Alt Left: The US Opposes Al Qaeda, Except When We Support Them

In addition to running the Al Qaeda Armies in Libya and Syria to overthrow Qaddafi and Assad, we also run the Al Qaeda Army in Yemen to overthrow the pro-Iran Houthis, in Turkey to support Al Qaeda Syria, and in Iran to overthrow the government. In every one of these places, the Al Qaeda Army is actually the (((Al Qaeda Army))) because they have Israeli support, especially in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Yemen. So it’s not even Al Qaeda. It’s more (((Al Qaeda))).

However, we oppose the Al Qaeda Armies in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, Mozambique, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and the Sahel because in those places, they are attacking our allies.

Any of it make sense? Of course not! The USA sucks. The whole West is basically fascist.

Yes, both of those branches of Al Qaeda are funded and armed in part by the US and also by (((Israel))), (((France))), the UK, (((UAE))), Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. There were intelligence agents from all of those countries literally embedded with Syrian Al Qaeda. We know this due to an interview with a top Al Qaeda leader in a cave by an East German journalist.

10 US intelligence agents were trapped by Assad’s army in Aleppo when his army conquered the city. That’s why the US was freaking out at the end. Assad even published every one of their names, ranks, everything. I think they were actually DIA, but they’re just as bad the CIA. Assad allowed them to be smuggled out. The DIA was involved in faking that (((Sarin gas attack in Damascus))) that never even happened. This was proven by the UN recently.

The DIA was also deeply involved in the rouge Ukrainian warlord oligarch was shot down hat airliner in the Ukraine to frame Russia, which has been covered up by the West ever since, including a fake judgement against Russia by NATO-run Netherlands, complete with literal faked forensic evidence. They scattered parts of what they said were a Buk missile as the site where the plane went down. Actually only one part and we don’t know how they linked it to a Buk.

We have literal eyewitness reports that a rogue element of Ukraine, a governor of a state who acts like a dictator – (((Kolomoisky))) is the culprit.

A lot of the really nasty foreign false flags, etc. are actually run by the DIA because it is US military and they are really good at actual military stuff. The CIA, not so good. Anyway, the DIA takes orders from the CIA. They’re both ratfuck agencies.

For instance, the people involved in recent paramilitary operations in Venezuela were active duty US military, often Marines or especially Special Forces, who are great at doing dirty work. One of these guys was recently caught in Venezuela with maps of oil refineries and huge cache of bomb material. There have been mysterious explosions that took out the entire Venezuelan electrical system that coincided with a US military mission to fascist Brazil (remember I keep telling you we love fascists?).

I am certain that US military – Special Forces or DIA – was involved in those explosions. There are regular sabotage attacks carried out against the oil industry and the electric sector by the Venezuelan opposition (You know, the “democratic” opposition), the same opposition which also tried to assassinate Maduro. Colombia was invoked in that assassination attempt and I know for a fact that the Pentagon was deeply involved.

You understand why I hate it when people say, “Support the troops?” Seriously, fuck the Pentagon. They’re no better now than they were in Vietnam and I came directly out of that protest movement. I walked door to door with my father for the antiwar “Clean Gene” Gene McCarthy antiwar campaign in the Democratic primary in 1968.

Alt Left: Latest on the Proxy War between Israel and Iran: “A War of Intelligence Services”

“A War of Intelligence Services”

Iranian Intelligence Attacked the Israeli Liner in the Gulf of Oman, Killing Three of Her Crew

The attack on the Israeli liner in the Gulf of Oman a while back was not a false flag. A few Iranians had been killed in Syria a couple of weeks before, and this was Iran saying there will be paybacks. So they attacked the Israeli liner and killed three of her men. The attack was conducted from Yemen. I am not sure of the weapon used, possibly drones. I am not sure of a Houthi role. When I asked who did it, my contact with deep connections to the Resistance Axis said, “This is a war of intelligence agencies!” So Iranian intelligence fired that missile from Yemen.

Huge Mysterious Blast on a Ship in UAE Harbor Killed Three Israeli Mossad Agents

I also saw a report in a Hezbollah paper about the mysterious boat blast in the harbor in UAE that was totally blacked out by UAE. 3-4 foreign nationals were killed in that mysterious blast, all Israelis. No state acknowledged this, least of all Israel. Obviously those men were all Mossad. I am assuming they either blew themselves up by accident or Iran killed them with a bomb on the ship.

Iranian Attacks on CIA and Mossad Based in Kurdistan

There are persistent reports out of Iran that Iran has targeted US CIA and Mossad bases in Kurdistan. The Kurds are traitors and they have let the CIA and Mossad set up shop there. The Mossad has had deep connections to the PKK forever. An Iranian drone scored a direct hit on a US CIA base in Erbil. Thing was that that base was top secret. No one knew it was there. There have been one or more strikes on Mossad bases in Kurdistan too. In one attack, the Mossad officer always went to the outhouse at a particular time to do his thing. Like clockwork. At the designated hour, Iran sent a drone over there, blew up the outhouse and killed the officer.

Iranian Intelligence Squad Raids Base in Israel

An Iranian intelligence hit team nailed a Mossad colonel in Israel almost a year ago. An Iranian intelligence squad just raided an Israeli base in Beersheva and made off with blueprints and fancy military hardware. The raid was done in a matter of minutes and they all escaped.

Azerbaijan Working Closely with Israel against Iran

In other news, Azerbaijan has completely whored themselves out to Israel. They were deeply involved in the attacks against the Iranian nuclear scientists.

Everyone knows there is no Iranian nuclear program. So why is everyone so frantic to shut down Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?

Deep Iranian and Hezbollah Connections to Gaza Armed Groups

Also, Iran started replenishing Gaza’s weapons and money very quickly after the war, within 2-3 weeks. I have no idea how they do this so quickly. How did all of those fancy military vehicles get into Gaza? Are there tunnels so large that you can drive trucks through them? Hezbollah was in contact with the Palestinians every hour during the war. They helped them greatly on strategy. Hamas alone may have 40,000 men under arms.

It is not known how much damage those tunnels sustained. I would think they would need bunker busters to destroy underground tunnels, no? Those are the only ground penetrating bombs out there. Hezbollah has been helping the Palestinians make all of these new weapons in Gaza. Almost all of the tech and expertise has come from Iran and Hezbollah.

A Requiem for Arabia’s Jews

A Requiem for Arabia’s Jews

I wish I could tell you who wrote this. It was written by a young Palestinian Lebanese man and posted on Academia. Once anything is posted there, it’s pretty much community property and in the public domain, so I grabbed it and am republishing it here. It required a pretty heavy-duty edit which I just finished. People writing English as a second language are often very hard to edit because their English is being translated from their native tongue.

What sounds fine in our language ends up sounding strange, odd, awkward, or weird in our language. And it’s not always easy to figure out how to fix it up! In a number of cases, the meaning of some particular sentence simply cannot be discerned, and one has to guess at the best possible approximation.

As I was editing this, I came close to closing out the application a number of times, especially towards the end. Each paragraph near the end had its own monstrosities that appeared daunting to say the least. In this edit, I took it upon myself to rephrase some of the less well-constructed phrases with my own style, so you are also reading a bit of Robert Lindsay at the same time you are reading the unknown author.

There is actually a social science that deals with all of this called Translation Studies. It’s not Linguistics per se. I think it’s an off-growth of English and Literature Departments. I haven’t read much of this material, but I imagine they go over everything I wrote above and then some.

Famous books that have been translated multiple times, like The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and especially Remembrance of Things Past by Proust have been the subject of long articles comparing the various translations and trying to figure out which are better and which worse. A similar enterprise has gone on for much longer with the translations of Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey because English speakers have been translating these for a lot longer than the former two. It’s amazing how hard it is to translate good prose from one language to another. It’s an art form.

The author has a point. The expulsion of the Arab Jews was a tragedy not nearly on the level of the expulsion of the Palestinians, but it is still a potent enough crime. The Jews are hypocrites about this, but they’re that way about everything, so no surprise there. They yell about the  expulsion of the Jews, in numbers about the same as the number of Palestinians expelled. Of course, being Jews, they want ample (((compensation))) for their losses, (((with interest))) if you can believe it. The gall of them. What chutzpah. But it figures. Of course they want (((interest))), right?

But the real problem here is the usual (((hypocrisy))). (((Pay))) us for our losses, scream the Jews. Fair enough, perhaps they deserve it, but only in the dollars of the day, not the inflated dollars of today. They lost the value of 1948 dollars, not 2021 dollars, no matter what  they would be worth if they held onto them.

But how about fair play. Oh yeah, Jews don’t play that game! How about paying the Palestinians for all of their losses in 1948 at the hands of the Jews. While there have been proposals to pay off the Palestinians in return for renouncing their beefs, right to return and resist oppression and the crimes committed against them; in other words, pay them off to make the problem go away, these will never fly because of all those nasty strings attached, like giving up your basic human rights. But generally speaking, with the Jews, it’s “Give us back all the stuff you took from us! Oh, about the stuff we took from you? Sorry, pal, you’re SOL!” The usual Jewish bullshit, in other words. For this reason, all the yelling about paying back the poor Mizrachi Jews leaves me a bit cold.

But there is another much more important question and it hinges on the notion that the expulsion of the Arab Jews was such a huge tragedy after all. Because almost 10

It’s another matter for the Palestinians. The Palestinians were also thrown off their lands and got all their stuff taken. But many if not most Palestinians, at least many of those in Gaza and the West Bank anyway, have a desire to go back to the homes they were thrown out of. “I threw you off your land, you went away angry, you’re miserable where  you are now, and you’re desperate to get your land back” is a tragedy of a much greater magnitude than the one of the Arab Jews above.

Of course, bring this up to Jews and you get the usual (((barrage of lawyerly diversion, bluster, threats, and accusations of anti-Semitism))). As far as the latter goes, natch.

“They threaten to beat us to death,” said Yahya Ya’ish and repeated the sentence while he leaned forward to look deep into my eyes. I do not know whether he did so to see if I believed him or to see whether I was credible. I recoiled imperceptibly. I did it to escape his forceful, inquisitive stare as well as his smell – a smell of fear.

We sat in the office of the director of the Yemen Observatory for Human Rights, a leading human rights organization. Yahya Ya’ish brought a joint letter from the few remaining Jews in Rayda, the last Yemeni town with an indigenous Jewish population. The Jews of Rayda requested the human rights center to assist them in obtaining protection against the repeated assaults, harassment, and threats that they have been suffering under for almost a year.

I must admit, now with shame, that I did not quite believe Ya’ish’s story, credible as it sounds. He aroused all my Arab anti-Jewish stereotypes. He looked exactly as a Jew looks in Arabic caricature. He had unkempt black hair with long curly sideburns, dark skin with black unruly beard, a prominent nose, and black, skewed, penetrating eyes.

I do not know if my suspicion was due to deep-seated prejudices derived from a childhood in which Israelis and Jews were one and same in my father’s Palestinian family or whether it was due to some experiences in my school where wild young classmates celebrated the days when the news reported that Israelis were killed.

I know not whether it was also due to deep-seated hatred for all those times when I and my family lived through the Israeli bombings, which often struck indiscriminately at my birth country, Lebanon. My distrust of Yai’sh’s credible report could also have been because I had lost my credulity having heard through the years my share of exaggerated stories of persecution; first from refugees and asylum seekers when I worked as interpreter and later as a human rights activist from Arab dissidents.

Yahya Ya’ish is a descendant of Yemen’s legendary chief rabbi, Ya’ish Bin Yihya, who died two years ago at the age of 81 years and left one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities without spiritual guidance. Along with a few families, he is among the last Jews in Yemen, once a home to one of the Arab world’s oldest and most populous Jewish communities. Now there are only 300 to 400 Jews left in the country.

In 1948 there were 60,000 Jews among the approximately 2.5 million Yemenis. Nearly 48,000 Jews ‘went away’ to Israel in the years just after the establishment of Israel. Today there are approximately 400 Jews out of a population of approximately 22 million Yemenis. Ya’ish told me that he and his family, but especially a cousin, has been subjected to systematic persecution by their fellow citizens in Rayda.

He reported that Rayda’s Jews were being harassed on the streets and threatened with death if they did not convert to Islam or leave the city. Many of the Jews’ neighbors refuse to do commerce with them. Ya’ish’s voice became especially anxious when in his sad tale of the daily humiliation, he recounted his greatest fear -“‘They threaten us to intrude upon our women (yet’aradu li-sharafina).”

During an earlier trip to Rayda in 2007, I noted that Jewish women wore the black abaya covering their bodies from head to toe and were secluded, while the men who sat and chewed qat, an addictive narcotic plant, claimed that according to Jewish law they were allowed, like their Muslim neighbors, to several women at once.

In this traditional culture to molest somebody’s woman is the worst calamity a man can be exposed to. Ya’ish feared,

If they molest our women, we will not be able to control the reactions of the young among us. They know it is not helpful to turn to the authorities. We have tried for years. Instead of providing us protection, they defended their own clansmen. If our young men hit back, it will be the end with us. This will give the Muslims an excuse to beat us all to death.

What Ya’ish feared happened the 11th of December 2008, just a few days after I met him. Moshe Ya’ish bin Yahya, brother of the Rabbi Ya’ish Yahya bin Yahya and a relative of Ya’ish, was murdered in cold blood in bright daylight in the middle of the street (Amnesty International, 19.12.2008).

The perpetrator of the heinous crime was a pilot in the army. In the court, which was filled with members of his tribe, he admitted without repentance to his action and added,

I had written and warned the Jews in Rayda several times before. I have warned them that they must either convert to Islam, leave the country, or I kill them.  (Daily Star, 23.12.2008).

He refused to accept the claim made by his advocates appointed the state that he is insane. He cried in court, “You are helping the Jews against me’.

The Rayda attack in itself does constitute something unique. Racist violence occurs everywhere. What makes the incident special is the Yemeni government’s response. In the wake of the attacks, President Ali Abdallah Saleh, the ruler of the country since 1978, declared in a magnanimous gesture designed to impress Yemen’s Western donors that he will take Rayda’s Jews under his personal protection but in the capital Sanaa, not in their city.

President Saleh’s apparent rescue of the Jews is anything but an expression of the Arab leader’s generosity. When Rayda’s Jews endured systematic harassment which occurred with the authorities’ knowledge and participation and refused to travel to Sanaa or out of the country to the United States and Israel like most other Jews have felt compelled to do in the last 50 years, it was not because they were patriotic heroes more connected than others to their Yemeni homeland.

Rayda’s Jews held out because they wanted to keep their houses, land, and other possessions. Apart from their own possessions, many of the remaining Jews purchased, acquired, or inherited the property of those Jews who had left. The Jews, who ‘went away’, nourished a hope that the remaining family members might be able to sell their possessions without a huge loss of their value, as usually happens when a population is driven away. This means that the remaining Jews, as Ya’ish informed me, are making a stand for the land and houses belonging to the rest of the Jewish community.

The persecution of the Jews of Rayda is also motivated to some extent, according Ya’ish’s report, by their neighbors’ hope to ‘inherit’ their property once they flee the country. It is a known phenomenon from similar cleansings of Jews in both Europe and the Arab world and for that matter from Israel’s expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. Ya’ish reported clearly, “If the state or anyone else buys our lands and houses at a reasonable price, we will not stay a single day longer in Yemen.”

By ordering the Jews moved under his own direct protection to Sana’a, President Saleh made himself guilty of the Jews’ persecution and not their rescue. President Saleh was aware of it. He made the same grandiose gesture when in 2005 another Jewish community was driven away from their home town in Sa’ada, located in the northern part of Yemen’s mountains.

Sa’ada had been ravaged by a civil war between a Shiite splinter group inspired by Iran and Hezbollah, called the Houthi, who let their rebellious anger transfer to Saada’s unarmed Jews. The Houthi rebels claimed that the Jews committed fornication and alcoholic orgies in Sa’ada, the most backward and traditionalist region of the country! Sa’ada’s Jews were moved into a ‘tourist town’ in the capital. Of the several hundred Jews who were moved from Sa’ada to Sana’a to become the President’s special guests, there are now fewer than 250 Jews left.

When President Saleh allowed the Sa’ada Jews to be driven away from their home town which they inhabited in 3000 years, he caused them to be driven from their houses, land, and trades without a guarantee of return and when his only gesture was to house them in of a fenced residential camp two miles from Sana’a Airport, it was an indirect way of throwing them out of the country.

Rayda’s Jews will face in the same dilemma as the tourist town’s Jews. Should they choose to continue to live in a fenced housing for soldiers, which requires a special permit from the Interior Department for foreign visitors to enter at the only entrance, without a glimmer of hope of returning to their homes or receiving compensation from the state for their lost property, or should they instead join their compatriots in the U.S. and Israel and emigrate forever from Yemen?

The result either way will be to exorcise the Yemeni Jews in all practical respects. The few Jewish families left soon found will soon find their way to the airport. With only a few Jews left as in Lebanon, Iraq, or Egypt, there will no longer be any real Jewish life left in Yemen. It will be a sad, unnoticed, and unrecognized end of a thousand-year-old residence that created a wealth of culture such that Yemen became one of the major lands in Jewish history in terms of importance.

With the exorcism of Yemen’s Jews will come the sad end of one of the Arab World’s most shameful chapters: the tacit, planned, and decades-long ethnic cleansing of the Arab Jews. This particular end of the chapter is particularly shameful because it did not happen under the exceptional conditions of war and sectarian conflict that characterized the previous expulsions. These conditions were used by Arab governments to show how they could not prevent the expulsions for fear of stoking the wrath of the enraged population.

