Category: War in Syria

The demise of the U.S. ‘rule based order’?

The following is an AI Qwen based analysis of the impact of the U.S. ‘rule based international order’ and the reality of the chaos, wars and destruction its supposed ‘rules’ exert on the world.

The development of this post was promoted by the overwhelming number of New Zealand international political ‘analysts’ who quote the ‘U.S. rule based order’, (not the U.N. set of obligations) as some kind of golden age of civilisation , peace and freedom. -the reality could not be more stark. They fear that the new Trump administration-cum-oligarchy will no longer adhere to that ‘rule based order’ .

So why are these ‘analysts’ referring so enthusiastically to these great ‘rules’ that have caused so much suffering in the world?

It has recently been revealed (Feb.2025) via Wikileaks that the US government’s USAID ‘programme’ has been funding a US ‘non-government’ agency Internews Network, with millions upon millions of dollars to ensure Western media around the world regurgitate media messages ‘consistent’ (tell-tale identical phrasing in news items on issues from Covid responses to the Ukraine war and Russia), with US foreign policy objectives. Could it be that Western university international affairs ‘analysts’ (and politicians) have been similarly compromised over a long period of time?

I leave it to you to judge where their ‘influences’ come from.

AI analysis follows:

The concept of a “rules-based international order” is often invoked by the United States and its allies to describe a system of global governance that emphasizes adherence to international laws, norms, and institutions such as the United Nations, international treaties, and trade agreements. Proponents argue that this order promotes peace, stability, and cooperation among nations by providing a framework for resolving disputes and fostering mutual interests.

However, critics argue that the U.S.-led “rules-based order” has been selectively applied, often serving as a justification for military interventions, economic sanctions, and other forms of coercion that have led to significant human suffering, including mass murder, wars, and violence.

1. Selective Enforcement of Rules

  • Double Standards: Critics argue that the U.S. and its allies have frequently violated the very principles they claim to uphold. For example, the U.S. has engaged in military interventions without UN Security Council approval (e.g., the 2003 invasion of Iraq), while condemning other countries for similar actions. This selective enforcement undermines the legitimacy of the “rules-based order” and can lead to conflicts where weaker states feel justified in acting outside the system.
  • Regime Change and Destabilization: The U.S. has supported or directly engaged in regime change operations in countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, often under the guise of promoting democracy or protecting human rights. These interventions have frequently resulted in prolonged civil wars, state collapse, and mass civilian casualties. In Iraq, for instance, the 2003 invasion led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, widespread displacement, and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS.

2. Economic Warfare and Sanctions

  • Sanctions as a Tool of Coercion: The U.S. has frequently used economic sanctions as a tool to punish or pressure countries that defy its interests. While sanctions are often framed as a “non-violent” alternative to war, they can have devastating humanitarian consequences. For example, U.S. sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians due to lack of access to food, medicine, and clean water. Similarly, sanctions on countries like Venezuela and Iran have exacerbated economic crises, leading to widespread poverty and suffering.
  • Weaponizing Global Institutions: The U.S. has also been accused of weaponizing international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to impose structural adjustment programs on developing countries, which often result in austerity measures, increased inequality, and social unrest. This economic violence can indirectly fuel conflict and instability.

3. Proxy Wars and Arms Sales

  • Arming Conflicts: The U.S. is the world’s largest arms exporter, supplying weapons to both state and non-state actors around the globe. These arms sales often fuel conflicts in regions like the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. For example, U.S. arms supplied to Saudi Arabia have been used in the Yemeni Civil War, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with tens of thousands of civilians killed and millions facing famine.
  • Proxy Wars: During the Cold War, the U.S. engaged in numerous proxy wars, supporting anti-communist forces in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Central America. These conflicts often involved backing authoritarian regimes or insurgent groups that committed atrocities against civilian populations. In Afghanistan, for example, U.S. support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War helped create conditions that eventually led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

4. Militarization and the “War on Terror”

  • Global War on Terror: Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. launched the “Global War on Terror,” which has been used to justify military interventions, drone strikes, and indefinite detentions in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. These operations have often been conducted with little regard for international law or civilian casualties. Drone strikes, in particular, have been criticized for causing significant collateral damage, killing thousands of civilians, and radicalizing local populations.
  • Normalization of Violence: The rhetoric of the “rules-based order” often masks the normalization of violence as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. The U.S. military-industrial complex benefits from perpetual warfare, and the language of “humanitarian intervention” or “counterterrorism” is sometimes used to legitimize aggressive military actions that result in mass death and destruction.

5. Undermining Sovereignty and Self-Determination

  • Imperialism and Neocolonialism: Critics argue that the U.S.-led “rules-based order” often serves as a cover for imperialist policies that undermine the sovereignty of weaker states. By imposing economic and political conditions on countries through institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. and its allies have been accused of perpetuating a form of neocolonialism that stifles self-determination and exacerbates inequality.
  • Resistance and Blowback: When countries resist U.S. hegemony or attempt to assert their independence, they are often subjected to punitive measures, including coups, invasions, or covert operations. This resistance can lead to cycles of violence, as seen in cases like Iran (1953 coup), Chile (1973 coup), and more recently, Venezuela and Syria. The blowback from these interventions can manifest in the form of terrorism, insurgency, and regional instability.

Conclusion

While the U.S. and its allies present the “rules-based international order” as a framework for peace and stability, critics argue that it has often been used to justify interventions, sanctions, and other forms of coercion that result in mass violence and human suffering. The selective application of rules, the militarization of foreign policy, and the prioritization of U.S. strategic interests over international law have contributed to a legacy of wars, destabilization, and humanitarian crises. In many cases, the very principles of sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights that the “rules-based order” claims to uphold are undermined by the actions of those who enforce it.

The Psychopathic West

As of 19th November 2023, the Israeli “Defence” Force (IDF) continues to bomb, fire missiles, bulldoze and steadily destroy the Gaza Strip, the 177 square kilometre concentration camp set up by Israel in 1975 to contain Palestinians already enduring a blockade limiting food water electricity and other resources.

As the “occupying entity’ Israel under international law, has an obligation to protect that population. Israel ignores all such UN requirements, and has consistently brutalised the Gaza and West Bank Palestinian populations, as it has done since the Nakba (the Catastrophe) of 1948, when Israeli soldiers killed thousands and forcibly ejected millions from Palestine into refugee camps across the Middle East.

