Yves here. The US is being revealed as not being able to stop Houthi attacks…which means higher shipping costs and shipping delays (longer average routes = need for more ships which also means backups as shipment origin). That means inflation and supply chain pressure, although Europe is much more in that line of fire than the US…unless the threat to shipping extends beyond the Red Sea to oil transit…..or insurers become concerned, jack up rates on Middle Eastern routes generally, and not just ones that transit the Red Sea. The fact that Iran is starting to mix thing up suggests oil prices could rise. Recall how high they became in 2022 and the impact on inflation.
So far, the insurer action is limited to carriers with certain “links” (how defined?) but the flip side it is more draconian than increasing rates:
As a result of Houthi operations "underwriters are seeking exclusions for vessels with links to the US, UK and Israel when issuing cover for trips through the area. It essentially means they won’t provide insurance" to US, UK, or Israel-linked vessels.https://t.co/TmKbphFit0
— Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 (@LalehKhalili) January 17, 2024
The reason for the focus on inflation is that what the Biden Administration would be concerned about, adverse economic developments that could (further) dampen its 2024 prospects, the risk of a regional conflagration be damned.
Consider:
The French Navy just posted these photos as they escort French container ships through the Red Sea. Before the American-led order that followed World War 2 this is how trade was done, with each nation protecting its own ships. Is this the future of globalization? pic.twitter.com/j7XHBBXW9X
— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) January 16, 2024
But it looks as if the US/UK actions are not completely ineffective:
US seizes Iranian weapons bound for Yemen's Houthi rebels pic.twitter.com/cXW7Nd5hQX
— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) January 17, 2024
And Mr. Market is awfully chipper:
Markets are totally ignoring shipping in the Red Sea, spiralling shipping rates and crashing European imports. Why? Because its an election year and so magical thinking abounds. Repeat after me: “if you buy the bond, the orange man will go away”. 🗳️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/g46Py13wHr
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) January 17, 2024
By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
When your enemy dupes you into compounding your mistakes, without achieving your military objectives, he is leading you into an escalation of force which will defeat you, sooner or later. Later is more costly, defeat more ruinous, so the Arab-Iranian alliance against Israel and the US is waging the long war they were never before believed capable to fight.
No matter how much force you use, every US Army manual on winning battles and wars says the same thing. Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, the British Army strategist of a generation ago, advised that “for success two major problems must be solved — dislocation and exploitation. One precedes and one follows the actual blow — which in comparison is a simple act.”
Today is Tuesday morning — and it is already plain on the Middle Eastern battlefield that the Anglo-American air attacks against Yemeni targets on Friday and Saturday have “dislocated” none of the capabilities of the Ansarallah government in Sanaa and the Houthi military units.
For exploitation after the air strikes, the initiative has remained instead with the Houthis: they are continuing their attacks on the US Navy fleet in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, keeping them on guard, but demonstrating they are ineffectual to protect US and Israel-connected shipping now diverting from the area. “War is a two-party affair,” old Liddell Hart had said, “in order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.” In the Middle East the enemy has been taken off his guard. That’s to say, the Israelis, the Americans, and the British.
Minutes after midnight on Tuesday, Moscow time, Russian military bloggers began relaying the news from Iran and Yemen of new missile attacks against a Greek-American owned bulker in the Gulf of Aden during the afternoon, and hours later at night, a US mercenary forces unit, a US consulate building, an Israeli base, and the home of a leading oil trader in the Kurdish city of Erbil in northern Iraq.
According to Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad Telegram platform, “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has officially announced that the ballistic missile attack on US and Mossad bases in Iraq was carried out in response to the bloody terrorist attack in Kerman during commemorative events dedicated to Qassem Soleimani. Local sources in Erbil report at least 8 rocket strikes… At the moment, what is known is that there have been strikes against the following targets by IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] missiles: 1. The American base at Erbil airport. 2. The U.S. Consulate in Erbil. 3. The local headquarters of the Kurdish security service. 4. The private residence of a local businessman [Peshraw Dizayee] associated with the Mossad. There is a high activity of ambulances in Erbil. There is no clarity about the victims, but it is obvious that there will be numbers of them.”