The exorcism of the Arab Jews was not caused only by the wars between Israel and the Arab states. Ask around the Arab World about what happened to the Jews of that country. “The Jews went away,” they will say vaguely. True enough, many Arab Jews left due to Zionist propaganda and many were driven out by terrorism committed by Israel such as the grenade attacks on Jews in Iraq and the bombing of Jewish targets by Israel in Egypt in 1949-1950.

In part, Jews left because for centuries they were treated as dhimmis, second class people under Sharia, or Islamic law, for centuries, although this ended for the most par a century ago with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Most left as a direct result of the wars, when mass hysteria and suspicion of the Jews as an Israeli fifth column swept the Arab lands. Sadly, this view of Jews as traitors to the homeland was stirred up by Arab rulers to distract the population from their humiliating defeat by the Jews in the newborn Jewish state of Israel that arose from the ruins of Arab Palestine.

Palestinians were driven away by the Jews too. 700,000 Christian and Muslim Palestinians were driven away by the Israeli forces in 1947-48. The Israeli exorcism of the Palestinians was matched by a concurrent exorcism of almost as many Jews from the Arab lands, with the proviso that the Jewish exodus occurred more gradually over a period of 50 years.

The Jewish communities of the Arab World, which for had developed complex and fascinating cultures in the lands of their birth in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, were were for the most part dissolved. By driving away the Jews, the Arabs not only hurt their own communities, but they also played into the propaganda of Zionism that said that Jews could only be safe in Israel. Israel needed mass Arab Jewish immigration to achieve universal legitimacy, in part to rid the land of its reputation as a homeland for European Ashkenazim only.

But what about the exorcism that continued after the 1948 war? What about the Arab governments’ passive or active involvement in this exodus to drive the Jews from their lands? And perhaps worst of all, what of the silence of Arab historians and intellectuals about the tragic loss of a millennia-old Jewish residence in their lands, where a huge population of 900,000 Arab Jews lost over 9

How can I as a Palestinian reconcile the expulsion of my parents during Israel’s ethnic cleansing when one million Palestinians remain peacefully in Israel with the expulsion of 900,000 Arab Jews, where only 6,500 Jews are left to live among 300 million Arabs?

In Israel, there arose a school history that obfuscated if not outright denied the Zionists’ exorcism of Palestinians in 1948, and there have always been brave Israeli intellectuals who have spoken in favor of the Palestinian cause and condemned the Israeli government’s crimes against human rights. But how is it that Arab intellectuals can pour so much condemnation on Palestinian exorcism in poetry, prose, and film, while allowing the concomitant tragedy of the exorcism of the Arab World’s Jews – a wound to the the heart of the Arab psyche and the world’s consciousness – to pass with nary a mention?

What do they expressions of solidarity that Arab intellectuals and masses have been trained practitioners of when it they are only practiced in solidarity with themselves? Is there only one possible solidarity for the Arabs, that of the aggression by the Satans, the U.S. and Israel? Strange how mention of the two unites so many Arabs and gets them shouting spiritually superior cries against the residue left and sets off so much flag burning by angry gangs of Arabs in the streets of the Middle East.

Why should massive protests against U.S. and Israeli aggression close London and Tehran, Paris and Cairo, Rome and and Istanbul, while not a word is heard about genocide in Darfur or starvation in Zimbabwe?

When were there were more than a few pre-cooled saved souls protesting in European cities against Burma’s inhuman regime, systematic persecution of gays in Iran, and the systematic oppression of women in Saudi Arabia? Or Arab compassion selective, as in: “My pain is the greatest, my enemy the worst, and my crime the least”

Ancient Arabs believed that poets should celebrate their own particular culture, whether their people were “ashamed or proud, peaceful or aggressive, radical or conformist,” and they should also celebrate the surrounding cultures, even if they were neither noble nor courageous. Arab spokesmen of old performed their role well and produced some of the world’s most beautiful poems.

But modern Arab spokesmen have a different responsibility than celebrating their own strains and opponents. They should in their books, articles, and movies hold up a mirror which reflects both the good and bad in Arab life and history. With few exceptions, such as Hazem Saghieh, Wadah Sherara, George Tarabishi and Sadek al-Azem, most Arab intellectuals fail at this brave task.

But even these courageous intellectuals never commented on the tragedy of the exorcism of the Arab Jews. Until the Arabs get their Orhan Pamuk or their Avi Shlaim, one who tells the hard truths, convenient or not, they will continue to reside in the dishonest half of the universe.

A showdown with the Arabs’ most shameful aspects of their history will help to reconcile them with themselves and possibly with their neighbors, and may help to preserve what is left of religious and ethnic diversity in their countries. Only by coming to terms with their own expulsion of the Jews from the Arab lands will the Arabs avoid reliving the failure, oppression and and resulting revenge on the innocent to correct their own errors. Until then they must live with the shame of silence.

Alt Left: An Overview of the Recent Israel-Gaza War

I have contacts very close to the whole Resistance Bloc  and I can tell you flat out that a lot of the material published by corporate media is just false. I know people close to Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, the Iraqi militias, and the Iranian and Iraqi governments. They’re journalists with great access.

During this war, rockets were shot from Lebanon. The corporate media began insisting that the rockets had been fired by Hezbollah. First of all, Hezbollah did not shoot any rockets out of Lebanon. They wanted to stay out of this fight. Also, Hamas themselves did not want Hezbollah to join in.

Instead, Hamas asked permission from Hezbollah to launch rockets, mortars, etc. from Lebanon. Hamas has many activists in Southern Lebanon, probably associated with the refugee camps. The request was  granted. Five rockets were launched. They were all Grad missiles! As they were Grads, they probably came from Syria. A couple of rockets were fired from Syria days ago. I don’t know who did it, but it wasn’t the government.

The point here is very important. Assad gave those missiles to Hamas in Lebanon to shoot at Lebanon. And he probably gave whoever shot those missiles from Syria at Israel permission. This is very important. What this means is that Assad was getting his revenge for years of attacks against his army in Syria. This war was also used by Iran to get revenge on Israel, often via Syria, for all of the attacks Israel has made against Iran recently. Iran and Syria used this Hamas war to get their revenge on Israel.

In an important sense, every one of those 4,400 rockets came from Syria, and to an even greater extent, Iran. You would think this would be a great line for the corporate media to play on, but they completely missed it as did the US and Israeli governments. This war was really Iran (and to a lesser extent) Syria versus Israel. Of course the Palestinian role was essential  also and they were a major source of the combatants, but to overlook the vengeance Iran and Syria got out of this war is a huge mistake.

A drone was at first thought to be launched from Jordan and shot down over Israel. Later examination showed it had been launched from Iraq by the Shia militias parts of the Iraqi Army.

Vast crowds massed at the Jordanian border trying to cross into Israel. Police held them back but the Jordanian police were completely in favor of the demonstrators. It’s false to say that Jordan is pro-Israel. Sure, the government is but that’s because it’s a dictatorship. If they had elections there, a vehemently anti-Israel government would be voted in very fast. 6

Three infiltrators got in. These are just local Palestinian Jordanians try to sneak in to Israel. They all say they want to go to Jerusalem. I know that one Palestinian in Jordan somehow made it to Gaza and was very happy that he had returned to Palestine. He was killed in the war, but he had gained his wish and he died happy.

Also, Hamas reported that one of their suicide submarines bombed a gas platform off the coast. A platform off of Haifa caught fire. Israel said the cause was an accidental explosion, but we still don’t know yet if it was hit by one of these suicide subs. Israeli Shin Bet intelligence somehow knew nothing about this submarine, so their intel is not as good as you think.

Mossad does not work in Gaza, as Israel considers Gaza part of Israel and Shin Bet is the intelligence force for Israel proper. Mossad only works overseas in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar, Iraq, and UAE.

A missile that hit a building in Beersheba killed 2 civilians and wounded 15 more. The building was a small factory that employed overseas workers.  That must have been a big missile that hit that building, considering the damage it did.

In the course of a single day, there were eight IDF troops wounded, two seriously, in the Gaza Belt or Gaza Envelope. In Kissifum, an IDF helicopter crashed. possibly hit by a rocket. At Nahal Oz, several soldiers were wounded, probably by a mortar barrage. The helicopter that crashed was coming to evacuate the wounded soldiers. These mortar barrages were being launched by a number of groups, not just Hamas.

The DFLP and PFLP, two explicitly Marxist or leftwing groups, were launching quite a few rockets and mortars, mostly shorter range. Hamas and Islamic Jihad seem to have the long range missiles and rockets. Surprisingly, the DFLP and especially the PFLP are very popular in Gaza, which is interesting as they are both basically Communists.

The Salah al Din Brigades are (Popular Resistance Committees) Fatah rejectionists. Fatah, the armed wing of the PLO, gave up armed struggle and surrendered to Israel. However, many members of Fatah rejected this surrender and split off to form their own groups. The Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, especially large in the West Bank, was the largest of these. AAMB is explicitly secular.

The Popular Resistance Committees were groups of Fatah rejectionists in Gaza. The Salah al Din Brigades is their armed faction. They tend to be more Islamist than Fatah proper. They have quite a bit of weaponry and fired a lot of rockets and mortars in this war, mostly short-range. SADB is the third largest group in Gaza after Hamas (13,000 members) and Islamic Jihad (7,000 members).

A new group called Palestinian Mujahedin or PM is ideologically close to Islamic Jihad Hamas. They also shot some missiles. This is one of the smaller groups in Gaza.

The PFLP-GC is a secular group founded by Ahmad Jibril that is secular. They are very close to Syria almost to the point of being Syrian-controlled. They have a fair amount of support in Gaza but they do not have a large force or arsenal.

The “resistance” in Gaza actually consists of 17 different groups. One is a Hamas cutout, then there are DFLP, PFLP, PFLP-GC, SADB, AAMB, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PM. I was only able to find names for nine of them. Most of the rest seem to be Fatah rejectionists, secular.

They all work together, Communist atheists right alongside Hamas and Islamic Jihad Islamists.

This whole war was cynically started by Netanyahu in order to stay out of jail, and it worked. He’d been stoking the flames for these wars since he came into office in 2009. Really most of the Israeli public is aligned with either Netanyahu’s Likud Party or similar parties like the one Bennett is a member of that are just as bad if not worse. The Israeli Left, including the Labor Party, has basically collapsed.

The uprising among Israeli Arabs in Israel proper was an utter catastrophe for Israel. Netanyahu said it was a worse problem than the rockets from Gaza.

The whole Arab population of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza was in open revolt along with large sections of Arabs in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. There was also a huge outcry in Pakistan.

This was due to a accumulation mostly of 11 years of Likudism and worse. This is where it led. There were huge riots in Jerusalem. Entire Arab cities all across Israel shut down one day for a general strike. Gangs of Arabs rioted all across Israel and in the north, they were even gathered along major highways where they threw rocks. It was dangerous to go anywhere in Israel during this war. In the first week of the war, 1,000 arrests of Israeli Arabs were made, 500 for attempted murder. So 500 Israeli Arabs, basically an army, all tried to kill Jews in the last week. Disastrous!

Of course Hamas decided to attack. Neither they nor any of the rest of the Resistance takes orders from Iran. The corporate media is wrong about that. They go to Iran if they want to do attacks, and Iran gives them a list of attacks that they might do that Iran would be ok with. Then they can do them. For really crazy attacks, they have to get ok’d by Iran first, and they get shot down a lot. If they do decide to do an attack, Iran may help plan and carry it out.

Iran helped plan that Houthi attack on Aramco. Also there are Iranian and Hezbollah advisors in the Houthis. The Houthis are just the former Yemeni Army, and they have huge factories, mostly underground, where they are churning out all these drones and missiles. They use Iranian prototypes and then modify them from there. Iran and Hezbollah, especially Hez, help them make the drones and missiles.

The “Iraqi militias” are just the Iraqi Army! They are not attacking the US directly usually. Instead, member of those militias take leave and go off on their own and form little resistance groups and moonlight as guerrillas while being soldiers the rest of the time. The militias have plausible deniability, as they are not doing or planning the attacks. However, anyone in Iraq who tried to crack down on those resistance groups would be stopped. You can’t. They’re too popular and wield too much power. No one can go against them.

Also, these grouplets contain moonlighting Iraqi Army from outside the militias people and Federal Police members. Munitions are probably Iraqi Army stuff.

Hezbollah was in contact with Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Lebanon every hour since this started. Later, we heard that Hezbollah used drones to help the Gaza resistance avoid Israeli attacks. I have also heard that much of the tunnel infrastructure is intact. Most of it is 90 feet underground and as such, it is going to be very hard to for conventional bombs to get at those tunnels. They will either require a ground invasion or the use of mini-nukes to take them out.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad make their own stuff now in underground factories. Some is Iranian smuggled in. It is very easy for Iranian weaponry to get into Gaza. Only a week after a war, Iran was already busy resupplying the Palestinians with money and weapons.

Once again as with Ansar Allah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad use Iranian prototypes and then make local knockoffs. Iran and Hezbollah help them a lot in these underground factories to make these munitions, and they helped, especially Hezbollah, helped build the tunnels.

The decision to launch this attack was Hamas’ alone. But once it started Iran and Hez gave them moral support.

The Palestinians have their own agenda so they did not launch this war for Syria and Iran, but in a way this is a multiple front war. Israel was attacked from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Gaza and the West Bank was in open rebellion with a number of towns in the West Bank becoming “liberated zones” by Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, normally quiescent but now resurrected and the main force in the West Bank. They’re secular.

During the war, there were many attacks every day in the West Bank: 5-10 shooting,, 1-2 attempted or completed ramming or stabbing, ~20 firebomb, and 80 fireworks! Some Israeli soldiers are even fled the front briefly. They felt under siege. A checkpoint was abandoned by fleeing troops and briefly taken over by AAMB.

Also all of these rockets and missiles that everyone has all come from Iran in one way or another. Even the weapons that the Commie groups have. The AA weapons, antitank guns and automatic weapons are all Iranian. Some is smuggled in. The smuggling route goes from:

Iran -> Sudan -> Egypt -> Sinai -> tunnels -> Gaza.

Alt Left: Rural Land Reforms: An Overview

What’s odd is that imperialism went along with land reforms in a lot of other places such as Europe and the Middle East. All of the Middle East has done a land reform.

That was one thing the wave of Arab nationalist leaders who came to power in 1950-1970 did right away, including the Baath in Iraq and Syria, Yemen, Nasser in Egypt, the FLN in Algeria, Tunisia, and Qaddafi in Libya.

I believe there was some type of land reform done in Palestine too. If you read Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian Leftist, in the 1930’s, he talked about how terribly exploited the Arab fellahin or peasants were in Palestine.

If you went to Yemen in the 1960’s, there was a portrait of Nasser in every house.

I’m not sure if a land reform was ever done in Morocco. It’s been ruled by a fairly rightwing king for a long time.

A land reform was probably done in Lebanon, but I don’t have details. Likewise with Jordan.

Nothing grows in the Gulf anyway, so there’s no need for a reform.

I’m not sure about Sudan or Mauritania, but I doubt much grows in Mauritania except date palms.

In all of these places, land reform was a very easy sell for whatever reason, probably because neoliberal capitalism seems to be antithetical to Islam itself. The feudal lords of the former Ottoman Empire had tried to justify feudalism on the basis that in the Koran it says something like, “Some are rich and some are poor, and this is a natural thing” but that never went over too well.

The idea that in an Islamic country, the rich Muslims were viciously exploit the poor Muslims is nearly haram on its face. You just can’t do that. All Muslims are part of the ummah. All the Muslim men are your brothers and all the Muslim women are your sisters. Also individualism never made it to any part of the Muslim World other than the Hindu variety in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that’s not really the same radical individualism that we have in the West. It’s just an ancient caste based system.

The first thing the Communists did in Eastern Europe was to do a land reform. You will never hear it here in the West, but until 1960, the Communist regimes in the East were very popular with industrial workers and also with the peasants.

In most of the world, peasants and rural dwellers are leftwingers. This is even the case in Western Europe in France.

The US is odd in that it’s farmers are so reactionary. That goes against the usual trend.

Yes, farmers are said to be conservatives, but that usually just means social conservatism. In most of the world, peasants are literally Alt Left: left on economics and right on social and cultural issues.

A land reform was definitely done in Iran.

Obviously one was done in the USSR, and the large landowners have not yet consolidated themselves in the former USSR, mostly because everybody hates them. Large landowners have taken over some of the state farms in Russia, but for whatever reason, they are not very productive. In fact, many of the state farms are still in existence. I am not sure what sort of arrangement they have now.

5

After World War 2, the US supported land reforms in some places as a way of heading off a Communist threat. This is one great thing about the Communists. So many great steps of social progress were only done out of fear or terror that if these were not done, the Communists would take over. Now that that threat is gone, one wonders what motivation the oligarchs have to give up anything.

In particular, land reforms were done in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They went over very easily. And in fact, the subsequent economic growth occurred right on the back of these reforms. There is a good argument that you can never develop a proper economy without first doing a land reform.

First of all, you need to get rid of the problem of rural poverty.

Second of all, you need to feed your own people. Large landowners in these countries typically grow food for export or simply fallow the land and keep it as an income base or a source of wealth.

When crops are grown for export, there is a problem in that the nation does not grow enough food to feed its people. This is a problem in Cuba and Venezuela right now, and it should not be. These are very fertile countries and there is no need to import food, but they have gotten hooked on some sort of “crack” of importing their food for whatever reason, possibly because most of their farmland was being used to grow crops for export.

