 March 2024, of the Francis Scott Key Bridge (FSB) in Baltimore, spanning the 2.4 km large Patapsco River, is a mystery as of this day. The river is used by massive cargo ships from Baltimore Harbor to reach the Chesapeake Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean and in reverse.
The story goes that the downfall of the bridge was caused by the container ship “The Dali” hitting one of the bridges two main pilons – in the deep of night, 1 AM, when few witnesses were around.
And one may question, who made the endlessly shown same video of the collapse?
The Merchant Vessel (MV) “The Dali”, Singapore-registered, was apparently headed for Sri Lanka, coming from the Baltimore harbor, the 14th largest in the US, but the nation’s largest and most important port for specialized cargo and passenger facilities. See this.
The Dali is about 300 meters long, can carry 10,000 standard-size containers (6 m long) and weighs empty 95,000 tons. The ship was carrying about 4,700 containers with an average weight of 2.5 tons / container, total cargo weight approximately 12,000 tons. The sluggishly slow speed of The Dali, about 14 km/h, with its total weight of roughly 110,000 tons supposedly rammed one of the main pillars of the FSB, and brought the entire bridge down within seconds. The entire structure collapsed as if it was made of matchsticks.
The Dali is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. It is managed by Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., also based in Singapore. The MV Dali was built in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, and completed in 2015, for Oceanbulk Container Management of Greece.
As of March 2024, the vessel is chartered by Maersk (Danish). The captain of The Dali, when it hit the bridge was supposedly Ukrainian.
Protocol demands that a Chesapeake Bay pilot is on board to guide large vessels in and out of the harbor. Was this the case with MV Dali?
Strangely, The Dali ship’s black box has 2-minutes of missing data right before it crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. How convenient.
And there it is…
The Dali ship’s black box has 2 minutes of missing data right before it crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge
How convenient pic.twitter.com/x75WUJecek
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 28, 2024
Synergy Marine Group is said to have strong business links to China, though no further explanations are given, other than apparently a growing number of Synergy Marine Group’s managed vessels are owned by China, and secondarily, because a large portion of Dali’s cargo from-and-to is between China and the United States.
There is no clear evidence on either. The destination of The Dali, leaving Baltimore harbor at mid-night was supposedly Sri Lanka.
See this. Joe Hoft, author of this article, also claims that China specializes in “Remote System Monitoring”, meaning in straight language “cyber-attacks”. But again, no justification for this accusation is given.
The complexity of flag-registration, ownership, management, construction, destination after construction, ship-chartering, is so confusing and complex that most readers will roll their eyes and stop thinking.
The first reaction by General Mike Flynn was that “the accident” was a Black Swan event, similar to 9/11 – with financial and political implications way beyond what meets the eye.
“Black Swan” means an extremely negative event that suddenly appears from nowhere, unpredicted, and unstoppable. The term is most often used in the world of finance. See this interview by “Redacted”.
Currently an almost uncountable number of rumors, “conspiracy theories”, accusations, innuendos, are making the round. None are fully substantiated.
“China Did It”
One that could immediately be expected is, China Did It. That stems from another pretense without proof, that it was a cyber-attack, and China apparently is specialized in cyber-science, leading to “cyber-attacks”; pure western hypothesis and unproven accusation.
Geopolitical analyst, Lara Logan from “Real America’s Voice”, refers to inside information (no source given, though) to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) being behind this attack. When asked whether it was a terrorist group or a state actor, she said clearly, “100% a state actor” – and meant China. But nothing is substantiated.
Lara Logan on the bridge collapse:
"This is what you call death by a thousand cuts. It's an absolutely catastrophic impact on critical infrastructure and you cannot see it because a cyberattack is unseen, just like the attack on 2020 on the voting machines that you cannot see." pic.twitter.com/NCiLKR1ppJ
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 27, 2024
China is a logical target for western blames. It is either – Russia, Russia, Russia! – or – China, China, China! – Most often there is no proof, just western propaganda-indoctrinated hatred. As so often, Tavistock at its best.
BOMBSHELL REPORT:
DEVELOPING..pic.twitter.com/Ug2tEcTYUi
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) March 31, 2024
Tavistock is a UK-based agency known for its science of social engineering and mind manipulation, perfected during the last about eight decades. Tavistock is closely linked to the Pentagon thinktank, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
Tavistock is responsible for many, if not most of the lies with which western societies have been brainwashed over the past decades, to believe the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) and the UN Agenda 2030 deception theories for world dominance, by a One World Order or a One World Government, is a good thing; that the elite’s silly-sounding, non-explicit slogan, of “build back better”, is good for society. It never says, what needs to be built back better, first must be destroyed, clearly expressed by the Club of Rome’s “First Global Revolution” (1991).
——-
Most westerners do not know, that an aggressive act like the downing of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, is not China’s way. Historically and philosophically, China does not know aggression western style. China is reserved, discrete, diplomatic, mediating, and does not mingle in other countries’ business and politics. China can de facto and de jure be excluded from the list of potential suspects.
Operation Bridge Takedown
More plausible versions are to be looked for “US-internally”, as in “false flag”. If it was indeed a cyber-attack that knocked out the ships navigation system and replaced it with remote cyber-guidance, one would have to ask, who has control of cybersecurity in the port?
CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) oversees cyber security. According to Whitney Webb, CISA is controlled by Israel’s Mossad with CIA and MI6. Just like 9/11, the Deep State intelligence cartel.
See also this transcript of a podcast of Whitney Webb and Clayton Morris on Redacted, discussing Cyberreason, an outfit with close ties to Israeli Intelligence and its role in CISA activities.
CISA was created in November 2018 by then President Trump. The law was enhanced by President Biden’s Executive Order (EO) 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” in May 2021.
Cybereason is an Israeli / Zionist agency – renown for doing “election simulations”, but being closely linked to CISA.
CISA works under the Coast Guard and CG is under the military’s oversight – so CISA (Israel) and the US military are working together. CISA is the “Deep State”, the Cabal’s cyber agency, embedded everywhere.
Journalist Whitney Webb is also referring to a Klaus Schwab (WEF) quote of a few years ago, when he talked about a coming “cyber pandemic”; and also, to the 2023 Obama produced movie “Leave this World Behind” – “predictive planning”, exactly what a diabolical Cult needs to do for its success.
See trailer (2-min clip) of “Leave this World Behind” –
and this, ending scene of “Leave this World Behind” (3-min clip)
Here is yet another theory. The taking down of the FSB is another 9/11. This interview with Ann Vandersteel, from Peak Prosperity, is pretty revealing.
She says it is not the Russians or the Chinese. The southern border crisis and destruction of borders globally is part of the One World Government agenda. It is not a war on the US specifically; she says the US is just “in the way”.
They discuss “The Declaration of North America,” signed by Biden, Trudeau (Canada) and Obrador (Mexico) in Jan. 2023, basically a revival of the Amero idea, no borders between Canada, the US and Mexico.
The collapsed bridge and the ensuing consequences is a needed disruption in American life – a borderless world, beginning with a borderless North America. It would be yet another step towards a One World Order (OWO).
All of this leads to believe the “accident” with the container cargo vessel “The Dali” ramming into one of the key pilons of the Francis Scott Key Bridge Baltimore, was not really an accident, but an event of auto-destruction, comparable to 9/11 – with economic and political implications way beyond US borders.
Now comes the bombshell
The State of the Nation says, “hard evidence is now pouring in which conclusively proves that the staged Baltimore Bridge collapse after the cargo ship hit was a deliberate sabotage carried out by all the usual suspects.”
The video shows explosives going off all over the bridge exactly at the time when The Dali hit one of bridge’s the pillars.
If this video proofs true – if ever any evidence of truth emerges – an auto-coup, self-destruction to build back better – the effects are going to be indeed similar to 9/11 – with implications worldwide.
Just look at the physical similarity. Airplanes hit the World Trade Towers. A cargo vessel hits a key pilon of an important bridge. Transportation and Trade in both cases.
Remarkably, Peggy Hall of TheHealthyAmerican, points to the strangeness of the FSK Bridge collapse. Her video, the one forever repeated video, of the sluggish moving MV Dali in direction of the bridge, what looks to be a sharp turn towards the pilon, shows that the moving 110,000 ton vessel leaves no ripples in the water, no splashing from the bow of the ship, the vessel looks like gliding over a mirror, and the splashes when Dali hits the pilon are relatively minor, as well as the immediate collapse of the entire bridge – like built on matchsticks – all very unusual.
She says the video appears like a very poorly made video game. See this 8-minute video-clip with Peggy Hall commenting. At the end she promises continuing her investigation and publish the research.