US media reporting after several hours of delay claimed there had been explosions near the US consulate in Erbil but “ ‘no US facilities were impacted. We’re not tracking damage to infrastructure or injuries at this time,’ a U.S. official told ABC News.” On the contrary, Rozhin reported, “according to one of my friends who lives in the centre of Erbil, the blow fell not on the current consulate, but on the new one, which is just being built. There was everything in scaffolding and construction cranes. Eyewitnesses say that they were building something grandiose.”
During Sunday afternoon, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed reported Houthi drone or missile attacks targeting the US Navy destroyer, USS Laboon, which claims to have assisted a USAF fighter to intercept them before they reached the destroyer. CENTCOM also reported Houthi launches “toward the southern Red Sea commercial shipping lanes.”
CENTCOM is saying nothing at all about the fate of the two US Navy F-18 pilots, shot down by Houthi air defence during the first raid on Friday morning and missing at sea since then. Pentagon concealment of the shoot-down — the first air battle success of its kind– has been camouflaged by a half-dozen press releases about the hospitalization and health of the Defense Secretary, General Lloyd Austin. “I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home,” Austin has claimed.
According to US Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims (lead image) who heads the staff advising the Joint Chiefs of Staff on operations: “The hope would be that any real thought of [Houthi] retaliation is based on a clear understanding that, you know, we simply are not going to be messed with here…I know we have degraded capability. I don’t believe that they [Houthis] would be able to execute the same way they did the other day. But we will see.” In less than 72 hours what Sims could see has had to be concealed from everyone else.
Not in Moscow.
“The Americans need controlled instability to realize their own plans,” Konstantin Dolgov, once a senior Russian diplomat and now a senator, told Vzglyad. “But this instability has long been out of Washington’s control.”
Yesterday, January 15, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and announced “coordination at all levels, emphasizing the unwavering mutual commitment to the fundamental principles of Russian-Iranian relations, including unconditional respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and other principles of the UN Charter, which will be confirmed in the upcoming ‘big’ interstate agreement between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“All levels” includes military coordination. It also means coordination with the Ansarallah representatives in Teheran.
As for the Houthi operations in the Red Sea, Lavrov and Amir-Abdollahian explicitly linked them to the Israeli-American blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza, calling for “an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and unhindered humanitarian access to the enclave to provide urgent assistance to the affected civilian population.”
Earlier on the same day, January 15, the Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met in Teheran with Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, and held detailed talks with Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian. The Indian minister revealed the same order of priorities for India as Lavrov revealed for Russia – strategic state interests shared with Iran for the long-term future, but for now the link between the Houthi shipping campaign and the Gaza blockade. In his tweet, Jaishankar said: “Our bilateral discussion focused on the long term framework for India’s involvement with Chabahar port and the INSTC [International North–South Transport Corridor] connectivity project. Also spoke about threats to maritime shipping in the region. Important that this be speedily addressed. Other issues on the agenda were the Gaza situation, Afghanistan, Ukraine and BRICS cooperation.”
Source: https://twitter.com/
“This is what diplomacy is meant to be,” commented an Indian source in Moscow. “They disagree on a lot but they also know what they need to agree on.”
The Indian government has been briefed that the reason for the strike against the MV Chem Pluto on December 23 was the Israeli ownership of the vessel, not its Saudi oil cargo or the destination for its cargo in India.
The official Yemen declaration of Monday, following the attack against the USS Laboon, has now expanded the targeting to include the US and UK fleets which had taken part in the weekend bombing and missile raids. “The naval forces of the Armed Forces of Yemen conducted a military operation targeting an American ship in the Gulf of Aden. All American and British ships involved in the aggression against our country are considered hostile targets by the Yemeni armed forces. The Yemeni armed forces confirm that a retaliatory strike against American and British attacks is inevitable, and that no attack in the future will go unpunished. The Yemeni armed forces continue to conduct their military operations and implement the decision to block Israeli shipping in the Arab and Red Seas until the aggression stops and the siege of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces confirm the continuation of commercial traffic in the Arab and Red Seas to all destinations, with the exception of the ports of occupied Palestine, and that they continue to take all defensive and offensive measures within the framework of the right to defend and resist American-British aggression.” https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin January 16 — Min 03:05.
