Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Empire, Communication and NATO Wars
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Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
Steps to Nuclear Confrontation in West Asia
This is the main point: with or without Russian weapons, Iran is a competent and canny weapons producer.
Arms Technology describes this system thusly:
“Bavar-373 is an indigenous surface-to-air missile defence system developed by the Iranian Defence Ministry. It can intercept aircraft and drones as well as destroy high-speed ballistic missiles.
The air defence system was launched on the country’s National Day of Defence Industry in August 2019. It is in service with the Iranian Armed Forces. The stimulator of the Bavar-373 missile system was unveiled in September 2021.
The Bavar-373 missile system is claimed to be more advanced than its Russian counterpart S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile system. Several studies and tests conducted by the Iranian military showed that the system is superior to the American Patriot PAC-3 air defence system.
Bavar-373 was first employed in a joint air defence exercise of the Iranian Army and Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in October 2020. It successfully destroyed stand-off targets during the exercise, which was codenamed ‘Guardians of Velayat Sky-9
Bavar-373 is an impenetrable, anti-hacking surface-to-air missile defence system comprising a vertical launching system, two acquisition and engagement radars, Sayyad-4 missiles, and a command-and-control centre.
The design minimises the need for additional support equipment and systems. The vertical launching system features square launchers that are identical to the launchers utilised by naval warships for air defence.
The Bavar-373 missile system can be prepared for launch easily. It features anti-stealth capability that allows it to detect hidden targets with a very low radar cross-section.
The weapon system provides high operational speed, as well as enhanced shelf life and operator safety. The spare parts of the system can be easily replaced.
The air defence system incorporates an advanced radio detector and secure protocols between targets, missiles and radars.
Bavar-373 can be armed with three different types of missiles designed to neutralise different targets at varying altitudes. It can detect up to 100 targets, track 60, and engage six of them simultaneously.
The air defence missile system has a maximum detection range of 320km and a tracking range of 260km. It can engage targets up to 200km away and at a maximum altitude of 27km”.
The fly in the ointment in 2007 was Russian deference to the US and Israel, a time when Russia was still valiantly but foolishly trying to establish its credentials as a promising member of Western civilization. In 2015, a year after the Western instigated coup d’etat in the Maidan in Kiev, the Kremlin formally lifted its own ban on the delivery of S-300 missiles to Iran, setting the legal groundwork for the possible Russian sale of a powerful air-defense system to Tehran. Iran purchased S-300 systems from Russia in a a deal worth $800 million in 2016. Moscow completed the delivery of the S-300s to Iran in late 2016, according to Russia's state-run news agency, Tass.
Further insights into the Russia-Iran-Israel dynamic surfaced earlier this year in a CSIS seminar (CSIS) involving Max Bergmann the director of the Europe, Russia, Eurasia Center and the Stuart Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Dr. Jon Alterman from the same division, and Dr. Hanna Notte, a senior associate nonresident fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program.
Alterman: “But more so, the one broad dynamic is just more confrontation. The logic of confrontation with the West is really dictating Russia's approach to the region. And the best example of that is how Russia has navigated the post-October 7th Middle East and the war in Gaza and we'll talk about that later. Now, a second dynamic and that is very much related, is that I would say we see a growing Russian tilt towards anti-Western forces in the region. Meaning Iran, but also Iran's partners and proxies in the Axis of Resistance. And we can talk about how that has manifested. Now, I think Russia still cares about pursuing certain balancing acts in the region that have been characteristic of its approach to the region for a long time.
And Russia still cares about, for example, its relations with the Gulf Arab states, in particular with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because that is important to Russia economically. But I think Russia has been willing to somewhat sacrifice its relations with Israel since October 7th. We've seen this quite stark pro-Palestinian posturing over the war in Gaza. So, I think there is this pro-Iran, pro-Axis of Resistance tilt. And one way in which that manifests very much, and we can talk about this more, is in a growing Russian-Iranian military defense relationship, which goes far beyond the drones that Russia has procured from Iran for its military campaign against Ukraine.
And I think we should be looking at how that relationship is going to evolve into the future.
