Presidential Catastrophe

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JIM KAVANAGH (THE POLEMICIST)

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The United States of America is on the verge of World War III in three different theaters. Its social economy and infrastructure are in tatters. It’s actively engaged in genocidal ethnic cleansing—killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of mainly children and women and spitting on every precept of humanitarian and international law—on behalf of an atavistic settler-colonial project. It is more than ever despised and less than ever feared in a world escaping its control. And in this catastrophic conjuncture, our political and media culture throws up two of the most ridiculous and incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading us into the abyss.

Our electoral system is insultingly anti-democratic. Built around donor control, a pastiche of opaque voting and tabulating systems including black-box proprietary electronic machines that allow (and therefore make inevitable) undetectable fraud, and, topping it all off, the Electoral College, it is designed to evade the popular will and enable fraud. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are the two most perfectly clownish figures to lead this election circus, which is guaranteed, on purpose, to end up in a fight over the result.

But no one seems interested in exiting the Big Top, so let’s bring in the clowns.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better, more radical, exposition of who runs the country than this gem:

Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don't. Trump said this week that he "gave" the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House "almost more than anybody." Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 22, 2024

https://x.com/mtracey/status/1837886438903357920

Just as I promised I recognized Israel's eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after... And as soon as I'd give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I'd give them something, they'd want something else. I said, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?

But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it. You know, for 72 years, they've been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn't have the nerve. But I said: You know what? I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less. on the Golan Heights. And he did. And I said: Let's do it. We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?

Yup. Even more radical than his notorious answer as a candidate at the Republican debate in 2015:

Q: You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies, you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.

TRUMP: You better believe it... I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

Q: So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.

Trump—the purported anti-Swamp candidate—is telling us that, as president, he had his biggest donors at the White House “almost more than anybody outside of people that work there,” always after something, “always for Israel,” and he was eager to give them anything they wanted, contravening decades of fundamental U.S. foreign policy and international law to do so. In fact, he was so eager to please, he gave them a contravention of longstanding national policy and international law “they never even asked for”—recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. That was an issue of national policy and international law about which, he tells us, he was entirely ignorant, and was content to radically overturn after a lesson of “five minutes or less” from an uber Zionist.

Donald Trump is telling us that the President of the United States is, and he as POTUS was, a figurehead who, in return for their money, takes orders from his donors like a servant, and uses the apparatus of the United States government and his position as overseer of a global empire to literally “give” those donors parts of other countries. Because “when they give, you do whatever the hell they want you to do.” He is telling us that, as a politician and President, he became exactly the kind of swamp creature he criticized his opponents for being in 2015. Donald Trump 2024 is confirming for us, and bragging about how well he embodies it: “that’s a broken system.” You better believe it.

Can you say “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”?

I dare any MAGA disciple to deny that s/he would renounce as a traitorous swamp creature any Democrat s/he heard bragging about how they let “George and Alex” Soros (rather than “Miriam and Sheldon” Adelson), as his/her most frequent guests, run around and run the White House, ordering up changes that overturn longstanding national policy and international law—and then try to deny that Trump is exactly the same kind of creature.

I’m sure any MAGA disciple will say: “But Biden/Kamala/the Democrats do the same thing! They’re just not as obvious about it.” And they are right. And that’s the point, the entire point, of the duopoly choice. And the reason, the principal reason, for the dominant faction of the ruling class’s antipathy to Trump. The Democrats obscure and gloss over their obsequious fealty to the ruling class with kinder, gentler, “progressive” rhetoric and insistent claims to champion the “middle class” (“working class” is so twentieth-century). Trump, who’s captured the Republican Party, keeps saying what’s supposed to be the quiet part out loud. Trump is comfortable bragging about his mega-donors running around the White House because he considers himself one of, born into, their club, so what’s wrong with that? The Democrats take a quieter, more humble posture when being invited to manage their master’s domain.

captured the reason for Trump’s appeal beyond his MAGA base: “The fact remains that there is something in Trump that the deep state thinks it cannot control.” That appeal was only enhanced by the two assassination attempts.

There’s no denying the Deep State distrusts him, and for good reason: No one, including Donald Trump, knows what he will do or say next. He's got no firm political ideology, just stubs of ideas, a few of which are not bad. But he doesn't have the intellectual capacity or political facility for executing them. And he has a ton of bad ideas. Sometimes both at the same time—like ordering an attack on Iran and calling it off at the last minute. Narcissism and confusion mask insecurity. Precisely contrary to how he wants to be seen, Trump is actually a weak, insecure political actor, susceptible to being pushed around—especially by those he perceives as rich friends or tough guys, and who know how to handle his narcissism and need. And they tend to come from the Deep State creatures (capitalist moguls, military/intelligence operatives, and neocon warmongers) he surrounds himself with. They, and the donors, will get him to do whatever the hell they want.

OK, maybe nine out of ten times. As Keaton Weiss has said, betting on Trump is like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun. But the idea that Trump will be different this time, in any programmatic sense—that he’s going embrace and fight for someone else’s program of free speech or Making America Healthy Again versus his stated program of making America, and Israel, “powerful” again—is wishful thinking as futile as the idea that someone’s going to push Kamala left. Please, did you forget he already was president for four years? Did anything fundamentally change? Do you think he’s not the same guy who prosecuted Julian Assange and assassinated Qasem Soleimani?

"The ruling class doesn’t care too much about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the people not voting, not giving legitimacy to the system, is what the ruling class fears the most..."

Trump is an ignorant, arrogant, narcissistic scion of the ruling class, who brags about being all of those things in ways that often embarrass, and can undermine support for, the capitalist dictatorship and the U.S. empire. He tells us he’s going to “Make Israel Great Again” (‘cause he, too, thinks that’s the job of the U.S. president), blow Iran to smithereens, intimidate Russia and China into submission, make American women stop thinking about abortion rights, and, yes, “close the internet.” He thinks he should be president because he is who he is, and he’ll talk his way out of it if he makes his arrogance too manifest.

Of course, The Democrats, now led by Harris, are supercilious, hypocritical defenders of the ruling class, American imperialism, and Zionism, who adopt whatever rhetorical strategies might fool disaffected constituencies into thinking they’re something else. People are fed up with their game, and no one believes anything they say.

Kamala has been the darling of the Democratic donor elite since she was anointed at a 2017 meeting in the Hamptons “with Hillary Clinton’s biggest backers,” where, “already said to be the Democrats’ top fund-raiser,” she “expand[ed] her influence and ambitions” and was “talked about as a 2020 presidential hopeful.” Unfortunately, she didn’t get any votes from actual people and, after her blistering attack on Joe Biden—Don’t worry, ”It was a debate!”—dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucus. Don’t worry, the donor cabal got her on the ticket in 2020 and got her as the presidential nominee this year—no votes needed.

Kamala tells us nothing much about what she will do because she has no idea. Her vacuity and opportunism are on display with her word-salad responses to specific questions that leave even Oprah wide-eyed and her bizarre attempt to pretend she’s a newcomer who hasn’t been part of the Biden administration for the last three-and-a-half years. Kamala thinks she should be president because she’s not Trump and has proved herself a compliant minion of the donors. She might get herself into the presidency by talking as little as possible and allowing wishful thinkers to project what they’re looking for onto her.

Here's my free, million-dollars’ worth of campaign advice that will ensure victory to the one of these clowns who most heeds it: “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

donor.”

https://x.com/caitoz/status/1840848048232284279

up mobile home parks, to suck more money-blood out of struggling people living in the very last bastion of affordable housing. But don’t worry, Israel and Ukraine got $8 billion each. To the cheers of Donald and Kamala.

In the midst of all this consequential chaos, we have no idea who’s actually running the country. The fact that the president is a figurehead for the ruling class and the deep state apparatus has never been more apparent, nor more blithely accepted. Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan had to hide their enfeeblement. Now the whole world knows Joe has checked out, and it’s a big yawn. The president is a zero.

Still, there have been some presidents who were smart. Or at least competent. Or at least articulate. Or at least persuasive. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Obama, even early Reagan to an extent. These two are none of that. In a context where intelligent statesmanship has never been more necessary, it will be worse than zero.

One of these clowns will become president of the United States. To think either of them is an anti-establishment, anti-war, free-speech candidate who will save democracy, or drain the swamp, or avert the disasters we face is to be inflicted with either Trump Derangement Syndrome or its mirror image, MAGA Personality Cult.

Believe what the presidents of the United States have told you about themselves and this country. With either of them, as the man said: "Nothing would fundamentally change." This country will still be, as the other man said, an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” And, as the other other man said, most recently and succinctly, they will both do “whatever the hell their donors want them to do.”

We are fucked. The demise of America is, I fear, irreversible at this point. Whoever becomes president, it will be a catastrophe—for us and for the world.

_______________________________________

JIM KAVANAGH (THE POLEMICIST)

Dateline: AUG 28, 2024

Oops. I didn’t see that one coming.

So, let’s talk about RFK Jr.’s decision to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.

Because, to be clear, Bobby is not just—excuse me, not even dropping out of the race. He could have done that, correctly denouncing the Democratic party’s anti-democratic legal and electoral tactics that made it impossible for his campaign to compete within the party or as a third party, and, indeed, denouncing the whole duopoly-enforced structure of American electoral politics that makes it impossible for any non-duopoly candidate to succeed. If he were really interested in building the possibility of a progressive third party, he could have stuck with his very recent critique of how “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions” and ended his campaign without transferring allegiance to either of the duopoly parties or candidates. He could have approached Jill Stein—as he apparently did both Kamala and Trump—and tried to negotiate agreements on highlighting issues that were important to him in return for urging his supporters to vote for her.

Instead, he is re-positioning himself and his campaign as supporting elements of the campaign of one of the extant duopoly parties—the Trump-Republican Party campaign. He will take himself off the ballot in battleground states, in order not to “likely hand the election to the Democrats,” and he’ll stay on the ballot in “safe” red or blue states where it won’t make any difference. This mirrors the “safe states” strategy of previous “left” third-party candidates, and it defines him as an auxiliary Republican, just as it defined those candidates as auxiliary Democrats. Whether he or they want to admit it, it’s an abdication of any effective third-party building, and a capitulation to one of the two duopoly parties and to duopoly politics tout court.

So, why is RFK Jr. doing this? Why is he abandoning a third-party building effort and any pretense of duopoly non-partisanship, and instead—in an astounding turn for a Kennedy—dedicating himself to the defeat of Kamala and the Democrats, and the victory of Trump and the Republicans? Here’s his campaign-suspending address, with his three reasons highlighted:

I’m 70 years old. I have maybe a decade to be effective. I cannot imagine that a President Harris will allow me or anyone else to solve these problems. After eight years of President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me he wants this as his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, and closest friends also support this objective.

By staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the existential issues of censorship, war, and chronic disease.

I want everyone to know that I am only suspending my campaign, not terminating it. My name will still be on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states — the same applies. I encourage you to do so. And if enough of you vote for me and neither of the major party candidates win 270 electoral votes, I could still end up in the White House in a contingent election.

But in about ten battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I will remove my name and urge voters not to vote for me.

Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place. These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party, and then as an Independent, and now throw my support to President Trump.

The cause of free speech.

The war in Ukraine.

The war on our children.

For the sake of argument, let’s interpret RFK Jr.’s action in the most positive way. Let’s stipulate that these are all important—even “existential”—issues (and I think they all are). Let’s stipulate that Kennedy has said good things and done good work on all of them. Let’s even stipulate that he’s sincere in his belief that Donald Trump is going to do something “existentially” more positive about these things than would Kamala Harris. Then let’s note what is one of the saddest sentences I’ve heard spoken by an American politician (and that’s saying something): “I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through.” RFK Jr. does seem to be wishful thinking about his “decade to be effective.”

Let’s then consider his three reasons, leaving aside for the moment the uncited and paramount issue of the ongoing USrael Zionist colonial genocide—a live-streamed holocaust that I and so many others consider a deal-breaker, but about which there is no Democrat-Republican or Kennedy-Trump difference.

Free Speech/Censorship

I agree that “the cause of free speech” is an “existential” political issue, and RFK Jr. has certainly taken good positions on it, including giving strong support to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But what is the position of the candidate and party with which he is now allying?

Donald Trump’s position is that “We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America,” and there needs to be “a new law” for “the ones that are already here, that grew up here.” He preaches to his fundamentalist Christian audiences that: “Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,” and “pledge[s]” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."

In RFK Jr.’s recently stated terms, “it’s a very narrow Overton window” that Trump wants to enforce in America.

What about the global war on free speech that is intensifying with arrests of Richard Medhurst in England, C.J. Hopkins in Germany, and Pavel Durov in France. Is Donald Trump, “his son, his biggest donors, and closest friends,” going to wage the fight against the restriction of free speech on the internet? Is the Trump Republican administration (perhaps with junior member RFK Jr. taking the lead) going to exert the tremendous pressure that is necessary, and could come from the president of the United States, to stop the worldwide assault on freedom of expression through the internet?

It’s a rhetorical question. Here’s Trump, who initiated the prosecution of Julian Assange, urging “closing that Internet up in some way,” and mocking the “foolish people” who say: “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!”

“And we have kids that are watching the Internet and they want to be masterminds. And then you wonder why we do we lose all these kids? They go over there. They're young. They're impressionable. They go off and they want to join ISIS. We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet. And we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them. Maybe, in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say : ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We've gotta maybe do something with the Internet, because they are recruiting by the thousands.”

If RFK Jr. doesn’t understand that the Trump Republican camp considers him one of the “foolish people,” he’s proving that he is.

And let’s not forget that a—perhaps the—main reason for censorship on the internet and in political and media spaces in general, in the U.S. and throughout the Western world, is to protect the Zionist project. The establishment doesn't like critiques of capitalism, but that’s been going on forever and they are not afraid of them yet. They really don’t like critiques of imperialism, which have also been manageable but arenow having uncomfortable effects in the context of waning imperial power—especially regarding the Ukraine conflict. But critiques of imperialism alone are not dangerous enough to provoke the omni-partisan US/Euro political establishment to blatantly jettison supposedly foundational free-speech and free-expression policies that have been so useful precisely for maintaining support of capitalism and imperialism.

The present critique of Zionism, however, which has been made possible by the wide and instant availability of historical information and political analyses on the internet that previously had been carefully kept under wraps by media gatekeepers, is extremely dangerous. As I pointed out in a previous essay, to my delighted (and the establishment’s dismayed) surprise, during the months of Israel’s horrific slaughter in Gaza, the availability of critical information and analysis has given rise to a recognition that Zionism is colonialism and thus to a determined and growing anti-Zionist movement in the United States. This is a real threat to the Zionist project. I don’t think there has ever been a quicker, more surprising, or more consequential change of attitude on such a fundamental subject, and the thoroughly Zionist American political establishment cannot abide it.

So, one of the main objectives of the current national and worldwide campaign of censorship is to protect the Zionist project by reasserting control over information and analysis—on the internet and throughout society—that might foster anti-Zionist thought in America and Europe.

Thus, Donald Trump, in 2019, issued an executive order applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “anti-Semitic” acts, using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “anti-Semitism” that includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This order, which threatens campuses that allow anti-Zionist protest with loss of federal funding, “generat[ed] concern that it will stifle free speech by those who oppose Israel's policy toward the Palestinians,” because, as the moderately critical Jewish group J-Street said, it "appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel.”

Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, standing next to Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, declared the peaceful BDS movement, a “cancer that…we're committed to combating,” and said the U.S. “plan[s] to identify and withdraw the department's funding and support from organizations linked to the movement.” Amnesty International USA “forcefully objected” to that policy as: “following Israeli government's approach in using false and politically motivated accusations of antisemitism to harm peaceful activists, including human rights defenders.”

Now, Trump is vowing to his donors: “If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that [pro-Palestine] movement back 25 or 30 years …any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.”

Not only Trump, but the bulk of the Republican party have joined their Democratic colleagues in Congress in passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would enshrine the IHRA “anti-Semitism” definition in law, and is proposing legislation to create campus "antisemitism monitors" who can initiate the revocation of funding for colleges that allow speech and protest tainted with that definition.

Glenn Greenwald has been especially trenchant about Republicans who, having postured as free-speech advocates, complaining about liberals and Democrats censoring conservative speech, are now “sound[ing] exactly like the left liberals who they've been heaping scorn on” when it comes to Israel and Zionism,” and how they conveniently ignore that “the most common and frequent targets of censorship, both on campus and generally, in the United States have long been Israel critics,” including “professors who have lost tenure [and] gotten fired because of it.”

Add those to the numerous proposed federal, and actual (38) state, bipartisan anti-BDS laws punishing citizens and organizations that boycott Israel, and you’ve got an idea of the “existential” difference between the Trump/Republican and Harris/Democrat parties on “free speech.”

RFK Jr. is going to have at least as hard a time fighting for “free speech” while supporting Trump and the Republicans as he would with Harris and the Democrats. It’s only because he shares with Trump the bipartisan “Israeli Exception” to the free speech (and every other) principle, that he cannot see how hollow his candidate and party choice on this issue actually is. He’s going to have a very hard time convincing anyone who doesn’t share that exception that supporting Trump does anything to defend free speech.

It befuddles me that anyone thinks Donald Trump is going to end forever wars.

Regarding Ukraine, Trump has made various noises, centered on cost—the Europeans should pay more to support Ukraine—and, of course, on the strength of his own personality, with which he will force both sides to stop fighting within 24 hours of his election. ‘Cause, you know, all it takes is a tough guy to intimidate Putin: “If we had a real president, a president that knew — that was respected by Putin ... he would have never invaded Ukraine.”

Pundits and interlocutors and associates of Trump have also chimed in with various speculations about “Trump’s” plan for ending the Ukraine war. The most specific version comes from Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who were chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council. Their plan is to tell Ukraine it will not get any more U.S. weapons if it doesn’t enter peace talks, tell Russia that if it doesn’t enter peace talks Ukraine will get more support, and impose a ceasefire on current battle lines during the peace talks. This is a delusional Plan B that’s been floated around for over a year, which anyone who understands what’s happening in the war knows Russia will never accept. It’s a plan Kellogg and Fleitz “presented” to Trump, and to which he “responded favorably,” though they are "not claiming he agreed with it.”

Campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt gave the most accurate statement about “Trump’s” Ukraine plan: “Any speculation about President Trump’s plan is coming from unnamed and uninformed sources who have no idea what is going on or what will happen.” No one, including Donald Trump, has any idea what “his” plan is for ending the Ukraine war.

In fact, though it is the case that some Republicans and RFK Jr. have expressed reluctance about continuing the expensive Ukraine war, with the latter framing that within a more general “antiwar” attitude, no one in the U.S. political establishment wants to recognize that there is no “plan” for ending it that does not involve the accepting the decisive defeat of the Zelensky regime, NATO, and the U.S., and/or going to war with Russia.

Here's RFK Jr.’s plan to end the Ukraine war, based on “our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty”:

We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia's borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions.

Too little, too late. Might have been worthwhile before 2022. The bit about withdrawal of troops and missiles from Russia’s borders is especially nice, if it were part of an overall reconfiguration of the security relationship between NATO and Russia that accepts a much greater drawdown of NATO forces. But the “UN peacekeepers” guaranteeing the “eastern regions” ~~implies~~ means those regions stay within Ukraine. Nor is there any mention of whether Ukraine’s “freedom, independence and sovereignty” allows it to join NATO. It’s Minsk III+, another frozen conflict scenario. It’s not gonna happen. The “eastern regions”—Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—are now part of Russia, and Trump, Harris, or any American president is going have to accept that and the decisive Russian victory/US-NATO defeat it represents, or fight Russia in a war to reverse it, in the face of enormous pressure that’s going to come from both parties and from the Euro-American establishment to do the latter.

I doubt that Trump, Harris, or RFK Jr. (anymore than his cold-warrior father or uncle would have) will accept the defeat and retreat of the American imperial project that the impending Russian victory in Ukraine represents. And none of them have a “plan” to avoid it.

In other words, regarding the Ukraine war, RFK Jr.’s choice of candidate and party does not make much of, let alone an “existential,” difference.

Regarding “forever wars” more generally, RFK Jr. would do well to remember the series of aggressions that gave rise to that expression, including the (continuing) invasion and occupation of Iraq, the murder of its leader and destruction of the Libyan state, the most prosperous in Africa, the (continuing) attack on and occupation of Syria, etc.

The “forever war” program that the US has been carrying out since at least 2003 was revealed by Wesley Clark in 2007 to involve “taking out” seven countries in five years “starting with Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan … and finishing off with Iran.” The purpose of that program was, as I’ve said in a previous article, to “remov[e]—by co-option, regime change, or chaotogenic sectarian warfare and state destruction—any strong central governments that have provided political, diplomatic, financial, material, and military support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism. Iran is the last of those, has been growing in strength and influence, and is therefore the next mandatory target.”

