Why Our Reality-Checks Always Bounce

Even when surrounded by false choices and liars (both the sneaky and the gross) the truth is where it has always been (hint: not ever once in BigMedia – in our entire post-industrial history)

Hey Folks!

It has long been widely recognized that for any democracy (or constitutional republic, the actual more mob-madness-resistant model, for most of the modern western variants) to function properly, the citizens who nominate their representatives, need clear and honest information about what those representatives say, what they plan, what they actually do, and how well or badly that worked out.

The lifestyle section, the classifieds, travel, home and garden beautifying – all that is luxury – extra. What we need is super clear information about economics, physical systems and management systems.

We need this information, because if it becomes buried under “Narrative” (bullshit spin) instead of being generous with facts and light handed on editorial shaping, we citizens (even we pathetic consumerists) become entirely incompetent – our only means of corrective feedback – voting – becomes a choice not between viable options, but absolutely always between fraudulent illusions.

The fact that such illusions are always structured to confer advantages to the hyper-sneaky and dishonest who already have too many advantages, and abuse every new power they gain, is obvious.

It is also really important to stop and notice – this worrisome reality is completely non-partisan. Both of our modern (contrived, distorted and misshapen) “sides” have very reasonable cause to fear loss of basic rights – because neither side steadfastly recognizes or rejects these evil-serving false-framings outright. They get all ‘heroic and principled’ only when it can hurt the other guy (that is, never, really).

Thus, in almost entirely false manufactured and reciprocal fear of the ‘other’ – each side faithfully continues to endorse (and pathetically serve) the most overtly evil management and economic structures in our whole society, just to earn themselves cheap tribalist put-down satisfactions.

I’ve said it before – and I’ll be saying it awhile yet, from the looks of things – two things at once!

BOTH “SIDES” ARE EVIL AND INSANE. (Destructive to civilization and warmonger colonialists)

Sorry – that formulation is probably a bit rude for politeness’ sake – still true, though.

It is just as true that both sides think they are holding the line against depravity and destruction, and the other side alone, is the driver of all harm and injustice – which is actually part of the proof that both sides are now utterly insane (juvenile, too), since that has never once been true (of multi-party us).

I can’t help thinking of the Nobel prize awarded to Joseph Stiglitz – whose research proved that the overly hyped (and symmetrically overly disparaged) “market forces” which are so often relied upon, to provide diffuse and collectivized ‘wisdom’ corrections (that is, a system too chaotic for any single party to control, and yet also organic enough to respond to changing societal needs, over time) are reliant upon true information circulating between all of the parties involved in said (any) market.

No really – after all these centuries of economic theories, we only just now noticed the entire edifice doesn’t work properly if some of the people can get away with lying, while others must tell the truth.

Can’t help thinking that unlike we arrogant westerners, who even after experiencing a market-crashing mega-disaster for the working class every decade or so (SO many harsh lessons, so scrupulously ignored by all), STILL keep betting everything on a lucky supremacist dice roll, the leaders in China DID notice that gigantic flaw in our form of capitalism, when they very carefully designed their still vital but far more regulated (purposefully society-serving) markets.

Here’s another bit of reality. Former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (widely experienced insider, in many roles) Chas Freeman recently quoted Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, saying he described the American system perfectly.

“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”

My regular readers might remember me quoting the much missed Stephen Cohen (believe me, it is very weird for an old leftist to bemoan the loss of a member of the CFR – but he was, perhaps, their best). Cohen’s take, after decades spent as a senior Russia intel expert in uncountable thinktank meetings and back room planning sessions is that ultimately, there is only one party in Washington – The War Party.

So now here’s a second-order bullshit problem. Donald Trump lies outrageously, all the time, and he does it so easily that it is hard to know if he even prefers the truth. But also (two things at once, again), BigMedia distorts every single important story they tell, to promote western supremacy and corporate monopolism, make us as individuals feel confused helpless and afraid (especially of “THEM”) and above all to keep the gears of war moving along, with whichever flavour of racism serves that best.

Some people will have a problem digesting half of that, but many more have already seen both parts – so rather than just stopping there to explain, or throwing up our hands in frustration, let’s go further and try out a few ideas for actually overcoming entire constellations of dangerous BS!

I was actually relieved to hear Alexander Mercouris, one of my favourite analysts, discussing the recent Russian statement (from Medvedev) that they are going to wait for something substantial, and just ignore the always-changing and contradictory noise from the White House for the time being. (He didn’t put it quite that provocatively clearly, but he could have, and still been entirely fair).

This – I should note, for those who still think BigNews on sacred Television is an unimpeachable oracle of Truth – is a huge policy departure for the Russians. They’ve been trying for useful diplomacy with the US and Europe for decades now. Problem is, no matter who American people vote for – the Russians always end up talking to the war party, every damn time. Diplomacy? That’s so last century!

Anyhow, what I appreciated about Alexander’s observations was his saying that while he, as an analyst, was still obligated to try to make some sense out of the weird official utterances from the White House, the Russians had every reason at this point, to retreat from that unrewarding and crazy-making effort, and just wait for something more substantial, that wasn’t spur of the moment home-crowd bullshit.

To be super-clear – Trump actually did have an obvious and clear path to making peace in Ukraine when he took office, and there really were several promising strategists and moments, in the long talks (For those who were watching – by pursuing the Witkoff, rather than the Kellog, path). But in the end, the real behind-the-scenes string-pullers of the USA simply cannot surrender their long obsolete idea that yes they are the boss of everyone – even when they’ve lost (yet another) war, against a foe that they were (yet again) certain would be easily defeated by their obvious superiority in all things. Not just weapons and tactics, either – war propaganda always stresses false differences in moral value between the populations – like I said – whatever form of racism serves the stock prices of death merchants.