Maybe her next video will also show the explosives going off all over the bridge – reminiscent of the explosives going off under the structures and in the lower walls of the World Trade Center towers, when the supposed airplanes hit the buildings.
Supply Chain Failures
This attack on the FSK Bridge is also an attack on the Baltimore harbor, meaning an economic disaster, a supply chain disruption for the US and worldwide – food shortages, possibly famine – playing right into the Great Reset’s and the UN Agenda’s 2030 depopulation agenda.
The Baltimore port is one of the busiest on the US East Coast and the most important one for special cargos. It connects any point of the US East Coast through highway I-95 that runs all the way from Florida to Canada.
With the Baltimore port out of container service at least for several years – who knows for how long? – cargo vessels may have to be rerouted via New York, and other East Coast Sea ports, a massive cost to the US economy and a supply chain disruption affecting the world beyond the US.
In the United States, the bridge collapse may be the beginning of a series of cyber-based “false flags” – possibly leading to Biden declaring Martial Law, suspending the 2024 Presidential elections.
The globalist Deep State cabal, seeking desperately to install the New World Order, needs to sow disorder, confusion, disruption, chaos, in every sphere of western life. It must destroy to build back better, according to the wishes of a small elite that pretends to rule the new world, with a drastically reduced population. This is their goal, after implementation of their long-planned Reset which is congruent with the United Nation’s Agenda 2030.
Just to know, the UN has long ceased to be what it was created for – an institution to promote and work for Peace in the World.
As a reminder – this nefarious Dark Cult has an iron rule to follow. For their success, they must tell us in advance – in any confusing way they want – what they are planning to do. We were warned about cyber-attacks, we were warned about virus “X”, we were warned about “global climate change”, meaning in clear text, but not said, geoengineered weaponized extreme weather patterns throughout the world.
They have stuck to that rule, like an iron fist hitting for the future. So far, we just have not cared taking it seriously.
We the People, MUST resist this planned diabolical takeover.
—-
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
The Lebanese resistance has utterly gutted Israel’s years-long strategy of denying its access to weapons. Tel Aviv’s strikes on Syria have failed to impede Hezbollah’s arms, which grow qualitatively and quantitatively with each passing day, and are now produced en masse domestically.
by Khalil Nasrallah at The Cradle.
Israel’s ‘battle between wars’ has failed
Work is ongoing to open new warehouses and bring in new land, sea, and air missiles that are more accurate and of higher quality. What we used to store in six months before 7 October, we now restock in a month.
So said Hezbollah resource and border official Nawaf al-Musawi, one of the Lebanese resistance’s strategic minds and a former deputy in Lebanon’s parliament. His 26 March disclosure carries significant weight amid the ongoing war in Gaza and notable escalations between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces, particularly along the southern Lebanese front, where events inch closer to full-scale warfare.
Musawi’s big reveal is evidence that Israel has not only failed to prevent the supply of quality weapons to Hezbollah but that the resistance group has managed to accelerate its accumulation of armaments in the past half year.
More importantly, it demonstrates that Tel Aviv’s escalated strikes on Syria have failed altogether. Since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the Israeli attacks, described by Tel Aviv as the “battle between wars,” had several objectives, foremost among them to prevent the arrival – via Syrian territory – of a “balance-breaker” weapon that could surprise or even cripple Israel’s defenses. And, of course, to impede the quantitative flow of arms to the Lebanese resistance.
To grasp the significance of war developments since 7 October, it’s imperative to delve into the historical context of the “battle between wars” strategy initiated by Israel in Syria. Through this campaign, Tel Aviv has tried to prevent the growing armament capabilities of the resistance across various domains, thereby securing its own superiority in multiple spheres and pre-empting Hezbollah’s ability to dictate qualitative terms even in the event of a full-scale war.
Syria’s ‘battle between wars’
Following the civil war in Syria in 2011 and the influx of western–Arab–Turkish-backed armed extremists to overthrow the Syrian government, concerns arose within Israel about the potential transfer of advanced weaponry from Damascus to the Lebanese resistance.
Concurrently, Tehran’s involvement in Syria, through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) working to enhance Hezbollah’s precision weapons, drones, and air defenses, further heightened these apprehensions.
In turn, Israel initiated the “battle between wars” aimed at preventing the transfer of “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah – including precision armaments, air defense systems, seaborne missiles, advanced drones, military techniques, and manufacturing technologies – disrupting the supply route to the Lebanese resistance, undermining the Syrian army’s armament and capabilities, keeping Iran away from occupied-Palestine’s borders and establishing a “security belt” extending 40 to 80 kilometers into the occupied Syrian Golan.
To achieve these objectives, the campaign in Syria unfolded in stages. Initially, it involved supporting armed groups with the support of the US and Persian Gulf states. They aimed to gain control over southern Syria and dismantle Syrian air defense units, thereby granting Israel unhindered access to the country’s airspace.
This strategy proved successful until 31 January 2013, when Israel directly intervened by launching the first attack conducted by the Israeli Air Force, targeting the Scientific Research Center in the Jamraya area of the Damascus countryside. Israeli media portrayed this strike as disrupting a convoy purportedly bound for Lebanon.
Since then, Israel has repeatedly violated Syria’s sovereignty, having conducted 288 air operations in Syria on thousands of assets that Tel Aviv describes as arms shipments, air defense systems, “Syrian, Iranian positions,” infrastructure, high-quality weapons stores, scientific research centers, radar sites, civilian and military airports, and other sites.
In response to Israel’s aggression and the stated objectives of its Syria campaign, Hezbollah and its allies embarked on a fierce security war, succeeding in disrupting Tel Aviv’s objectives.
Furthermore, Hezbollah has embarked on a project to domestically manufacture missiles and drones within Lebanon, a fact acknowledged by Israeli political circles, research institutes, and former generals. In this context, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly characterized the so-called battle between wars as a failure.
In a 2022 address, Nasrallah stated: “I tell the Israelis that what they call a ‘battle between wars’ has turned the threat into an opportunity for the resistance.”
“We now possess the ability to transform our thousands of rockets into precision-guided missiles,” Nasrallah added.
After Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
Which brings us to the present day. Following the Palestinian resistance’s 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the Israeli Prime Minister declared a state of war, igniting the war front in southern Lebanon the very next day and plunging all of West Asia into a state of insecurity.
In response, Israel hurriedly launched strikes in Syria, disrupting Aleppo International Airport and Damascus Airport on 12 October 2023. These preemptive actions were driven by fears that the Axis of Resistance could utilize these airports to transport weaponry and fighters.
Over the past six months, Israel has conducted 30 attacks targeting more than a hundred sites across various regions of Syria, including the north, south, east, and center. These strikes encompassed assassinations and the targeting of Iranian advisors involved in supporting the resistance, notably General Razi Mousavi, responsible for aiding the resistance front in Syria, and most recently, the 1 April strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing senior Iranian military advisors safeguarding the Quds Force, led by Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
An analysis of the nature of these attacks reveals Tel Aviv’s strategic maneuvers to circumvent wartime constraints, including on the Lebanese front, albeit within certain limitations. These strikes were aimed at disrupting the resistance’s armaments in Lebanon, weakening resistance positions in Syria, and exacting reprisals against Iranian figures supporting the resistance forces.
Hezbollah brings out the big guns
Amidst the ongoing confrontation, the resistance has showcased several types of advanced weaponry, signaling its preparedness and capabilities and warning off the enemy by forcing its military to step back and recalibrate its attainable objectives.
Since 8 October, those reveals have included the Almas – or “Diamond” – missile, which carries a camera in its head, hits fixed and moving targets, has a range of more than ten kilometers, and has been used in several operations, most notably hitting the “Meron” base and successfully penetrating Israeli tank defenses.
Precision-hit drones have also been used in several operations, including targeting Israel’s Northern Command headquarters, its army positions, armored vehicles, and tanks.
We have also seen unidentified Hezbollah air defense missiles successfully intercepting Israeli drones, such as the Hermes 450, and neutralizing others flying over border areas, as confirmed by resistance statements. In addition, we have seen modified Burkan and Falaq-1 rockets with high destructive capabilities, targeting Israeli military sites, troop gatherings, and illegal settlements.
While these revelations represent only a fraction of the resistance’s arsenal, they illustrate its success in accumulating weaponry deemed by Israelis as destabilizing the regional balance. Hezbollah’s ability to procure and potentially domestically manufacture and develop such armaments over preceding years is further proof of its strategic prowess.
A losing ‘battle’
It is undeniable that Israeli actions have resulted in casualties within the ranks of the resistance, particularly evident in their constant violations of Syria’s sovereignty, using it as a battleground to settle scores against Iran.
