Iran in the empire’s cross-hairs

If I was a superstitious man of staggering hubris I might conclude, today at 05:25, I’d tempted fate with my post at similarly daft o’clock yesterday (Sunday) morning. It opened with this:

Quite an eventful weekend this is turning out to be, no?

It then gave a bullet point summary of said events, starting with the ICJ ruling which reached me on Friday afternoon. From there it moved to Tel Aviv’s exquisitely timed claim to have proof …

(A word to the touchingly trustful: “we have proof”  is not, even from parties without a track record of lying, proof. Here endeth the epistemology lesson.)

… of UN workers moonlighting for Hamas on October 7. After noting the criminality of the US-led West’s response of collective punishment, its last bullet noted my own country’s bluster on Saturday night of its “right to respond” – definitely a phrase of the hour – to those evil Yemenis recklessly bent on halting genocide.

And it ended with the fate-tempting words: All this, and the weekend not yet over!

Well now the weekend is indeed over, and here’s the news:

Three posts ago, in Israel has lost the ground war in Gaza, I wrote of the potential:

… of Iranian involvement, real or perceived, to trigger WW3 when the only party to want this here and now is Netanyahu’s demented cabinet. Even Washington’s crazies divide over whether now is the time to strike “the head of the snake”. Bolton and Nuland have yet to see a war they didn’t like, but Blinken and Sullivan remain party men, gloomily cognisant of disastrous ratings in an election year. To this we can add that, left with nothing to lose, Iran is a formidable force capable of destroying Israel: a fact revealing all we need to know about Bibi’s contempt for those he nominally represents.

Blinken and Sullivan, like their putative boss, are no less foreign policy hawks than Bolton or Nuland. All are of one mind on Iran being indeed the ‘head of the snake’. (That this is a view deep embedded is shown by US General Wesley Clark’s infamous revelation on the seven countries targeted back in 2003.) If Secretary of State and National Security Advisor are more circumspect it’s because their priority is to secure a second term for the Democrats. Neither is stupid. Both know that unprecedentedly bad poll ratings, and disaffection with Biden’s wars in a people famously averse to losers, are intimately linked.

But a massive casus belli  could change the equation, and Washington has ample form on false flags. Am I advancing a conspiracy theory? No. Not yet anyway. I still think US foreign policy – if that’s not an oxymoron – more Dr Strangelove than Dr No in its evildoing. All I’m saying, as I have this past eight years, is how scary things are.

And more importantly, why:

Modern imperialism, whose major powers show high but not total overlap with those of the colonial era, is defined by the export from global north to south of monopoly capital, and south to north repatriation of profits …The threat to imperialism – from Eurasia rising … from the BRICS …  from a steady weakening of both petrodollar, and dollar as world reserve currency – and the inept but terrifying responses by Washington and its satellites to that threat are what now make the world so dangerous.

The why is more important because everyone with at least a tenuous tie to planet earth knows the times are perilous. But those who rely on mainstream media for their pictures of the world condemn themselves to remaining hopelessly clueless on matters of non negotiable import to power. In my last post but one – What of ideology when reality intrudes? – I wrote:

On many matters the reporters, columnists and editors of ‘quality’ media serve us tolerably well but this truth enables a greater lie. Corporate media need to show themselves trustworthy even when doing so may embarrass those in high office. (Not only does their long term capacity to influence opinion and manufacture consent depend on this. So too, on pain of losing market share, do their business models.) But the trust so gained helps them mislead us, more by omission than commission, on matters critical – above all the vilifying of states and leaders in the way of empire designs – to the power they ultimately serve.

We must look elsewhere for truth on such matters. In the coming week I’ll be offering sources of information, on this frightening but hardly unforeseen turn of events, I deem more reliable. I’ll start with Caitlin Johnstone’s piece today. It begins with these words …

Well, it finally happened. The scores of attacks on US troops in the middle east in response to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza have resulted in American deaths, just as critics of US foreign policy have been saying would happen for months. At least now we can stop bracing for it, I guess. 

… and ends with these:

Get out of the middle east. Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.

You might want to check out what she has to say in between …

Meanwhile my in-box tells me Simplicius the Thinker has weighed in with his own response. He is always worth reading but doesn’t do short, so I’ll make myself a coffee before engaging. You have a nice week, why doncha?

* * *