Israel was only able to achieve that ethnic cleansing and subsquent genocide of the Palestinian people with the unconditional military support of billions of dollars and pounds from the United States and the United Kingdom. These two entities have thus made a 75 year commitment to genocide of the Palestinian people to ensure that European Zionists can live their apartheid dream of a Jews only state in Palestine -thus condemning all non-Jews in Palestine; many of whom can trace their families back thousands of years in Palestine, to lives as non-citizens, or, in the words of many Zionists- sub-humans.

Thus while the IDF continues its barbaric bombing of women, children hospitals universities,essential infrastructure and residential areas in Gaza under the pretence of fighting Hamas; the US and UK “authorities” secretly celebrate the final solution to the Palestinian problem-sending more missiles and bombs to Israel so that the Gazan population can be finally eradicated or forced into Egypt.

A cease-fire therefore is not an option; that would just prolong the Palestinian problem and might lead, (“God”-forbid) to a negotiated settlement – a 2 or 1 state solution.

British and US “authorities” are therefore dismayed at the enormous groundswell of public revulsion in the West to Israel’s barbaric response to Hamas’s terror attack on October 7th, which lead to the deaths of over a thousand Israelis and about 250 hostages. Increasing evidence shows that many of those deaths were caused by Israeli helicopter gunships shooting at anything that moved.

https://goingunderground.castos.com/episodes/bombshell-max-blumenthal-exposes-israels-bidens-lies-deceit-over-gaza-bloodbath-october-7th

It is ironic that it is only now that Western publics are beginning to appreciate what Israel stands for- a quasi-religious fanatic apartheid state prepared to undertake any barbarity to fulfil its messianiac goal of a Jews-only state in Palestine.

These acts of barbarity and dehumanisation of Palestinians are not a one-off; they are part of a systematic process of extermination of Palestinians that has been steadily evolving and constantly refined by the Israeli state since the Nakba of 1948.

Those who criticise the Israeli entities actions are deemed to be ‘anti-semitic’; strangely ignoring the overtly deeply racist and murderous anti-Palestinian actions of the Israeli state and its settler thugs, and ignoring the explicit racism of a state that only recognises one section of its people as legitimate citizens.

For 75 years Israel has been milking the myth of it being the victim against Arab terrorism, a myth that Western mainstream media has enthusiastically endorsed, despite the evidence. e.g. Even today the New Zealand state television channel, TVNZ1 conveniently refuses (despite requests) to acknowledge the existence of the Nakba when outlining their history of the ‘Israeli/Arab’ conflict.

Purely coincidentally of course, we note that New Zealand’s ‘Five Eyes’ ally Australia is providing targetting data of Palestinians to be murdered by Israel, through its Pine Gap intelligence monitoring facility. Almost certainly, New Zealand is providing similar data to Israel via its signal intelligence facility at Waihopai.

So why does the US and UK and most of the West “unconditionally” support these 75 years of brutal savagery by Israel?

Because its suits them. Israel is supposedly a rational “Western” (read “white”) state entity in the Middle East amidst a torrent of ‘unpredictable Arabs’ -who also dont have the “right” religion! Israel is a predictable conduit for Western arms into the region. Israel can act as a proxy for Western ambitions in the Middle East, can spy for them, and can undertake savagery in the region with terrorists that would be hard to justify at home; including ongoing assassinations of Iranian scientists and providing support to ISIS jihadists in Syria.

US and UK authorities continue to deny what is self-evident-that Israel is committing massive war crimes against the Palestinian people. Using the illegitimate excuse of ‘revenge’, Israel is indisputably committing the war crime of collective punishment. UK’s Labour leader (and bizarrely a human rights lawyer) Keir Starmer, has enthused about the right of Israel to commit collective punishment, knowing full well he is lying, and is thus complicit himself in genocide

The UK, France, and other Western nations have even attempted to make support for Palestine illegal (a gross human rights abuse in itself). Such is the desperation of the Western establishment to support apartheid Israel, no matter the cost. The effort to keep lying that Israel is a shining democracy with the right to ”self-defence’ by people like Germany’s Olaf Sholtz is astounding. Im not aware of too many democracies in the world that keep half their population in concentration camps, depriving them of basic necessities of life and human rights!- but such are the cruel fantasies that people like Sholtz have to make up to defend their complicity in genocide.

And all the while, Palestinian people of all ages are being massacred by the Israel state for the crime of not being Jewish.

Mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, young children and babies; blown to pieces by Western bombs and missiles used by a racist psychopath state.

But none of this should be any surprise -the West has been actively engaged in the murders of millions in the South over the centuries, where a profit can be made- why stop that little scam now?

The difference this time is that the role of the West in this ongoing savagery by Israel is visible for everyone to see- despite the fabrications and prevariciations of mainstream Western media.

The lies, duplicity, brutality, greed and racism of those who cling to power in the West are exposed for all to see.

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Links

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/19/when-it-comes-to-the-israeli-led-war-on-terror-follow-the-money

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-war-on-hospitals


The Immorality of Western Politicians

On 7th October , the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, Hamas, a militant group in Gaza , the home to three quarters of a million Palestinians imprisoned behind concrete and wire fences by Israel since 1967, launched a surprise attack against Israelis.

Moon of Alabama talks about this new Hamas raid (doomed to failure against overwhelming military odds) as a retaliation against Israel’s recent military support for Israeli settler thug’s invasion of the Muslim Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

In reality, this is one more desperate attempt by Palestinians to reassert their legitimate rights as free Palestinians, rather than prisoners of the Israeli apartheid regime – which many have described as slow motion genocide, since the 1948 Nakba (The Catastrophe) when Israeli soldiers, with the full support of the US, UK and many other Western countries, killed thousands of Palestinians and brutally forced many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes into refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.

247 villages in Southern Palestine were ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1948. The refugees from those villages were then forced into a concentration camp that came to be known as the Gaza strip.

And while any responsible government should deplore any violence by any party in another part of the world; the response from Western governments, including my own New Zealand government, has been to condemn Hamas’ violence, without in any way acknowledging that the causes for this violence are the direct result of the barbaric actions of multiple Israeli governments since 1948. A long-standing pattern of ‘legalised’ (by Israeli courts) sustained violence against Palestinians for their crime of owning land that Israeli settlers wanted to acquire at no cost.

