By Kit Klarenberg – Oct 3, 2024

A little-noticed report published September 19th by JINSA laid out how the Empire will be on the defence, and at grave disadvantage, in all-out hot war with Iran.

On October 1st, Iran launched scores of missiles at the Zionist entity, in response to the murder of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, among many brazen provocations and escalations targeting the Resistance in recent months. Voluminous footage of key Israeli infrastructure, including military and intelligence sites, being comprehensively flattened by the Islamic Republic’s inexorable onslaught has circulated widely, amply contradicting predictable claims emanating from Tel Aviv and Washington that the blitzkrieg was successfully repelled by Western air defence systems.

It is the largest, most devastating attack on the Zionist entity in its 76-year history. The full impact is not yet apparent. While US officials worriedly warned hours in advance they possessed “indications” Iran was preparing to attack “Israel”, the incursion’s timing, scale, and severity caught all concerned by surprise. Washington dispatching thousands more troops across West Asia in the days prior, explicitly in “Israel’s” defence, was evidently no deterrent to Tehran.

That deployment came replete with a supposedly rock-solid Pentagon pledge to come to the rescue should the Islamic Republic seek to repeat the historic, wide-ranging drone and rocket barrage to which it subjected the Zionist entity in April. Department of Defense apparatchiks boldly declared they and Tel Aviv alike were “even better prepared for a new Iranian attack” than last time round. The ease with which “Israel’s” purportedly impregnable Iron Dome was bested exposes this braggadocio as hopeless hubris at best, dangerous delusion at worst.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is ever-cautious, and has acted with extraordinary restraint since the 21st century Holocaust erupted in Gaza. Some analysts have interpreted this implacable self-control, and Tehran’s lack of immediate backlash against acts such as the audacious assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as not merely rigid reluctance to escalate into all-out war with “Israel” and its Western backers, but an inability to respond at all. Tel Aviv’s unprecedented October 1st battering should dispel any such inference.

Senior Israeli politician Yaiv Golan, who returned to Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) service following October 7th, has branded Iran’s latest assault a “declaration of war” against the Zionist entity. Notorious Benny Gantz boasts Tel Aviv “has capabilities that were developed for years to strike Iran, and the government has [our] full backing to act with force and determination.” Meanwhile, IOF spokesperson Daniel Hagari declares, “There was a serious attack on us and there will be serious consequences.”

The IRGC appears to have calculated such threats and pronouncements are as empty and meaningless as the Pentagon’s pledge to be “better prepared” for a future Iranian strike. At the very least, the Islamic Republic fears no Anglo-Israeli retaliation to its latest broadside. That may mean Tehran has grounds to believe the balance of power in the region, and in any future large-scale conflict with the Zionist entity and West, has irrevocably tipped in favour of the Resistance.

Eerily, a little-noticed report published September 19th by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a powerful and shadowy Zionist lobby organisation, inadvertently reached this same conclusion. It laid out in forensic detail how the Empire will be on the defence, and at grave disadvantage, in all-out hot war with Iran. Along the way, a blueprint for Resistance victory was plainly sketched. With Tehran having thrown down a gauntlet on October 1st, we could now be seeing that plan being put into action.

‘Gaining Overmatch’
Titled U.S. Bases in the Middle East: Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography, JINSA’s report was authored by former CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie, who oversaw the Empire’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It appraises the viability, value, and force projection capabilities of current US military installations throughout West Asia, focusing on Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. The findings are stark, calling for an immediate overhaul of American basing across the region:

“Our current basing structure, inherited from years of haphazard decision-making, and driven by divergent operational and political principles, has yielded installations that are not optimally situated for the most likely threats of today and the future in the region.”

Despite mentioning “threats” in plural, JINSA’s sole focus is the Islamic Republic. While a myriad of issues with the Empire’s modern day positioning throughout West Asia are identified, the “most important” conclusion drawn is that Washington’s “current basing array detracts from our ability to deter Iran and fight them effectively in a high-intensity scenario.” McKenzie is nonetheless at pains to portray Tehran as somewhat feeble and vulnerable:

“The Iranians have no army that can be deployed as an invading force. They have a small and ineffective navy, and in practical terms, no air force. Their missile and drone force, though, is capable of gaining overmatch against many of its neighbors…they can deploy more attacking missiles and drones than can be defended against.”

Handing out Sweets: How British Propaganda Steers Events in West Asia

Given what went down on October 1st, McKenzie correctly forecast that the April strike would “probably remain the basic template for large-scale Iranian attacks.” He appraised the effort – “at least conceptually” – as “a sound one,” from which “there are lessons for all to learn.” The most pressing and “obvious” takeout for JINSA was that, “for the defenders of the Gulf, it will be a war of strike aircraft, tankers, and air and missile defense…and here is the problem”:

“These aircraft are largely based at locations along the southern coast of the Arabian Gulf…an artifact of planning against Russian incursions in the 1970s, and the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns of the early decades of this century. They are close to Iran, which means they have a short trip to the fight…but that is also their great vulnerability. They are so close to Iran that it takes but five minutes or less for missiles launched from Iran to reach their bases.”