When a nation can feed itself, this means it can feed its urban workers. This is extremely important and it is part of the reason that Stalin went at such breakneck speed in his collectivization. He had to feed his urban workers so he could industrialize because even back then, he was looking into the future and seeing that he was going to have to fight Hitler.

I’m not quite sure why, but no country seems to be able to properly industrialize and develop as long as the problem of rural poverty exists.

And once you are feeding your own people, you have solved a lot of other problems. Money that would be wasted importing inferior food from the West, especially the US, can now be spent on actual development of a national economy. The elimination of rural poverty gets rid of a constant revolutionary bur in the side of the state.

The US has always opposed land reform in Latin America because large US corporations are usually involved in growing foods for export down there. See Dole Pineapple in Guatemala. We want all of their agricultural land to go for export crops so US corporations can grow those crops or make money importing them. And we do not want them to grow their own food. That way there won’t be so much land for export crops which we need to make money off of.

Also, we want them to spend all of their food money importing lousy processed food from the US. So we make money on food both ways – importing food from crops grown for export to the US and in exporting processed food to the Latin America. This processed food is not very good for you and it is implicated in a lot of health problems in these places.

This is why the US opposes most efforts at land reform in the Americas.

An exception was made in El Salvador. After 200,000 people died, the US and the Salvadoran oligarchs were forced to the negotiating table and a land reform was one of the first things they pushed. I recall a piece written soon afterwards where the reporter went out to the rural areas and interviewed recipients of the land reform. They basically said, “Well, at least we can eat now. It wasn’t like that before.”

In semi-feudal countries, there is debt bondage whereby large landowners rent out their land to sharecroppers or peasants who never seem to get out of debt. This is a very primitive form of development.

The Philippines is notable that there has never been a land reform. And of course they have a vicious Communist insurgency.

Nor has there been one in Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras, or Argentina. The first five countries are horribly screwed up. Colombia and Paraguay have active armed leftwing guerrillas, and Guatemala did for many years. Haiti is a disaster. Honduras has a vicious rightwing dictatorship that has murdered over 1,000 people.

Argentina is mostly urbanized, but the landed rural elite still runs the country. Any talk at all of land reform or even taxation of large estates as was done recently under Christine Fernandez, and the ruling class starts making ominous threats of a coup. I assume something similar is going on in Uruguay. Those countries are urbanized though, so large landownership is not such a problem.

I’m not sure if there has ever been a land reform in Brazil, but there is no dearth of large landowners.

The fact that Colombia, Guatemala, and Haiti are so backwards is largely because there has never been a land reform.

The land reform was incomplete in Venezuela.

It is interesting that every country that fails to do a land reform seems to end up with a Communist or Leftist insurgency at some point or another. It’s almost without fail. This goes to show you that most Communist insurgencies in the Third World are over the most basic things dating all the way back to French Revolution: land and bread (food).

As far as land reforms go, they were done in Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru.

I’m not sure about Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Jamaica, Belize, the Guyanas, Chile, and most of the Caribbean.

And I’m not sure if one ever got done in the Dominican Republic after Bosch.

In El Salvador, 200,000 had to die in order for a land reform to take place. Roberto D’Aubission, the godfather of the Salvadoran death squads and the most favored visitor at the US Embassy, once said that “We will have to kill 200,000 people in order to prevent socialism in El Salvador.” What he meant by socialism was land reform.

It is notable that no land reform was ever done in India, nor in Pakistan or even Bangladesh. I had a friend whose parents were large feudal landowners in Pakistan who rented out land to farmers who ended up in debt peonage. In 1986, 14 million people a year were dying of starvation related diseases in the capitalist world. Most of that was in South Asia in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Most of these deaths were attributed to the problem of the private ownership of land.

There is a problem with the private ownership of land. In the US, we think this is sacrosanct, but on a worldwide basis, it doesn’t work very well. What do you need all that land for? What do you need more than, say, an acre and a house? Nothing, unless you are a farmer.

In China, all land is owned by the state. All homeowners lease the land, often on 100 year leases. I’m not sure how it works in the countryside.

In Mexico, much of the land is owned by the state also, a product of the land reform that occurred after the Revolution. One of the major demands of the Revolution was land reform. Pre-revolution, most peasants usually lived like serfs. The state land in Mexico is called ejidos.

If you ever can’t make it in the city, if you become unemployed or homeless, you can always go out to the countryside and take up residence in an ejido, which are something like communal lands that are formed by the group that makes up the ejido. You join this group, work the land, and get a share of the crop. At least you have enough food to eat. So in Mexico the ejidos are a stopgap measure.

In China too, if you can’t make it in the city, you can always go back to the rural areas, take up residence, and work the land. At least you will have enough to food to eat. It is illegal to be homeless in China. If you are homeless, the police pick you up and put you in shelters, which are something like college dorms. They also encourage you to go back to the countryside if you have relatives back there. In recent years, many people have moved from the countryside to the cities to make more money. Those that don’t make it can always move back to the farm.

There was debate a while back about privatizing state land, but it ran aground on the idea that the state ownership of land was necessary as a stopgap measure in the event of urban poverty. In addition, state ownership of land has prevented the development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been adamant that the  development of a national oligarchy or plutocracy must be prevented at all costs. Once they develop, they are sort of like an infection in that they soon spread and take over society. The CCP has billionaire party members who are members of the People’s Assembly.

Guess what these “Communists” are advocating for? Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy. I think this goes to show you that billionaires are the same everywhere. Whether in a Communist or capitalist country, a rightwing or leftwing country, billionaires always have precisely the same class interests that barely vary at all. It’s usually something like this:

Reduction or elimination of taxes on the rich, massive reductions in social spending, state repression of labor, and the privatization of land along with most of the rest of the economy.

This goes to show that class interests of various classes are nearly a  law in a mathematical sense and not even a theory of social science. This was what Marx was getting at when he spoke of the laws of economics. They are so predictable that we can almost class them with the laws, theorems, and corollaries of mathematics instead of the typical “true for now” theories of most of the sciences.

I have a feeling that a Hell of a lot more things are laws, too, especially in terms of basic human behavior. So many of these things seem almost unchangeable. Of course they would never apply to everyone, but it’s pretty obvious that they are general tendencies.

Alt Left: Yemen, Houthis, Sunni, and Shia

The Houthis are very misunderstood. They’re not really “Shia” or “Iranians” or any of that crap. They’re not even really Shia. Ansar Allah, the army of the Houthis, is simply the former Yemeni Army. Probably 8

There’s barely any difference between Shia and Sunni in Yemen anyway. The Yemeni Shia practice an odd form of Shiism that is very close to Sunnism. Yemeni Shiism only differs from Yemeni Sunnism in only one or two issues of doctrine.

The Houthis themselves are not even necessarily Shia. Most Houthis say they are Shia, but some say they are Sunnis, and a few say they are both Shia and Sunni.

A Yemeni friend of mine told me that before 2014, there was no such thing as Sunni and Shia in Yemen. They were all just Muslims. But Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and Sudan all went to war against the Houthis, who overthrew the government in a very popular revolution. They also imported Al Qaeda and especially ISIS and for the first time in forever, the Sunni/Shia distinction became highlighted because these genocidal religious bigots decided to make a big deal of it. But it goes against Yemeni history.

In case you are interested, the ousted president was a Houthi, too. As was the previous President who was also ousted. But he was a pro-Saudi Houthi, and that makes all the difference. Ansar Allah are anti-Saudi Houthis. The Houthis ran Yemen for hundreds of years with no problems at all. For most of the last millennium, the Houthis ran Yemen. They’re the ones who know how to run the country. It’s not so much that your average Yemeni Sunni cares anything about the Houthi and the Shia of Yemen. On the other hand, they do have the usual Sunni Arab paranoia of Iran.

The war against the Houthis was really just another Saudi-UAE “Kill the Shia” war driven by Sunni Arabs’ utterly insane hatred and paranoia of Iran.

Alt Left: Sunni Hatred and Paranoia of the Shia and Iran: One of the Stupidest Forms of Bigotry On Earth

Almost all Sunni morons, even Pakistanis, believe that Iran wants to control the Middle East. The extreme versions say Iran wants to conquer all of the Sunni Arabs and rule over them. Almost all Sunni Arabs actually believe this crap. This thinking is especially prominent in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf (except possibly Qatar), Lebanon, to some extent in Jordan, and Egypt and Sudan to a somewhat weak extent.

Further west in Africa, the Sunnis do not give two shits about Iran. Nor do the rest of the African Sunnis. Nor do they Turks although they hate and persecute their own Shia. Nor do the Muslims of the Caucasus, Russia, and the Stans. In Afghanistan it is particularly stupid because Afghanistan is largely Iranic culturally and even linguistically, particularly in the West. Some of the bigger warlords such as Ismail Khan over there in the west in Herat were actually openly pro-Iran.

Shias are persecuted pretty brutally in Pakistan. Sunni Salafists regularly attack their rallies with suicide bombers, killing many people. The jihadi group LET, which fights in Kashmir, is viciously anti-Shia.

No one quite knows where this comes from but it seems that anyplace where there are lots of Shia, they Shia are hated by the Sunnis.

They are persecuted by Sunni majorities in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but not in Yemen or Syria, although there are vicious anti-Shia groups there. Sunni minorities in Lebanon and Iran and particularly in Iraq are very anti-Shia. However, the Iranian Sunnis are not treated right at all, although they have 28,000 mosques in Iran. W

hen you get over to North Africa, there are just not any Shia to hate. What’s a Shia? That’s what the North African says.

Palestinians were typically anti-Shia and especially anti-Iran historically because Arab nationalist idiots hate Iran for no good reason, as I elaborated above. Hamas caused a lot of controversy in Palestine for being so close to Iran since they were Sunnis, but they are not stupid. Recently they supported the Sunni Syrian opposition, which enraged the Syrian government. At the same time, Palestinians in Syria formed pro-government militias and fought on the side of the government, though a few went over to the jihadi opposition.

ISIS took over a large Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus for a time and the Palestinians were smeared as ISIS supporters because of this. But most Palestinians in that camp disliked ISIS. The camp is called Yarmouk, and is one of the worst hellholes in Syria. I think there may be delays in rebuilding because of government suspicion that residents sided with ISIS. So Hamas was aligned with Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, the Houthis, the Iraqi Shia, and Iran, and then like complete tools they let their bigotry get the best of them and supported the Sunni jihadis in Syria. However, Syria and Hamas have patched up their relationship.

This is especially odd considering how poorly the Shia have been treated. Before the rise of Hezbollah, the Sunnis in Lebanon would not let the Shia work at any job more respectable than a trash collector. They were like Dalits in India. Imagine that you were in the Jim Crow South and the Whites were all possessed by paranoid fantasies that the Blacks were going to declare war on the Whites, conquer them and rule over the Whites, treating them as inferiors. Crazy, right? This is how Sunnis feel about Iran. They’re all nutcases. It’s also projection, see?

But the Palestinians have become very pro-Iran these days since only Iran has stepped up to the plate to support the Palestinians and only the Shia are supporting the Palestinians at all. The Sunni Arabs would much rather kill the Shia than fight Israel, though the latter obviously is more important and the former has no importance at all.

The only significant help the Palestinians are getting is from the Shia Houthis in Yemen, the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, a Shia-led regime in a majority Sunni country, Shia Iran, and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq that are now formally part of the Iraqi Army itself.

They have gotten help from Jordanians who massed at the border and tried to break through, but those were probably mostly Palestinian refugees, as they make up 7

It is true that large majorities in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, and Qatar support the Palestinians, and there is also a lot of support for them in Turkey and Pakistan. These supporters are mostly Sunnis. But the average person does not rule in the Arab World and dictatorships are the rule. It is these dictatorships that have been selling out and making peace with Israel lately, the most outrageous of which has been the UAE, which has apparently gone full Zionist. They’re simply traitors.

However, the Saudis and Emiratis have brainwashed their populations, which used to strongly support the Palestinians but who know repeat the programmed lie that “the Palestinians are not our problem.

A while back, mobs stormed the Israeli border with Syria in the Golan and quite a few of them were killed. These were probably mostly Sunni Syrians though there may have been a lot of Palestinian refugees among them, as there are quite a few in Syria.

There was some anti-Shia sentiment when Islamic Jihad was formed because this Sunni group took inspiration from the Iranian revolution.

There was a rumor that the original Sunni leader converted to Shiism and this caused something of a scandal. The Sunnis are all absolutely terrified that Iran is going to conquer and dominate them and in the process force them to convert to Shiism. The truth is almost zero Sunnis ever convert to Shiism.

Shiism is simply not a proselytizing religion, whereas Sunnism is. One of the main complaints of the Houthis was that Saudi Arabia was sponsoring Wahhabi preachers to come into the north of Yemen and convert the Shia to Sunni Wahhabism. This roused up quite a bit of anger amid the Shia and it was a major reason for the Houthi Revolution. Once again you can see that Sunnis are projecting with their terror of the Shia forcibly converting them to Shiism.

Hamas has aligned very closely with Iran, but so have the Salah-al-Din Brigades, the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades rejectionists who took up arms in various formations, and the PFLP. I have heard that there is a portrait of Soleimani in every home in Gaza.

Alt Left: If Iran Is Broke, How Can They Afford to Support All of These Resistance Groups

Rambo: How is Iran supposed to be giving all of this military and economic aid to different countries if they’re supposedly so broke because of sanctions against them? The media never asks that question. I’ve always wondered that. Supposedly they’re supposed to have been crippled by sanctions, so where is all this spare cash coming from? Something’s fishy.

They have the money. It doesn’t take a whole lot. Who are they supporting? Hezbollah. The Palestinians. The Houthis. That’s all very much affordable for them. All of those groups have their own income streams, banks, businesses, you name it, they’ve got it. The Houthis have all the weapons left over from the Yemeni Army because Ansar Allah is nothing but the former Yemeni Army.

Hezbollah has extensive underground arms factories and they make most of their own weapons. Hamas also has large factories that manufacture weapons and Islamic Jihad and the Salah-al-Din Brigades also have their own factories. The Houthis are now running large factories where they are making their own rockets, missiles, and drones. Hezbollah factories also manufacture these things. Hamas factories also make drones, mortars, rockets, missiles, and even submarines!

All of these factories – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi in Yemen, are underground, often deep underground. They’re pretty much untouchable short of a ground operation.

Anyway, in Iran, military spending comes first. I don’t know that they are spending much money in Syria or Iraq. There’s not much to spend on over there. They’re helping Assad, but they aren’t really in Iraq at all despite what you hear.

This military assistance to the Resistance takes precedence over everything. Also they’re not broke. They’ve been exporting lots of oil and oil products and nobody seems to be stopping them. It’s not like Venezuela where they can hardly import anything. Whatever sanctions there are on Iran are not nearly as bad as the ones on Venezuela.

There’s nothing fishy. Iran is a large country that has a big economy and quite a bit of money on hand like all big countries. They are already flooding Gaza with cash and weapons to replenish what was lost and rebuild what was destroyed.

On the other hand, the spending abroad is starting to get a bit controversial and the Iranian opposition has taken advantage of that. But the opposition rioters are only ~1

 

Alt Left: Yes, There is Little Classism in Muslim Countries (Because It’s Against Islam)

James Schipper: Was it really very different (highly classist) in Islam?

Yes, Islamic countries are just not like that.

I can’t think of any Arab country that is like that.

No North African country is like that.

Neither Malaysia nor Afghanistan nor the Caucasus nor Xinjiang nor the Stans is not like that. However, Afghanistan was feudal or semi-feudal until recently. That’s why Communism was fairly popular there. An outsider went there in the 1950’s, and he saw groups of young men chanting with their fists in the air, “Kill the rich!” I suppose the Communist revolution did a land reform and got rid of this feudal land tenure system.

Communism was an easy sell in Bosnia and Albania, but Islam is weak there.

Corruption is a bad problem in the Arab World and a rich elite bled Lebanon dry for decades, but they are widely hated, and there is little to no class hatred in Lebanon.

I can’t see any class hatred in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Somalia, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or even in UAE.

I’ve never heard of any real classism in the Sahel, but no one there has any money anyway.

The only African countries with a history of classism were the apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa, but there it was racialized, and the classism was imported from Christian Europe. Classism among the Whites of these states themselves was not a problem.

Angola has become very unequal due to oil wealth, but the system is not popular, and most people are ending up poor. They had a successful Communist revolution that remained in power for a long time. The anti-Communist rebels didn’t even have much ideology. Jonas Savimbi of UNITA started out as a Maoist and switched to rightwing capitalist to get money from the West for his revolution.

Africa just doesn’t have a history of European classism. It was always a relatively egalitarian village society. Sure, the chiefs were rich, but they were supposed to provide for everyone.

All of the Gulf Arab states have such extensive social democracies that in a lot of cases, you hardly even have to work. Education and health care is free and housing may be subsidized. UAE is a very rich country and capitalism roars right along, but I don’t see a lot of class hatred. For one thing, everyone in the Gulf is well-off.

As I said, it was different before. Read Ghassan Khanafani (one of the founders of the PFLP) on the lives of fellahin or peasants in debt bondage in semi-feudal Palestine in the 1930’s. Nasser did a land reform in Egypt in the 50’s and he was a hero all over the Arab World. People said they went to Yemen in the 1960’s, and there were Nasser portraits everywhere in the homes of working class people. Nasser’s land reform set off a wave of land reforms in the Arab World. In Syria and Iraq, they were done by the socialist Baath Party. There was never much resistance to the Baath’s socialism. There were large state sectors and good social democracies. Even Saddam was basically a socialist.