Nevertheless, the strategic implications of these actions have not halted the resilience of the resistance. Despite the ongoing conflict, the resistance accumulates capabilities and bolsters its qualitative armament in unprecedented numbers.
Ali Haidar, an expert on Israeli affairs, informs The Cradle that Hezbollah’s ongoing arming during the current war signifies the failure of Israel’s “battle between wars” strategy. He emphasizes that Hezbollah’s continued accumulation of weaponry illustrates the enduring effectiveness of its deterrence umbrella over strategic facilities.
According to Haidar, “There is a new phase that Hezbollah has risen to, which constitutes an additional challenge to the enemy entity and its will to confront.”
The group’s uninterrupted accumulation of weapons during these years, Haidar says, shows that:
Hezbollah’s deterrence strategy continues to protect its strategic facilities, and that this umbrella is very effective, contrary to the impression created by Israel carrying out some strikes here and there. This is also reflected in the level of development reached by the resistance in expertise and production and its determination to improve those capabilities.
The ongoing battle between wars has seen the resistance in Lebanon significantly augmenting its weapons capabilities in terms of quantity, quality, and diversity. This represents a substantial strategic setback for Israel, which has expended vast sums on its strategy in Syria without achieving its objectives.
The impact of Hezbollah’s significant armament operation will undoubtedly influence Israeli war calculations, especially if Tel Aviv’s War Council favors stepping up hostilities against Lebanon. The ramifications of these efforts in terms of armaments during the war will be keenly felt as the battle edges closer to war.
L’Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord (OTAN) est une alliance politique et militaire internationale composée de 32 États membres d’Europe
L’article Y a-t-il un trou dans la raquette de l’OTAN? est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Garland Nixon interviews Laith Marouf — West Asia update: ISRAEL ATTACKS IRANIAN CONSULATE – RUSSIA FURIOUS
wide ranging talk includes:
Anglo-Zionist terrorism on sovereign diplomatic territory of Iran in Damascus
— use of F-35 and weaponry just delivered by the US to attack Iran [a double provocation, carrying imprimatur of Anglo-Americans]
— the calculated savagery in holy time, at time of breaking fast, among top military cadre of Iran in a protected establishment [the banner photo on right is of the martyred General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, assassinated yesterday in Damascus, with future Leader Ayatollah Khamenei during Iran-Iraq war frontline in the 1980s. This was the highest ranking general killed since Soleimani, and a personal friend of Khamenei]
— Iran directly blames the USA
— Israel admitted they obtained permission from USA for the terrorism (!!)
— Likely retaliation at either Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan or Jordan [this is debatable. I disagree. If so, Jordan, to speed along the fall of its odious regime, would be more likely. No need to stir up the gung-ho Azeris tied at the hip to the Sultan in the fragile Transcaucasia as well]
Jordan is tottering and not for long in current condition and regime; Iraq is mobilizing Jordanian Resistance with arms for initial 12,000 cadre as well as severing the “Abraham Accords” land bridge running through the kept GCC concubines
Israel has lost the battles in both Gaza and Lebanon; all this is a provocation to draw in USA, directly against Iran. They are losing the attrition war and are on precipice of Collapse. Lunatics count on dramatic war expansion to the entire region, involving the equally sinking USUK, to save them
Zionism will be conclusively defeated, having already morally defeated itself. A global civilizational siege is on
The occupied Golan height is a front that has been shaped by Hezbollah, Iraqis and Syrian resistances. They degraded much of the installations and hardened military sites. In major upcoming war expansion, these critical height will be an objective, and to deny Israel its tremendous water resources.
Iraqis, like Yemenis, have upgraded missiles and drones which now overcome Jordanian, US, and Israeli air defenses, hitting the most sensitive sites in occupied Palestine with pinpoint precision! The building of the naval commander in Eilat was struck a night ago..
Zionists appear to hit targets in civilian areas within Lebanon due to lack of up-to-date knowledge. Some are Hezbollah offices abandoned since 2006! They just lash out for the optical value, and to harm civilians, focusing on first responders and civil defense teams, due to the usual viciousness
ISIS, Zionists, UkroNazis — rabid imperial tools, are thoroughly exposed, and condemn their USUK patron
ISIS in Syria is on last legs — why Idleb largely ignored, to focus on Damascus and major population centers; and for depleted Syria to regain strength. Russia is also busy on so many other fronts, chiefly 404 but also Sahel, Transcaucasia, Asia-Pacific, etc..
Erdogan: punished at local elections due to anger over his two-faced Palestine policy, which no longer fools Turks…
the sheer satanism of Al Shifa Hospital
the purposeful targeting of medical and humanitarian aid (food delivery) workers in Gaza
the shelf life of the Zionist project: sayonara! Put a fork in the bastards
the future consolidation of region around Greater Syria — with the end of the zionist project, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Palestine (and northern KSA) will disappear to return into the historic Greater Syria of the Holy Land, connectivity center of the Afro-Asian World Island.
the moral midget Little Blinkie returns to Saudi today to push them to normalize with the Zionists (!) And zionazi-controlled western media also is pushing Saudi normalization with Zionists. Unbelievable. You can’t fix Stupid
The West is fatally sucked into West Asia — as its last gasp and energy is fully devoted to zionism– other regions such as the Sahel, 404, slip through the dripping claws…
the contraction of Empire began at Syria, with the loss of that war during [official] Obama days
the loss of Israel will mean the loss of this Empire’s crown jewels, as with the Brits losing India.. a retreat across the Pond..
China is an active member of the Axes of Resistance — backstopping Russia, Iran, the Sahel, and others through its hefty wallets and protecting them from vicious imperial sanctions tool. There is a Global-Resistance. The two major civilizational states built up Iran, Yemen, other middlings to serve as firebreaks of Armageddon. The delusional Empire will exhaust and shatter itself long before it can get to a direct contest..
within the next two weeks, the messianic madmen will try to engineer Armageddon through ritual sacrificing of a Texan GMO red heifer, demolishing the Al Aqsa Mosque and turbo-charging a contrived civilizational war
mankind will come to appreciate and thank the 1.5+ century anti-imperialist sacrifice of the Palestinian nation. Being part of Greater Syria, they were simply the rock that could not be budged from the middle of the road
The Axis of Resistance in the Sahel is a multipolar counterpart of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia. Everyone needs to keep the focus on Resistance across the spectrum. A long and winding road – but we will prevail.
By Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.
The African Sahel is revolting against western neocolonialism – ejecting foreign troops and bases, devising alternative currencies, and challenging the old multinationals. Multipolarity, after all, cannot flower without resistance paving its path.
The emergence of Axes of Resistance in various geographies is an inextricable byproduct of the long and winding process leading us toward a multipolar world. These two things – resistance to the Hegemon and the emergence of multipolarity – are absolutely complementary.
The Axis of Resistance in West Asia – across Arab and Muslim states – now finds as its soul sister the Axis of Resistance spanning the Sahel in Africa, west to east, from Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea.
African Sahel states
Unlike Niger, where the change in power against neocolonialism was associated with a military coup, in Senegal, the power change comes straight from the polls.
Senegal plunged itself into a new era with the landslide victory of Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, in nationwide elections on 24 March. A former tax inspector who had just spent a fortnight stint in jail, Faye emerged with the profile of an underdog pan-African leader to turn the ‘most stable democracy in Africa,’ under French puppet incumbent Macky Sall, upside down.
The incoming Senegalese president now joins Ibrahim Traore, 36, in Burkina Faso, Aby Ahmed, 46, in Ethiopia, Andry Rajoelina, 48, in Madagascar, as well as future superstar Julius Malema, 44, in South Africa as part of the new, young pan-African generation focused on sovereignty. In his election manifesto, Faye pledged to reclaim Senegal’s sovereignty no less than eighteen times.
Geoeconomics is key to these shifts. As Senegal becomes a substantial oil and gas producer, Faye will aim to renegotiate mining and energy contracts, including the largest ones with British Petroleum (BP) and UK gold mine operator, Endeavor Mining.
Crucially, he plans to ditch the exploitative CFA franc – the French-controlled currency system used in 14 African states – even setting up a new currency as part of reshaping relations with neocolonial power France, Senegal’s top trading partner. Faye, echoing Comrade Xi Jinping, wants a “win-win” partnership.
(L): Niger’s military ruler General Abdourahamane Tchiani with Malian counterpart Colonel Assimi Goita, Bamako, Mali; (R): Niger’s Tchiani with Burkinabè counterpart Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; November 23-24, 2023.
Enter the Alliance of the Sahel States
Faye has not yet been clear on whether he intends to kick the French military out of Senegal. Were that to happen, the blow to Paris would be unprecedented, as embattled Petit Roi Emmanuel Macron and the French establishment consider Senegal the key player when it comes to blockading landlocked Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, which have already left Paris in the (Sahel) dust.
