The sheer inability of the collective West to force Russia into submission in Ukraine plus the fast-changing global opinion about the West in the context of the latter’s support for Israel’s brutal war on the Gazans has put the so-called ‘liberal-democratic’ world into a panic mode. The White House has already said that it will run out of money to fund Ukraine into 2024 unless the US Congress gives approval for more funding. This has led the Western war machine – primarily led by the US – to anticipate a possible defeat. “There is no guarantee of success with us, but they are certain to fail without us”, a senior US military official told CNN recently. Without the military support, US officials now estimate, Ukraine would fall by the summer of 2024. But, in Western calculations, Ukraine’s fall does not just mean Russia’s victory; it also implies a possible collapse of NATO and the eventual downfall of the Western-dominated global political, economic, and security order.
“Even more important, Russia’s success in Ukraine would increase a threat to NATO’s Eastern flank—in particular the Baltic states and Poland. Outside of Europe it would embolden Moscow’s allies Iran and North Korea and provide a template for China for the military solution of the Taiwan dispute. In all those cases, the U.S. and NATO troops could find themselves in the midst of a military conflict of the sort that Ukraine fights today without direct involvement of NATO”.
Such prospects are causing severe problems. Germany, for instance, is considering shelving voluntary force and making a return to conscription. “I believe that a nation that needs to become more resilient in times like these will have a higher level of awareness if it is mixed through with soldiers,” said Jan Christian Kaack, the chief of the German Navy. This is in addition to the fact that the German army is too small to defend itself against any threat; hence, the renewed emphasis on conscription.
But Germany is not an exceptional case. In fact, it mirrors developments in the rest of Europe. The UK, otherwise known to possess one of the best fighting forces in the world, is running into some problems of a fundamental nature. The Sky News reported earlier in the year that, a senior US general “privately told Defence Secretary Ben Wallace the British Army is no longer regarded as a top-level fighting force”. It was further reported that the “The armed forces would run out of ammunition in a few days if called upon to fight” and that “The UK lacks the ability to defend its skies against the level of missile and drone strikes that Ukraine is enduring”.
On top of it is the fact that the Russian military position in Ukraine remains strong, making it a lot harder for the West to provide enough funding. The Biden administration is facing its own challenges vis-à-vis more funding for Ukraine. As far as Europe is concerned, a recent report showed that pledges for funding made in August 2023 fell by almost 90 percent compared to the same period last year.
This is war fatigue that is being compounded by a well-sustained Russian resolve to achieve its objectives. For the West, Vladimir Putin remains “stubborn”. As Putin recently reiterated, “There will be peace when we achieve our goals… Now let’s return to these goals – they have not changed. I would like to remind you how we formulated them: denazification, demilitarisation, and a neutral status for Ukraine.”
Speaking from a position of strength – and keeping in mind the war fatigue in the West – Putin further said that Russian forces are “improving their position almost along the entire line of contact. Almost all of them are engaged in active combat. And the position of our troops is improving along [the entire line of contact.]”. This being the case, Putin conveyed no ideas of making a compromise with the West over Ukraine. Speaking from the Russian perspective, it would make no sense to offer negotiations and, thus, turn Russian tactical victories into unsustainable settlements.
Clearly, Russia has no intention of withdrawing from its victories, which is why there is a panic, especially in Europe. If Russia continues to win and the US funding stalls, Europe will be left to fend for itself. Germany’s defence minister minced no words to express this fear last Saturday when he said that the US “was losing interest in European affairs and that security tensions in the Pacific would likely leave the European Union having to fend for itself”, adding that “One can assume that the USA will be more involved in the Pacific region in the next decade than it is today – regardless of who becomes the next president,” he said. His conclusion is: “This means that we Europeans must increase our commitment to ensure security on our continent.”
In a nutshell, for the US, if the war in Ukraine was to unify the West, it is beginning to have an exactly opposite effect. There lies a very strong reason for the US to reconsider its strategy. This reconsideration can go in two directions. First, the US can withdraw from its obsession with expanding NATO to include Ukraine. Second, the US can make one last push and make Ukraine fight for as long as it can, hoping that this might break Russia. The Biden administration favours the second option, which is why it is pushing for the US$61 billion aid package. But will a Republican victory allow this to happen? A Republican victory could not only end support for Ukraine but also leave Europe in a total lurch. Tough times ahead.
“One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come.”
With these words, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defined the “turning point” of the American era, the transition from one world order to another.
“In this pivotal time, America’s global leadership is not a burden. It’s a necessity to safeguard our freedom, our democracy, and our security,” Blinken said in his address to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in September.
Official US documents, including last year’s National Security Strategy, underscore Washington’s conviction that waiting is a luxury it cannot afford; that it “will act decisively” to maintain its global leadership. As such, the US involvement in conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the militarization in Southeast Asia, must be seen through this lens of international dynamics.
Broadly, tensions in Africa and Asia are interconnected with the west’s frenzied initiatives to maintain a dominant position and decisive role in the new multipolar order.
From Eastern Europe to West Asia
Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the US has strategically tied its support for Kyiv to the defense of the “rules-based order.”
With clichéd sound bites, President Joe Biden characterized the conflict as “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”
Many Atlanticist leaders echo the sentiment that unwavering support for Ukraine aims to deter Russia from challenging a world order where the west holds sway.
Most prominently, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz articulated this perspective in his Foreign Affairs article published in early 2023 titled The Global Zeitenwende, (“an epochal tectonic shift”) in which he posits that Russian President Vladimir Putin is challenging a world order where Washington is a decisive power.
Scholz emphasizes the need for collective action by those who believe in a rules-based world order, even cooperating with countries that do not embrace democratic institutions but endorse the US-led principles for global governance. That western rules-based paradigm, it should be noted, is one in which international law and the UN Charter have long been discarded in favor of power and advantage.
Today, those dueling visions are playing out in the Ukraine war: a confrontation between the west seeking to maintain its global superiority and Russia striving to disrupt this dominance. Moscow’s rationale for the war is to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s borders, as confirmed by the western military alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Similarly, the war in Gaza must be seen through this international lens, with Israel representing western interests in West Asia and any harm to the occupation state viewed inherently as a blow to US influence in the region.
As Washington stands at this crucial turning point, according to Blinken, the cost of a blow to Israel is deemed too high, underscoring the resolute US defense of its global influence in the devastated towns and cities of Gaza.
Neo-colonial maneuvers
There are important nuances between these two US-backed wars, however: Ukraine is seen as a tool used by Washington to achieve its interests, while Israel is considered an American interest in itself. That Biden once famously asserted that the US would need to create an Israel if it did not exist illustrates its status as a neo-colonial outpost, protecting western interests in the region.
This also explains the noticeable shift in US interest away from Eastern Europe to West Asia after the Palestinian resistance breached the occupied territories on 7 October to target military personnel and take prisoners. The deliberate shift of American attention from one war zone to the other was neatly exemplified by the Washington Post’s swift removal of the ‘War in Ukraine’ tab from its homepage.
As previously mentioned by The Cradle, “Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip is best understood to be a US-backed one,” one that is being fought to safeguard US influence and interests in West Asia. However, the maneuvering room for Washington’s allies is shrinking dramatically. Unlike the diverse strategic options West Asian countries explored during the Ukraine war, Gaza offers no such latitude. It is fundamentally Washington’s war, demanding collective mobilization to defend the US position.
It is also telling that the US-led multination task force, Operation Guardian of Prosperity in the Red Sea, is already facing major set-backs since its recent inception, with some members pulling out and others choosing to remain unnamed.
White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby had to awkwardly caveat the secrecy like this: “There are some countries that have agreed to participate and be part of the operation in the Red Sea, but they have to decide how much they want that to be public. And I’m going to leave it to them so that they can describe it somehow, because not everyone wants to be public.”
For example, the role of NATO member Turkiye has transformed into that of an energy transmission station for Israel, while the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan serve as a transit bridge for goods bound for the occupation state that Yemen prevents from passing through the Red Sea.
Notably, shipments from Turkiye to Israel surged to 355 after 7 October, with many linked to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and individuals close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including his son Buraq. Even Egypt, restricted to allowing aid trucks through the Rafah crossing, could not facilitate aid to Palestinians without US approval.
How conflict spreads
In international relations, there are two main theories that address the relationship between power and the spread of peace. The first is the hegemonic stability theory which posits that the international order is likely to remain stable when one country is the dominant global power. The proponents of this theory believe that the existence of a single hegemon deters all powers in the world and prevents them from spreading tension.
