Shredding Children IS Western Civilization

Israel Strikes Iran

Latest Update (as of 5:00pm California time of Friday October 25)

I am not intending nor am I in a position to provide blow by blow accounts of Iranian strikes on Iran in the morning of Saturday October 26 (Iranian time). But I want to frame my remarks from earlier in the day to this latest information.

From AP we learn that Israel launched airstrikes early Saturday on what it described as military targets in Iran. Israel’s military described the attack Saturday as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” without immediately elaborating. In Tehran, explosions could be heard. State-run media initially acknowleded the blasts, saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.

“A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Meanwhile, state media in Syria described its air defenses as targeting “hostile targets” there as well…The strike Saturday happened just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East where he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran…Two U.S. officials said the U.S. was notified by Israel in advance of the strikes. They said there was no U.S. involvement in the operation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation”.

At 6:30pm California time, Reuters reported: “Iranian state TV quoted a military spokesman as saying the explosions heard in Tehran were linked "to air defence systems reacting to efforts by the Zionist regime (Israel) to attack three locations outside the city of Tehran."

Slaughtering Children is Us

Khamenei’s statement yesterday to this effect (see heading) comes at a moment in time, along with the singularly important BRICS summit in Kazan, when the civilizational fissures of the globe are crystalizing as never before.

It comes at a moment, too, when Israel’s existential threat to Iran increases the likelihood of the extermination of all civilization.

“The massacre of 10,000 innocent children with two-ton bombs and all kinds of weapons, while Western politicians did not even raise an eyebrow, dishonored lying Western politicians and self-styled human rights advocates. ‘It showed the disgrace of Western civilization to the whole world, which is the biggest defeat for them.’”

Complicity in Genocide

The complicity of the collective West in the Palestinian genocide is a message, more than any other, about the innate presumption by Westerners that their civilizaton - built through genocide, blood, colonization, fratricidal war, torture and murder and the pomp and circumstances of over-privileged elites - is somehow, outrageously and oxymoronically superior to every other. The history which, until very recently at least, has decriminalized torture and imprisonment without trial, is whitewashed while the media gatekeepers of Western cultural purity focus on their accomplishment, as they believe and for only a few years so far, of LGBT rights, rights of the unborn (at the expense of the freedom and safety of women) and issue angry and threatening noises about how other countries (never they) allow gender and ethnic and all sorts of other abuses, real or imagined.

Odious Hypocrisy

There goes the New York Times this morning complaining that the alliance between Russia and North Korea is an alliance of autocracies that, wait for it, “suppress dissent.” No mention of course of the criminalization of dissent in Ukraine, where dissent invites exile, disappearance and murder; no mention of the callous disruption of the lives of the elite’s own children by US universities invoking police action against peaceful pro-Gazan protestors on campuses; no mention of the Julian Assanges, Chelsea Mannings, John Kiakous, Edward Snowdens and hundreds of other whistleblowers who have had to sacrifice their freedom as the price for revealing the brutalities of empire; no mention to the everyday and widespread practice of censorship of dissenting views by social media beholden to Western governments amidst shameless calls from the small-brained likes of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and John Kerry for the dismantling of first amendment rights so as to protect official narratives from competition.

Back to NATO’s Wars

Well, when a “civilization” loses this amount of credibility it becomes more difficult to muster up the strength to want to save it. But save it we must because that is the only path to saving all civilizations, the ones the West so beneficently “approves” of, and those that it so pompously condemns and all the others in between.

Which of course brings us back to NATO’s wars in defense of Western hegemony being fought out against Russia, over the proxy Ukraine, and against Iran over the proxy Israel, and against China, over the proxy Taiwan. Left to itself, the West will never run out of corruptible or duped proxies.

US Participation in the War for Israel Against Iran

In the Middle East the US maintains some 57,000 servicemen and women in a variety of bases, all of them immediately vulnerable to the possible breakout of a regional war initiated by Israel against Iran with a view either to luring in the US in defense of Israel or giving the US the excuse it needs for doing so.

The US itself is clearly divided, with the neocons and their vassals, including two-passport Israeli agents in the State Department, wanting a war against Iran regardless of anything else, while the realists and the Pentagon wanting to avoid a war if possible because they know that the US lacks the weaponry and resources to fight even one war (Ukraine) to successful conclusion, let alone two or three.

In this group there may be some who calculate that if the US does not come to the support of Israel in a war that Israel initiates against Iran, and if Israel’s first wave of attacks fails to cripple Iran or to take out its senior leadership and bring about regime change, then Iran will strike back in a way that will destroy Israel.

Of this, Iran is capable, with or without a nuclear bomb (though I don’t believe Iran would actually use a nuke even if it had one, not least because it knows that Israel has several hundred at its disposal). A much smaller and more fragile country than Iran, Israel - if subject to an existential attack of this kind - will then be the first to reach out for nuclear weapons in response.

Who would really be so stupid as to plunge the world into such a scenario? Plenty, it seems. The growing prospect in the background of a 2007-2008 Western economic crisis, perhaps initiated by the collapse of an institution like the Bank of America, will likely add to the tensions and the dangers of precipitate behavior.