Left, MV Gibraltar Eagle; right, location of the vessel when hit by Houthi missiles, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations office (UKMTO). The shipping company released a statement confirming the strike but omitting to identify the destination for the vessel.
The attack on the Gibraltar Eagle in the Gulf of Aden, currently in the lead maritime news for today, makes the vessel appear to be unconnected to Israel. The vessel is publicly identified as one of Eagle Bulk Shipping’s fleet; Eagle Bulk Shipping is a New York Stock Exchange-listed company based in Connecticut which has been reporting dwindling profits. But since a takeover transaction was announced last month, the controlling owner is now the Greek company, Star Bulk of Athens. The two Greeks controlling Star Bulk are Petros Pappas and Spyros Capralos. They are shippers of dry bulk commodities — coal, grain, fertilizers, iron ore, steel products. It is not known whether they have been delivering to or loading at Israeli ports. Western vessel tracking publications claim the Gibraltar Eagle had taken on its current cargo of steel products in South Korea and was headed for the Suez Canal when it was hit. At the time, and for several days of sailing before, the vessel had turned off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal.
Maritime industry sources say the secrecy employed by the Gibraltar Eagle may have been intended to conceal that it is carrying a cargo of South Korean arms and ammunition intended for unloading at a Polish port for onward delivery to the Ukraine; or for an Israeli port. The destination port recorded for the vessel is not showing in the regular western vessel tracking sites.
The sources add this is unusual. Reports on the international arms trade indicate a surge in South Korean production for the Ukraine. Operations managers at Eagle Bulk Shipping offices in the US and Singapore refuse to identify the destination port for their vessel’s cargo.
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British oil giant Shell has announced this week that it will stop sending ships through the Red Sea. This is on top of an announcement by BP that it was doing so of as last month and LNG exporter QatarEnergy doing the same last week. Nobody want to send LPG ships through there for obvious reasons and five of them were diverted the other day. The joint attack by the US and the UK has only served to make the situation even worse though I note that this time that France did not join this attack on Yemen. I said a while ago, they could have negotiated a “gentleman’s agreement” that any Israeli-affiliated ship would go round Africa while everybody else would have free passage. But that was not enough good for the Biden White House who wanted to look tough in an election year and so they have kicked the hornet’s nest.
A note on the bombing of the private residence of a local businessman, Peshraw Dizayee. The Iranians were really gunning for this guy as they used a total of four missiles to take him out. I have read that he was heavily involved with the Mossad and was responsible for helping send oil from this region to Israel. I suspect that somehow he had involvement in that attack in Iran which killed about a hundred people. But if this guy was actually letting his residence be used for a Mossad HQ, then that was reckless in the extreme. Any secret Israeli base or Mossad field office is now a priority target and you do not want to be anywhere near them.
Why do we keep hearing about businessmen with ties to Mossad…
The signal to noise ratio in this Houthi affair is very low. And events on the ground / sea rapidly outpace stuff like this Helmer piece.
I mean, has anyone really emphasized the fact that a great deal of Saudi oil shipments are loaded at their half-dozen Red Sea ports north of Yemen? The Persian Gulf ports are always assumed in discussion. But is there any reason to suspect Saudi oil shipments from the Red Sea to Euirope are not affected, being out of Houthi range?
Then consider that Iran is perfectly capable of shooting itself in the foot. The US neocons must be laughing their butts off! Dumbbell Iran attacks its next door neighbour Muslim Pakistan in the “fight” against Israel. How crazy is that? Got to get those terrorists that annoy the IRGC, apparently. More important than bilateral relations, considering Pakistan offered nukes if Israel goes off the complete deep end. Pure speculation on my part, but is that IRGC attack the result of the Indo-Iran talks Helmer writes of? India versus Pakistan yet again? Lavrov’s undying devotional words about Iran and Russian cooperation come off somewhat lame to me.