The “thousands of short-range missiles” Iran possesses are also a key negative “factor”, offering “no strategic depth.” While an F-35 fighter jet “is very hard to hit in the air…on the ground it is nothing more than a very expensive and vulnerable chunk of metal sitting in the sun.” Refuelling and rearming facilities on US bases in West Asia “are also vulnerable, and they cannot be moved.” Most damagingly of all:

“These bases are all defended by Patriot and other defensive systems. Unfortunately, at such close range to Iran, the ability of the attacker to mass fires and overwhelm the defense is very real.”

In closing his roadmap to Tehran’s victory, McKenzie bitterly laments, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that our current basing structure is poorly postured for the most likely fight that will emerge.” The Empire “will not be able to maintain these bases in a full-throated conflict, because they will be rendered unusable by sustained Iranian attack.” Imperial overreach in West Asia has now fallen victim to “the simple tyranny of geography.” And all along, the Islamic Republic has been taking rigorous notes:

“The Iranians can see this problem just as clearly as we do, and that is one of the reasons why they have created their large and highly capable missile and drone force.”

‘Nothing but force’
For all the JINSA report’s doom and gloom, McKenzie does express some optimism – of the most fantastical, self-deceived kind. For one, he suggests Iran cannot threaten the Empire’s “carrier-based aviation” capabilities. Still, he concedes “there aren’t enough carriers, and therefore naval aviation will probably not be the central weapon in a fires war with Iran.” The former CENTCOM chief also conveniently overlooks AnsarAllah’s recent crushing defeat of the US Navy during Operation Prosperity Guardian, which unambiguously exposed the redundancy of US aircraft carriers altogether.

Elsewhere, McKenzie declares that the Empire “needs to move aggressively to develop basing alternatives that demonstrate that it is prepared to fight and prevail in a sustained high-intensity war” with Tehran, and therefore “overcome unfavorable basing geography.” One radical solution proposed by the JINSA report is to “consider basing in Israel”. US military presence in Tel Aviv has already been slowly growing over recent years. While largely unacknowledged and downplayed, it has proven incredibly controversial every step of the way.

In September 2017, the IOF announced the arrival of America’s first permanent military installation in the Zionist entity. Such was the backlash domestically and regionally, that officials in Washington raced to deny this was the case, prompting a major cleanup of IOF websites referencing the site. Any move to create a fully-fledged US base in “Israel”, explicitly for war-fighting purposes, would inevitably spark even greater outcry, and be seen as a major escalation by the Resistance, demanding a drastic response.

Such an eventuality undoubtedly didn’t occur to the former CENTCOM chief. His analysis is hazardously unsound and fallacious in other areas too. On top of “Israel’s” “geographic advantages”, he praises Tel Aviv’s “powerful, proven air and missile defense capability.” It was this “competence”, combined with “US and allied assistance, and the cooperation and assistance of Arab neighbors”, that ensured Iran’s April strike on the Zionist entity was a “failure”, McKenzie muses.

He appraises this group effort, which supposedly prevented Iran from delivering decapitation strikes against the Zionist entity’s military and intelligence structure, as “in every measurable way…a remarkable success story.” If McKenzie’s view was shared by the Pentagon, this may explain why the US was so caught off guard by, and ill-prepared for, Tehran’s recent bludgeoning of “Israel”. Far from an embarrassing cataclysm, the April effort was a spectacular success, which exposed “Israel’s” fatal weaknesses, and reshaped West Asia forever.

Far from wanting too deliver a death blow, the Islamic Republic sought to deescalate via a measured, well-advertised show of strength, while avoiding a wider response. In the process, the IRGC demonstrated that if it wished, in future it could successfully bypass the Iron Dome, and would wreak immense destruction. Then, a “new equation” was spelled out by a Corps Commander:

“If from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point we will attack against them.”

This message was evidently not received in corridors of power in Brussels, London, Tel Aviv, and Washington. Whether it will finally be comprehended now that Tehran has struck once again deep into the Zionist entity’s putrid heart remains to be seen. As Russian military strategist Igor Korotchenko once observed, “this Anglo-Saxon breed understands nothing but force.”

(Al Mayadeen – English)

Reflecting on the mass protests that recently shook Kenyan society from top to bottom, Joel Mukisa argues that we must go much further than a choiceless democracy to find answers. A systematic questioning of the underlining political and economic structures underpinning the choices on offer must be undertaken.

