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☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Another Nail in Israel’s Coffin

Par : AHH — 24 avril 2024 à 17:27

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.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

A New Order Rises from the Ashes

Par : AHH — 20 avril 2024 à 10:19

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:

  1. You cannot explain the condoning and enabling of Genocide
  2. You cannot explain the vetoes of ceasefires
  3. You cannot explain the failure to condemn the attack on an Embassy (an echo in Quito’s invasion of Mexican Embassy)
    ☝ 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 … ]
  4. We are seeing the collapse of everything achieved in terms of regulating international affairs by rules since the 18th Century

🔅A geopolitical sea change in the international system is well underway.

  • The US and post-ww2 UN system are casualties.
  • The UN/US failed to rise to the challenge.
  • They now perpetuate evaporated western primacy that is not only resented as intolerable obstacle to common global work, but no longer reflective of the current constellation of dominant power in world affairs. Workarounds are evident everywhere and will accelerate, such as bilateral/regional dispute resolution mechanisms for the sabotage of the World Trade Organization by USUK.
  • The US will lose its veto power.
  • Why should the UN be in NYC?
  • Other Global South institutions such as BRICS will displace its role and mechanisms as formulator and enforcer of rules

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.

☐ ☆ ✇ STRATPOL

Le Japon décide de conserver ses parts dans les projets pétro-gaziers en Russie

Par : ActuStratpol — 16 avril 2024 à 10:16

japon sakhalin

japon sakhalinLe Japon a décidé de conserver ses parts dans les projets Sakhalin-1 et Sakhalin-2 car il les considère comme importants

L’article Le Japon décide de conserver ses parts dans les projets pétro-gaziers en Russie est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Iran’s Retaliatory Strikes

Par : AHH — 14 avril 2024 à 21:34

Last night, Iran carried out retaliatory strikes on Israel in response to the Israeli attack on the consulate in Damascus. We are joined by veteran war correspondents Hala Jaber and Elijah J. Magnier to discuss the significance of the strike, what it means for the conflict in Gaza, and its geopolitical implications.

Hala Jaber, a Lebanese-British journalist, was honored with the Amnesty International Journalist of the Year Award in 2003. She garnered the title of Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in both 2005 and 2006 for her exceptional coverage of the Iraq War.

Elijah J. Magnier, a veteran war correspondent with over 37 years of experience covering West Asia. He has resided in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and Syria for extended periods, specializing in political assessments, strategic planning, terrorist organizations, and non-state actors.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Crocus Terror: USUK points back at itself!

Par : AHH — 1 avril 2024 à 21:56

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:

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Terror in Moscow: what went down

Par : AHH — 28 mars 2024 à 19:31

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

#NewRulesPodcast

 

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection

Par : AHH — 26 mars 2024 à 00:13

The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.

By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.

Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.

December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”

January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.

January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.

February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.

February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.

Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.

Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).

Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.

March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.

March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.

March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.

March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.

March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.

ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms

The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi– similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.

And that brings us to the Tajik connection.

There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.

The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.

All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.

A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.

And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.

The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.

Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.

Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.

Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.

Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.

Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.

The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.

The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.

After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.

That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.

Oleh Tyahnybok, with McCain and Nuland

The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.

Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.

One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.

The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.

Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.

Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).

The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.

The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.

But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.

Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.

In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Double Crossing of the Red Line

Par : AHH — 25 mars 2024 à 18:05

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.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Fallout from Moscow’s Crocus City Hall

Par : AHH — 25 mars 2024 à 08:10

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.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Pakistan in End Times Eschatology

Par : AHH — 12 février 2024 à 16:14

A solid spiritual analysis by a sensitive and aware native. He rises above the labyrinthine politics and minutiae of Pakistan to focus on the two big picture points: (1) the persistent vassalage of elite Pakistani military corps to the British Empire mission against mankind (more recently the Anglo-Zionist), and (2) the interesting role Pakistan plays in Islamic eschatology. Once the terrible half-century fire of war was put out in Afghanistan with the fleeing of USUK in 2021, a new darkness settled onto Pakistan. “AfPak” was always intertwined for centuries in the Pashtun heartlands, but the deep concern at the moment is inside Pakistan proper, namely their Punjab heartland, perhaps driven mad with pleonexia.


