BRITISH/ EU/ NATO COMPLICITY

PETER KOENIG—The Houthis have made technological advances in building their own drones, missiles, and rockets. They have shown the Saudis that they have the precision and capacity to attack Saudi Arabian targets practically anywhere in the Saudi territory. This is impressive and surely may have had a crucial influence in this first step of a prisoner exchange; first step to what I hope will be a much more important goal – Peace.

JEAN SHAOUL—The UK has licensed more than £6.5 billion worth of arms to the Saudi-led coalition in the five years since March 26, 2015, when the bombing began. This is likely an underestimate as many of the bombs, missiles, and aircraft components are licensed via the opaque and secretive Open Licence system that is “more flexible” than a standard licence and “avoids the need to apply for a new licence for every export.”

CALEB MAUPIN—Dispatch dateline October 2019 • Topics included:
The fake (synthetic) left destruction of real leftism in the developed world • Criticism of identity politics, LGBTQ, transgenderist idealism, etc.  • Deliberate “de-industrialisation in the developed world heartland • Dismantlement of the postwar “welfare state” in Europe, and rollback of worker gains in the US (the “Great American Middle Class”) • The imposition of austerity and unending war • Why bourgeois feminism leads nowhere •The century long campaign to defame the Soviet Union and J. Stalin • The accomplishments of socialism • Art & music under the Bolsheviks: it wasn’t the way the film Ninotchka presented it —and much more.

MoA—The U.S. wants to counter China’s growing economic and political standing in the world. The Obama administration had attempted a ‘pivot to Asia’ by building a low tariff economic zone via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). It would have excluded China. The Trump administration rejected the TPP and withdrew from it. It launched an economic war against China by increasing tariffs on Chinese products, prohibiting high tech supplies to Chinese manufacturers, and by denying Chinese companies access to its market. 
It has also tried to build a military coalition that would help it to threaten China.

Two highly dependable commentators—Moon of Alabama and Eric Zuesse—reach the same conclusion: the latest round of US sanctions on Iran, calculated to bring Tehran to its knees, may accomplish some of its squalid goals because the corrupt and complicit EU, despite its sanctimonious liberal rhetoric, refuses to stand up to the Great Hegemon and instead joins in its global campaign of war and intimidation. In their arrogant quest for dominance at any cost to their victims, the Washington cliques are actually forcing countries like Iran to become fully self-sufficient, and thereby more powerful and more independent than ever before. Russia should be a lesson, but their boundless arrogance does not allow them to see the obvious.