Donald Trump knows, and in his embarrassingly forthright way that so discomfits liberals, says the censored part out loud:

https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1800860461417877747

“Because the fact is we don’t have to be in the Middle East other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. But other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East. We don’t need, you know there was a time we needed desperately or we don’t need that anymore. We have more than they do. Isn’t that nice?”

Anyone who is committed to guaranteeing the Zionist project is committed to forever war.

Anyone who, like RFK Jr., demands “unwavering, resolute, and practical action” to support the Zionist colonial project, who renounces the JCPOA and decrees that Israel must but Iran must not have nuclear weapons, and pledges to “provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself.. throughout this operation [the Gaza genocide] and beyond,” is someone who is supporting Israel’s constant aggressions against its neighbors Syria and Lebanon, and will support the attack on Iran that is the next and most dangerous “forever war” on the agenda. It’s a war that is Israel’s solution to the existential problem the Zionist project confronts in Gaza—a war Israel is determined, and has been planning since the Trump administration, to get us into.

To ensure the security of Israel and, indeed, the Iranian people, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is non-negotiable. It will require constant vigilance and stringent verification.

The JCPOA is based on outdated assumptions and conditions, and is not…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 16, 2023

To ensure the security of Israel and, indeed, the Iranian people, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is non-negotiable. It will require constant vigilance and stringent verification.

The JCPOA is based on outdated assumptions and conditions, and is not appropriate to our time. But I will set my sights on real peace in the Mideast, including between Israel and Iran.

When I am President, we will set a new standard for international behavior. The US bears historical culpability for much of the tension in the region, which is partly the result of our regrettable history of regime change operations, coups, and support for despotic regimes in Iran and elsewhere.

The War on Our Children/Chronic Disease

[Disclosure: I have had friendly correspondence with RFK Jr. regarding my 2021 articleopposing vaccine mandates that he read and praised.]

I also think RFK Jr. has done admirable and courageous work on this issue. It is likely, per his statement, that this is the issue he thinks he can do something really effective about in “maybe a decade.” He knows there are other people who can and will do effective work on his other “existential” issues. He is confident that he’s the one who has, and can, make some serious headway on this one.

Kamala and the Dems did not want to hear from him about this. If Trump offers him that last serious opportunity to do something important, why not take it?

Here's the thing, though: Donald Trump, who developed the horrid mRNA gene therapy “vaccines” at Warp Speed, and is still proud of it, does not give one fig about this issue of children’s health and chronic disease as RFK Jr. sees it. Anymore than Trump, who prosecuted Julian Assange and wants to “close the internet in some way” is really concerned about free speech.

RFK Jr. is, kind of desperately, looking to find a reason to believe. I don’t know what, if any, deal he made with Trump, whose “philosophy of leadership could not be further apart,” and who is notorious for using and discarding people. If he did not get some firm commitment for something like HHS Secretary, then RFK Jr. can expect to be discarded the moment Trump gets the votes he wants and the pushback that will surely come from his pharma-invested donors or, you know, Bill Gates, who told Trump to turn his back on RFK Jr. in 2016, and whom Trump is now going to consult about closing the internet.

Let’s consider the best case, that Trump actually gives RFK Jr. HHS (and doesn’t abolish it), a perch from which he might be able, and will try, to radically reform the corporate-captured agencies. Trump and RFK JR. will then come under tremendous pressure from those pharma-captured donors, and all the pharmaceutical companies, and all the pharma-captured bureaucrats who’ve been counting on those cushy deferred-bribe jobs at those companies, and all the pharma-captured and funded establishment politicians and media who despise both of them and despise and understand nothing about RFk Jr.’s project.

To carry out the radical reform RFK Jr. seeks would require having strategic political depth for the project—broad public support and loyal support from a president who himself understands and is committed to the project, speaks up forcefully on its behalf and stands up to its detractors, and is willing to mobilize people and resources to support it. I am not describing Donald Trump, who is pushed around by his ruling-class cronies and tough-guy militarists, who get from him what they want—the Donald Trump who was going to withdraw American troops from Syria.

To the point, I’ll let Whitney Webb ask a few questions:

Given all the hype about the RFK Jr. team up with Trump, and what it means for healthcare, I have some questions.

Many funders of Trump, such as Joe Lonsdale and Elon Musk as well as JD Vance himself, have major investments in biotechnology, gene therapies and companies deeply…

— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) August 27, 2024

Given all the hype about the RFK Jr. team up with Trump, and what it means for healthcare, I have some questions.

Many funders of Trump, such as Joe Lonsdale and Elon Musk as well as JD Vance himself, have major investments in biotechnology, gene therapies and companies deeply invested in mRNA and DNA vaccine technology. Trump stands by Operation Warp Speed, which produced mRNA vaccines of dubious efficacy and safety, some of which were made with the help of companies tied to Lonsdale's VC, among others.

Will RFK JR. be opposing the use of these technologies as he seeks to tackle the chronic disease epidemic in the US in a future Trump administration? Will he allow the "health" DARPA, ARPA-H, to continue to operate? Will he allow the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale co-founded Palantir to continue to collect and analyze Americans' health data (and genetic data) with no meaningful oversight into how they use that data and if they share it w other government agencies they contract for like the CIA?

I agree that there is a major healthcare crisis in the US, but identifying the problem is one thing - will these experimental technologies be used or promoted as part of the solution? I think it's important to know and it seems like not many are asking these types of questions.

Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe it’s worth it for RFK Jr. to give it the old college try. I would be happy to be wrong, but I think Trump, if he doesn’t jettison RFK Jr. before his inauguration, will fold under the attacks on any RFK Jr. project, which is not his, his son’s, his biggest donors’, and his closest friends’ first, or second, or fifth priority. RFK Jr. will go the way of erstwhile Trump favorite, Anthony Scaramucci.

So, I’m betting RFK Jr.’s decision to support Trump as an ally for the War on Our Children/Chronic Disease project is a naïve gamble that won’t take a decade to wash out. He would have done better sticking with “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions,” and continuing to build a politically independent movement for health reform—an issue that has been gaining momentum since the Covid debacle—rather than allying with one of the parties whose failure to solve anything will end up tainting him and his project.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not horrified by RFK Jr.’s traitorous apostasy to the Democrats, about whom I could not care less. I am more surprised, but no more disappointed, by RFK Jr.’s embrace of the Trump campaign than I would have been by his embrace of Kamala’s. I consider the American electoral system an insult to me as the citizen of an ostensible democracy. I have not the slightest interest in figuring out which of the two deal-breaking genocidal duopoly candidates is the lesser evil. But those who do should realize that RFK Jr. is not the only longtime Democrat who will find that to be Donald Trump.

RFK Jr. has just done the lesser-evil thing that so many are calling for. He has made the same kind of lesser-evil choice one might make as an abortion-rights supporter who was offered a chance to work for that issue in one of two genocidal campaigns and administrations—if genocide is not a total deal-breaker for you. If you want to vote for Hitler versus Himmler (and that’s the kind of choice we’re faced with—unless, for some reason, you find the Palestinian holocaust you’re watching live-streamed less disturbing than the one you read about) because Hitler has a better position on reproductive rights or whatever, go right ahead. But accept that that’s what you’re doing and do it with the requisite great humility. No one for whom genocide is not a deal-breaker because of their (more?) important issue is in a position to judge anyone else who makes the same kind of choice for theirs.

Whatever he or his detractors might say, I find RFK Jr.’s lesser-evil choice neither terribly transgressive nor existentially important. It demonstrates, rather, that he’s an ordinary establishment political actor whose roots in American political and socio-economic establishment are as deep as can be, and who acts on the ordinary establishment assumptions about imperialism, Zionism, and the duopoly. He was never threatening to revolutionize the American polity, only to reform aspects of it.

He’s just taken one of the lesser-evil paths that keep us in those woods.

______________________

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Clarity After Iran Strike, as Israel Tries to Pivot to Nuclear Arc

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Clarity After Iran Strike, as Israel Tries to Pivot to Nuclear Arc

A cascade of Iranian missiles get through the fabled "Iron Dome", fortified with Western anti-missile shields.

Two days out from Iran’s seminal strike on Israel and some things are being clarified.

All the early claims of having shot everything down were slowly retracted, with more realistic headlines taking their place as testament to the confusion behind the scenes.

Videos like this one are hard to deny—watch the end to see major explosions at the site of whatever was hit:

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Alleged to be outside of Nevatim base:

We’ve finally got some BDAs of the hits, though they do present uncertainty as to Iran’s true objectives.

Here’s a news report confirming one of the missiles landed outside the Mossad HQ:

But was it a miss, or a deliberate “message” sent?

There are two camps now: one claiming Iran cannot hit anything, the other that Iran deliberately avoided causing too much damage. There is some evidence for both.

Trump just released an interview where he confirmed—if he can be trusted—that Iran had previously told him in advance they would hit US assets during his term, but intentionally not cause any damage merely as a show of force—listen carefully:

This is quite normal in international relations.

But listen specifically to the last part of the video where Trump himself admits the missiles are “very accurate” but everyone in the media was shocked they missed—why would Iran’s “accurate missiles” miss an easy, fat target like the US base in question?

This gives us insight into Iran’s SOP, and we can thereby infer that Iran may have treated the present Israeli strike in a similar fashion. A hit near the Mossad HQ could merely be a message.

Now we have satellite BDAs of Nevatim base.

One hangar was hit which, in a previous satellite photo, had the tail of what looks like a fighter craft sticking out of it:

However, other hits appeared all over the place.

The area of the base hit was the “transport, tanker, surveillance, and recon” area, reportedly housing the 122nd Nachshon Squadron (EW/signals), not the fighter jet area where the famed F-35s are usually housed.

The area of the struck hangar is at the southeast portion of the image below:

Experts later identified 32 strike points from a wider 3m satellite view:

However, we do not seem to have satellite photos for the other sections in detail yet, nor for the other air bases potentially struck, the Hatzerim and Tel Nof airbases.

What’s most interesting is there was a brief controversy yesterday surrounding some jagged digital clouds apparently being ‘painted’ over Israeli bases, blocking the ability to assess damage. This was dismissed by experts as just ‘clouds’—though strangely this rarely seems to happen in Ukraine—but most strange of all was that both penetrated bases apparently had this cloudy ‘luck’:

As reminder, the US apparently restricts satellite images of Israel, as previously confirmed by NPR—so it’s very difficult to get accurate post-mortem shots:

Personally, I have a theory as to why there appear some accurate hits with others that seem merely ‘random’. From the characteristics of the missiles we saw, there appeared to be many different kinds of missiles fired. For instance, some clearly came down extremely fast, at near hypersonic speeds, as I highlighted last time, while many others appear to come down at fairly middling speeds.