There is much prospective speculation with which I disagree, being based on one man’s interpretation of Scripture, but the current reality of Pakistan’s near-total geopolitical isolation is manifest. It is at a sharp crossroads. Its tribulations are just ahead, as with most nations under the thumb of the Anglo-Zionists. They are all slated for such terrible political division and internal trials. The farmers revolt in Europe is merely the beginning everywhere…

Rockefeller’s four scenarios began with the planetary COVID Op. Total loss of confidence in political authorities was built-in. They got the compradore elites in most nations to commit the greatest crimes — against their own values and peoples! — then exposed it in most painful public terms, as happening now to those who carried out COVID. This implodes most societies, with “elites” being delegitimized. It facilitates the desired subsequent chaos, civil wars, and disintegration, after which they can “build back better” using the same old rebranded satanic paradigms at the hands of supranationalist zionist technocrats. The target is really the modern understanding of Westphalian nationhood… So they plan and hope.

Undoubtedly calm and mature oases of civilizational resilience will remain after the imperial planetary hybrid war. These will serve as surviving magnetic poles gathering allies to fight back the universal onslaught, such as through BRICS, SCO, EAEU, BRI, ASEAN, etc…

Pakistan serves as an instructive test-case, being an amalgamation of dissimilar tribes cobbled together by the departing British; whether studied from geopolitical dead-end or spiritual dead-end, the fall of Pakistan may be our universal conundrum right now. Most imperially created borders of the past are under question for the New Order — whether the Ukraine/European (Yalta-Potsdam), African (1885 Berlin Conference), the greater Middle East (WW1 Sykes-Picot), Balkan (post-Yugoslav NATO), Latin American (pre-WW1 Monroe), even lands stolen from Mexico or the Russian Empire.. The Interregnum labors mightily.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

Will the Hegemon Ever Accept a New Westphalian World Order?

Par : AHH — 1 février 2024 à 08:36

There will be no peaceful road towards the new Westphalian world order. Fasten your seat belts – it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture

A new book by scholar Glenn Diesen, The Ukraine War & The Eurasian World Order,  out in mid-February, asks the make-or-break question of the young 21st century: will the Hegemon accept a new geopolitical reality, or will it go Captain Ahab on Moby Dick and drag us all to the depths of a – nuclear – abyss?

An extra touch of poetic beauty is that the analysis is conducted by a Scandinavian. Diesen is a professor at the University of Southeast Norway (USN) and an associate editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. He had a stint at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, working closely with the inimitable Sergey Karaganov.

It goes without saying that European MSM won’t touch him; rabid yells – “Putinista!” – prevail, including in Norway, where he’s been a prime target of cancel culture.

That’s irrelevant, anyway. What matters is that Diesen, an affable, unfailingly polite man and an ultra-sharp scholar, is aligned with the rarified cream of the crop who is asking the questions that really matter; among them, whether we are heading towards a Eurasian-Westphalian world order.

Apart from a meticulous deconstruction of the proxy war in Ukraine that devastatingly debunks, with proven facts, the official NATOstan narrative, Diesen offers a concise, easily accessible mini-history of how we got here.

He starts to make the case harking back to the Silk Roads: “The Silk Road was an early model of globalization, although it did not result in a common world order as the civilizations of the world were primarily connected to nomadic intermediaries.”

The demise of the Heartland-based Silk Road, actually roads, was caused by the rise of the thalassocratic European powers reconnecting the world in a different way. Yet the hegemony of the collective West could only be fully achieved by applying Divide and Rule across Eurasia.

We did not in fact have “five centuries of western dominance”, according to Diesen: it was more like three, or even two (see, for instance, the work of Andre Gunder Frank). In a historical Long View that barely registers.

What is indeed The Big Picture now is that “the unique world order” produced by controlling “the vast Eurasian continent from the maritime periphery is coming to an end”.