However, given the reality that the United States has dominated a conflict-ridden global order for four decades, it can be argued that the presence of the hegemon did not lead to global stability. Rather, the dominant was the major source and catalyst for spreading tension around the world. It is sufficient to look at the distribution of US bases in the world and the proliferation of military agreements signed by Washington to understand how the US consistently provokes rivals and challengers, and creates strife.
The second is the balance of power theory, in which states seek to protect themselves by preventing any country from acquiring enough military power to control all other nations. If one power dominates – such as the United States – the theory predicts that weaker countries will unite in a defense alliance.
According to this theory, a balance of power between competing states or alliances raises the cost of tension for everyone and ensures stability in the world. Thus, achieving peace today requires a rise in the level of power among Washington’s rivals, power which will provide the deterrence required to limit the spread of tensions around the world. Increasing the capabilities of Washington’s rivals is now a key requirement for all peaceful peoples and nations. And according to the balance of power theory, uniting against Israel is the most successful way to stabilize West Asia and its environs today.
Post-unipolar realities
As the war in Gaza is unequivocally an American war, a vertical division emerges in West Asia, dividing those siding with Palestine and the Resistance Axis from those aligning with Israel and the Zionist project. Washington’s allies cannot stay neutral as the US leads the battle directly.
This clarifies the positions of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Egypt, Turkiye, and other West Asian countries choosing to align with the US at the expense of Palestinian interests.
Observing Washington’s policies reveals global tensions spurred on by the pursuit of US influence. From Eastern Europe to West Asia and Southeast Asia, the US works to counter Eurasian powers Russia and China, and other influential countries, such as Iran and North Korea.
Since the end of the Cold War, Washington’s unipolar moment has resulted in more wars and destruction imaginable in decades often characterized as ones marked by peace. A more stable world order necessitates the achievement of a global balance of power by weakening the US and empowering new rising powers. Thus, peace and stability in West Asia hinges on the weakening of Israel, a colonial project so intricately tied to Washington’s hegemonic agenda.
In 2023, the West was unable to contain the advance of multipolarity. Despite continuing to finance aggression against Russia and fomenting chaos in several regions to avoid the geopolitical transition process, the US and its allies are weakened in the current world scenario and have not been able to make their projects successful.
On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, Kiev was unable to achieve any significant victory throughout the entire year. Since late 2022, the neo-Nazi regime has been betting on the possibility of launching a major “counteroffensive” in the spring-summer season of 2023. According to Western media, this counterattack would be strong enough to retake all the territories claimed by Kiev, including Crimea.
However, the Ukrainian measures have absolutely failed. Neo-Nazi forces were unable to inflict damage on the strong Russian defense lines and thus failed to achieve territorial gains. The Ukrainians’ focus then shifted from the battlefield to the media, with the launch of a series of terrorist attacks on demilitarized Russian territory with the aim of showing Western public opinion that at least some harm was being inflicted on the Russians – thus justifying continued military support.
Russian strong defense capabilities and high-precision strikes, however, disrupted Ukrainian plans once again and neutralized all terrorist incursions. In the end, the Ukrainians had no more arguments to disguise their failures and publicly admitted that the counteroffensive was not successful. As a result, the situation on the front lines became even more disadvantageous for NATO’s proxy forces. With more than half a million Ukrainians dead – tens of thousands of them in the failed “counteroffensive” alone – and with increasingly greater territorial losses, Ukraine already appears to be a “lost battle” in the West, having a growing critical opinion regarding the support for the regime.
Some other relevant military events also took place in 2023, such as a new war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In September, Azerbaijani forces launched a series of attacks against the Armenian resistance in the former separatist republic and achieved a quick military victory, gaining complete territorial control over the region. Without support from Armenia or sufficient military force to resist Azerbaijani aggression, the separatist government declared the extinction of the Republic of Artsakh, formally handing over the territory to Baku.
Since 2018, Armenia has been governed by a pro-Western regime that has moved it away from Russia and closer to the US and EU. Local politicians were led to believe that with such an approach it would be possible to contain the Azerbaijani advance, but indeed they got precisely the contrary. NATO is interested in generating as much instability as possible in the Russian [and Iranian] strategic environment and therefore encourages the worsening of crises in the Caucasus.
The scenario in the region now is one in which on one side there are Azerbaijani forces supported by the Turks and on the other Americans and Europeans backing Armenia. Both sides share common anti-Russian interests and want to make the region a NATO occupation zone. In this scenario, Moscow only tries to avoid new conflicts and works diplomatically so that peace between the parties is achieved as quickly as possible.
However, it was in the Middle East that the biggest “geopolitical news” of the year emerged. In October, Hamas-led Palestinian Resistance’s forces launched a military incursion into areas illegally occupied by Israel. Called “Al Aqsa Flood Operation“, the action was successful in causing real damage to the Israeli armed forces and settlers, but it prompted a brutal response from Tel Aviv, with Netanyahu declaring war on the Palestinians and launching a series of bombings that already killed thousands of innocent civilians.
Israeli brutality, however, was not enough to give Israel victory. On the contrary, on the battlefield there is a complicated scenario in which Zionist troops are suffering to obtain gains. There are many difficulties on the ground, mainly due to the fact that Hamas maintains a complex network of underground tunnels and knows the local terrain much better than the Israelis. Furthermore, Israel’s tanks are not able to circulate easily due to the amount of debris from bombed buildings, making frictions more favorable to Palestinian guerrillas.
Suffering heavy military losses and simultaneously killing thousands of civilians, the Zionist government is in a situation of serious crisis, both domestically and diplomatically. Globally, Israel is isolated, gaining support from only a few Western countries. Internally, the pressure for his impeachment is great, with part of his armed forces and the intelligence sector joining the opposition.
In this regional context, the Yemeni Houthi government showed solidarity with the Palestinians through a declaration of war on Israel. The Houthis have been conducting operations in the Red Sea, hindering naval flow and severely damaging the Israeli economy. The US tried to neutralize Yemen by launching a multinational naval operation, but the coalition collapsed before it even started fighting, with European countries refusing to participate.
It is also important to note how Iran has acted in this crisis scenario in the Middle East. Tehran’s proxies in the so-called “Axis of Resistance” are acting in deep support of Palestine, as can be seen, for example, in the role of Hezbollah. The Lebanese militia has launched multiple attacks against Israeli positions, severely damaging the Zionist intelligence system.
In practice, it is possible to say that the crisis in the Middle East harmed American war plans. Until recently, the US had a clear strategy to avoid the multipolarization of the world order. The plan consisted of waging a proxy war against Russia and a direct conflict with China. It was expected to defeat China and wear down Russia, but none of that happened.
Ukraine proved inefficient in causing damage to Moscow, and the West was unable to generate more conflicts in the region. Attempts at regime change to radicalize anti-Russian positions have failed – as in Georgia -, preventing the emergence of new flanks. The US has also tried to provoke a proxy war against the Russians in Africa, financing terrorist groups against the revolutionary governments of the former “Françafrique”. But this is also failing because, in partnership with the Russian PMC Wagner Group, local governments have achieved several victories against Western-backed gangs.
In the same sense, China did not “take the bait” and continued to act only diplomatically and economically, without engaging in any conflict. And, in the meantime, the Palestinians – with Iranian support – launched a military operation that forced Washington to ignore its previous plans and focus on supporting Israel. With a strong Zionist lobby in the US, there is pressure for total support for Israel, even if it means an end of the aid to Ukraine or anti-China plans.
Until October, the US was preparing to fight on the two fronts. Now, with the emergence of a third flank, the situation has become much more complicated. Washington does not seem to have enough strength to fight being involved in the three conflicts at the same time. Faced with this situation, it remains to be seen whether there will be diplomatic willingness or whether the US will irrationally opt for total war. But, in any case, what is clear is that in 2023 the West proved to be weaker than ever.
Like most of the world, I have been considering the Israel / Gaza slaughter with fascination and a sense of dread. Did Israel allow the events of October 7, 2023 to happen? It appears so. Were the savage acts of Hamas sickening? It appears so. Have the ensuing actions of Israel in Gaza been devastating? Yes.
Have the reactions of the general public in nations around the world, and on the internet, become increasingly polarized? Definitely.
At the height of the hysteria during the build-up to Operation Desert Storm®, and in the jingoistic fever of the newly coined War on Terror®, Ritter claimed Saddam Hussein had zeroWeapons of Mass Destruction®. Ritter was right back then, so, now, I pay attention whenever he addresses global tensions.
