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A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

offsite link Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
2023/02/27 19:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of

offsite link The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you?re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by

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Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link British Drivers Steering Away From New Cars In Their Droves Mon Dec 23, 2024 13:00 | Sallust
British car-buyers are turning away from new vehicles in their droves and keeping their reliable old petrol models going for far longer as Labour's Net Zero war on affordable motors heats up.
The post British Drivers Steering Away From New Cars In Their Droves appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Britain on Brink of Recession After Growth Revised to Zero Following Reeves?s Horror Budget Mon Dec 23, 2024 11:09 | Will Jones
Britain is on the brink of a recession after official figures were revised to show zero growth in the third quarter of the year and living standards fell, with Rachel Reeves's horror Budget blamed.
The post Britain on Brink of Recession After Growth Revised to Zero Following Reeves’s Horror Budget appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link What Fresh Hell is This? The Climate and Nature Bill Mon Dec 23, 2024 09:00 | Paul Homewood
If you thought eco zealot Ed Miliband was bad, wait until you get a load of the Climate Change and Nature Bill, which seeks to turbocharge the Net Zero agenda and already has the support of 192 MPs. Paul Homewood has the skinny.
The post What Fresh Hell is This? The Climate and Nature Bill appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal Mon Dec 23, 2024 07:00 | Toby Young
The Daily Sceptic's Christmas Appeal launches today ? an opportunity for readers to show their appreciation of the work we do. Remember, donating just ?5/month or ?50/year will give you access to a range of premium perks.
The post The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Dec 23, 2024 01:12 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Leader of Hizballah Hasan Nasrallah killed by Israeli airstrike in Beirut that killed many Civilians too

category international | anti-war / imperialism | news report author Saturday September 28, 2024 22:49author by indy Report this post to the editors

On Friday, Israeli struck a number of apartment blocks in the suburbs of Beirut using it is estimated 5000 lb bombs supplied directly by the USA. It was unclear initially whether Nasrallah had died or not but it has now been confirmed by Hizballah itself.

Here is a report from the Electronic Intifada

Hasan Nasrallah died on the road to liberate Palestine

Israel’s assassination of Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizballah, in an apocalyptic bombing attack on Beirut’s southern suburb on Friday is likely, at least in the short term, to cause enormous shock, despair and demoralization among supporters of the resistance to Zionism in Lebanon and across the region.

That is exactly what it is intended to do.
A portrait of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah seen in Beirut on 21 September. The leader of the Lebanese resistance group was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburb on Friday, 27 September
A portrait of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah seen in Beirut on 21 September. The leader of the Lebanese resistance group was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburb on Friday, 27 September

Confirmed by Hizballah on Saturday, Nasrallah’s killing comes after a series of tactical successes in the early stages of Israel’s unfolding full-scale attack on Lebanon, an open-ended assault that may well equal in barbarity Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

These are terrible and difficult thoughts to absorb after almost a year of genocide.

First there were the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, followed by a series of assassinations of Hizballah’s senior leaders, and now the head of the organization itself.

As Nasrallah himself admitted in his final speech, the organization suffered a severe blow with the pager attacks. Even worse was to come. Clearly there were serious breaches in security.

Nasrallah’s stature as a tactical and strategic thinker, as the most prominent and trusted leader of the Axis of Resistance, and as a personality capable of inspiring and reassuring supporters even in the worst of times, cannot be overstated.

The euphoria in Israel, Washington and some Arab capitals, will be exceeded only by the grief of Nasrallah’s supporters, who are far more numerous.

And there is no doubt that the loss is real and great from the perspective of a resistance that faces not only Israel’s formidable arsenal, but all the resources of the United States and the collective West.

Israel’s ability to carry out this series of attacks in quick succession will shake the confidence of many in Hizballah’s legendary prowess and operational security.

The attacks will go some way to restoring the prestige Tel Aviv has lost among its Western and Arab backers after a year of military failure in Gaza, and its failure to prevent the Hamas military offensive that wiped out the Gaza division of Israel’s army on 7 October 2023.

And although Hizballah has been hammering Israeli military assets and settlements in the north of historic Palestine with rockets, many in the region are asking why the resistance group’s response to Israel’s escalating aggression has not been harder and harsher – even as Israel intensifies its bombardment of civilians across Lebanon and within its capital.

Another question on many lips is why Iran, which vowed retaliation after Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, has acted with such restraint. There is a growing perception that its lack of response only encouraged Israel’s ever more brazen violence.

“Shock and awe” is not victory

Amid the rapidly changing situation and the torrent of emotions after a year of livestreamed genocide in Gaza, now being extended by Israel to Lebanon, it is hard to maintain a long view. But doing so is essential for sound analysis.

It is worth remembering this: In almost any asymmetrical war, when the strongest side – the invader or colonizer – goes on the offensive, it often appears to achieve quick and stunning success.

