On any other news day, this would have been another nail in Starmer's coffin. That Special Relationship, eh?
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| By their friends shall ye know them |
ND
On any other news day, this would have been another nail in Starmer's coffin. That Special Relationship, eh?
|
| By their friends shall ye know them |
ND
33 comments:
A good weekend to bury bad news. Remarkable how sleazy the Paedophiles' Pals Party is. I mean, they've not had years in office to corrupt them yet.
I find it hard to keep up with der Sturmer's U-turns. Do I understand correctly that he's already U-turned twice on Iran? Has he yet promised to give Iran the Chagos Islands?
"Operation Epstein Fury"
This isn't going to improve the economic outlook one bit, Rachel won't be happy.
It's hard to keep up. From the Daily Sceptic:
"New Labour peer is suspended after it emerged he quit college role over ‘inappropriate’ sexual liaisons during work hours” – Freshly appointed Labour peer Lord Joe Docherty has been stripped of the whip while the party investigates claims of inappropriate sexual behaviour at work, says the Mail.
I'm not much one for conspiracy theories, but ...
(A) little diddy Shahed [i] hits Akrotiri, nobody hurt
(B) Starmer U-turns and allows US to use UK bases "strictly for defensive purposes" ... (ii)
_________________________
(i) Iranian design, but very widely available worldwide (jus sayin')
(ii) don't know if Starmer has been told, but "UK bases" have been heavily in use by US forces for several weeks now, in the pretty massive buildup phase. The 'air bridge' has been a sight to behold.
The ghost of Jo Moore lives deep within the Labour Party. Scumbag as ever. That said as Anon above says "Operation Epstein Fury".
The thing is this is looking like confidence calling on it's cousin hubris as soon as it set off. The Pentagon now briefs no immediate threat to US forces and is concerened it might run out of air munitions. And Even Eric Prince is sceptical of benefit.
Let us see how much the Gulf States are exposed.
Political decapitation of State leaders is now apparently a legitimate policy. (There were reasons that regicide again fellow Kings was frowned upon); and even if the rationale is a China based strategy a la Rabobank
"THE BIG WAR GAMBLE: The US strike on Iran is Trump’s high-risk gamble to choke China's energy lifeline, flip Tehran to allied control, open the India-Middle East-Europe corridor, weaken Russia, and lock in 21st-century US hegemony—delivering quick regime change and falling oil prices that cement Trumpism as a historic win, OR sparking Middle East chaos and global blowback that hands Beijing the advantage in a new age of empires."
H
Nick Drew I understood the line of evolution of the Shaheed was: Initial Germany build --> sold to Israel --> used to attack Lebanon -> shot down handed over to Iran --> reverse engineered --> Shaheed --> supplied to Russia in Ukraine --> upgraded in in some elements --> sold back to Iran --> current Shaheed;
I am however willing to be corrected.
My understanding is the Russian Shaheed is the Geran, but you would have thought it only comradely to feed back the development lessons to Iran. Indeed a quick Wiki tells me Geran 1 from Shahed 131 from South African Kentron ARD10 2004 version. And even stranger, the US are building reverse-engineered Shahed-136 (Geran 2) drones as Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drones. Just been deployed in the Gulf!
Nasty thought occurs - weren't those two elderly Brits jailed in Iran locked up in Evin prison, currently being bombed I assume in an attempt to put the inmates on the streets and give the authorities another headache? That must be pretty unpleasant to put it mildly.
Looking at oil and gas jumps, Miliband briefing on renewables in 3.. 2...
CH
I don't see Trump as the pondering type but I wonder if the thought passes his mind 'how did I get into this, who's the sucker here'.
Drone technicalities look interesting and you can buy some interesting navigation and guidance parts from a Ukrainian site (used) if you fancy tinkering. Wiki has some articles on drone innards that to my mind look a bit misleading and old fashioned. Maybe that is the idea. I see the Iranian knock off piston engine is reckoned a life of about 3 hours - just about good enough. As a guide WW2 Merlin engines had a design life of 200 hours but were made by a good company.
Looks like Marco Rubio let the cat out of the bag:
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
The Israeli tail wags the US dog.
"They made us do it".
From wiki again, the original Shahed had a Wankel engine. I can just about remember you used to be able to buy a sports car with one.
Wouldn't it have been simpler for the US to bomb Tel Aviv and say "This is revenge for the USS Liberty"?