Bangladesh is a problem. Pakistan has been discussed but it is Indianized and Hinduized. The same problem may be going on in Bangladesh. The class hatred is vicious in India, but it’s coded as caste hatred instead. So Pakistan and Bangladesh have a sort of Hinduized Islam. But the poverty and class hatred is not nearly as bad in those two states as it is in India and Nepal.

Bahrain and Indonesia are problems for whatever reasons but in Indonesia they had to kill 1 million Communists to get their crappy rightwing capitalist dictatorship. And in the last several years they have been led by a social democrat.

Turkey does have problems with its capitalist class in terms of exploitation of workers. After World War 2, there was a Communist revolution and the Commies almost won. However, there is a huge underground Leftist and Communist movement that regularly sets the factories and yachts of the rich on fire! They’re quite popular. The Kurdish PKK was also Left. Islam is rather weak in Turkey though, and Turkey is Europeanized. Erdogan is actually quite socialist. He’s more socialist than Biden. His brand is Islamism is heavy on the social justice end.

 

Alt Left: Right and Left in Islamic and Catholic Societies

If you’re not careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and cheering the people doing the oppressing.

Malcolm X

This is precisely the function of the media in a capitalist society. The Chinese media is not like this because, duh, China is not a capitalist country! Nor is the Iranian media because Iran is not a capitalist country. In fact, Iran is almost something like “Islamic Communism.” I’m not wild about Ayatollah Khomeini, but he did have a strong social justice streak.

The Revolution was populist, pro-independence, and anti-imperialist. Iran is almost based on a Muslim version of Liberation Theology or “the preferential option of the poor.” The social safety net is huge in Iran. Also, much of the economy is run by the state. It’s actually run by religious charities, often with ties to the military and the IRGC. I believe these religious charities do not operate at a profit. Small businesses are not bothered at all, as in all Muslim countries. I was reading Ayatollah Khameini’s tweets for a while on Twitter, and I could have been reading Che Guevara. Basically the same message.

Islam is just not friendly to neoliberal economics or radical individualism. It is a very collectivist religion in a very collectivist society.

Neoliberalism hasn’t caught on much of anywhere in the Muslim world other than Indonesia and the Southern Philippines, and they had to murder 1 million Communists in cold blood to get there in Indonesia and the Moros have always rejected Catholic rule in both a political and economic sense. it is notable that the Maoist NPA are also huge in Mindanao, home of the Moros.

Pakistan, too, has inherited the selfish economics and even feudalism in land tenure straight from Indian Hinduism. They even have caste, which would be considered an aberration in any decent Muslim society.

All of the Arab countries are basically socialist at least in name, and that was never a hard sell there. It’s true that 100 years ago, the Arab lands were mostly feudal in nature, with big landowners and peasants in debt bondage. They rich had co-opted the religious authorities like they always do, and the mullahs preached that Islamic feudalism was right and proper because the Prophet had said, “It is normal that some are rich and some are poor.” But it was always a hard sell, and it had a very weak foundation.

After independence, socialism was instituted in most if not all Arab countries at least in name. In particular, huge land reforms were done in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Palestine. I assume something like that was done in Algeria too. It was a very easy sell, and everyone went along with it without a hitch. The mullahs quickly changed from support for feudalism to support for socialism.

Hamas rules Gaza and I was shocked at how huge the social safety net is. The many religious charities run the safety net, which is distributed under the rubric of Islam. This is done instead of the state doling it out.

Mohammad himself didn’t have much to say about economics, but he wasn’t a neoliberal capitalist or a feudalist.

In Christian societies, the rich have utter contempt and hatred for the poor, who they regard as little more than human garbage. If you want to see this philosophy in action, look at the classism in Latin America. As all Muslims are part of the umma, and hence, as all are brothers and sisters, it is simply unconscionable that wealthy Muslims would be able to openly hate poor Muslims. You simply cannot treat your fellow Muslims like that. It’s not officially haram but it might as well be.

European Style Fascism in the Middle East

It is instructive that the only place in the Arab world where neoliberal economics and in particular Libertarianism took hold was in Lebanon, and even there, it was only among Catholic Maronites. Most Arab Christians look east to Antioch (and before that, Constantinople) to the Eastern Orthodox church, which is really just the eastern wing of Catholicism.

The Maronites, though, deride Antioch and instead look to Rome. They see themselves as European people instead of Arabs. Many deny that they are Arabs and instead refer to themselves as “Phoenicians.” It is interesting that the only real classical fascism in the Arab World  took hold in the Lebanese Maronites, where the Gameyels imported it from Europe in the 1930’s.

The Jews of Israel also developed a very European form of fascism starting with Jabotinsky and his book The Iron Wall in 1921. This man was an open fascist. He is considered to be the spiritual father of the Likud Party. During the 1940’s, the armed Jewish rebels split into leftwingers who were almost Communists and rightwingers who were more or less fascists.

The Kahanists today look a lot like a European fascist party. And in fact, the entire Israeli rightwing around Likud, etc. looks pretty fascist in a European sense. So Israeli Jews are really Jewish fascists or fascist Jews. It has never been an easy ride for liberal and secular US Jews to support the Orthodox religious fanatics and rightwingers if not out and out fascists in the Likud, etc. in Israel. This was always completely unstable, and after that latest war, it’s finally starting to fall apart. But the seeds of destruction were already there.

But note that the Jews of Israel very much look to the West and see themselves as Europeans (which many are for all intents and purposes). They align themselves with the Judeo-Christian European society that many of them came from.

Half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi Jews from the Arab World, and they have always had a Judeo-Islamic culture. However, when they moved to Israel, this was dismantled by perhaps not entirely. They rejected it due to the association of Arabs and Islam with the enemy, which is correct.

Economics and Catholicism

This radical classism and near-feudalism in Latin America was supported by the Catholic Church, which was always a very rightwing institution because they were always in bed with the rich. There were always Left splits in Catholicism like Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker. The Catholic clergy in the US has tended to be quite leftwing.

There is a long history of “Catholic Communism” in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the Basque Country, France, Italy, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Cuba, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. The IRA was a leftwing Catholic armed group. A lot of priests were caught hiding IRA cadre. So was the ETA in the Basque Country of Spain.

Catholic Leftism never caught on in Poland and Lithuania due to hatred of Russia and the USSR. Nevertheless, both are more or less socialist countries.

Even today there is an active “Catholic Communist” movement in Cuba that is very lively. In Honduras and Colombia, Catholic priests actually led guerrilla bands. Liberation Theoloy is something like “Jesus Christ with an AK-47.” The Leftist who recently took power in Paraguay was a former Catholic priest.

The ELN was founded by a priest, Camilo Torres, and many Catholic clergy even supported the Shining Path! Edith Lagos, a 20 year old woman, was the leader of a very early Shining Path column in Peru. She was killed in 1980 and the entire town of Ayacucho, 30,0000 people, came out for her funeral which was held at midnight. The lines of mourners stretched through the whole city. All of the priests in town blessed her body, and she was given a proper Catholic funeral.

I believe that the PT or Workers Party of Brazil has a large Liberation Theology component. The Catholic clergy had an excellent relationship with the FARC in Colombia. Of course, the Catholic clergy played a big role in Venezeula, and Hugo Chavez himself was a practicing Catholic. The FMLN Salvadoran rebels were explicitly Catholic, as were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. One of the Sandinists’ top leaders, Tomas Borge, was a Catholic priest. Jean-Paul Aristide in Haiti was a Catholic priest. Catholic believers are now allowed to join the Communist Party in Cuba, and near the end of his life, Fidel Castro said he was a “cultural Catholic.”

After Vatican 2 and Liberation Theology began to spread out via the seminal documents written by Gustavo Gutierrez in Brazil, “A Theology of Liberation,” otherwise known as “exercising the preferential option for the poor,” it began to spread in Latin America. It started with local priests and especially Catholic lay workers in impoverished areas and then slowly spread. Even today, Catholic layworkers and especially seminaries are very leftwing, while the Vatican itself is not. A lot of seminaries are hotbeds of homosexuality, and the gay priests and lay workers are quite open about it. It is estimated that 1

Alt Left: Israel Versus Egypt and Lebanon

Polar Bear: Egyptians, Lebanese, etc. defeated Israel in battle, and they backed off.

Egypt

Egypt, sure. But Egypt also has to suck up to Israel as part of the peace deal. They also get $1.5 billion completely wasted tax dollars a year as part of the peace deal. Consider that $1.5 billion as more or less aid to Israel.

However, the peace between Israel and Egypt is a cold one indeed. Especially the ordinary people seriously hate Israel. The Israeli Embassy was burned to the ground by a mob of thousands of people a few years back. The entire staff had to flee. The cops just sat back and let the mob burn it to the ground. Curiously enough, the mob was not mostly Islamists. Sure, they were there too, but it was mostly Leftists, including quite a few Communists. There were a lot of women without hijab in that mob. At any rate, the Leftists and Islamists worked very well together.

It’s the same thing in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel proper. Both Islamists and Leftists in those places really hate Israel, so they get along swimmingly. There are two Marxist Palestinian groups who work very closely with Hamas!

For one thing, Leftists tend to be extreme rejectionists of making any sort of peace with Israel, so they have that in common with a lot of Islamists.

Obviously I am not including the Islamist sellout traitors in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE.

In Morocco and Sudan, sure, the governments made peace with Israel recently (because they were bribed to do so, as were the Gulf Arabs), but the people still hate Israel. The difference in opinion between the people and the regimes is vast in all of those US-allied Arab states. The only reason any of those US Arab allies are in power at all is because they have dictatorships. If they had real elections, no way would any civilians in the Arab world vote in a pro-Israel government, never, ever.

Truthfully, of all of the governments that recently recognized Israel (they didn’t make peace like the idiots keep saying because they were never at war recently anyway), only the UAE has excellent relations with Israel. The UAE is so friendly to Israel that it is almost bizarre. I guess they sold out the Palestinians for the $$. That’s all they care about anyway. They and the other Gulf traitors think they can make a lot of money working with Israel, and more than anything else, they want Israeli weapons systems.

They’ve all been allied with Israel forever anyway, but it’s always been behind the scenes, so no one saw it. The Saudis have been allied with Israel for a good 40 years. The Saudis used to own some islands in the Gulf of Aqaba. In 1979, the Israelis, with their usual charm, decided that those islands were really owned by Jews, so they demanded that the Saudis hand them over. The Saudis did just that and of course got nothing in return. They sold out to Israel like craven sissies.

However, Oman, Kuwait, Yemen, and especially Qatar do not have good relations with Israel at all. Qatar has long housed the leadership of Hamas. Khaled Meshal made an appearance there recently to a mob of cheering civilians.

In Egypt, an anti-US and anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood (Ikwan) government that won with 7

In addition, Egypt maintains a terrible blockade on Gaza, an anti-Hamas blockade. The probable reason is because Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood of Palestine, and the Egyptian government despises the Ikwan.

The Ikwan is also despised in Saudi Arabia and UAE, but this is due more to competition than anything else. This is why you see Islamist UAE and Saudi Arabia allying with Egypt and why you see the UAE arming the anti-government army in Libya where the UN-recognized government is the Ikwan. Turkey and Qatar support the Ikwan, so this is why you see Turkey in Libya supporting the government.

The Ikwan proper is often friendly to Iran because they figure the Iranians are very religious Muslims too. Hamas, Qatar, and Turkey enjoy good relations with Iran. This was strained for a bit when Hamas supported the Syrian rebels. The Iranians didn’t care that much, but the Syrians were very angry. Syria has now made up with Hamas. Sunni Hamas has excellent relations with Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon, the PMF in Iraq, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Iran.

Hamas never talks about being Ikwan-Palestine because the Ikwan has always been unpopular in Palestine. Palestine is actually one of the more secular Arab states, a longstanding trend. 2

Gaza is a very conservative society and has been for a long time. The West Bank is also pretty conservative but not as conservative as Gaza. In Israel proper, the Arabs are less conservative. In that famous recent video from Lod, those are young Arab women or teenage girls climbing that pole, tearing down the Israeli flag, and putting up the Palestinian flag to the cheers of a crowd below full of teenage girls and young women. None of them are wearing a hijab. But Lod is in Central Israel very close to Tel Aviv, which is the secular, SJW center of Israel, so there’s probably some bleed-over.

East Jerusalem probably has the most secular Arabs in Palestine for some reason. Why might that be? In videos of recent riots, many of the younger women were not wearing a hijab. In a lot of these communities, you often see teenage girls and young women not wearing a hijab while the older women still do.

But in Umm al Fahm in the Galilee, a famous nearly all-Arab town, most women wear the hijab.

Lebanon

Yes, Hezbollah eventually threw Israel out of Lebanon, but Hell no, has Israel backed off on Lebanon. See that nuclear bomb Israel dropped on Beirut a while back? You call that backing off? By the way, speaking of civilian populations hating Israel, the Lebanese probably are some of the worst Israel-haters in the Arab World.

Like Syria, Lebanon is still officially at war with Israel. Syria has been since 1973, but Lebanon has been since 1948. Both refused to sign an armistice. The Christian Maronite Phalange, however, are pro-Israel to some rather weak extent, but the rest of the Maronite Christians are with Hezbollah. The Greek Orthodox are represented by the Leftist, profoundly anti-Israel Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The Druze go back and forth, but Walid Jumbalatt has been a serious Israel-hater in his time. He’s just a guy who no principles of morals with his finger to the wind.

Opinion polls in Lebanon recently showed that 8

What people don’t realize is that Lebanon has no real army. The true army of Lebanon, with much more power and capabilities than the Lebanese Army, is Hezbollah. The Lebanese Army has been deliberately kept weak by the West, with whom they are rather unstably allied. Notice that the Army worked for Israel in the latest conflict, arresting a few of the Hamas people in Southern Lebanon shooting Grad missiles at Israel and dismantling some rocket launchers. They’re traitors, or maybe they are just scared.

Missiles Are Literally Hitting Tel Aviv

Alt Left: About Those “Iran-backed Militias”

That phrase doesn’t mean much. All it means is that this is an armed group in the Middle East who opposes US and Israeli hegemony. This includes Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, the Afghan Shia militias, and the PMF division of the Iraqi Army.

None of those groups takes orders from Iran. The group that we bombed does not take orders from Iran and they receive neither funding nor weapons from Iran. They are simply allied with the Iranian government.

In the case of the Houthis, there are Iranian advisors embedded in the group that help them plan and carry out some attacks. Iran sends weapons prototypes of missiles, rockets, and drones and then the Houthi modify them into their own native products. There are also Iranian advisors embedded in the Houthi forces.

In addition, Iranian advisors help the Houthi carry out some attacks. For instance, Iran helped plan and carry out the Houthi attack from Yemen against the Aramco oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. The US said Iran launched the attack from a base in Southern Iran, but that’s not true. We made that up because we would rather blame Iran than the Houthis for the attack.

It is important to realize that the US government, especially the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon, lie constantly when it comes to US foreign policy against nations we consider our adversaries. And all major US news organizations get a lot of their foreign policy stories directly from the CIA.

Look up Operation Mockingbird. In this plan, the CIA had most of the top journalists in the US on its payroll, so in essence, the CIA was controlling almost every major press organ in the US. The owners of these media groups knew that they were under CIA control, but they didn’t mind because the US media always agrees with whatever aims the CIA and State Department has as the CIA and the American ruling class and corporations share the same aims. When it comes to opposition to US foreign policy in regard to our adversaries, there is no major opposition media in the US. Our press is as controlled as PRAVDA was in the USSR.

That is why it is important to be dubious to say the least about any foreign policy news story you read about a nation deemed an enemy of the US. Every single story you read about that country or group is going to be propaganda in one way or another. Stop believing the US media! Stop believing the US government! Stop believing the Pentagon! They’re all lying to you.

Alt Left: Blockbuster Report: Who Are the Iraqi Shia Guerrilla Groups That Are Attacking US Bases in Iraq?

Biden bombed the Iraqi Army in Syria on the Syrian border yesterday. Anywhere from 1 Iraqi Army soldier was killed and two were wounded. The only known casualty is a Sunni member of that division. The force there is known as the PMF, a pro-Iran militia that was formed a few years ago to fight ISIS in Iraq. The US calls the PMF an “Iranian militia,” but that’s not what they are. They were formerly independent but now they have been incorporated into the Iraqi Army itself. Probably most members are Shia, but there are also Sunnis, Christians, Yezidis, and Sabeans, in addition to both Kurds and Arabs in the PMF.

The group that Biden attacked is not really the group that carried out the attacks on US bases. US bases have been getting rocketed and mortared recently for some months now. The attacks are being claimed by shadowy, illegal underground Shia guerrilla formations. The US claims that these guerrillas are nothing but the PMF in disguise, but that’s not exactly true.

The following information about the nature of the illegal Shia guerrilla formations attacking US bases in Iraq comes from Elijah J. Magnier, a 30-year veteran war correspondent who has deep contacts in the Iranian and Iraqi governments and also in the PMF. His reporting has generally been on the money in the past. He is quite straightforward and puts little if any spin on his material, so it tends to be quite objective.

First of all, you must understand that Iraq is a very weak state and the Presidency is even weaker. Many Iraqis have decided for themselves to act independently to wage attacks on US forces, as they are seen as occupiers. The Iraqi government has ordered the US forces to leave Iraq, but the US has thumbed its nose at Iraq and says it’s not leaving! What arrogance. Hence, patriotic-minded Iraqis have taken it upon themselves to form guerrilla formations to attack the US bases and Embassy.

