Index

Putin’s Fingerprints All Over It

The “Surprise Attack” on Israel is no Surprise

Putin is desperate in Ukraine. He is slowly losing, and is out of real resources to fight. Why is anyone surprised that his ally Iran pushed Hamas into attacking Israel?

The move is very reminiscent of the KGB strategies that Putin lived before the USSR fell apart of its own dead weight. Trying to distract the U. S. and E. U. by opening up a second war in an area they have interests in is straight out of the Soviet playbook. All of his maneuvering in Africa has done nothing, so that leaves Israel. Putin cares not one whit about Palestinian citizenry, and they are the ones that will suffer the worst from all of this.

Now that Hamas has slapped Israel hard enough to get their attention, I don’t expect Hamas and the Gaza strip to exist much longer. While Iran may have pushed Hamas into attacking, it cannot defend them from the inevitable. Israel is quite capable of eliminating the Gaza Strip entirely, scorched-earth style. Nobody with any leverage over Israel has anything to say on it because of the attack.

Forcing Israel to eliminate the Gaza thorn in its side only strengthens the case against Putin’s failing Ukraine adventure. Israel has the same case against Gaza that Ukraine has against Russia, and overwhelming force to deal with it. Gaza could easily be a smoking ruin in short order. Israel taking their fight to Iran afterwards - something the U. S. is likely to back, if only quietly under the table - could hurt Putin’s Ukraine adventure even more. Iran has been selling Putin weapons that they would need against Israel. Iran is full of easy targets that Israel would have no problems destroying, including the weapons factories that feed Putin. Both of these factors ruin what help Iran has been to him if Israel attacks.

The longer-term outcome of this is likely to be that Russia climbs even further in bed with China. Putin has basically eliminated any possibility of improving ties with the civilized world, so autocracies like Iran, North Korea, China, and Belarus are all he will have left. The right-wing he has supported in trying to overthrow western democracies has pretty much run out of steam. Putin should have known better that to try to depend on incompetent fruitcakes like the orange menace and his Nazi supporters in the U. S. The only one of those possible allies with any economic strength is China, and Xi is doing his damndest to eliminate that.

The American right wing depends on rich donors for survival since they have no competence of their own. Those billionaire fascist donors are slowly figuring out that the fright wing can’t help them. Dumping money down idiots’ rat-holes in only a waste of money in the long run. The billionaires money came from a strong middle class, so as they destroy the only economically productive group, they have nothing left. They certainly cannot produce anything themselves, so without their wage slaves, they are nothing and have nothing.

This same argument applies to the Axis of Autocracies that Russia is likely to build. Autocracies in general cannot build economic strength in a world where intellectual development is the driver of productivity. What brought Europe out of the dark ages was the destruction of the Church/Nobility autocracy by the formation and (in historical terms) sudden economic power of the middle class and craft guilds. The same thing in reverse is sinking China’s economy faster than a punctured child’s balloon. Russia under Putin already threw away their chance at economic growth that way.

Putin’s self-destructive lack of foresight has cost him in Ukraine. it will cost him in Iran by the time the Gaza mess settles out. In the end it will cost him at home. The more failures he backs, the weaker and stupider he looks at home.

Israel’s Netanyahu may be the biggest (or only) beneficiary of the attack. His trump-like dictator-wannabe act has wrecked Israel’s unity, and he needed something like this attack to overcome that. Whether he has the intelligence to use it to break ties with his far-right problem and rejoin the civilized world is another question. We won’t know the answer to that until long after the shooting stops.