And please note I said VALUE, not VALUES – the weight of a soul does not come from any code.

I have already written extensively about the origins of the Ukraine war (extremely evil decisions made during Clinton’s time in office). To repeat, the people of Ukraine didn’t deserve any of this – but neither did the people of Russia. This is the warmongers in Washington and London, start to finish.

The people of Ukraine elected Zelensky (a comedian, remember, not a statesman) because he promised to sign the Minsk II treaty, and if he had, Ukraine would be intact, and more than a million, still alive.

He did have a threat to his life made on live TV, from a member of the Azov battalion – and the CIA has been working hard (more than two dozen major bases – which is off-the-scale, for them) ever since the Obama ordered (and Biden supervised) coup they spent billions engineering in 2014, to make sure right-sector people rose in power.

But it is impossible at present to say whether he ever intended to sign the treaty he was elected to sign. I’ve shared the video from his close advisor Arestovich, from years before the war, where he clearly says the offer from the west was you can get into the EU, but only after at least one war (maybe THREE) with Russia – which would then, according to the plan (thanks to Western “superiority”) be smashed into tiny poorly organized bits, and thus present a huge resource-profit bonanza for salivating (and incidentally, almost universally bankrupt) western multinationals and banking interests.

The Russians were willing to end the conflict two weeks into the war – the Istanbul process would have left Ukraine intact and restored language and cultural rights to the Russian (and also the sizable Hungarian and Romanian) minorities. The only price was Crimea, which was always Russian anyhow (both the majority population of the region, and the centuries old black sea base at Sevastopol).

Contrary to what our Klan-like hyper-violent supremacist war-crazy BigMedia and “politicians” said, the Russians absolutely were provoked in two outrageous ways. One was sustained and brutal ethnic cleansing operations against Russian speakers in the Donbas – fourteen THOUSAND killed (so please multiply many times, for wounded and terrorized) in the eight years before Russian troops first rolled.

The other was the exact same nuclear threat which sent the USA into a fugue of war madness over Cuba, in the famous Cuban missile crisis. The last time Putin and Biden talked (which was before the war even started, to be clear) Putin asked if Biden would at least promise not to base US missiles in Ukraine (less than ten minutes flight-time from the key population and political centres of Russia).

Biden seemed agreeable to this – so when Lavrov next met Blinken, he tried to get this agreement set into a more formal shape (Putin was a lawyer by training, and really likes to get the paperwork solid).

Blinken told Lavrov that Biden was just dreaming aloud with Putin, and wasn’t setting policy, then said that the Americans absolutely would station Nuclear capable missile launchers in Ukraine, the only thing they might be willing to discuss with the Russians, was how many of them.

There is only one correct answer to the question of how many nuclear weapons can we hold pressed against the foreheads of your children? It is the same answer which John F Kennedy gave the USSR.

That answer is ZERO – and that answer will be made a hard reality, by whatever means are required.

Here’s another very cruel fact the western media has always lied about. Every time they give Ukraine a longer range missile system to attack Russia with, the planners in Russia go back to the maps and draw their ‘safety circle’ even bigger. Alright then, if that’s the way you want to play it, then to keep our people safe, we’ll have to take even more territory, to keep your death systems out of range.

Be clear here, folks – Russia and Ukraine have been trading long-range fire for years – there is zero chance that any new “wunderwaffen” missile will change the war. The reason the western powers keep sending their fancy and hyper-expensive gear, and escalating toward Nuclear War deliberately and recklessly, is simply to raise the stock prices of the (local politician bribing) companies that make them.

Every single politician who has ever appeared on your television and said they were “helping Ukraine” by sending weapons and money to prop-up the profoundly dysfunctional racialist regime in Kiev, was lying to you, every single time they opened their mouth on this subject. So was BigNews (since it is above all else, as has been very long established, the imperialist consumer-sales arm of BigWar).

They didn’t help Ukraine, they took billions of dollars that we needed here, for our infrastructure and to raise up our struggling poor, weaponized Ukraine to smash Russia, then utterly and irretrievably destroyed everything key to the Ukrainian nation, economy and society – as they always meant to.

The Zelensky government were so excited about the fake western promises, they didn’t even see that the same thing they were being trained and built-up to do to Russia, was being done to them at the very same time. Devastation and desperation on the human scale – and on the grander almost abstract (only also lethal) level, widespread surrender to foreign capital interests, which were long held at bay by key national laws (overturned on orders from the psychopaths at IMF, as a condition for a bridging loan).

But holy crap were those promises the west made to Zelensky ever fake. Especially the assertion of superiority of our tactics, our weapons, even our logistics. Every last bit of our standard gear has now been battlefield proven to be second-rate, (maybe even third) even the fanciest stuff we’ve got!

Stranger still, we actually don’t even know how to make most of our gear any more – haven’t built new tanks and ‘guns’ in years or decades, the factories that did are long gone, we’re tapping old warehouse stock and refurbishing (and even then, it takes two freakin’ years for us to make an old tank newer-ish).

Thing is, Russians actually bother to read the policy papers our thinktanks put out (which reading alone corrects ninety percent of the lies our BigWar BigMedia tells) and noticed that we were trying to kill them, so, though it took them awhile, they finally woke up, and figured they’d better start to make stuff again – and they ended up actually making far more stuff than ever, in many different sectors.

