The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The Long War to Reaffirm Western and Israeli Primacy Undergoes a Shape-Shift Alastair Crooke The Middle East is ‘conservative’ no more. Rather, a very different ‘Awakening’ is gestating. The long war to reaffirm western and Israeli primacy is undergoing a shape-shift. On one front, the calculus in respect to Russia and the Ukraine war has shifted. And in the Middle East, the locus and shape of the war is shifting in a distinct way. Georges Kennan’s famed Soviet doctrine has long formed the baseline to U.S. policy, firstly directed toward the Soviet Union, and latterly, towards Russia. Kennan’s thesis from 1946 was that the United States needed to work patiently and resolutely to thwart the Soviet threat, and to enhance and aggravate the internal fissures in the Soviet system, until its contradictions triggered the collapse from within. More recently, the  Atlantic Council  has drawn on the Kennan doctrine to  suggest  that his broad outline should serve as the...

The Surprise of Hazel Israel Shamir   Russians have the quaintest ways to name their weapon systems. They name them after flowers: geranium, hyacinth, tulip. They give them female names: Katyusha, Tatjana. They might use the moniker of a favourite doll, like Pinocchio. Today it is Hazel, translated in Russian as Oreshnik, the latest medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile with multiple nuclear-capable warheads. This little number was recently tested at the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk (or ‘Dnepr’, as it is called by the Ukrainians). It is a lethal beast that no Western defence system can stop as it approaches at the astounding speed of Mach 10. All the world’s militaries began to scramble upon news of its first operational flight, but once it gets fitted with nuclear warheads – it will truly terrify. What would be a worthy target for such a devastating monster? Who should be first to be obliterated once WW3 starts? It seems like too much power to waste on Ukrainians. Who real...

  Iran missile attack: what we learned last night Mindless march to World War 3 may have hit a brick wall yesterday Alex Krainer During the night of 2nd October 2024, Iran unleashed their operation "True Promise 2," launching between 200 and 400 ballistic missiles into Israel. As the video footage coming from Israel has shown, many of these missiles reached their targets inflicting extensive damage on the ground. Apparently, some offshore gas platforms were also struck. Claims and counterclaims are a bit all over the place at the moment: Israelis have claimed that the Iranian attack failed and that most of the missiles were intercepted. Netanyahu's aide  Hananya Naftali  even  tweeted a "BRAVO"  to Israel's aerial defence systems for intercepting "nearly all the missiles." But the footage from last night gives a very different impression; it corroborates those who claimed that many missiles hit their targets. A few of the videos also confirm that t...

  Of Cool Heads and Hot Heads Philip Kraske   Ever more desperate, Israel is working hard to start a world war with the United States on its side. The elimination of  Hassan Nasrallah  won’t make much difference to Hezbollah’s fight; the new leader will soon step up. But Israel might regret the absence of the cool-headed Nasrallah. Cool-headedness has actually been the norm this past year, and is among the few hopeful notes on the international scene. Lots of leaders are keeping calm, holding back the factions in their governments that would love to take a crack at the folks thumbing their military noses at them. China merely tut-tuts about foreign navy ships traversing the Strait of Taiwan, Hezbollah keeps its big missiles in their silos, Iran responds to Israeli attacks with a few half-hearted firecrackers, and Vladimir Putin frowns and issues warning after warning when Ukraine, with Nato help, hits Russian refineries and radar installations. Meanwhile Egypt, Jorda...

  Netanyahu and Human Sacrifices in Occupied Palestine and America What Should Be the Fate of the Genocider-in-Chief? ANTHONY JAMES HALL The drama unfolding in Gaza, the West Bank, and more generally in West Asia is announcing a new phase in the fall of Western Civilization as we have known it. At the core of the drama is a very public ceremony of human sacrifice in the joint US-Israeli ritual to depopulate Gaza and rid the West Bank of its native Palestinians. The conflict is widening geographically, religiously, and ideologically. US universities are becoming major sites of the intensifying turmoil. These places are meant to be devoted to higher learning, open debate and critical thinking. But those ideals are fast giving way to assaults on very promising surges of free expression. Attempts are underway to wrestle to the ground the outbursts of liberated articulation. The quest to silence free speech is being done in the name of quelling so-called anti-Semitism. The ironies are g...