The question I have been asking for a long time now is, “Who exactly are these shadowy underground Shia guerrillas? Are they really just the PMF as the US  says?”

I have now learned who these groups are, but it is complicated.

As noted, many Iraqis have taken it upon themselves to act independently to attack US bases and embassies. In this role they are acting independently of the Iraqi Army and the PMF because the Army and the PMF are not interested in attacking the US in Iraq at the moment for a variety of reasons. These guerrillas are mostly Shia and use Shia names and symbols. They do not take orders from Iran. They don’t take orders from anyone.

To give you an example of their independence from Iran, Iran is not happy that these Shia guerrillas are attacking the US Embassy because Iran is opposed to  attacking anyone’s embassies or diplomatic missions. This is one lesson they have learned from 1979. However, these guerrillas march to their own drummer. They simply do what they want.

These guerrilla groups are known to locals because they operate in certain locales, so these are local Shia Iraqis who have formed illegal armed formations. They are very hard to find and catch because when they are not moonlighting as guerrillas, they hide in the Iraqi Army, the federal police, and the PMF. The Iraqi government is not interested in uncovering these forces anyway.

So the guerrillas are members of the Iraqi Army, federal police, and PMF who go off on their own to moonlight as guerrillas and carry out attacks on US targets and then return to their units to hide. They operate independently of all three units of the security forces.

One major question is where do they get their arms and funding. All of Iraq is a weapons depot anyway, so weapons should not be hard to find. I assumed that they were getting funding and arms from Iran, but I was wrong. The funding and arming of these Shia guerrillas who are attacking our bases comes directly from the Iraqi government itself. Nevertheless, even though they take a paycheck from the Iraqi government, they act on their own. They use Iraqi  military weaponry on their own too. They take it from Iraqi security forces arms depots.

If you are wondering why the Iraqi government doesn’t step in and disarm or at least try to find these Shia guerrillas, the truth is that no one can go against these groups. They are too powerful and have too much support. Look at the situation with Moqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi government cannot tell Sadr what to do either. He’s too powerful. He gets to do whatever he wants. As I noted above, political and military structures in Iraq are weak.

There are different tendencies in the Iraqi Shia, and it comes down to the individual level. Even within the PMF itself, there are Iraqi Shia who are obedient followers of Iran, others that are pro-Iran but act independently, and others who are anti-Iranian Iraqi nationalists associated with the Marjaya religious establishment around Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf. There are also Sunnis and members of other confessions.

Also, the PMF takes orders from the Iraqi government, not from anyone else, including Iran. None of the “Iranian-backed militias” ever took orders from Iran. They would meet with the Iranians and Iranians might give them a list of possible attacks they might carry out. Then they could choose from the list. For example, to show you how that these groups do not take orders from Iran, wanted the Houthis to advance on San’a early in the war, but the Houthis decided not to turned them down as they thought it was too risky at the time.

Iran doesn’t even give orders to Hezbollah. But they don’t need to as Iran and Hezbollah have aims and philosophies that are in great accord with each other.

Alt Left: US, UAE, Saudi, and Israeli Support for ISIS in Syria and Yemen

In Yemen, the UAE and Israel have formed an alliance. The UAE has been close to ISIS for a long time. A while back, 3,000 ISIS fighters were moved from Syria to Yemen by the Saudis and UAE to help fight the Houthis. At the moment, the UAE-Israel alliance is supporting ISIS in Southern Yemen.

The southern army that the US, the UK, UAE, and Israel are supporting is mostly ISIS. They were used to defeat Al Qaeda in the south for whatever reason, and of course they have been used against the Houthis. Marib is ready to fall again because the pro-Saudi Hadi forces never wanted to fight in the first place and are now refusing to fight to save Marib.

This army has been mostly hired mercenaries, often Sudanese, for a long time. Others are tribal fighters who are just in it for the money. They don’t seem to fight very well, possibly because mercenary armies tend to be lousy armies. Many of the tribal fighters have been going AWOL recently, saying they’ve been used.

The Houthis besieging Marib and calling on the mercenary army that give up and fight with the Houthis. They are calling them”misled brothers who were led astray by propaganda.” This is very smart of the Houthis. Get the other army to surrender and go over to your side!

At the moment, the mercenaries are largely simply refusing to fight at all in Marib and the Houthis are advancing. The other day they were not just refusing to fight but they were fleeing the scene of the battle. The mercenaries who refuse to fight and are running away from battle are presently being bombed  by the Saudi Air Force. The Saudis are bombing their own mercenary army!

If the Houthis take Marib, the pro-Saudi forces are screwed badly. So Israel and the UAE are now assembling a large ISIS army to supplant the tribal forces that were formerly in the army. This ISIS army may be sent into try to save Marib.

The Israel-UAE forces are starting to get worried. Yes, you heard me right.Once again, we see Israel supporting ISIS. The UAE has been supporting ISIS forever now. The UAE and Israel recently conquered and annexed Yemeni territory on Socorro Island off the southwestern coast. The Israelis are rumored to have set up a base there. Yes, you read that right. Israel and the UAE have literally conquered Yemeni land, stated that they own it now, and have set up a base there. And you wonder why I hate these Israelis so much…

The US has been supporting all of this of course.

Israel openly states that they are supporting ISIS in Syria. They want ISIS to take over and defeat Assad. In the Bukmal corridor of US-occupied Syria, the US has been training ISIS for a long time. They just give them a new name and send them out to fight. Whenever Assadist forces or pro-Iranian elements of the Iraqi Army got close to Bukmal (ISIS Central), the US has bombed them. In two incidents, 30 Iraqi Army soldiers were killed and in another, 30 members of a pro-Assad militia were killed.

Major intelligence agencies, including the CIA, recently met with ISIS and confirmed that they will support ISIS taking up arms again in Eastern Syria.

The US has conducted bombing missions in conjunction with ISIS attacks on Syrian forces. That’s why the US is now called the Air Force of ISIS.

ISIS killed two Russian generals a while back with sniper fire. There’s no way ISIS could do that on their own. The US must have helped them.

US Special Forces regularly drive by ISIS positions and do nothing, as there is an informal true in many areas.

The US allowed ISIS to occupy an area north of Bukmal for a long time and refused to attack them for many months while they attacked Assad.

Finally after months of extreme pressure, the US started attacking ISIS.

So you can see, the Deep State relationship with ISIS is very strange. We support ISIS in Syria and Yemen, but we also attack them sometimes a while back in all three countries. This is typical Deep State stuff. Support a group and then attack them sometimes if they get too out of hand. It’s interesting that ISIS in Syria and Iraq rarely attacks US forces. I wonder why?

Alt Left: Wars for the Jews: Seven Arab Countries in Five Years

Remember the list of seven Arab countries Israel demanded that we take out after 911? Yeah, that actually happened. And as the US does everything Israel orders it to (Why!?), the US has been busy taking out all these countries one by one in repeated Wars for the Jews. We have used military force and killed people in five of those countries – Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia. Iran doesn’t quite count because we killed their general in Iraq. By the way, those wonderful Israelis tipped us off to where and when he was going to be in Iraq.

Iraq: Done. Result: Saddam removed. Failed state, replaced by pro-Iran, anti-US, anti-Israel government. Mission: Accomplished in a sense as Saddam was removed and a government hostile to Israel and the US was taken out. The new government is hostile but not nearly as much as Saddam was, plus the US has the country over a barrel.

Libya: Done. Result: Failed, somewhat fractured state. Mission: Accomplished, failed state with Al Qaeda like groups everywhere.

Somalia: Done. Result: Failed, fractured state. Mission: Accomplished, but Al Qaeda everywhere.

Sudan: Done. Result: Regime change. Mission: Completely accomplished. New government is pro-US and pro-Israel.

Syria: In progress. Assad still in power. Turkey and US occupying Syrian land in violation of international law. Result: Failed state, with existing pro-Iran, anti-Israel, anti-US government still intact. Mission: Ongoing, not accomplished, but maybe partly accomplished with creation of failed state. Al Qaeda and ISIS still very active. Significant parts of country controlled by insurgents. Pro-US, anti-Assad illegitimate Kurdish state in power in  the east. Government weakened but not taken out, and in some ways, the state is better armed and trained. Probably more hostile than ever.

Lebanon: Ongoing. Result: Failed state. Regime change attempted but government still in power. Anti-US, anti-Israel, pro-Iran government still in power. Hezbollah still controlling government and not yet destroyed. Mission: Ongoing but failing.  Recently attacked by US and Israel with a nuclear weapon! Regime change attempt with coup via mass violent riots and French government strongarming failed.

Iran: Ongoing. Anti-Israel, anti-US regime still in charge and support for the government has actually gone up. Regime change via violent riots in support of coup attempt failed. Ongoing offensive activities in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine. Result: Government weakened greatly by sanctions and surrounded by hostile military forces in the Gulf states and in the Arabian Gulf, Mission: Ongoing but failing. Iranian allies being bombed in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. First two by Israel, second by Saudis. General and nuclear scientist recently assassinated, but support for the government only increased. Regular threats, false accusations, and false flags.

 

Repost: The Purest Whites of Them All

Indicates that, contrary to White nationalists, the purest Whites of all are not Nordics but the Whites of the Caucasus and, of all folks, those nasty Jews! Holy Semites, Batman! What now?

The Purest Whites of Them All

This very term White itself is a little bit absurd, but as long as White nationalists talk about pure Whites versus non-pure Whites, let’s evaluate the matter.

On a board I used to frequent called Human Biodiversity (mostly non-racists interested in race, genetics, anthropology, etc.), someone said that the purest Whites are from the Caucasus and noted that White Power types don’t even consider them to be White! Recall that hundreds of Armenian White Power types were tossed off Stormfront recently for being “non-Whites.” So I decided to look into the matter. From my research:

Group         
Iraqi Jews     
Iranian Jews   
Sephardic Jews 
Georgian Jews  
Kurdish Jews   
Ashkenazi Jews 
Azerbaijan     
Armenia        
Georgia        

*Note that these are just averages. Some studies have claimed to show that individual Ashkenazim have some Black in them.

Figures from my post A Little Black in All Of Us.

So the only Whites that don’t have any Black blood are Mizrachi (Eastern) and Mountain Jews and Whites from the Caucasus above. All other White groups have some Black in them. Horrors! Sephardic refers to the Jews of the Mediterranean – Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Turkish Jews.

On the board where I posted this, I got some hostile responses. One asked me why Jews should have avoided this presumably terrible situation (having a few drops of Black).

I suggested that in part it was due to the purity of the bloodline in the Jews and their long-term hostility to mixing with non-Jews. Ashkenazim came to Europe in ~300 or so and moved into the Continent over the next 700 years, taking in some non-Jewish genes. Typically, Jewish men would move to a new area, marry a non-Jewish woman who would convert and then stay pure after that.

After 1000, Talmudic rules kicked in with very heavy penalties for Jews, especially Jewish women, having sex with non-Jews, and only 1 in 200 matings in Ashkenazim were with non-Jews. I suspect that there were few Blacks in Europe from 500-1000. What few there were lived in far Southern Europe.

After 1000, there seem to have been a few more Blacks moving into Europe as part of colonial armies, freed slaves, and whatnot. The Mizrachi Jews have no Black in them because they were not Muslim. I would suspect that Christian Arabs also have little to no Black in them.

The slavery of Blacks in the Arab World was very much associated with Islam. Jews did not keep slaves. In the Arab World, the Black genes came from Arab men having children with the Black slave women. Black slaves hardly had sex with Arab women at all, although there was some of this in Yemen.

The Yemeni Jews are the only Jews outside Africa to have some Black blood, and they have a fair amount. I’m not sure how this came about, but Blacks have probably been a more important part of Yemen than any other Arab country.

The Caucasus has no Black blood because there were probably few to no Black slaves in the region. Most of the region is Christian, and the Muslims there did not keep slaves. If anything, the region’s Christians were raided by the Turks for White slaves. See Circassian Beauties for more.

Interestingly, the reason that the women of the Caucasus were so prized by the Turks was because they were considered to be the purest Whites of all (see above). The same pure Whites who get tossed out of White Power forums on the net. Go figure.

Repost: Berber Genes in Europeans

Interesting stuff about Berber

Berber Genes in Europeans

It seems reasonable that Southern Europeans especially would have a considerable amount of Berber genes in them. This has been disputed by certain Southern European White racist bloggers like Dienekes Pontikos and Racial Reality. These bloggers are vociferously opposed to the notion that Southern Europeans are anything but pretty near pure White.

For instance, here Dienekes states gives Berber percentages in Europeans as follows:

Nation          Berber

Spain           
Italy           1.7
France          

I am going to disagree with this assessment, though I admit I am not an expert on the subject. Looking at this journal article (table here). we come up with something a lot different. From Cruciani et al 2004:

Ethnic Group                Berber

Spain (Cantabrian Pasiegos) 3
Spain (Cantabria)           1
Southern Portugal           12.
Northern Portugal            
Spain (Basques)              3.
France                       3.
Spain (Asturias)             2.
Southern Spain               1.
Northern Italy               1.
Central Italy                1.
Italy (Sicily)                .
Sardinia                      .

The Berber genes seem to have come to Europe for the most part in the past 3,000 yrs. Cantabria is an interesting place. The Cantabrians, in particular the Pasiegos, are said to be quite distinct genetically, almost like the Basques. No one really knows what this is all about.

During the Moorish invasion, they conquered all the way up to the southern mountains of Cantabria, a province in the far north of Spain on the coast next to the Basque region. Perhaps this is where the Moorish (Berber) genes came in.

Looking at the figures above, most Berber genes appear to have gone into Iberia in tandem with the Moorish conquest. Strangely, they are concentrated in the North of Spain. This doesn’t make much sense to me.

The Cantabrian language is still spoken here. It is said to be a dialect of Spanish, but actually it is part of the Extremaduran language spoken in Caceres in Extremadura. People say it is dying out, but in the mountains children are still being raised speaking Cantabrian. They show up in school as Cantabrian monolinguals and their teachers cannot understand them.

Extremaduran-Cantabrian is really just Eastern Leonese, which got cut off from the rest of Leonese ~400 years ago and came under heavy influence from Old Castilian. Nowadays East Leonese proper scarcely exists in either Asturias or Leon. Extremaduran itself spoken in Caceres is endangered, has no official status, and but has 500,000 speakers, including monolinguals (!). A Spanish informant who grew up in the region told me that Extremaduran has only 1

Leonese has only 50,000 speakers, is considered very endangered, but does have special status in Castile and Leon. And children are still being raised speaking Southeastern Leonese or Porteno. Leonese is part of the Asturian-Leonese language, with Asturian spoken in the north in Asturias and Leonese spoken to the south in Castile y Leon.

Asturian has 550,000 speakers, but is considered endangered.

A related language is Mirandese, spoken in Portugal. This language looks a lot like Portuguese, but it is actually a branch of Asturian-Leonese. It has 8

About the Berbers, I consider them to be one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient, Caucasian groups in existence. Berbers go back at least 20,000 years and possibly up to 50,000 years in North Africa. Much of the Berber group may have come from the Middle East in the past 10,000 years. There is a huge split between Berbers and Sub-Saharan Africans.

The Mozabites, the Tuaregs and the Chenini-Douiret are quite different from the rest of the Berbers. Why? Probably genetic drift.

These men are Mozabites, possibly some of the most ancient Caucasians on Earth, with a genetic line going back up to 50,000 years. Though White nationalists probably freak out if you say these people are White, they are most definitely Caucasians. The fellow in the right forefront also looks Caucasian – he looks somewhat East Indian.

The two men standing at the top could be East Indians or some strange Mediterranean type. Given that East Indians are also one of the most ancient Caucasian groups on Earth, it figures that these Berbers resemble Indians. Both groups came out of the Middle East – the Berbers probably 42,000 years ago, and the East Indians about 17,000 years ago.

There are few genetic differences between Berbers and North African Arabs, which means that North African Arabs are simply Arabized Berbers. There are lots of great photos of Berbers at this link.

The origin of the Berbers is nevertheless quite obscure. This article suggests that both Berbers and Europeans came out of the Levant about 40-45,000 years ago. Obviously, prior to that, they came out of Africa. A date of 40-45,000 years is about right for the genesis of the Caucasian race. The homeland of the Caucasians is often said to be located in the Caucasus itself.

This line rose in Southwest Asia (the Caucasus) and then moved to Africa along the Mediterranean, not via Somalia – Yemen as the Out of Africans went. They moved first into the Levant, and from there went to Europe and to North Africa, both at the same time. This line went to the Cro-Magnon as well as the Berber, and both came out of the Levant about 40-45,000 years ago.

Another very interesting looking Mozabite fellow. There are some Mediterranean types who look something like this, but I have a hard time pinning this phenotype down. Clearly, they are Caucasians, but other than that, they look pretty sui generis. A recent genetics study, though poorly done, seemed to show the Mozabites as one of the most ancient ethnic groups on Earth and a source population for many other groups outside of Africa.

The Uighurs in Central Asia were also a source population for many diverse groups all over the place. The Uighurs may be the remains of ancient Caucasian-Asian hybrids that go back up to 40,000 years.

The first Caucasians were probably a mixture of 1/2 Africans (possibly Maasai and Tutsi types from Central Africa) mixed with ancient proto-Asians from China (who may have resembled the Ainu). From this strange mixture arose the original Caucasians, probably in the Caucasus and southern Russia, but maybe also in Iran.

There is good evidence that the first Caucasians, including the Cro-Magnons, looked a lot like Black Africans, in particular the Caucasoid-appearing Africans such as the Maasai and the Tutsi. Cro-Magnon skeletons look like the Masai more than any other modern skeleton. Cro-Magnon skulls are more likely to be confused with Negroid skulls than any other.