The EU sanctions were especially stupid and self-harmful (by American design?) – the arrogant EUdiots not only lost the cheap energy supply which alone made their manufacturing competitive – they insulted and thus long-term discarded a highly profitable market (much as the USA is doing now with unhinged bellicosity, even to its many servile vassals). The western planners were trying for a grand scale deliberate disaster – a fatal economic rug-pull that would bring down the entire Russian government, but instead, hard working and realistic Russians responded by developing uncountable vital new companies (competitors) in consumer sectors which were previously entirely foreign dominated. The full regretting of this will be utterly ruinous (to the EU), and last for decades.

As a pissed-off Canadian, I am particularly frustrated that our media has been so dishonest, because otherwise we’d already know how to shift-gears and respond to the US threats – use our economy to make everything we need and to hell with disrespectful and manipulative assholes – the same basic plan as the Russians were forced into, and have found unexpectedly energizing, even to their national spirit. Don’t like us or want us? Fine – we don’t want you around either – go away, and take your warmonger political corruption and your generations-long mass terrorism sponsoring for profit, with you!

Seriously people. Iran isn’t even on the top ten list of sponsors of terrorism. The USA is Number One! (And the UK comes a close second, with their vicious globe-manipulating clan in the heart of London).

The creepy reason Canada keeps lying to itself, and will never do something so courageous and self-respectful, even if we do somehow come to see more clearly in-common, in the future, is that our investor-before-society version of capitalism absolutely despises our workers – and the only way to make an economy thrive as a healthy independent creature, is to reward workers well, and give them more rights as they become ever more empowered stakeholders, so that we as an entire thriving people, rather than decadent consumers in foreign export markets, become our own chief economic driver. A transition the Chinese are, thanks to decades of work and planning, also poised to make at last (even though the US is still deep in denial about how much more their de-industrialized economy will suffer, as the relationship sours).

Which goes back to a nasty truth about the new investor aristocracy (which got a huge boost from the first wave fire-sale of the western economies, under leaders like Reagan and Thatcher). They aren’t extra powerful because of their greater skills or virtues, but (as per Stiglitz’s Nobel insight) because they lie and cheat best.

Of course the old leftie in me wants to leap to assert the moral superiority of the oppressed and exploited workers, who really have been held back decades with this slave-collar “Must serve foreign markets competitively” mythology, and denied any clear sight of the obvious and far better alternative.

But we’re all prone to be just as nasty in our basic drives, and denying this is a gigantic problem today. So I think I’ll skip that old standard for today, if you don’t mind.

It comes back to that depressing dilemma (which I swear is a reflection above all, of our modern alienation frustration and resentments). If you offer people twice as much money, but everyone else gets that too, they don’t find the idea particularly appealing. But if you offer them ten percent more, and promise that someone they hate will get ten percent less – now you have a crowd of passionate supporters!

Let me say again – this is taken as a commonplace in psychology – but I consider it evidence not of normal human psychology, but of how badly screwed-up “normal” western thinking has become, thanks to bitterness, crazy theories, horrible child rearing and truly heartbreaking levels of selfish post-industrial alienation.

I have (and have made clear) every kind of sympathy for my sexual non-conformist friends – but we see this same kind of dangerous narcissistic projection codified in modern “queer theory” – which is essentially an attempt to say the psychological projections and rationalizations of deeply traumatized victims, should henceforth be considered the new normal baseline mentality. Boundaries, rights, restraint and respect in many areas are now held to be forms of oppression against the already injured, who alone see!

Assumptions so far from the overt intent of compassion as to be poisonous to both partisans and society.

I saw my own version of this game, growing up in a cult. Evil impulses gather more easily and promiscuously than healthy aspirations. This doesn’t mean we should give up trying for big things, only that caution and constant morally-centred vigilance is required, lest we lose our way and become what we despise. (Road to hell, and all that)

Above all – the easy assumption that “We are the good guys, just because we are we!” is FATAL to any hope of genuine virtue. Past this gateway-rationalization – all evil is transferred to the other, and the home-team stops being sane enough for any other sane party to strike a useful bargain with them.

Next time you feel inclined to hate Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela – or any other distant country in the world – please go look in the mirror instead – that is an unquiet soul, looking back. Way-ignorant, also.

Would we like some other countries to be nicer to their citizens? Sure we would. Can we achieve that by bombing them, or starving their people with sanctions? No we cannot. That is just violence for corporate profit and cheap supremacist catharsis, nothing else. Clear evil, that we are trained to casually endorse and even cheer for, as ‘humane.’ (Libtard racists are actually worse than the trad types, because they add wild dishonesty to ignorance, and the capacity for enabling and rationalizing state violence).

How much would we Canadians like China arming separatist terrorist cells in Quebec? How much would we consider that, their problem to solve, their morality to compute and then their result to force?

Or (always measure bottom-up, and not just top-down). What if we really badly need a favour one day?

Would Africa have any reason to want to feed us, after we’ve worked so hard to screw up their food production continent-wide on the basis of western market-serving philosophies that have nothing to do with Africa or Africans, for decades?

Haven’t you ever needed anything from a neighbour? Did you find that asking with a raised shotgun, was helpful to your neighbourly relations, and the prospects for friendship cooperation and many future favours?

Even the “pure” economic (again, abstract but still lethal) systems-violence the west tried to do, backfired completely. Russia has overtaken stagnant (unplugged) Germany to become the biggest economy in Europe, in PPP (PurchasingPowerParity) – and is growing at more than twice the rate of the best performing economy in the west, (three times the ultra pathetic Liberal Canadian economy).