It’s likely that what Iran is doing, is saturating the airspace with a bunch of their lower tier older missiles, ones which do not have much accuracy and are cheap in cost, while there are a lesser number of the more advanced hypersonic ones with better guidance capabilities which are used to ride that saturation “cloud” to the target. Thus, the type of BDA result visible would be a bunch of random hits in a wide dispersion field with a few accurate ones amongst them, courtesy of the main weapon—which could be the Emad or Fattah-2, etc.

As to the question, brought up by many last time, whether Iran truly notified everyone in advance of the strikes, here is Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

So, according to him, Iran warned the US after it had launched the missiles.

The truth is, we know for a fact that US and Israel had already expected the strikes as articles literally came out several hours prior, stating that Iran may be gearing up for strikes. This would likely have been known by US/Israel’s satellite surveillance seeing Iran setup the necessary equipment in its base outside of Shiraz—images I have seen.

Thus, knowing an attack was imminent, even if Araghchi’s words are true, Israel and the US would have about 10-15 minutes to make necessary last minute movements, like scrambling F-35s to the sky, etc., as that’s how long the missiles would take to reach Israel. In short, we can confidently say that Israel had at least a decent amount of advance warning. This is a way for Iran to diplomatically save face by being able to say they did not really give anyone warning, since it technically came after the launch, but it was given in practice. Another way this is done is by Iran overtly using known launch sites. If Iran wanted to truly carry out a devastating surprise attack, it would probably preposition launchers in remote areas that US satellites do not have overwatch on. Thus, this is still all part of the theater I spoke of last time, the subtle dance between both sides.

The other interesting thing was that certain contradictions within Iranian ruling elite were brought to the fore by the latest strikes. NY Times initially reported that new president Masoud Pezeshkian was not even informed of the decision to strike:

While in another article they claimed it was the IRGC command itself that pleaded with the Supreme Leader to strike, their pressure ultimately winning out:

https://archive.ph/QyeLS

A senior aide to Mr. Pezeshkian said in a telephone interview before the missile attack that whatever the president’s private reservations about war with Israel, he would publicly support any decision Mr. Khamenei made — as he did on Tuesday.

Iran’s shift in strategy, officials said, stemmed from a reckoning among its leaders, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

They decided that Iran had miscalculated by not responding to the killing of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in July, and the more recent killing of the top Iranian commander, Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan.

—

Bonus video of IRGC preparing their Operation True Promise 2, with what looks to me like Emad missiles visible:

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But now things get interesting.

Israel has claimed it would initiate a major counter-response before suddenly walking back its threats out of fear:

'Israel is considering striking Iranian assets in Yemen or Syria, instead of striking Iran directly', says a U.S. Official – Politico

Lebanon is not on the list, as it seems.

PS: Today's Isreali Strike on apparent buildings in Beirut, targeting a female Hezbollah MP, with appr. 100 dead civilians was supposedly conducted via Israel's sea-born fleet .... nobody knows why NO air-born F-35 or F-15 or F-16 have been used.

Last night, Iranian assets were allegedly struck in Jableh outside Khmeimim—it’s uncertain if that’s meant to be the ‘response’, or one of them. Fake news reports claimed Israel had struck Russia’s Khmeimim base itself, but geolocations showed that to not be the case.

However, other sources continue to imply that behind the scenes Israel and the US are conspiring for something bigger:

You see, it’s a little confusing because on the surface MSM is painting the Biden administration as being totally spurned by outlaw Israel:

But while that’s true on the surface, other factions inside the deep state appear to be working in close coordination with Israel on all ongoing plans and actions:

Everyone knows there are competing factions within the US government, which is why the State Department had witnessed a surge of resignations this year over the Biden team’s support of Israel. However, Brian Berletic outlined the other likely explanation for these seemingly incoherent discrepancies. On one hand, Biden reiterated he would not support Israeli strikes, which need to be “proportional”, he says:

But on the other, Berletic quotes the 2009 Brookings paper entitled "Which Path to Persia?", which outlines a strategy of “maintaining plausible deniability while, in fact, attacking Iran including its nuclear sites.”

In essence, it’s the same old CIA and intelligence agency tactic.

Now Trump has joined in blaming Iran even for his own close encounters. In this case he’s clearly acting as ventriloquist puppet, with ‘someone’ speaking through his mouth in order to again divert America’s military onto a false target, just like in the wake of 9/11:

In fact, just today investigative journalist Lee Smith unleashed a report describing how the FBI set up the fake Iranian story to divert attention away from the true source behind Trump’s would-be assassins.

It’s obvious that a pro-Zionist faction of the deep state in the US government is working in tandem with Mossad to set Iran up as the fall guy one way or another. Whether they get the Democrats to attack Iran, or they take out Trump and blame it on Iran in order to whip up a military campaign of performative vengeance.

All across social and regime media voices are now calling to cripple Iran’s nuclear program, to the delight of Israel. It’s gotten so perverse that even neocons from the Iraq War are rehashing their same old spiel to an ignorant new generation:

Andre Damon writes:

In 2003, Bret Stephens lied that "Saddam may unveil, to an astonished world, the Arab world’s first nuclear bomb." Today, he says "Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb." Twenty years on, it's the same script.

Even as of this writing, FP released their own call for war:

https://archive.ph/IfbIp

It quotes the now widespread MSM marching banner that Iran is only a fortnight away from The Bomb:

Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. The country’s breakout time to a bomb is down to one to two weeks. There is no new nuclear deal in the cards. Hamas and Hezbollah are in no position to retaliate. And the Islamic Republic just asked for it. In fact, this may be the last best chance to keep Tehran from the bomb.

What’s obvious is that Israel is pushing all its neocon puppets to make the most out of its ongoing disastrous maelstrom of unprovoked attacks on neighboring countries. Israel will settle for any kind of ‘victory’, which can be defined as whatever buys it civilizational time against its enemies. Taking out Iran’s nuclear program would be ‘worth’ the price of slaughter and their likely soon-to-fail Lebanese campaign.

Well, we can certainly see why Israel would be paranoid—after the latest strikes it’s clear that the combined West’s air defenses stand no chance against a ballistic missile saturation attack of the Iranian variety. The only real question is one of accuracy—but if Iran were to get a nuclear weapon, accuracy wouldn’t much matter. At that point, Israel would be held at the long point of an existential gun for all time.

Israel Lebanon map (CNN screenshot)

As for that new Lebanese campaign, ISW and other sources claim the IDF has made marginal advances into southern Lebanon in a pincer-like motion from Upper Galilee and the northeastern Galilee Panhandle region:

Here’s a clearer and more detailed write up, with exact unit names, positions, etc.

However there have already been reports of big losses for the IDF in ambushes.

It’s not looking good so far, with photos claiming to show knocked out Merkavas and Hezbollah’s claims that dozens of IDF have already been eliminated with hardly any territory captured. At this pace, Israel will understandably need to ‘divert’ again to a big US-led strike campaign against Iran to paste over and memory-hole what may turn out to be another huge failure in Lebanon.

As a last pertinent update, on the heels of Iran’s strikes, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met with Iran’s president in Doha, Qatar in a symbolic opening of a new chapter of rapprochement:

Something tells me this isn’t the “new Middle East” Netanyahu wants: Just a day after Iran’s missile attack, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister meets with Iran’s president, declaring that Saudi Arabia wants to “permanently close the chapter on our differences.”

On the occasion, Arnaud Bertrand writes:

I found the exact quotes (https://english.news.cn/20241003/9ed1ef8a2572491abca18736bce8f761/c.html…): on top of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister telling Iran’s president that he wanted to "permanently close the chapter on our differences", he also called Iran's strikes on Israel "retaliatory attacks" (meaning they were justified) and said Saudi Arabia "trusted Iran's wisdom and discernment in managing the situation and contributing to the restoration of calm and peace in the region".

Underscoring the historic meeting, the foreign minister wrote an OpEd for FT, highlighting Saudi Arabia’s commitment to establishing an independent Palestinian state, with its capital in East Jerusalem, and no diplomatic relations with Israel until such time:

https://www.ft.com/content/06a1f31d-7cf9-4559-a7d4-8f0f19f2aced

So, snubbing Israel while meeting with Iran’s president under the proclamation of “permanently [closing] the chapter on our differences”.

It seems the last remaining silver linings are quickly turning to lead for Israel.

Below, the prior dispatch on this subject.

Operation True Promise 2: Iran Strikes Again as Missile Barrage Overwhelms Israeli Defenses

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OCT 01, 2024

Iran unleashed their ‘Operation True Promise 2’ on Israel, sending hundreds of ballistic missiles which passed unopposed through Israel’s porous air defenses.

One video showcasing the speed of an incoming Iranian—allegedly hypersonic—missile:

Watch the above videos of hundreds of missiles hitting Israel, then read this deluded tweet by a Netanyahu aide, who with a straight face declared that most missiles were intercepted:

Yes, the Tweet is actually real.

Video from the Iranian situation room when the order was given to fire an alleged 200 missiles:

The moment when IRGC Commander-in-Chief, Major General Hossein Salami, orders Iran's missile strike on Israel from Khatam-al Anbiya Central HQ.

One must recall, however, what I said about gerontocracies.

The biggest question that remains is whether the missiles have inflicted any real damage, or if they were merely scattershot ‘psychological’ actions.

On one hand, we have videos like the following which show missiles hitting random empty fields:

On the other hand, we have eyewitness accounts and geolocations that appear to show the areas of sensitive targets being hit.

This Twitter thread has a bunch of them, including areas hit near Mossad headquarters, Ort Tel Nof airbase, etc.

These videos in particular claim to be from just outside Nevatim airbase which houses much of Israel’s F-35 fleet:

In one of the Videos, it is filmed from the side of the city of Ararat an-Nakab, the operator films the Nevatim Air Base.

Show coordinates: 31.162038217254675, 35.01097230545869

It is currently impossible to find out whether the Air Base was damaged or destroyed, but the approximate range of the targets of Iranian Missiles is quite clear: Air Bases.

Iranian sources allegedly announced that “over 20 F-35s were destroyed” but of course such statements are usually hyperbolic and not reflective of reality—verification is needed.

In truth, Iran openly admitted notifying the US—and thereby Israel—of the strikes in advance, which gave Israel forewarning to take all their F-35s to the sky. This is standard procedure for high value assets like that before any strike, regularly carried out by both Ukraine and Russia in the SMO.