However, there are many others, including especially some Christians, who believe Israel cannot lose; and, today, as of this writing, The Jerusalem Post has predicted a truce.
Who is right?
I recently viewed a video posted on the Lew Rockwell website entitled: “Bad Theology: Israel, the “Rapture,” and the End Times” and the Bible scholar in that interview claimed modern Israel is a secular nation having nothing to do with Biblical Eschatology.
Of course, other Christians disagree with that conclusion and believe the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is still dealing with the nations of the world through Israel – and just before the return of Christ.
Apocalyptical interpretations, and misinterpretations, regarding modern Israel are concerning because people act upon what they believe… one way, or another. Hence the great divide today, as derived from historically ancient faiths; and why supporters of both Israel and Palestine/Gaza are protesting and rallying around the world.
In February 2019, I considered some of the potential interpretations of possible events in an article entitled “As the Games Begin…”:
Some… Christian Zionists believe the entire world would embrace the Psalm 83 war as the Book of Revelation’s “Armageddon” thus setting the stage for planet earth to accept a false messiah; like Islam’s Twelfth Imam, a Talmudic strongman, a fake return of Christ, or possibly even an outer-space alien (i.e. metaphysical demon / fallen angel) as all of the above – and delivering a false peace and prosperity thus fulfilling the “strong delusion” or “great deception” or “falling away” of the Bible’s 2nd Thessalonians, chapter 2, verses 3-12…
…Other Christians claim the Psalm 83 prophecy is credible because none of those nations are named in the Ezekiel 38 and 39 war when Russia, Iran, Turkey and other countries come against Israel or, even later, in the Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9 when the Kings of the East (China?) march up the Euphrates river to Israel in the battle just prior to Armageddon.
Crazy, no? Again, don’t kill the messenger. All of this is on the internet and, as some claim, in the Bible.
On the other side of the debate… many folks, including several bloggers and online commenters, believe modern Israel is the de facto “Synagogue of Satan” as referenced in the Bible’s Book of Revelation (Rev 2:9 and Rev 3:9). These verses refer to those “who say they are Jews but are not”.
Correspondingly, a video at StopWorldControl.com about modern Israel, its early formation and sinister benefactors, is quite compelling – just not to those who believe a Psalms 83 War (paired with other Biblical prophecies) will result in the complete destruction of the following nations:
– And, as some claim: “Gebal” and “Tyre” will be decimated prior to the conclusion of the Psalm 83 war – with these referring to modern Lebanon and southern Lebanon (Hezbollah), respectively, as well as Turkey.
But others argue Turkey (i.e. “Gomer”, “Meshek”, “Tubal”, & “Beth Togarmah”) won’t meet its fate until the later Ezekiel Chapters 38-39 War involving Russia (Rosh), Iran (Persia), Libya (Put), Ethiopia (Cush), and the Central Asian nations (Magog) including…but perhaps not limited to… Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. I say “not limited to” because some interpreters include Afghanistan in the latter group and I’ve also seen Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe included under “Gomer” as well.
Anyway, here is the point: Many Bible “scholars” believe ancient scriptures have predicted that modern Israel would defeat wave after wave of military attacks by other countries. First, the surrounding Psalm 83 nations, then, later, the Ezekiel 38-39 war, until, finally, the Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9 when the Kings of the East (China?) march up the Euphrates river to Israel in the battle just prior to Armageddon.
All of this, in accordance with other prophecies in the Bible, such as…
… I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
– Zechariah 12:2-3
And
And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.
And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.
– Amos 9:14-15
Around two weeks ago (as of this writing), Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, referenced Hamas in relation to an ancient tribe of people called “Amalek” in scripture. He said: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”
In the Bible’s book of 1st Samuel, in chapter 15, God commanded (Israel’s) King Saul to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass “
But, not wanting to be overly cruel, King Saul disobeyed God’s command and Israel was eventually given cause to kill others who didn’t deserve to die. This story, in fact, is said to have inspired the concept of “cruel to be kind” – thereby instilling this maxim into Jewish culture:
“To be lenient when you should be firm is to be cruel when you could be kind.”
Or, in other words: “He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate”.
Or, stated another way: “Destroying evil is perhaps the greatest act of kindness possible.”
Nonetheless, non-Zionist Christians (such as the Bible scholar in the above-embedded “Bad Theology” video/link), as well as pretty much all non-Christians, consider this type of Biblical parsing and cherry-picking of scripture to be completely ludicrous, if not insane; especially as the headlines rage:
Israel’s best chance of survival lies in expanding the scope of the war in Gaza into Lebanon — and possibly even into Syria — shoulder-to-shoulder with the Americans.
Will Israel defeat all challengers? Will Iran and the U.S. escalate the war in the Middle East? Will the Psalm 83 nations of “Gebal”, “the inhabitants of Tyre”, the “Hagrites” (i.e. Lebanon, South Lebanon / Hezbollah, and Syria, respectively), and the nation of Turkey, join the war?
Turkey is a member of NATO. How would that work?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. Yet. I am just a blogger sharing what I’ve read and viewed online.
But even if the Psalm 83 War came to pass in the days ahead, most of the world would surely call it a coincidence… or Armageddon… or claim it occurred as the result of a deceptive conspiracy using the Bible as a script.
Conversely, if peace suddenly broke out in the Middle East and World War III was narrowly averted, the prophecy experts will likely claim that Armageddon was delayed… but only for a while.
For how long? I guess we’ll see. Hence this time-stamped post.
After nearly 2 years of portraying the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as unfolding in Kiev and the collective West’s favor, a sudden deluge of admissions have begun saturating Western headlines noting that Ukraine is not only losing, but that there is little or nothing its Western backers can do to change this fact.
What had been a narrative of Ukraine’s steady gains and indomitable fighting spirit has now been replaced by the reality of Ukraine’s catastrophic losses (as well as net territorial losses) and a steady collapse of morale among troops. What had been narratives of Russian forces poorly trained and led, equipped with inadequate quantities of antiquated weapons and dwindling ammunition stockpiles, have now been replaced by admissions that Russia’s military industrial base is out-producing the US and Europe combined while fielding weapon systems either on par with their Western counterparts, or able to surpass Western capabilities entirely.
Ukraine’s Catastrophic Losses
Ukrainian losses, especially after 5 full months of failed offensive operations, are almost impossible to hide now.
The London Telegraph in its article, “Ukraine’s army is running out of men to recruit, and time to win,” published as far back as August of this year admitted:
The war in Ukraine is now one of attrition, fought on terms that increasingly favour Moscow. Kyiv has dealt admirably with shortages of Western equipment so far, but a shortage of manpower – which it is already having to confront – may prove fatal.
The article also claimed:
It’s a brutal but simple calculation: Kyiv is running out of men. US sources have calculated that its armed forces have lost as many as 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 injured. While Russian casualties are higher still, the ratio nevertheless favours Moscow, as Ukraine struggles to replace soldiers in the face of a seemingly endless supply of conscripts.
The article paints a bleak picture of continued Ukrainian military operations that are almost certainly unsustainable.
The claim of 70,000 killed in action among Ukrainian troops is a gross underestimate, while claims that “Russian casualties are higher still” are not only unsubstantiated, but contradicted elsewhere among Western sources.
Mediazona, a media platform maintained by US government-backed Russian opposition figures, has tracked Russian casualties from February 2022 onward by allegedly tracking public information regarding the death of Russian soldiers.
Its numbers cannot be entirely verified, but on the few occasions the Russian Ministry of Defense released Russian casualty numbers, they were relatively close to Mediazona’s claims versus the cartoonish claims made by Ukraine’s General Staff – claims that are often unquestionably repeated by Western governments and media organizations.
A more recent article published by Business Insider in late October titled, “Ukraine official says it can’t properly use its Western kit because it has so few soldiers left, report says,” confirms that Ukraine’s losses and resulting manpower crisis is only getting worse.
The article reports:
A Ukrainian official said Ukraine’s army is suffering a manpower shortage that is hampering its ability to use Western-donated weapons, Time magazine reported. Since the start of the war, several Ukrainian officials have blamed their difficulty repelling Russia’s invasion on the slow pace of deliveries by its allies.
However, in the Time report, an unnamed source identified as a close aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted a different problem. “We don’t have the men to use them,” the aide said in reference to the Western weapons. Although Ukraine doesn’t give public figures, Western estimates suggest it has suffered in excess of 100,000 casualties.