By Joel Mukisa

If you asked a think-tank team leader, a social sciences Professor at Nairobi University if they anticipated the scale and popularity of the protests that rocked East Africa’s economic powerhouse Kenya, only a few months ago many honest people would simply retort, NO!

The protests that rather appeared spontaneous characterized mainly by a young generation of Kenyans known as Gen Z protesting the Finance Bill (an annually produced document that lays out the government’s fiscal strategy) that would introduce a cocktail of new taxes on essential and basic commodities. This comes on the heels of an economy recuperating from the COVID-19, Ukraine War, the decpreciation of the Kenyan shilling, massive unemployement, massive debt and a divisive election.

The protests were characterized by incidents of violence among the deaths, shootings by Kenya’s Police, deployment of the Armed Forces, looting, plunder and the most dramatic, setting the national parliament ablaze. This all came as a surprise especially to Africanists that have viewed or tounted Kenya as a radical break with what it stereotypically labelled African.

Kenya is characterized as democratically stable and having strong democratic institutions. So the force meted out by Kenya’s police or even such rabid dissent with a leader of William Ruto’s stature and credentials can seem to be confusing. These tribeless protests can not be understood under the banal templates of “ethnic madness.” This is why I argue we must understand this protest movement as merely examples of something broader than even the protestors were saying which is characteristic of contemporary social movements.

Nomeclature

It may sound bourgeoisbut before we begin to understand the systemic shifts and questions the protest generated, we should understand it by the name under which it moves. The protests begun under the #OccupyParliament. Which was symbolic of the need to take a sovereign democratic institution and its symbolic power into the hands of the majority. This was after and slightly before parliament debated and passed the Finance Bill.

Despite objections raised and wide mass distemper against the law, parliamentarians of the Kenya Kwanza (the main party of governement) hurriedly passed the law with amendments from the minority. Government claimed that it had listened and hence the amendments. The tone shifted with Gen Z clarifying that they wanted: “Reject Not Amend.” The Amendment signalled the state’s ability to offer more if push came to shove and many urged those protesting to up the ante, and their gamble paid when Kenya’s President William Ruto declined to ratify the impugned Bill sending it back to Parliament.

It is in this context of democracy’s failure that #OcuppyParliament must be understood.

#OccupyParliament is not a fresh lexicon in the Antropocene. It first emerged in 2011 with the #OccupyWallStreet as a left-wing anarchist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of money in politics that had begun in Zuccotti Park, in New York City’s financial district, and lasted from September 17 to November 15, 2011.

How can we better situate #OcuppyParliament without reducing it to an analogous analysis but rather steeping it within both its national, regional and international histriocity.

We can glean from the foregoing that from the onset #OcuppyMovements are mobilized online, overcoming differences emanating from historical injuries such as race, tribe (in the African context) and class, gender (not so much) as bodies assemble on the streets to make the point that life is nolonger liveable.

These protests made known a hard truth that unity does not precede political praxis; it is produced through political struggle. They bypass established democratic institutions that they think are part of the mess. They are leaderless hence less prone to compromise and represent a shift in ways of political organization.

This spectre started in 1978 with the Soweto uprising that changed the conventional understanding of struggle from armed to popular struggle. Ordinary people stopped thinking of struggle as something waged by professional fighters, armed guerrillas, with the people cheering from the stands, it continued to Tahrir square in Cairo in 2011 when Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign. Little wonder the protesters hope that for their mission to be complete, Ruto too, must resign and that’s why after him ceding to their demands and refusing to sign the law, they continued to protest insisting that he too resign under the hashtag #RutoMustGo.

The Metaphor

CNN journalist Larry Madowo interviewed two people who have been subject of humor and caricature. He asked them why they were on the streets. What particular grievances they had against the state that perhaps prompted them to come to the streets? The answers shifted from incoherent and incomphrensible to muffled and inarticulate hinting at a systemic problem from which the Finance Bill is the starting blocks through which mass hysteria could be immediately articulated.

Kenya is part of what has been termed as the African crisis or African Tragedy. The foregoing are adjectives for endemic poverty, high unemployement rates, inflation, corruption, deterioting terms of trade, cronynism and debt dependence. These were in recent times compounded by the Corona Virus pandemic, a war in Ukraine, among an array of other international factors. In such a fix with a near financial crunch just pending, the Kenyan leadership was forced onto the IMF who imposed the usual straitjacket.

The IMF insists that the crises are budgetary, i.e, that government expendintures have excedded revenues and the demand for foreign exchange outstripped supply. The short term antidote is to freeze wages, cut social programs and subsidies. Secondly, increase production from the supply side by transfering resources from the classes which have a tendency to consume to those that have a tendecy to invest. The recommendations at times include regressive tax regimes on the middle class. A middle class that been vanishing since 2008 during the Kibaki administration. It’s the same middle class on whom the new taxes would be imposed – joined by their dependant subaltern kith and kin on the streets in protests that were reminiscent of the 20th century bread riots that too, opposed IMF and World Bank Austerity.