Let us not pretend that Western politicians are not aware of these barbaric crimes by the Israeli state- crimes which continue to this day, and every day, and yet somehow, year on year, we do not hear condemnation of these crimes by the Israeli state and the settler thugs they support. Instead we hear that Israel is a key partner of the US, the UK and the EU in helping conducting the West’s business of extortion of Arab and Iranian assets in the Middle East.

And for many years the United States purported to act as an ‘honest broker” between the Israeli state and Palestinians; pretending that a Palestinian state was still a viable option, while all the while providing unlimited military and other resources to the Israeli regime to continue it expansionist agenda in Lebanon and Syria, and almost nothing to the West Bank and Gaza enclaves.

This is one moment in this decades’ long war against Palestinians where Western countries could really do the honourable thing, and strongly pressure Israel to ensure it complies with international law by tearing down the walls containing Palestinians in their tiny prison encampments, grants them full rights as Israeli citizens, allows the right of return for all Palestinians since 1948 and fully compensates Palestinians for the theft of their lands.

Do we in fact have any Western politicians with any honour?

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Postscript

As Jonathan Cook so lucidly outlines ,the West’s enthusiastic swooning over Israel’s ‘retaliation’ is sick-making; and who gives a flying f*** that Israel’s much vaunted ‘intelligence” (read ‘Terrorist’) services didn’t have advanced warning of Hamas’s attack? How about some long term justice for the Palestinian people (after 75 years of Western enthusiastic support for Israeli injustice). As Jonathan says; ‘This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in western capitals’.

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Links

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/palestine-strikes-back.html#more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

Remembering the Nakba

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-israel-west-hypocrisy-jailbreak-stomach-turning

https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/p/gazans-break-out-of-worlds-biggest?publication_id=314817&post_id=137770975&isFreemail=true&r=5hf4x

– IMEMC News International Middle East Media Center

https://richardfalk.org/

PCHR: “Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Weekly Update | September 14-20, 2023)” | – IMEMC News

Mansour: Israel’s ‘License to Kill’
Chris Hedges: Palestinians Speak Israel’s Language

The United Nations & ‘Human Rights’

The recent article in the Guardian which notes that the world has the “worst cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes’, focuses on a rather selective set of human rights abuses. While no-one in the West at least, can argue that Russia is a ‘selective’ democracy and the Chinese Communist Party (while supported by the vast majority of mainland Chinese) rules the country with a strong and often repressive hand, those excesses pale into insignificance when we look at the human rights abuses perpetrated by many Western states across the globe.

Wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen (let alone their unconditional support for Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people), by the West are indisputably gross human rights transgressions which require the U.N. to demand , on behalf of those populations, compensation from the aggressor. The U.N. is silent….

And let us not forget the Guantanamo Bay torture centre, nor the genocide against indigenous populations by Canada, the United States and Australia.

While Uighur ‘re-education’ camps, which significantly impact on some Uighurs’ human rights, certainly exist in Xinyang (China says these are to reduce the risk of Uighur Muslim extremism and terrorism promoted by Turkey, the Saudis and Western intelligence groups); current evidence tends to suggest that statements about genocide are a fabrication by those very groups.

The Uighur genocide stories can perhaps be likened to the U.S. state political propaganda theatre of American POWs captured by the Koreans and Vietnamese in the United States’ genocidal colonial wars against those two countries. No solid evidence exists of genocide of Uighurs, but we can make up a really good story with ‘anecdotal evidence’ and ‘statistics’ and newspaper headlines …..

In response to U.N. criticisms of Navalny’s political party in Russia being forcibly disbanded, and Hong Kong protesters and their Western funded protests militantly arguing for separatism from mainland China, we may yet have to see how Western countries respond to foreign countries funding political parties advocating separatism and sanctions of their own countrymen, on their own patch….

Indeed the continuing and increasing use of sanctions by Western countries against those countries they wish to destabilise is surely another key example of breaches of human rights of those populations. Cutting off access to food, energy and medical supplies and ‘withholding’ ( i.e stealing) money in state bank accounts from countries like Iran, Venezuela and Cuba are blatant abuses of those populations ‘ human rights.

As Telesure notes about Nicaragua: Human Rights Watch… has been notorious for taking a pro-State Department line on Latin America and even contains former State Department personnel on its board of directors. The former (the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation ) , meanwhile, is led by an anti-government partisan who supports imperialist sanctions on her own country. As The Canary reported in December 2018, Jagger has not only expressed support for the crippling US sanctions already in place but even called for the European Union, Canada, and other Latin American nations to issue their own set of sanctions as well.

And perhaps we could look at the multiple and gross human rights violations committed by the West’s ‘colonial’ troops in Africa in the past decade, or the ongoing catastrophe in South and Central America caused by the United States’ brutal Monroe Doctrine tactics.

Western led statements supporting greater freedom and democracy in Russia and China and other autocratic states that don’t kneel to Western business interests, should indeed be a wonderful ideal and a catalyst for freedom for all, were it not for that fact that those very Western governments- particularly the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and some other Western European countries, are also the countries that have waged savage wars across the third world to promote their own ‘interests’ ( i.e. money).

For some unknown reason, those countless wars of aggression by Western and predominantly ‘white’ countries; along with indiscriminant sanctions, torture, drone murders and the promotion of extremism in other countries, do not appear on the list by the U.N. advocate for human rights- one might wonder why that is?

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Links

https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/06/21/new-evidence-reveals-that-senator-john-mccain-and-other-high-ranking-vietnam-war-pows-may-have-lied-to-the-american-public-about-being-tortured-in-order-to-bolster-support-for-an-imperialist-war-that/

https://www.rt.com/news/527292-us-seizes-iran-presstv-websites/

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2021/06/22/660640/Yemen-Saudi-aggression-Saudi-Arabia-United-Nations-Children-Antonio-Guterres

https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/What-Media-Dont-Want-To-Tell-About-Arrests-in-Nicaragua-20210619-0011.html?

