Iran’s next retaliation will intensify Russia’s fight with “Israel,” & make this conflict’s battle lines clearer
Rainer Shea
Rainer’s Newsletter
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Iran’s next retaliation will intensify Russia’s fight with “Israel,” & make this conflict’s battle lines clearer
understand that the entity’s “war” is not justified.
working to keep “Israel” on a leash throughout the latest confrontations).
Our only path forward is to build a domestic united front against monopoly capital, one that can keep organizationally operating amid the state’s crackdowns. As our allies abroad finish the job of crippling imperialism, we need to defeat it from within, and the global conflict’s next stage will bring us many more allies in this task.
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By Rainer Shea ☭ · Launched 3 years ago
Marxist-Leninist analysis on geopolitics & socioeconomics
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Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics: Social Science or Cold War Propaganda?
Bruce Lerro
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Prefatory Note
The field of comparative politics took off in the 1950s in Mordor and for many years it never lost its heavy anti-communist tinge. It continues to take for granted the fact that democracy exists (sic) in the United States and compares it favourably to "authoritarian" societies of communism, a convenient Cold War dualism. Its definition of politics. It is lopsidedly insensitive to cross-cultural definitions of politics. Historically, its definition excludes the politics of egalitarian hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists who comprised well over 90% of human history. Comparative politics is part of a self-propagandizing triumphalism that includes domestic political science, neoclassical economics and international relations theory. All these fields are ideological smoke screens that keep the West from facing its deep political and economic decline in the face of the rise of the East.
Orientation
What is politics?
Nine Questions for Determining What is Politics
In Part I of my article Seven Theories of Politics I posed ten questions for narrowing down what the range for defining what is politics.
Temporal reach
How far back into human history does politics go? Does politics go back to pre-state societies? Or does politics begin with state societies? Is politics possible before there were political parties?
Cross species scope
Is politics confined to the human species or does it ooze into the life of other species? If so, which ones? If politics crosses species, is it social species that are political? Is it possible to have animal societies which are social such as lions or wolves, but not political? Does a species need to be social to be political? Is being social a necessary but not sufficient condition for politics? Is being social a necessary and sufficient condition for politics? Or is being social neither a necessary nor sufficient condition? In other words, is it possible for a non-social species to have political relationships?
How much does evolutionary biology impact politics?
At a macro level, how does natural adaptation impact human politics? In terms of men and women, how much does sexual selection determine politics? At the micro level, how much do genetics and brain chemistry determine the level and the interest and skill in politics? Or is politics primarily a creature of the socio-historical level of reality?
Spatial reach
Where does politics take place? Many political scientists limit politics to what is taking place within states. Is that casting the net too narrowly? Can there be politics through discussions in private space? Is it politics when I get into a discussion about the viability of capitalism while I am at the unemployment line waiting for my check? Are there politics within families? Are there politics between lovers? Or are politics only about public affairs?
Am I being political if I ask my partner if she wants to go to the movies and propose a movie and she agrees to both proposals, is spontaneous agreement political? Suppose she said she wants to go to a movie but prefers another movie. We debate about it, and one of us persuades the other. Has the discussion become political? Suppose you and I are riding bicycles. We reach a crossroads where we have to decide whether to turn left or right. We each want to go in a different direction. Is the process of deciding this political?
Political agency
Who does politics? Is politics done only by politicians? If I argue with my neighbor about police brutality in my neighborhood, are my neighbor and I political beings in this discussion? Do I become political only when I vote on the issue in the next election? Do I become political when I bring police brutality to a town hall meeting next month? Or is the only person who is political the mayor who decides whether or not to make it part of his platform for his campaign next month?
What is the relationship between politics and power?
Can you have politics without having power? Can you have power without having politics? If power and politics are related, in what way? Are politics and power interchangeable? Is one a means to another? Is power the means and politics is the end? Is politics the means and power the end?
Politics, force and coercion
Let’s go back to this movie issue. Suppose Sandy has been drinking, and in the past she has been bad-tempered to her partner. She starts drinking while they are deciding on a movie. Sandy’s partner starts worrying and gives in to the movie Sandy wants to watch prematurely to avoid the risk of being yelled at. Is that politics?