Mr. Bergmann: Maybe, if I could just follow up on that last point. Because it strikes me that in Russia's role in the Middle East prior to the war there was a large military component of Russia being an arms provider of S-400s to Iran. Support for Assad in Syria, but also potential arms sales, or arms sales to the Gulf States. But now Russia needs to absorb arms, it's not exporting as much. It needs countries to provide it with aid. It's getting that from North Korea in particular, but also Chinese support. But Iran has been really helpful here and maybe you could outline what is the nature of this military relationship now. And also, what is Russia providing back to Iranians?
Dr. Notte: Sure, happy to. I would say that the Russia-Iran military relationship was one, I mean, it's long-standing, it goes back decades. But until 2022 there was what one could call a patron-client dynamic in that relationship where, really Iran was on the receiving end hoping for certain systems from the Russians, which were not always forthcoming. If I think back to 2010 when the Russians, under President Medvedev did not provide the S-300 system to Iran. But we didn't really see Iranian support to Russia in any sort of a meaningful scale. What have we seen since? Since 2022 of course, the UAVs, the Shahed drones, I mean different types of Shahed drones.
But not just complete systems, importantly also Iran sharing production technology for those kinds of systems, enabling the Russians to effectively indigenize the production of those drones in Russia, in Yelabuga and in Tatarstan. The Iranians providing training on how to operate those UAVs and that training has happened in various countries based on what we know from reporting. Actually, including in Syria, where according to Ukrainian military intelligence, Hezbollah have trained Russian officers on the use of Iranian drones on Syrian soil. So, quite a sort of convoluted situation there.
But the Iranians have also given support to Russia for their ground war with ammunition, with shells. I think that's sometimes less talked about because we pay so much attention to the drones. So, that's what Russia has gotten from Iran. We can also have a separate conversation about learning on techniques how to overcome the effect of sanctions and sanctions evasion. There might be a lot of knowledge diffusion going on between those two partners in that area that's obviously harder to study from the open source. But certainly, they have come to agreements in that domain that they're going to work together on countering or mitigating the effects of Western sanctions.
If we now look at what the Russians have given the Iranians in return, you know, there's certain things that the Iranians have wanted for quite a long time that they haven't gotten yet. For example, the Sukhoi 35 fighter aircraft, even though there's been sort of intermittent talk about deals and delivery forthcoming, but we haven't seen those systems delivered. We've seen trainer aircraft, we've seen increased collaboration on electronic warfare, which is having the Israelis very worried in terms of what the Russians give the Iranians in terms of support in that area. We have seen Bill Burns, head of the CIA, state on multiple occasions this concern of Russian engineers supporting Iran's missile and space launched vehicle program.
So there's different areas in which the two sides are probably working together. And then one final point, I think that's important to mention here is that we've also seen indications of Russia passing captured Western origin technology captured on the battlefield in Ukraine to Iran. Which is probably studying those systems, and possibly using them for the purpose of reverse engineering or sort of looking into those systems. And of course, the Iranians are probably getting a lot of operational insights and sort of learning from how their own systems fair against Western air defenses or other technologies on the battlefield in Ukraine.
So, I think we need to not just look at hard systems and hard technology that is passing past both, in both directions but also the area of knowledge diffusion and intangible assistance.”
From all of this I take away the following, and add to it: (1) there has been a long-standing, two-way relationship between Russia and Iran to do with arms; in other words, this is by no means one-way patron-client thing; (2) in the recent past this relationship has been trumped by Russian ambition to be accepted into an international community led by the neoliberal Western powers, which led Russia to prioritize its (also long-standing) relationship with Israel, and its far more complex relationship with the US, so that Russia has put its broader geopolitical interests above the regional interests of its allies in West Asia; (3) Iran’s history of relations with Russia, the US, and Israel have long ago counselled it to be very wary of dependence on or trust in any one of them; (4) that Iran has sustained its moral opposition to the use of nuclear weapons even while playing a diplomatic game - for the purposes of negotiation about the severity of Western sanctions imposed on Iran on the false pretext that it is a nuclear threat - about degrees of uranium enrichment; (5) while we should not simply reject the possibility that Iran has covertly developed a nuclear weapon or that it does not have some form of pact with elements in Pakistan that might place a nuclear weapons capacity in Iranian hands so as to achieve a measure of justice in Gaza
Distrust with Russia and Europe will never have been more intense than during the collapse at then President Trump’s insistence, of the JCPOA agreement on Iran’s nuclear energy program, at a time when Russia, on the other hand, was pioneering the construction of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran (a project, by the way, with a very long history).
