A Few Thoughts On Iran Perception As The Stars Begin To Fall

As the missiles began to fall yesterday afternoon NZ time, I was struck by a few observances. Both of how much some things had changed - and, within those, how much yet disappointingly remained the same.

Almost seventeen years ago, in 2003, we gathered at high school to watch opening salvos of the American invasion of Iraq on a tv set up in the library.

Today, we are watching missile salvos over Iraq again ... only this time, we are doing so largely via twitter and other forms of regularly updated online media.

Partially, it is because the televised broadcast has gone the way of the wireless radio-set (upon one of which, The Rev. Rolinson still recalls our proudly French forebear listening with sadness and then announcing that Dien Ben Phu had fallen as the high-water mark of another country's out-of-time imperialist programme). And partially, it is because you find out so much more by going off and hunting out primary sources and secondary commentary out there in the wilds of the internet than you ever do simply watching and awaiting for special television bulletins or the 6 o'clock news.

Which does not, of course, mean that it's assured to be more correct than what is visible via official channels - but given the nature of some of the stuff either turning up twisted upon them, or worse, not turning up at all, it doesn't necessarily mean you're much the worse off, either.

One prominent example of all of this 'in motion' concerns the character and the dispositions and the deeds of the figure at the heart of all of this. Major General Qassem Soleimani - now eternally of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

You read a lot of newspapers, see a lot of public newscasts quoting American politicians or talking heads, and you start to come away with one, overwhelming and throbbing impression. That even if you're not wild about another American fireworks-display-into-fire-out-of-handling in the Middle East, that the guy was somehow monstrously "evil". Yet it goes further!



The perverse alchemy of 'official narratives' is plainly visible in the way in which a man who had spent much of the 1990s fighting the Taliban, and much of the past decade fighting ISIS and otherwise pushing back against Saudi-emanated objectionable forces (including Al Qaeda franchises I can think of in at least three countries offhand) ...

... is now attacked and castigated as a "terrorist", and some kind of latter-day Osama bin Laden. [I had somewhat less overt sympathy for Saddam, but the man found himself afflicted by a similar downright pernicious no doubt intentional mislabeling. He, too, had spent years opposing many of the same forces as the Americans, and had directly offered to assist after both 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in fighting back against Al Qaeda - none of which stopped him being linked in press reports and in Presidential rhetoric to exactly those terrorists aforementioned. Gosh, it's almost like some words have meanings that simply convey "you're supposed to actively hate that guy", and little more.]

Now, "terrorist", to be sure, does not simply mean "Sunni extremist" ... but, then, it certainly does not just mean "person incongruent with the active extension of the power and agenda of America And Friends (tm)".

As Malcolm X once put it - "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

And that is only one of a few areas in which the strange radioactivity of embedded mis-perceptions can be observed making itself known in relation to Iran in recent days.



Ever since the footage started coming out of ... literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people being pretty outraged by Soleimani's death, I have noticed this small but pert attempted push-back, predominantly from persons of a 'certain age', insisting that the whole thing has to be staged.

And while I can understand thinking that massive demonstrations which happen to be pretty politically and optically potent might be staged (after all, you just have to look back at some of the trick photography and such utilized in some recent Anglosphere events) ... I suspect rather strongly that there is something else going on here.

Several days ago we heard from a wise Iranian cleric who asked who the equivalent figure to Soleimani was in Western culture ... whom the Iranians could kill and have it carry a similar resounding impact in all of our collective psyche ("...Spongebob?"), noting that almost all the modern-day 'heroes' of the West are made up, and highly animated only in the two-dimensional sense (possibly involving a Korean sweat-shop).



Well, not only was he right about that, but he also gave voice to just why some people frequently (yet not always) 'of a certain age' and/or political disposition are having such great difficulty grasping that actually, yeah, a lot of Iranians, Shi'ites elsewhere in the world, and other people entirely are annoyed about what has occurred and have been actively expressing and demonstrating their feeling upon the matter.

I do not intend to turn this into a fully-blown lecture-discursion upon the Disenchantment of the World, but it could be fairly suggested that this minority of disbelieving is perhaps symptomatic of growing up in an era wherein the last time something like that happened in the Anglosphere West was Beatlemania.



To mash up Grettir's Saga and Nietzsche:

"BARE IS THE BACK OF THE MYTHLESS MAN"

Also, speaking of 'myths' [here, somewhat, in the sense directly opposite to that in which I more usually mean it ... ], take a look at Netanyahu earlier in the week.



If there is one thing that Netanyahu is (and there are .. many), it is a survival expert. That a man such as he who has spent quite some effort attempting to stir up fear of Iran in recent years, would be backpeddling frantically and attempting to put distance between his country and the killing of Soleimani ... I think that it speaks volumes as to the actual realities of the situation.

In specia, serving to undercut somewhat the illusory "all be home by Christmas" mis-thusiasm being put forward by the principle instigators of this now-escalating conflict safely ensconced all the way over on the other side of the Atlantic.

That, too, was the hubristic attitude which characterized the previous American adventurism in this region, also on trumped up charges against an "Ira-" country, almost deliberately flouting international law and norms, and to general opposition from experts and ordinaries across the globe.