Indeed “shock and awe” is the name of a Western, specifically American, military doctrine, developed in the 1990s and explicitly touted when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Also called “rapid dominance,” its aim is to demoralize and paralyze the adversary with the use of overwhelming and spectacular displays of violence.

The goal according to the doctrine’s authors, is to so “overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels.”

We’ve seen this time and again in recent decades and we’re witnessing it now.

Just weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States attacked Afghanistan, quickly toppling the Taliban government under the pretext that it had sheltered Osama bin Laden.

American confidence following this swift apparent success undoubtedly spurred Washington to go on to its next project: the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

With the government of Saddam Hussein quickly overthrown and American tanks in control of Baghdad, President George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on 1 May of that year – words that came to haunt him as the United States became bogged down in a war of attrition against resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

These rapid victories, or so they appeared, sparked real fears at the time that the American forces would roll onwards towards Damascus and Tehran, or perhaps other “rogue states” on America’s hit list.

We know now, from the so-called Afghanistan Papers, that the warmongers in Washington recognized all along that they had lost the war, but lied to the American public for almost two decades that they were winning.

And when the American withdrawal from Afghanistan came in August 2021, the humiliating departure from Kabul airport was widely compared to the chaotic scenes of the defeated Americans evacuating in helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.

With respect to Israel too, this pattern has been evident. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 – an assault it dubbed “Operation Peace for Galilee” – its forces quickly swept north to Beirut, besieging and occupying an Arab capital for the first time in the Zionist settler state’s history.

Israel murdered tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization. But success, from Tel Aviv’s perspective, quickly turned to failure.

During a long occupation, resistance to Israel grew, especially from Hizballah, which did not even exist at the time of the Israeli invasion.

Hizballah and other resistance groups bled Israeli occupation forces for two decades in a grueling war of attrition, until Israel withdrew from occupied southern Lebanon in defeat in May 2000.

Even in the context of the American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israel’s constant professions that it has placed this or that part of Gaza under its total control, quickly crumble. The fact is that the resistance continues to fight in every part of Gaza.

So far every Israeli-American “day after” plan, in which a defeated Hamas would be replaced by an Arab-backed Palestinian collaborator force, has collapsed.

Distracting from an exhausted Israel’s ongoing failure in Gaza, is perhaps one of the factors spurring Israel to seek spectacular “success” in Lebanon.

Turning point

This sobering moment is a turning point in the long regional war for liberation from racist, Western-backed settler-colonial Zionism. But after a century of Zionism’s depredations and horrors, neither the people of Lebanon nor Palestine have surrendered, and there’s no reason to believe they will now.

On the contrary, after the initial shock, the determination of the resistance will only increase, and its circle will expand, as it has in every phase of the liberation struggle.

Nor does the assassination of Nasrallah, with American bombs and American warplanes, and perhaps other assistance from Washington, change the trajectory of the downward decline of US global power – the power on which Israel relies for its survival.

Let’s recall too that the Zionists have always used assassination as a primary tactic. However, their war is not against individual leaders, but against entire peoples whose determination cannot be so easily snuffed out.

Nasrallah himself assumed the leadership of Hizballah after Israel murdered his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Nasrallah grew the organization to unprecedented strength.

That strength is not based on the will of one individual, but on a base of support deeply committed to the cause and willing – as Nasrallah himself never failed to point out – to make enormous sacrifices on the road to liberation.

If the Israeli army has admitted Hamas cannot be destroyed because “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party,” then what about Hizballah?

What is most sobering is that the war to liberate Palestine and the region from Zionism will be no less brutal on the people of the region than the wars to liberate Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and so many other places targeted by the Euro-American empire.

After all, the occupiers and colonizers are the same countries, and the genocidal hatred their ruling classes bear towards the people whose land and rights they seek to usurp has never dimmed.

Like others before him, Nasrallah gave his life on the road to liberate Palestine, and that struggle did not end today.

Related Link: https://electronicintifada.net/content/hasan-nasrallah-died-road-liberate-palestine/49071

late_secretary_general_of_hezbollah_hassan_nasrallah_delivers_speech_sept19th_2024.jpg

author by crazy catpublication date Tue Dec 10, 2024 11:07author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Pepe Escobar in conversation with Judge Napolitano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWBrLsUP5eQ&t=21s

author by Crazy Catpublication date Sat Dec 07, 2024 15:58author address author phone Report this post to the editors

From Voltairenet. org.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article221566.html

Strategic Culture:

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/12/04/the-syria-riddle-how-it-may-turn-into-the-first-brics-war/

Interview with Pepe Escobar with Dialouge Works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5S5md0JsZQ&t=38s

And one in French with Thierry Meyssan from Le courrier des Stratčges:

Meyssan : "Comment Trump va neutraliser la monnaie des BRICS"

https://lecourrierdesstrateges.fr/

 
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