In 2022 Iran was reported to be seeking Russia’s help to bolster its nuclear program, in the form of some kind of backup plan should a lasting nuclear deal with world powers fail to materialize. It was said that Iran asked Russia for help acquiring additional nuclear materials and with nuclear fuel fabrication, resources that could help Iran power its nuclear reactors and could potentially further shorten Iran’s so-called “breakout time” to create a nuclear weapon.
To this day, the CIA continues to insist - contrary to claims from Netanyahu and US neocons notwithstanding - that there is no evidence, even on the brink of a war between Iran (which has no nuclear warhead) and Israel (which likely has over 200), that Iran has made a decision to produce a nuclear weapon.
Russia’s relations with the US today are, of course, very different to how they were in 2007 and one might not expect to find continuing hesitation by Russia in consolidating an agreement with Iran that includes military cooperation. Russia signalled its readiness to sign such an agreement back in June this year, and more recently it was expected that the treaty or the “strategic partnership” would be signed in Kazan during the BRICS summit. Iranian President Pezeshkian in his most recent statement on this matter said simply that he “hoped” the agreement would be signed. Commentator Pepe Escobar, talking with Judge Napolitano earlier today expressed full confidence that the agreement would be signed, but that it might not be signed until sometime towards the end of the year.
Given the current state of crisis, this dilatory approach to the treaty seems quite strange. Some commentators, including Ray McGovern, Gilbert Doctorow and myself, have been inclined to suspect a Russian coolness, following the possible murder of former Iranian President Raisi in May. Raisi was a close friend to Moscow whereas his successor, following a popular election, Pezeshkian, is a known advocate for improved Iranian relations with the West, and seems to have been duped by the US and Israel into a posture of restraint in the face of Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah leaders in return for a ceasefire in Gaza which never materialized. Yet following Pezeshkian’s recent meeting with Putin at the East Asian Economic summit, Pezeshkian told media outlets in Tehran that Russia could be doing more to bring an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yes, indeed it could. Furthermore, Iran did indeed launch a surprisingly impactful barrage of ballistic missiles on Israel on October 1st.
If there is help that Russia could be giving Iran that it has not already provided, then the arrival of any such help is now well past its due date. Iran’s apparent refusal to consider any form of preemptive attack on Israel amidst an international chatter that appears to take Israel at its word that it will retaliate for October 1st can be read as a dangerously naive belief in the game of calibrated escalation, or as a strategic delay while Iran absorbs new Russian arms shipments, or as a quiet despair in the knowledge that it lacks the means to sustain an escalatory relationship, or as a very prudent, nuanced handling of an aggressive maniac in a manner calculated to yield as little damage as possible.
I am inclined to think that even if Russia has not provided S-400 air defense systems, as I and others have recently intimated, Iran has nonetheless benefitted from other kinds of state-of-the-art Russian help, including, very likely, hypersonic kinzhal missiles, and that Iran has a very sizable stock of more missiles, many likely developed by Iran itself, and that if Israel does strike Iran the Iranian response will be very considerable.
I do think we should worry, by the way, that Israel will conduct a strike on Iran during the BRICS summit in an Israeli show of disdain for BRICS every bit as arrogant and nauseous and stupid as the disdain it has shown the UN. UNIFIL positions remain in place in Southern Lebanon, by the way, even if their soldiers have not yet fired back on the IDF.
Steps to Nuclear Confrontation in Ukraine
The speech by a now unelected Zelenskiy to his equally unelected RADA two days ago, and to the European Council a day ago, boils down to demands for instant membership of NATO, integration of Ukrainian military into that of NATO so that Ukraine benefits from NATO’s nuclear umbrella, as well as from protection under the cover of a US nuclear umbrella, with US/NATO nukes positioned on Ukrainian soil along with a NATO army, all in return for the laughable if not preposterous notion that after the war Ukrainian troops can take over the role up until now fulfilled by US forces of protection of Europe.