‘Rules-Based International Order’ Means Washington-Based International Order
UK military deepens ties with regime accused of funding terror groups

An Australia We Can Believe In

Australian  Prime Minister Scott  Morrison is apparently incensed about  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s posting of an image of  an Australian  soldier slitting the throat  of a young Afghan boy.

Chin'as constrcuted image of Aussie war crimes in Afghanistan

The  ‘constructed’  image  that  Zhao Lijian  used  was based on  an  Australian government  report into  Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan,  which  found   ‘credible information of 23 incidents of unlawful killing of 39 people “by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder. None of these are incidents of disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle, found the inquiry.” Those 39 prisoners and civilians were unlawfully killed and two treated so cruelly, the soldiers’ conduct amounted to a war crime.

This new report follows on  from  previous allegations of misconduct  by  New Zealand troops in  Afghanistan, by  journalists Jon Stephenson and Nicky Hager where New Zealand “Defence” Force personnel  breached rules of engagement in an SAS-led raid in Afghanistan in 2010 and covered up the resulting civilian deaths.

Why  such a report about  murders and abuse should be a surprise to  anyone, is a mystery. Western  countries have prided themselves on their superiority to  the ‘less than pink’  skinned races of the world  in  their  centuries’ old thrust  to control  the world’s resources for their exclusive benefit. Such  superiority extends to  a  war culture that dehumanises the ‘enemy’  as ‘gooks’,   ‘rag-heads’ and the ‘yellow peril’, among many other perjorative names..

Australia and the Western media at large depict their country as an innocent victim of ‘Chinese bullying’, ‘coercion’ and ‘aggression’, through  China’s use of  tarriffs, border controls and  monitoring of import goods’ quality,  to  press its argument that  Australia needs to  learn which side its bread is buttered on.

China is particularly annoyed with  Australia  foolishly following the Trump  propaganda line  that  COVID19  is a Chinese  communist government threat  to  the world. Startling, when it is China who  has done most to  show the world how to  limit infection spread…

Australia’s former finance minister, Joe Hockey, labeled China’s President  Xi’s actions “economic coercion.” As Hockey told Bloomberg in a Nov. 3 interview: “That’s not the China that I knew when I was treasurer” for two years until September 2015. This “immature action,” Hockey says, is “not the behavior of a great power.”.

One might be forgiven  for laughing at Joe Hockey’s ‘belief’  that Western  ‘great powers’   never use extortion,  threat  and violence to  get their  economic way. The creation of economic sanctions  and wars of aggression on countries the West  does not like,  is a time honoured tradition- not the sole prerogative  of Donald Trump!

We are now subjected to  the shameful  behaviour of both  the Australian  and New Zealand prime ministers whitewashing these current war  crimes by  claiming that  the images posted by  Zhao Lijian were ‘fake news’. Clearly the images posted were indeed not taken  in the heat of  Australians  killing Afghan children for fun; they  were intended as representations of real  events. Apparently,  ‘an obscure artist in China made an art about the tragedy which was widely circulated in Chinese social media, and which Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Li JianZhao tweeted.’

Human  Right Watch  notes that: The former military lawyer and whistleblower David McBride, who was deployed to Afghanistan with the special operations task group, was charged with a number of offenses in 2017 after he spoke to reporters about the alleged abuses, and his trial is ongoing. He is the only person who was charged, and the charges are unrelated to his conduct in Afghanistan.

One should therefore not be surprised by  a  Chinese (and North  Korean,  Vietnamese,  Syrian, Iraqi,  Libyan etc etc )  call  in  the future  to  demand reparations for all  those countries Australia and the other Five Eyes and Fourteen Eyes countries ( In addition to the Anglo-Saxon countries, the group includes Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Sweden and Norway), that have ‘bullied’ with  war and sanctions  over the past 60  years- the genocidal  wars in  Korea and Vietnam   come to  mind;  let alone Iraq, Libya or Syria…..and recently American  sponsored atrocities have come to  light….

That  Australia  and New Zealand  continue  to  defend  their  positions as  ex-colonial  powers  allied to  racist  and war-mongering  Western European states and the U.S., is no  surprise; but it does give an indication of the intelligence and humanity  of their political  and ‘intelligence’ communities, and their capacity  to grasp where  the future lies.

Links

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/508216-china-australia-soldier-afghanistan/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/19/australia-follow-afghan-report-prosecutions

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/11/no-comparison-between-alleged-australian-defence-force-atrocities-in-afghanistan-and-kiwis-actions-in-operation-burnham-kiwi-war-journalist-jon-stephenson.html

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-bullying-of-Australia-is-bound-to-backfire

Australian Lowlifes – American Empire’s Bitches

Stealing Mineral Wealth for Corporate Interests: U.S. Bankrolled Mass Murder of Millions in Central Africa

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-docs-reveal-dubious-details-of-targeted-killings-in-afghanistan-a-1010358.html

 

Assange’s Show Trial

As the  tragi- comedy trial of Julian Assange in London wends its way  to its inevitable conclusion: (extradition to  the United States); the day  to  day  accounts of those few people (noted below in  the links)  permitted by  the Court to  view ‘proceedings’,  shows a client British  state determined to  kowtow to  the United States,  regardless of the cost to its intended credibility as an upholder of international  human rights.

We are reminded of  Gilbert & Sullivan’s  comic-opera, ‘Trial  by Jury’ of Victorian times in its absurdities: from  the bombastic prosecutor, to  the Judge  who  chooses to pretend the terrors inflicted by her government simply do  not exist,

The contrast  between  Assange’s courage and morals  in the face of the “Exceptional  Empire”, and the duplicity  of  the mainstream media in either not reporting about the trial or continuing to  excuse the depravity of the U.K and U.S.  court systems,  could not be more complete.

And once Assange is extradited  and sent to  the   Eastern District of Virginia, where thousands of  CIA staff  are based at  Langley,   where traditionally “whistleblowers’  are tried and prosecuted and sent to  jail , we will  once again be reminded of those great  freedoms we posses in  the West- (provided we toe the line).

The longer Assange languishes (and perhaps dies) in  some American  prison for ‘terrorists” ( perhaps he can be sent to Guantanamo Bay so any actions against  can  be ‘extra-judicial’?)  the more the United States “Shining City of the Hill  will be exposed as the house of horrors it truly is.