Because, Putin sits on the fence over Gaza. Apparently, his “humanitarian” side of not bombing average Ukrainian civilians does not extend to trying to assist Palestinian civilians being genocided in Gaza.
So he’s just another opportunistic politician really. The good PR Russia built up in the Global South gets whittled away every day Putin prevaricates over Gaza. And Iran mightily cheeses off Pakistan with missile strikes that killed children on its territory. Brainpower seems strikingly absent to me.
The US neocons got a free get out of jail card with this Iranian idiocy — Muslims maybe fighting each other, how wonderful is that for them? Couldn’t be better!
And who knows? By tomorrow morning something else may well happen that changes the calculus of the current chaotic mess yet again.
There is much danger in speculating too soon on fluid matters. One can come to conclusions too early that are simply not warranted, in my opinion. I and other nobodies of any rank of amateur commenter can opine away, but this constant flow of supposed more learned punditry from “experts” gets me down when it seems off base.
? Pakistan?
did I miss something? The Kurds may wish they had a terrirory called kurdistan… proper… but that isn’t pakistan.
Iran fired missiles at Jaish ul-Adl militant’s base in Pakistan, and Pakistan protested. About a month ago the militants killed 11 police officers in Iran and this was a retaliation.
Nothing to do with Israel, although Iran is apparently flexing it’s muscles now. In this situation every violent action is an escalation, me thinks.
It may have been that ISIS in Pakistan has been running operations into Iran so this might have been Iran telling Pakistan to knock it off – or else. Iran is not a country where they do wild, stupid stuff for the sake of it. Iran does so many calculations in their military and political moves that I suspect that they must be making use of slide rules to do so.
> Iran does so many calculations in their military and political moves…
Indubitably correct. However, I reckon that in Pakistani General HQ just now they are no doubt happily musing along the lines of
‘Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim gun, and they have not’.
Mutatis mutandis
Marvelous. This just encourages the Iranians to get their own “Maxim gun” regardless of what the American Regime wants, does it not? More toys for more hotheads to start a world war with. I can imagine waking up to see World War Three starting after the capital cities of Tehran, then Islamabad, followed by their allies’ capitals becoming radioactive. This is how both world wars started as countries and their allies got dragged into the fighting.
We could easily have several million dead with millions more injured and/or homeless in a single day of war. And that is if the United States, Russia, and China do not get into the fighting. If the major nuclear powers, likely with India joining, start launching their own nuclear weapons, which would be likely, then we are looking at hundreds of millions of dead, plus the injured and the homeless.
All through the Cold War the leadership was composed of veterans or children of veterans who had survived major wars. This partially explains why the Cold War never became hot. Today’s leadership, and I make no exceptions for any country, seem ignorant of the costs of any war, no matter the size of it.
I’m sure the Pakistanis are glad to have their nuclear Gatling Gun for an absolute worst case scenario(though I both suspect and of course Hope they also are realistic enough to know they are far from any such thing, thankfully), but it also shows once more (as the entire war in Ukraine already does) that nuclear deterrence doesn’t work outside some extremely specific circumstances, to the point that it is functionally useless and does nothing to prevent or limit military conflict in a broader sense.
For one because people have largely just lost all sense of how bad nuclear reality would be and generally no longer have the ability to effectively discern reality from fantasy, fact from fiction.
Though this obviously is far more common in the collective West than anywhere else.
Another more universal problem is that by now everybody has realized that no even remotely sane nuclear power will ever retaliate with nukes when it is attacked conventionally.
It perhaps would, if it was the only nuclear power in the world, but there are a bunch.
There is no substantial difference anymore between attacking a nuclear and attacking a non nuclear power.
The only thing you can deter with nuclear weapons is (for now) a nuclear first strike by your opponent (and of course everyone knows that the US forever strives to gain nuclear supremacy and capacity to execute pre-emptive decapitation strikes).