Which reminds me – “standing up to Trump” meant one thing in the Canadian context – REFUSING A US WAR ECONOMY.

So, what does his yeah-right ‘honourable’ investment-banker Carney do, practically first thing out of the gate? He promises so much outlay on future foreign violence capacity (the opposite of the territorial defence and robust diplomacy, which was our best traditional Canadian pairing) that even the most optimistic Liberal strategists are predicting a twenty-five percent cut to social services – across the board (and they have already been starved thin for decades, very flimsy systems now, where once they were robust and served the majority, well, by extending workers rights and dignities).

All those tribalist idiots who screamed “The Conservatives will steal our healthcare.” No – you fuckers just did that, all on your own, without any conservative (or western, or sane) voices involved in it at all.

Here’s the second order trick though – Carney has no choice. He needs to get us into a ruinous war, because that’s the only way the Liberals can possibly shift the blame for our massive economic disaster on to evil foreign untermenschen, instead of us all finally waking-up and blaming completely stupid Liberal economic policy.

Thing is – the media leaked a confidential RCMP report a year and a half ago that predicted massive social unrest in normally peaceful Canada, because our economy was imploding so disastrously fast.

So – their arrogance and incompetence completely fucked the entire country, big-time and long-term – and now, to hide that fact, they have to rush to find a way to fuck us all twice as hard (playing Kayfabe battles with Trump, while simultaneously giving him everything the American warmongers have ever wanted from us) all just so they can pretend the huge disaster they created is really the fault of THEM.

Which reminds me – has anyone told you that Mae Musk – the mother of our current Satan of the week, was herself the daughter of one of the co-founders of the (Canadian left-sacred) CCF party – which evolved over time into the NDP (by losing touch with workers, and embracing bourgeois shite).

You might not want to dig too far into that, of course – the number of early leftist parties which were certain that Eugenics too was a part of the obviously superior “scientific model of social planning” is truly scary! (One of these days, I have to finally sit down and do a multi-angle take on Maurice Strong - weirdest Canadian of all time).

My point is that just as Zelensky was elected to sign Minsk II, even though his advisors already had other plans in mind, Carney was supposed to maintain Canadian sovereignty, political and economic – for which the most important two points are diplomacy over war (that is, NO shitty F35 attack planes) and preserving our far more compassionate social safety net, to keep Canadian poverty from getting out of control (even though the Liberals pushed millions downward already, under clueless Justin).

What Carney did instead is what he’s been doing his whole life, and what he will keep doing, his entire time in office – an investment deal which will benefit shareholders, by diverting money away from the many (growing) legitimate needs of the people. He’s planning massive structural long-term harm to the Canadian people and the integrity of the nation – to make the global super-rich, even richer, simple as.

(Don’t look at me – I sure as fuck didn’t vote for the patron saint of Globalism/Bilderberger/Bankers).

Anyhow – wow, that was a heck of a chain of digression – even for me! What I really meant to say about trying to sort out the chaotic, fast changing and contradictory messages coming from Trump in particular (which is even harder, if you listen to the extremely weirdly presented and distorted versions from the spinmeisters in BigMedia), is that he really has proven that effort to be a waste of energy.

It was one (astonishingly evil) thing, for Israel to assassinate the lead negotiator for Hamas, while he was in the process of negotiating the release of hostages. But when Trump “Bought-in” to Israel’s more recent attack on Iran, which included a whole wave of (again, unequivocal war-crime) assassinations of senior commanders, scientific and political leaders, he effectively lost the game (all the big games which require trust, as one of the ingredients). Something he’d already destroyed, with all of his highly infuriated but still despicably war-priority-obedient vassal-allies.

How can you negotiate with someone who thinks it is fair-game to assassinate the negotiators? You can’t. Which means you are forced (because of their violence) to seek deterrence in a clearer way.

Tragically, this lesson applies no less clearly to the (part of the same big) war happening in Europe.

When I say “the same big war” I mean the war by the rich west against the poor(er) east and south, which began when America started bombing Afghanistan (which had nothing to do with 9/11) and has not yet ended. It is a war of old imperial blood money capital and global dominance on one side, trying desperately to hold back the aspirations of global majority – and our evil aristocrat faction is now so far unhinged, they don’t even like or faithfully enrich their own fellow citizens anymore (the cut of the loot which kept us all passive and compliant, for so many booming post war decades).

What this means is that we – increasingly screwed workers and besieged normal citizens in the west, have actually got far more in common with the normal people of the many BRICS nations, than we do with our own corrupt governments and lawless megalomanical world-wrecking oligarchs.

Except for our stupidity arrogance and hatred, that is – they put us to shame, on every one of those fronts, by having the same combination of hope and energy we haven’t really felt here since last century!

To be clear – as short as (this round of?) the war was, the physical infrastructure of Israel was dealt historically unprecedented damage, by the Iranian retaliation. None of this is covered well here on BigMedia, though ex-CIA Larry Johnson has been splendidly clear about his analysis. The short version? Israel is a small country with a small population and a very limited easy to destroy infrastructure – Iran is a huge country with a huge population and a far more dispersed economy.

Yes, Israel proved that it can “Hit” (murder) people in Iran, and Iranian air defence cannot stop these attacks – but even there, only part of the truth has come through. The damage done to Iran was not from Israeli warplanes flying in Iranian airspace, as was claimed, but rather from a whole network of sabotage agents actually inside Iran already, who were recruited over years, and built workshops to create large stockpiles of combat drones, for just such an attack.

