Such a dichotomy!
I am watching my friends online swing from baseball euphoria to disgust and dismay at what we are seeing on our screens right now. Then it might be College Football or the golf outing this weekend. Then we shake our heads at the news again. We feel it in our gut. Something earth-shattering might be brewing in Iran, Israel, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan. A handful of second tier nations, three of whom you hadn’t thought of since geography class, if ever, are now a balloon knot of conflict, each with their supporters standing by calculating the price of “helping”.
Anyway, the Phillies and the Braves are one game each in the playoffs. And you know how I feel about that.
A Primer (of some value)
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I want to mention the video at the bottom of the text, just above the footnotes. I will refer to it in the meat of the podcast. This video is 7 years old. It could have been made yesterday and it’s conclusion reflects what we see right now.
It is also a myth buster. I am heartened when someone acknowledges the FACT that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not thousands of years old. The popularity of that meme is a symptom of the intellectual laziness that governs EVERYTHING in our geopolitical world. But that is grist for a separate episode.
I have one issue with the video I’ll share later.
Present Day
One must suffer a constant state of migraine living in places like Gaza. The cesspool is governed by a band of dark-ages lunatics whose most important hold on power is maintaining a loud, pseudo-religious hatred among the people for their neighbor. The place is crowded, kept ignorant and suffers severe and self-imposed unemployment.
The phony Iranian mullahs, as interested in the hereafter as I am, have been feeding the brooding in places like Gaza for years, decades. And I suppose this is the week they have chosen to expand their power and flex their muscle in these wretched regions.
For context, please note this: Iranians (Persians) don’t much like Palestinians. They see them as inferior, far-distant, poor cousins. That is the way much of what we call the Middle East sees them. If Israel didn’t exist nobody would be excited at the idea of spending any time with them. So clearly, financing and planning the Gaza incursions was not an act of mutual love of god or need for justice.
Iran sees Israel as turf to be taken, that’s all. It is, for Iran, potential Mediterranean access. Jew, Muslim, Christian… it matters not at all. They would covet the land. But, you say, Iran doesn’t border Israel. Iraq and Syria do. You make me giggle.
In recent years, especially under Trump (this will seem ironic to the typically uninformed American) many in the neighborhood have been realizing the pointlessness of conflict and have been moving closer to a real, productive peace with Israel.
Sadly, this has happened concurrent with the United States losing interest in maintaining our role in keeping sea lanes and trade functioning around the world.1
Geopolitical Killjoys.
Ever the fly in the ointment, the stick in the spokes, the wrench in the gears, Iran has taken an opportunity here. They see a USA, with a puppet president controlled by a credulous cabal, led by an Islamophile (Obama), bumbling around the world and reacting late and weakly to EVERYTHING.
Hell, the mullahs have taken the same cabal for billions of dollars. It’s not just the ransom payments from Obama and Biden in question. It’s tens of billions in exemptions allowed, rendering the sanctions impotent. By beefing up the Iranian budget, they’ve freed up billions for Iran to dedicate to sewing pseudo-religious destabilization.
Wider implications…maybe
I am not a WWIII believer or WWIII denier when it comes to what this conflict will trigger. I am a WWIII agnostic. A much wider conflict could be triggered by the nut bags and the phony mullahs. Or it all could remain contained to Gaza and maybe southern Lebanon.
I will say the reporting out of Iran is not encouraging. They have chosen NOW to also make noises against their neighbors to the north, which does portend Hitlerian tendencies. In the midst of all this, Iran is explicitly threatening Azerbaijan.
Iranians have an Azerbaijani presence in the north and feel much the same about them as the Turks and Iraqis feel about the Kurds. Ironically, the phony religious nut bags in Tehran are backing Christian Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan. Conveniently, and dangerously, this area is close to the Ukrainian conflict. Russia, also Armenian backer, is pleased.
If you consult the map, you can note that this region is among the areas Putin wants to re-establish his vision of a Czarist empire. It has natural boundaries and an area that they’ve been attacked through previously. It borders Georgia who have a testy relationship at best with Russia.
Further, as Tricia DeGennaro mentioned here in her P4B appearance, we need to keep an eye on the Balkans because people who were young when peace was established are now older and moving into positions of authority. Old vendettas are still simmering in their hearts. Just a small spark could set things alight there.
I mentioned this and expounded on it a bit a week later while talking sports with Ron Cori. Could one nut bag or another take advantage of Iranian and Russian aggression to move on old enemies?
It’s a lead-pipe cinch that Russia gave Iran the nod to get loud with Ajerbaijan. Could this be the spark?
I have said that with the breaking up of Germany and the “peace” plans in the Balkans, we had recreated 1876 Europe. That was the chemistry that led to WWI in 1914. Things happen a lot faster now. And the insanity we’ve witnessed in the last few days are far more serious and more wrapped up in international resentments and alliances than the shooting of a central European royal, of whom the world thought not at all.
The grain of salt
I want you to take everything in this piece with a grain of salt. I watch. I read. I spot trends and have been writing about them since 2011. More than a decade ago I told some intel Bubbas, who were fixated on the Middle East to keep an eye on this Putin guy. He never got the memo that the Cold War was over. I got a tolerant smile and a pat on the back. What did I know, right?