Europe, be afraid, very afraid. With “protectors” like these…..
If Zelenskiy cannot get these things, and there is very little objective reason to think he will, then he threatens that Ukraine will build its own nuclear bomb. This would require him to obtain the materials without Russian detection and then to build a bomb, a process that would very likely take at least a year, by which time there would be every good reason to expect Russia to have crushed Kiev, forced regime change, assassinated or otherwise have disposed, once and for all, of the insatiably manipulative Zelenskiy (if his own Banderite colleagues or the Ukrainian people have not done the job before the Russians get there), or allowed Zelenskiy safe passage to one of his Mediterranean palaces and let him set up just another risible, hopelessly expectant “government in exile.”
Perhaps Zelenskiy could get his bomb through Amazon from Israel, which never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty anyway (if it had, it would have had to admit to its possession of nukes. The US would not have legally been allowed to funnel aid to Israel had its illegal acquisition of nukes been confessed. I expect there are all kinds of mischief that the two maniacs could get up to with the joint development of nuclear forces.
Zelenskiy’s recent comments demonstrate that Russia was entirely right to launch the SMO when it did. Zelenskiy is as much a maniac, even more of a maniac, than Netanyahu, if the numbers of deaths that a maniac causes is any measure of maniacness. That 20% of recent Ukrainian conscripts are beaten to death by the Polish-staffed Territorial Recruitment Office kind of says it all. Zelenskiy’s nuclear blackmail will have frightened the wretched poodles of Europe and of the UK that threw the maniac their wealth, their kisses, their credibility and the credibiity of Western civilization and “rule of law.”
The US can look forward to saving itself the $1.5 billion that Zelenskiy says the US currently sends to Kiev each month just to keep the Administration afloat. Perhaps the might of the US, still the strongest economy on the planet (at least in terms of nominal GDP), and fast making clear blue economic water between itself and the newly poor countries of Europe and Japan and the G7 that trusted the US to look after their interests and whose competition the US has done its best to suppress, could do something vaguely useful, like introduce free healthcare.
But beware of the kick from left side, this time in the form of some kind of NATO assault through Finland on Saint Petersburg, or some new NATO push into Belarus or Russia, that will serve not to prevent a Russian win, but to delay it at the cost of a few hundreds of thousands more lives than have already been sacrificed.
Palestinian Deaths 335,500 Gaza Dead Ignored By Western Mainstream Media: Input To Special Rapporteur Report To Human Rights Council
by Dr Gideon Polya
Excerpts
“I have made a detailed and documented Submission (below) in response to the Call for input for the report of the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory to the Human Rights Council 58thsession. My position is that a major contributor to the horrific and ongoing Palestinian Genocide and specifically the ongoing Gaza Genocide is lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream media. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated.
“Put simply and bluntly, a major contributor to the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Gaza Genocide in particular is massive and remorseless lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. Presstitute is defined thus by Wikipedia: “Presstitute is a term that references journalists and ‘talking heads’ in mainstream media who give biased and predetermined views misleadingly tailored to fit a particular partisan, financial or business agenda, thus neglecting the fundamental duty to report news impartially” [1].
“War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate. The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth. More specifically, the key moral imperatives from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust – and indeed from all WW2 holocausts and from all of about 70 genocides and holocausts – are “zero tolerance for lying”, “zero tolerance for racism”, “bear witness” and “never again to anyone”. However these moral imperatives are resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream presstitutes lying to hide numerous genocidal atrocities in living memory by the US and the US Alliance, including Apartheid Israel”.…
“Palestine was a culturally rich part of the Semitic Fertile Crescent that gave the World the alphabet, civilization, cities, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, plant breeding and philosophy. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was the World’s second oldest mosque. Gaza had a rich history. The Nabateans exported spices and perfumes to the Roman Empire via Gaza. Gaza was important in the spread of India-derived Arab mathematics to Italy, Spain and Europe [19]. Oil was discovered in Iraq in 1906, the British invaded Iraq in 1914, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Middle East between the UK and France, war-related famine killed 100,000 Palestinians and 2 days after the 31 October 2017 Australia victory over the Turks at Beersheba the British gave over Palestine as a Homeland for non-Semitic Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist settler colonialists, and thence started the Palestinian Genocide after 400 peaceful years under the Ottoman Turkish Caliphate. In 1948 the British-armed and British-trained Zionists seized 78% of Palestine and expelled 800,000 Palestinians (about 60% of the population). In 1967 a nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel seized all of Palestine plus bits of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and expelled a further 400,000 Arabs – and thus began the 57 year Occupation.