This example is a small slice of a larger issue: what is the relationship between politics and force or the threat of force? Is violence an inherent part of politics or is politics what you do to win someone over without being violent? Some political theorists like Bernard Crick say that politics is the art of compromising when you know you cannot get what you want. Others say that the whole political system is based on violence because the entire class system is based on exploitation and force. All attempts to change things must come up against this militaristic force which protects the rulers. Some say that the only force is political and that the state is the ultimate political actor because it has, in Weber’s words, a monopoly on the means of violence.
Interdisciplinary span of politics
How (if at all) is politics related to economics? What is the relationship between technology and politics? Does the economy dictate politics? Does politics determine economics? Does technology determine politics or does politics determine technology? The same question could be asked about religion or mass media.
What, if any, is the relationship between theories of politics and political ideologies?
Is there a relationship between a consistent set of answers to these questions and whether you are a liberal or conservative? How will the answers of social democrats, communists and fascists be different than that of either anarchists on the left or libertarian capitalists on the right?
As it turns out, the field of cross-cultural politics I will be discussing gives very narrow answers to these questions and therefore leaves a great deal out.
- Temporal reach – narrow, starts with class societies and leaves out tribal societies
- Cross-species – narrow, limits it to the human species
- Is politics biological? Narrow, politics is limited to the social, psychological
- Spatial reach – narrow, limited to what happens in states
- Political agency—limited to what politicians do, no one else
- Relationship between politics and power, wide, used interchangeably
- How is politics related to force or coercion? Narrow, understates force
- Interdisciplinary span of politics – narrow, it excludes economics
- Theories of politics and ideology -narrow, it tries to make politics scientific and above ideology
In Part II of my article, I identity seven theories of politics:
Old Institutionalists
Civil Republicans
- Weberian political sociologists
- Marxian political scientists
- Rational choice theorists
- Radical feminists
- Bio-evolutionary
All the answers comparative politics gives to those questions primarily come from two schools, the old institutionalists and rational choice theorists. They pretty much leave out the other five schools.
Connection to past articles
About three years ago I wrote four articles about the ideological nature of political science. One article Anti-Communist Political Science: Propaganda for the Capitalist State was primarily about political science as it is practiced in the United States (not Europe). The second article, Invasion of the Body Snatchersconnects political science to neo-classical economics and shows how both support each other while blocking out an integrated approach called political economy. In my third article Dictatorship and Democracy I expose how Mordor political scientists were quite interested in dictatorships both in Europe and even within the United States in the 1930s. On the other hand, their interpretation of democracy was thin and lacked any subsistence. Lastly, my piece Totalitarian Anti-Communism showed the manipulation of the use of the word “Totalitarian” from the 1930s into the late 20th century. However, there is one topic that I did not cover in much detail and that is the subject of comparative politics. I did discuss it a bit in the last part of my first article but not in any depth. I would especially like to write about it now because while the field of comparative politics is not taken seriously outside the United States because its political manipulation is well-known, it still serves as propaganda for war and imperialism within the United States. It is as part of Yankee self-propaganda that discussing the field of comparative politics is still worth an analysis.
To call them democratic serves the ideological purposes of cold warriors and their desire to fight communism and preserve Western imperialism, in one shot.
Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics
Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics are as follows. Ronald Chilcote wrote a very good criticism of comparative politics from a Marxian point of view. He was especially good at exposing the ideological nature in the field. For example he pointed out the connection between the social sciences and the CIA. Ido Oren was also really excellent at showing the connection between modernization theorists and the promotion of US foreign policy. Michael Latham’s book Modernization as Ideology
reveals how modernization theory was behind JFK’s international anti-communist program, Alliance for Progress. Lastly, Irene Gendzier’s book Development Against Democracy explains how the word “development” was used by comparative politics involved in foreign policy to railroad countries on the capitalist periphery away from socialist and communist transition programs.
Where are we going?
In this article I will show eight foundational problems with comparative politics:
- Its treatment of nation-states as autonomous and not determined by alliances and between larger, more powerful states and transnational capitalists.