What this means is that the aircraft-based attacks from Israel (their specialty) were almost always long range missiles launched from planes flying within zero-control Syrian, or light-control Iraqi airspace.

Yes – they did set people from unit 8200 (some of the best electronic warfare specialists in the world) and the CIA together, to do a major system wide hack on the Iranian air defence system. They projected that the outage would last somewhere between seven and ten days – so Israel could attack Iran at will.

With some help from the (top-shelf, and now world’s most experienced) Russian electronic warfare experts, the Iranian system was back up and running in eight hours, and then the Iranians started launching missiles back, wave after wave after wave of missiles – a few dozen at a time, over and over.

In the Israeli plan, the Iranians were supposed to be so frightened and disorganized, thanks to the assassinations of so many senior government leaders and military commanders all at once, that the government itself would rapidly begin to disintegrate.

Nope – they already had well planned systems in place – new commanders took up their roles and the whole machinery began to run – using a plan which is almost as old as Clinton’s war plans for Ukraine.

Yes, Clinton’s. And here’s another mind-fuck for you – that awesome most perfect ever attack that the US launched against (some of) Iran’s nuclear facilities was planned under Obama – no kidding!

So the next time BigNews tells you Trump is, like a petty child, simply trying to undo Obama – nope. They are both figurehead-idiots, obeying the secret war party behind both parties, every damn time.

Some may have already forgotten that we were all rather afraid of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan just a few weeks ago. There is increasing speculation from analysts in the global south, that this conflict was deliberately provoked (almost certainly by UK intel proxy forces, who are involved in, if not in control of, most of the bloodiest and most savage global terror manipulations) as a way to intimidate Pakistan, so it would be too nervous to openly support Iran, in the coming attack.

Or course BigNews here told that story worse than most. The real takeaway? The Indians spent more than a billion dollars buying the most modern French combat jets – the Pakistanis (under Imran Khan, who was later jailed by Biden’s US intel people on trumped-up charges, for his “Aggressive neutrality”) went a different way, investing in Chinese fighter jets, at roughly one fifth the price.

What happened? The cheap jets from the global south KICKED ASS. In one encounter, a J10 (with both Chinese AA missiles and radars) shot down six of those champagne fighters with zero losses.

So much for intimidating Pakistan – quite the opposite – the whole global south rose and CHEERED!

I must go back to review what we learned from the war against Iran (and what might happen next). But before I do that, let me Douhet – I mean do Douhet – or actually, in this case, demolish him.

Ever since aviation was a thing, creepy theorists have been drawn to it as a means not just of death, like any other weapon of war, but also as a way to instill disabling terror in entire populations. And I mean right from the start – the Wright Brothers borrowed from many previous experimenters and theorists, and they also had many (too often overlooked) contemporaries with far more peaceful aims in mind (like Alberto Santos=Dumont), but they really were seeking a military contract, from day one.

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous aviation pieces, only Americans think Aviation is an entirely American thing (Ailerons, anyone? Empennage, perhaps? – or are we still doing “there is no French word for entrepreneur?”)

In the event, many worked on the question of how to employ air weapons best – and in the thirties, the Italian Giulio Douhet was one of the first widely read theorists of air war. He boldly asserted that air power alone could overcome a foreign power, simply by instilling terror in the civilian populace (undermining their faith in their own government, and also causing mass-desperation and panic, turning them against one another, leading to a breakdown of all economic and war functions, soon after).

I probably don’t have to tell you how great aircraft manufacturers (and early commanders of air forces) thought this idea was, do I? No more need for a Navy, or even a big army – we’ll just fly over every barrier, and persuade the enemy population directly (with mass terror bombing, always a war crime).

The bombing of Guernica, in the Spanish civil war, by aviation units from Germany, testing weapons and tactics they would soon be using in Poland and then France, was the first test – and it was a huge global shock, to see weapons employed directly against civilians on such a horrifying scale.

The Germans “upped the game” considerably early in WW II, after an RAF bomber raid accidentally hit a beautiful historical (wooden) town centre and set it ablaze (not deliberately, they just had really shitty navigation, early on). Then began the Baedeker Raids – named after a tourist guide of the times – deliberately attacking the civilian centres of especially beautiful and precious English towns (Coventry was particularly badly hit – though many lovely places suffered heavy damage). Finally, when the RAF bombed Berlin, to retaliate (a tat for the previous tit?), the Germans began “The Blitz” a concentrated bombing campaign against London (which absolutely savaged the working class docklands areas of the city, but also saved the RAF itself, by buying it time for repairs to badly stressed planes and runways).

The way the RAF ultimately responded to the German attempt to Douhet their capital, will ultimately be seen by history as entirely criminal also. Using many smaller bombs to break structures open, then adding millions of tiny incendiaries, to set far too many fires to be extinguished, they created a brand-new never before seen atmospheric phenomenon in Hamburg – the firestorm – a literal hurricane of combustion. Even those sheltering from the raid in tunnels far below were cooked by the heat or else suffocated as the fire rapidly consumed all the oxygen, leaving only heavier byproduct gases to sink and fill shelters.

This one was not an accident. The same Wunderkind Genius types (many from OxBridge) who brought us the Atomic bomb, deliberately came up with the idea of creating firestorms, and they did it again, deliberately, to Dresden – a city my grandfather loved dearly (as a photographer, before the war), and a scale of tragedy which he could not ever hope to adequately express, despite his first hand witness of what was lost, both the lovely people and the enduring artifacts of high culture and civilization.