And one last thought. How is it that the  great  ‘democratic’ institutions of the  U.S.  and U.K. government have spent millions on  hunting down  and imprisoning Assange for reporting the truth  about their crimes,  and not one dollar or pound has been spent in  tracking down,  trying and imprisoning those ‘patriots’  who  have engaged in  these war  crimes by either  those governments or their mainstream  media?

The current actions of the U.K.  and U.S.  governments, in trying to  suppress and punish  Assange and Wikileaks, have demonstrated very  clearly that  those governments and state apparatus continue to  fully support the  very genocide,  mass murder and  torture that Wikileaks has exposed to  the world.

Links

Waiting for the Old Bailey: Julian Assange and Britain’s Judicial Establishment

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/julian-assange-prometheus-bound/

As British judge made rulings against Julian Assange, her husband was involved with right-wing lobby group briefing against WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange Show Trial Resumes: Why the U.S. Government Wants Him Silenced

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-09-04-as-british-judge-made-rulings-against-julian-assange-her-husband-was-involved-with-right-wing-lobby-group-briefing-against-wikileaks-founder/

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500083-assange-pilger-court-trial/

As Assange extradition hearing resumes, the future of a free press is on trial

Media Freedom? Show me the MSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange

 

 

Lieutenant-General Soleimani & the Red Flag of Qom

 

Sardar Qasem Soleimani
Sardar Qasem Soleimani

Lieutenant-General  Soleimani; leader of Iran’s   Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Qods Force,  was, as Soleimani  himself expected, assassinated by  United States drone or helicopter rockets on the morning of Friday 3rd January  2020,  while leaving Baghdad Airport by car after a civilian flight in to Baghdad from  Tehran to  meet  with  the Iraqi  prime minister.

Soleimani was revered  by  many Shiite Muslims around the world for his  military successes in helping  Shiite Hezbollah  protect  and defeat  an Israeli  invasion  of Lebanon (part of Israel’s  ‘grand’  strategy  of building a mythic “Greater Israel”),  but more importantly,  for his work in  both  Iraq and Syria coordinating the largely successful battle against  Al Qaeda  in Syria (or HTS)  and ISIS (otherwise known as Daesh).

As Iran has consistently and publicly stated,  and the evidence confirms,  both Al Qaeda and ISIS, were  not only funded and supported by  the lunatic Wahhabist Saudis, but also  by  the United States and other Western  countries,  particularly the U.K.  (long a mercenary   supporter of the Wahhabist Saudi  tribe since Lawrence of Arabia in  the First  World War.  Also note the very  apt comment from  UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson  that  Soleimani was a ‘threat  to  our interests”.

The Wahhabist Muslim  sect  believes that  all  non Sunni Muslims are ‘heretics’ and should either be forcibly converted or killed . General  Soleimani was therefore following the lineage of the great Shiite Imams of medieval  times,  in  protecting all  Shiites -this time from  the scourge of Wahhabism.

In collaboration with the Russians, a  revitalized Syrian Arab Army (Assad’s forces), a re-armed Iraqi Army, and Shi-ite militias under his command, Soleimani  had at  the time of his death  largely succeeded in  defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The jaws are rapidly closing in on the remnants of Al Qaeda, HTS, ISIS and other Saudi and Western backed jihadists in Idlib in Northern Syria and Iraq. There is real  fear in Washington “intelligence” circles that mainstream media will finally be forced to expose the direct linkage between Washington and the head-chopping jihadists.

The recent death in Ankara of James Le Mesurier, leader of the White Helmets, supposedly humanitarian aid workers in Syria, but in reality well funded propaganda units for the jihadist groups and their backers, is likely to be directly linked to the  imminent exposure of the White Helmets as fakes, and the revelation of Western governments’ manipulation and likely bribery of senior staff at the OPCW to create a ‘scientific finding” that the Assad government had gassed civilians. Western  governments will consequently be finally forced to acknowledge their appalling collaboration and support of pyschopathic jihadist killers in the Middle East- all in  the name of oil and support for the Israeli entity.

American  intelligence agencies consequently panicked  and reasoned that a decisive provocation against Iran, would ensure that Iran would ‘over-react”,  and could thus be seen by the world as the crazed religious pariah state that the United States has always tried to  portray  Iran  as being since the Islamic revolution.

It might be useful  at  this point to  list just  some of  the legitimate grievances Iran  has against the United States.

  1. The deposing of Iran’s democratic government under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s MI6,  and the installation of the brutal Shah.
  2. The arming and support for Saddam Hussein’s attempted invasion of Iran which cost at least  a million Iranian lives (and in which ferocious war, Soleimani learnt his battle skills)
  3. The provision of poison gas and equipment to Iraq, which resulted in further Iranian deaths and injury  in that war.
  4. The shooting down of a civilian Iranian Airbus A300 by a US warship in the Persian Gulf , with  290 resultant deaths. There was no official apology  from the  United States although  some compensation was paid out belatedly.
  5. Ongoing promotion of Iran as a pariah state at the UN and with other Western governments, which resulted in severe sanctions and the deaths of many innocent Iranians because of Iran’s non existent nuclear weapons programme.
  6. Unconditional support by the United States of the Wahhabist Saudi clan who have funded and managed Sunni jihadist groups, killing many Shi-ite across the world, but particularly in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
  7. United States unconditional  support for the Israeli entity, in their desire to create a “Greater Israel” by the theft and extremely brutal occupation of land from (largely Sunni) Palestinians, Shi-ite Lebanese and Syrians.

Perhaps it might therefore be understandable why Iran’s leadership calls the United States, the “Great Satan”.

Iran is, unlike many of the United States’ allies in the Middle East, a democracy of sorts. However the rules for democracy are managed and controlled at a central level by its Shi-ite  Islamist leaders, and democratic choice is very limited (not too dissimilar in fact to the U.S. presidential election process).

While there are undoubtedly many in Iran who long for what Western democracy  appears to promise, most are also fiercely patriotic;  proud of their many thousands of year’s history as Persians. Faced with ‘existential” external threats, as Iranians have been since the Islamist revolution in 1979, few Iranians would support an overthrow of their current government.