Oligarchies vs Democracy
Those of you who were unlucky enough to take a political science class might have been exposed to a cross-cultural version of the same thing. I refer to the field of comparative politics. The first thing that struck my eye in looking at the table of contents of a college textbook on comparative politics was the different types of rule. According to mainstream theorists, there are only two kinds of rule, democratic and authoritarian. The United States and Western Europe are deemed “democratic” whereas Russia, China and Iran are deemed authoritarian.
The unpopularity of democracy in the West until the 20th century
One problem with this formulation is that it fails to address the unpopularity of democracy in Yankee history itself, not only among conservatives but liberals as well all the way to the end of the 19th century. In the 19thcentury when liberalism really took hold as a political ideology, liberals were not interested in democracy, and considered it “mob rule”. Most industrialized countries did not have the right to vote at the end of the 19th century. Back then farmer populist parties and socialist parties took their democracy seriously, bringing economics into it. The result was a “substantive democracy” championed by Charles Merriman and Charles Beard in the 1930s. But the rise of fascism and communism had shaken liberal confidence in the natural sympathy between democracy and capitalism. So in the 1940s Joseph Schumpeter introduced a weakened form of democracy as simply the circulation of elite politicians that people choose between. The procedural democracy of Robert Dahl of the 1950s involved choosing between these elites through voting. There was nothing about economics.
In his book Strong Democracy, Benjamin Barber distinguishes “thick democracy” from the “thin democracy” of Dahl. My point is by the standards of thick democracy few if any Western countries are democratic. To call them democratic serves the ideological purposes of cold warriors and their desire to fight communism. Since democracy is a loaded virtue word, and authoritarian is a loaded vice word, a cold war opposition between the two is built into the entire field of comparative politics.
How many parties make a democracy?
What is striking is the criteria for what constitutes democracy when it comes to political parties. For comparative politics, a single party rule constitutes authoritarian rule. But the addition of just one more party, as in the American political system, we suddenly then have a democracy. Countries with many parties including most of Europe are also constituted as democracies. Aristotle argued that there were 3 forms of rule – monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. Oligarchy is the rule of the few. Given the actual nature of who controls the elections in the United States, it is most reasonable to say the United States and Western Europe are oligarchies, ruled by the ruling class, the upper class and the upper middle class. Taken together this is about 20% of the population, hardly a democracy. In the United States most of middle class, working class and poor have no representation and yet the country is called democratic.
- One party – authoritarian
- Two parties – democratic
- Many parties – democratic
In other words, the difference between one and two parties is greater than the difference between two parties and many parties. In fact, the implication of those who defend the two-party system is that having many parties can be confusing and unwieldly. So we wind up with the two parties of the United States as a kind center of stability. This is so despite the fact that for about the last 50 years, forty percent or more people in the United States do not vote. Is this a sign that democracy in the United States doesn’t work? Not at all. Those who don’t vote are dismissed as ignorant, apathetic or pathological in some way. The reason people don’t vote is simply because neither party represents their interest is never present. When voting tallies are presented, the number of people who don’t vote is rarely presented. Voting tallies are presented like 50% vs 49% for the two parties as if that constituted all the people who could have voted. In fact, in the actual tallies the winning party gets 30% of the vote. The loser gets 29%. What is ignored is the highest tally: 40% who don’t vote. This is democracy? What we have here is an oligarchy. But in comparative politics, democracy is not a process that actually exists but a self-congratulating ideology for the ruling capitalist oligarchs who control both parties.
Governing vs Ruling
In comparative politics, “governing” is a taken for granted term for Western capitalist societies. “Ruling” is saved for countries suspected of not being democratic, like “authoritarian” countries. I prefer to take the governing word very seriously as it is used in cybernetic systems. Governing in cybernetic systems means steering a system which includes goals, communication within the system, adaptation to the environment, feedback systems which allow for adjustment and few forward system which results in planning. The human heart is a “governor” of the human body. By these standards the only type of society in which there was governing was the egalitarian politics of hunting and gathering societies. Simple horticulture societies in these societies decision-making was collective. They adapted and moved when the ecology dictated a change.