You know what London didn’t do? Give up. Same with Berlin – even after almost all of the rest of Germany had been captured by allied forces, they endured hard punishment from the air, without cracking. From Douhet’s time to this, territory has never once been effectively captured from the air.

(The Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were totally unnecessary – just post-war posturing - but that’s an essay for another time).

My favourite feminist Tara Van Dijk (ultra sharp critic of the modern, self-harming bourgeois and bigoted variations) recently wrote about the hilarious backflips feminists do, to try to “Save the theory” (that all evils in the world stem from “The Patriarchy”) – even though, as she points out – capitalism destroyed the patriarchy generations ago – got in the way of profit, don’t you know – can’t have that now, can we?

The same damn thing goes with Douhet. Even though his theory of air power alone winning wars by breaking the spirit of the population has failed every single time it has been tried, modern theorists keep adding “Yeah but” clauses, to try to rescue the disproven (and stupid and deeply evil anyhow) theory.

Mostly they do this by citing a tiny part of an example, to people who are too ignorant to know the weight of the other part of the story, that they very carefully leave out.

There are just as many theorists who are sure that adversaries can most easily be brought down by turning their rebels into terrorists, to make them far more destabilizing than they could ever be, on their own. Obama ran this kind of an operation on Syria (Timber Sycamore) and sure enough, the USA was soon sending weapons and money to Al-Qaeda (one of the most revealing early wikkileaks was a diplomatic cable which outright said “The US is now allied with Al-Qaeda in Syria”).

Did that theory work in Syria? (it certainly cost millions of ruined lives and civilian casualties over many years – so we definitely ought to check how well our management systems and tax dollars did, there). No, it didn’t.

More specifically, what happened in Syria was that the US armed local rebels (made them terrorists) so that they could steal the main crops and the oil, which meant almost no food and almost no revenue for the central government. After this horrendous national strangulation had gone on for years, everything about the Syrian state was hollowed out, including the military. This meant mass bribery and gangster threats against family members (which were also used against Iran, in the recent attack by Israel, to far less effect) disrupted what was left of the impoverished Syrian military command effectively enough for another band of “fresh” terrorists to knock over the hollowed-out state and replace it – not with a democracy and new hope, but a mass murdering “leader” who has already carried out many horrendous racist massacres, attacking minority populations which have been part of the fabric of Syrian life for more than two thousand years.

That’s western “help.” Destroyed the country, murdered at least a million, empowered terrorists.

Still miss Obama? Libya was an even greater war crime, Douhet style, because it was a far more advanced country – a genuine jewel of black power – meaning American blacks who continue to support Obama ARE IDENTICAL TO THE VERY SAME VIOLENT SUPREMACISTS THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT.

I know, I know, no self-reflection mirrors are allowed in America – by law (or at least convention). Still though – how can you yell so loud, you even drown-out your very own brains and conscience?

Photograph by my travel photographer grandfather Robert O’Rourke - pre-war

Now let me get back to the West Asian reality which has been papered-over here, with so much expense and expertise.

Israel pulled out all the stops for that first attack – consumed assets which had taken years to put in place, and years more, to build up a stockpile of attack drones. There is no question that western intelligence still has a few more dirty tricks up its sleeve (a “False Flag” is a real possibility, and would not even be a break of precedent, when you consider the lethal deceptions which are always heavily promoted by western BigMedia to “justify” the wars their military-industrial-banking masters demand).

However, like I said – that wasn’t meant to be glancing blow or a sparring match – they were trying for the KILL – and absolutely failed in that aim – spectacularly, even. As Larry Johnson so helpfully puts it – Israel only has two ports, Iran has two dozen – same goes for airports – so it is Iran and NOT Israel which absolutely can handle an extended conflict, and keep going. Israel is already badly damaged.

This does not mean they will now think strategically, and abandon that insanely self-destructive aim. This isn’t the place to do an extended treatment, but I have long argued that not only is Israel being used by the US, for geostrategic power-projection (that is, they too are vassals, no matter how it looks) but that this condition for US investment and military support (far greater than the cash value stated, though that is already billions per year – again, see Larry Johnson’s recent stuff, for more details) coupled with universal military service (for which, dehumanization of the “other” is “education”) has given them an emphasis on tactical victories at the expense of strategic gains, going back many decades.

More precisely, as anyone who has read Machiavelli knows, you can’t rely on foreign strength to prop up your state long-term. Mercenaries grow restless – patrons grow enfeebled and indebted.

Strategically – the only path to long term stability for Israel has always been deep integration with, rather than violent domination of, the entire region. This means mutual respect prosperity and cultural flowering, but the entry price is a state, restored dignity, aspirations and rights for the Palestinians. Of course if they did achieve that kind of stability, the Americans could no longer effectively manipulate them to do all their dirty work – keep the major gulf oil states properly scared and obedient.

Israel is therefore only useful to America when it is hated and feared – which “Aid” and “Empowerment” makes it (functionally) a Crusader outpost, rather than an established nation with an inherent inertia, stability and equilibrium of its own.

Here’s another multi-level second order mind fuck. America gives Billions to Israel, then Israel spends some of that money electing congresspeople in America, to pass legislation favoured by their (tactics over strategy) faction.

Sure, America suffers like hell from this circular corruption – but Israel suffers more. Just like “Help for Ukraine” that aid isn’t sent ‘cause they like Israel, or truly care about it, one way or another – it is entirely conditional on Israel faithfully serving as a weapon for American capitalism (the US has had a petrodollar for a half a century now, in place of the old gold-backed dollar that served for the post war prosperity boom, until the ruinous war in Vietnam – just in case you missed my recent pieces).