All of which has me reaching for Marx's well-worn quip that:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

"Death Is As Nothing Compared To Vindication" - On Soleimani and the Soleimani Doctrine, in 2018 and the Prsent

[Author's Note: The following is largely drawn from a previously unpublished - and, sadly, unfinished - draft of an article I'd been working on in late July 2018, which sought to contextualize the Iranian response to some rather conflagrationary remarks then-recently made in their direction by Trump. Much of it was pertaining directly to Soleimani. Due to the understandable recent explosion of interest in the man and his saliency, along with the regrettable seeming fruiting of the vainglorious threat-making by Trump, it seemed fitting to finally put it to light. Although after almost a year and a half, even despite the notes I left with the draft of what I'd intended to cover towards its closing, I'm not sure that I'd be capable of finishing it off properly. It therefore hangs not so much 'concluded' as 'interrupted'. Which, itself, is perhaps a fitting metaphor for ... well, you know. We have a saying - "What is the Joy of Life? To die knowing our task is complete"; "What is the Terror of Death? To die with our work incomplete". Although as applies Major General Qassem Soleimani - it strikes me that for Him, it shall not so much be a case that "Death is only the beginning", as "Apres Moi, Le Deluge". And speaking of Deluges, in place of the uncompleted originally intended second half, there's a postscript which states what would have been there, followed by a surface look at why the push for an American-led conventional military effort against Iran is exactly what the 'Soleimani Approach' was set up in anticipation of and as a direct counter to.]

So, in response to Donald J. Trump's .. desperate tweet from earlier this week, in which he threatened Iran with "CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. [sic]"; Major General Qassem Soleimani [a figure I have occasionally written about before, with some deserved degree of admiration] made a most interesting speech - the gist of which can probably be summed up in the following quote: "We are ready for you".

Now, this might seem like an absurdity - particularly if you are of the Neocon persuasion, and haven't yet realized the rather hard limits on American geopolitical (hard) power. Certainly, there are those within the US foreign policy establishment, and commentariat, who still for some reason persist in the belief that just because they think they're a hyperpower-Chakravartin in a monopolar world ... that this axiomatically makes it so.

But Soleimani is not so much a "student of history", as one of the regrettably under-acknowledged "contributing authors" - at least, insofar as the last twenty years or more of Middle Eastern geopolitical developments go.

He was there, on the front lines of some of the most brutal fighting of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s; and partially as a result of this, developed an avowed plan - a vision - for an Iranian-Shi'ite expansion in power and influence which would not be contingent upon meat-grinder wastes of life against technologically superior foes in conventional pitched battles.

An entirely and eminently understandable thing.

Flash forward two decades, and it has become abundantly clear that Major General Soleimani has been largely successful in his vision.

Whether in the west of Afghanistan, or in a pretty huge crescent across Northern Iran, Syria, and much of Lebanon [wherein local ally Hezbollah has effectively become a de facto operating Government - and a surprisingly broadly supported/popularly legitimate one at that, in direct response to Israeli excesses carried out in the 2006 war], as well as the present associates in Yemen etc. ... it is no exaggeration whatsoever to state that Soleimani has effectively rebuilt Iranian influence and prestige to heights and geographic extents unknown since the height of the Sassanid Empire some one thousand four hundred years previous.

Indeed, the present-day 'corridor' running through from western Iran to the Mediterranean - of obvious military utility, especially given Iran's major adversaries in the region - is basically something that the Iranians have not held consistently since the days of the Seleucids, more than two thousand years ago (barring the span of a few years toward the latter half of the Byzantine-Sassanid wars - and almost immediately prior to both the collapse of the latter Empire and the seemingly meteoric rise of the Islamic Caliphate at its fairly direct expense).

How has Soleimani done this? Well, through three key things.

The first of which, unquestionably, has been his remarked success in setting up or otherwise augmenting local groups capable of advancing Iranian aims in their country of origin.

I have already mentioned Hezbollah - which by this stage must surely be acknowledged as one of the most impressive political success stories of the late 20th and early 21st centuries; and many are also aware of the Iranian linkages of the Houthi movement operating in Yemen.

In addition to these, Iran has also - perhaps surprisingly - made useful local subordinates out of Kurds in Northern Iraq (which caused considerable problems for American designs on that country in the latter 2000s); as well as having long-standing associated elements fighting in Western Afghanistan against the Taliban.

Soleimani's geopolitical fingerprints are, predictably, on all of these projects. And not in the vague and abstract sense of, say, John McCain suggesting the funding of "moderate rebels" from the safety of his nation's capital. But rather, entailing his direct, personal presence and oversight in-country. (In fact, as a point of interest, Soleimani appears to have spent much of the 1990s - during a period wherein the West was quite content to forget what it had (part) authored there - in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban)

But these various local elements would be of comparatively limited use in the absence of the second tool within Soleimani's arsenal:

The various mis-steps of his foes.

For you see, three of the greatest forces which have leant themselves to Soleimani's cause are those of the American, Israeli, and Saudi militaries.

After all, prior to the disastrous American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran had held very limited influence indeed within that country. And despite throwing literally hundreds of thousands of men at Iraqi defences during the course of the Iran-Iraq War, had never been able to meaningfully change this situation. One American invasion and ensuing destabilization later, and all of that changed. The precise scope and specificities of Iranian involvement in post-Saddam Iraq is - while fascinating, and at turns highly amusing (particularly as applies Soleimani's own occasional habit of, I suppose you might say, "trolling" American factotums sent to that country with a view to curtailing Iran's entrenched abilities there) - well beyond the span of this piece. Suffice to say it was extensive; and according to some accounts, sufficient to secure the Iraqi pressing for American withdrawal in 2010.

[Author's Note (Postscript): And that, as you can see, is basically how far the draft had gotten in anything approaching 'finished' form. The next two paragraphs were going to briefly discuss in more detail the Iranian experience in Lebanon, Syria, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan - wherein foreign military incursions (to render the term somewhat broadly as applies Syria, to be sure) produced significant strategic openings for the Iranians, and helped to then shore up momentum for Iranian efforts already in play.

This would then have moved to mention of the third 'weapon' of Soleimani - namely, "Foreign Friends"; and with particular, especial mention made of the Russian intervention within Syria - not least due to the suggestion made in some quarters that this was, again, not just a Soleimani overseen occurrence, but one which eventuated in large measure due to Putin's personal regard for the man. Although how much of that is apocryphal and "sounds cool" narrative-threading myth-making, I suspect we shall never truly know.

I might have then compared this to two more distinctly American occurrences as a juxtaposition. First, the frankly bizarre allegation levied by the United States about a supposed IRGC plot to utilize a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the explosive assassination in Washington D.C. of the Saudi ambassador to the United States; which is worthy of mention not only for bathos-value - but also due to the sustained chorus of expert opinion that castigated these claims on the dual bases of a lack of actual evidence (something the Americans later conceded ... after they'd placed increased sanctions upon the Iranians anyway and attempted to link the whole thing to Soleimani himself) as well as this particular form of 'foreign friends' entanglement being so far outside the established Iranian / Revolutionary Guard modus operandi (as well as general logic and sense) as to be blatantly improbable.

But second, and more ... poignantly, especially in light of what has just occurred at the time of publishing [early 2020], the Iranian record (and Soleimani's in particular) in Afghanistan between the renewal of American armed interest there (this time against certain Sunni militancies, for a change) and the period immediately prior to the run-up to the Invasion of Iraq. Basically, the Iranians were quite keen to actively co-operate with the Americans, viewing it as the West finally turning up to help fire-fight against the blaze which had been smoldering upon Iran's borders ever since the Atlanticist-aligned powers had stoked it to such potency against the Soviets some decades before. And, alongside this, as a potential pathway towards eventual rehabilitation and reintegration within the international community - demonstrating their capacity to act in good faith as 'mature' and 'responsible' actor in a problem situation alongside others, including one of their loudest critics.

The sadness of the above, and why it bears mentioning especially in the context of recent events, is because it demonstrates road-map of 'the path not taken'. The period of tentative co-operation in Afghanistan between the Iranians and the American-led Coalition reportedly worked rather well. It was not allowed to continue, however - although with the severance of the working relationship effectively happening at the stroke of a speech-writer's pen rather than any actual well-considered and cogent decision-making ... as soon as Bush Junior declared Iran a part of the "Axis of Evil" (lumping them in, for added insult to injury, with at least one of their direst foes), that was it. The detente ended, the entente failed, and a pattern of low-intensity conflict began to ensue.

Although with a view to what I had earlier said about making use of the American military, it is perhaps worth additionally noting that during the period of saber-rattling against Iraq, the Iranians appear to have offered co-operation with the Americans in the event of an American-lead Invasion. I understand why they did that, and it made sense from their own perspective ... but I do not mean to present it as being an option with which I would have been morally comfortable.

Mention would then have been made of a 'fourth' weapon - that of reputation and the intangible armouring of image; partially because I've admired Soleimani's sense of 'style', and the accounts of his time in Iraq semi-indirectly liaising with increasingly bemused American counterparts make for both a logical bridging point from the previous and for no doubt intentionally entertaining reading (He later graduated to firing Game of Thrones memes back at the current US President over Twitter).

But also, and rather more substantively because in the game of geopolitics, even despite all the "hard power" rational calculations of, as Truman put it, "how many divisions have you" ... it is the force of (myth)perception and belief which drives so much (for a direct example of which, witness George W. Bush's Iran as Axis of Evil co-conspirator speech effectively meming the President's misguided belief into reality over the top of the actual reality being almost the diametric opposite); and the belief, the damn near superstition that somebody is powerful, successful, untouchable, which thence goes on to make it so as the web-like fabric of actions begins to 'bend' around them in result.

Soleimani's own reputation is a grand example of this in action as well, of course (up until Friday, when it uh ... wasn't; Ideas, while they may in theory be "bulletproof", turn out to be questionably effective at stopping physical projectiles; although it's probably worth noting that an Idea, unshackled from its former mortal embodiment, can become all the more potent as a fairly direct result); but, then, so is the American President's - and Trump's more so than most.

A situation which also encapsulates many persons' belief, whether ordinary civilian or soldier or elected representative or even paid-for analyst in agency, company, or "company" employ ... that America and the 'Pax Americana' is likewise. In extremis, that there are no 'hard limits' thereupon - for they are the 'hard limits' upon the power of any and all others, likely even combined. And that the indefatigability, implacability, inchoate-ability of American Hyperpower means that unlike almost literally every other empire in the history of human civilization worthy of the name they shall neither fall, nor stumble rather spectacularly thanks to some protracted land-war in Asia [to reference Field Marshal Montgomery's Second Rule of War] [And with especial mythic resonance wrong-genre-savvy points for the Americans, casting themselves as Rome to Thassalocratic Britain's Athens ... not noticing the striking pattern of Roman military adventurism against Iranid peoples and polities going spectacularly badly to the point of the Romans doing the unthinkable and having to sue for peace, ask nicely for the return of Imperial standards, etc. ]

This is basically what Soleimani was getting at in the message to Trump which had formed the initial spark of inspiration for the mid-2018 piece. That whether speaking in a (geo)political or a personal sense, the illusion of being 'untouchable' was just exactly that.

He did not simply 'puncture' the self-inflating and over-inflated 'myth' of American hypremacy; he pointed out that it had already met its limits and rolled back bleeding from Afghanistan, torn at by over a thousand asymmetric cuts. To quote him himself upon the subject: "You came to Afghanistan with tens of tanks and armoured vehicles and hundreds of advanced helicopters and committed crimes there but what the hell have you achieved between 2001 and 2018 with 110,000 troops? Isn't it that now you are begging the Taliban to negotiate?"

He also observed that even well in advance of any 'official' American military action, the Iranians would have the ability to significantly impair American (and Saudi) activities in and around the Persian Gulf, even potentially closing the Red Sea - with obvious impacts upon Saudi-sourced oil flows going in both directions. A mirror image, in some ways, of the American sanctions then being ratcheted further up (but when have they not been over the past few years) against Iran and her oil exports in particular.

Ever one for the personal touch, Soleimani went from recalling Trump's commercial background in the casino business (both as a gambler by nature, and his downright vaude-villain "cabaret" proprietor hype-man ethos) through to stating "We don’t go to sleep at night before thinking about you."

“I’m telling you, Mr Trump the gambler, I am telling you: know that where you are not thinking of, we are near you. Places you cannot imagine, we are next to you.” Like I said. The personal touch. Emphasis upon the "touch". As in, reach out and.

Anyway, despite what you might perhaps be forgiven for presuming after wading through all of the above post-script and draft, the purpose of the original (uncompleted) piece was not simply to provide an escalating litany of Soleimani Does Cool Stuff with a view to burnishing his already impressive reputation.

But rather, to respond to a trend I had observed in many of those voices supporting a more aggressive American stance, both prior to Trump's mid-2018 bloc-caps outburst, and also more especially subsequent to the Soleimani issued reply to same.

Namely, that the 'inevitable' outcome of any U.S. conventional war effort against Iran would be near-total American victory, attained with nil or virtually nil casualties, complications, setbacks or losses in other areas, or pretty much any real risk at all (except,  presumably, from friendly-fire incidents).

And while it's not that hard to see how somebody who might remember the dizzying progress of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, could come to the erroneous misapprehension that an American invasion of the other "I-" country right next door might transpire in pretty much exactly the same manner, but faster due to technological advancement or something ... there are so many things wrong with that perspective that it'd literally be an entire other article (completed, this time, or otherwise) even starting to explain why.

Running supply-lines through unfriendly Mesopotamian towns and desert to troops attempting to battle their way through the downright inhospitable Zagros Mountains would be bad enough even before reaching the somehow even less forgiving flatter lands of the Iranian interior ... which are significantly salt-desert. A situation not made particularly easier if a sea-bourne invasion across the Persian Gulf were contemplated instead or in addition to, given the Iranians' demonstrable facility with and stockpile of anti-shipping wargear. Even conventional bombardment, bombing, and missile- or airstrikes would be at a significant risk in light of the Iranians' advanced ABM and anti-air defences.

This is not to say that the Americans (and er .. "Friends", or whatever it is they're calling Saudi Arabia these days - the 'hydration technicians' of McWorldistan Empire, perhaps, due to their well-observed position down the back prepared to fight to the last NATO-man while doling out the oilectrolyte 'sports' beverage of sugar-water) would be utterly unable to take Iran; nor that they would be completely frustrated at any and all attempts to seriously flatten appreciably large proportions of its most populated areas.

Just that the costs of making a serious play at doing so - both in terms of the manpower and money-power going into the initial invasion, and the amount of each decidedly unlikely to ever come back therefrom - would make it a prohibitive undertaking on par, perhaps, with what Field Marshal Montgomery identified "Rule 1, on page 1 of the Book of War" as militating most strongly against - namely, some foolhardy vainglorious attempt to "March on Moscow".

Yet all of this is actually only of secondary relevancy to my point.

Which is, to endeavour to state it succinctly (quelle ironeia), that suggesting the Americans shall successfully subjugate Iran via a victorious conventional war ... is so far wide of the mark as to be like Christopher Columbus attempting to reach the East Indies by heading in completely the wrong direction and then stumbling onto a 'New World' entirely instead. It's not even the "right question", let alone the "right answer". It's Two Plus Two Equals Fish. And not just due to the odour.

It doesn't matter that some American Vultures (not Hawks, definitely not Doves, although perhaps with deference to the age and pate of some of the culprits as well as the fowl in question's actual food-gathering habits ... Bald-Spot Eagles) are rather keen to try and fight a conventional war against Iran, whether they dress themselves up for it as Alexander the Great (who did, in fact, manage it ... albeit with much of the necessary 'heavy lifting' done outside of modern Iran, in various locales to the west thereof), or whether they show a bit more insight and choose to larp as Crassus, instead. Crassus, as is well known, was an early recipient of advances in Iranian missile technology

It may be the sort of conflict which these sorts want ... but the Iranians are under no obligation to oblige them. And after all, why would they. The rest of the world does not merely exist so as to provide target practices, exotic locales, and robotically scripted OPFORs for American video-game pseudo-John Wayne foreign/imperial policy. [Partially, what I am referencing here is the outcome of a 2002 US military war game carried out against an opponent closely modeled upon Iran ... which the Americans managed to lose badly (the first time around, anyway) - total (simulated) casualties of well over twenty thousand men, and pretty much the entirety of the US carrier battle group and amphibious operations vessels. Why this occurred - again, the first time around - was because the OPFOR commander behaved like an intelligent, capable foe rather than a punching-bag. With the end result that the exercise was declared a failure, and ordered to be run again in a manner which had the OPFOR behaving not even as a 'conventional' enemy, but a deliberately extra-stupid and incapable one. There's more to the exercise in question - much more - and at some point I may write up a proper piece upon it; but suffice to say, it demonstrates a historic difficulty on the part of the Americans both with asymmetric opponents, and with casting themselves militarily in a headspace which doesn't feature them as all-conquering insta-win Designated Protagonists]

It has been said that when one is faced with a heavily rigged, hugely unfair game in which loss is an almost certainty, that sometimes the only 'winning' move in such circumstances ... is not to play. And that is often pretty useful advice. But not always. Sometimes, the contest, the game, the confrontation, the strife, the struggle, comes for us whether we are capable of evading it or not. And in those regrettably bleak scenarios, it can turn out that the 'winning move' - or, at least, the vanishingly small array of moves that are not almost insta-losing ones - is not to simply throw up hands and "not play". Rather, it is something quite different, yet related. It is not to play their game, but something else of your own devising. Preferably while your self-appointed castigationary opponents are still labouring under the comfortable delusion that you're still playing (and near-certainly to be losing) by their rules. Or even, better yet, before the game's ever actually begun in earnest.

This is partially what the great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was getting at with his spin upon the words of Ecclesiastes -

“He talked about luck and fate and numbers coming up, yet he never ventured a nickel at the casinos because he knew the house had all the percentages. And beneath his pessimism, his bleak conviction that all the machinery was rigged against him, at the bottom of his soul was a faith that he was going to outwit it, that by carefully watching the signs he was going to know when to dodge and be spared. It was fatalism with a loophole, and all you had to do to make it work was never miss a sign. Survival by coordination, as it were. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.”

It is also the lesson of Lord Major-General Qassem Soleimani. It is the entire point of much of his active existence ever since that young water-carrier managed to survive the horrors of the Western-facilitated Iraqi war against Iran some decades before.

Namely, that the logical and inevitable response to perceiving an onrushing conventional conflict ... does not have to be receiving the charge, engaging in it, and accepting as some meagre compensation for the unavoidable ensuing loss a certain measure of gloriful remembrance of heroic last stands and pious martyrdom. But rather, that through skillful action and far-sighted (oft decidedly 'unconventional') intervention, the circumstances pertaining to the confrontation can be significantly altered; whether before the first 'official' shot has been fired, or while the conflagration has yet commenced in earnest. This can change the course of events to avoid ensnarement in a costly conventional war entirely; or, where such things are less avoidable, provide a significant set of force-multipliers and other contextual advantages that help to 'level the playing-field' (and then dig into it considerably for the purposes of entrenchments and 'nature reserves', to reference one of the 'nastier' surprises the Israelis encountered in Lebanon circa 2006 - a conflict which should, on the basis of past experience, have gone far better for the IDF than it in fact did; hence, no doubt, why Soleimani referenced it directly in his aforementioned reply to Trump).

I've attempted to avoid citing the usual cliche (but absolutely true) axioms from Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, etc. in this piece ; but it really is the case that just as warfare is the continuation of politics by other means ... so, too, is geopolitics both a continuation and an encapsulation, a preparation, or an alternate expression to warfare carried out via conventional means. In much the same way that the Soviet Union learned from both Hitler and Napoleon's attempted-invasions, and constructed itself a half-a-continent sized Cordon Sanitaire in Eastern Europe against future Western encroachment or invasion behind the 'Iron Curtain' even before the Second World War had concluded, so too has Soleimani's multilayered and multi-pronged approach built just such a proverbial minefield all across much of Iran's westerly neighbourhood.

Iraq, whether we are speaking about Iranian-backed militias and other irregular forces, or whether we are looking at the official Iraqi political demands for American troops not to utilize it as a staging post ... has been crafted by him to be the diametric opposite to what the Americans had wanted it to be post-Hussein (i.e. an ominously looming American force-projection platform's housing, producing a corridor of Atlanticist influence and geopolitical alignment running from Turkey as it was at the time down through to Saudi Arabia, keeping Syria isolated, among other things).

The Saudis, meanwhile, who had previously put resources into the American-fronted efforts against Hussein in the twilight years of the 20th century, and who had involved themselves significantly in Afghanistan against the Soviets, in all manner of other pies subsequent wherever Sunni extremism is being served - now have their hands full almost to overflowing attempting to combat the Houthis in Yemen; who have even managed to carry out successful attacks upon Riyadh, and upon key infrastructure targets - as well as granting the ability to the Iranians to shut down the Gulf of Aden shipping-route that lies beyond the Suez Canal [this, in concert with their ability to do likewise on the Persian Gulf, and to carry out quite some efforts in the eastern Mediterranean from the Lebanese coastline north to Turkey, means that the Iranians have a power-projection capacity through almost every viable approach to the Saudi oil-fields, particularly along two of the busiest shipping routes in the modern world ... thus granting the Iranians the power to wage an economic front against the West, in the manner of the 1973 Oil embargo, without even requiring the co-operation of much of OPEC to do so]

The Israelis have gone from being near-undisputed rulers of all they can survey and/or range in artillery upon, through to being trepidacious about cross-border incursions into Lebanon; and having to themselves rely upon proxy-forces [funnily enough, the local Al Qaeda affiliate among them) in Syria. Partially due to direct Iranian affiliated groups such as Hezbollah, or even IRGC manpower and hardware; and partially, especially as applies Syria, due to the Iranian securement of Russian intervention (again, identified by various sources as Soleimani's own doing) which effectively locks down most of the area (as seen, for instance, during the recent Russian further intervention against Turkish territorial-filching in Syria's Kurdish-heavy North]; and may even render swathes of northern Arabia an effective 'no-fly zone' for NATO (the irony) in the case of serious escalation. [The Russian point also matters for another reason - it was not at all that long ago that the USSR sided with the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, etc. against the Islamic Republic of Iran. A warm working relationship between Tehran's agents and Moscow has secured not only a powerful friend, but virtually Iran's entire northern front thanks to Russian influence and/or looming-ness over its former Republics]

The Americans had also alleged the IRGC had begun operating in strength in Latin America in the last few years as well, although while I do not have strong reason to doubt an Iranian assistance to the Bolivarian government in Venezuela ... the notion of Revolutionary Guard cells co-conspiring with cocaine cartels to open an insurgent and high-pow(d)ered 'southern front' against the United States, has always struck me as just another "Saddam has a wood-chipper!" style flight of rhetorical fancy on the part of Venezuela and Iran's mutual detractors about the Neocon-isphere. In much the same way as you occasionally see confused boomers ranting about commu-nazis, it is always appealing to presume that all one's psychological bete-noirs are actively working together, and within conveniently co-proximate physical space. And besides, the last actually proven interface of the Iranians and cocaine-dealing Latin Americans for military purposes ... was authorized by Ronald Reagan.

What does all of this mean? That any American-lead escalation towards full-scale armed conflict with Iran shall be seriously costly indeed. This was partially why Trump's predecessors showed far more sense when contemplating Soleimani - and pointedly refused to touch him, lest his death trigger uprisings, instability, insurgencies, and all manner of unpredictable, uncontrollable wildfire "Hell Breaking Loose" that would indisputably seriously imperil US and US-aligned interests.  This is also why Soleimani kept personally pointing out in response to Trump's proclamations upon the subject, the evolving Iranian capacities to cause merry asymmetric chaos in key areas which would hurt, such as oil exports and shipping lanes. This wasn't just for Trump's benefit on the off-chance that he happened to be listening, but also to remind any number of third party smaller actors of the cost which they, too, would be shouldering in the event of American active-intervention. Who would then, as we are seeing right now, lend their voices and what influence they could bring to bear, to the cause of dissuading any further American-led escalation-ism. A weaponization of other states in service of the Iranian cause, almost regardless of what they actually might think of Iran.

Now to be sure, even despite all of this, there are some prominent weaknesses within the Iranian position. The most obvious of which being called Pakistan and Afghanistan - both of which happen to house American military staging points, both of which happen to have governments that are at least nominally on-side with the Americans, and both of which, entirely 'coincidentally', have strong Sunni insurgency movements which occasionally carry out attempted-actions against Iranian targets. The Eastern route into Iran is not hospitable, either - it's more mountains and a tough logistical slog even before you get to the border, followed by further salt-plains in between more (smaller) mountains all the way to the major population centers in the more western side of the country. It is also something of an open question as to whether Western forces attempting to make use of either or both of Iran's eastern neighbours as an invasion vector would find a countryside laden with Sunni armed groups to be particularly more accomodating than transversing those approaches to Iran's west embedded with Iranian-affiliated militias and operatives. Who knows - perhaps Trump's recent stab at peace-talks with the Taliban will have rather more on the agenda to break bread over this time than at any point since the Reagan Administration's hosting of their forerunners at the White House in 1983.

But I have gone on for far more than well long enough. The point of the original piece I had drafted and then half-completed in mid-2018, was to demonstrate that Iran was capable of responding to American emanated, sponsored, supported, enabled threats ... because in point of fact, it already had been for quite some time. And that, as applies Soleimani Himself, a strikingly significant proportion of this was either his direct doing, or strongly in accordance with his personal strategic vision. Therefore helping to demonstrate that when he had taken Trump to task over the latter's incendiary "CONSEQUENCES" tweet anti-diplomacy ... Soleimani's responses were not just words (even words in Game of Thrones memetic format), but actual and reasonably plausible statements of Iranian capability and intent.

Events have since then taken on a life and a logic of their own, as is so often the case upon the eve of crises - or, more hopefully, of crises just narrowly, inchingly averted.

Looking back upon what I had thought and what I had written circa a year and a half ago, it is curious to think how much of it 'remains in place', ever closer to ultimate, untimely "activation" - even in the conspicuous-via-his final absence state of lacking its grandest insurgent-architect. That is the test of a great man, I suppose - seeing the extent to which his works are capable of surviving him. Or, oddly enough, in this particular case, whether it is precisely his death which causes the construction he wrought to become that much more closer to 'perfect' and 'complete'. It is almost a situation comparable to the words of Talleyrand upon hearing of the death of Metternich (for those unaware, Metternich was significantly responsible for building the post-Napoleon 'Concert of Europe' politico-diplomatic order designed to keep said continent ticking over rather than ticking down like a fuse again; and was regarded as a master of plots, plans, designs, intrigues, schemes) - "I wonder what it was he meant by that?" [As in, the feeling that although it could not likely have been, that the nature of the result is almost as if it had been .... intentional, or at the veer-y least, so thought through and integrated as to be a furtherance, another Just As Planned moment, rather than  near-catastrophic chance for a derailment].

Yet there is much more urgency, now, to the whole scenario. And not just because we are now in a position wherein the Americans are moving closer and closer to the situation meditated upon by JFK during the course of the Cuban Missile Crisis - that of actions which cannot be taken back, and which instead push the whole edifice over the brink into active, overt warfare. Kennedy had been caused to ponder this 'tipping point', and the desirability of behaving with utmost caution the closer one inched towards its precipice not merely because of the then-unfolding crisis in Cuba, but also due to a book he'd been reading upon the outbreak of World War One entitled The Guns of August. He directly ruminated upon what was meant by that - the mobilization plans drawn up by all the Great Powers of the day, and which, once the order had been given to initiate them, could not be stopped or resiled from.

Perhaps one foolhardy drone-strike, one early Friday in January 2020 was just such a similar 'irrevocable' order, at least in terms of its rippling agglomeration of the waves of possibility-consequence. Or perhaps, just perhaps, we are still yet to find ourselves well beyond that point (such lines of no return are all too often only to become readily apparent when they are seen darting backwards from us through the rear-view mirror of hindsightful perspicacity).

But in one of life's more lamentable ironies, I rather strongly suspect that with a single burst of Hellfire late last week, the world actually lost one of the men more consciously and conscientiously committed to avoiding large-scale armed conflict between Iran and the United States. Whether you believe him or not about his purported actions to try and stop the shelling of US facilities in the late 2000s by Iraqi militias, or whether you take at something closer to face value his indisputable keenness to co-operate with the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan some few years earlier ... I do not think that Soleimani had anything like the same irrational, irascible urge to topple "the other guy" that various Republican and NeoCon voices in Washington (the former of which have Trump over a bit of a barrel right now via their protecting him from Impeachment) seem ineluctably to harbour about Iran.

Rather, quite the diametric opposite.

He did not want senseless war - neither with the Americans, nor for that matter with anybody else. He'd seen too much of it already as a much younger man. [Although it is important, as a qualifier, to note that his world-view did not hold all war nor all militant expenditure of life to be senseless. Losses, he considered acceptable if regrettable - failure, and the waste of lives (as distinct from their needful expenditure), he did not. One wonders if the John Boltons, and other such 'hydration technicians' of bloodshed harbour similar depths of compassionate consideration for their mortal instruments. I somehow doubt it.]

It may, perhaps, be a bit of a stretch to suggest that he wanted peace with the Americans, but there is strong evidence in support of his actively working towards mutually-beneficial co-operation with his latter-day fatal adversary where appropriate and where this could actually be in some measure attained.

Whatever the case on that score, it is inarguable that he was not keen on the idea of a full-scale shooting confrontation with the superpower. If this state of non- (or, at least, significantly less ) conflict could be secured via good-faith interaction, shared purposes in particular areas, and common goals worked towards in earnest ... then so much the better. If it had to be pushed towards not via gestures of magnanimity and warmth, but rather through shows of strength and intimidation - the frank communication of just why an intentionally sparked conflict with Iran was not something the Americans should either actively want, nor expect to come out of anything like unscathed .. well, that is the nature of realist relations between powerful and proud states, just as it has been for about as long as 'diplomacy' has been an identifiable, practicable thing.

Yet to return to the incidence of Talleyrand and Metternich to which I had but briefly referred to earlier, the present currents of events in and about the Middle East and further afield appear to be producing two general trends.

The first, is that the Americans are isolating and vilifying themselves at a greater pace than they had been before. Certain European countries were already rather heartily sick of the American antics in relation not only to Iran (and the Nuclear deal in specia) but also Russia and the sanctions upon economic engagement with same. Trump posturing about carrying out war-crimes against Iran and just expecting everybody else to go along with it can hardly have helped the cause of trans-Atlantic rapproachment; with the entire situation helping to present the Iranians as far more reasonable either in absolute terms or more especially via relative comparison. It is therefore - although a risky proposition indeed - possible to suggest that the current crisis, if it doesn't wind up "wiping [at least one country] off the map", will likely result in a further reduction in relative power position for the United States; something which also, in its own way, has been ongoing as a fairly direct result of its previous bout of mis-entanglements in the Middle East, for the last nearly sixteen years.