There are allegedly reports that Israel did in fact take its F-35 fleet to the skies as evidenced by a fleet of refueling tankers that were airborne, which suggests the F-35s were kept aloft throughout the duration of the attack:

So, we don’t yet know if any real damage was done, but the one take away that we’re again able to make is that Iran is at least capable of penetrating all Western air defense nets. That is because the US openly announced their attempt to interdict the strikes as much as possible, in futility—as reported by the official US Naval Institute:

https://news.usni.org/2024/10/01/u-s-warships-fire-a-dozen-interceptions-against-iranian-missile-attack-against-israel

USS Bulkely (DDG-84) and USS Cole (DDG-67) fired a dozen interceptors as part of the U.S. response to Iranian missiles launched at Israel, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Iran launched approximately 200 ballistic missiles at targets in Israel, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. He did not elaborate on what type of interceptors the two destroyers used. No ground-based interceptors were used.

They claim no ground based interceptors were used, though Iran begged to differ.

Iran of course again claimed they hadn’t used their best stuff yet:

Iran's Minister of Defense: 'None of our most advanced Missile capabilities were used in Operation True Promise-2'.

It doesn’t really matter in the end, because the attack as per usual is mostly theater, a kind of delicate dance between the warring parties, given that it was telegraphed in advance to notify the recipients for the purpose of de-escalating. Iranian president Pezeshkian afterwards released a statement in fact conveying that Iran had done its show of force and was now finished, insinuating to Israel that the two should accept the parley and de-escalate.

Israel, however, claimed they would respond to any attack large or small—but as per usual, Israel barks loudly while relying entirely on its American backing. Biden had recently signaled he was at the end of his rope with supporting Israeli attacks, which could mean Israel will be forced to back down from its threat of “major” response against Iran. As I said last time, Israel can only create “miraculous” victories on the backs of the entire Western world, which controls the commerce, communications, military, and every other sphere in the region, allowing Israel to wield full spectrum dominance. Without this backing, Israel would not be able to survive on its own, and would have long ceased to exist.

At the same time, Israel has finally invaded southern Lebanon, and what remains to be seen is the true nature of the current battlefield dynamic between Iran and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem released a statement that Hezbollah is ready to repel the Israeli assault:

WE'RE READY AND PREPARED TO CONFRONT ISRAEL GROUND OFFENSIVE, WE WILL BE VICTORIOUS, declares Hezbollah's Deputy SG Qassem in first live statement since assassination of party's chief Nasrallah and other leaders, stressing "Vast majority of Hezbollah's medium, long range weapons capabilities fully intact, despite Israeli lies".

Our fight will continue, everyone on battlefield is ready, and despite losing our leader and commanders, we will never forsake our duty in support of Gaza and in defense of Lebanon - he adds, reaffirming Washington's involved in massacring Lebanese civilians alongside Israel.

Qassem eulogizes "Popular, loved leader Nasrallah who dedicated his life to resistance and struggle" in 2nd video, stressing new SG will be chosen in near future, adding "We will fill leadership positions steadily. Be assured choices will be straightforward because they are clear".

Even Hezbollah’s greatest detractors and enemies admit that the death of Nasrallah is fairly meaningless vis-a-vis Hezbollah’s military integrity.

For instance, take Mohammad Ali Al-Husseini, “a Shiite cleric from Lebanon, who has known Nasrallah since their youth and for years has been one of the strongest critics of what Nasrallah and the Iranians have done to Lebanon.”

This cleric, said to now live in Saudi Arabia, is considered a traitor and would not otherwise be a reliable source on Hezbollah’s activities, except when it comes to the fact what he says rings true, and has been echoed by others in the past: that Hassan Nasrallah was not really the man in charge of Hezbollah’s military wing, at least in regards to making the final calls on military actions.

One must remember that in many Arabic cultures, things work a little differently, and responsibilities are delegated in ways that may appear confusing. For instance, in Iran the president is not really in charge of the military, which is the domain of the Ayatollah or Supreme Leader. Similarly, Hezbollah as an organization can be confusing because it is both a political party and movement, as well as military wing.

Al-Husseini below basically states that Nasrallah was more of the mouthpiece or spokesman—the public “face” and spiritual leader of the organization. But the people who actually make the hard military decisions in Hezbollah have differed over the years—they include figures like Imad Mughniyeh and Fuad Shukr:

Hezbollah’s enemies can lie when it benefits them or makes Hezbollah look bad, but in this case Al-Husseini’s message appears to grudgingly defend Hezbollah’s resilience by admitting that the death of the figurehead does not affect the integrity of Hezbollah’s internal military decision-making power structure.

Here’s a handy map comparing Israel’s previous border incursions:

On the left where it says ‘Number’ it should be ‘Tyre’.

As a very brief summary, Israel has invaded Lebanon three major times since the ‘70s. The 1978 and 1982 invasions were essentially due to claimed attacks by Palestinian groups based in Lebanon. In 1978 Israel went up to the Litani River roughly at the Tyre latitude in southern Lebanon, and in 1982 they made it all the way to the north past the Awali River, besieging the capital of Beirut. Both times the UN eventually expelled them back south.

In 2006 they tried again to go all the way to the Litani—but this time they weren’t facing the PLO, but Hezbollah for the first time. One of the key differences is Hezbollah was armed with large amounts of ATGMs, which the PLO didn’t have, nullifying Israel’s armor and tank advantage. This time IDF could not even get past a few miles into southern Lebanon before giving up. The battle of Bint Jbeil was the main battle, only a couple kilometers from the border:

Both sides were able to claim ‘victory’ however because, in Israel’s case, they claimed to have destroyed a large amount of Hezbollah rockets and infrastructure in widespread strikes throughout the country.

I mention this important fact because I can see the current conflict potentially going the same way. You see, the Middle East has a way of being redundant, when you study its long history. Many of the conflicts replay over and over again in similar fashion, with similar ever-inconclusive results. For instance, much of the current Gaza invasion that Israel has been perpetrating since last October has the hallmarks of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and yet that one likewise ultimately accomplished nothing.

To understand geostrategy and geopolitics, one must understand that both side’s aims are to appear victorious, particularly in frozen-style conflicts where no truly decisive victories are possible for a variety of reasons. As such, each side strives to posture and affect some kind of big moral or political victory. In Netanyahu’s case, he would love to present some kind of victory to fortify his weakening rule.

Thus, there’s a strong chance that Israel could go in, do some damage as always, and amid mounting international pressure, withdraw under the guise of some “major victory” based on claims of disabled Hezbollah infrastructure, etc. Meanwhile, Hezbollah merely has to keep the IDF from advancing to some key point like the Litani River, and credible victory can be claimed for them, no matter the losses. Iran can then chime in and say their ‘overwhelming attack’ knocked out so much Israeli infrastructure as to have thwarted the whole campaign. It’s really a theater of sorts, with nothing of note being accomplished in the end.

Israel’s objectives make no logical sense and are not realistically achievable. That is, the chief stated objective of creating a buffer zone such that northern Israel can be secure from Hezbollah rocket attacks in order to facilitate the return of Israeli citizens. But any such settlement cannot possibly last because it would require Israel to devote inordinate forces to occupying all of southern Lebanon indefinitely. And if they were to withdraw, then Hezbollah can immediately resume acting as before. That’s not to mention the fact that Hezbollah has longer range capabilities such that pushing them back to the Litani would not accomplish much, as that’s a mere 23km from the border, a distance easily covered by around 50% of Hezbollah’s rocket types.

Thus, most likely Israel will take a few border villages, then if they cannot suck Iran into a giant regional war, backdoor emergency agreements will be struck by the US to prevent having to go to war against Iran. Israel would then save face by withdrawing under shallow claims of some obscure ‘victory’ with a list of phony Hezbollah assets destroyed, etc. At the same time, Israel will probably get a bunch of secret concessions from the historically weak US administration in exchange for saving the US from having to do heavy lifting against Iran.

I agree with this take:

That being said, we have now entered October, the fateful month of the great October Surprise and various awaiting black swans that threaten to spoil the election one way or another, under the elites’ guiding hand. So it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that the Israeli conflict can somehow spark into something much larger and uncontrollable to fulfill the needed script.

For what it’s worth, Jared Kushner wrote a long screed espousing his demented theory that Israel’s ‘destruction’ of Hezbollah is the gateway to effectively burying Iran. He cites Hezbollah as a ‘loaded gun pointed at Israel’ which was the sole bulwark protecting Iran’s nuclear facilities from being taken out. But after Israel finishes off Hezbollah, Kushner appears to imply Iran can be safely dealt with without fear of reprisal. It’s likely he’ll be eating his words in the not too distant future.

However, he appears to point to a concerted plan, echoed by Naftali Bennett in today’s blurb from NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/01/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah

In fact, all the Mossad mouthpieces have come out in concert with this same spiel, confirming that this is in fact the orchestrated plan Israel is attempting to carry out:

As a last interesting note, around the time of Iran’s attack, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Chernyshenko was heading to Iran:

At this moment, a passenger plane Tu-214 of the Special Flight Squadron "Russia" with Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Chernyshenko is in Iranian airspace.

All the while, the full-on Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin had landed yesterday to meet with Iranian president Pezeshkian amongst others:

Some sources claim Mishustin was there to sign a major gas deal called the ‘contract of the century’, though official Russian outlets are more mum on the trip. Unreliable Moscow Times claims:

Under this “strategic agreement,” Iran will receive 300 million cubic meters of Russian gas per day through a new pipeline that Moscow plans to build under the Caspian Sea in direct competition with Azerbaijani and Turkem plans for an east-west pipeline.

We’ll keep the Ukraine news light today. Israel’s invasion and subsequent Iranian attack obscured the news that Russian forces finally captured Ugledar after two years of bitter fighting.

The 36th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Lozovskaya Red Banner Brigade is a tactical formation of the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation. It is part of the 29th Guards Combined Arms Army of the Eastern Military District. Its permanent deployment point is in Borzya, Zabaikalsky Krai.

Apart from the Vostok Buryats there are many other units yesterday took part in this awesome operation in Ugledar, here are the The 40th separate guards marine brigade operating inside the city

The STORM detachment. The 40th separate guards marine brigade captured a block of high-rise buildings on the western side of Ugledar. For the first time, the vest is raised, which is considered a symbol of the courage and bravery of a Pacific warrior.

Geolocations for the above video montage:

Russian Army took Ugledar! - DS

▪️The military resource Deep State, working for the Main Intelligence Directorate, analyzed the video of the raising of flags and, after checking with its sources, confirmed the loss of the city by Ukraine.

▪️Other Ukrainian military analysts also draw this conclusion from numerous videos of Russian flags in different parts of the city.

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The combined West lacks all legitimacy

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Don Hank
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Members of the scumbag NATO mafia in 2024.