The three latter states, which have just formed an Alliance of the Sahel States (Alliance des Etats du Sahel, AES, in the original French), are not only a major Paris nightmare after serial humiliations but also a big American headache – epitomized in the spectacular breakdown of military cooperation between Washington and Nigerien capital Niamey.
The culprit, according to the US Deep State, is, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Obviously, no one in the US Beltway has been paying due attention to the Russia–Africa diplomatic flurry since last year, involving all key players from the Sahel to the new African BRICS members Egypt and Ethiopia.
In sharp contrast to its prior regard of Niger as a staunch ally in the Sahel, Washington is now forced to present a calendar date to get its troops out of Niger – after a military cooperation deal was annulled. The Pentagon cannot be involved in military training in Nigerien territory anymore.
There are two key bases – in Agadez and Niamey – which the Pentagon spent over $150 million to build. Niamey was finished only in 2019 and is managed by the US military’s African Command, AFRICOM.
Operational objectives are, predictably, shrouded in mystery. The Niamey base is essentially an intel center, processing data collected by MQ-9 Reaper drones. The US Air Force also uses the Dirkou Aerodrome as a base for operations in the Sahel.
Now things get really exciting, because the presence of a de facto CIA drone base in Dirkou, manned by a handful of operatives, is not even acknowledged. This dark base allows intel collection everywhere in Central Africa, from west to north. Call it another classic example of former CIA director Mike Pompeo’s “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal.”
There are roughly 1,000 US troops in Niger who may soon face ejection. The Americans are trying everything to stem the bleeding. Only this month, US Undersecretary of State for Africa Molly Phee visited Niger twice. Losing bases in Niger will translate into Washington following Paris in losing control of the Sahel – as Niger gets closer to Russia and Iran.
These bases are not essential to exercise surveillance over the Bab al-Mandeb; it’s all about the Sahel, with drones operating on their limit and violating every sovereign air space in sight.
Incidentally, a hefty delegation from Niamey visited Moscow in January. Then, last week, Putin discussed security cooperation in phone calls with Mali’s interim President, Assimi Goita, and Niger’s military junta President Abdourahmane Tchiani before talking to the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Nguesso.
(L): VVP with Burkinabè interim leader Traoré, St. Petersburg, July 2023; (R): Russian Deputy PM Alexey Overchuk with Nigerien PM Ali Lamine Zein, Moscow, January 2024.
Ivory Coast: The Empire turn-around
Pro-west puppet regimes are dwindling fast all across the African continent. The Alliance of the Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – may be the vanguard of an African Axis of Resistance, but there’s more, in the form of South Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt as full BRICS members – not to mention serious candidates for the next wave of BRICS+, such as Algeria and Nigeria.
Russia, diplomatically, and China, commercially, plus the full weight of the Russia–China strategic partnership, are clearly focused on the long game – counting on Africa as a whole as a key multipolar player. Additional evidence was provided once again during the multipolar conference last month in Moscow, where charismatic pan-African leader Kemi Seba from Benin was one of the superstars.
Pan-Eurasian diplomatic circles even allow themselves to joke about the recent hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris. The utter humiliation of France in the Sahel is likely one of the drivers of Macron’s chest-thumping threats to send French troops to Ukraine – who would be turned into steak tartare by the Russians in record time – and his eagerness to support Armenia’s current Russophobic stunts.
Historically, the fact remains, that Africans considered the former USSR much more pliable and even supportive when it came to siphoning natural resources; that goodwill has now also been transferred to China.
As a regional integration platform, the Alliance of the Sahel States has everything it takes to become a game-changer. Senegal under Faye may eventually join, but Guinea already offers the geographical capacity to provide the alliance with credible maritime access. That will lead to the progressive extinction of the western-controlled, Nigeria-based ECOWAS.
Yet, never dismiss the Hegemon’s mighty tentacles. The Pentagon master plan does not entail abandoning Africa to a multipolar Russia–China–Iran sphere of influence. Yet no one across the Sahel’s Axis of Resistance buys the US ‘terror threat’ card anymore. There was virtually zero terror in Africa until 2011, when NATO turned Libya into a wasteland, then put boots on the ground and erected military bases across the continent.
So far, the Alliance of the Sahel States is winning the sovereignty-first information war, hands-down. But there’s no question the Empire will strike back. After all, the whole game is tied to the Beltway’s supreme paranoia of Russia taking over the Sahel and Central Africa.
Enter the Ivory Coast, now that Senegal may be about to start flirting with the Alliance of the Sahel States.
Ivory Coast is more strategic to Washington than, for instance, Chad because Ivorian territory is very close to the Sahel alliance. Still, Chad has already recalibrated its foreign policy, which is no longer Western-controlled and comes with a new emphasis on getting closer to Moscow.
What lies ahead for Empire? Perhaps US ‘anti-terror’ drones shared with Paris at the French base in the Ivory Coast to keep the Sahel alliance in check. Call it the humiliated Gallic rooster embracing the Hegemon in West Africa without receiving even the crumbs of a stale croissant.
Terror Attack on Moscow & Why the US Stands as the Prime Suspect
US use of terrorism to advance foreign policy objectives is based on decades of evidence and includes support for militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, Chechen separatists inside Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, and Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria against Syrian, Iranian, and Russian forces;
More recently, US foreign policymakers have laid out plans to use listed terrorist organizations as proxies to carry out attacks in targeted nations like Iran and Pakistan;
Ukraine has already carried out an extensive terror campaign aimed at Russian civilians deep within Russian territory including in Belgorod, St. Petersburg, and Moscow;
US media admits collaboration between US intelligence and Ukrainian intelligence from 2014 onward while also admitting Ukraine has carried out a number of attacks on civilians inside Russia including Darya Dugina and Vladen Tatarsky;
US media also admits that despite the US claiming to have warned Russia of an impending terrorist attack, information was withheld due to the “adversarial relationship” between the US and Russia;
Leading up to the deadly Moscow attack, US foreign policymakers had repeatedly stated the need to make ordinary Russians “feel the pinch” of the conflict;
References:
NYT – Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack (March 28, 2024)
RAND Corporation – Extending Russia (2019)
The New Yorker – The Redirection, by Seymour Hersh (2007)
NYT – C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition (2012)
NYT – Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A. (March 2013)
Washington Post – ‘Al-Qaeda is eating us’: Syrian rebels are losing out to extremists (2017)
BBC – Islamic State and the crisis in Iraq and Syria in maps (2018)
Brookings Institution – Which Path to Persia? (2009)
BBC – US removes Iran group MEK from terror list (2012)
Foreign Policy – Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists (2012)
Russia Matters – Claim (in 2004, 2015 and 2017): The U.S. government supported Chechen separatism
RFE/RL – Chechen Separatist Fighters Defend Ukraine Against ‘Common Enemy’ Russia (November 2022)
NY Times – Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack (March 28, 2024)
NYT – U.S. Believes Ukrainians Were Behind an Assassination in Russia (October 2022)
NYT – The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin (February 2024)
Where to Find My Work:
First the local zionists last Fall, who knew the daunting and impossible guerrilla war confronting them, and now the Big Daddy in the Land of the Free and Brave… these are no mere slips of the tongue. Intent is openly declared. Little good it will do those guaranteed of defeat at this point.
Timothy Lee Walberg (born April 12, 1951) is an American serving as the U.S. representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he previously represented the 7th district from 2007 to 2009 and from 2011 to 2023. As the longest tenured member from Michigan, Walberg is the current Dean of its delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Early life, education, and early career
Walberg was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Alice Ann and John A. Walberg. His paternal grandparents were Swedish. In 1964, Walberg served the Barry Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign as a volunteer. Walberg graduated from Thornton Fractional North High School in 1969 and briefly served the U.S. Forest Service. From 1973 to 1977, Walberg served as pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in New Haven, Indiana.
Foreign Policy
In March 2024, responding to a question about “why are we spending our money to build a port for them,” referring to the Biden Administration’s plan to build a temporary port off the coast of Gaza to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid in the Israel-Hamas War, Walberg told the crowd the U.S. “shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid” and instead “should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S.-based Muslim civil rights group, condemned Walberg’s comments as a “clear call to genocide.” In response, Walberg denied advocating the use of nuclear weapons, claiming that he was merely referring to the need for Israel to win “as swiftly as possible.”
Walberg also opposes humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War. “Instead [of] 80 percent in Ukraine being used for humanitarian purposes, it should be 80 to 100 percent to wipe out Russia — if that’s what we want to do.” Walberg also voted against aid to Ukraine in 2022.