Late in his life, Kissinger himself said “There will be no Israel in twenty years.”

There is even a famous quote from a US congressman in the seventies who called Israel “Our Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier in the Middle East” (Lindsey Graham is just part of a sadly long line of such dangerous and irresponsible blowhards).

I’ve quoted Plato before “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Here’s a clue from military history, which has messed up uncountable civilian lives, interested or not. West Asia (middle east) was long seen as a major battleground by grand strategists (both internally, in terms of factions within Islam struggling for power, and also with respect to Islam as a whole, facing then-barbarous Europe).

But we can still say that the modern age of oil, war and tragedy began not so much with automobiles, but with the decision by British Naval planners to shift their fleet from coal power to oil. The moment the great imperialists made this decision, oil became “Strategic” (must control, at any cost) instead of just profitable. Kind of like they pre-authorized themselves for extra psychopathy – for “Defence.”

The way the old Ottoman empire was redrawn and divided against itself (very carefully and with great malicious brilliance, like all things imperial) was about the west forever taking their oil, and local governments being prevented from ever becoming powerful enough to question, stop, or effectively tax them for it.

Now – we will hear a lot of arguments about whether Trump’s really beautiful bombing was or was not effective (high odds on NOT – but so what? – THEY WERE NOT WORKING ON AN A-BOMB!)

What we will not hear is this. In the early days of the war Israel hit many Anti Aircraft installations which were ancient (1960s vintage) gear. Yes, operational, but still decoys, on the grand scale.

Many speculated that the recent treaties between Russia and Iran included Russian air defence systems – but it has finally come out that though Russia offered their (best in the world) systems and even a formal millitary alliance, Iran refused both – because they are so incredibly determined to make everything they NEED themselves (super understandable, when so many countries around the world have been screwing you, for so long) and they also have serious moral concerns about the potential that such a treaty might see them being drawn into a future Russian war against Muslims (western-provoked or not – still unacceptable).

Word is that now, the Iranians are considering buying Chinese (cheaper, but still great) AA systems. Any ‘round two’ will definitely see them far better defended.

Iran also launched their oldest and shittiest missiles first – always accompanied by drones, to make a far busier radar picture for the Israeli defenders, and also to overtax any capable interceptor systems. The standard protocol (once you have decided which of many targets, to even try to shoot down) is to fire two interceptor missiles, for every one incoming (if you want to have a decent chance of getting it).

I should digress here to note, the Ukrainians have such a shortage of trained Patriot missile crews (because they keep getting hit by Russian missile counter-fire) that in several engagements we have seen Patriot batteries firing on “Automatic” which means they might loose as many as TEN patriot interceptors, against just one target. (More than five hundred incoming a day, these days, remember).

The cheap model patriot interceptors are just under two million (and aren’t made anymore). The “Good Stuff” is closer to six million – and that’s PER BULLET – not counting the cost of the gun (launcher).

The Iranian missiles cost somewhere between a quarter of a million and a couple of million. But the drones both Russia and Iran now launch, cost only a few thousand bucks each – the math is fatal.

Not only that, but after three years of screaming demands to ramp-up production, America now makes a grand total of 600 Patriot missiles per year. About enough for one major attack on Ukraine or Israel.

And even that’s only if you don’t send any of the new production to US bases ships and allies.

Of course they have a newer system – (Patriots are updated eighties tech, after all) The THAAD (TheatreHighAltitudeAirDefence) system pairs the latest greatest USA radar and interceptor tech, and unlike Ukraine, Israel actually got one (you can so easily picture all the salivating executives back in the states, hoping for great performance, so their stock price would get a nice bump).

Israel definitely gave the thing a serious combat workout – fired off A BILLION DOLLARS worth of interceptors – and they did manage to hit some of the older Iranian missiles in the early waves.

Thing is – America makes about sixty interceptors for the THAAD per year. So, that’s done now too.

AND – most importantly of all – Iran never did fire ANY of their good stuff. When I said their plan goes back decades, I mean it. They saw what America did to Iraq (even after first weaponizing Iraq, to use it to violently invade and try to smash Iran, in a much earlier attempt at forced regime change).

They correctly saw that they would never catch the US and Israel in manned aviation – but they also quite brilliantly recognized that that didn’t matter – because those were already obsolete systems.

So they built a long term drone plan and they built ever more sophisticated missiles. Contrary to western racist presumption, this isn’t tech they were given by Russia or China (and neither Russia or China have needed any of our dumb ideas for years now). Iran has superb universities (note for the pignorant – fully 60% of university graduates are female) and fantastic domestic scientific programs.

Their highly protected underground missile warehouses are called “Missile cities” and the estimates are that they contain somewhere between fifty and two hundred THOUSAND missiles – all of which are more sophisticated, more destructive and much harder to hit than those which have already smashed so much Israeli infrastructure (a shocking blow such as Israel has never once suffered in its history).

Is the US pausing weapons to Ukraine? Will they find them ten more patriots (about an hour’s worth?)

No folks – they’d love to keep both parts of the big war against the whole aspiring world going forever, but they can only afford to re-stock one of their bloodied pawns at a time, and one of those pawns is incomparably better at working US politicians!

Will Israel attack Iran again – even though it means absolute sure-fire destruction for their economy?

Hard to say – there is certainly no sign of calm strategic thinking breaking out. Tragic war mania rules.

How many Israelis are fleeing the country, and will never return? Again, this one is hushed-up hard!

Did Trump give Israel one big dramatic attack, to try to satisfy them (shut them up, at least for now?)