Soleimani’s death was mourned by  hundreds of thousands of  Shiites in  Iraq and Iran. Memorials in Tehran  had to  be postponed because of the size of the crowds mourning  him  in other cities in Iran,  but the most crucial  memorial  was held for him  in the  Iranian  city of Qom .   “Qom is considered holy by Shiʿa Islam, as it is the site of the shrine of Fatimah bint Musa, sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida[6] (Persian Imam Reza, 789–816 CE). The city is the largest center for Shiʿa scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage, with around twenty million pilgrims visiting the city every year..” -Wikipedia.

The  red  Shi-ite flag of the blood of the martyrs and revenge, was raised in Qom at  his funeral  procession. According to local reports it is the first time in the Qom mosque’s history – a holy site since the Middle Ages – that the red flag has been raised over the building.

It should be noted that  the raising  of the red-flag over Qom  is not simply an Iranian government contrivance,  but a religious appeal  to  all  Shi-ite believers  around the world to  avenge Soleimani’s death -one who  battled with  the forces of evil  to  save Shi-ites.

Albawaba .com  notes that ‘Last night Khamanei and Rouhani consoled Soleimani’s family.

‘Who is going to avenge my father’s blood?’ One of the commander’s daughters asked.

In response, Rouhani promised her that ‘everyone will take revenge’ and assured her as she wept, ‘we will, we will avenge his blood, you don’t worry.’ 

‘The Americans did not realize what a grave mistake they have made. They will suffer the consequences of such criminal measure not only today, but also throughout the years to come,’ Rouhani said.

‘This crime committed by the US will go down in history as one of their unforgettable crimes against the Iranian nation.’  

Iranian  government news sources also  quote IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami  as saying that: The assassination of martyred General Qassem Soleimani will be followed by a strategic revenge which will definitely put an end to the US presence in the region…” 

Is it possible that United States intelligence  officials were unaware of the paramount importance of Soleimani to  the 112 million people in  the Shiite world?  Did they  not understand that   his killing would provoke a desire for revenge against  the United States which  would be  unstoppable?

As the Shi-ite Hezbollah  leader in  Lebanon,  Nasrallah stated on the Sunday  following his killing; ‘When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported … to the United States, (President Donald) Trump and his administration will realize that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections…” 

No  matter whether  President Trump  carries out his threats to  bomb 52 targets in Iran including “cultural  sites”. (which  would of course be a war crime,  but nothing new to  the United States,  which  has been  guilty of horrendous war crimes and genocide  in  so  many parts of the world  since  the U.S began:  see our  blog article;  America’s Exceptional Interest in Wars) or whether the United States might lose its residual  sanity and nuke Tehran, the revenge would continue .

The United State’s only option now is to  seek  forgiveness from the Iranians and negotiate  a deal  which  allows their soldiers  to  leave safely from  their many many bases circling Iran.


In just one example, the United State’s main  military  base  in the Persian Gulf  is located on the island of Bahrain. Bahrain is ruled by  an  autocratic and brutal  Sunni ‘prince” over a population which is 62% Shi-ite. It would not require any intervention on  the part of the Iranians for a rebellion to  once again  boil  over to  depose   the  Bahrain Al Khalifa royal family and for Shi-ites in   Bahrain to   destroy  the U.S.  base there and its occupants.

While Western  media choose to portray  any actions by  Shi-ite groups  around the world as being  by “Iranian proxies”, Shi-ite groups, whether military of otherwise,  will  seek  to  avenge the death  of Soleimani; they have  now been called to  do  so.

It would be timely for someone  in Washington who  is sane,  and with more than  the level of intelligence  currently displayed,  to  seek the mediation skills of someone with  credibility to  both  sides,  like Russian Federation Foreign Minister Lavrov-  who  may be able to help  forestall what  currently looks like the inevitable tragedy  for the 60,000  plus United States soldiers stationed in  the Middle East, as a result of General Soleimani’s killing.

Links

https://www.albawaba.com/news/iran-raises-flag-revenge-qom-city-after-us-killing-qassem-soleimani-1330888

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/05/615439/US-soldiers-coffins-Soleimani-Hezbollah

Fragmentation in the Axis of Resistance led to Soleimani’s death

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/03/615247/Qassem-Soleimani

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1365976/middle-east

https://www.opednews.com/articles/US-Kick-Starts-Raging-20s-by-Pepe-Escobar-Assassination_Iran_Iran-Versus-Israel_Iranian-Foreign-Minister-Javad-Zarif-200105-814.html

Lies, the Bethlehem Doctrine, and the Illegal Murder of Soleimani

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russia-highlights-qassem-soleimanis-role-in-fight-against-isis/

The Donald Is Now America First’s Own Assassin

Le Mesurier, Syria, Corruption & the OPCW

James Le Mesurier
James Le Mesurier

As Craig Murray  has eruditely noted,  even  the greatest of scoundrels who  die, have  wives, children  and other people who  love and care for them and who  mourn  their loss.

That James le Mesurier,  likely “ex”-MI6  operative and founder of the White Helmets, was a scoundrel  and a man  with  few ethics is indisputable;  however you would certainly  not know that  from  Martin Churlov’s fawning obituary  in  the Guardian .

What  however we do  get  from  that obituary  is an  acknowledgment of the close ties that  Le Mesurier and MI6 had and continue to have with  Israeli  secret  police and military  in  brutally putting down  what  Churlov describes as the Gaza “insurgency” ( a curious  but telling name for an  uprising against  the disgusting barbaric ( and internationally illegal) Israeli occupation and imprisonment of Gaza’s population). But again;  this should not come as a surprise;  we know the U.K.  intelligence  community’s and UK Military’s longstanding and ongoing involvement with  corruption,   torture  and murder across the Middle East , and its mercenary  longstanding involvement with   the Saudi  regime’s jihadist  terror and genocidal  campaigns against  Shiites.

If you believe Martin Churlov,  Le Mesurier was able to  somehow mysteriously  access large amounts of  Western government money  to  establish  and maintain and provide Western  logistics  to  a band   of humanitarian workers   who  operated in  areas where the officially recognised Syrian  Red Cross could not access because the jihadists would have killed them.

