OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Considerable controversy continues to swirl over the issue of whether Israel did or did not inflict significant damage on Iran on October 26. I trust the voices of Crooke, Ritter, Macgregor, McGovern and Johnson more than I trust Israeli claims or those of the Pentagon. Iran is a technologically advanced entity, a country of 100 million people with powerful alliances and major historical grievances with the rules-based order. Its enemies do not seem to understand that.
-
-
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Israel says it will strike back. I find this game of telling your oppenent you are going to attack – giving him plenty of time to prepare for your attack and then attacking, but maybe not so much as you said you would, and then waiting for the retaliation – somewhat quaint, to say the least.
It is reminiscent of seventeenth century style war-by-the-square tactics of bright uniforms, gleaming bayonets, chess-board moves and a death toll accounted for almost solely by civilians (unless you were Cromwell beseiging, starving and burning Irish towns, or European imperialists putting down the revolting natives).
-
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—In the UK there is a formal machinery of censorship through what used to be called the D Notice Committee, a system that shocks most US journalists when they learn of it, but which explains routine silences by the British media of so many stories of potential embarrassment to the UK Establishment (such as British media inability to refer to last week’s BRICS summit in Kazan as a BRICS event as opposed to what British media simply referred to as an international meeting convened by Russia).
-
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Kuzmarov cites Dr. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, as saying that he found it impossible to believe that “Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.
A documentary by John Hankey shows footage of two purported Mossad agents opening the gates to the electric fence to Hamas fighters to allow them to enter Israel and carry out the terrorist attacks of October 7.
Summarized by Kuzmarov, the documentary “suggests that: a) Mossad knew in advance of the October 7 attack and may have helped to plan it; b) IDF officers were deliberately withdrawn to allow the Hamas invaders to enter the country and carry out their attacks; c) female IDF soldiers who reported on Hamas activities were deliberately ignored and then allowed to be killed; and d) many of the killings of Israeli civilians were carried out by IDF soldiers as part of the deception operation, whose purpose was to inflame Israeli opinion in support of war.”
-
OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—“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.