The combined West lacks all legitimacy

No state that supports genocide, as the US does in Palestine, or supports Nazi ideology, as it does in Ukraine, can, strictly speaking, be considered legitimate.

However, since colonial days, Americans felt it was perfectly legitimate to stand by as the Indigenous peoples were slaughtered and blacks were captured by unscrupulous slave traders and shipped in chains to the US for sale, as if auctioning off a human being were no less moral than selling a horse.

It took well over a century for the US culture to reject the heinous practice of slavery, and as for the wholesale slaughter of human beings in foreign countries, we are still deeply embroiled in this barbarous practice, with NATO and the Pentagon, lawmakers and the White House dedicating major efforts, blood and treasure toward building weapons of mass destruction and employing them to murder people whose views fail to match our own. Or sending them to other brutish nations to do so by proxy.

How can anyone think for a moment that the collective West belongs in the community of civilized nations when we routinely kill people on the basis of trumped up pretexts – the most outlandish of which is the construct of “Christian” Zionism, a racist construct that bears no resemblance to the teachings of Christ, from whom it usurps its name.

Genocide is universally rejected outside the West and Nazism is generally scorned everywhere – outside the West.

Likewise, outside the West, few see the Israeli genocide-supporting US as the exceptional or indispensable nation or as a shining city on a hill. US hegemony, or the monopolar world, is rejected by the Global South and the BRICS, which holds out hope for a just world order.

Our lack of legitimacy is not just because the US and its yapping chihuahuas in Europe violate the Geneva Convention in various important ways, but worse, they fail the humanity test. Only a tiny minority of the world’s population would, responding to a pertinent question in a poll, say that genocide can ever be legitimate. Humans – barring severe brainwashing – don’t naturally think that way. The human heart does not agree that some humans are less than human or are inferior and hence undeserving of equal treatment.

But I said “barring severe brainwashing,” and severe brainwashing is the weapon used by the west to dehumanize people it doesn’t like. It is a weapon wielded 24/7 by the duplicitous western media and the political class to twist ordinary humans into veritable zombies without a twinge of conscience.

Without our regular dose of indoctrination by the Establishment agents in our institutions such as the press and politics, we would not normally and naturally fall into the current hatred and distrust of the countries we are taught to be wary of, such as Russia, China, Iran and others. And we would not naturally learn to hate and distrust the Muslims, most of whom are excellent human beings, who, among other things, respect Jesus as an important prophet (whereas the Jewish religion generally teaches that he is a fraud and some Jews that he deserved to be executed. In fact, some Israelis have started the trend of spitting on Christian leaders working in their country).

That US new media are pure propaganda sheets is evidenced by the fact that they routinely call Putin a dictator even though his power comes from free elections, and that they routinely call the Axis of Resistance terrorists even though terrorists and resistors are two entirely different kinds of groups.

After thorough indoctrination for an entire lifetime, it is doubtful that the average news consumer in the west even thinks twice about these deliberate perversions of the truth, accepting them as Gospel.

If we were to be honest with ourselves we would realize that a country that supports Nazis is hardly free of Nazi ideology and a country that supports genocidal murderers is hardly free of the deep-seated will to kill entire ethnic or religious groups.

If Washington Neocons felt any aversion to the irrational hatred of Russians and Palestinians, they would hardly be able to live with their consciences.

And if Americans were capable of analyzing the sleazy motives of their own government and media, it is likely that they would rise up and overthrow both our ruthless regime and its ancillaries in the press.

Yet somehow we have allowed ourselves to be beguiled by our religious and political leaders to accept the unacceptable, and roughly half of us believe that the Republicans will save our republic while the other half of us have placed their faith in the Democrats, blissfully unaware that both parties are firmly in the grip of AIPAC and incapable of departing an inch from the genocidal positions of the crime syndicate we call Israel.

Our thanks to CA for this, which fits in well with what I said above. Nicely stated:

There is absolutely no moral equivalence between 43,000 [source] dead civilians (30% to 40% of whom are believed to be children) and the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. No moral equivalence at all.

Providing the weapons for this mass murder (and that's exactly what it is) is an unconscionable act by the United States. And it is motivated by base emotions, fear and ignorance, not by any moral principle.

Those who claim Israel acted appropriately by attacking civilians in Gaza are practicing the same moral relativism that allowed Americans to say, 20 years ago, "Americans do not torture!" (well, maybe, almost, never?).

True moral principles are not applied selectively ... only when it is convenient ... only when it meets the approval of the public. True moral principles are always individual, non-negotiable, and immutable. They are not influenced by propaganda or politics.

And they are not determined by the State or by any Church or by a political party or by the White House or by the US Marine Corps.

From Gaza to Beirut: KHADER JABBAR AND ABDALJAWAD OMAR on the ripple effects of Israel’s attack on Lebanon. Abdaljawad Omar speaks to Mondoweiss about how the recent escalation of fighting between Israel and the Lebanese resistance is connected to the ongoing genocide in Gaza since October 7.

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From Gaza to Beirut: Abdaljawad Omar on the ripple effects of Israel’s attack on Lebanon

BY KHADER JABBAR AND ABDALJAWAD OMAR SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

THE AFTERMATH OF A MASSIVE ISRAELI ATTACK IN THE DAHIYA AREA OF BEIRUT ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2024. PHOTO SHARED BY LEBANESE JOURNALIST AHMAD EL HAJJ ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

The following interview with Abdaljawad Omar was recorded on September 25, 2024, before the massive Israeli attack on the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut which killed Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah. In the interview Omar outlines Israel’s overall strategy in its escalation with Hezbollah, which is consistent with its assassination of Nasrallah, and how it is connected to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The following transcript has been edited for conciseness and clarity. The full version of the conversation is available on The Mondoweiss Podcast.

Mondoweiss: Israel has been waging a brutal bombing campaign on Lebanon. At the time of recording, over 700 Lebanese have been killed. This comes almost a week after the Lebanese pager attack where hundreds of personal electronic devices were booby-trapped by Israel and exploded across the country, killing and wounding thousands of people. How do you read the situation in Lebanon?

Abdaljawad Omar: For at least two weeks, we’ve been seeing Israel moving upwards in the escalation ladder in its northern borders, specifically with the Lebanese resistance and more specifically with Hezbollah. It has conducted various forms of operations using some of its intelligence gathered in the 17 years since the 2006 war, including knowledge of Hezbollah. It’s able to penetrate some of its communication devices to create what is called, in military language, a “system shock” in enemy forces.

To do that, it showed its capability of blowing up the pagers and then blowing up some of the walkie-talkies that members of the Lebanese resistance use. Of course, it’s important to note that a lot of these pagers and walkie-talkies are also used by civilians and the wider Lebanese social base from which Hezbollah is drawn, which is why there were a lot of civilian casualties when these devices exploded in homes, markets, and other locations. It was described as a terror attack because it did not really differentiate between military personnel and civilians in Lebanon more broadly.

After conducting these two massive attacks that attempted to paralyze Hezbollah, it also continued with its approach of assassinating its leadership, including bombing a meeting that was taking place between some of Hezbollah’s leaders in Dahiya in Beirut. About a dozen of those leaders were killed, including one of the main commanders of the Hezbollah military forces.

From a military standpoint, these attacks were meant, first of all, to exact a price from Hezbollah. They’re a step up in the escalation ladder, and they were meant to create this system shock by weakening Hezbollah’s confidence in itself as a fighting force, creating mistrust in its own communication networks, and depriving it of some of its key leaders.

Then, after it conducted all of these forms of attack, Israel also moved to a widescale bombing campaign, one of the highest and most intensive bombing campaigns that the Israeli Air Force has ever conducted in its history. It’s targeting Lebanese homes across villages in the south, and now even in the north and in the Beqaa Valley and other areas across Lebanon.

But despite the operational success — even Hasan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, has acknowledged that these were painful attacks on Hezbollah — the current paradigm does not mean that these operational successes will translate easily into strategic success. The rationale behind this intensifying escalation campaign is to try to decouple the Lebanese or northern Palestine front from the ongoing genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.

Thus far we have seen that Hezbollah has remained calm, and has been able to also control the escalation of its rocket firepower, whether in terms of what areas it actually targets inside historic Palestine (for now, it has limited itself mostly to the northern part of historical Palestine, the Galilee area), or by using some of its more high-quality precision rockets. It has slowly and steadily increased the tempo of attacks in a very measured manner, which shows that Hezbollah has maintained command and control, has maintained its ability to fight, still has a lot of its capability intact, and has not used most of its capabilities throughout this military campaign.

So what we have now is a trading of blows. Of course, within this paradigm, Israel is committing more atrocities, killing more civilians, and targeting more of the civic space in Lebanon, while Hezbollah is largely confining itself to military targets, whether it’s military bases or some of the industrial infrastructure around Israel’s military system and its military capability.

You pointed out that Hezbollah’s response has been relatively calm and measured compared to Israel’s bombing campaign, which is the bloodiest since 2006. In your opinion, how much of Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon is to provoke Hezbollah into a greater response, and to accelerate this regional war that Netanyahu seems really keen on having?

Well, I think from the outset, Israel has been looking for a highly intensive and short form of warfare. It does not want this war to continue with Hezbollah endlessly, meaning that it’s pursuing a coercion policy. By intensifying its campaign and getting Hezbollah to also intensify its firepower, it can reach a point where each actor would want to resolve issues quite quickly and, therefore, reach a strategic stalemate that would actually enable a diplomatic resolution to happen without Gaza being considered.

I think what Hezbollah has been attempting to do is to show that it’s capable of swallowing up a lot of Israel’s attacks. Some of them were surprising and shocking, but Hezbollah has still continued in its policy of attritional warfare without reaching the threshold of complete war.

So Israel is still in a bind. On one hand, the advantage of being in Israel’s position is that it can test Hezbollah’s limits: it can bomb as much as it wants, kill as many people as it wants, exact a price from Hezbollah’s social base and its military organizational capacity, and still not get into total war. But at the same time, Israel is also, at some level, afraid of getting dragged into all-out war, as it would cause a lot of havoc within Israel itself, especially if Hezbollah uses its entire rocket arsenal and targets strategic infrastructure or some of its more advanced economic infrastructure in the north or the center.

Since Hezbollah has been able to maintain a measured response so far, it is thwarting Israel’s strategic objective of decoupling Lebanon from Palestine.

We’ve seen Israel’s rhetoric regarding Lebanon and Hezbollah has been very similar to what it has been saying about Gaza. They make no difference between Lebanese people and Hezbollah fighters, claiming weapons are being stored in civilian homes, telling people to flee before civilian areas are bombed. How much of the Gaza genocidal playbook are you seeing playing out in Lebanon?