For the last 5,000 years, complex political systems had rulers. This means that political goals were rarely carried out, communication systems were blocked and muddled by self-interested bureaucracies. Adaptations to the environment were slowed down by the machinations of the short-term thinking of ruling classes. Feedback systems were ignored such as extreme weather and pollution. Feed forward mechanisms were clogged by myopic ruling classes who couldn’t think three months ahead – if that. In Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies he describes how inept the ruling classes can be. Calling complex societies “governing” is ridiculous when compared to hunting and gathering societies which prevailed for 90% of human history. We are ruled by oligarchies and this should be reflected in any political field that considers itself scientific.
The Exclusion of Propaganda from Political Communication in the West
In part, the reason we have the illusion of democracy and a governing class rather than rulers of an oligarchy is because of Western propaganda. There are many textbooks describing propaganda in the West. If you like videos more than books, check out Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Century of the Self. This video demonstrates how 100 years of psychological propaganda in the person of Edward Bernays and the brainwashing in the work of Ewen Cameron controlled the Mordor public. Despite this, the only mention of propaganda in my comparative politics textbook is when it comes of “authoritarian” regimes. No surprises here.
Comparative Politics Ignores Capitalism
Following the tradition of Mordor social sciences, just as political science excludes economics while neoclassical economics ignores politics, comparative politics ignores the economic system of capitalism when it discusses Western politics. They ignore economic exchange and act as if politics was merely system of law, voting, institutional systems of bureaucracies and foreign policies. Without saying so, countries that count as “democratic” have capitalist exchanges. The field of comparative politics theorists act as if there was a natural, unremarkable relationship between capitalism and democracy. But as Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens have described in their book Capitalist Development and Democracy, it was not the capitalist merchants that brought representative democracy to the West, but the working class. Capitalist economic exchanges should be foundational to understanding political systems. Yet in my comparative poetics textbook that I’m reading, “political economy” is buried in the last chapter of the book.
Two reasons why capitalism should be included in politics
Capitalism should be foundational to politics because countries that have counted as politically “underdeveloped” have become so because of capitalist imperialism, as Gunder Frank pointed out decades ago. At the same time capitalist societies should be foundational to politics because it was under capitalist crisis that fascism emerged. The political ideology of fascism can never be understood without its roots in capitalism. There has never been fascism in human history before capitalism and there has never been fascism without the presence of capitalism.
The Deep State and International Pressure Groups are not Included in the Decision-making Processes of Politics
Supposedly, democratically elected leaders of political parties govern their populations by carrying out “the will of the people”. I am countering this by saying these politicians represent the will of the oligarchs who rule over people. But the oligarchs do not just use political leaders to carry out their will. Besides capitalists that politicians have to answer to, there are agencies such as the FBI, the CIA as well as international pressure groups such as AIPAC, Five Eyes, and NED. None of these groups are mentioned in my comparative politics textbook as involving political decision making. The textbook on Political Psychology in International Relations writes as if political leaders make decisions for their nation by themselves. It is only in “authoritarian” societies that bureaucracies, revolutionary factions and terrorist groups come into play that constrain the decision-making will of the official political leaders.
Authoritarian Politics is Synonymous With Socialism
When it comes to the West the field of comparative politics ignores the fact that its ruling oligarchy is run by capitalism. However, they have no problem declaring that authoritarian politics goes with a socialist “command economy”. Western countries that became socialist, such as Sweden and Norway, are presented as socialist democracies only because the presence of a market or capitalism. This made the naturally socialist authoritarian states more democratic.
Most military dictatorships are capitalists
Advocates of comparative politics ignore the fact that military dictatorships are often attempts by capitalists to hold on to power in the face of socialist uprisings. Most dictatorships are not socialist, but capitalist installations. In the case of socialism, the textbook cases that are trotted out are the old Soviet Union, Cuba or China. These countries have oligarchies as well. But whether or not they are more authoritarian than the capitalist West is much more complex than it first appears. Theories of comparative politics play down or ignore the relentless international class war any socialist system has to endure on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis at the hands of the heads of state in the West along with their capitalist rulers. Capitalists in the West act as if the whole world is their private property. They treat any elected national leader (even if not a socialist) who has the nerve to set their own agenda for international trade as an enemy. All socialist leaders have to treat most any oppositional party in their country as potentially a tool of international capital. The extent to which socialist countries are authoritarian has a great deal to do with the pressure they experience from international capital.
