The Tower-22 Strike in Jordan Triggers Us, Israel Into All-front War – the Arabs and Iran Are Ready, the Russians Too

ageingrockstar

The attack's success may be due to information passed on by the Russians, who have been learning how to defeat US air defence systems in Ukraine :

“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”

...

While there has been no announcement from the Russian Defense Ministry of a successful hit against C-RAM in Kiev, military sources believe Russia’s General Staff have acquired the technical capability to neutralize the American system, allowing drones through to hit their ground targets, including the C-RAM mounted truck unit.

The Iranians have been observing, as have the Arab forces planning and executing drone attacks against C-RAM defended US bases. How much of the Russian intelligence on C-RAM is being shared with them?

...

The military source again: “If there’s no coincidence, and if this isn’t a lucky strike for the Arabs, then this may reflect a step-change up in Russian military assistance to the Iranians. Maybe Tower-22 was selected as a small target for demonstration effect, so as to send a message about the bigger targets, Al-Tanf and Muwaffaq Salti. Hitting them next makes ‘regional war’, and then US ground forces are going to be in the thick of it — the Biden Administration will have a new war on its hands — and bodybags, instead of votes, for Election Day. “

John also reports on the deployment by Iran of a converted container carrier (not an expensive warship) into the Gulf of Oman. The Shah Mahdavi is a naval drone carrier and electronic warfare vessel.

The current positioning of the Shah Mahdavi is a signal that if the Biden Administration, or the Trump election campaign, or their claques in the US Congress decide on making a direct, retaliatory strike against Iranian targets — military personnel, territorial units, or naval vessels — the IGRC will close the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will then be at war with the US, and so will the rest of the world which, until Israel started its war against the Palestinians, depended on the Suez Canal, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean for its energy supply and trade lifelines.

“This is a major embarrassment and a message for the US and its allies”, the military source concludes. “It should resonate with all of them. It’s the conclusion to be drawn from the fact that the systems they have relied on have been defeated on land [in the Ukraine] and are now defending their ships on the Red Sea, and being defeated there too. The implications of all of this are enormous. Now, even the smallest maritime country, at a relatively low cost, can project force and inflict harm on the traditionally dominant actors. No need for expensive fighter or strike aircraft, let alone the pilots to operate them, or technicians and facilities to maintain them. No need for specialized military ship-building facilities. Any bulk transport, cheaply got, will do.”

ageingrockstar

I can't be bothered reading a RCP post but, just looking at the headline, Trump is a cause of chaos and in a (very moderately) good way.

I'm not a fan of Trump either but it's very noticeable how much the 'Deep State' is opposed to him. That's because he is not a compliant politician in some ways and because he doesn't play the role of the President in the ways that they want. The election of Trump was a black swam event - outsiders like him aren't meant to defeat the Deep State favourites (Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, etc) but he did, and in a consummate way. They then sought to undermine his presidency in various ways and are now going to extreme lengths (and we are yet to see the limits of how far they will go), to prevent him getting a second term. This is despite Trump doing most of the things that the Deep State wanted as president, but the fact remains that they couldn't ever be 100% sure of him (as they could be of Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc, etc) and that is not acceptable to the Deep State and the oligarchy, not acceptable at all. They will simply not tolerate a president that goes 'off-script', as Kennedy started to do in the period leading up to his assassination.

So yes, Trump is a cause of some chaos. Doesn't mean I endorse his presidency but it is somewhat amusing to observe how much his election freaked the Deep State out, any yes, brought some chaos into US politics.

ageingrockstar

Re Russian jets, the Superjet 100 is a smaller aircraft than the 737 or the Airbus A320. For the direct Russian competitor to these 2 aircraft, there is the Irkut MC-21 which has also implemented an import substitution redesign and retesting schedule.

ageingrockstar

I've become an interested follower of the development of China's Comac C919 and Russia's Sukhoi Superjet 100.

The Chinese jet is further advanced, with a significant landmark achieved last year as the first jets went into commercial use (in China).

The Russian jet had to be redesigned to swap out all the imported parts subject to sanctions (including the engines). However, this has proceeded apace with the first import substituted jet undergoing test flights last year with the old engines and a second test vehicle with fully Russian engines scheduled to do test flights this year.