In addition to irreversible losses in manpower, Ukraine is also losing territory despite 5 months of intensive offensive operations and the fact that the Russian military leadership has repeatedly stated Russia’s goal is to eliminate Ukraine’s military, not take territory.
The New York Times in a September article titled, “Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One,” would note:
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has struggled to push forward across the wide-open fields in the south. It is facing extensive minefields and hundreds of miles of fortifications — trenches, anti-tank ditches and concrete obstacles — that Russia built last winter to slow Ukrainian vehicles and force them into positions where they could be more easily targeted. When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.
Along with steep losses in manpower and a net loss in territory, Ukraine suffers from an equally damaging loss of equipment. Compounding materiel losses is the fact Western military industrial production is incapable of replacing these losses.
Military Industrial Production: West Running Out as Russia Ramps Up
Last year, Western politicians and the Western media promoted the idea that superior Western military equipment would easily sweep aside Russia’s dwindling numbers of supposedly antiquated weapon systems. One article published by the London Telegraph in early June of this year was even titled, “British-made tanks are about to sweep Putin’s conscripts aside.”
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Instead, Russian military equipment has proven itself capable if not superior to Western weapon systems and, together with Russia’s massive military industrial base, it has both outnumbered and outfought Ukrainians trained and equipped by the West.
This was admitted in the New York Times’ September article, Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say,” which noted:
Russia is now producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe. Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.
The article admits that Russia has doubled tank production, increased missile production, and is producing at least as many as 2 million artillery shells a year – more than the US and Europe combined currently produce and more than the US and Europe combined if and when they meet increased production targets between 2025-2027.
A more recent article published by The Economist titled, “Russia is starting to make its superiority in electronic warfare count,” admits that Russia has developed an “impressive range of EW [electronic warfare] capabilities to counter NATO’s highly networked systems.” It explains how Russian EW capabilities have rendered precision-guided weapons provided by NATO to Ukraine ineffective, including GPS-guided Excalibur 155mm artillery shells, JDAM guided bombs, and HIMARS-launched GPS-guided rockets.
The article also discusses the impact Russian EW capabilities have on Ukrainian drones which are lost by the thousands week-to-week. And as Russian EW capabilities disrupt Ukraine’s ability to use guided weapons and drones on and over the battlefield, the article admits Russia is able to produce at least twice as many drones as Ukraine giving Russia yet another quantitative and qualitative advantage.
Despite much of the hype surrounding talk of equipping Ukraine with NATO-provided F-16 fighter aircraft, more sober Western analysts have gradually admitted that between Russia’s vast and growing aerospace forces and its superior integrated air defense systems, NATO-provided F-16s will fare no better than the Soviet-era aircraft Ukraine had and lost throughout the duration of the Special Military Operation.
After months, even years of “game-changers” sent to Ukraine only to prove incapable of matching let alone exceeding Russian military capabilities, the game is indeed revealed to have been changed – in favor of Russia and a military doctrine built on vast military industrial production, cheap-but-effective weapon systems, and most importantly, a doctrine built to fight and win against a peer or near-peer adversary.
This stands in stark contrast to a West who has shaped its military for decades to push over developing or failed states around the globe in military-mismatches, atrophying the technological, industrial, and strategic capabilities the US and its allies would have needed to put in place years ahead of time to “win” their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
The “solution” to Russia’s now admitted advantage in terms of quality and quantity on and over the battlefield is to “increase production” and “collect data” on Russian capabilities to then “develop counters to them.” However, these are processes that could take years to yield results, all while Russia continues expanding its capabilities to maintain this qualitative and quantitative edge.
And as this process continues to unfold, the US continues simultaneously seeking a similar conflict with China, which possesses an even larger industrial base than Russia.
One wonders how many lives could have been spared had these recent admissions across the Western media regarding Russia’s actual military capabilities been presented long before provoking conflict with Russia in the first place through Washington and Brussels’ long-standing policy of encroaching upon Russia’s borders. One wonders how many lives may yet be saved if the collective West learns from its current mistakes before repeating them all over again in a senseless conflict triggered by efforts to likewise encroach upon and provoke China.
The term “free world” was a mainstay of the cold war lexicon for decades. Although the United States and its NATO allies still portray themselves as paragons of free thought and action and declare anyone they don’t like as laggards in regard to human rights. They make quite a show of bragging about being democracies but their actions prove otherwise.
The U.S. and Israel continue their killing spree in Gaza which now totals 11,000 fatalities of men, women, and children. While the President of the United States claimed to have seen confirmation that Hamas beheaded children, Palestinians in their sorrow display the broken bodies of their children, some of them headless or limbless as Israel bombs homes, hospitals, and ambulances. The U.S. and the European Union are steadfast in their support of the bloodletting.
Of course most of the world has unambiguously condemned the ongoing crime. Millions of people have protested on every continent to express their outrage and revulsion as the sick plot to kill Palestinians en masse and force the survivors to leave their homes intensifies by the day.
Eight nations, including South Africa, Bolivia, and Colombia have cut diplomatic ties with Israel. In Washington DC, headquarters of the aiders and abettors of the genocide, an estimated 300,000 people took to the streets in just one protest. Similar numbers were seen in London and other European capitals.
But these displays of empathy and solidarity pose a problem for the nations known as the collective west. The U.S. and its friends in NATO are committed to imposing their will on the rest of the world and they don’t want to hear from pesky citizens who point out their wrongdoing.
France and Germany both banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations and yet thousands marched anyway. The United Kingdom actually charged two young women with a terrorism offense for wearing images of a Hamas hang glider on their jackets as they marched in London. In the U.S., doxing, job termination, and even the censure of a member of Congress, Representative Rashida Tlaib, are all used to silence anyone who strays from official narratives.
Lest anyone think this assessment is overly harsh, consider that Joe Biden is proposing that any additional military aid to Israel be discussed in secret without any congressional oversight. Biden has little reason to fear rejection when even many “progressives” join in giving billions of dollars to the military industrial complex. Clearly something else is afoot that the people don’t want. Perhaps they want to put more U.S. boots on the ground in Israel and attack another nation. No one knows for sure but something very serious is in the offing. The desire to keep what ought to be public under very tight wraps ought to give everyone pause.
It must be pointed out that the repression of protests on Palestine is not occurring in a vacuum. The “democratic” nations are nothing of the sort. They are under the rule of capital which means that the popular will must be subverted. NATO nations are obligated to spend at least 2% of GDP on military spending, which means that people’s needs are not met in the way that they want. The European Union also demands austerity as a condition of membership.
The U.S. oligarchy is quite clear that even minor efforts to do what people want will be rejected. There is no Build Back Better, no minimum wage increase, no student loan debt relief. All of these options are off the table. Of course it has been proven that the U.S. electoral system provides smoke and mirrors but little else. Americans are harangued into voting but the results rarely result in the changes they seek.
The same is true in the rest of the collective west. The last thing they want is an energized citizenry making political demands they have no intention of fulfilling.
Palestine is the flashpoint now, but it is not the only crisis facing the fake democracies. Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are diminished as long as he is Israel’s genocide co-conspirator. He may churn out blather about Bidenomics but he has failed to live up to the phony “most progressive since FDR” trope and he can’t live down his role in perpetrating a slaughter that most Americans want to end. The fact that it hasn’t ended is further proof that political leadership are committed to ignoring whatever the people want.
The repression will only intensify as conditions worsen. Protesters in Atlanta who oppose the Cop City militarized policing project have been shot and killed by police, and charged as RICO conspirators. That heavy hand is a harbinger of what is potentially in store for everyone who dares to speak up. The repression isn’t fake, but any claims of true democracy are.
“The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters in New York, adding that the need for a ceasefire is becoming “more urgent with every passing hour.”
Hundreds of thousands of people are demonstrating across the planet in opposition to the outrage of being forced to witness the barbaric state terror and collective punishment of the occupied and oppressed people of Palestine by the illegitimate settler-colonial state of Israel.
The flood of images of dead Palestinian children and even the audio of Palestinian women screaming in between the sounds of bombs being dropped on buildings in the pitched black darkness of Gaza that house the 2.2 million displaced Palestinians sparked a moral outrage that politically is being expressed by the call for a ceasefire. It’s believed that a ceasefire would at least stop the carnage. And it probably would, but that is the problem. While a ceasefire would temporarily stop the mindless slaughter of innocent Palestinians, the ongoing agony of Palestinians forced to live under the inhumane conditions of occupation in the Gaza concentration camp and the rest of occupied Palestine would continue until the next escalation of resistance or attacks by the settlers.
Why?