References

Cruciani, F.; La Fratta, R.; Santolamazza, P.; Sellitto, D.; Pascone, R.; Moral, P.; Watson, E.;  Guida, V.; Colomb, EB.; Zaharova, B.; Lavinha, J.; Vona, G.; Aman, R.; Cali, F.; Akar, N.; Richards, M.; Torroni, A.; Novelletto, A.; and Scozzari, R. 2004. “Phylogeographic Analysis Of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events within and out of Africa.” American Journal of Human Genetics 74:1014-1022

Intelligence Agencies in the Middle East Rated

The Mossad is one of the best spy agencies on Earth, near unparalleled. But I had no idea that Iran’s intelligence was this good. I’m shocked at how good they are.

Lebanese military intelligence is ok; at least they keep up on matters. Actually they are excellent in terms of internal matters. Superb.

Hezbollah’s intelligence is much better than Lebanese military intelligence. In fact, all of Hezbollah almost acts as an intelligence agency all the time, as they are locked into a conflict with Israel. Hezbollah has probably one of the finest intelligence apparatuses in the Arab World, and they definitely engage in external operations too. They are very secretive and have been very hard to penetrate. Even Mossad cannot seem to penetrate them, and sadly, Lebanon is swarming with Israeli spies.

Iraqi intelligence under Saddam was said to be excellent. Of course they were utterly brutal also. I’m not sure how good they are under the new regime. They have not yet been able to put down the ISIS insurgency in Iraq, although they have done very good work.

However, my source closes to the Iranian government tells me that the headquarters of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad now is a joint headquarters manned by not just Iraqi intelligence but also Iranian and even Russian intelligence, which is probably military intelligence, not the GRU. The GRU seems to work mostly domestically. It’s interesting that Iran and Iraq have gotten so close to Russia. Even under Saddam,  most work was internal.

PMF pro-Iranian militia intelligence. These groups are are part of the Iraqi military. Their intelligence is excellent, as are their fighting capabilities. It is these militias that put down the ISIS insurgency in Iraq. Without the help of Iran and these groups, ISIS would have conquered Baghdad and probably all of Iraq. Iran essentially put down the ISIS insurgency in Iraq and did excellent work fighting ISIS and  Al Qaeda in Syria.

Syrian intelligence was always said to be excellent under both Bashar and his father. I believe they are still very good. Of course they are absolutely brutal. Most work is internal.

Saudi and UAE intelligence are ok. They at least know the scoop on what is really going down around them. For instance, both agencies reported that Israel attacked the Beirut harbor, which is of course correct. However, they repeated the Israeli lie that Israel was targeting a Hezbollah missile depot at the harbor. They both mostly work internally, however they were both working in Syria and Yemen and may still be there. In Syria, they were working with Al Qaeda and to some extent with ISIS in terms of ferrying ISIS fighters from Syria to Yemen.

Egyptian intelligence has always been among the best in the Arab World. However they mostly work internally. Nevertheless, they have not been able to put down the ISIS insurgency in the Sinai. They are also very brutal.

Iranian intelligence is surprisingly good. And it looks like they are good at external operations too with this attack inside Israel. They have operated in Europe for a long time eliminating enemies of the regime.

Moroccan intelligence is good at internal work.

Jordanian intelligence is also good at internal work. Brutal too.

Qatari intelligence was active in Syria, embedded with Al Qaeda.

The PLO and Hamas governments in Palestine. PFLP intelligence used to be pretty good. The Shin Bet seem to operate pretty unimpeded in the West Bank, and after any attack, they quickly roll up the actors. So PLO counterintelligence is obviously not good enough to stop Israel and its spies. Hamas intelligence is a lot better.

Israel has found it very hard to even get Mossad or Shin Bet spies into Gaza in the first place and a few of these teams  have been rolled up and even killed by Hamas once they got inside. One team was given away at a Hamas checkpoint when they  spoke Arabic with Hebrew accents. Hamas executes Palestinians in Gaza fairly regularly for spying for Israel.

No idea about the intelligence capabilities of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait are, although Qaddafi’s intelligence agency was said to be very good.

 

Alt Left: About That Attack on the Saudi Aramco Facilities, with an Aside about Sunni-Shia Relations in the Arab World

Over at Moon of Alabama, one of my favorite websites, b, the man who runs the site and is one of my favorite writers, unfortunately fell for the US manufactured propaganda about the Aramco attack. For some reason, the US didn’t want to pin it on the Houthis who did it, so instead they pinned it on Iran.

This was complete with fake photos of  missiles in the desert, actually from previous Houthi attacks. The US said the attack came from a military base in Southwestern Iran. We even named the base. It was all a lie.  I don’t know why we didn’t want to blame the Houthis. I suppose we just want to pin everything bad on Iran because it’s the US boogeyman.

This lie was coordinated by the Saudis, some of the most pathetic propagandists around, complete with a laughable press conference where missile parts were displayed. All were said to be from the latest attack and were said to be Iranian weapons. This was the “proof” that Iran did it. However, the display was faked. I looked at all of those weapons. Those were all Houthi weapons, not Iranian weapons. They look different and I know how to tell them apart. The Houthis have been shooting missiles at Saudi Arabia for some time now, and I suppose this was the wreckage of those missiles.

The part of the lie that b went along was that the Aramco attack was carried out with Iranian weapons. He is wrong.  Iranian weapons were absolutely not used in that attack.

First, how do I know all this stuff? I have a source close to the Iranian government. Journalist like me. That’s where I got all the information below.

Ok, here’s what happened. Those were Yemeni weapons that were used. However, they were manufactured from Iranian prototypes.

I do not believe that the Iranians help the Houthis build these missiles. I can tell you though that Hezbollah absolutely helps the Houthis build all those missiles because Hezbollah are experts at rockets and missiles. Yes, there are Hezbollah people in Yemen.

The Iranian role is, among other things, that they have advisors embedded in the Houthis. Hezbollah also has advisors in the same role. And Iran smuggles a lot of weapons to the Houthis. But many of these are just prototypes. They come in on innocent-looking fishing boats. Yemen is awash in ammunition and weaponry of all kinds. No need to import a thing. Also, the Houthis seize a very large amount of material.

Iran also at times helps the Houthis plan and carry out attacks. In this particular attack, the missiles were manufactured by Houthis with Hezbollah assistance. The missiles were based on Iranian prototypes, but they were modified in various ways. The attack was planned for four months with deep Iranian assistance. And the Iranians absolutely helped the Houthis carry out this attack, which definitely came from Yemen and not Iran.

You need to recognize that the Houthis are nothing but the official Yemeni military. At one point, 8

Also, Sunni and Shia mean nothing in Yemen. Until 2014, there was no such thing as Sunni and Shia in Yemen. Everyone was just a Muslim. And the Houthis are not necessarily Shia. That’s another lie. Most of them are Shia, yes. But there are many Sunni Houthis, and quite a few Houthis will tell you that they are neither Sunni nor Shia! This is because the Houthi Shia are a peculiar sect that is virtually Sunni in practice. They only differ in one or two things.

The sectarian mess started when the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE came in and stirred up the hornets nest. Before that, the Saudis had sent many missionaries into Yemen to convert the Houthis to Wahhabism. It’s not so much Sunni versus Shia in Yemen, but more Wahhabism versus traditional Yemeni Islam, Sunni or Shia. Wahhabism Islam in its extreme hatred of the Shia among other things is very much against typical Yemeni Islam. Many Houthis converted to Wahhabism. This was part of what led to the original Houthi rebellion against the government several years back. Rage against conversion to Wahhabism.

The Yemenis are quite used to having Houthis rule the land historically. The Houthis have ruled Yemen for most of the last thousand years, often with the enthusiastic agreement of the Sunni.

After the war against the Houthis started, the UAE and the Saudis shipped 3,000 Al Qaeda and ISIS fighters from Syria to Yemen to fight the Houthis. Remember when the US said that the Houthis used an anti-ship missile to attack a cargo freighter in the Red Sea? First of all, yes the Houthis do have anti-ship missiles. They are embedded along the rocky coast in tunnels cut into the rock. But they are usually hidden from sight.

And they are extremely hard to find because the launch site just looks like a rocky coastline. Iran has a huge number of anti-ship missiles borrowed into the coastline, and those are also almost impossible to find. If any war starts, those anti-ship missile will pop out of that rocky coastline and attack any warships in the Gulf. Iran has the whole east shore of the Gulf lined with these hidden anti-ship missiles.

The US lied again. Are you surprised? The Houthis absolutely did not attack a civilian cargo ship. Instead, they attacked one of those Saudi-UAE ships that was bringing in Al Qaeda and ISIS fighters from Syria to fight in Yemen. They scored a direct hit on the ship. I am not sure about casualty figures. The US then screamed that the Houthis were attacking civilian shipping, the  pathetic Western media ate it up, and we attacked one or more of the anti-ship missile sites along the coast. I have no idea if we hit anything.

So the US government retaliated against a lethal attack on Al Qaeda and ISIS fighters by Shia rebels by attacking the people who attacked our proxy jihadists. See how the US supports Al Qaeda and ISIS? That’s not the end either.

The US, Israel, and the Saudis and UAE are going all over the Arab World stirring up sectarian hate against the Shia for whatever reasons they have. The Gulf Arabs are psychotic about the Shia and Iran. For the US and Israel, the psychosis is more calculated and cynical. Most Sunni Arabs, particularly in the Gulf and Mesopotamia and to a lesser extent in the Levant suffer from this psychosis. The delusion is: “Iran is coming to conquer all of the Arab World and convert us all to Shiism.”

This nonsense is particularly prominent in Iraq because the Persian Safavids did indeed conquer the eastern half of Iraq. But that was 500 years ago. The hysterical Sunnis act like it was yesterday.

I hate to bring up Nazis, but the Sunni hate for Iran and the Shia is like the Nazi hate for Jews. Remember the Nazis said, “The Jews are coming to kill us all.”? The Turks said the same about the Armenians. The Hutus said the same thing about the Tutsis. They all said, “They’re going to kill us all!” about the victims who never attacked them who they were about to genocide. Before a genocide takes place, the genociders generally project their exterminationist murderousness onto their victims.

And this is what the Sunnis do in regard to Iran. It doesn’t make sense. Iran has not invaded another nation in hundreds of years. The last thing they need is to be occupying a hostile population of Shia-hating Sunnis. They have enough issues with their own Sunnis and even their own Arabs, who are actually Shia Arabs!

The Shia are the underdogs of the Arab World. They’ve been treated as second-class citizens for centuries. Until Hezbollah came on the scene in Lebanon, the only jobs the Sunnis would let the Shia have were garbage collecting. I exaggerate but you get the picture. So the advent of Hezbollah was not only a blossoming of Arab Resistance to the Zionist enemy – it was also a liberation and empowerment of the Shia of Lebanon and in a broader sense, across the Arab World, particularly in Iraq and Yemen.

It’s not only in Lebanon. The Shia are also under the boot in Saudi Arabia, where they suffer pervasive discrimination and are impoverished even though they sit on the oil fields.

The Saudi Shia are better armed than you think. The Saudi military almost never goes into the Shia part of Saudi Arabia. It’s too hostile. However several years ago, they invaded this region. As soon as the military entered the neighborhood, basically the entire neighborhood opened up on them with automatic weapons. This is the sort of reception the Israeli military usually gets in West Bank Palestinian habitations. Keep in mind that I believe it’s illegal to own weapons, much less an AK-47, in Saudi Arabia. But that whole neighborhood was armed to the teeth.

There was a bit of a war, but the Saudis mostly gave up. When you come into a neighborhood, and the first thing that happens to you is the 10-story apartment complexes on all sides of you open fire, a lot of soldiers probably think it’s time to go back to the base. Further, Saudi soldiers are notoriously conflict-averse.

The leader of the Saudi Shia was a man named Al-Nimr. He was a good, kind, Shia religious leader type like the Iraqi Sistani or the Iranian Khameini. A man with a big heart. He supported civil rights for the Shia, but he was a quietist. That means he didn’t support armed revolt. He always pushed only for peaceful change. Al-Nimr was arrested during this uprising along with ~100 other Saudi Shia. They were all charged with treason and executed. I have no idea what the others did, but Al-Nimr was accused of fomenting a violent revolt, a lie. He was executed too, by beheading of course. That’s how the Saudi animals roll.

The Shia are the majority in Bahrain, but the country is under minority rule of Wahhabi Sunni who hate the Shia. The majority Shia are deeply oppressed and impoverished. At the same time that this Saudi revolt took place, the Shia in Bahrain also rose up. The Saudis sent their military, including tanks, into Bahrain to smash the revolt.

This Sunni hatred for the Shia takes on almost genocidal formations in the form of Al Qaeda in Iraq under Zarqawi and the subsequent ISIS. ISIS has flatly stated that part of its program is to kill all ~150 million Shia in the world. They’re all targeted for death. And the Gulf Arabs, the US, the UK, and Israel are supporting this murderous and at times genocidal project to the hilt.

Proof That ISIS and Al Qaeda are US Assets Being Assisted by the US Military

Both of those groups are US proxies in a way. We are using them at the moment to attack the Iraqi, Syrian, and Afghan governments.

In recent years, US the shipped many ISIS fighters into Iraq after the Iraqi government voted to throw our asses out of that  country.

We use both Al Qaeda and ISIS to attack Assad in Syria.

We also help the Saudis and UAE use Al Qaeda and ISIS to attack the Houthis in Yemen.

While the Iraqi government was fighting ISIS a few years back, the US and the UK were doing daily airdrops of weapons to ISIS, mostly in Anbar Province. Local tribal leaders said these were happening every day. They even took their complaints to the Iraqi Parliament. In one case, the British were caught red-handed in a weapons drop to ISIS. The British admitted that they did it, but they said it was an “accident.” So the wonderful Brits are supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS too. Wonderful people.

I am not sure why we were backing ISIS. Keep in mind that at the same time, we were helping the Kurds fight ISIS. So we were attacking and supplying ISIS at the same time. This sort of double-dealing nonsense is classic US Deep State foreign policy. We do this sleazy stuff all the time.

I believe we were backing ISIS because we were angry at the Iraqi government for various reasons. One of the main ones was  that they have strong ties to Iran. Israel and sometimes the US have attacked the Iraqi military many times at the border crossing with Syria. In one case, we left 75 casualties. So the US is literally carrying out attacks against the Iraqi Army!

We said the attack was against an “Iranian militia” but there’s no such thing in Iraq. There are pro-Iran Shia militias, sure. But they are made up of Iraqi Shia, not Iranians. And all of those “Iranian militias” are simply battalions in the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi government is pro-Iran. The Iraqi Army in its entirety is pro-Iran.

As the anti-ISIS wars in Iraq and Syria wound down, Afghans started complaining the US helicopters (black helicopters at that) were flying in ISIS fighters and dropping them in Nuristan in Afghanistan. Black helicopters are absolutely real as are “men in black,” often heavily armed in military fatigues. There’s no mystery about these forces. Both the black helicopters and the men in black are US military intelligence. In the US at least, they dress in black.

I have no idea why were dropping ISIS fighters in Afghanistan. It’s a mystery to me. Perhaps we just want all of these wars to go on forever and we wish to keep the region destabilized for as long as possible.

The Pathetic Search for the Pure White Man

RL: Problem is if you go over to White Nationalist Central and say what you just said, they will all completely flip out. Most of the commenters over there literally believe in the one-drop rule. You would think if Whites were literally going extinct, they would relax it, but nope.”

That’s my issue with the Stormfront crowd. It’s not their racism. I think that’s fantastic! It’s their insistence on being of pure European genotype and phenotype. It’s not scientific, and because of that, it has a hard time going mainstream. With that said, I think the majority of the Arab and Persian world has some non-White in them. So are clearly mixed and I would classify them as non-White.

Saddam Hussein looks pure Caucasoid here but his son Uday Hussein does not. Uday is the man standing in the middle.

No, Uday is White. Hell, they’re all pure White in that photo. Iraqis are very White. Not a lot of Black admixture in Mesopotamia until you get way down south near Basra, and now you are in the Gulf, where the mixture is pretty high.

There wasn’t much Black slavery in Mesopotamia and the Levant. Not at all. Also, they really hate Blacks in Mesopotamia. In the Gulf, not so much. In Yemen, there is some discrimination but it’s not at a high level. In the rest of Arabia, pretty much none.There are some extremely beautiful “Black” women in Saudi Arabia. I put Black in quotes because we don’t have many Black women who look like that here. They’re obviously Black, but their features can be rather fine and they have this shiny, almost golden color to their skin. And apparently there’s zero discrimination against them.

About Mesopotamia, I remember reading an article about Iraqis complaining about being occupied by Black soldiers. They said they didn’t mind being occupied by White soldiers because they were just like them (do they mean the same race?). They said they were thinking of taking up arms because they were being occupied by Blacks. “It’s so humiliating to be occupied by Blacks,” they said. They clearly thought that Blacks were a somewhat lower form of human, which is the very definition of racism right there.

As long as the person does not have obviously observable Black in them, to me they are just White. Also, in Latin America, even the White Supremacists down there say that if you are 75-8

The idea that if anyone has non-White in them, they’re not White, is just insane. James Watson, the man who discovered the double helix in DNA, is 1

Even at 35-5

I was so baffled that I even asked some of my students, and they told me 1/2 Black and 1/2 White. She was really beautiful too. And some mixed race “Black” men are very handsome too, though I’m not much of a judge of male looks. You look at them and you don’t think “Black.” You think “Caribbean,” something along those lines, which is of course a geographical designation, not a racial one.