China will obviously get there first (it already has, with jets now in use) and has a larger internal market to support it. So they're the main prospect but it's good to have the Russian prospect as well. Then there's Brazil's Embraer jets too (in commercial use for decades now). So jets from 3 out of the original 5 BRICS countries.

For now, my position is to avoid Boeing and take Airbus. But keen to switch from Airbus to a BRC jet when the option is available.

ageingrockstar

Then there's the Megan 'comically grotesque' special - They're still making too many babies even when we regularly 'mow the lawn' so how can it be genocide when the population continues to grow ?

Found here : https://saidit.net/s/WayOfTheBern/comments/bpxa/michael_tracey_brings_the_evidence_that_new/14j19

ageingrockstar

Great submission; a perspective on China that is very counter to the usual narrative in the Western media

ageingrockstar

BTW, both ppl have very clear enunciation (including the native Dutchman) so this video is very comprehensible at 1.5 speed, if you want to get through it faster.

ageingrockstar

I'm often a little lazy about writing a comment under a submission. Fortunately, this time, Arnaud Bertrand has done the job for me (and at some length).

This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.

This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Key points in the video:

He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."

He says that with Oct 7th "Hamas had 2 objectives":

"Put the Palestinian self-determination issue back on the global agenda", something he says they've "succeeded" in doing since they're is "widespread recognition outside Israel that only self-determination for Palestine in the form of a 2-state solution can provide security to Israel". He says that even in "the US, which has a larger Jewish population than Israel, many Jews have come to realize that this is the case. Younger Jews in particular in the U.S. are very disillusioned with Zionism and don't want to suffer contagion from it in the form of antisemitism, which is actually growing now as a result of Israeli actions".

"Give Hamas enormous popularity among Palestinians because they are seen as having stood up, as having been willing to accept death rather than captivity". He refers to Norman Finkelstein's "analogy of slave revolts in the U.S." and particularly the "1831 revolt by Nat Turner, a well-educated very intelligent enslaved African who led a slave revolt in Southern Virginia which had as its objective the murder of every white person they encountered." He says it "raises a moral question: 'Is the violence of the slave-owner morally the same as the violence of the slave trying to end that violence?'. The same moral question arises with Israeli oppression of Palestinians versus Palestinian resistance to oppression."

All in all he concludes that much like the violence against African-Americans that followed slave revolts in the 19th century, the Israeli vengeance against Palestinians "won't be remembered fondly by anyone in the future". In fact he goes as far as saying that "when people think of Israel in the past they thought of it as a refuge for the victims of the Holocaust... now they will think of it as the home of perpetrators of genocide. When they think of Israel, they will think of burned buildings and dead babies. This is an image problem of a fundamental nature and from the point of view of Israel it strips Israel of its protection by charges of antisemitism against anyone who is critical of Israel because to be critical of people who are carrying out genocide cannot be antisemitism, it cannot be considered immoral. Antisemitism is a despicable attitude but to oppose genocide by Israel is not."

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1743865744218358216

ageingrockstar

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

ageingrockstar

Yes, Steamboat Willie is finally entering the public domain. Welcome, Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Read what this means here.

ageingrockstar

I'd read it, but I'm afraid of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf should have been more afraid of Virginia Woolf

ageingrockstar

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) :

At the end of every year, we look back at the last 12 months and evaluate what has changed for the better (and worse) for digital rights.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/2023-year-review

ageingrockstar

The Paris Review’s Favorite Books of 2023 :

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/12/15/what-the-paris-review-staff-read-in-2023/

ageingrockstar

Dimitri Simes Jr. Talks Geopolitics 2023 With Scott Ritter & Michael Hudson

This is a 3 hour radio 'marathon' live-streamed on December 27. There's an information page here which describes the format : 1st hour a review of the key events and Dimitri's key interviews (from his New Rules podcast), 2nd hour with Scott Ritter to discuss the major military conflicts that shaped the world this year, 3rd hour with Michael Hudson to talk about the shifts in the world economy, as well as the rise of the Global South against US dollar hegemony. That page doesn't seem to include a link to the 3 hour show but it can be found in its entirety on twitter's platform here :

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1LyGBnmWalLGN