But, as much as I might have my finger on the pulse, as closely as you might watch events unfold, neither I nor you can be sure what we are seeing is real - or at least not orchestrated by what are supposed to be opposing governments. Orwell warned us of powerful people creating enemies and killing peoples for domestic consumption. This would be to maintain the myth of other and to instill a frightened sense of nationalism - us against them.
Just a handful of people2 control trillions of dollars that wash around the globe under their hand. They could stop a country from aggressive action with the stroke of a pen. If you want to borrow my money, you play nice with the other kids. Develop your nation. Don’t demolish others’.
And yet, they don’t. The Rothchild family was the first to realize this power. Instead of using it for peace, they profited WILDLY from endless war - financing BOTH sides! And who controls what you see on the internet and TV? It’s the same people from footnote 2. So where lies the truth?
Qui bono? Who would benefit from something as heinous as this? Well, besides the big guys, how’s your Bidenomics working for you? Biden’s puppeteers might be gearing up the message right now. No, America! You don’t change horses in the middle of the war!
With that caveat…
…just what ARE we seeing right now? It could be a precursor to war between Israel and several neighbors. The subhumans in Hamas might just be the grease fire to be used as a trigger. I’ve heard nothing of troop buildups (keep the caveat in mind) and that would surely be required for a real conflict to heat up. Keep an eye out for word that Lebanon or Jordan or whoever might be mobilizing.
The only thing I can call it so far is a wholesale prisoner snatch. I mentioned earlier the Obama and Biden ransom payments and the multiple billions they freed up in sanction exemptions for Iran. Kidnapping for fun and profit has been a cottage industry in the Middle East for decades. Perhaps Iran has decided to contract Hamas and do industrial level kidnapping.
If so, I can only shake my head. If that is the case it shows the mullahs to be every bit as stupid and greedy as I have accused them of being. Could they REALLY be that stupid? And Hamas just signed its own death warrant.
Incredibly, these subhumans have threatened to execute hostages, one at a time, and release the video. Iran may have calculated the response of Israel to all this, but Hamas hasn’t. They actually think they have a tactical advantage here.
Of this you can be certain: Israel will use their special forces to ferret out as many hostages as they can find. They will attempt to rescue them. Anyone within shouting distance of the hostages WILL BE KILLED.
They can’t kill us all.
I noticed something the average Lefty would call progress, but I find disturbing, in the video of the music festival. None of the people were packing. On my visits to Israel many years ago you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting an armed civilian. We’re talking dads our with their family eating ice cream or a guy having a gyro. Weapons were everywhere.
Not, it seems, today. And the people at that event have lost touch with the lessons hard won in WWII. They outnumbered the subhumans by a grand order of magnitude. There is no realization of the concept that says they can’t kill us all.
Of course, that requires in any situation a person brave enough to be the first. I wonder if it even crossed anyone’s mind. If such a person were there, things might have ended quite differently. I’m not judging. I’m wondering what happened.
Looking forward.
I have spent my life listening to pundits and average jackasses talking about this or that event presaging WWIII. If the dire warnings about this one hatching World War are correct, you’ll know pretty soon. Keep and eye on Iran, Syria and Jordan. Watch the Armenian/Ajerbaijani headache unfold. Notice if France decides to put down the rebellions in their former colonies in Africa. That can do it easily enough. They still have friends in those places who speak French. And I mentioned the Balkans earlier.
Added to the specific areas, we have economies all over the world, especially China’s and Germany’s, that are going very wobbly.
If any of the flash points go critical, then boys and girls, we have 1914 all over again on a much larger scale. All the work the US has done or 80 years keeping the sea lanes open for all nations will be a nice memory.
Should North and South America chose sides? We will have the most survivable economies left. Or should we, on these continents let the rest of them kill each other?
I’m no hawk. Few serious, military men (non-yes men) are. I would lose not a minute’s sleep if we, over here, send in all the guns and bullets they need while we all sit this one out.
One point about the video.
When discussing Israel in 1967 and 1972 the narrator says something like, “they had a war.” In this case it was a nebulous “they”. Your are not certain of a bad guy. Israel’s acquisition of all the territories including Sinai, was the result of aggression by the powers surrounding Israel. Several countries massed huge numbers of troops and tanks and artillery and launched coordinated attacks on a single smaller country. By historical standards, there has never been an obligation on Israel’s part to EVER return a single yard of territory in a situation like that.
In fact, it was the Allies after WWII who set any kind of precedent by doing so. Before giving up ALL of Germany, Austria and the rest of Europe, the Allied powers first insured they were governed by “our” kind of people. And still that puts Israel, or any other country who was so attacked, under any NO obligation to surrender anything to the vanquished aggressors. They could have immediately annexed all the lands and ousted any undesirable elements.
Instead they spent from that day to this in an almost constant state of negotiation and/or defense trying to actually give land back. With Sinai, they surrendered the greatest natural border by any country EVER. Honorable by any standard.
So “they” didn’t just “have a war.”
Enjoy the video.
I’ve made mention of this declining power projection before and I’ve covered it in more detail in other episodes. Suffice it to say that what we see ending is not imperialism. We could have taken half the globe after World War II. We didn’t. Instead, we committed our treasure and our Navy to a plan that fostered trade and development throughout the world for 80 years. The wisdom of ending the scheme can be argued legitimately be proponents and opponents alike.
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