Even a lot of the Gulf Arabs are just White to me. The princes all look like White men. However, when you get to the types like Prince Bandar, sorry, he’s not a White man. They even call him ‘abd, which means both Black and slave in Arabic.

Alt Left: America’s Salad Days, or When America Ran the World, 1945-60

The UN has been an American province for a long time. Let’s take after World War 2 for example. Sure, there was a UN. But from 1945-1960, the UN and the US were pretty much synonymous. Hence the pussilanimous and disgustingly murderous behavior of the US proxy called the “UN” in the Korean War. After World War 2, we had not only defeated all of our adversaries but most of our allies lay in ruins too. We weren’t running the world before the war – Germany and Pax Brittanica were vying for that honor – but we sure were after the war.

Some people think we allowed our allies to get destroyed on purpose so we could, in our usual slimy way, end up sidelining our allies and running the world, the World Dictatorship Ruled by the US being the main US project since 1945. I don’t know why Americans think it is groovy for the US to be this swaggering, belligerent, out of control outlaw organized crime gang that rules the world.

Do Americans really think that’s cool or something? Because that’s exactly what we are. We aren’t even a country. We’re an Outlaw Empire ruled by an Organized Geopolitical Crime Gang that happens to be the top gang in the world right now?

Anyway from 1945-60, the world was our oyster. Of course, we fucked it up like we fucked up everything. Even the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Japan reportedly had sleazy Mafia-like subplots going on. After that, we finally started getting some good hard pushback from China and the USSR (Thank God and it was about time!), first in Cuba, next with the Missile Crisis and the Gary Powers affair, and especially in Vietnam.

The cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions followed in Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, India, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Palestine, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Ireland, and Guyana. Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mozambique, Angola, Rhodesia the Basques followed suit. Arab nationalist revolutions took Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq by storm.

The Shah fell in Iran in what was actually very much an anti-imperialist revolution. A revolution rocked Afghanistan.

But 1945-1960 were the America’s salad days.

Alt Left: Arab Sunnis Hate the Shia Vastly More than They Hate Israelis

3,000 rioters employed by the CIA as part of an anti-Iran group overthrew the Lebanese government over this Israeli Beirut nuke attack false flag. Those were Hariri’s Sunnis. They are deep in with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been working very closely with Israel for a very long time now. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are close allies of Israel from way back. They both hate the Shia and Iran. The Gulf Arabs hate the Shia far more than they hate those Jews squatting on Arab land. Shows you where their priorities are.

This is true for most Arab Sunnis in the Middle East outside of Africa. The Sunnis of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Bahrain, and Kuwait have sold out the Palestinians a long time ago. The popular masses in these places all hate the Shia far more than the Jews, and most of the governments are presently allied with Israel.

ISIS is considered to be an Israeli ally. Syrian Al Qaeda had Israeli advisors embedded with them. The Syrian Sunnis are split; however, many of them hate the Shia far more than they hate Jews.

The Jordanians are split too, as many are Palestinians. But the Jordanian Bedouins don’t care about the Jews and hate the Shia far more.

The Yemeni Sunnis hate the Shia so much that they are genociding their own people because some of them have allied with Iran. That’s how much they hate the Shia.

The Saudis treat their Shia minority like subhumans.

The Bahrainis treat their Shia majority the same.

he Kuwaitis hate Iran.

The Egyptian government completely hates Iran and has sold out the Palestinians completely.

The Sudanese don’t care anything about the Palestinians anymore. They hate Iran far worse.

The Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, and Moroccans are very pro-Palestinian, though their governments have all sold out to Israel. None of those people care about Iran. There is a distance factor. The further away you get from Iran, the less Arabs care about it. Iran-hatred is unique to Arab Muslims. There are historical reasons for Middle Eastern Arab hatred of Iran and these same historical reasons mean that the North African Arabs don’t care much about Iran.

Most other Sunnis don’t care about the Shia very much except in Pakistan, where they really hate the Shia for unknown reasons.

The Turks also completely hate the Shia, and their own Shia are treated like garbage. This goes back to Ottoman Sunni chauvinism. Part of the problem is that the Turkish Shia are Alevis, related to the Alawis of Syria, and they practice a very New Age form of Shia Islam that is nearly secular.

The Alevis and Alawis are often despised as heretics, converts, apostates and non-Muslims by the Sunnis due to their very secular beliefs. The twirling dervish dancing comes out of Alevism and there are deep Sufi roots in Alevi Islam extending down to the Sunni Kurds and even the Iraqi Sunnis. Saddam’s Sunnism was heavily inflected with Sufism. Even Iranian Shiism has a strong Sufi component. Sufism is also quite big in Afghanistan and even in Pakistan.

However, Turks also completely despise Israel.

Nevertheless, Turkey has a very strong alliance with the Azeri Shia.

The Kurds have completely sold out to Israel and the US a long time ago although the US is probably one of their worst enemies.  Sunni Kurds don’t seem to care much of anything about the Shia for whatever reason. The Syrian and Iraqi Arabs dislike Kurds. The Turks absolutely hate Kurds. The Iranians hate Kurds too. Really nobody on Earth likes the Kurds except Israel and the US fake love. The Kurds have been sold out by everyone they ever allied with.

Even a lot of Palestinians hate Iran. Even Hamas, which has a close relationship with Iran, has prominent Shia hatred, which is why they supported ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria against the Shia government. However, the Palestinians have close relations with both Iran and Hezbollah at the same time, so they are the most pragmatic of the ME Arabs.

Alt Left: Socialism, Communism and Neoliberalism in High and Low-IQ Societies

Clavdius Americanvs: I don’t believe socialism is necessarily better for low-IQ societies, but it definitely helps redistribute the misery so things are more bearable for the general populace.

Socialism and even Communism is always better for low-IQ countries. There’s not even any debate about it. I suppose you can say that neoliberalism functions somewhat in the West, but it doesn’t work at all in low-IQ countries. It’s just fails spectacularly, however, the top 2

Clavdius Americanvs: I really don’t think socialism at the moment is a great idea for low-IQ countries. But it can arise if the ruling capitalist class is entrenched old money and not very permeable. Latin America used to have a race-based CASTE system for Christ’s sake! Entrenched old money isn’t really capitalist at all – it’s feudalism masquerading as a free market. I don’t believe Latin America is capable of anything else.

Well this is all neoliberal capitalism ever turns into – something that looks a lot like feudalism. Libertarians can’t figure out this law of capitalism and keep pining for this just and proper pure capitalism that never exists. Take the non-aggression principle. They can’t figure out that aggression is at the very heart of capitalism. No aggression, no capitalism.

Will capitalist countries ever allow socialist or communist countries to exist? Of course not. They try to overthrow them, often with violence, as soon as they show up. In the US, overthrowing socialist and even social democratic countries is a bipartisan affair, with even left Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders joining in with glee. Ocasio-Cortez is right. The Democratic Party is a center-right party and we don’t have a left party in the US. When was the last time? Henry Wallace? How did that work out? A party coup that put Truman in instead.

Clavdius Americanvs: I foresee any regime, even a socialist one, to eventually become feudal simply with a new ruling class not descended from the old one.

Probably not and it never happened in any Communist countries that I can think of. Many social democratic countries simply went corrupt and put the old ruling class in and continued calling themselves socialists. This happened in Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico.

Down in Latin America even the rightwing parties often call themselves socialists or have leftwing words like Labor, Liberal, Progressive, People’s, Popular, Workers, Revolutionary, etc. in their names because that’s often the only way to get elected. Rightwing parties down there even campaign on leftwing themes. All rightwing parties down there, even the death squad parties, campaign on helping the poor and alleviating poverty. Of course they never do it, but they have to say it or they won’t have a chance.

Clavdius Americanvs: The only hope is a secular rise in IQ for the countries so they can all produce more under capitalism.

I don’t think that will work either. The highest IQ countries are either Communist or “National Socialist” as in South Korea and Japan. I’m not sure what Taiwan is. Hong Kong is about ready to go Communist. Vietnam is Communist. All of Europe is nominally socialist or social democratic. It doesn’t look like even high-IQ countries want neoliberalism. Now if you talk about a market instead of “capitalism,” we can talk. After all, I am a socialist and I support a market myself.

Clavdius Americanvs: Afterwards, they can go the European route and turn into social democracies when they can afford it.

No one goes this route anymore – capitalism -> social democracy. Obviously the US is headed that way and Europe formerly did, as did Indonesia, with the Philippines heading that way slowly. And almost all poor countries nowadays are socialist or social democracies in name if not in form. No poor country wants to start out capitalist anymore. Neoliberalism is a luxury good, only affordable by the rich.

Clavdius Americanvs: Only with higher average IQ’s can entrenched ruling classes be otherthrown.

What happened in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Laos, Cambodia, Eritrea, South Yemen, and Cuba?

Clavdius Americanvs: A population needs to be smart enough to produce and become aware of its social contract with the government. I doubt most leftwing participants in Latin America or any low IQ country really understand what they are signing up for in terms of a social contract.

Of course they do. Why do you think they all vote for the Left. Even at this late date, 7

Clavdius Americanvs: Low-IQ peasants just don’t want to starve or be beaten by armed thugs of their aristocratic overlords. They are somewhat aware of what they can get, but have no clue as to what they are giving up.

What they are giving up never worked for them anyway and probably never will.

Alt Left: The Modern Jewish Nation Is Murderous and Genocidal, But So Are Many Nations, Especially the US

Jews are not monstrous genocidal maniacs on the level of the Nazis, though the genocidal Jewish monsters in Israel surely give Nazis a run for their money. It’s all pretty sad. Innocent Jewish people get murdered by genocidal Master Race supremacist racist maniacs. So what do Jews do in response? Turn into genocidal Master Race supremacist racist murdering maniacs. Sure the Nazis killed a lot more and did it in a more up close and personal manner. But Jews are genocidal too.

Jews declared war on the Iraqi People in 2003 and used Jewish control over the US state to attack and destroy Iraq for no reason at all other than the state being hostile to Jews. The UK helped. As a result, 1.4 Arab Iraqis were killed, basically slaughtered by Jews and their American and British allies.

Next, the Jews along with their US, Turkish, Saudi, British, French, UAE, Saudi, and NATO allies launched a war on the Syrian people using Al Qaeda and similar terrorists to destroy the country and massacre its people. 500,000 people died. Jews are partly responsible for the deaths of those 500,000 people.

Prior to that, the Jews along with the US and the UK imposed a no fly zone on Iraq. The purpose of this was to exterminate the Iraqi people via terror disease plagues by not allowing their to treat their waste water. This caused Iraqis to drink contaminated war, causing the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. The Jews absolutely helped slaughter those kids.

The Jews assisted the US, British, Saudi, UAE, Sudanese, and Egyptian war on the people of Yemen. The war has had genocidal overtones as the aggressors, including the US attempted to starve the Yemeni people into defeat. In Iraq, the Jews, the US, and the UK tried to exterminate people with plagues.

In Yemen, the same people tried to exterminate people with a error famine. Deliberate terror famines caused by the Saudis and their allies in addition to a scorched Earth campaign against the Yemeni people and their civilian infrastructure killed at least 200,000 Yemenis.

First plagues, then famines. The Americans and the Jews are almost Biblical in the ways they go about exterminating their enemies. What’s next? Locusts?

All told, the Jews have their hands in the murder of 2.1 million of their racial enemies, the Arabian people. The conclusion is inescapable:

Modern Jews are killers.

The Jews are not alone in their murderous and genocidal behavior. The US, UK, NATO, Turks, Saudis, UAE, Qatar, Sudanese, and Egyptians are also murderous genociders.

Of these the worst by far are the Americans and the British, particularly the former, with direct hands in the deaths of 2.1 million Arabian people. The British mostly stood on the sidelines and cheered the US on. The Saudis and UAE are next. They have the blood of 700,000 Arabian people on their hands all because of their genocidal hatred of the Shia Muslims.

Next are the French and Turks, with the blood of 500,000 Arabs on their hands. The Turks because of their genocidal hate of the Shia Muslims, and the French because they are American suck-ups and sidekicks and in particular strong allies of the genocidal Jews.

Check out President Macron of France, who was placed directly into office by the notorious family of Jewish monsters in the UK, the Rothschilds. Macron is essentially working for Lord Rothschild. There’s no other way to put it.

The Egyptians and Sudanese had a role in 200,000 deaths. The only reason for their role in the killing is their murderous hatred of the Shia Muslims.

Alt Left: Social Democracy Only Works in Homogeneous Societies Is Often but Not Completely True

RL:

The US and a handful of other countries are literally the only countries on this planet that regard social democracy with outrage and want nothing to do with it.

A commenter responds:

Mithridates: Yeah, I suspect much of this attitude stems from the ethnic divisions within the US that no one is ever allowed to talk about in any sort of frank or intellectually honest manner. Of course the Pluto/Mammon-worship inherent in the American mythos is a influential factor as well.

But let’s explore the first:

Basically, Ethnos A, the group responsible for most of the country’s productivity, is forced at gunpoint to redistribute a portion of their wealth to Ethnos B (and C in some regions), and a good portion of Ethnos B takes that money, pisses it away on all sorts of stupid instant gratification fuckery and doesn’t add much of anything to the country’s overall productivity; in fact, a sizable minority of Ethnos B behaves in public like zoo animals.

And then A’s gets called horrible bigots if they object to this, and especially if they object to being forced to live within shouting distance of B’s.

Most of the countries with working social democratic economic arrangements tend to have been ethnically homogeneous for most of the period when these systems were in place. And now these countries have tried the mass immigration experiment, and the same sort of shitty results is happening in those places that we here in the US have been experiencing for many decades now.

Natural Law says that humans are extra-clever social primates who are predisposed to be open to sharing among others they consider to be kin. There’s a certain other Ethnos I won’t mention by name or even a single-letter set of punctuation marks that exemplifies this principle very clearly.

Anyway, expecting all members of an Ethnos to consider the entire planet’s population of clever hominids to be a part of their kin group is quite an aberrant expectation; only weird ideologies can invert what to everyone else is a common sense understanding of Natural Law principles. And finally, loving one’s own kin does not necessarily mean hating other kin-groups.

Of course everyone has always known that this is the dirty little secret for Americans’ hostility to socialism. This is why all of the American White Nationalists are also hardline economic Rightists, Republicans and Libertarians despite this being bad for most Whites. Race trumps economics for a lot of folks. Whereas in Europe, most of the nationalist groups, even the White nationalists, are explicitly socialist.

You’d be pissed to, eh?

Actually I am fully aware of this argument, but I’m not pissed at all. For one thing, I have never been part of the wealthy White group, so Whites with money can go pound sand. They are my class enemies. I think in terms of economics. Screw race. Do the rich Whites want to help the poorer Whites? Of course not. So why should I support them. Also I know quite a few low-income Whites who use those redistributive programs that Whites hate so much.

On the other hand, I am not a typical White person. I am very hard to the Left; in fact, I am an out and out socialist.

Many countries have health care for all despite being ethnically diverse. However, in a lot of these countries, public health care and education is simply underfunded, so the dominant group, whoever they may be, simply goes to private hospitals and schools. India is an excellent example of this as is much of Latin America.

All of the Arab World has social democracy under the rubric of Islam, or in the case of Lebanon, ethnic peace, and Lebanon is unstable for ethnic/religious reasons. And some Arab countries with prominent religious of ethnic minorities are very unstable or at war.

All of North Africa has social democracy except Morocco, although minority Berbers are dealt with by denial of their existence and roping them into the main group, Arabs. Ethiopia has tremendous ethnic diversity and some religious diversity, but they have a good working socialist system. Eritrea is the same but the main divide there is religious rather than ethnic.

Zimbabwe has a good working system although it has many tribes. Argentina and formerly Bolivia and Ecuador has or had working social democracies, although all three countries had serious instabilities; in all cases the rich objecting to sharing with the poor and with a racial element in Bolivia. A number of countries in Latin America do have social democracies, but they don’t work very well because the rich don’t want to share with the poor.

In a number of those countries such as Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti,and Mexico also have an ethnic element in that the dominant rich group tends to be Whiter or lighter-skinned though not usually White per who don’t want to share with the poorer, darker, folks who are more mixed with Indian and in some cases Blacks.

A number of countries in Latin America have homogeneous populations, but the rich still don’t want to share with the poor, so that doesn’t solve everything. And historically speaking, most nations were quite homogeneous, nevertheless the rich still shared just about fuck all with everyone else and needed an actual revolution to be convinced to do so.

Russia and China has very good working social democracies although they have many minorities, although China and to some extent Russia has some ethnic warfare. Ukraine has a good system despite minorities and ethnic warfare. Vietnam, Cambodia, Bhutan, and Laos have good systems despite having anywhere to a couple to many ethnic minorities. Malaysia has a working social democracy and it has a large ethnic divide. Japan has minorities with an excellent social democracy.

Most of the former Soviet republics probably still have working systems although most have large minority populations.Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran have social democracies and minority groups. However, in Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran are currently embroiled in ethnic separatist wars.

Most of the countries with non-working systems are not only rightwing but also quite poor. Hong Kong is an exception. The government is very rightwing, but there are not ethnic problems. It’s all one ethnic group, but the rich ones hate the poor ones, just as it was traditionally.