What about “totalitarian”?
Fortunately, this Cold War vice word is now internationally discredited. However, the use of the term totalitarian to characterize socialist or communist countries, leaves out at least the following. If we grant that Sweden and Norway were once socialist, there has never been a socialist country with an advanced technology, communication systems, or advanced science. These societies have never had the ability to control the messages sent out to the population so that people were all thinking the same thing at the same time due to centralized control of propaganda. It is only advanced capitalist countries that have the capacity to do this. For example, Mordor’s media has roughly five corporations that all send out the same propaganda message in the case of Israel. People are severely punished by the police for supporting the Palestinians. All third parties in Mordor are blacked out. They cannot get into the “debates”. My point is that because of its control over mass media, capitalist control of the state is much closer to real totalitarianism than anything Stalin or Orwell ever dreamed up. The Soviet Union and China are poor countries. Their communist parties have no centralized control over their entire nation state. Peasants in both countries made up their own mind as to what was happening. Only in Mordor do you hear the same anti-working-class slogans against health care, or “welfare queens” from New York to San Francisco, from Houston Texas to Missoula in Montana. This is the power political propaganda holds to be internalized by people who imagine they are making up their own minds.
Comparative Politics Ignores Anarchism as Part of Socialism
The claim that all socialism is authoritarian ignores the 180-year history of the anarchist movement and its leaders from Proudhon to Bakunin to Malatesta, Kropotkin, to Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman to Durruti. Anarchism was no intellectual movement. It was followed by thousands of people who fought in and out of labor unions and in the Russian and Spanish revolutions. This negligence on the part of comparative political theorists is ironic given that anarchism at its best is the purist form of democracy – direct democracy. If comparative political theorists understood the scale that the anarchists organized during the Spanish revolution of 1936-1939, they would be ashamed to think that what goes on in Western societies has anything to do with democracy, at least comparatively speaking.
Comparative Politics Ignores the International Pressures Within Larger States or Alliances Between other States
Comparative politics acts as if political decisions begin and end at national borders and with only official political leaders. But today’s nation-states have formed alliances with other nation-states. They have agreements about where they or won’t all act together. In the West we have the alliance of United States, England and Israel. None of those countries enacts a political decision by themselves. The same is true with China, Russia and Iran. Nation-states are interdependent, not independent actors.
Conclusion
I began this article with nine foundational questions of what politics is. I described how narrowly the field of comparative politics is in answering these questions. Then I identified seven theories of politics and showed how each of the seven theories of politics answers these nine questions differently. As it turned out, the field of political science uses only two of the seven theories: old institutionalism as rational choice theory.
Then I embedded within this article other articles I had written about how anticommunist domestic political science and neoclassical economics are in their studies and how international political science (comparative politics) is in carrying on that tradition. After that I named eight areas in which comparative politics are weak, including:
- Its propagandistic use of the word “democracy”. I claim that no state society on this planet is democratic. They are oligarchies.
- Its propagandistic use of the world governance. I identify with a cybernetic definition of governance, using the heart as an example. With this as criteria, no state system in the world governs a society. They all rule, not govern.
- Comparative politics over-emphasizes the use of propaganda in “authoritarian” societies while barely even mentioning propaganda in capitalist ruling oligarchies.
- Comparative politics does not successfully integrate capitalism into the comparative systems it analyzes . One textbook tacks it on as a last chapter.
- Comparative politics ignores the power of the institutions of the deep state and transnational capitalists in determining the decision-making capacities of politicians.
- Its treatment of the term “authoritarian” is more or less synonymous with socialism. It plays down the existence of socialism in Scandinavian countries and communal councils in Venezuela.
- Lastly, the use of the term “totalitarian” to depict Soviet Union, China and Cuba is completely false. In the case of the Soviet Union and China they were too poor to have a centralized state that could reach down to every peasant village and bombard them with propaganda. The foundation for this totalitarian state is a centralized media apparatus, mass transportation, a country that was electrified. Paradoxically it is Mordor’s control over its mass media where we see the closest approximation to totalitarianism.