Neocons and Realists

Within the ranks of the neocons and their Israeli allies there may be those who are waiting the results of the US elections in two weeks’ time, calculating that with or without the aid of a flow of Israeli money that Col. Douglas Macgregor claims is headed, one way or another, in support of the Trump campaign (so different to the nonexistent flow of Russian money when the Democrats were complaining of Trump’s success in 2016 being all due to - non existent - Russian support), a Trump presidency will guarantee unwavering US support for any amount of Israeli knavery and butchery.

Within the ranks of the realists will be those who understand that Iran has the direct support through both its existing relationship with Russia and the manner of how that relationship with Russia will be molded through Russia’s “strategic partnership” with Iran. The presence of Russian warships in Iranian ports could be crucial in the event of a decision by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz). Equally critical is the support of China, which is an extremely close ally of Russia and is also an outspoken advocate for the aims of the BRICS (which, in reality, are to de-dollarize the global economy and set up a new group of institutions and commodity exchanges to parallel and one day to take over the task of facilitating and regulating the global economy), and depends on Iran for a good proportion of the oil that it needs to stop its economy from floundering.

The Calculus of Aggression

Behind Russia and China are up to 80 other countries that largely feel the same way. BRICS member Saudi Arabia was said by Col. Douglas Macgregor in interview yesterday on Judging Freedom to be funnelling large tranches of money right now to both Egypt and to Jordan to reassure these otherwise empire-coopted vassals that they need not depend on US aid and can and should act against Isrsael in defense of Palestine.

The US could even win in Iran and lose the global war. But I dont think it will win in Iran and it will not win the global war.

Adding to the diverse range of “trip wires” for the construction of pretexts for war, the US is sending 100 American troops to Israel along with one or two THAAD air defense systems that according to Col. Dougles McGregor yesterday put local populations in danger of radiation and are immediate targets for Iranian missiles.

If Israel attacks Iran, and Iran then retaliates, or if Iran mounts a pre-emptive strike against Israel, then yes, the US comes in. The exception might be if Israel limits itself only to a symbolic attack, then Iran might similarly restrain itself. It is not at all impossible that Russia is restraining Iran on the understanding that the US can restrain Israel, evidence of such understanding, perhaps, being represented by the leaks of US intelligence concerning Israeli attack plans on Iran.

The Leaked Plans (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and NSA)

The leaked intelligence on Israeli attack plans on Iran are summarized by Scott Ritter on Consortium News as mainly comprising the launch of 40 ROCKS 500-mile range, air-launched ballistic missiles (ALBMs) and 16 “Golden Horizan” 1,200 mile range ALBMs. These would be supported by armed covert drones to track mobile targets. An initial salvo of ALBMs would target radars associated with Iranian air defense.

Israel has for some time been carving an air path to western Iraq (the point at which missiles would be fired on Iran) by means of daily barrages over Lebanon and Syria. On the day of attack Israel would use F-15Is and F16Is to suppress Syrian air defense (even, I would add, if this was only the air defense facilities that Russia has installed to protects its naval, air and army bases in Syria, given that other air defense in Syria seems weak to nonexistent)

The likeliest targets would be close to Tehran, perhaps including the Parchin missile production facility or the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, in a manner similar to the US attack on Iraqi missile production sites at the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Or, Israel may attempt a decapitation strike on the most senior Iranian leaders and institutions. This would be followed by the instigation of an uprising by dissident groups including pro-monarchy groups (really? - there is any remote chance of a meaningful pro-Pahlavi group in Iran - difficult to believe), MEK-related groups (previously designated as terrorist by the US State Department) and Kurdish, Azeri, Baluch and other militia. This strategy already played out, unsuccessfully, in the 2023 Western supported uprisings in protest against the death of Mahsa Amiri in custody.

Turkey Slipping from the Fence

Complicating any such invasion plans will be the movement of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza and Lebanon up towards Turkey, at a time when Turkey (still struggling under the weight of Syrian refugees in southern Turkey and its obligations to the former jihadists of Idlib) is under pressure to put some substance into its anti-Israeli rhetoric and into the sincerity of its desire to join the BRICS. The US is thought to be inciting the Kurds whom it supports in northeastern Syria against Turkish forces in the northwest in order to warn off Turkey from any thoughts it must have about acting on such considerations against Israel.

North Koreans in Russia

Despite considerable initial skeptism within the “alternative commentariate,” about Ukrainian claims of the presence of North Korean troops in Russia, these are gaining traction - especially in the wake yesterday of Russia and North Korea signing a mutual defense treaty, and of Putin’s reported refusal, in Kazan, to deny this story.

I have noted in previous posts that Dima of the Military Summary Channel has been on board with this story since it broke, even while referencing Ukrainian intelligence as his sources. Dima has said on more than two occasions that these troops, numbering 3000, will be used in the defense of Russia against Ukrainian invaders of the Russian territory of Kursk at a time when Russia has recovered over 50% of the territory initially impacted, and where a considerable number of Ukrainian forces appear to be trapped in a cauldron or cauldrons.

It has not seemed at all odd to me that North Korea would want its army to benefit from live battle experience or that Russia would be interested in encouraging North Korea to help Russia counter the supply by South Korea of aid and weapons to Ukraine. A more hardened North Korean military, given the closeness of relations between China and North Korea, will help all countries of the “axis of resistance” prepare for war against the anti-Chinese ring of US allies in the Pacific, among them, most importantly, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines (not to mention Australia and New Zealand further south).

In this way, we see how closely interlinked are each of these three major conflagrations.