“Before the 7 October 2023 Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp the World’s 15 million Palestinians included 7 million Exiled Palestinians (excluded from the homeland continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3,000 years), 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians (with no human rights under brutal foreign military rule and confined to ever-dwindling West Bank patches and the Gaza Concentration Camp), and 2.1 million Israeli Palestinians (able to vote for the government ruling them albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based, Nazi-style discriminatory laws and under threat of dispossession and expulsion). Before 7 October 2023 the Gaza Concentration Camp was already subject to severe blockade for over 16 years (from June 2007), as well as several massive bombing and killing episodes, although none as horrendously lethal as the present Gaza Massacre. Before 7 October 2023 the deadly Jewish Israeli-imposed blockade was designed to permit bare survival of the Gaza population. Before 7 October 2023, the GDP per capita was about $52,000 for Occupier Apartheid Israel, $3,400 for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a mere $l,000 for the Gaza Concentration Camp. There was a 10 year life expectancy gap between Occupied Palestinians and Israelis [21].
“Before 7 October 2023 the Indigenous Palestinians represented about 51% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel but after the killing of 335,500 Gazans by 5 September 2024 this had shrunk to 50%. Apartheid Israel is a democracy by genocide. Before the 7 October 2023 Breakout the Palestinian Genocide was associated with about 2.2 million deaths from violence (50,000) and deprivation (the remainder). However as set out below the Palestinian Genocide is now associated with about 2.5 million deaths from violence (100,000) and imposed deprivation (2.4 million) i.e. similar to Jewish deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million) [22-24] and indeed I have referred to a Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust [8, 9, 25, 26].
“Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (6 October 2024): “Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams. An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were children [16,596 children], and 21 per cent were women [10,561 women and hence 23,134 men]. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres” [27]. The Mainstream media have been typically reporting about 40,000 killed for some months but this does not include those dead in the rubble (perhaps 10,000) and a huge and growing number of Gazans killed by the Jewish Israeli siege and the deadly lack of water, food, shelter, electricity, sanitation, medicine and medical care”.
Western Censorship
Attack on journalist part of broad crackdown on Palestine reporting, activism.
“Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.
“A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”
“An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.
“Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.
“Winstanley is active on several social media platforms, and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter/X, where he frequently shares articles, other peoples’ opinions and his own comments on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, British government support for these crimes, and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide”.
RUSSIA
Pressuring Russia from the West
By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 10/4/24
Excerpts:
“Finland and Estonia, two NATO countries, have recently signed an agreement about Baltic Sea security. Moreover, and more importantly, they have announced their intention to blockade the Gulf of Finland by closing it to Russian shipping. The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted by stating that Russia would regard any such action as a violation of maritime law. Establishing their boundaries (pertaining to the Gulf of Finland’s contiguous zones) would be within their sovereign rights, of course. However, restricting maritime shipping the way they intend to do cannot be described as anything else than a violation of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – with potential serious consequences.
“The Gulf of Finland extends to Saint Petersburg in Russia to the east. Its southern coast contains a network of ports plus the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. The port of Primorsk at the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland is important for oil products, for example – there are several others. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of the gulf for Russia. For one thing the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline began in Finnish waters.