In  Wikipedia we are told (without any hint of sarcasm) that: The Times reported that Le Mesurier was “the subject of an intense black propaganda campaign for years by pro-Assad activists and Russian diplomats”.[28][29] The New York Times reported that the group and Le Mesurier were the target of “unfounded conspiracy theories”.[3] It was alleged that Le Mesurier’s British Army background meant that he was effectively operating as a British state agent.[30] Janine di Giovanni has written the claim he was a spy lacks any evidence.[31] The accusations, from those who are opposed to any Western involvement in Syria and are backers of the Assad regime, include bloggers connected to the English-language Russian media who claim the White Helmets and Le Mesurier were intending to push for regime change in Syria.[32][33]

One of  the White Helmet’s  key  functions ( unlike any other  internationally  recognised humanitarian  mission),  was to  publicise itself and the  supposed military actions of the Syrian Arab Army  (SAA) under Assad. The recent expose of reports  made by   the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) after the allegations by  the White Helmets of  SAA  chemical  weapons use in Douma,  clearly show corruption at  a senior level in the OPCW to  manipulate evidence and come to  conclusions not supported by  their investigators .

Le Mesurier died mysteriously;  somehow falling from  his balcony at his home  in Ankara to  his death in  the middle of the night without his wife hearing anything. And yes, security cameras reveal  no breach of security  at his home-  so  presumably-no  evidence of murder.

Did Mesurier jump  because he knew he was soon to  be exposed to  the world as the charlatan  he was,   and not the  humanitarian portrayed so  well  in  the White Helmet’s  expensive movie and Western mainstream  media?

White Helmets | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix – YouTube

Or was he pushed because he knew too  much? Perhaps we will  never know.

We do  know from TASS   however that  the British have been  getting increasingly concerned about the ongoing ever-deeper  incursions into  Idlib  in Northern Syria by  Russian  and SAA  troops,  where most of their intelligence operatives are working alongside the jihadists and particularly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) , the Al  Qaeda affiliated  group funded by  the Saudis. A  captured British operative  in Idlib could reveal  much  of the  very  embarrassing support   by the British  French,  US and Turkey of  the jihadists (including the White Helmets),  and their  links to  Israeli operatives.

In  addition, “Old Boy” Boris Johnson’s Etonian and City of London  links might be put  even more at  jeopardy  if any  of this little escapade comes to  light during the current British  General  Election…

As with  U.S.  foreign policy, we need to  understand that  British realpolitik  is simply about the money.  How much  can I or my cronies   get  out of this next  little war?

External Links

The Sad Death of James Le Mesurier

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/13/james-le-mesurier-obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/nov/17/british-government-army-accused-covering-up-war-crimes-afghanistan-iraq

https://tass.com/world/1089495

The USA’s History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change

The ‘White Helmets’ and the Inherent Contradiction of America’s Syria Policy

Who is James Le Mesurier?

OPCW Losing Credibility As Even More Revelations Surface On Douma

International Middle East Media Center- and Israeli violations of norms of humanity

Relevant New Antarctica Links

Lieutenant-General Soleimani & the Red Flag of Qom

No flies in Syria

America’s Exceptional Interest in Wars

We have often heard that  it is in  America’s “interests”  to  start this or that  war, to   “defend democracy and human  rights”  or some other  envisioning of the United States as that  Shining City on the Hill  of freedom  and light.  However when  we come to  examine what  particular Interests  are at  stake for the United States in  these  aggressions,  we somehow fail  to  note that  those interest  are solely business interests-  –  and not just  any businesses-  but big business-  large powerful corporations  with  tentacles in  many countries  whose financial  interests  may  either be jeopardized or opportunities   lost  if this or that  country  is not subjugated  once again  by  the U.S.  military  for  the profit margins of United States’ businesses.

Pity the poor country  that  dares to not bend its knee to  U.S.  corporate interest…it will be  sanctioned,  ridiculed,  its minority  groups funded and trained to  create  instability,  (or worse),  and if that  doesn’t succeed in  bringing that  recalcitrant country  to  the ‘negotiating’  table-  then  a little genocidal  war might help.

As U.S Major-General  Smedley  Butler has often been  quoted:

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. (1933)…

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism….

Supporting big business in  any way the U.S.  military  can ( regardless of international  conventions,  human  rights, human  lives,  human  decency  or any other ‘soft’  issue) is and always has been,  therefore the complete and total  sum  of United States international  relations-  it has no  other purpose.

We may  wonder who  profits from  the apparently senseless endless war  waged by  the United States in  Afghanistan-  could it be that  the CIA is once again filling its coffers with  the blood of  the drug-addicted? -or who  profits  from  supporting Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinian  people,  or who  profits from  the human  catastrophe that  is the Saudi  war on Yemen?

“Foolish”  and soft issues like  the global  emergency ( maybe more like global  ‘catastrophe’?) are therefore a complete irrelevance. American exceptionalism  is seen in its true form-  red in  tooth  and claw as Alfred Lord Tennyson  wrote about nature. No  morality,  no ethics,  pure barbarism  and pure profit.

It is small  wonder that those poor American  soldiers coming back  from  America’s pointless and endless wars  of total  barbarism,  struggle  to  come to  terms with their “moral  injury” to  the propaganda they  have been  force-fed from  an  early age,  of the United States being a civilizing  and enlightened country in  a world of barbarism.

U.S. bases surrounding Iran
U.S. bases surrounding Iran

Peculiar to  those  pink-skinned Americans who  front for big business in  the military  and  in Washington, is a deeply entrenched racism  of those who  are “other” and darker skinned:-   whether they  be  Plains Indians,   Filipinos,  Japanese,  Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqi’s, Libyans, Syrians-  even  the Slavic Russian  and Serbian nations ..  the list  goes on  and on  and on….

It is time for the world to  recognise the savagery  and brutality of United States’  international  relations.  It is time to press for reparations for the  environmental  destruction,   the war destruction,  war crimes,  loss of life,  the torture  and the  murders  that  the United States has inflicted on  the world in  the fictitious name of “democracy  and freedom” in  the past  100  years. It is time to  end this  barbarism  and stupidity.

The United States is indeed ‘exceptional’,  but not quite in the way  that  their propagandists planned it. The American  state is  exceptional  in  it being a war  machine;  the government’s role is largely to  fund and plan  wars which  will  assist  the American  armament industry to  sell more weapons at  home abroad.