- 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.
Print this article
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Lula’s backstab of Venezuela is meant to precede new imperial war escalations. Get ready to fight back.
Rainer Shea
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Lula’s backstab of Venezuela is meant to precede new imperial war escalations. Get ready to fight back.
As imperialism and fascism self-destruct, they’re going on a rampage that’s soon to become even more aggressive than it already is. And there are actors, like Brazil’s president Lula, who assist in this assault while portraying themselves as allies of justice. This week, the Brazilian government blocked Venezuela from joining the BRICS economic grouping, going against the wishes of Russia and the other genuinely anti-imperialist states. The betrayal hasn’t just let Washington keep economically strangling Venezuela’s people; it’s also extended the lifespan of the Zionist industrial slaughter machine within Palestine. The lesson to take from this is that BRICS, though absolutely worthy of support, is not alone capable of defeating the imperial beast; the economic aspect is only one front within this struggle, which also requires military resistance. This is what forces like Russia understand.
The longer the empire lives, the longer Zionism lives, which is what makes Brazil’s betrayal all the more heinous. The price of this setback is the loss of more souls, in Palestine and in elsewhere. We must keep this reality in mind as the hegemon tries to expand the destruction into a new big war, with the empire’s preferred next opponent being China.
Washington’s proxy wars have failed, and China continues to weaken its economic grip, but this week has shown that the empire maintains important assets. In addition to Lula, it has Modi, who vetoed the entry of Pakistan and Turkey into BRICS.
America’s PSL; the European CPs that functionally act as social democratic parties; the CPs throughout the broader globe that adhere to a hardline Trotskyist view of geopolitics; all of them have abandoned the Donbass people by vilifying Russia’s action. These forces remain a problem, since they have potential to lead Palestine supporters in a fundamentally imperialism-compatible direction. They’re being challenged, though, by the communist parties which are principled on anti-imperialism. And ultimately the principled elements will win against the opportunist parties, like how the Bolsheviks defeated the opportunists in the Second International.
Will the empire get its new big war by the end of this year? If it does, Iran will be in place to severely cripple the U.S. war machine. China and the DPRK will also be ready to subdue the hegemon, which Russia and the Axis of Resistance have already greatly weakened. So monopoly finance capital will intensify its war against the USA’s own people, using the election as an opportunity for creating more January 6 events and suppressing dissent.
likely to put the neocon deep state agent Mike Pompeo in his cabinet again.
The only thing that can let us survive the state’s next assaults, and then overthrow this state, is a project for mass mobilization which has actual strength behind it. We need to build substantial connections with the unions, and with the other revolution-compatible mass elements. We need to expand our united front with the forces inside the existing structure, from military personnel to lower-level capitalists, which have reasons for turning against monopoly capital. We need to master secret work, and train our cadres for defense against whatever attacks our enemies direct at us. Only a practice as broad and diligent as this can let our organizations stay operational amid extreme repression, and to fulfill our part in imperialism’s downfall.
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
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By Rainer Shea ☭ · Launched 3 years ago
- 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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Garland Nixon: MIDDLE EAST IN DEPTH WITH LAITH MAROUF – EPISODE 30 – ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN THWARTED?
Garland Nixon
with
LAITH MAROUF
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MIDDLE EAST IN DEPTH WITH LAITH MAROUF - EPISODE 30 - ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN THWARTED?
Garland Nixon
Garland and Laith discuss the actual outcome of the latest Israeli strike on Iran, concluding that the air assault, comprising at least 100 warplanes and probably 200 missiles, and the full-on assistance of the US military, did little damage to Iran's AD and strategic and economic infrastructure, and could have demonstrated instead Israel's (and America's) severe limitations when confronting a formidable peer power. Of course, Iran is now a member of BRICS, and also enjoys a mutual defence alliance with Russia and a de facto one with China, neither of which wants to see a destructive regional war in the Gulf, nor a major military setback by Iran, nor the development of a successful regime change op by NATO. In any case, despite the noisy acclamation of the airstrike by the Western media, as expected, all facts indicate at this time that the attack was a dud, and that a more credible deterrence by Tehran may have been established as a result of its impressive AD performance (understood to have been buttressed by Russian weapons, ISR, and personnel).