I don’t know any better than you do. But I can tell you this, the worst psychotic imperialists in the entire world (who supposedly “represent” we citizens, in every modern sophisticated nation in the west) are increasingly desperate, and they are losing hard. Expect more bad-craziness, for sure.

On the other hand – the most evil powerful war-mad maniacs on earth ARE LOSING – HARD!

Believe me, you and I may be baffled and nervous (our hollowed out financialized western economies are ALL due to implode, in the next few years – right on schedule, really) but the people of the global south see the leash slipping at last and feel rising hearts and spirits – and so should we.

No more hegemon – that age has past. And no taking a bloody century to figure that out, this time!

Westphalianism – fairness and respect between nations and cultures – no more war – trade and culture instead.

The true basis of everything good about “Western culture” is the stuff we only learned how to do after a century of killing in search of illusory hegemony proved utterly ineffective – which means we moderns will only be on the right track after WE realize that all of the point of a bayonet moralizing stuff we’ve been doing for the last eighty years straight isn’t just violent, evil, racist, inhumane and demented – it’s fucking dumb as hell for our very own spirits brains and long-term thriving, too!

You can’t kill your way to peace, or steal your happiness from someone else’s.

There are no Royal roads to any worthwhile place at all, just the same old humble dusty path of effort there always has been – if we can only once again learn patience and faith enough to walk it!

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Now I have once again been unable to pore over my usual high volume (and quality) compendium of expert essays – but I do have one last special gem to share with you – because it does two kinds of work at once.

Jesuitical modern Leftists (those psychotically certain of their own manifest moral superiority) love to demonize. (I swear they’re actually the first to joyfully celebrate the burning of heretics – not the right, as is so often BigMedia asserted).

Naomi Klein is a heroin to many (no, I didn’t forget the E), because she has spent years writing in a style which flatters her readers into thinking themselves superior, just for expanding their collection of resentments and finger-waving targets. (If we all pout at Kochs at the very same time, why then...­)

More recently, she wrote a whole book about how she was absolutely not Naomi Wolff, even though people confuse them all the time (two most famous writing Naomis, maybe?) and anyhow, as she proceeds to detail for hundreds of pages, Naomi Wolff (who she totally isn’t) is a representative of absolutely everything which is wrong with the whole entire world. A far rightist! (that is, a genuinely curious skeptic, where Klein herself has long since got drunk on her own delusional moral-indulgence koolaid).

Thing is, I read both – and they both say some dumb shit and some stuff that is really smart and insightful. Neither one of them seems to be able to tell their best stuff from their worst, though Wolff alone admits error and seems determined to keep growing – where Klein insists she has always been entirely right, all along. (which I would agree with – though not at all in the sense she means it – I mean supremacist).

Anyhow – here’s a little snippet of Naomi Wolff, which went at something far too often quoted, without anyone really running down the source and the scholarship about the thing.

You tell me – crazy right-wing nutcase – or just another imperfect person, trying to add more sense where we could really use some?

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Dr. Naomi Wolf: "Okay, so I was challenged below: "Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people." So....I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it -- most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew -- as I do -- you see that God did not "give" Israel to the Jews/Israelites. We as Jews are raised with the creed that "God gave us the land of Israel" in Genesis -- and that ethnically 'we are the chosen people." But actually -- and I could not believe my eyes when I saw this, I checked my reading with major scholars and they confirmed it -- actually God's "covenant" in Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy with the Jewish people is NOT ABOUT AN ETHNICITY AND NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT. IT IS ABOUT A WAY OF BEHAVING.

Again and again in the "covenant" language He never says: "I will give you, ethnic Israelites, the land of Israel." Rather He says something far more radical - far more subversive -- far more Godlike in my view. He says: IF you visit those imprisoned...act mercifully to the widow and the orphan...welcome the stranger in your midst...tend the sick...do justice and love mercy ....and perform various other tasks...THEN YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND THIS LAND WILL BE YOUR LAND. So "my people" is not ethnic -- it is transactional. We are God's people not by birth but by a way of behaving, that is ethical, kind and just. And we STOP being "God's people" when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, "God's people." And the "contract" to "give" us Israel is conditional -- we can live in God's land IF we are "God's people" in this way -- just, merciful, compassionate. AND -- it never ever says, it is ONLY your land. Even when passages spell out geographical "boundaries" as if God does such a thing, it never says this is exclusively your land. It never says I will give this land JUST to you. Remember these were homeless nomads who had left slavery in Egypt and were wandering around in the desert; at most these passages say, settle here, but they do not say, settle here exclusively. Indeed again and again it talks about welcoming "zarim" -- translated as "strangers" but can also be translated as "people/tribes who are not you" -- in your midst. Blew my mind, hope it blows yours."- Dr. Naomi Wolf

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Here’s Tara Van Dijk – that amazing (brilliant and also hilarious) anti-bullshit feminist I mentioned

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Here’s ex-CIA and now international peace-advocate Larry Johnson’s Site – hard to beat for an informed second take, on the latest events.

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And here’s the unique and super useful Black Mountain Analysis – absolutely superb technical detail, for those who simply must have it!

A link again to Nima and Dialogue Works - there are plenty of other superb interviewers with informed guests, but none so pleasant to listen to, even when the subjects are dire indeed. (The kind of cheery Iranian who teaches engineering in Rio!)

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And why not first things last - the mellifluous, beautifully spoken Alexander Mercouris, who I mentioned in the opening. Again, if one must hear the painful, wit and care, help the medicine go down a whole lot easier than do squealing and bellowing!

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