The Patriotic War of 1812 ended with the expulsion of the invaders from Russia (Napoleon’s army apart from its French troops also included units from all across continental Europe) and served as a prologue to the so-called Big European War of 1812-1815 with the capture of Paris by the Russian army on March 31, 1814, as one of its major highlights.
This campaign came to be known among Russian historians as the Foreign Campaigns of the Russian Army. Together with its allied armies, namely Prussia, Austria, Sweden, and Great Britain, Russia liberated European countries from the French oppression.
When the Russian Army entered France in December 1813, Emperor Alexander I issued an order. Here’s a quote from it:
“Warriors! You have already saved your Motherland and brought it glory, and enabled Europe to recover its liberty and independence. Crowning this feat with the much-desired peace is all that remains.”
With Paris seized by the Russians, Napoleon abdicated in Fontainebleau on April 6 under pressure from his marshals, and was exiled to the Island of Elba off the Italian coast.
Russia played an instrumental role in France’s remaining within its pre-war borders, and took French cities under its protection by preventing Prussian and Austrian troops from pillaging them. Following Alexander I’s orders, the Russian troops also ensured that the collections of the Louvre and other French museums, as well as historical monuments, remained intact.
On June 9, 1815, a new European security architecture was established a the Vienna Congress, which became one of the main outcomes of Russia’s Foreign Campaigns.
“We honour the memory of our heroic ancestors, finding strength and inspiration in their valorous deeds. We’d like to advise the contemporary Western leaders and the emerging “Napoleons” who once again harbour intentions of sending troops eastward to remember the lessons of history”
From Maria Zakharova’s briefing:
“These days we mark the 210th anniversary of the triumphant conclusion of the Foreign Campaign of the Russian Army of 1813-1814. Following the defeat of Napoleon’s Grande Armée during the Patriotic War of 1812, Russian forces, bearing the banner of freedom for the nations and peoples of Europe from Napoleonic tyranny, embarked on a journey of thousands of kilometres from the scorched walls of Moscow. After intense battles, they reached the French capital, which capitulated to the mercy of the victors on March 31, 1814. We suggest honouring this event with well-researched historical narratives.
The Paris Peace Treaties and the Congress of Vienna delineated the political and diplomatic trajectory following a quarter-century of incessant wars that ravaged Europe. Thus, less than two years after the grandiose announcement of the campaign against Russia by French propaganda, France was defeated. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Napoleon abdicated the throne.
As we revisit this illustrious chapter in Russian history, juxtaposed with the ignominious one in French history, we honour the memory of our heroic ancestors, finding strength and inspiration in their valorous deeds. We’d like to advise the contemporary Western leaders and the emerging “Napoleons” who once again harbour intentions of sending troops eastward to remember the lessons of history and not to forget how the aspirations of their predecessors to inflict a strategic defeat on our country always ended.”
The broken relationship between the United States and Niger reveals U.S. grand strategy as well as policy towards Russia. The policy failed to isolate Russia in the Global South. The denial of Niger’s right to choose its own partners uncovers the lie behind America’s stated objectives in Ukraine.
By Ted Snider at Antiwar.com
What Does the Coup in Niger Tell Us about the War in Ukraine?
On July 28, 2023, a coup led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani kicked out the democratically elected government of Niger. On March 16, 2024, the coup government kicked the United States out of Niger.
Niger, and a cooperative government in Niger, are important to the United States. “Niger is a strong ally of western nations, especially France, the U.S. and the European Union in fighting insurgency and curbing illegal migration to Europe,” according to Olayinka Ajala, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Leeds Beckett University. The New York Times has called Niger “a centerpiece of American efforts to combat surging Islamist militancy in the Sahel region” and “the main U.S. counterterrorism ally in the region.” Niger’s vast uranium and oil reserves also give it an economic importance to the United States.
That partnership was threatened by the July 2023 coup. The United States was sluggish in calling the coup a coup because such a recognition would force the U.S. to suspend military aid and limit the ability of the U.S. military to operate in Niger. The State Department did eventually make that decision and suspended aid. The United States did not, however, withdraw their forces from Niger and soon resumed flights of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones.
The Defense Department says that the U.S. currently has “approximately 1,000” troops in Niger. They are “consolidating” to U.S. Air Base 201, “the linchpin of the U.S. military’s archipelago of bases in North and West Africa.” The $110 million base is key to U.S. intelligence in the region, including satellite communications and a fleet of drones that includes armed Reapers.
The March 16 statement by the coup government in Niger ended those drone flights and that military partnership and kicked those American forces out of Niger.
Niger’s military spokesman, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, announced on television that, “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, decides with full responsibility to denounce with immediate effect the agreement relating to the status of military personnel of the United States and civilian employees of the American Department of Defense in the territory of the Republic of Niger.” The agreement for U.S. forces and civilian personnel to be hosted in Niger has been revoked.
The decision came just days after a U.S. delegation traveled to Niger to “continue ongoing discussions… with leaders of the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland (CNSP) regarding Niger’s return to a democratic path and the future of our security and development partnership.”
Those discussions, for a number of reasons, reportedly went very badly. Those unsuccessful talks contain a number of lessons, not only on failed American foreign policy in Africa, but on the war in Ukraine.
Alex Thurston, assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a specialist in the politics of northwest Africa, says there are reports that American officials were criticizing Niger’s turn towards Russia. The State Department says that, while exchanging “views on how to chart a new path of cooperation forward,” the “U.S. delegation met with Nigerien officials, expressing concerns over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia.”
In a March 18 briefing, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh again referred to “direct conversations about some of our concerns, about some of their, you know, pursuing relationships with Russia.” She also raised concerns over the fact “that Russia has, certainly, a presence within the region from, you know, they continue to pursue ties to African nations to deepen their security cooperation.”
The American delegation’s warnings about Russia outraged Niger. Abdramane said, “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships. Also, the government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people.”
The American effort in Niger is crucial for the hypocrisy it reveals in American foreign policy. On March 21, 2022, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, State Department spokesperson Ned Price explained that one of the “core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine” is that
“each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
The United States was prepared to risk a war with Russia, a third world war, a potential nuclear war, and the injury and death of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers for a “core principle” that it does not subscribe to: at least not when it comes to Africa or when it does not convenience the United States. The U.S. “den[ies] the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships.”
The pressure brought to Niger reveals that Washington is supporting the war against Russia for reasons other than the right of Ukraine to choose its partners and join NATO, or that that right only applies when the partner being chosen is the United States and NATO but not Russia. The core principle, then, is not the right of a sovereign nation to choose its partner, but the right of a sovereign nation to partner with the United States.
The American attitude toward Niger and Russia reveals a second lesson. A key response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to isolate Russia and reinforce the U.S.-led unipolar world. It has not worked.
The United States has expressed concern that the “Russian Federation is really trying to take over central Africa as well as the Sahel.” Thurston told me that the U.S. is “very worried about Russian influence throughout the Sahel, and it has a particular sting in Niger given the previous closeness of the relationship.”
He added that the United States “seems to regard competition with Russia in Africa as zero-sum; whereas, most African governments don’t see things that way.” And that is the hallmark of the emerging multipolar world that the U.S. is trying to hold back. Saudi Arabia has said “we do not believe in polarization or in choosing between sides.” India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, in his book, The Indian Way, describes the new multipolar world as one in which countries deal “with contesting parties at the same time with optimal results” for their “own self-interest.”
Africa has rejected America’s “zero-sum” framing of partnerships. Not one country in Africa has joined the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia. Instead, Africa has asserted its sovereign right not to be forced to choose sides in a world where you can partner with many factions in pursuit of your own national interest. So, Niger stands up to American pressure and asserts its “right to choose their partners and types of partnerships.”
The broken relationship between the United States and Niger is important for what it reveals about America’s foreign policy in Africa and the future of its footprint on the continent. But it is also important for what it reveals about U.S. grand strategy and its policy towards Russia. American fears and concerns about Russia’s strengthening relationships in Africa reveal its fears about the failure of its policy of isolating Russia. And, most importantly, the denial of Niger’s right to choose its own partners uncovers the lie behind America’s stated objectives in Ukraine.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
Jon Elmer of the Electronic Intifada with his weekly update, focused on guerrilla war around Al Shifa Hospital. Kevork Almassian, originally from Aleppo, Syria, reviews the Anglo-Zionists’ return to bombing Aleppo in coordination with Al-Qaeda, Jordan, and the US base at Al Tanf; back to the sordid future! Does a criminal ever deviate far from a favored MO? Will it matter in the end, as during the last decade?
Why the USA is an Outlaw
with thanks to Dr. Karl at karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium.
It’s been brought to my attention that the reasons WHY the USA is an Outlaw relative to International and its own Domestic Law isn’t clear enough. First we’ll begin with the UN Charter:
“The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.”
