Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)

The talks between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, as agreed upon in their Memorandum of Understanding, are veering off course.

There are two major forces that are threatening to derail the agreement.

One is, very predictably, Israel, which does its best to sabotage the talks. The MoU emphasizes the end of fighting in Lebanon and the retreat of Israeli forces from Lebanese ground.

While Israel, after pressure from the U.S., had stopped fighting over the weekend, its officials have stated that there will be no retreat of their forces. Today, Israeli troops attacked Lebanese civilians who were clearing a road in Nabatieh. It then attacked the civil defense forces, which tried to help those wounded during the first strike.

The U.S., Iran, and the Qatari and Pakistani mediators had agreed over the weekend to install an observer group to prevent such incidents. Iran will demand that the U.S. intervene in the case. It will otherwise take its own measures, which may again block the Strait of Hormuz.

English Outsider
Comment lifted from MoA
Moon of Alabama

Russia will just overwhelm Ukraine and then install a puppet government to ensure it remains as a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe/NATO. This could go on for some more years, or maybe Russia will speed things up, surprise everyone, and make it happen sooner.

Yes, the end state of remnant Ukraine will be along those lines, though precisely how it’ll be done is unclear and is still maybe unclear to the Russians themselves. Friendly state (unlikely), neutral state, puppet state or occupied territory. The last decidedly the worst case for the Russians and they’ll avoid it if they can. Also, of course, the worst case for remnant Ukraine.

The position has changed, however, since the early Istanbul negotiations. Paramount now is the Russian need to prevent remnant Ukraine being used by the West for attacks into Russia. These have increased greatly in scale and intensity over the last few years and there is no indication that these attacks will cease unless remnant Ukraine is neutralised in one of the ways set out above.

This is not some rarefied “geostrategic theory” for the analysts to mull over. It is an urgent practical necessity for the Putin administration. How long would any American administration last if the American President had to say to his voters “We’re getting sabotage and assassination missions run in against us from Mexico. Drones and missiles are still coming over. There’s not a lot we can do to close these attacks down entirely so we’re going to have to put up with them for the indefinite future.” Impossibly to imagine an American President saying that and similarly impossible for any Russian President. So the Russians do have to aim for an end state to this conflict that precludes, permanently and entirely, any such threat on their Western border emanating from remnant Ukraine.

Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)

To keep Trump happy may well be the sole reason why China has agreed to the meeting.

This week U.S. President Donald Trump is going to China.

His larger plan had been to take Venezuela, Iran and their oil before pressing China, via tariffs and energy restrictions, to concede to U.S. hegemony.

That plan has failed. Trump has lost two wars. His tariff schemes ended in retreat after China restricted the export of its rare earth products. His war on Iran has is one big failure.

Trump is coming to Beijing with his cap in his hand. He, as usual, will try to bluff a way to ‘victory’. He will proceed as if the U.S. were in a great position. The Chinese will be polite, but won’t have any of it.

There have been little preparations for the trip. The sherpas did not convene beforehand to straighten out serious issues between the countries. There are no big contracts or treaties to sign.

Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)

[First, a comment by Another World Is Possible:]

🔺What are legitimate targets in war? It seems to us that a distinction should be made between civilian infrastructure on the one hand and institutions, military positions plus military gear on the other. More importantly, there should be one between civilians and military personnel.

🔺A big problem here is the degree to which civilian and military infrastructure are interrelated. In such situations, then what do you do? Is the bombing of power stations legitimate?

🔺The darkening of Kyiv is holding a population hostage to its rulers. The threadbare, unsupported theory here basically is that a cold, hungry population then rises up and overthrows the hated regime. To our knowledge, this has never happened anywhere.

🔺In our view, the civilian population is always sacrosanct, and their needs must go first. To bomb their much-needed supply of electricity is not OK. Not in Ukraine, not in Yugoslavia, not in Palestine, nor anywhere else. We generally support the Russian special operation, but depriving Ukrainian civilians of electricity in wintry conditions is taking it a step too far. We’re not OK with it. – Editor

                                                                                 ♠ ♠ ♠

NATO doctrine holds that the side in a war that has severe trouble with its infrastructure has choices to make.

Electricity and heating supplies in Ukraine have stopped in large parts of the country. Kyiv had already been on scheduled blackouts in which groups of consumers received, for example, four hours of electricity, only to be cut off for eight hours. That scheduling has ended. The blackout has become permanent.

Over several weeks, Russian attacks had isolated Kyiv's electricity supply from the rest of the country. It then attacked generating stations within the city. There is now less than 10% of the electricity supply available than the city would normally use. Public lighting has been shut down as much as possible. Factories have closed down. Schools and Universities are on prolonged holidays. Many shops have closed because running their private generators costs more than they can make while open.

Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)

One never know how serious Trump’s ‘leaked’ plans are. Their purpose often seem to be solely to increase pressure on opponents, to move things into a direction he likes. If that does not work the plans may just be discarded. Or may, just may, be carried out.

Venzuela is, as Politico points out, not known for drug trafficking. It does not have ‘cocaine facilities’. But it does have the largest oil reserves in the world. That has always made it a target for a U.S. regime-change operations.

But Venezuela is also a huge country double the size of Iraq with a mountainous and often densely wooded countryside. The U.S. military is unable to invade, occupy and control it.

English Outsider
Moon of Alabama

The outcome of the war with Iran is still unknown. That of the war in Ukraine is set in stone and always has been.