The embarrassing failure of Israel's missile attack on Iran on 25 October 2024 may have established a de facto regime of deterrence against further attacks by the Zionist regime and its American imperial enabler.
ISRAEL FIRES AT IRAN - CHANCE FOR DE-ESCALATION
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The Utter Incompetence of the US Courtier Class Exhibit 3 & 4: The Two Clever By Half Twins
Roger Boyd
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The Utter Incompetence of the US Courtier Class Exhibit 3 & 4: The Two Clever By Half Twins
Jake Sullivan
He then clerked for two senior US judges before practising law back in Minnesota, and then becoming chief counsel to Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. The latter introduced him to Hillary Clinton, for whom he became deputy policy director during her losing 2008 presidential primary campaign. After which he became part of Obama’s successful presidential campaign, and having prepared Clinton for primary debates now prepared Obama for presidential election debates - gaining direct access to the future president. When Clinton was appointed Secretary of State in the Obama administration, he became her deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning, travelling extensively with Hillary Clinton. She treated him as her confidante and go-between, and was at the least intellectually besotted with him:
When Jake Sullivan first came to work for me, I told my husband about this incredibly bright rising star – Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School – and my husband said, “Well, if he ever learns to play the saxophone, watch out.” Now we travel all over the world together and people say how excited they are to meet a potential future president of the United States, and of course they mean Jake.
Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire as a senior fellow and faculty member. He also served on the advisory board of Microsoft.
He has been trained well though to be an excellent liar and propagandist for the US Empire, as here where he blatantly lies about the US position of attempting to provoke China into an aggressive misstep with respect to Taiwan:
And here where he plays disgusting word games to not define the Zionist regime’s genocide as what it is, a genocide. After being nailed by journalists for this behaviour he literally fled the press briefing.
He is only 47 and therefore has the possibility of rising to even greater heights, especially with his own vast connections and those of his wife and her family. For the good of America and the world, one would hope that he does not. In the North East of England where I grew up, the term “too clever by half” is not a compliment.
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From 1980 to 1984 he majored in Social Studies at Harvard University, where he co-edited the Harvard Crimson. Then a year working at the New Republic before Columbia Law School which he graduated from in 1988, following which he was a lawyer in both New York and Paris.
In 2002 Blinken married Evan Ryan, who also served in the Clinton administration as well as in the electoral campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden. After that, she served in the Obama administration and was a senior advisor for the Biden-Harris transition team. She also helped launch and lead Democratic news website Axios before it was acquired by Cox Enterprises in 2022. She has also worked with the Clinton Global Initiative and like her husband is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Two peas in a pod.
Pine Island Capital Partners, founded by Democratic Party insiders and the ex-chairman of Merrill Lynch - John Thain; which was in partnership with WestExec. The conflicts of interest are obvious for a company advising corporate clients on their government relations partnered with a firm directly investing in companies seeking government contracts.
Reflecting the utterly misplaced arrogance of the Biden administration in its dealings with China:
Then of course there was the utter failure in Afghanistan where Blinken and his delusional colleagues believed that the utterly corrupt and incompetent Afghan puppet government could resist the Taliban. And in the first year of the administration also the refusal to negotiate in good faith a renewal of the Iran nuclear treaty. Followed in 2022 by the obvious moves to pull Russia into a conflict so that it could be destroyed by Western sanctions and foreign exchange reserve theft and Western support for the Ukrainian military. A colossal miscalculation which is now leading to the very obvious defeat of the West in Ukraine. Here is Blinken talking about his policies toward Russia, showing an utter lack of the real political-economic and geopolitical realities:
In history he will go down as one of the Secretaries of State that at the least oversaw and accelerated America’s decline and at the worst accelerated the move toward world war. As a comparison listen to this wide ranging interview given by Lula, the President of Brazil. a man who has had to work hard and long to gain his position.
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS