Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way.

Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do).

A new article from The Washington Post titled “Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed” reports that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.” The article notes that Trump has expressed openness to war with Iran, saying that “anything can happen”.

This comes as the al-Qaeda affiliates who captured Damascus assure the world that Syria will no longer allow itself to be used as a launchpad for attacks against Israel.

After Assad was ousted I got a bunch of weirdos in my comments claiming that Israel was somehow sad about this development, because Israel and Assad were secretly on the same side. This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve been asked to believe in a long time, and I was asked to believe it not by crazy QAnoners or the liberal mass media but by a sector of pro-Palestine leftoids who also love NATO.

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The US hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda, then hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda. They split up, they get back together, they split up again. “We were on a break!” “We were not on a break!” Will they or won’t they? Keep watching and find out!

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Fake revolutions everywhere you look. Hooray, the brave freedom fighters ousted the dictator in Syria! Hooray, Donald Trump is fighting the Deep State! Hooray, Bernie Sanders and AOC are transforming the Democratic Party and fighting for economic justice!

As the need for real revolution becomes more and more urgent, we’re seeing more and more fake revolutions designed to keep the status quo in place. People’s rage against the machine is harnessed by phony billionaire populism and shitlib progressivism so that their political energy can be fed right back into the machine. People are trained to cheer for foreign rebels who are backed by the CIA and fight to expand the might of the US empire instead of for the groups around the world who are fighting against imperial domination.

They funnel our attention and energy into fake revolutions to keep us from fighting a real one. The more discontented the public becomes, the more existentially necessary it will be for them to do this. The longer we keep getting redirected into political dead-ends by those who benefit from the imperial status quo, the longer the imperial status quo will keep abusing us all.

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Israel supporters will tell you antisemitism is one of the biggest problems in the world and then if you ask them for examples of where dangerous antisemitism is occurring in our society they’ll list things like the United Nations, Amnesty International, Ireland, and the pope.

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I often see questions like “Why are the billionaires destroying the world like this? What’s the point of amassing all that wealth if you’re just going to spend the rest of your life in some underground bunker?”

Such questions assume a level of rationality I don’t believe these people possess. Billionaires are driven by unconscious, irrational forces within themselves, not by rational concerns. Becoming a billionaire is itself an irrational thing to do; nobody needs that much money. Nobody’s safety, security, or quality of life is significantly improved by having billions of dollars instead of millions. No matter how much wealth you control, you can only drive one car at a time, wear one suit at a time, live in one house at a time. Past a certain level, accumulating more money becomes an absurdity by any possible metric.

People who amass that much wealth aren’t behaving rationally — they’re trying to fill a gaping hole within themselves that can never be filled. They’re reacting to early childhood trauma and compelled by dysfunctional psychological coping mechanisms. They’re subconsciously trying to compensate for believed stories of deficiency and lack; trying to chase after their long-dead father’s approval; trying to feel a sense of control in a world which felt very threatening to them when they were small. They’re not even acting based on any real concern for their own future, so why would they act based on concern for the future of the planet?

The obscenely wealthy people who rule our world are destroying it not out of stupidity or spite, but out of unconscious compulsion. A heroin addict doesn’t keep using because they don’t understand that heroin is bad for them or because they hope to overdose one day, they keep using because their addiction is driven by inner pain and psychological forces within themselves which they have not yet brought into consciousness. Becoming a billionaire and becoming a heroin addict are both irrational destructive behaviors driven by irrational internal dynamics. The only difference is that the billionaires are taking the rest of us with them.

Original article: Caitlin Johnstone