Like all European settler projects since 1492 when Europeans spilled out of what became Europe first into the “Americas” where they grew fat and powerful off of the stolen land and most vicious form of slavery humanity has ever known and then through the industrial fueled global colonial/capitalist expansion, the Jewish European settlers have one objective – the expansion of Israeli colonial power and control over all of the lands currently occupied by the Indigenous Palestinians. Unlike other settler projects where the indigenous peoples were subjected to genocide, the Israeli bourgeoisie has the problem that they have not been able to murder and/or displace all of the Palestinian peoples.
The incessant expansion of Israeli settlements, the apartheid wall, checkpoints meant to make live miserable for Palestinians, the neighborhood raids, impunity for the violence of the settlers, thief of houses, massive incarceration, assassinations of Palestinians leaders, peaceful demonstrations met with live fire, the inhumane siege of Gaza and periodic attacks (mowing the lawn as the Israeli govt calls it) in Gaza – all expose the extreme violence of the Israeli settler project that will persist until the colonial relationship is altered.
This means quite clearly that without ending the Israeli settler project with its apartheid laws, racialization of Palestinians and normalized violence, it will be ceasefire today and war tomorrow, because opposition by Palestinians will continue until they are all murdered and/or expelled, and even then, opposition will continue from the displaced Palestinians joining the other displaced Palestinians from the last 75 years of Palestinian dispersal.
The only solution is authentic decolonization. But that solution must be imposed on the Israeli colonists in a similar fashion as the wars for national liberation that took place in Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Israelis understand that the success of European settler projects only occurred where the settlers were able to murder most of the indigenous population and then subject the survivors to permanent internal colonization such as the current situations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Elements of the Israeli ruling class represented by the fascist coalition of forces currently in power under Netanyahu, are quite clear that they are prepared to impose a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem.
Genocide has been the handmaiden of the European Settler Projects
No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel…We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” (Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister)
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, defines genocide as the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole, or in part. A genocide is accepted to be represented by any of five acts:
Killing members of the group 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
It should not be necessary to systematically chronicle Israeli policies from the murder of Palestinian resisters to the gruesome stories of Palestinian women dying in the process of giving birth at Israeli checkpoints, to the current murder of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, to conclude that the colonial policies of Israel fit the classic definition of genocide.
The horrific violence deployed by the colonial powers to establish the parasitic colonial relationship pales in comparison to the violence needed to impose a settler colonial project where the intent to permanently settle the conquered land with the population from the “mother-country” or other territories that requires eliminating or severely reducing the physical presence of the indigenous peoples.
This understanding of the genocidal nature of settler-colonialism should be more developed in the U.S. as a result of it being the most developed settler state with its history of violent conquest, slavery, and internal colonization. However, the framing of the U.S. as a settler state with a practice of systematic genocide that continues up to this day has only started to penetrate the theoretical frameworks of left and radical discourse in a meaningful way over the last two decades.
Yet for those of us struggling against this colonial criminal state, its nature is clear, and as a consequence, the historic task – turning imperialist/colonial wars into wars against colonialism it all its various forms.
Therefore, as necessary as it is to demand that the Israeli stop the slaughter, a ceasefire is not enough. The genocidal Israeli project must be completely dismantled and the officials directly responsible for its implementation along with their enablers in the successive U.S. regimes must be brought to justice.
There must not be any hesitation in calling for justice in this form. Gaza has revealed the true nature of European colonialism to a public that had not given much thought to the subject. Establishing the connection between colonialism and capitalist exploitation must be the next step to take advantage of this incipient new consciousness among the public in the West. Today it is going to be a little easier to do that as a consequence of Gaza. The gap between the “collective West” and the global humanity beyond the 10% that represents the U.S. and Europe, a population that the collective West refers to as the “world,” is hardening. But the gap between the elite policymakers and the people in the West and Europe is also expanding and hardening – that is a positive development.
The demands that must serve as the foundation of for a realistic resolution of the colonial relationship in Israel/Palestine must also be demands that serve as basis for the global movement to finally identify and defeat what the Black Alliance for Peace calls the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.
As the Elite program to kill or enslave us all proceeds virtually unimpeded, one way in which this is being accomplished is by using two of the Elite’s oldest known tools: War and genocide. With the active complicity of its agents in governments and elsewhere, the Elite is killing off substantial numbers of ‘ordinary’ people (but certainly not Elite members or agents) in wars between various countries, most notably, Ukraine and Russia, as well as in genocidal attacks such as that by Israel against the Palestinian ghetto of Gaza.
While I have previously explained how the war between Russia and Ukraine (along with the latter’s NATO allies) is being used to advance the Elite program – see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – it is equally clear that wars anywhere, as well as genocides, serve the same purpose.
Unfortunately, very few people are perceiving this connection and the fundamental threat it poses to us all and, in the sense that this is being achieved, the genocide in Gaza is successfully distracting people from the wider program to kill or enslave everyone.
This is obvious from any candid assessment of the evidence readily available to those seeking it. Let me start with an overview of the evidence in relation to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
In the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: ‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas’. See ‘Analysis: Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant’.
Did it actually matter that Hamas appears to have achieved movement in the direction of its stated goals – as noted by Ritter: to reassert the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland, release of the 10,000-plus Palestinian political prisoners (including children) locked up in Israel, a return to the sanctity of the Al Aqsa Mosque – as Ritter claims and despite or even because of the enormous ‘sacrifice’ made by the ordinary men, women and children of Gaza?
Did all of those Palestinians – including children – who weren’t consulted about the raid and have been (or will be) killed during Israel’s genocidal response knowingly and willingly sacrifice their lives? Or were they hapless victims of the violent ideology of their leaders who do not value ‘ordinary’ lives?
Despite the truism that Ritter identifies – ‘you can’t solve a problem unless you first properly define it…. any solution which has nothing to do with the problem involved is, literally, no solution at all’ – with which I agree, Ritter has a very limited, essentially military, interpretation of the conflict and what will be necessary to resolve it. That is, he suggests, the conflict is between the Israeli government and Hamas, it is military in nature and it will be won (or lost) according to political shifts the military resistance offered by Hamas generates in other parts of the world (including the Arab/Islamic worlds and the United States).
But as will be obvious from my explanation below, Ritter does not understand this conflict, particularly the global forces driving it and their reasons for doing so and that, from the perspective of ‘ordinary’ people, the ‘gains’ from the raid he nominates (and the genocide following) are worth nothing, and that the deaths of both ordinary Israelis and Palestinians as a result is a terrible price to pay.
In any case, whatever the origin of the military raid by Hamas (and its ongoing engagement with Israeli forces in Gaza), the evidence of the killing of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians is well documented.
In his thoughtful analysis of the situation, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Professor Richard Falk offers a similar conclusion:
My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.
Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. See ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s endgame is much more sinister than restoring “security”’.
While Hasan Illaik argues that the plan to ‘displace millions of Palestinians’ is ‘nigh impossible to achieve’ and notes that the plan has been rejected by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi – see ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’ – even its substantial or just partial fulfillment would open new possibilities for Israel and the United States.
Nevertheless, despite the evidence presented above and the considered opinion of the experts cited, Scott Ritter argues that Israel will find it extraordinarily difficult to defeat Hamas. Ritter offers historical evidence of battles taking place in confined spaces where damage has been inflicted by prior bombing that impedes subsequent ground operations because of the vast quantities of rubble. He also cites other battles where large tunnel networks were extremely difficult to neutralize. In Ritter’s view, Hamas has both of these battlefield advantages in Gaza, including over 500 kilometres of tunnels. See ‘Israel Faces “Near Impossible Task” in Gaza’.
Unfortunately, however, there is some evidence that Israel is planning to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas – see ‘Israel-Palestine war: Israel plans to flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas, source says’ – but, whether or not it does so, a ground invasion is not the only way to ‘clear’ Gaza of its ‘surface’ population with another weapon already being used by Israel against Gaza.
As in earlier manifestations of war and genocide, military forces have sometimes laid siege to a trapped population to starve it to death. And this is now happening in Gaza. According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: ‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly.’ See ‘Israeli Defense Minister Announces Siege On Gaza To Fight “Human Animals”’.
You can see photos of the devastation in Gaza and its genocidal impact on the Palestinian people in the compilation presented by Antonio C. S. Rosa here: ‘Genocide in Pictures: Worth a Trillion Words’.
In any case, if we step back from the immediacy of this conflict and consider the Elite perspective on what is taking place, plenty of people are being killed and other Elite objectives are being achieved by what is happening.
A Regional War?