Mackinder is hit by a train

Diesen hits the nail on the head when it comes to the Russia-China strategic partnership – on which the overwhelmingly majority of European intellectuals is clueless (a crucial exception is French historian, demographer and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd, whose latest book I analyzed here.)

With a lovely on the road formulation, Diesen shows how “Russia can be considered the successor of the Mongolian nomads as the last custodian of the Eurasian land corridor”, while China revives the Ancient Silk Roads “with economic connectivity”. In consequence, “a powerful Eurasian gravitational pull is thus reorganizing the supercontinent and the wider world.”

Poviding context, Diesen needs to engage in an obligatory detour to the basics of the Great Game between the Russian and British empires. What stands out is how Moscow already was pivoting to Asia all the way to the late 19th century, when Russian Finance Minister Sergei Witte started to develop a groundbreaking road map for a Eurasia political economy, “borrowing from Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List.”

Witte “wanted to end Russia’s role as an exporter of natural resources to Europe as it resembled ‘the relations of colonial countries with their metropolises’”.

And that implies going back to Dostoyevsky, who argued that “Russians are as much Asiatics as European. The mistake of our policy for the past two centuries has been to make the people of Europe believe that we are true Europeans (…) It will be better for us to seek alliances with the Asiatics.” Dostoyevsky meets Putin-Xi.

Diesen also needs to go through the obligatory references to Mackinder’s “heartland” obsession – which is the basis of all Anglo-American geopolitics for the past hundred and twenty years.

Mackinder was spooked by railway development – especially the Trans-Siberian by the Russians – as it enabled Moscow to “emulate the nomadic skills of the Scythians, Huns and Mongols” that were essential to control most of Eurasia.

Mackinder was particularly focused on railways acting “chiefly as feeders to ocean-going commerce”. Ergo, being a thalassocratic power was not enough: “The heartland is the region to which under modern conditions, sea power can be refused access.”

And that’s what leads to the Rosetta Stone of Anglo-American geopolitics: to “prevent the emergence of a hegemon or a group of states capable of dominating Europe and Eurasia that could threaten the dominant maritime power.”

That explains everything from WWI and WWII to the permanent NATO obsession in preventing a solid rapprochement between Germany and Russia, by any means necessary.


The Little Multipolar Helmsman

Diesen offers a succinct perspective of Russian Eurasianists of the 1920s such as Trubetskoi and Savitsky, who were promoting an alternative path to the USSR.

They conceptualized that with Anglo-American thalassocracy applying Divide and Rule in Russia, what was needed was a Eurasian political economy based on mutual cooperation: a stark prefiguration of the Russia-China drive to multipolarity.

Savitsky in fact could have been writing today: “Eurasia has previously played a unifying role in the Old World. Contemporary Russia, absorbing this tradition”, must abandon war as a method of unification.

Cue to post-Maidan in 2014. Moscow finally got the message that trying to build a Greater Europe “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” was a non-starter. Thus the new concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership was born. Sergey Karaganov, with whom Diesen worked at the Higher School of Economics, was the father of the concept.

Greater Eurasia Partnership repositions Russia “from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the center of a large super-region.” In short, a pivot to the East – and the consolidation of the Russia-China partnership.

Diesen dug up an extraordinary passage in the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, proving how the Little Helmsman in 1990 was a visionary prefiguring multipolar China:

“In the future when the world becomes three-polar, four-polar or five-polar, the Soviet Union, no matter how weakened it may be and even if some of its republics withdraw from it, will still be one pole. In the so-called multipolar world, China too will be a pole (…) Our foreign policies remain the same: first, opposing hegemonism and power politics and safeguarding world peace; and second, working to establish a new international political order and a new international economic order.”

Diesen breaks it down, noting how China has to a certain extent “replicated the three-pillared American System of the early 19th century, in which the U.S. developed a manufacturing base, physical transportation infrastructure, and a national bank to counter British economic hegemony.”