I think what’s important to understand is not the playbook itself, which replicates a similar rhetorical or discursive stance, but how this characteristic of Israeli fighting has come about. Israel is an army that practices a “post-heroic” form of warfare, relying heavily on standoff firepower — mainly airpower. It does not want to risk its soldiers. To the extent possible, it wants to unleash its firepower while preserving its military forces and capacity to fight over time, without sacrificing many of its soldiers.

We have seen this in Gaza. Yes, of course, Israel wants to change the paradigm of the relationship with the Palestinians and is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing to ensure that the idea of October 7, as a moment of possibility for liberation in the Middle East and in the world more broadly, is killed through this monstrous policy. But Israel is also incapable of fighting a war where its soldiers are placed in high-risk situations. It cannot sustain a campaign where its soldiers will actually enter homes or areas where they would find these weapons.

Of course, a lot of these claims that Israel has been throwing around can’t actually be confirmed. There was no highly complex military command center under al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, for instance. Israel has not shown any proof that placing rockets in civilian homes is happening in any significant way to justify such widescale aerial bombardment. So we can’t take these claims with any seriousness. A lot of them are just made to justify targeting what it sees as an important base for resistance movements — the civilian or social space from which the resistance emerges.

By exacting a bloody price, Israel hopes this society will pressure resistance movements to give up on the fight.

Israel’s rogue behavior in Gaza, and what we’re seeing right now in Lebanon, wouldn’t be possible without the U.S.’s unconditional support for Israel. Many experts have called the U.S. approach a disastrous failure of policy. In what ways has the U.S. failed to de-escalate the situation or hold Israel accountable both in Gaza and Lebanon?

Well, one of the things here is that nobody really knows what the Americans want. Do they want to just contain the war while allowing it to continue endlessly? Do they want to give Israel more maneuvering space to exact a price from Hezbollah, Hamas, and all these different groups challenging Israel? Or do they want to end the war?

It’s difficult to distill a consistent policy from the Americans. On the one hand, they claim that they want a ceasefire, but they hold the keys to stopping the war by stopping the flow of arms.

Without this endless flow of arms, Israel would have a hard time fighting a war on these multiple fronts and using its airpower in this way. America has a lot of leverage, unlike what it says. It says it’s incapable of actually stopping the war, which is factually and objectively untrue.

I think that America, at some level, sees Israel’s willingness to continue fighting could play to its advantage as long as it does not harm its vital interests in the Middle East or lead to all-out war regionally. So if the war widens to Lebanon but remains confined to it, and if Israel is able to weaken these resistance groups at the same time, America can just simply attempt to manage the war and prevent its expansion to the wider region. That’s one way of thinking about it.

The second way of thinking about it is that America is actually supporting an Israeli policy of slowly escalating to the point of even confronting Iran, Iraq, or Syria. They’re thinking, Israel has moved from Gaza and was able to come back with some results in terms of depriving the resistance of some of its capabilities, so perhaps it should emulate the same scenario in Lebanon and then move to other areas. Perhaps it could even seek a military solution with Iran or, at the very least, weaken it.

As long as this war continues, the possibilities exist for both scenarios. There should be no certainty in our thinking about war. War in itself provides many opportunities, but as actors practice their power, they might grow more or less confident. By becoming more confident, they could make many mistakes in assessment. And if they get less confident, they might retreat at a time when they shouldn’t. These things in war are highly unpredictable.

Over the past two weeks, Israel has gained some confidence in its military capabilities. It could take these military successes as a sign of its ability to decisively defeat all of these forces. Maybe it will make mistakes along the way and actually pay a heavier price by misreading the nature of its success.

So I think that it remains uncertain what American policy is, but what we can say for certain is that there is no real will to end the war in Gaza or Lebanon.

Now, I’ve heard you saying this isn’t currently a full-out war. What would, in your eyes, need to happen for it to be labeled as such? And how can things even get to a level of de-escalation?

When we talk about all-out war, when it comes to Lebanon, it would include a ground maneuver by Israeli forces into the southern Lebanese towns, or wherever else they would reach. Both parties would use more of their capabilities. Even with this brutal bombing campaign in Lebanon, Israel still has not targeted a lot of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon itself, and it has not targeted Beirut extensively.

Of course, it could change at any moment that we could see that Israel is bombing Beirut more extensively and Hezbollah is bombing Tel Aviv more extensively or using more of its firepower and its rockets. But at this moment, this is just the next level of a more intense campaign. Again, I think that Hezbollah is trying as much as possible to keep this war measured. Playing it out in the long term while Israel is trying as much as possible to use the intensity of its abilities in order to pressure Hezbollah into a corner to agree to decouple from the war in Gaza, Hezbollah’s attempt, or the Lebanese resistance’s more broadly, is attempting to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Now, having said that I think that the problem of defining the type of war we’re in is a hallmark of this hybrid form of warfare. It’s not a war between two equally equipped forces or regular armies. This is a war between resistance forces that use a mix of tactics and operational abilities and an established state. Each has its own alliance system, its own investment in military capabilities, and weapons systems. It’s a blend of low intensity, high intensity, medium intensity, and maybe also the ability to move between these intensities at various points.

Each actor is thinking of how to economize its use of weapons and extract as many political gains from this war as possible. At the same time, there is also a fear that an all-out war will be costly for everyone. A broader regional war means a lot of bad news for the global economy. It’s bad news for anyone in American politics running for elections. It’s bad news for inflation. It’s bad news for people’s pockets in everyday life in New York, Pennsylvania, or London.

So there’s a lot of fear around an all-out war, but at the same time, we’re still playing within a specific set of give-and-take between these forces and what they can actually produce in terms of costs on the other. And I think this will continue. There’s an escalation ladder that I don’t think is exhausted by just one step or another step. There are a lot of steps before we get into a more open war with everybody using whatever they have in their capabilities against the other.

Israel is still carrying out a genocide in Gaza and recently closed down Al Jazeera’s office inside the West Bank. With global attention now focused on Lebanon, do you see Israel’s actions being even more heinous in Gaza and the West Bank?

I mean, sometimes when the attention is directed on one specific front, Israel might get away with doing things in another context. During the war on Gaza, for instance, the settlers and the settler-led government of Israel used that opportunity to annex more land, build more settlements, organize and take over Palestinian homes, and unleash the killing machine in the West Bank, but in a more managed manner than in Gaza (at least until now).

The war with Lebanon at this specific moment does direct the attention rightfully towards Lebanon. Because of the intense aerial bombardment, the potential for all-out war and the repercussions on Lebanon and its people is a very difficult and painful moment for a lot of people, including us in Palestine. We look at the horror that is happening in Lebanon and feel for every person who’s sacrificing in support of Palestine. But having said that, I think that at this current moment, while Israel is conducting a lot of its military operations in the north, it’s already overextended in many ways militarily, and will need to divert a lot of resources in order to fight a highly complex war.

Hezbollah is not the same as Hamas in terms of types of weapons, strategic depth, and alliance systems. Israel will have to divert a lot of resources to fight it, and it cannot risk things escalating in the West Bank in ways that would extend it even more. On a military level, I don’t think Israel will be very aggressive in the West Bank. It will continue to make its presence felt, specifically in the north of the West Bank, conducting operations and making people feel that they’re still on top of things, but they’ll try not to have the West Bank blow up in their faces while they’re still fighting in Lebanon.

Could you talk a little bit about how the internal political situation in Israel, including Netanyahu’s leadership and his right-wing coalition partners, influenced its military strategy in both Gaza and Lebanon? And what is your sense of the general Israeli public? Do they want a war with Lebanon?

I may be exaggerating at some level, but those are the contours of how Israel viewed October 7. Not because it was really an existential risk. We already saw that in only two or four days, Israel was able to regain the Gaza envelope and the settlements surrounding Gaza. But on the level of the psyche, that’s how it felt for most Israelis. So they want to regain the initiative. They saw October 7 as an opportunity to exact a price from everybody in the region who supports resistance. They want to destroy societies that are challenging them, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or other places.

The real desire is for an ultimate form of victory, this kind of awe-inspiring victory that will give them an answer to their existential questions.

I think that on some level, the Israelis won the war, they won the victory. They want to create these awe-inspiring moments, like we saw with the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, which they have severely missed in contrast to how they were caught with their pants down on October 7.

October 7 was a moment that not only stuck in the Israeli psyche, but the Palestinian psyche as well. Israel’s genocide in Gaza inspired shock and horror, but didn’t inspire a lot of awe. It didn’t give Israelis the taste of power that Israeli identity was built on. But with Hezbollah, we’ve seen this awe factor come back, like the penetration of the communication devices and blowing them all up at once. This includes some of the operations that Israel has conducted in Gaza, like the extraction of some Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.

That’s on a level of, if you want, psychological and aesthetic analysis. But on a political level, Israel finds this as an opportunity. It’s already way deep into a war for 11 months, a war that is costing it a lot economically, socially, politically, and diplomatically. It sees that only more war will bring about better results in those domains.

It will be able to establish what it calls deterrence. It will be able to put a line in the sand and say, if you ever challenge us again, this is what will happen to you. It will burn into the consciousness of the people of the region that Israel shouldn’t be played with. All of these motivations coexist all at once in Israel’s conduct—and of course, for the settlers specifically.

The only ones who have a real solution for this whole Palestinian question, instead of managing the conflict or shrinking the conflict or destroying the possibilities for two states or one state, are the settlers who say that we should change the paradigm with the Palestinians. They say, we should destroy Palestinian existence in the land of Palestine.

So for the settlers, the “ultimate victory” is to get rid of as many Palestinians as possible from the river to the sea, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, and establish the kind of pure religious Jewish state that they have always dreamed of. For them, war is desirable. It maintains the possibility for ethnic cleansing, it maintains the possibility for genocide. It means it still keeps the possibility of total victory open. Of course, even in their wildest dreams, even if they clear out all of the Palestinians from Palestine, I think the Palestinian question will not go away.

Yeah, I want to touch a little bit more on what you said about the Israeli psyche and this kind of idea of total victory. As you were talking, I was thinking about how Israel constantly leaks images of violent acts they’ve done to Palestinian prisoners, I think to obviously dehumanize Palestinians and to break our psyche. And as you put it, October 7 broke the security psyche that Israelis had about themselves and about the state of Israel. But I’m curious from your perspective, as someone in the West Bank, how has the resistance psyche for Palestinians changed and evolved since October 7?

October 7 peeled away the Iron Wall that Israel surrounds itself with. The Zionist movement has theorized this iron wall from its inception, in the writings of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of the revisionist Zionist movement in the 1920s and 30s. He wrote about this iron wall and the need for military power to be used extensively, repeatedly, until the Arabs surrendered.