Beyond what happens in Gaza, however, the conflict includes evidence that this war could be expanded beyond Israeli and Palestinian borders into the wider region so that the killing can be compounded and a wider set of Elite objectives fulfilled.
In fact, as Chossudovsky points out in his most recent video interview, Israel has a vast military (including nuclear) capability compared to the poorly-armed Palestinians and is reinforced by both extensive military aid from the United States as well as a major US military presence (including two aircraft carrier battle groups, a substantial fleet of fighter aircraft and special forces troops) that has been deployed to the Middle East to engage in a wider war in pursuit of long-standing US political objectives to subjugate Iran and reshape the Middle East. See ‘A Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran is Contemplated: The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking’.
Professor Michael Hudson agrees. In an interview, Hudson indicated that ‘the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel…. [our] landed aircraft carrier… takeoff point’ for the US to control the Middle East with its vast oil and gas reserves. But in elaborating his explanation, Hudson goes on to highlight that the US supports Netanyahu (rather than Israel itself), ‘an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person’ to distract attention from the US role in supplying the military weapons to kill people in Gaza and the West Bank which is essentially designed to provoke a response from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why? By using the corporate media to keep talking about Hamas and Hezbollah as puppets of Iran, the intention is to use any military response from Hezbollah to ‘justify’ a ‘move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran’ with the aim of controlling Middle Eastern oil. This would make it possible ‘to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.’ In essence, Hudson summarizes, ‘Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now’. Watch ‘Why Does the US Support Israel?’
Many analysts have discussed the possibility of a wider war with Hasan Illaik arguing that ‘Both in practice, and publicly, the US government and military are running this Israeli war’ with the intention of fueling a wider one. See ‘The US is fueling, not avoiding, a regional war’. Huseyin Vodinali considers the possible role of countries like Yemen and Turkey as the war expands and argues that ‘China and Russia support Palestine and declare that they will stand by Syria and Iran.’ See ‘“A Big Event is Coming, its Name is a Regional War”? The Danger Waiting for Turkiye’.
In contrast, however, Scott Ritter cogently argues that the US and Israel combined do not have the logistical capacity to successfully fight and defeat Iran. See ‘US Not Ready for War With Iran’.
Military and geopolitical analyst Andrei Martyanov agrees. In a wide-ranging interview in which he referred to the two US aircraft carriers now in the region as ‘sitting ducks’, he offered an outline of Iran’s sophisticated air-defense systems and its ballistic missile capabilities (which could easily knock out all US bases in the Middle East, the carrier battle groups now in the region and leave ‘Tel Aviv and Jerusalem… burning’) as just two of the problems confronting the US and Israel in any consideration of an attack on Iran. Beyond these problems and among others, he mentioned that the mythology attached to the Israeli military was largely propaganda from 1967 and 1973 and did not apply now. He described the Israeli army as a ‘very well equipped police force’ and also briefly discussed the debilitating decline in US military production and noted that ‘the decline and degradation of the American political class is astonishing’. Watch ‘The US and Israel cannot defeat Iran’.
In contrast, and despite the use of a nuclear weapon on Gaza being advocated by Israeli government Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, Timothy Alexander Guzman argues that ‘There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb. If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel’ and that is something for which Tel Aviv and Washington are not prepared. See ‘“Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Gaza”: Israeli Minister Says Using Nukes on Gaza an Option’.
In essence, while there are sound political and military reasons for both Israel and the US to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, given the insanity of some key figures in this conflict, it is difficult to assert anything with certainty in this regard.
Moreover, irrespective of the many factors that might be considered in relation to the ‘wider war’ issue, it should be noted that there are plenty of ‘minor’ military clashes already taking place throughout the Middle East. As reported by the highly reputable ‘South Front’, and confirmed by the Telegram channel ‘War Monitor’, ongoing military engagements are being reported taking place involving Hezbollah (for example, targeting Israeli army positions on the Lebanese-Palestinian border), Syria (for example, using air defences to confront Israeli targets in the vicinity of Damascus), Yemen (for example, with the Houthis reporting the targeting of sensitive sites in Israel’s Eliat area on the Gulf of Aquaba) and the US Pentagon (reporting engagement by pro-Iranian groups in both Syria and Iraq).
These reports are also confirmed in the article by Professor Adham Saouli who suggests that, like the US, ‘Hezbollah is using the time to set the stage for a regional war should that become necessary.’ See ‘Hezbollah and the 2023 Israeli War on Gaza’.
Before proceeding however, there is one more critical issue to consider, nothwithstanding what has been written above.
What is the prospect of the US orchestrating a false flag attack – perhaps on a US vessel in one of its two carrrier strike groups in the region – to ‘justify’ an attack on Iran? With the USS Gerald R. Ford and escort vessels stationed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and escorts currently operating in the Gulf of Oman off the Arabian Peninsula – see ‘Aircraft Carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Now in Gulf of Oman’ – such an attack could ignite a regional war (and easily expand beyond the Middle East).
How might this be done?
Most simply by directing Israel to launch a missile (from land, sea or air) at the designated target and then deluging the corporate media with the claim that it was Iran that launched the missile.
Under cover of the initial confusion, it would be simple enough to initiate military action against Iran (and, possibly, certain allies) by Israeli and US forces to ‘respond’ to this attack and any debate about the source of the attack would be relegated to the backburner while the war quickly inflamed and national populations were manipulated to ‘rally around the flag’.
You might ask, of course, why would this be done? Why start a war where there is none?
The answer is the same as it has been throughout history. If you like, you can read brief accounts of 42 false flag attacks in the past century. See ‘42 ADMITTED False Flag Attacks’.
Wars enable Elites to consolidate and expand their power, and make vast profits. Every weapon fired represents profit; every weapon, building and other asset destroyed represents profit (for example, in subsequent rebuilding); every country subjugated represents profit in the form of control of its resources (strategic minerals, fossil fuels, fresh water, cultural heritage…); every person killed represents progress in the Elite depopulation program; and every war presents opportunities for tightening Elite control (particularly while submissively frightened populations tolerate government actions supposedly to enhance ‘national security’ but really to enslave us in one of the Elite’s increasingly technocratic prisons cities).
Have you ever wondered why governments are never really interested in avoiding or even winning wars (despite rhetoric to the contrary)?
The Elite most effectively consolidates its power and maximizes its profit by ensuring perpetual war. And it simply ensures that its agents in government make this happen.
In this scheme of things, you are the victim in every sense of the word: You vote in elections believing you are living in a ‘democracy’, you pay the taxes to buy the weapons, you join the military to fight (believing you are defending ‘your country’), you are the soldier or civilian who is killed (not a member of the Elite profiting from your killing/dying), and you do the suffering when someone you love dies.
War is one of the Elite’s most profitable enterprises and control of everything from the human ‘socialization’ (that is, terrorization) process and ‘education’ systems to the messaging of the corporate media and ‘entertainment’ industry means that you learn that violence is not only ‘necessary’ but really the ‘only’ effective way to deal with international conflict.
So far, however, Putin has shown himself to be adept at avoiding direct military confrontation with the USA over the war in Ukraine and, from a nation-state perspective, the latter clearly lacks the capacity to engage Russia directly for the reasons Martyanov gave in relation to the USA and Iran.
But to elaborate my point above: There are plenty of powerful vested interests with a stake in this conflict and a lot of insane individuals involved too which means that there are enormous pressures pushing for a wider regional war. However, if the war expands beyond Israel and Palestine, there is no guarantee it will remain contained within the region either.
And, as explained just above, it doesn’t matter what countries are involved or how many are killed. The Elite will carefully consider its options with the inclination to expand its power and increase its profits at every opportunity.
The Rothschilds
Before departing this immensely complex subject, about which a great deal has been written, there is another dimension to this conflict that is invariably ignored. And that dimension concerns the role of the Rothschild family.
Why highlight the Rothschild family? Consider the following.
As noted by Richard S. Dunn in his historical overview of events leading to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine – see ‘Israel Should Know: “What Thou Sowest, Thou Shall Also Reap”’ – the letter advising the Jews of the British government intention was sent to Lionel Rothschild.
According to the official Rothschild Archive:
On November 2, 1917, the British Government expressed its sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations and announced that it would use its “best endeavours” to facilitate “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. The announcement came in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter, 2nd Lord Rothschild (1868-1937), the unofficial leader of the British Jewish community. The Balfour agreement became the diplomatic foundation stone of the state of Israel….