Nuke isn’t nuke either, the Neocons at least probably would not hesitate to nuke Pakistan or more plausibly a nuclear armed Iran IF they didn’t have to worry about the reactions and the much more powerful arsenals of China and especially Russia.
It’s of course the West that has prompted all of these dangerous insights and developments but everyone is learning.
I guess the Pakistanis know that the Iranians aren’t out for war so much as they were sending a message to stop harboring terrorists (presumably aligned with the US and Israel to some degree) that attack Iran.
I’m not fully sure what Pakistan even really gains these days for serving a haven for these terrorist mercenaries but the government there is certainly pretty strongly limited in their actual political agency and hopelessly corrupt.
Who knows, perhaps there are even some elements of the pakistani leadership that are really fed up with dancing to the american tune (or at least with being seen doing so by their populace) and if the US Government demanded of them and/or bribed (some) of them harbor or in other ways support those terrorists (or at least to some degree even the ISI isn’t entirely comfortable with) during their operations against Iran, those pakistani players might not be that averse to Iran taking out the CIA/Mossad assets they’d perhaps prefer to no longer be there anyway but don’t have found the guts to force out themselves
Pure speculation of course, but if it was true it would explain Pakistan keeping quiet and they DID pay some token lipservice to muslim solidarity and resistance against israeli genocide and western support for it at least.
Here’s what Biden and his handlers are exposing your family to in the third war he has started. When your brain vaporizes, you feel no pain. Ugly deaths ahead for those outside of target areas. On the other hand, think of the gains in defense stocks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions_on_human_health
The medical effects of the atomic bomb upon humans can be put into the four categories below, with the effects of larger thermonuclear weapons producing blast and thermal effects so large that there would be a negligible number of survivors close enough to the center of the blast who would experience prompt/acute radiation effects, which were observed after the 16 kiloton yield Hiroshima bomb, due to its relatively low yield:[1][2]
Initial stage—the first 1–9 weeks, in which are the greatest number of deaths, with 90% due to thermal injury and/or blast effects and 10% due to super-lethal radiation exposure.
Intermediate stage—from 10 to 12 weeks. The deaths in this period are from ionizing radiation in the median lethal range – LD50
Late period—lasting from 13 to 20 weeks.
Question: how does Pakistan propose to deliver their nuclear Maxim Gun?
I think the commenter refers to this?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/17/will-pakistan-retaliate-against-unacceptable-iranian-air-attacks
“Lavrov and Amir-Abdollahian explicitly linked them to the Israeli-American blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza, calling for “an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and unhindered humanitarian access to the enclave to provide urgent assistance to the affected civilian population.”
So as of today, the cost/benefit calculus moved Russia off the fence (the Houthi got their needed US escalation to get Russia off the fence). What are you expecting? A Cuban missile crisis to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza with Senile Genocide Joe staring down Vladimir Putin and WW3? You must realize WW3 will kill all Gazans. And if certain missile tech was covertly being transferred, I would not expect Lavrov to announce.
The internet tells me that in 2022 77.8% of Saudi crude oil exports were to Asia.
Thanks for this. Not saying I’m getting nervous but I keep checking X to make sure #archduke isn’t trending.
Better check Twitter to make sure that #ClimbMountNiitaka isn’t trending either.
Good idea to keep an eye out for #remembergleiwitz.
So is it two F-18 pilots missing or two SEALs? Helmer has mentioned pilots twice but I thought the DOD has came out and said two SEALs were lost during the interdiction on the vessel carrying the missile parts pictured above.
Or was it both?
Helmer noted that the US has said nothing about F-18 and the pilots. I’m guessing it’s really four people missing. SEALs aren’t pilots and pilots aren’t SEALs, I think.
This appears to be an unbacked assertion by Helmer. The official US line is two seals lost at sea. There were reports that Yemen downed an aircraft, so people have linked the two. Calling it an F18 seems to be Helmers assumption based on having two pilots?
Strange, as usually F-18 is a single pilot craft, unlike the venerable F-14.
There are not many multi person combat planes left on US carriers as best i recall.