“With that said, as Pavel Klachkov (Russian political scientist and a Financial University director) remarks, NATO’s military presence is increasing in the Baltic region, which is such a strategic area for Russia as well. In April, for instance, NATO joint military exercises commenced in Lithuania. Finland’s accession to the Alliance, he argues, gave “new momentum to the northern direction, where conditions are being created for a potential conflict between NATO and Russia.” The Atlantic Alliance has also begun setting up a headquarters in Mikkeli, a Finnish city, which lies very close to the Russian border.”…
“Moreover, NATO exercises have been rehearsing the blockade of key routes for Russia – both the Suwalki Gap and the Gulf of Finland are crucial for supplying Russia’s northwestern regions. This is the larger context behind the recent Finnish-Estonian announcement…
“In November 2020 I wrote that, under Joe Biden’s presidency, Washington would pursue the policy of countering and encircling Russia, bringing changes not only in US relations to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but to the entirety of Europe. At the time, tensions were rising in most – if not all – countries neighboring Russia. For one thing, in September 2020 NATO troops took part in provocative military exercises in Estonia near the Russian border.
“Earlier that same year Washington sent no less than 20,000 troops to Europe to take part in the NATO exercise “Defender Europe 20”, It involved 18 countries across 10 European nations, including Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia (all of which share a border with the Russian Federation). It was described as the “largest military exercises on the continent since before the end of the Cold War.” From 2020 onwards things intensified considerably – with vast consequences for the continent and the whole world.
Pressuring Russia from the South
Anatol Lieven, Almut Rochowanski and Artin DerSimonian
Posted on October 17, 2024
Excerpts
Executive Summary
“Until recently, Georgia was often held up in the West as an example of a relatively healthy post-Soviet democracy. For example, the Atlantic Council report “2024 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity Around the World” rated Georgia in the top quarter of all nations for the health of its democratic institutions, ahead of countries like Poland and Ukraine. Yet, in advance of this month’s Georgian parliamentary election, claims are being made that the ruling Georgian Dream party is falling under the control of Moscow, and that Georgia is on the edge of sliding into autocracy. Both the U.S. and the E.U. have begun to put sanctions in place against Georgia. What happened?
In this research brief, we give a background analysis of the current challenges to Georgian democracy. We explore the history of Georgia’s democracy over the past several decades, conditions leading into the upcoming election, recent controversies such as the “foreign influence” law put forward by the ruling party, and the Georgian government’s reluctance to take a stronger line against Russia over the Ukraine war.
We argue that a fuller examination supports a more balanced view of Georgia’s situation, one that avoids an extreme black-and-white perspective on Georgian politics and the current election. Claims that the ruling party has fully embraced a Putin-like authoritarianism, or that it has even fallen under Russia’s direct control, seem highly exaggerated given Georgia’s recent history of real — if imperfect — democracy, and evidence of the government’s desire to cooperate with the West and join the E.U.
Unfortunately, it remains true that heated rhetoric on both sides has raised the stakes of the coming elections, and increased the likelihood of a new political crisis that could destabilize Georgia and potentially risk its relationship with the West. The Georgian government has threatened to ban opposition parties after the election, while the opposition has implied that if they do not accept the results of the elections, they will attempt to overturn them through street demonstrations.
Western governments should seek to avoid playing into this spiral of mutual radicalization between opposing political sides in Georgia and stress the importance of the Georgian people deciding their own future through democratic means. Western analysts should also appreciate the objective imperatives created for Georgian policymakers by Georgia’s geographical position bordering on Russia and its economic ties to Russia.
The U.S. and the E.U. can best honor Georgians’ right to self-determination by supporting election monitoring by objective international observers, and by committing to respect the election’s outcome. Georgian democracy would be hurt, not helped, if the West supports efforts to overturn an election result due to dissatisfaction with its outcome”.
Yahaya Sinwar
Western mainstream media are anxious to sell the notion that Yahya Sinwar, assassinated within the past day by Israel in southern Gaza was the architect of October 7 2023, responsible, they say, for the killings of over 1,000 Israelis and the taking of over 200 hostages. The idea that October 7 was simply one more cry for the liberation of a people abused and suppressed by Israel since the inception of the apartheid state gets no press today and never does. Nor the fact that some 50% of those killedon October 7 were killed by Israelis applying the Hannibal doctrine, that the most horrific of crimes attributed to the Hamas have been proven to be Israeli propaganda fabrications, and that most of the hostages are dying as a result of Israeli bombings and Israeli neglect.