The Balfour Declaration used deliberately vague language. The term “national home” was chosen in order to minimize the Zionist dream, to make Palestine a Jewish state. The Arabs, whose “civil and religious” (not national and political) rights were not to be prejudiced as the declaration put it, were referred to only as “existing non-Jewish communities”. You can read the letter and the Rothschild commentary on it here: ‘Walter Rothschild and the Balfour Declaration’.
The Rothschild commentary on this development includes these words: ‘Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War.’
Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians), in which they played such a critical role, the Rothschilds have continued to exercise their enormous political and economic clout to both build the state of Israel and ‘defend’ Israel, including by mobilizing the military and financial support for it from the United States. While some of this support is publicly known (such as that of James de Rothschild in financing the building of the Knesset in Israel), as with the bulk of Rothschild affairs (including in the US), most of this support is concealed behind a myriad of Rothschild-controlled corporations, front groups and ‘third parties’, many with significant public profiles.
And this explains why supposedly scholarly books such as Jews in American Politics do not reference the Rothschilds even once while Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the authors, readily acknowledges that ‘the greatest triumph of American Jewish organizations during the postwar period [was] recognition of the state of Israel. Despite the opposition of large segments of the British government and the U.S. State and Defense departments, American Jewish groups succeeded in securing President Truman’s support for the creation of a Jewish state to house Jewish refugees from Europe. Over the ensuing decades, American Jews successfully urged the U.S. government to provide Israel with billions of dollars in American military and economic assistance. In recent years, Jewish groups have fought not only for aid for Israel but for American humanitarian intervention in other regions of the world as well.’
While not discounting the roles of other prominent individuals and families, it is nevertheless the case that the long-standing Rothschild practice of obscuring their role has ensured that much of what it does is concealed. This is why, for example, few people know that the Rothschilds control the US Federal Reserve and own substantial holdings (again, often through tightly-controlled ‘third parties’) in the global (including US) weapons industry. So while Molly Gott and Derek Seidman offer a fine report on ‘Corporate Enablers of Israel’s War on Gaza’ and even name some prominent individual donors to pro-Israeli lobby groups, rarely do studies of this nature expose the human individuals who ultimately own the weapons corporations.
But now with a significantly expanded range of ways of obscuring the family investments, such as through the private but major asset management corporation Vanguard, the Rothschilds will benefit handsomely from President Biden’s recent announcement of a ‘giant’ weapons package to Israel – see ‘Biden asks Congress for Israel, Ukraine aid in giant defense package’ – with most of the money going to US weapons corporations in which the Rothschilds have substantial investments. Profiting from war (and military conflict generally) is the second oldest trick (after profiting from money) in the Rothschild money-making machine. See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’
And there is a third old trick too: ownership of massive resource corporations, starting with oil and gas.
While Felicity Arbuthnot, in the 2013 article just cited, nominated the interest of the BG Group in Gaza’s gas and oil reserves, in early 2016, the BG Group became part of Shell Global. See ‘Combining Shell and BG: a simpler and more profitable company’.
Of course, Shell has been a Rothschild corporation since the very early 20th century. According to the Rothschild Archive: ‘As it turned out, Rothschilds had a decisive influence in shaping Royal Dutch Shell, more so than anyone had previously imagined.’ See ‘Searching for oil in Roubaix’. But Shell does not represent the only Rothschild investment in energy supplies.
Another motivation for Rothschild involvement concerns a long-standing interest of the family’s. Following a brief discussion with British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on 14 November 1875, Lionel Rothschild agreed to finance the British Government’s purchase of 177,000 shares in ‘one of the world’s great commercial and strategic assets’, the Suez Canal Company, from Egypt’s debt-ridden Khedive for £4,000,000 at 3% interest. See The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait pp. 150-152. This gave the British government a majority holding in the waterway that enabled commercial and military shipping to bypass the Cape of Good Hope in traveling from Europe to Asia and Oceania.
In 1882 the UK invaded and occupied Egypt, taking control of the country as well as the Suez canal which then became a geopolitical weapon during subsequent wars. It also later became critical for the transport of oil from the Middle East to Europe (and elsewhere).
During and following World War II, Britain maintained a vast military complex at Suez with a garrison of some 80,000 soldiers.
But following a military coup that removed the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and in the context of a geopolitical world in considerable turmoil on various levels (including the decolonization process, the Cold War, and the Arab-Israeli conflict), ownership of the Suez Canal became increasingly contentious. Thus, on 26 July 1956, the Suez Canal Company was nationalized by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This led to the Suez Crisis in October when Israel and, subsequently, the UK and France invaded Egypt and Gaza in an attempt to remove President Nasser and restore western control. Pressure from the United States and the UN led to withdrawal of the invaders.
The plan was eventually shelved, presumably at least in part because the fallout from the nuclear explosions would have made the environmental cost of the project prohibitive. But what if such a plan was now feasible and the shortest route went through Gaza?
Is there a more ‘acceptable’ (that is, non-nuclear) weapon that could be deployed to create the canal now?
The obvious domain to look for possible answers is the expanding range of geoengineering weapons.
Why?
After many years spent researching geoengineering weapons, in a 1996 article, Dr. Rosalie Bertell summarized 50 years of destructive programs targeting control of the upper atmosphere. She concluded the article with the following words: ‘The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amounts of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle
So if one considers the range of geoengineering weapons that might be used in this context, one possibility would be to use HAARP: the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. HAARP is currently ‘the most important facility used to generate extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic radiation in the ionosphere. In order to produce this ELF radiation the HAARP transmitter radiates a strong beam of highfrequency (HF) waves modulated at ELF…. high-power ELF radiation generated by HF ionospheric heaters, such as the current HAARP heater, can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and strong localized heating.’ See ‘High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating’.
If this weapon could be used, it would need to be calibrated to perform the massive task of excavating the canal (or at least pulverizing the materials that need to be excavated into a readily removable form).
So, as in the case in relation to the HAARP ELF radiation option, if this weapon was to be used to construct another canal, it would need to be calibrated to be less destructive than those used in Turkey.
But whatever technological challenges might remain in choosing the geoengineering weapon(s) and deploying it/them effectively, the financial rewards of having a second canal would be vast. And given existing Rothschild financial interests in infrastructure – ‘Over the last 200 years the Rothschilds have systematically gained control of much of the infrastructure of the modern industrial world.’ See Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire p. 23. – and geoengineering – see ‘The Rothschilds and the Geoengineering Empire’ – it is reasonable to postulate their interest in financing such a project and profiting from it indefinitely into the future.
Beyond its profound control of money, weapons, energy and infrastructure (not to mention other sectors), the Rothschilds own a substantial proportion of the corporate media, again both directly and through agents. For example, by the late C19th their Paribas Bank ‘controlled the all-powerful news agency Havas, which in turn owned the most important advertising agency in France.’ See Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War p. 214.
But Rothschild interests in the corporate media extend far beyond France. If you would like to read more about the extensive Rothschild ownership and control of the media, Paul Cudenec offers more examples in his thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the family’s extraordinary violence and exploitation in Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire.
Their extensive media ownership means that the Rothschilds have significant control of the primary narrative presented in worldwide ‘news’ outlets, including in relation to Israel: the ‘victim’ Israel must always ‘defend’ itself. So that even when some accurate and graphic media get through some corporate social media channels (Facebook, X, Youtube…) or some events not sponsored by the Elite, such as the current wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world, are reported in the corporate media – see ‘Around the world, people take to the streets for Palestine’ and ‘More Demonstrations for Palestine’ – it doesn’t mean anything. Even footage of demonstrations that are protesting the genocide in Gaza can be blandly presented as demonstrations ‘calling for a ceasefire’ or something equally effective at distracting people from the truth. And even if they do not, demonstrations are routinely ignored. History records the futility of such protest demonstrations even when they garner some attention for a secondary narrative.
Because for any particular tactic (action) to have strategic value, it must be derived from a strategy that has been designed to alter the power relationship between the actual perpetrator and their victim. If there is no comprehensive strategy to guide tactical choice, or if the tactic is chosen to achieve a political objective rather than a strategic goal – see ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’ – it is not possible for the tactic to achieve a strategic gain (although it might allow those doing the action to let off a little emotional steam and feel good about themselves).
But to return to the theme above, if you believe that the Rothschilds do not leverage their ownership and control of such vast assets (in money, weapons, energy, infrastructure and media to name just a few key sectors) to achieve outcomes in the perceived interest of the family, including by manipulation of political leaders, you can read relevant Rothschild history – and even the official biography written by Niall Ferguson cited above – which documents a rather endless list of ‘gifts’ (that is, bribes) to a range of monarchs, including the British Crown, and political leaders.