Looks like i need to correct myself, as there are F and G variants in use that are two seaters. The G Being a specialized electronic warfare variant. I guess they could be flying the F on ground attack missions to ease the workload of the pilot.
Have any press releases or stories about Austin had a current picture of him? You’d think they would have at least staged one with him giving the V sign as he was wheeled out to go home. The only story I saw yesterday had a picture of Austin from last Fall. Quite odd how this subject is being handled.
Hence the rumors he was in UKR?
Like you suggested, a quick pic would be an easy way to nip those rumors in the bud.
Yup it’s clearly damage control mode, tho’ pretty incompetent stuff. I wonder how much real authority Austin has if he can disappear for a week and no one notice. One bright thing about this crap “administration “ is it’s so incompetent in every domain that it is severely weakening the imperial regime. Genocide Joe and the Dimwits, playing out of tune and out of time.
It’s important not to confound the Houthis with Yemen. There’s a civil war going on in the country, which has been on uneasy hold since April 2022 after UN mediation, and there were promising signs of an outbreak of mutual tolerance between the Saudis and the Houthis. The end of the war can’t come soon enough: before Gaza, Yemen was the humanitarian crisis of the 21st century, with widespread starvation and even famine. This latest escalation by the Houthi will put paid to any resolution of the conflict in the short term. In any event, whilst the Houthis control Sanaa, the capital, and much of the North and West, the country (it’s two countries really) remains one of the most complex in the world, with its tribal structures, and nobody has ever really controlled it completely. (It’s also a country where the feeling of imminent violence is present everywhere.)
Whilst there’s no doubt the Houthi leadership genuinely supports the Palestinian cause, they are also aware that escalation like this will increase their popularity with the Yemeni people, who are very pro-Palestinian, and help to deflect increasing criticism of their rule in the parts of the country they control. Likewise, they hope that these attacks will encourage more countries, especially in the Arab world, to recognise them as the legitimate government, or at least support them in the peace talks. They therefore have every incentive to escalate, and it’s not clear how much practical influence Iran has over them.
More generally, I think we’re seeing the beginning of something very important here. The use of drones and low-cost but relatively accurate missiles against ships enables, in effect, a blockade of the kind that used to require large navies to perform. Most of the world’s shipping lanes pass through narrow and congested areas at some point, and with 80% of the world’s commerce going by sea, small states, and maybe even non-state actors, are about to get a fearsome political and economic weapon to use against their enemies.
Actually, I think the Houthis/Ansarallah have been using this crisis and their closing off of the Bab el Mandeb Strait in a smart way politically, and there already defections among some of their opponents, who are rallying to Ansarallah, not least because they can now paint the country as being attacked by the U.S..
Not to mention, nobody in Yemen wants to be seen as being on the side of Israel. Ansrallah could not ask for a better advertisement, not if they had the Challenger Group run their latest PR campaign.
I enjoy your blogposts and today was no exception
It is either 80 or a hundred years too late and maybe an impossible dream anyhow given the presence of ‘superpowers’, but whatever happened to the principle of collective security? I’ve not read anything to confirm my impression that the US undermined it almost from the beginning of the United Nations, turning the UN into an instrument of US foreign policy. (references appreciated) Now it is increasingly unable to call the shots, is there any hope for resurrecting the idea of collective security?
The dream of UN died with FDR, as it was his attempt at revising the League of Nations. Though it didn’t become obvious until Hammarskjöld was made an example of to send the message that activist general-secretaries would not be tolerated.
Thanks! Is there a good history of this or some links to an extended history?
“Drawing the line – The American Decision to Divide Germany 1944-1949”, by Carolyn Eisenberg makes the case that already before the end of the WW2 USA had decided to divert from the collective security already agreed upon by the Allies.
“Bomb power – The Modern Presidency and the National Security State” by Garry Wills says this was due to The Bomb, the very existence of which made the US president the most powerful person on Earth for it’s use was only on his/her discretion. The Bomb became the source of all power in USA and the government became paranoid about others gaining the same power thus giving birth to the National Security State (which doesn’t do collective security).