The most common violation is interference in the internal/domestic affairs of member nations. Most grievous is violation of Article 4. Upon the Charter’s entering into legal force on 24 October 1945, the USA was in the process of interfering in the domestic affairs of the USSR and numerous other member nations. It was also providing aid to known Nazi elements in Soviet Ukraine and aiding known Nazi War Criminals to escape justice for the crimes they committed. As such, the USA was also in violation of Articles 2, 3, 4, and 5. Those violations continued unabated and others were added as time moved forward.
In relation to the USA violating its own Domestic Law of the Land, the 1787 Constitution, what’s known as the Supremacy Clause—Article VI, Clause 2—makes it mandatory that any ratified treaty becomes incorporated into the Law of the Land:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
The UN Charter is a treaty signed by President Truman and ratified by the Senate on 28 July 1945 by a vote of 89-2. Thus, the UN Charter is part of the US Constitution. Upon ratification, Truman said: “The action of the Senate substantially advances the cause of world peace.” The actual truth as he spoke those words was the USA was already involved in aiding the OUN—Ukrainian Nazis—and helping Nazi war Criminals avoid being caught by helping them escape to the USA, Canada, and many South American nations, which were violations of their domestic affairs by introducing the grossest of criminal elements into their societies which enabled Nazism to remain alive and terrorize today’s world.
The actions of the United States before, during and after the legal founding of the UN Charter have made it an international outlaw and violator of its own Law of the Land, which every President swears to defend and uphold and is its primary job as Chief Magistrate. That such illegality is allowed to continue unabated makes the Outlaw US Empire a serial lawbreaker of the worst sort when we look at the millions of people it has killed and displaced in its criminal behavior. Yet millions of US citizens, including members of Congress, the Executive, the Military, appear to be 100% ignorant of the fact that they abet an international serial criminal of the worst sort.
The evidence for US lawbreaking is present within the US government’s own archives and has been subjected to Congressional inquiry; yet, such inquiry avoided the conclusion that the US government is a serial lawbreaker needing serious remediation and constant monitoring of its behavior along with the elimination of the institutions responsible for the lawbreaking.
The public humiliations being experienced by both USUK and the UNSC are astonishing! The first video makes clear the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) is turned into a global pariah against its own interests, domestic laws and the future of the Democratic party.. the second video makes clear the same process as done to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is underway at the UNSC: binding demands to cease and desist from unfathomable crimes against humanity are not merely ignored but escalated with open sense of contemptuous impunity. What will these actions do to the Old Order largely crafted by the 1941 Atlantic Charter system? How to return international law to primacy in the face of nuclear powers turned rogue parasited entities? For now, it appears only regional solutions are available — for those willing to fight to the death for dignity and liberty.
Ukraine, ISIS, and the Moscow Concert Attack: What really happened? Pepe Escobar joins us to examine the complicated spider web of connections between Ukrainian intelligence, jihadist groups, and Western governments.
hosted by Dimitri Simes Jr. at the New Rules.
Ukraine, ISIS, and the Moscow Concert Attack: What really happened?
Pepe Escobar joins us to examine the complicated spider web of connections between Ukrainian intelligence, jihadist groups, and Western governments.
#NewRulesPodcast @RealPepeEscobar pic.twitter.com/oiNQgd7eLP— NewRulesGeopolitics (@NewRulesGeo) March 28, 2024
Lost in the thunder of the two incendiary battlegrounds of the Ukraine and the Holy Land, the end of the western Age of Plunder is vividly demonstrated in the West African Sahel. Calm business arrangements are conducted with friendly states, even as the last US garrisons are dismantled, one by one.
@Intel Slava Z:
SENEGAL: how Russia is destroying French neocolonialism
Historical events are brewing in another West African country, Senegal. Getting rid of the country’s neocolonial dependence on its former official metropolis – France.
Over the weekend, presidential elections took place here, in which the opposition candidate Bashiru Jumaye Faye is confidently leading (and may even win them in the first round, which will become known tomorrow), who, as part of his election promises, promised to review oil and gas deals with Western campaigns, including agreements with British Petroleum, Endeavor Mining and Kosmos Energy.
He also advocates a radical revision of relations between Senegal and France. And as part of this, Faye is going to follow neighboring Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to leave the French currency system (by abandoning the CFA franc). And the French military will have to leave the country. By the way, sensing something was wrong, Paris had already announced a little earlier that it was sharply reducing the military contingent in the country (probably so that it would not be so shameful later). In return, he promises to take a course towards rapprochement with Russia.
Thus, France’s next major foreign policy defeat on the African continent looms on the horizon. Moreover, Senegal was a key player in the issue of the blockade of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, which had previously freed themselves from the influence of Paris. And the departure of Senegal from the CFA franc zone puts a final and fat cross on this system (which brought huge profits to France) and on which the entire system of French neocolonialism was essentially built.
And hence all of Macron’s current anti-Russian hysteria. He, like a plucked rooster, understands that he is losing to Russia and therefore becomes hysterical. And Ukraine for him is the last chance to spoil Moscow. But I think he will be disappointed here too.
@Russian MFA:
President Vladimir Putin spoke over the phone with President of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland of the Republic of Niger Abdourahamane Tchiani, who expressed solidarity with the Russian people and heartfelt condolences over the numerous victims of the heinous terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall.
In discussing the bilateral agenda, the Leaders expressed determination to step up political dialogue and develop mutually beneficial cooperation in various spheres.
They also exchanged views on the developments in the Sahel-Sahara region with an emphasis on coordination of security and counterterrorism efforts.
@Sputnik Africa:
US will plan for the “disengagement” of troops from Niger after its military pact with Washington ends, Niger’s interior minister says.
The statement was published on social media after Mohamed Toumba hosted US Ambassador Kathleen FitzGibbon for talks.
A spokesperson for the Nigerien military said in mid-March that the country’s transitional government, which took power in a coup last July, ended the agreement with immediate effect, citing the interests of the Nigerien people.
@Africa Intel:
Putin discusses security cooperation with West and Central African leaders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed security and economic cooperation with Mali’s junta leader Assimi Goita by phone on Wednesday, both countries said, a day after Putin held a similar call with the junta leader in neighbouring Niger.
“We discussed bilateral issues, particularly the security and economic areas,” Goita said. “We agreed to cooperate further in the fight against terrorism.” The Kremlin confirmed.
The call appeared to be part of a round of diplomatic exchanges Putin has made with West and Central African leaders since his re-election earlier this month.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday Putin and the leader of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, had agreed in a phone call to deepen political, economic and humanitarian ties.
On Tuesday, Putin spoke by phone with Niger’s junta leader, Abdourahamane Tiani and discussed a need to reinforce their security cooperation, according to Nigerien state television.
@Arab_Africa:
The US is worried that Niger will replace its military with Russian mercenaries
This was stated by the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers, at a hearing on the US military posture in the Middle East and Africa.
According to him, the recent expulsion of the US military from Niger may be linked to security talks with Iran and Russia that took place the day before.
“It looks like Niger will soon join Mali, Libya, Sudan, Mozambique and Burkina Faso in welcoming Russian troops and mercenaries into their country,” Rogers suggested. He also noted that China is at the same time seeking to expand its military presence beyond the PLA naval base in Djibouti.
“And they set up bases on the west coast to give the PLA strategic access to the Atlantic. China has already built and currently operates several major trading ports along the west coast of Africa,” the Republican reported.
Finally, Rogers warned that the US could lose the initiative due to inaction on the continent.
“Africa is of vital strategic importance to the United States. We cannot allow China or Russia to become their preferred security or business partner,” the American worries.
#нувыпонимаете
LOL
@Sputnik Africa:
“Atomexpo-2024,” the largest international forum on nuclear energy, was held on March 25-26 in Russia. Here are our publications not to be missed
Atomexpo-2024 nuclear industry forum breaks attendance record;
Rosatom signs roadmaps for developing cooperation on nuclear energy with Mali, and Burkina Faso and Algeria; NOTE: the first two are members of the Sahelian Junta Belt..
“Russia will be able to better support Burkina Faso towards its energy independence,” a Burkinabe minister reveals details of the roadmap with Rosatom;
“Gold mined in Mali should be processed in Mali,” Malian minister of mines comments on the gold processing plant project with Russia;
Cooperation with Russia can help eliminate power shortages in Africa and advance Zimbabwe’s healthcare system, says minister;
Russia attracted Africans’ interest in nuclear energy because it’s a reliable partner, says a Rosatom official;
With the help of the agreements with Rosatom, Burundi intends to have a nuclear power plant that will help launch the country into industrial production, says a minister from the African country.