This is the Yahya Sinwar trap, the selling of the idea to an apparently credulous public that monsters come out of nowhere, unbidden, to disturb the sleep of the oh-so-innocent, the so-deserving West (did we not all deserve Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk - are not these the paragons of human blessedness?), heirs to the perpetrators of the greatest genocides - as of Native Americans by White invaders, of Inca and Aztec indigenous by the conquistadores, or African and Amazonian slaves to the rubber lust of Belgium’s King Leopold, or the holocaust by German Nazis of the Jews and millions more. There is no room in this idea for centuries of despoliation, mass murder, enslavement, because it is unthinkable that the West, now having basked itself for a few years in the self-annointed goodness of me-too feminism, same sex marriage and LGBT orthodoxy, could ever have been responsible or might still be responsible for anything really bad that might give cause to monsters to monsterize.
The past, in this telling, has no consequences, leaves no traces. Ukrainian neo-Nazis just spring up from nowhere, from a non-history; US troops in Germany are just visiting tourists; don’t dare say the post-war occupation of the defeated of Germany and Japan never actually ended.
As the world waits for Israel to strike Iran, determined as Israel appears to be to lure a not-so-unwilling imperial hegemon into the fray of a regional war - possibly World War 3, possibly the end of the human species - the slaying of Yahya Sinwar somehow escapes notice as the start of Israel’s strike, in the same breath as reports of US strikes by B2 stealth Spirit bombers of five underground weapons storage sites in Yemen announce US readiness to join Israel in its campaign of regional slaughter.
A B-2 "Spirit" stealth bomber has just been used by the Americans to subdue the Houthis, in a move that announces a broader and deeper involvement of the US Empire in the Middle East conflagration. This type of aircraft has also been used to attack and intimidate smaller powers: Primarily designed as a nuclear bomber, the B-2 was first used in combat to drop conventional, non-nuclear ordnance in the Kosovo War in 1999. It was later used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen.[6][7]
This generation of B2, at a cost of $2 billion per plane (there are 19 operational) can deliver conventional and nuclear warheads, and can fly without re-fuelling for distances up to 6,000 nautical miles - certainly enough to get a fellow from Missouri to Tehran. Their huge payload allows for the dropping of GBU-57 MOP “bunker busters,” - GPS-guided 30,000 pound bombs that can strike targets up to 200 feet below ground before exploding. That these weapons are used against the Yemenis but not the Russisans nor, yet, Iran, may signal US deference to a nuclear Russia and a potentially nuclear Iran.
The message is a warning to Tehran to back away. Even if Tehran had truly conducted a nuclear test a few days ago, as some believe, it would still be a year away from actually having warheads it could actually fit on missiles. We don’t know for sure what is the state of Iranian air-defense, and there is just a chance that whatever it is it could still take down a B2 missile. Russia’s caution in dealing with Pezeshkian, a man it has every reason to distrust, may have fatally slowed the transition of Russian S-400s to Iran, but Iran probably does have other Russian weapons and these might include either S-300s or the equivalents, at least, of Russian TOR and Panzir missile defense systems which, even if they lack the protection offered by more comprehsive systems can provide effective defense of vulnerable facilities.
In Ukraine, Zelenskiy’s intransigence is read by some as a last heroic gesture ahead of decapitation and by others as a further indication of his determination to keep sending his people to the slaughter just so long as they don’t slaughter him, first. Russian victories on the battleground suggest that Ukraine and the West will, in the end have to accept Russian terms, only neither Western submission, nor a Russian victory is likely ahead of the November 5 US presidential election. Trump will bring a close to the Ukraine war and concentrate his attention on China; and while Harris will likely maintain a front of pro-Ukrainian obstinacy, that obstinacy will be supported with less money, and Harris’ own foreign policy advisers will try to find routes for her to take towards a more multi-polar universe. In that Universe, China will be first among equals.
But be cheerful, cheerful like Jared Kushner (for whom, to be honest, cheerfulness is not really a thing); courtesy of Israel’s Likud Party, there will be great real-estate opportunities along the Mediterranean from which to admire Death’s mushroom clouds, though quite possibly at uncomfortably close quarters.
- In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
- Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
- Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
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