“NSC 68 and the Political Economy of the Early Cold War” by Curt Cardwell comes to the conclusion that it was mostly about saving the US capitalism from another depression.
I am just appalled at the Biden administration bending over backwards for the Gaza Genocide. The worst part of their simping is not that it’s craven but that it’s bootless: Netanyahu and the Israelis *want* Trump back. Biden writing checks does nothing to change that.
The Nut ‘n Yahoo clique’s strategy to bring back Trump is working. Biden is constitutionally incapable of popular electoral politics. He was elected Delaware Senator at the age of 30 and only understands the DC power politics in which he has spent a lifetime.
The Delaware Dept of Corporations indicates that there as many corporations and businesses based in Delaware as there are residents of the state. There are 47 U.S. counties that are more populous than the entire state of Delaware. Biden only knows how to chase corporate money, not individual voters. For a variety of reasons, American corporate money strongly backs Zionism.
Biden is incapable of “reading the room” on Palestinian genocide, on immigration, on student and mortgage debt, on economic inequality, on corporate power — issues that will cause voters to stay away from the polls in droves as happened in 1996 and 2016.
Yes, and the R faction are just as rabidly genocidal and racist – Zionist as the Ds, DT included.
I still can’t get over how the DNC is going to run Biden again, even though his cognitive decline and likely dementia are worsening. The orange dude is also showing signs of cognitive decline. I thought the depths of Kakistocracy had already been reached… let the Freak Shows begin
Trump actually may have learned a few things last go ’round, and one of them may be to not let your son-in-law or son lead your administration around by the nose to your and its detriment.
This may be out of date. Times of Israel from last month
It is increasingly evident that Sullivan and Blinken are in over their heads and can’t cope with the messes their neocon ideology has produced. Their focus now is on avoiding a military disaster before the November election. Unfortunately for them, as Helmer points out, they have lost control of the global instability they have cultivated. Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind.
Todays NYT features an op-ed written by Bret Stephens entitled The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity. In many ways, it represents the thinking of Biden and his team of neocons along with the mainstream news. While there are comments that rebuke Stephens’ arguments, many of the comments are in complete agreement and thank Stephens for his views. Very troubling!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/opinion/israel-hamas-war-genocide.html
Several days ago, I wrote a comment to a NYT editorial saying that the Israel has dehumanized the Palestinians. It was rejected.
Information control. Censorship. Lies need protection. Even reading the NYT is a waste of time except to understand the objectives of the owners. And commenting in their controlled echo chamber is futile.
“I wrote a comment to a NYT editorial saying that the Israel has dehumanized the Palestinians. It was rejected.”
Important, and seemingly becoming typical as the uniformity of comments suggests..
The NYT rejects 90% of the anti-massacre, anti-genocide comments responding to its Gaza articles (those that invite comments (some don’t)). From experience, for some time the comments regarding anything going on in Israel are and have been censored to favor right-wing-slanted opinions. I noticed this during Israel’s Supreme Court protests. Very eye opening for me as I’ve always thought of the NYT as being centrist. Nope.
NYT, printing a series of front page articles by Judith Miller to support making war on Iraq. After Bernie Sanders won early primaries, NYT, Washington Post and other papers ran a series of op-eds for several months telling their readers that Bernie was too radical for the American people. They circled the wagons. After we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, NYT ran a front page heading sayin that there was no radioactivity released from the explosions. These are just a few examples of how NYT is a tool to manufacture consent. The release of the Pentagon Papers was an exception that will probably never again be duplicated.
A bit off topic, but not really:
Blinken Stuck After Boeing 737 Breaks Down on Davos Trip.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-17/blinken-stranded-after-boeing-plane-breaks-down-on-davos-trip?srnd=premium
Lots of symbolism and irony in this headline, intended or not.
Though again this seems to be an NG rather than a MAX (really a military C-40, but based on the 737NG), the timing is divine.
Nimrada Halawa was on the Boeing board whan the Max was designed.
NG is not encouraging, though I suppose it is better than the POS.