Some are just poor. Most of Africa has social democracy, but it often doesn’t work well due to poverty. To some extent this is true in Pakistan, Mongolia, Yemen, Moldova, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, and Thailand. It is also true in Ecuador, Guatemala, most of the Caribbean, Chile, and Paraguay. In these places, social democracy doesn’t work more due to poverty than to diversity.

Alt Left: Refuting Western Media and State Lies about Iran

The Evil Basij Repress the Vast Majority of Iranians

The media in the West says there is this evil group called the Basij who come out and break up every demonstration, no matter how peaceful, with serious violence. Supposedly the vast majority of Iranians are being oppressed by this tiny group of thugs.

First of all, the Basij is simply something like the National Guard of Iran. The Basij has an incredible membership of 11 million men; in other words, an amazing 4

Demonstrations, No Matter How Peaceful, Are Not Allowed in Iran and Are Always Broken Up with Violence

This is absolute nonsense. Though Iran is not Cuba where the only people who demonstrate are the Ladies in White – the wives and family members of political prisoners, neither is it China where there are 500 demonstrations every single day.

Instead it is somewhere in between. Nevertheless there are demonstrations all the time in Iran, practically every day, the vast majority of them are peaceful, and nothing ever happens. Khameini himself recently affirmed the Iranian people’s right to demonstrate peacefully about a wide range of issues.

The Peaceful Demonstrations about a Fuel Price Hike Got Broken up by Evil Regime Elements, Killing 1,500 demonstrators

First of all, that death toll is way off. It’s inflated by at least five times. The highest reasonable toll for those killed during the demonstrations is 300. Furthermore, the demonstrations that were broken up were not about the fuel hike, and they were certainly not peaceful. On the contrary, they were extremely violent, and from day one, they were advocating the violent overthrow of the government. In fact, they were actually trying to do just that – violently overthrow the government.

Here’s the truth about what happened.

Yes, there were large demonstrations about the fuel hike. The demonstrations were dumb though. Iranian gasoline is massively subsidized by the state to the point where Iranians  pay ~10 cents/gallon for gas. The state simply cannot afford to keep subsidizing gas at that level, especially with the extreme sanctions it is under.

Furthermore, the regime advocated only a small raise in price from ~10 cents/gallon to ~20 cents/gallon. So what. In addition, all of the money saved by raising the gas price was going to be given to support the poor of Iran. So the gas hike was necessary, the new price was easily affordable, and the price increase was going for a great cause.

However, these demonstrations, which were all completely peaceful by the way, lasted for only one day. Huge crowds of peaceful protesters showed up to protest the fuel price hikes, and nothing happened to them.

However, at nightfall, violent protesters or rioters showed up, and all the peaceful protesters quickly left. After that it was nothing but violent rioting for a couple of weeks, with ~200,000 mostly young men burning down almost 100 banks and other buildings, destroying everything in sight, and attacking and even killing police.

Furthermore, these violent rioters had already showed up at the peaceful rally on motorcycles and fired on the demonstrators there. So they obviously weren’t there to protest the gas hikes. Instead, as noted, these violent rioters were trying to overthrow the government by force. Most but not all of the dead were violent rioters.

There are indeed demonstrations in Iran that get broken up, often with violence. These demonstrations feature young people, often university students, who are objectively contras or counterrevolutionaries. These demonstrators typically call for the overthrow of the regime either via force or otherwise. Demonstrators yell slogans like “Death to the dictator!” and fly  American and Israeli flags.

The vast majority of Iranians absolutely hate these people. Surveys show that 8

The rioters have no support. Only ~1

There Is No Freedom of the Press in Iran

Although there are definitely limits on what you can say in Iran, and some journalists are arrested and sentenced to prison there, the press is freer than you think.

For instance, Iranian social media is a wildly free place swarming with contras. Hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of Iranians regularly post counterrevolutionary material there, often advocating for the violent overthrow of the government. There’s not a lot that the government does about this, as the situation is out of hand. Is Iran really going to arrest 2 million people for speech offenses? Come on.

After the recent accidental shootdown of the  Ukrainian jet in Tehran, I looked at the English language editions of several Iranian papers. I was absolutely stunned by the headlines. All of these papers were furious at the jet shootdown and quite a few articles were demanding the resignation of the government and its replacement with new people.

The truth is that there are two large forces in Iran that are within the revolution. One is called the Reformers and the other is called the Hardliners. Right now, the Hardliners are in charge.

Recently the Reformers captured the presidency of Iran via elections. President Rouhani was a Reformer. However, the Rouhani Administration did not rule very well, and the voters threw them out at the ballot box. Yes, Iran has fairly free and fair elections, although there are occasional cases of vote fraud. Former President Ahmadinejad, a Hardliner, was said to be elected via fraud ion 2009.

Although the Reformers support the revolution, they are quite antagonistic towards the hardliners. All of those papers I saw with those incendiary headlines were run by Reformers. So in that sense, the Iranian media is extremely free.

Surveys of Iranians

Excellent surveys of the Iranian people, some run out of the University of Maryland, paint a completely different picture than the one we get in the Western media.

Surveys show that 7

The contra riots typically call for an end to Iran’s foreign policy, where it is supporting the armed Shia forces in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon in addition to supporting the Palestinians.

The Western media says the Iranian people are opposed to this foreign policy, which they see as expensive and unaffordable adventurism, but surveys show that ~2/3 of voters support Iran’s support of armed Shia groups in those countries. A similar number also back Iranian support for the Palestinians.

I’ve got some news for brainwashed Westerners. The Iranian Revolution has lots of supporters. Did you see the size of those crowds mourning Soleimani?

Even a lot of these hip young women with their push the limit hijabs you see nowadays showed up in huge numbers. Some of these women were wearing headbands saying things like “I Fight Israel.” I kept seeing photos of these hip young liberal women at the funeral processions, and I thought I must be hallucinating. Except I wasn’t. The media in the West lies constantly about Iran and never tells you the full and true story of what is going on there.

Alt Left: Communism Is a Universal Movement Not Tied to Any Ethnicity

Communism appeals to all sorts of people on a basic level. Look at what Communism promises. It’s pretty clear that that’s something that a lot of humans would want, not any particular ethnicity or culture.

Polar Bear: NS Germany surely had a German spirit. Was Communism based on Russian farm culture or anything native? I often think it contrasts with warring Celtic tribes on the British Isles and Ireland. Maybe some of it is Slavic in nature.

I’m not sure. You know it took off in Mozambique, Grenada, Angola, Cuba, Afghanistan, China, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, Congo, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Yemen too, right?

And they almost won in Peru, El Salvador, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Colombia.

The CP was huge in Iraq – the  base of Moqtada Sadr’s movement is actually the old Iraqi CP! Most of Sadr’s followers and soldiers were former members of the Iraqi CP. It had huge memberships in Sadr City. Eurocoms were huge in France and Italy. The CP is in the ANC government in South Africa.

In addition, Communism  was very popular in Kazakhstan (Turkics), Tajikistan (Iranics), Uzbekistan (Turkics), Turkmenistan (Turkics), Kyrgyzstan (Turkics), Karelia, Mari-El and Udmurtia (Finno-Urigics), the Caucasus, Azerbaijan (Turkics), Armenia, among Siberian Turkics, Buryats (Mongolics), Tungusics, the Nivkhi (Japanese types), and the Chukchi (Inuit types).

I’m afraid there’s a little more to it than Slavicism. I do not believe it was ever very popular in Poland, the Baltics, Finland or Georgia though. Stalin once said that forcing Communism on the Poles was like putting a saddle on a cow.

Anyway, Marx was German and Engels was British. Rosa Luxembourg was German. Antonio Gramschi was Italian. Carlos Luis Mariategui and Edith Lagos were Peruvian. Manuel Marulanda Gabriel Garcia Marquez were Colombians. Gabriel Mistral was Chilean. Farbundo Marti and Roque Dalton were Salvadorans.

Augustino Sandino was Nicaraguan. Pablo Picasso was a Spaniard. Ho Chi Minh was Vietnamese. Mao Zedong was Chinese. Patrice Lumumba was Congolese. Samora Machel was Mozambican. Those are all very famous Communists who were non-Slavic.

We and our pals overthrew non-Commie Leftist nationalists in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Guyana, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Portugal, Iraq, Iran, and Libya. We and our pals tried unsuccessfully to overthrow them in a number of other places.

Communism has universal appeal. It is nothing less than the dream of a better world. That is why in a way I was sad when the Eastern bloc collapsed because what collapsed with it was that most beautiful dream.

The Latin American Left believed in the dream of a better world. And in Latin America, that is a dangerous thing.

– Alejandra, an Argentine ex-girlfriend

Alt Left: The US Murder of Qassem Soleimani – What Was It All About?

The murder of Hajj Qassem Soleimani, a great fighter against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS, for the oppressed and downtrodden and against the oppressors all over the Near East and Southwest Asia for the last two decades, was obviously an international war crime. You don’t just get to go around murdering generals of other countries that you aren’t even at war with.

All of the justifications for his killing were fake. He was not planning any attacks against US interests, much less against four of our embassies. Those are just lies made up by the Americans with a little help from some (((friends))).

Soleimani is absolutely not responsible for the deaths of 600 US troops in Iraq. Not that I would care if he was. Those soldiers deserved to die. They waged an illegal, Nazi-like war of aggression on Iraq and then they occupied the land that they conquered and installed their puppet government in while they set about exploiting the resources, especially oil, and out and out stealing $8 million cash.

The reconstruction work was a boondoggle that had huge cost overruns and generally didn’t produce much of anything good. Much of what was produced was shoddy and fell apart. Graft and corruption were huge factors in reconstruction with both US and Iraqi contractors.

The UN itself has stated that the Iraqi resistance does not violate the rules of war and that the Iraqi people have a 10

The 600 US dead is based on some figure for how many Americans were killed by so-called shaped explosive IED’s designed to penetrate the thickest armored vehicles. The technology supposedly came from Iran and it is from this theory that the claim that Iran and Soleimani killed 600 Americans comes. However, the tech did not come from Iran.

Initially, it came from the Lebanese Hezbollah, who were active in the Iraqi resistance also for some time. They taught the Iraqi guerrillas how the technology. From then on it was mostly manufactured inside Iraq by the guerrillas themselves. Yes, one Iranian said to be a spy was captured with shaped explosives in Iraq in 2006. Big deal. The Iraqis already had their own.

For most of the early stage of the war, Iran had no involvement. The British had control of the Shia South and then said that in the early years, they never found any evidence of Iran supplying guerrillas with arms.

Later in the war, Shia militias such as Moqtada Sadr’s army got involved in the war against the US. They got beaten pretty badly for a variety of reasons but they definitely inflicted some casualties on US troops. It is definitely possible that Iran and Soleimani may have helped supply the Mahdi Army with weaponry. But so what? They had a right to fight us anyway.

However, there was a revenge attack against a US base in Najaf. The US had arrested several Iranians and accused them of being spies. They were apparently members of the Qods Force. The US refused to release them.

An Iraqi Shia group launched a very sophisticated attack in which they dressed up in US uniforms and gained access to the base. When there, they took five US soldiers prisoner. Then then escaped with them. The troops were taken somewhere and executed. The Shia militia that carried out that attack definitely had help from Iran and Soleimani. After the attack, the Iranians were released by the US.  So you can definitely credit Soleimani with five US deaths.

Earlier, the British had arrested a number of Iranians who they accused of being spies. These may as well have been Qods Force members. In return, mysterious forces captured four British troops and executed them. The Qods Force may well have carried out this operation. The Qods Force members in British custody were then released.

The overwhelming majority of casualties inflicted on US forces in Iraq were via Sunni guerrillas, often hardline Islamists who hate the Shia and Iran. There is little good evidence that Iran was arming their worst enemies, these forces.

So we so far have a whole nine Western casualties, five Americans and four British, we can credit directly to Soleimani, the Qods Force, and Iran.

For a period of 2001-2019 during which Iran and the US have faced off on the opposite sites in various warzones, that’s not a large number.

You can probably credit more casualties to Soleimani if you include those inflicted by the Mahdi Army, but I’m not sure what that figure is.

There are also complaints that Soleimani helped Hezbollah. He sure did. That resulted in 200 dead (((Israelis))) in 2006. Excuse me, but I didn’t realize that (((“Israelis”))) were the same thing as Americans. But hey, now that Current Year America is more like (((America))), maybe that’s the case.

There is a complaint that Soleimani and Iran massacred hundreds of thousands of Sunni civilians in Syria. Not so. The Qods Force had a small group of advisors embedded in the Syrian Army. They helped the Syrian Army fight and defeat ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other radical Sunni Islamists in many battles. They didn’t fly planes or bomb cities. They didn’t do much of anything.

Yes, Shia militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Hezbollah from Lebanon participated in the war against the Sunni Islamists, but there are not a lot of reports of atrocities committed by them. Much of the civilian casualties have come from bombing of rebel-held cities by Syrian and Russian jets.

Reports of massacres and chemical weapons attacks that killed large numbers of civilians are all made up. The massacres were all done by the rebels of villages that supported Assad. After they chopped the people up, the rebels turned around and accused Assad of doing it. The Western media lapped it up like chumps.

None of the chemical weapons attacks occurred. I’ve studied every single one of them. None of them even happened. None of the chlorine attacks even happened. Assad doesn’t use chlorine gas.

I’m not saying Assad is a nice guy. He’s probably executed 50,000 people in his prison and a lot of others died of maltreatment. But he doesn’t do civilian massacres or chemical weapons attacks. He kills people, sure, but only has certain ways of doing it and he avoids other ways of doing it.

Soleimani helped the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is supposedly a big crime. Well, good for him! The righteous cause in Yemen is the Houthis. The bad guys are the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Soleimani fought a number of big battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Conveniently, the media left this part of the narrative because it made him look like a good guy.

Soleimani also formed Iraqi Shia militias to fight ISIS. The truth is that if not for Iran and Soleimani, ISIS would have conquered Iraq. That’s simply the dirty truth. You can accept it or not, but it’s still true. There are claims that some of these militias committed atrocities against Sunni civilians. That may well be true. But I understand that Soleimani and Iran were trying to put a stop to this.

The new claims are that Soleimani and Iran were behind a number of rocket attacks on US bases in recent days. No one really knows who did those attacks, though Shia militias are widely suspected. No one has ever claimed responsibility for any of these attacks.

Some of these militias like Kataib Hezbollah have a close relationship with Iran. But I know for a fact that not only do these militias not take orders from Iran (no Iranian “proxies” take orders from Iran), but that Soleimani and Iran had nothing at all to do with these rocket attacks.

The US had been allowing Israel to bomb the bases of these militia on the Syrian border for some time, so the militias that were getting bombed probably decided to start shooting some rockets at US bases in revenge. Why not? Anyway, we started it. The militias were just fighting back.

One attack on a base in Kirkuk killed one American and wounded four more. Trump went ballistic after this attack.

This was followed by a US bombing raid on a Shia militia on the border of Syria and Iran that killed ~27 troops and wounded ~75 others. However the militia that was attacked was part of the Iraqi military. In fact all of the “Iranian proxy” Shia militias are actually part of the Iraqi military. They take orders from the Iraqi Central Command.

Most of the dead and wounded were actually members of the Iraqi military who were not members of that militia. That is because the bases of these militias are full of Iraqi military people who are not members of those militias. It’s all mixed together.

After that, outraged members of the militia that got bombed swarmed the US Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad. They destroyed some stuff but no Americans got hurt. The US blamed “Iran” for the embassy mobbing, although I know for a fact that Iran had nothing to do with it. This militia just got bombed by the US and had its members killed and wounded. You think they need to get orders from Iran to angrily swarm an embassy after that?

We then murdered both Soleimani and Mohandes at the Baghdad Airport, the leader of the PMU Shia militias, which as I said are now part of the Iraqi military. It was the PMU that basically defeated ISIS in Iraq.

Soleimani had been lured to Baghdad to meet with the Prime Minister as part of a Saudi proposal to ease tensions with Iran. So he was there as a diplomat to try to negotiate a peace treaty. It now looks like the US and Saudi Arabia set him up for this by using a fake peace treaty.

The Iraqi government was very mad about this. There is a video of the Iraqi Parliament standing in their seats and chanting, “Death to America.” This is the Iraqi Parliament. The government then voted to order all US forces and forces allied with them to leave Iraq.

The US incredibly thumbed its nose at Iraq and refused to leave. That means that we are now officially occupiers as we are there against the will of the government. Trump threatened Iraq with devastating sanctions if they went through with this.

Later he threatened to seize Iraq’s account at the New York Central Bank that they use for oil sales. We were going steal all of the money that they had in the account (How the Hell is that legal?) and then cut them off from it. Most world trade in dollars goes through the New York Central Bank. See all those rich people in New York? Well, a lot of the are involved in one way or another with the New York Central Bank.

This goes back to the petrodollar, which the US uses to enforce its dictatorship on the rest of the world. US hegemony rests on many things, but the petrodollar is one of them. Most oil and other commodities for that matter are traded in dollars and no in other currencies.

This has many advantages for the US in economic terms which I don’t quite understand. For one thing it allows us to borrow until the cows come home with few to no consequences.

Most of the recent wars and threats of wars we have waged have been to support the petrodollar. Basically, you go off the petrodollar, you get regime-changed or attacked and overthrown.

For example, Saddam went off the petrodollar. Soon after he got invaded. Oh and one of the first things we did after we conquered Iraq was to put Iraq back on the dollar.

Ghaddafi went off the petrodollar. Look what happened to him.

Syria went off the petrodollar. Look at Syria.

Iran is going off the petrodollar. What’s happening to Iran?

Venezuela is going off the petrodollar. What’s up with Venezuela?

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