Enter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); the AIIB; the de-dollarization drive; the China International Payment System (CIPS); increased use of yuan in international trade; the use of national currencies; Made in China 2025; The Digital Silk Road; and last but not least, BRICS 10 and the NDB, the BRICS development bank.

Russia matched some of it – as in the Eurasia Development Bank (EDB) of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and in advancing the harmonization of financial arrangements of BRI and EAEU projects via the SCO.

Diesen is one of the very few Western analysts who actually understands the drive to multipolarity: “BRICS+ is anti-hegemony and not anti-Western, as the objective is to create a multipolar system and not assert collective dominance over the West.”

Diesen also contends that the emerging Eurasian World Order is “seemingly based on conservative principles.” That’s correct, as the Chinese system is drenched in Confucianism (social integration, stability, harmonious relationships, respect for tradition and hierarchy), part of the keen sense of belonging to a distinct, sophisticated civilization: that’s the foundation of Chinese nation-building.

Can’t bring Russia-China down

Diesen’s detailed analysis of the Ukraine proxy war, “a predictable consequence of an unsustainable world order”, is extrapolated to the battleground where the future, new world order is being decided; it is “either global hegemony or Westphalian multipolarity.”

Everyone with a brain by now knows how Russia absorbed and re-transformed everything thrown by the collective West after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). The problem is the rarified plutocracy that really runs the show will always refuse to acknowledge reality, as Diesen frames it: “Irrespective of the outcome of the war, the war has already become the graveyard of liberal hegemony.

The overwhelming majority of the Global South clearly sees that even as what Ray McGovern indelibly defined as MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cast the Russia-China partnership as the main “threats” – in reality those that created the “gravitational pull to reorganize the world order towards multipolarity” – they can’t bring Russia-China down geoeconomically.

So there’s no question “the conflicts of the future world order will continue to be militarized.” That’s where we are at the crossroads. There will be no peaceful road towards to Westphalian world order. Fasten your seat belts – it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

☐ ☆ ✇ Global South

How Yemen changed everything

Par : AHH — 29 décembre 2023 à 16:30

In a single move, Yemen’s Ansarallah has checkmated the west and its rules-based order.

By Pepe Escobar and first posted at The Cradle.

Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated.

Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now.

The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.

Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea.

Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions.

It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.

Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes

For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cape of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways.

Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers.

All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?

The new architecture will be framed in West Asia 

The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.”

This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.”

That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.

Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.

Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators.

On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.”

For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel.

A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.”

Keep in mind we’re not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; we’re still on Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb.

Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system.

The paper tiger is in a jam 

Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.

That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.

When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down.

So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy?

Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.”

Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.

Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”.

None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty.

Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.”

Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula.

This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.

☐ ☆ ✇ Vu du Droit

Empire romain devenu fou : une énorme corruption

Par : Régis de Castelnau — 17 juillet 2023 à 09:18
Max Blumenthal est un journaliste américain qui a été invité à s’exprimer devant le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU sur le rôle de l’aide militaire américaine à l’Ukraine dans le conflit avec la Russie et les véritables motifs du soutien de Washington… Continue Reading
☐ ☆ ✇ Red Samovar

[Analyse] La fin des chars de combat T-72 en Europe

Par : B.G — 24 février 2023 à 20:47
La fin du T-72 en Europe.
☐ ☆ ✇ STRATPOL

Aux origines de l’arme nucléaire nord-coréenne

Par : Xavier Moreau — 4 avril 2019 à 20:26

Parmi les idées fausses les plus répandues à l’étranger se trouve celle que la Russie serait responsable de l’apparition de l’arme

L’article Aux origines de l’arme nucléaire nord-coréenne est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

☐ ☆ ✇ STRATPOL

Feu nucléaire nord-coréen, retour aux sources

Par : Xavier Moreau — 30 janvier 2019 à 17:08

Les soviétiques puis les Russes ne sont pas à l’origine du programme nucléaire militaire nord-coréen. La technologie utilisée par Pyongyang

L’article Feu nucléaire nord-coréen, retour aux sources est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.

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