Kenya’s path on this neo-liberal financing model must be one of the most ambitious on the continent and has been sustained across decades without proper scrutiny of its nefarious, cataclysmic implications such as the wide and dispropriate levels of inome inequality that has been an enabler in the reproduction of a political caste or aristocracy from which “alternatives” in the multi-party dispensations are to be chosen. The political economist Thandika Mkandwire refered to this as choiceless democracy given that it restricted sets of policy options available to African states, which find themselves strangled by a skewed international economic structure, the neoliberal economic and security demands of donors, and the pervasive presence of foreign NGOs and development agencies.

Therefore the inarticulate protesters referred to above speak against this context of an all powerful elite and under an ever contracted political landscape that benefits a few. The concrete example should be how the opposition had fielded amendments to this regressive bill in parliament that it later withdrew under the auspieces of a protest gaining momentum.

If the current state of democracy is limited in its scope to tackle the pervasive issues that bedevil us today and institutions of the global economy such as IMF and World Bank remain unfazed as we stand in the hot African sun to elect leaders, then democracy as it has been sold to us has failed.

So do we do as part of the #OcuppyParliament movement? Do we continue reforming the political system to which this mess is greatly attributable. As Zizek reminds us here, Marx’s key insight remains as pertinent today as it ever was: the question of freedom should not be located primarily in the political sphere – i.e. in such things as free elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, respect for human rights. Real freedom resides in the ‘apolitical’ network of social relations, from the market to the family, where the change needed in order to make improvements is not political reform, but a change in the social relations of production. We do not vote concerning who owns what, or about the relations between workers in a factory and their bosses. Such things are left to processes outside the sphere of the political, and it is an illusion that one can change them by ‘extending’ democracy – say, by setting up ‘democratic’ banks under people’s control.

The democractic illusion may thus be the real impediment to real time transformation of the social relations of production and the start of a conversation on the politics of redistribution that has been supplanted by the discourse of recognition that has atomized emanicipatory struggles.

Ruto is not the problem, the problem is sytemic and Kenyans should use this moment as an opportunity to seach for a new mode of democracy that is emancipatory. To return to the start of this blogpost, the answer as to why no one could have predicted this kind of event is simple, it required imagination, a break with the past for which most social sciences are totally incapable.

A version of this blogpost appeared as ‘Kenya’s protests as metaphors’ on 17 July 2024 in The Independent (Uganda).

Joel Mukisa is a**** radical researcher with interests in political economy, agrarian question, human rights, philosophy and psycho-analysis****.

Recently some group published an interactive, javascript based, website, to graphically explore data broker companies. This is just one group doing similar research work in different fields. I applaud the cause, but I take issue with the format.

An organization, that is, or group that frequently needs to provide structured data. In turn, developers might want said data, in order to deliver apps.

Interactive websites seem flaky to me, since no one guarantees they will still be there two years from now. I think it is only natural that groups doing important work would do a great service to communities if they served a RESTful or GraphQL API, depending on the complexity of the data.

But even in this case, when the group stops serving the API let alone be coerced to stop, or access to the API is blocked, this great service will be discontinued. Obviously the raw data must be shared for this to work.

Lately I was thinking about these edge cases. Journalists or activists doing this type of work may lack the sophistication to structure the data in useful ways. They probably do the journalist work and then have some developer they either hire, or is part of the group, make the important backend decisions, including structuring the raw data.

Regarding the retention of the data in case the group disbands or goes away, there are some existing solutions like torrenting or IPFSing the datasets. Both methods can help the data be online forever, but what about content integrity and versions? They would still need a static webpage or something to provide the hashes, and IPFS is by its design not very well suited for versioning.

There are no clean cut guidelines on how to go about this, or at least, what is a handful of good ways to go about this, so that a current or future group can rely on to deliver this type of work.

Another idea that popped into my head is that the ecosystems of repositories and package managers are very mature in all major distributions. Structured data could be uploaded to distro repositories (including FDroid and the like), just like any other software with underlying data structures. Hashing and versioning would be then natively taken care of by existing package managers. But the question still remains, what data structure is the best for this kind of relational data, and what kind of API should best be exposed to the user.

So, if you feel like it, I would like to hear your thoughts on:

1. Skills and preparations required by investigative teams to publish structured data to the world.
2. Assessment of the torrenting and IPFS solutions to ensure recovery of the data in perpetuity.
3. Assessment of the RESTful or GraphQL format to disseminate investigative data.
4. Assessment of using established package managers and repositories to disseminate investigative data.
5. Ideas on what should be eventually exposed to the user, who can be assumed to be a developer as well.
6. Further comments.

I would be glad to get some feedback on these thoughts.