There's nothing funny here, though it's true that the Western military and political establishments are now pure farce. Nothing funny because the farce has had lethal consequences. The unrestrained carnage in Gaza will be a reproach to the West for ever.

As for Ukraine, "b" summed up, must be two years ago now, what we are putting our proxies in Ukraine through. A "crime", he stated. So it is. Has been since 2014. Worse now, after a million and more deaths and economic and societal ruin for Ukraine to match.

As for the military reality Putin, in the video embedded in the Simplicius article above, sums up the military reality that has been clear to us Europeans since February 2022. NATO, the US and all, is a paper tiger. Even with the substantial manpower of the original Ukrainian armed forces NATO has neither the troops nor the equipment for a ground war on Russia’s doorstep and never has had. All we do have is the nuclear threat and neither Biden, nor, now, Trump, will risk Chicago frying for Vilnius. Nor for Berlin. Nor for London. That accepted, the only puzzle lies in working out what the European politicians hope to gain from prolonging a war long since lost.

Author unknown

From the comment section of an online article, cited below.

In the 10 years before Israel was created, from 1937 to 1947, Israel launched at least 50 major terrorist attacks, blowing up 814 civilian aircrafts, two trains, one ship, and razing 385 Arab villages to the ground. Note that these are only “major” terrorist attacks.

Between 1947 and 1949, Israel attacked major Palestinian cities, destroying some 530 villages and killing some 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.

On April 9, 1948, Zionist forces carried out one of the most notorious massacres of the war in the village of Deir Yassin, on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, where more than 110 men, women, and children were killed by the Zionist militia of the Irgun and Stern Gang.

During this period, 750.000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and became refugees in their own ancestral land. Refugees have the right under international law to return to their displaced homes and to recover their property. So Israel’s current occupation of Israel is illegal.

Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)

What is the reason for the 'Al-Aqsa Deluge', as Hamas had named its terror operation against the Zionists? On October 8 Alastair Crooke, one of most experienced Middle East hands, wrote in AlMahadeen:

💬 "Israel" has shattered into two equally weighted factions holding to two irreconcilable visions of "Israel’s" future; two mutually opposing readings of history and of what it means to be Jewish.

The fissure could not be more complete. Except it is. One faction, which holds a majority in parliament, is broadly Mizrahi -- a former underclass in Israeli society; and the other, largely well-to-do liberal Ashkenazi.

Mizrahi are mostly the original Middle Eastern Jews and often on the religious far right, Ashkenazi are mostly liberal European ones. The current Netanyahoo government is the first which includes far-right Mizrahi ministers. Most Mizrahi follow the Sephardi religious rites. They want a religious state based on Jewish law. They are as radical as ISIS.

The High Court of Israel has 14 Ashkenazi judges and one Mizrahi one. It is one of the reasons why the Netanyahoo government wants the parliament to be able to vote down high court judgments. There have been large, U.S. sponsored 'regime change' protests in Israel against that move. The leaders of the military and security services, mostly Ashkenazi, have also opposed the government's move against the court. I therefore think that it is quite possible that there was intelligence pointing to the Hamas attack, but that it was not revealed to let Netanyahoo fall into a trap. We have however no evidence that there were reasonably precise intelligence warnings, or that they were held up.

John Waters

‘Hate speech’ laws are not simply censorship. Their deeper purpose is to terminate equality under the law, so the normative indigenous members of a nation are made to feel like an alien underclass.

Those who have doubted that Western Civilisation is in the process of being dismantled are about to receive their definitive reply. The supposedly ‘unavoidable’ fire-brigade damage inflicted on our freedoms in the Spring of 2020, which has never been repaired or reversed, is about to be consolidated. The shout of ‘Emergency!’ was at that time sufficient to quiet most objections and provide reassurance that this was indeed a temporary imposition.

Now, two and a half years later, the maintenance vans pull up and the workmen start to scrutinise the damage done by the firemen — the windows shattered by their axes, the shards of glass still protruding dangerously upwards, the splintered frames. As we look on expectantly, imagining that they are about to replace the broken glass and repair the damaged frames, another convoy of vehicles pulls up, this time bearing men with sledgehammers, crowbars, pneumatic drills, wonder bars, angle grinders — and, bringing up the rear, a scammel transporter with a large crane and wrecking ball. It becomes clear that what the workmen have in mind is not reconstruction, but demolition. Thus, the ‘emergency’ is signalled as over and the Era of Permanent Despotism begins.

Pål Steigan
(Translated from the Norwegian by Tanja Barth)

"Victory for the democratic, pro-Western forces" - This was the message that most of the Norwegian and Western media sent when commenting on the elections in Ukraine, claiming that the Nazi and fascist elements have been completely marginalized. The truth is quite the opposite – never have the Nazi & fascist groups been as strong as they now are in Ukraine.

Election results for the openly fascist parties - The Nazi/fascist party "Svoboda" got 4.71% of the votes and did not pass the national election threshold of 5 %. But the party will still have 6 delegates that have been elected in single constituencies.

The even more extreme fascist party "Right Sector" only got 1.81 % of the votes, but their leader, Dmitro Jarosj, personally won the election in his constituency in the Dnepropetrovsk region. In this region, he is closely allied with the oligarch Igor Kolomoiskij, who has financed several fascist battalions in the East. So in this case there is a fusion in Ukraine between Nazi ideology and Nazi militia on the one side, and robber barons on the other.

"The Radical Party", lead by Oleh Lyashko, got 7.45 % of the votes, which resulted 22 seats in the national assembly. So the openly fascist phalange thus will be represented by 29 seats in the national assembly.