After blocking Russian and Iranian gas pipelines to Europe and working to decouple from China, the combined West put their eggs into the Leviathan basket off Gaza and the IMEC connectivity corridor over the revitalized ancient Silk Roads…
Solving the ‘Climate Crisis’ is Bad for Business and Worse for Politics
For GlobalSouth.co by Peter Koenig
25 March 202
The article “Harvard Shuts Geoengineering Project” by Cauf Skiviers, explains Bill Gates, funder of the project, stopping Harvard from carrying out the study to Preserve the Climate Narrative.
How is this relevant?
That Bill Gates calls the shots on what should and should not go forward, is nothing new. Surprising is that he was willing to finance such a study in the first place. – Why?
The honest results of the research would have shown the outright “climate change” fraud humanity has been exposed to for more than three decades.
The study’s outcome would have gone in the complete opposite direction of the current western globalist plan, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Great Reset and the UN Agenda 2030, One World Order, One World Government. Their success being largely based on the ”climate” lie.
Geoengineering serves two purposes, falsely demonstrating the Green Agenda’s fake CO2 emissions-based climate change, and – of equal importance – making weather and climate into Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The outcome of the study would have been against those who want to destroy the world’s economy and social structure as we know it – to rebuild it afresh, according to the elites’ desire. See Club of Rome’s “First Global Revolution” (1991); and this.
The revelation of the now canceled Harvard research, would have allowed just about anyone marginally aware of what is happening to Mother Earth’s climate, to see through the scam. It would have been difficult to avoid leaking the study’s outcome of such a hyped-up topic, like “climate change”, to the public.
Imagine! – Harvard research would destroy a political agenda, as well as Big Business. It would reveal that the climate narrative of the “Green Agenda”, is a lie, and that the weather almost everywhere on the globe is manipulated – or to use the scientific term “geoengineered”.
More than three decades of intense “fake science” and media manipulation about humans’ CO2, methane, and similar greenhouse gas emissions, is the culprit for “climate change”, have left most people, even non-active, often “bought”, so-called scientists, under the impression that doomsday is just around the corner, if we keep using hydrocarbons (oil and gas) to fuel our economy and keep using agriculture to feed humanity.
These alarm bells are constant calls to decarbonize civilization. Yet, the use of hydrocarbons (mostly oil and gas) to run the world’s economies has hardly changed in the last three decades. In the early 1990s about 87% of all energy used worldwide came from oil and gas. The figure is almost the same today.
It is a big lie. The climate is NOT changing, at least not more than it has always changed over the past 4 billion years – normally by small increments, so that life on earth can adapt and adjust.
According to Spain’s State Meteorological Agency (Spanish Acronym – AEMET), there are currently more than 50 countries which have at least some technologies to change the weather and climate. See this.
Those with the most sophisticated knowledge are the United States, Russia, and China.
It is fair to assume that the 50-plus nations are “modifying” the weather or climate according to what benefits them most. It is also fair to assume that today there is worldwide almost no weather completely natural, but influenced either directly, or indirectly, through modified weather patterns elsewhere in the world, the collateral effect of geoengineering.
In olden times, it was called “the butterfly effect” – meaning the butterfly flaps its wings and will have an effect somewhere in the world. You do not know where and what. With geoengineering that can be very dangerous.
Obviously, weather modifications, so far, serve primarily the fake climate change agenda. When a super hurricane hits the Caribbean, or a prolonged Monsoon floods and destroys two thirds of Pakistan, including her economy, it exponentially exceeds the “normal”. Blame it on “climate change”.
But most often there is an economic and / or political agenda behind it. Take Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans on 29 August 2005. Some 1,800 people died. With 230 km / hour, Katrina made landfall in Southeast Louisiana and destroyed New Orleans.
While the State of Louisiana evacuated about 1.5 million people before the hurricane hit, 150,000 to 200,000 stayed behind, mostly black people in “old” New Orleans, often run-down, but potential prime real estate for developers; was to be razed for luxury-style rebuilding.
The original owners were later force-evacuated to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) provided “emergency” camps (shacks), all over the country. So, the force-refugees could not organize. The properties were taken over by the state and city. – This served both, an economic and political agenda.
In June through August and into September 2022, Pakistan received about three times as much rain as normal. The deadly disaster was blamed on “climate change”. See this.
In reality, the catastrophe is suspected of having been geoengineered, and had a political agenda. On 10 April 2022, the popular, democratically and by a landslide elected President, Imram Khan, was ousted through a parliamentary non-confidence vote, instigated and “influenced” by the US, because Mr. Khan refused to follow orders from Washington, but instead intended to be President for an independent Pakistan and for the People of Pakistan.
For weeks people took to the streets by the millions, creating national unrest, wanting their President Imram Khan back. Creating or geoengineering the destructive Monsoon floods was a means to stop the social upheaval, so that the country could follow the western / Washington imposed political agenda, which meant foremost no political or business relations with China.
This is weaponized geoengineering.
When geoengineering serves as a weapon for Super-Powers, the dangers may be equivalent or worse than from nuclear weapons. Because most people have no clue that these weather “disturbances” and climate disasters are manmade and targeted for specific purposes at an “enemy”.
To get this right, geoengineering is NOT manmade in terms of what the Green Agenda interprets manmade “climate change”, as in CO2 emissions, greenhouse gases and more of the like. Geoengineering is dangerous. The Green Agenda climate change claims are sheer bullsh*t.
Geoengineering has been developed since the early 1940s. It started out with simple cloud-seeding, to prompt rainfall, mostly for agricultural purposes. It then moved to more sophisticated weather and climate manipulations, using the infamous chemtrails, white “vapor” stripes emanating from airplanes, crisscrossing the blue skies, disseminating poisonous chemicals and microscopic heavy metal particles, to influence the climate – but also, and possibly more important, to affect people’s health in very negative ways.
There are hundreds if not thousands of patents out there for these chemicals and heavy metals coming down from the planes into the ground, into the water, into plants and vegetables and finally into our bodies, killing our Pineal Gland and gradually weakening our bodies.
Geoengineering also includes the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) and similarly sophisticated technologies. HAARP, created by the Pentagon-linked thinktank, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), is controlled by the US Airforce. HAARP is possibly the world’s most capable high-power, high-frequency electromagnetic waves transmitter, acting on the ionosphere.
HAARP technologies often applied from satellites, can emit electromagnetic waves piercing deep into the earth, creating earthquakes. It is suspected that HAARP technologies were used to cause the 6 February 2023 Turkey – Syria earthquake of 7.8 Richter scale strength, killing more than 60,000 people.
The seism happened shortly before Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reelected in May 2023 as President of Turkey. The earthquake’s epicenter was in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, with seismic movement taking place along the Conjugated Tectonic Faults. Strangely and remarkably, however, the tremors defied the natural patterns and do not fit into the usual mainshock–aftershocks sequence.
This was also the time when President Erdogan refused to approve Sweden and Finland into NATO, despite the tremendous pressure of all 29 other NATO countries – to put NATO even closer to Russia, the western-made non-conform enemy that needed to be “subdued.”
This would be weaponized political geoengineering, with an economic side effect.
The 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake of 7.0 magnitude, left the capital city, Port-au-Prince, devastated and killed about 220,000 people. Sizable off-shore oil and gas deposits are all over the Caribbean, and also off-shore of Port-au-Prince.
These petrol reserves, are so deep that it is uneconomical to exploit them at current depths. A seismic event will break the tectonic plates, so that the earth’s core pressure pushes the oil to higher levels, where exploitation is easier and more economical.
Haiti has been in chaos ever since. The Clinton Foundation set up allegedly to help rebuild Haiti, has been a disaster, causing more harm than good, and making the Clintons richer. Destabilizing the country is a good reason for the US to maintain steady control.
Haiti is the world’s first and only country inhabited by black slaves that fought for and obtained independence 220 years ago (January 1, 1804). Washington pretends, Haiti could become a national security threat – like Cuba! – and must be controlled. See this.
The giant Haiti tremor also served two interests: Economics, as in oil; and politics, as in control.
Geoengineering is a convenient and highly effective weapon to dominate or coerce countries into submission. The geo-weapon’s potential could explode exponentially during the coming years, decades, if people remain ignorant about its menace for humanity.
A Harvard study divulging what geoengineering does and can do would not only derail the entire fake “climate change” narrative, but might also risk taking steam out of the growing geo-weapons industry.
Therefore, “Solving the ‘Climate Crisis’ is indeed Bad for Business- and bad for Politics”, and even worse for strategic warfare planning. So, Bill Gates was right in stopping the Harvard Geoengineering Project. Geoengineering may, therefore, prosper, bringing rain, shine and – war.