Moreover, while many people are a little squeamish in response to the profoundly distasteful images of Palestinian children mangled by Israeli-fired weapons, the Rothschilds had turned their backs on such suffering more than 200 years ago. You cannot profit by financing both sides of wars for more than 200 years and have any sense of human compassion. From the Rothschild perspective and compared to other mass slaughters from which they have profited enormously, such as World Wars I and II, the genocide in Gaza is inconsequential.
Hence, if we are to understand the current Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza, it is necessary to understand the foundations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the background role that the Rothschilds continue to play. Using a longstanding network of allies and agents, which includes corrupt (that is, ‘bought’) politicians in Israel and the United States as well as such networks as the ‘The Israel Lobby’ in the USA, it is not difficult to shape the words that come out of the mouths of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US President Biden as well as the military actions that follow.
They do not answer to their electorates and Netanyahu and Biden are well aware of that. As long as they serve their masters faithfully, their roles are secure (however they unfold), even despite their extensively-documented corruption as well. See ‘Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption scandals, explained’ and ‘Joe Biden – Corrupt’.
Of course, Rothschild allies and agents ensure that these two individuals are surrounded and supported by a wide coterie of equally corrupt and politically unaccountable agents ranging from a wide spectrum of other national political leaders, to members of the US Congress and Israeli Knesset.
In fact, issuing statements is an industry in itself and highlights the powerlessness of a staggering array of actors, some of whom might be more meaningfully engaged in the struggle to liberate Palestine were they given strategically impactful actions to take. See ‘War of the Statements: The unusual way Americans have processed the Israel-Hamas War’.
Consequently, and despite possible initiatives by third parties, a critical variable that cannot be ignored is that containing the insane Global Elite that is driving these wars and genocides as well as the overall descent into technocracy is extraordinarily difficult. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
And it means that their wars, genocides and the ongoing imposition of their technocracy won’t be stopped by statements, petitions, lobbying politicians, protests or legal challenges although Elite-controlled media will talk about these as part of their strategy to ensure our dissent is absorbed and dissipated.
Summary
Thus, as is happening behind the scenes of mass slaughter of ordinary (mainly Ukrainian but also Russian) soldiers in Ukraine, where the creation of all of the infrastructure necessary to impose the Global Elite’s technocracy on both populations proceeds apace with Presidents Putin and Zelensky fully complicit – again, see ‘The War in Ukraine: Understanding and Resisting the Global Elite’s Deeper Agenda’ – there is little doubt that the heavily technocratized Israel at the behest of the United States and (intentional or otherwise) complicity of Hamas, is simply killing Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank) while displacing as many as possible. This is being done to precipitate responses from other countries that will enable the United States to ‘justify’ pursuit of a range of geopolitical goals – inevitably involving more killing – on behalf of its Elite masters, while facilitating the more elaborate imposition of the necessary ‘smart city’ technologies on whatever population lives in Gaza when the genocide is concluded and the inevitable technocratic rebuilding commences.
My point is unpalatable but simple: The Global Elite is in the process of implementing its long-planned and complex program to kill off vast numbers of people and imprison those left alive as transhuman slaves in their technocratic cities. So while there is value in considering events from various perspectives, it is important that sight is not lost of this fundamental Elite program and the insight that this perspective offers.
Of course, the Elite’s ‘kill or enslave’ program is being implemented everywhere, not just in war zones and zones of obvious genocide. And all governments are complicit, not just the US and Israeli governments and the Palestinian leadership.
So whatever position we might take on any given war, genocide or other violent conflict, we also need to understand and resist the fundamental Elite program – see below – if we are to successfully defend ourselves and those we love, from both its genocidal programs and rapidly advancing technocracy.
In addition, as always, if we want to end war as an instrument of Elite policy, we must strategically campaign to do so. See ‘Strategic Goals for Ending War’.
And if national populations such as the Palestinians wish to defend themselves from genocidal attacks, rather than simply lobby for the beneficial intervention of third parties, they must use an appropriate strategic response (modified from this template). See ‘Strategic Goals for Defeating a Genocidal Assault’.
Of course, it they wish to liberate themselves from occupation, they must bypass the corrupt Palestinian leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza and mobilize ‘ordinary’ Palestinians and international solidarity activists to campaign strategically to do so, as I have been explaining since the early 1990s. See ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy’ or, for the fullest elaboration, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.
This means they must do far more than encourage involvement in just a few tactics as advocated by the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement. Of course, these tactics could usefully form part of a comprehensive strategy.
Needless to say, there are a great many social groups (within Palestine, in Israel and in third-party countries) – identified on the ‘Strategic Goals’ page – who can be mobilized to take action, as well as a large number of nonviolent acts of noncooperation and intervention – listed in ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’ – from which the appropriate combination of tactics can be strategically chosen as explained in ‘Strategic Considerations in the Selection and Implementation of Nonviolent Tactics’. By following this process, concerned people anywhere can take solidarity action with Palestine (not just protest) to end the genocide in the short term and the occupation in the medium term.
The reality is simple: Unless Palestinians commit to developing and implementing a comprehensive nonviolent strategy of liberation, Palestine will continue to be the victim of forces beyond its control at the cost of an enormous number of lives, whatever optimism some might feel at the outpouring of popular support being exhibited by those attending Palestinian solidarity demonstrations around the world at the moment.
Strategy is determinative; not numbers.
Resisting the Elite’s Technocracy
Beyond the defense of Palestine, if you are committed to being strategic in your resistance to the Elite’s ongoing imposition of its genocidal and technocratic programs on us all, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.
More simply, and as a minimum, you can download the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 23 languages (Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak and Turkish) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here: ‘One-page Flyer’.
And you might also consider organizing or participating in a local strategy to halt the deployment of 5G, given its crucial role in making the Elite’s ‘smart city’ technocratic prisons function. See ‘Halting the Deployment of 5G’.
If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.
Moreover, if this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram or Signal groups (with advice on accessing the necessary links on the website).
Thus, what happens now in a particular global, regional, national or even local context has been fundamentally shaped by detailed Elite plans that have been ongoingly formulated and refined, as well as progressively implemented over the past 5,000 years. And we have long ago past the point in which a local population confronts a local Elite in what might once have been a local fight.
Consequently, what happens in this world system is an outcome of power. Laws and legal systems, human rights and human needs count for nothing in this world, unless they do not impact power relationships. Whatever laws exist are breached when it is convenient for powerful actors to do so. And no-one holds those responsible for such breaches accountable. Do you really think that anyone in Israel, or the Rothschild family and its agents, will be held accountable for the genocidal atrocities inflicted on Gaza?
However, just because the Elite and its agents are extraordinarily powerful, operate beyond the rule of law and have no conception of morality, it does not mean that they cannot be stopped. But if we are to stop them in any context, we must work together both strategically and in sufficient numbers. Turning up at a demonstration or doing any one or more of a million things when it suits us will not stop them.
Thus, if we are to resolve any conflict, including those that involve military violence, several things are necessary.
Primarily, the conflict configuration must be analyzed very carefully so that it is fully understood. This includes an understanding of who, most fundamentally, is driving the conflict, why (and for what purposes and benefits) and how they are doing so. This is essential and in sharp contrast to just assuming the conflict is how it is routinely presented or even how it superficially appears.
We must then design a strategy that, if implemented, will succeed in achieving our desired outcome. And, finally, we must mobilize sufficient people to participate in implementing this strategy.
For example, in the current context, it is easy to perceive that people like Klaus Schwab, Yuval Noah Harari and Bill Gates are benefiting from the World Economic Forum push to impose a technocracy on us all, but they are just the front men, positioned to act on behalf of far more powerful global actors.
And it is easy to identify that Benjamin Netanyahu is benefiting from the violence in Palestine but this is utterly superficial. Like any politician he is the lackey of more powerful global actors who offer him trinkets (but of value to him) to do their bidding.
So we have a choice. Whether as a global population or a local one, we can continue to be the victims while we attribute blame to the puppets (political leaders and a vast range of organizations) put in place to perform on behalf of others.
Or, as I have tried to do in this article, we can do the work to understand how the world works, who really exercises power, the means they are using to exercise it, and then mobilize enough people to participate in carefully-designed nonviolent strategies to stop them.
If we do not take the latter course very soon now, those of us left alive will all be enslaved in one of the Elite’s technocratic (‘smart city’) prisons.
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
After the Crash 