Links

https://original.antiwar.com/andy_corbley/2019/07/01/how-does-the-war-on-terror-stack-up-to-some-of-historys-most-infamous-genocides/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-united-states-of-genocide-putting-the-us-on-trial-for-genocide-against-the-peoples-of-korea-laos-viet-nam-cambodia-iraq-and-elsewhere/5352227

https://www.thenation.com/article/naming-americas-own-genocide/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-states-war-crimes/5561468

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/meet-american-empires-dr-death/

The Sick Men of Washington

President Trump,  has now  officially pulled the United States out of the Iran  nuclear deal , officially known  as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA) 

Negotiated via U.N.  auspices, the Iran deal limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and thus limit any potential  for Iran to develop  nuclear weapons;  something it has always said is has not intended  nor planned to  do. UN inspections prove that  Iran has indeed complied with  the JCPOA in  full  since its inception in 2015. The deal  in no way  prohibits Iran’s develop  of missile technology,  which would be seen by  any state as a   sovereign  right to protect  itself from  aggressors.

And Iran has many threatening states  to protect  itself from. These include Israel, who  sees Iran  as its major  spoiler to the  ongoing expansion of Israeli  territory  in  the Middle East;  particularly  because of Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, who  roundly  defeated  Israel in its last  attempt to  occupy Lebanon in   2006 . Then  there is Saudi Arabia,  the despotic regime which  pretends to be a ‘monarchy” who  actively supports protects and funds the Salafist terrorists  across the Middle East  and beyond.  Salafists believe that  all  other Islamic and other religious  beliefs   other than  their own  are ‘heretical”, and therefore those people who  hold such beliefs need to be either forcibly converted or disposed of. Hence the  millions of Shiite peoples of Iran   and its Shi-ite theocracy are anathema to  the Saudi  ‘princes’. Iran is a  large country of over 80  million people,  and while its economy has been made vulnerable by  years of U.S. and other Western countries sanctions, it has managed to develop a wide range of responses to those sanctions,  and particularly  a  home grown defence industry.

Iran is therefore not  significantly vulnerable to  attack  by  Saudi Arabia ,  despite S.A.s huge defence spending ($76 billion in 2017 – third  highest in  the world after the U.S.  and China) ,  as opposed to Iran’s approximately $14 billion), largely because of its very  effective home grown  ballistic missile systems. (it is always amusing to note that U.S. military ‘specialists  always attribute this or that countries’  home grown  military capabilities to some other country – implying in some way  that the specific  country does not have the  technology ,  research  capability and technical know-how that  only  the great and exceptional  U.S.  has!)

And finally,   Iran’s perhaps most significant threat  comes from  the United States,  who has desperately tried to destabilize Iran’s theocracy  in  every  way  possible way since its inception in  1979, after overthrowing the U.S.  and and U.K. installed  despot, the ‘Shah’  of Iran .

The U.K.  has also  played a supporting role to the U.S.  since 1953 in supporting the salafist regimes in the Persian Gulf  and encouraging the export of  Saudi  and Qatari  jihadist  terrorists to  Middle East  states  which  are not active supporters of Western colonialism or Israeli  expansionism.

Thus the latest  move by  the Trump administration to  undermine the U.N.  JCPOA agreement  and threaten sanctions against  countries  and companies that do  not comply with its renewed sanctions against  Iran, is simply part of the ongoing war  by the United States against  Iran that had its inception in  the overthrow of its  brutal dictator ,  the Shah.

The drivers for this  ongoing  war against  Iran are  largely economic:  primarily  re-acquisition of the huge Iranian  oil  market  by  American oil  companies  will  buffer the U.S.  against  the imminent collapse of the local  shale oil  market, whilst  ensuring that Iranian owned oil  and gas is not pipe-lined through to  Europe and Turkey.

However the other major U.S.   impetus for Iranian destabilisation and overthrow of its  independent theocracy is the role of Israel  and its Zionist  lobbyists in  Washington.  Now that Saudi Arabia has been bought into  the Zionist  fold and accepts  the Israeli   theft of Palestinian  lands since 1948 as legitimate, there is only Iran  as a significant power player in  the Middle East  who is  able to  confront Israeli  expansionism.  A tame Iranian regime that supported both  Israel  and  U.S.  colonial policy in  the Middle East  would mean Chinese and Russian commercial and strategic   ambitions  there could be thwarted, and  U.S.  and U.K.  (and to  a smaller degree, French) companies could make billions exploiting the region. With  the truly psychopathic John Bolton now  as Trumps defence advisor, drooling for war  with Iran, and Israel’s Netanyahu frothing at  the mouth for the U.S.  to bomb Iran, all  options are truly on  the table.

While Iran does not have an  effective airforce, due to the  long-standing sanctions against it; it’s ballistic missile  capacity is  indeed formidable,  although largely deprecated by  U.S.  defence analysts . Should the U.S. launch  an attack on  Iran’s infrastructure, as it has continually threatened to do  over the years, the U.S.  would undoubtedly be able to , over time,  obliterate much of Tehran  and  its  key urban  centres as it has done in North Korea,  Vietnam Libya and Iraq in  the past, along  with the consequent  huge suffering and civilian casualties  that  entails. However in  the first  days and weeks of such  a war, Iran’s  widely  dispersed military units, and particularly its missile and anti-ship  units, will  be able to  inflict  massive damage on  U.S.  military bases and aircraft  carriers in  the Gulf because of their close proximity to Iran. An ongoing guerilla war against  U.S.   economic and military  interests in  the Middle East   could well  last  for years. In  comparison  to  the U.S.  war against  Iraq,  Iran’s military capabilities cannot be under-rated as American  defence  analysts  are wont to do  in  their arrogance. This would not be the  “cake-walk” that  the neocons pretended the Iraqi  invasion would be!

Should Israel  also enter the war,  as it has often promised to,  then Tel Aviv is now  well  within  missile striking distance by  Iran’s  Lebanese allies.  Hezbollah.

One would hope that  the crazies like Netanyahu  and John Bolton will  finally be locked away  somewhere safe for the rest of humanity’s sake ,  and the fools like Donald Trump  fade into  quiet  oblivion,  but sadly it seems , that may not be the case…

Links

The Deep State First – Madness On Both Ends of the Acela Corridor

How Hezbollah Defeated Israel

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/countdown-to-war-on-iran.html