—-
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Moscow’s Terror Explosion – Macron’s NATO Troops to Ukraine
Peter Koenig
23 March 2024
Automatic gun-shooting by 5 men in black took place Friday evening 22 March in the Crocus City Concert Hall, attached to a shopping mall, at the outskirts of Moscow. The terror attack preceded a concert. The hall was therefore crowded with people, panicking for leaving it. The assault was followed by a massive explosion.
The official fatality as of 23 March stands at 133. Dozens of people were injured.
The Islamic State (IS) – a CIA creation – claimed credit for the attack.
However, the political end of this attack is more complex.
On March 7, 2024, the US Embassy in Russia warned Moscow that a terror attack may take place in Moscow within the next few weeks. No further details.
Is it one of the now fashionable “predictive planning” stunts?
On the same day, the same US Embassy in Moscow warned US citizens in Moscow not to visit shopping malls. How much did the US know?
Speculations abound. Was this an empty warning to destabilize Russia and Russian elections? Or was it one more provocation to pull Russia into a larger conflict?
On the day of the attack, John Kirby, spokesman for National Security at the White House said in a Press Conference that there were no indications that Ukraine had anything to do with the attack. In early March Washington just had some indications that a terror assault may hit Moscow.
“Some indications”? – Why then the warning on the same 7 March to US citizens in Moscow not to visit any shopping malls?
It could not be more obvious that a hidden agenda is being played by Washington – and, may be added, by NATO and Europe?
Whether the Islamic State, Al Qaeda or another CIA / MI6 terror creation – or even Kiev directly, was involved in this mass-killing is irrelevant, because whoever acted, did so on behalf of US / NATO and the collective West.
Admiral John Kirby, spokesman for National Security at the White House
It is no coincidence that French President Macron practically simultaneously sends officially 2,000 French NATO troops to Ukraine. “Officially”, because western / NATO military advisers, trainers and coaches for Kiev’s Nazi-military have been in Kiev for quite a while.
Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski has called it an open secret that Western soldiers are in Ukraine. German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz said, “there are already some troops from big countries in Ukraine.” (See this)
This is clearly the crossing of President Putin’s Red Line. Mr. Macron knows it, those who mandate the crossing of the Red Line, like the WEF and those dark Deep State Cult forces behind the WEF, know it – and Moscow knows that they know it.
Is it a provocation to pull Moscow into a hot war?
And the Moscow Concert Hall assault being a doubling-up of the Red-Line crossing?
This happening in the Ides of March, and just after the confirmed landslide re-election of President Putin on 17 March 2024.
Ides of March, is the day in the ancient Roman calendar that falls approximately on Mid-March and is associated with misfortune and doom. The date is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Most US wars were initiated in March. Is it a symbolic cult ritual of the west?
It would perfectly fit into the Death Cult of the Great Reset (WEF) and the UN Agenda 2030, which are currently plaguing humanity – worldwide.
There are other non-coincidences. The 24 March 2024 is the 25th anniversary of the 1999 US-NATO assault on Yugoslavia (Ides of March) – currently being commemorated by a three-day Conference 22-24 March 2024, in Belgrade.
The destruction and dismembering of Yugoslavia were also planned by a long hand. After Josip Tito’s death in May 1980 (he served in several leadership positions of Yugoslavia from 1943 – 1980) – there were some lesser communist successors, who were vulnerable to western / NATO “pressures”, and let what was a solid Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) deteriorate, western-style.
In 1990 Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia became de facto President of the SFR Yugoslavia attempting to hold the federation together – which in the ten years after President Tito’s departure was financially destabilized by the west. In the 1990s the SFR Yugoslavia was one of the first “cases” where the World Bank, IMF Washington Consensus was applied full-scale – indebting to destabilize, create internal unrest – and divide.
Mr. Milošević was captured, detained at the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prison in The Hague. He was poisoned on March 11, 2006 in his prison cell – shortly before his scheduled appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Once divided with constant civil unrest, there was “justification” for western rescue, i.e., bombing Yugoslavia literally into bits and pieces – leaving what we have today, numerous so-called independent former Yugoslavian Federal States – being economically and with “sanctions” controlled by the west.
This is the strategy Washington wants to apply to the Russian Federation – destabilizing it, fracturing it, Regime Change, and then taking it over.
Imagine! – The world’s biggest riches in the world’s largest country, absorbed or subdued by the (still) wannabe US Empire – and its European vassals.
It looks like the west wants a hot war with Russia, come hell or high water. Yes, it would be hell for Europe – for the third time in just over 100 years, and three-times for the same purpose – taking control of Russia, WWI, WWII and now WWIII?
A war – possibly nuclear – of which nobody can predict the outcome. As President Putin repeatedly said – there will be no winners, just absolute destruction.
Under no circumstances will Russia allow a take-over by an arrogant, criminal west. With Russian military’s far-superiority over US and NATO forces, this will not happen.
In the current Middle-East scenario, western leaders are supporting and funding the Israeli-Zionists, literally destroying and mass-killing – wiping out – Palestine, depicting an arrogance blinded by the zest for unlimited might, possibly driving humanity into a bottomless abyss.
A cleansing of this genocidal western “superiority” may bring birth of a new civilization – an evolution to a more spiritual and less material humanity.
—-
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Was the US behind the Moscow terror attack? The US and Ukraine will pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.
By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.
The Ukraine war could be poised to take a dramatic new turn
The terrorist operation in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall centre, which killed 143 people and injured hundreds of others, mostly concertgoers, was clearly carried out by a group that had been given serious military training. It could mark a paradigm shift in the Ukraine war presaging a strategic escalation and NATO’s official entry into the war.
Two weeks earlier, the US embassy in Moscow had warned its citizens that extremists were planning imminent attacks on large gatherings, including concerts, in the Russian capital, and warned them to stay away. That foreknowledge of the planning and execution of the operation raised suspicions about a degree of complicity. Washington’s denunciation of the atrocity, and swift disavowal of involvement, cannot be taken at face value.
When the initial warning was made, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked that if the US had information about terrorist actions of such enormity, it should have shared it with Russia. That was the first official hint from Moscow of suspected American complicity.
Two years into the Ukraine war, the US has begun to sense defeat. Russia has made a succession of gains, taking control of the Donbas region and annexing it after holding referendums.
Large-scale US and NATO intervention — on the material, military, and intelligence fronts — failed to achieve any major success. Russia did not collapse under the weight of draconian sanctions. Its economy remains strong. The predicted colour revolution never happened, nor the anticipated military coup to depose Putin.
The opposite occurred, with the Russian president getting re-elected with an 87% majority on a 74% turnout.
The resort to terrorist attacks in Moscow could be a mark of the US’ frustration and a response aimed at expanding the scope of the war. But that would not only be a losing bet. It could bring the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear war closer.
Putin announced on Saturday night that the eleven people involved in the attack, including four direct participants, had been apprehended.
Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the Russia Today broadcast network, Margarita Simonyan, published video excerpts of the interrogation of one of the suspects. He identified himself as Feredoun Shamsedin, born in 1988, who arrived in Russia from Turkey on 4 March. He said he had been recruited via Telegram after following an extremist preacher, by someone who offered him 5 million roubles ($5,000) to conduct a mass killing in Moscow. Half of the money was transferred to him in advance.
I met Ms. Simonyan when I visited Moscow recently. She was constantly accompanied by a security detail because she had been subjected to death threats. She said she believed the Crocus atrocity was masterminded by the Ukrainian regime, rather than by ISIS as the US media were claiming. Putin’s subsequent assertion that the perpetrators were arrested while heading towards the Ukrainian border reinforced that accusation.
Russia’s fingers of blame pointed at Ukraine were a portent of fierce retaliation. It seems to have already begun. Former president and current deputy national security chief Dmitri Medvedev warned immediately after the massacre that Russia would hunt down any Ukrainian leaders proven to have been involved.
Reading between the lines, that may imply that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could be top of the target list.
Two days before the Crocus attack, Putin threatened Ukraine with ”war’—abandoning the term special military operation’ — in response to French President Emanual Macron’s hint that NATO could send 90,000 fully equipped troops to Ukraine. Under Russian military doctrine, a declaration of war authorises the use of all available means, including nuclear weapons.
The US administration, disoriented and defeated in Ukraine and (so far) the Middle East, is fueling this escalation against Russia. It is the primary beneficiary of the Crocus attack. Not just to destabilise Russia by stoking ethnic tensions, but also to divert international attention away from its collusion in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the failure of its cynical attempt at the UN Security Council to sustain it under the guise of favouring (but not actually calling for) a cease-fire.
Putin won’t forgive this assault on his capital while it was celebrating the renewal of his presidential term. He is likely to make the US and Ukraine pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.
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