There’s a kind of dialectic, if you want, between the Iron Wall and Palestinian Arab attitudes toward Israel. That Iron Wall started to dissolve after October 7.

But today, the situation among Palestinians is one of disorientation. People don’t know what the future holds. There’s a lot of anxiety and fear. And this is reinforced by a military occupation that is actually a regime of terror. It chooses who to arrest and who not to arrest, who to kill and who to leave alive, whose home to destroy, and who is spared. This is one level.

On a second level — and this is perhaps a surprising element if you want — there is the idea that liberation is not some fictional scenario in the far-off future. That idea came across on October 7. Maybe it was only possible for a couple of days. I’m not here to assess the historical veracity of whether October 7 will lead to liberation as a certainty, because I don’t believe in inevitability. I’m much more cautious about trying to make judgments on where this war will end up. And I think it already presents us with both the nightmare and the dream at the same time. And perhaps sometimes the nightmare is the dream and the dream is a nightmare. But, my only point is that when October 7 came as this possibility of liberation, people were also afraid of liberation itself, as if, at this moment, we’re not ready to think of the end of an order to which we’ve already adapted ourselves. Even though we want to end it, we have made choices in our life based on this order.

This opening of an actual horizon for liberation has, for a lot of Palestinians, meant rethinking who they are and what it means to be Palestinian. This is specifically true for people outside of Gaza because I think people within Gaza are only thinking about the immediate end of the war.

But in many ways, I think resistance still operates on this level of hope. Its existence and persistence, where Gaza is giving people hope that the war will end and that the Palestinians will come out, still with a lot of pain, but having at least prevented Israel from achieving everything that it wants to achieve. The same goes for the Lebanese resistance and other resistance movements in the region.

And we should remember, of course, that part of the social discourse around whether we’ve lost or won the war is being fed through systematic psychological warfare by a lot of Arab governments and the Israeli information warfare units. They are operating through social media and established media operations in the Arab world, feeding psychic and ideological assaults against the resistance.

I think there’s no single decisive answer to this question It just goes in different directions, because war is living in uncertainty.

Thank you for that. And finally, but before we end here, where do you see the events in Lebanon heading? Do you see de-escalation on the horizon or do you see it going out to a full-blown war?

Well, look, I’ve learned something about predictions in this war and it is that those who make them end up looking like fools. So I don’t see that the war will deescalate unless one of the actors flinches or is incapable of continuing or decides to retreat. Looking at Israeli strategy at this moment, it’s true that it wants a short intensive war, which it will not get in Lebanon, so the only option it has is to escalate more and more, forcing the Lebanese resistance to escalate as well. And unless there is some sort of intervention by Israel’s allies that is actual and tangible, I think that this war will unfortunately continue to escalate.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Khader Jabbar
Khader Jabbar is Mondoweiss’s Digital Director

Abdaljawad Omar
Abdaljawad Omar is a Palestinian scholar and theorist whose work focuses on the politics of resistance, decolonization, and the Palestinian struggle.

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Why I Feel Bad for Americans

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S.L. Kanthan
SPUTNIK OPINION
SPUTNIK INDIA

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Why I Feel Bad for Americans

Liar in Chief

12:15 30.09.2024

I feel bad for the Americans. Yes, they live in the biggest empire in human history. But the US is the #1 country in the world in consumption of antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, the #1 in the use of illegal drugs. Half of all American adults are functionally illiterate and the are many more problems.

Americans live in the biggest empire in human history. And there are many other statistics to boast – biggest GDP in the world, giant corporations worth trillions of dollars, the largest number of millionaires and billionaires, extraordinary dominance over the digital world and the media, technological superiority in many areas, dollar as the preeminent reserve currency of the world, and so on.

However, such impressive data hides a myriad of ugly facts faced by the average American who is financially broke, physically sick, mentally unhappy, and pessimistic about the future. How could that be? Let’s unpack life in the Empire of Lies, where the elites wage not only wars everywhere around the world but also on their own people.

The first thing to remember about the US is the mind-boggling inequality. Thus, while the US’ GDP-per- capita is $80,000, it does not mean that a family of three – mom, dad and a child – earn $240,000 a year. In fact, 92% of American households earn less than $240,000. Here’s a shocking stat: the top 1% of Americans earn more money than the entire Middle Class!

Similarly, the US stock market is worth nearly $50 trillion, but it’s almost entirely (93%) owned by the top 10%. This is plutocracy.

There is also another type of inequality – based on geography. While people in coastal states like California or New York make more money (on the average), there are vast areas in middle America that are crumbling and decaying, thanks to deindustrialization. Go to YouTube and search for “dying cities in America” and you can spend an entire day watching shocking videos. There are third-world and fourth- world countries hiding inside America.

Even in the relatively wealthier states, a majority of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, because of the high cost of living. For example, in the 1960s, an average home cost twice as much as the average income. Now, the ratio is 7. Plus, in most families now, both parents must work to make ends meet, while a few decades ago, just the husband could work and support his entire family.

Education is key to the success of any nation, but the wealthiest nation ranks at the bottom of the OECD nations in math, science and reading. Half of all American adults are functionally illiterate. And when young Americans go to college, they often get useless degrees and are collectively burdened with $1.7 trillion of student loan. Welcome to a life of debt serfdom.

It’s no wonder that 78% of Americans say that their children will be worse off (than the parents).

But the problems continue.

All of America's big cities exhibit the huge problems afflicting this nation—grotesque inequality, drug use, dirty streets, crime, rundown neighborhoods, homelessness. All victims of the country's unofficial religion: capitalism.

It’s sad that most Americans cannot afford real food. The mainstream food is not even real food, it’s simply a toxic concoction of chemicals, GMO, sugar, bad fat, and ultra-processed junk. Hence the term SAD – Standard American Diet. The food corporations do not know anything about health, and the health corporations do not know anything about food.

Not surprisingly, Americans are also mentally sick. The US is the #1 country in the world in consumption of antidepressantsand other psychotropic medications. Big Pharma rigs all the clinical trials and comes up with fake science about “chemical imbalance” in the brain. Thus, even children in primary school are forced to take brain-altering drugs, some of which act in ways identical to cocaine or meth.

The US is also the #1 in the use of illegal drugs. 100,000 Americans die every year from drug overdose, but the elites do not care, since there is an endless supply of illegal immigrants across the border.

The cabal that rules the USA must really hate Americans, because there is no other explanation for the destructive social engineering that is being forced upon the masses. Since WW2, the US establishment has managed to destroy Christianity, tradition, wholesome values, and families by relentless bombardment of degeneracy and hedonism through Hollywood, media and even the legal system. What is being done to American children right now is unspeakable perversion. Worse, the experiments done in the US are soon spread to Europe and many other parts of the world. Thankfully, some countries like Russia and China have rejected these psychotic “values.”

So, what is left for the greatness of America? Capitalism, Freedom and Democracy? Let’s take a look.

There is no real capitalism or free market in the US. The real model of the US is “financial capitalism” or “casino capitalism” or “crony capitalism.” For more details, here’s my article on how financial capitalism is destroying the USA. There is an illusion of a free market in the US, but all the major corporations are controlled by a handful of giant financial corporations like Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street, which are the biggest shareholders. Moreover, all public corporations are controlled by a small network of people who sit on the boards of directors. Thus, there is only “One Corp” with different names such as Google, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Walmart etc. This is neo-feudalism, not capitalism.

How about democracy, the one word that justifies all American wars? Lots of studies, including one from Princeton University, have shown that America works just like a textbook oligarchy. There is only one party in the US, but it comes in two flavors – Democrats and Republicans. This uniparty is funded by the One Corp mentioned before and special interest groups like AIPAC.

However, the US has an elaborate reality show known as the presidential election every four years. This rigged system is why Congress has an approval rating of 20% and nearly half of all Americans do not vote. But the clown show must go on.

While Americans love their freedom, it is increasingly under attack. Political correctness stifles discussion of many critical topics involving politics and geopolitics. People and groups on social media quickly get cancelled for daring to have the “wrong thought.” It is so bad that Americans cannot even talk about what they cannot talk about! There is a multibillion-dollar censorship industry made up of deep state, special interest groups, corporations and tech giants. And the US is working closely with its vassal, the European Union. As the official narratives keep losing their influence, totalitarianism is increasing, as seen by arrests and raids of journalists.

America’s oligarchs have been playing divide-and-rule in order to neutralize the 99%. However, this has resulted in an extremely polarized nation, which might face a civil war in the future. To preempt a revolution, the rulers of America are encouraging unbridled illegal immigration and are openly talking about getting rid of the Constitution. The mask will completely come off soon.

As for technological primacy, America is quickly losing that battle as well. China dominates the world not only in traditional industries such as steel production, but also modern sectors such as electric cars, EV batteries, solar panels, next-gen nuclear power plants etc. According to a study by Australia’s ASPI, China leads the world in 57 out of 64 critical technologies. Two decades ago, the US was #1 in 60 out of 64. In spite of brutal US sanctions on hundreds of top Chinese tech companies, China is on the verge of making breakthroughs in semiconductor technology. Once China masters the chip ecosystem, it will be game over for the US empire.

Finally, thanks to aggressive imperialism, the rest of the world is embracing BRICS and dedollarization. When that takes off, the US will lose its ability to print and/or borrow trillions of dollars. Once the voodoo economics is gone, Americans will face devastating austerity. The cost of imports will go up and the standard of living will decline, while the US government will be forced to slash spending, layoff workers, and raise the retirement age.

Conclusion

Americans need to wake up to the fact they are ruled by psychopathic and incompetent elites. Unfortunately, too many Americans are still hoodwinked by propaganda, since the entire US establishment – corporations, politicians, media, think tanks, academia etc. – is very disciplined in sticking to the official narratives.

The US needs a complete overhaul of its domestic and foreign policies. At home, the US needs to re-industrialize and focus on the welfare of farmers and workers. Also, the US should go back to traditional family values and reject the globalists’ social engineering. Abroad, the US needs to end the perpetual wars, make friends with Russia and China, and embrace a multipolar world.

Can Americans avoid the tragic end of an empire?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SL Kanthan is a geopolitical analyst, columnist, blogger, tweeter, podcaster. Based out of Bangalore, India.

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Why I Feel Bad for Americans

S.L. Kanthan SPUTNIK OPINION SPUTNIK INDIA

But the problems continue.

All of America's big cities exhibit the huge problems afflicting this nation—grotesque inequality, drug use, dirty streets, crime, rundown neighborhoods, homelessness. All victims of the country's unofficial religion: capitalism.

Conclusion

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