It seems the drone had a Russian Kometa guidance system - otoh this was reported by pravda.com which I think is actually Ukrainian.
Is just me or are there shadows of Suez and who new what?
Can we sell, or even giver that damned island airbase in the pacific and let the Yanks sort out the legalities at their cost.
Mr Simons broke the 11th Commandment and thus had to go.
We do seem to have a lot of Oxbridge types in the upper reaches of government. But we don't seem any the better for it. I suppose HR wonks will tend to choose what looks a good product a bit like themselves.
I did work with a few Oxbridge types and some were plainly very bright but others talked well - for 5 minutes. So no guarantee. My guess is that a high 'intelligence' is not that rare. Socio economic factors tend to give us a sub set who find their way into Oxbridge and thence into government. This rather restricts the spectrum of viewpoints likely to become visible. Perhaps a few more plumbers and plasterers, unlikely to be worse.
In other news I see HMS Duncan 'may' go to Cyprus. Motto "Upright in prosperity and peril". Rachel and the Sea Lords can only hope it does stay upright and not turn turtle.
I see a Russian gas tanker has blown up off Malta. This is going to get us into trouble one day, talking of HMS Duncan.
Not The Duncan but The Dragon, a change of mind somewhere. Motto "We yield but to St George". We must hope the excitement has died down by the time it gets to Cyprus.
Puzzle now is how all this is going to look in 30 days time. Dark mutterings about 'Turbulent Presidents' will be ruthlessly supressed.
Given Starmer's omni-erring political antennae, I suspect things are going to go relatively well. Iran's attempts to expand the battlefield looks to have less driven a wedge between the Gulf states and the US, so much as have them coming around to the view that the Islamic Republic's time is up.
Had Starmer gone all in with Trump, then we'd probably be looking at a disaster, as it is, I'm expecting the 2030s to be an era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
Not sure about the mid-terms, you can see the split between the hardline MAGA crowd and the Trump Can Do No Wrong brigade now, the latter having had a sudden Damascene moment over military adventures abroad.
"Had Starmer gone all in with Trump, then we'd probably be looking at a disaster"
Indeed.
So instead we're guarding the north-west flank of this op, "strictly defensively"
So what about the jolly wheeze to arm the Kurds, ?
Turkey obviously alarmed that they are next in the sights of the Israelis (who are leading the US by the nose) have believe indicated this could be seen as declaration of war against them.
They are after all the next significant military power in the region (with their own defense industrial complex and not so reliant in the US), that will but against Netanyahu's dreams of Greater Israel.
Buckle up.
H
The Kurds get used, then shafted, by one and all - you'd think they'd have twigged. But it seems to have been ever thus, at least since the days when the Turks drove the Armenians into them, correctly assuming the Kurds would kill them.
Another TTK u-turn ... mind it's Merz that gets me. He's more homicidal than Trump!
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/the-kurdish-stratagem-risks-an-israeli?triedRedirect=true
This is what I was referring to.
H
I don't know. Erdogan is a remarkable character and survivor, trusted by none and courted by all, who's survived US regime change attempts (the Gulenists ten years back), Kurdish attacks, and nearly got Turkey into the EU. Turkey's now a bigger industrial nation than the UK. He has relations with all sides including Russia.
His strategy with Israel has been to bitterly condemn them while doing damn-all to stop them. He definitely has a hankering for Ottoman glory days, but he's not daft.
OTOH Israel are feeling their oats following Syria and Gaza, with Iran smashed (maybe) perhaps Greater Israel feels almost within reach?
I must say Natalie Bennett has changed a lot since she was the Green Party's spokeswoman ten years ago, she sounds more like a revanchist fascist now.
OT, Dominic Cummings:
"Farage tells people ‘after May’ Reform will start showing a transformation yet he’s spent his time recruiting some of the worst Tory dregs to help him persuade voters to vote for ‘change’. "
Who's the sleazy ex-Stratford MP - Zahawi ! Just the ticket !
He worked for Gulf Keystone Petroleum, a Capitalist favourite in its day.
I see that bombing Iran is "defensive" as long as we (or the US using our bases) are bombing missile sites. You can tell TTKier was a lawyer. You could extend that to defensively bombing factories that make the missiles, or defensively bombing the people that work in the factories, or defensively bombing the water and food that the people consume ...
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