The second, is that notwithstanding the possible consolidation of Iranian power position represented by the retreat of their current oppressors (and here I do not simply mean whether the Americans withdraw some or all of their troops from Iraq as the Iraqis have been demanding; but also the Americans losing some measure of their ability to enforce their will upon slash through and via other second-rate countries or blocs), we are about to witness a direct putting into practice of the theories underpinning the Soleimani Doctrine. It has already had numerous 'field tests' and stages of progressive refinement - an organic, living thing; calibrated in each instance for its specific terrain and localized opponent.

The fighting faced by the IDF in 2006, which brought them if not to a standstill, then at least to what they themselves branded a "disaster" (and which, not coincidentally, lead to Israeli defence planners worriedly starting to speak about the possibility of Hezbollah seizing entire towns during any presumptive 'next war' between them), was an early demonstration. Particularly in terms of its indirect results - the shoring up of a considerable swathe of support inside Lebanon behind Hezbollah as a political force, directly in response to the Israeli military intervention.

The form being employed currently by the Houthis in Yemen is a parallel development rather than a strict 'upgrade', for it has somewhat different localized goals: the drawing in and draining of Saudi and Gulf-State attention, financial resources, stomach-for-conflict, and other such things; the occasional lobbing of missiles at Riyadh and key infrastructure, which also helps to demonstrate the hard limits upon modern American ABM technology; and the provision of a staging post from which to launch attacks upon the Gulf of Aden and attendant Suez Canal shipping route, so as to cut off both major Arabic marine approaches and thus impact oil and (more especially in the case of Aden, given just how busy the Suez is) other flows.

Syria was a further success of again, a different kind. It cut off a series of Saudi and Sunni attempted-salients, helped to underpin the Iranian corridor to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, and hugely importantly it directly brought in the Russians, and in partial consequence of this, helped to move the Turks away from being a pretty active adversary to a quieter one who is a warming friend to a friend of theirs, so to speak. The ouster of ISIS et co has also lessened the ability and facility of American troops to remain within Syria, while the perceived abandonment of the Kurds to the Turks helped flip a potential fertile grounds for American support over to, of all things, Iranian amicability.

Previous employments of the "Soleimani Doctrine" in Iraq, as well as further afield such as western Afghanistan, have also featured the long, slow, and drawn-out grinding down of American engagements there via means conventional, unconventional, diplomatic, political, and "ungentlemanly". The results have been broadly positive for the Iranians ... but it can be argued that they have never had to test the 'full strength' of insight and of technique which they have mustered, up against a more direct and directly targeted aggressive frontage of the Americans.

So why do I reference once more that open-ended question asked by Talleyrand after the death of Metternich - I wonder what he meant by that?

Because as applies Soleimani, while I do not mean to suggest that his death was deliberate - well, deliberately sought by himself, rather than the Americans, I mean; there is a certain poignancy to the fact that his (final, rather than living) martyrdom is what has apparently been necessary to kick various phases of his long-developed Doctrine into the proverbial "higher gear".

It would have been difficult for further escalation to have taken place in the absence thereof. Perhaps thankfully for all involved and concerned. But the time for such longed-for alternate-facts theorizing about roads we could have gone down is passed.

Presuming that there shall be no last minute back-down by the Americans (and such a thing is not entirely impossible - the willingness of American military personnel to publicly contradict their President and state that they will not be carrying out certain alleged orders around the striking of Iranian targets and such, is interesting), then there is but one question remaining:

And that is whether the Soleimani Doctrine, having so successfully accomplished for much of this century without requiring active and overt 'official' warfare against other powers (Great, Regional, and Otherwise) ... shall now manage to perform the other roles expected, nay demanded of it. The dissuasion of further aggression against Iran; the infliction of an undesirably high 'price tag' for any such actions which do go ahead  against them regardless; and the weakening, countering, even dissipating and riposte-ing back against such American thrusts which may take place even so.

The board is set, the pieces are moving. If all of this goes "according to plan" [Soleimani's one, I mean - I am not sure that Trump actually has one; and the Boltons of this world appear instead to have drawn up designs for victory parades rather than armoured advances, as a matter of course], then the man himself would probably have two things to say. The first, the observation that in the war business (holy more so than otherwise), "Loss is acceptable; Failure is not". But second, and as applies the hoped-for eventuation of circumstances more generally, that:

"Death is as nothing compared to Vindication".

A Retrospective On The 2010s and 00s As Seen Through A Burning Middle East

It has been said, with some justification, that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Yet while that might be the progression for a theatrical script or series ... history occasionally moves with an internal logic that is downright the inverse. Men condemned in their own day may be judged more kindly with death and hindsight; not least due to their mortality giving vigorous illustration to that Chestertonian maxim of never tearing down a fence without first understanding why it was there in the first place.

Gaddafi himself made a direct statement to this effect - informing the E.U. that in his absence, there would be nothing stopping a huge wave of migration from Africa across the Mediterranean to the North.

Although that is not why I mention the principle here today. [And not least because Gaddafi using the above as an intentional threat and/or bargaining chip rather undercuts the maxim's more 'pure' application, somewhat]

Rather, it is thinking about another figure a few countries over and cast in a not too dissimilar light - Saddam Hussein.

Now, I do not mean to make the case for Hussein the Hero. It would not be a good fit of a term. But as applies a fence that is up, the removal of which causes all manner of hell to break loose - well, that is much closer to an apt summation.

It is a matter of historical record that Hussein was strongly concerned about Sunni extremist currents - both within Iraq, as well as operating more broadly (he oddly enough put forward an offer of assistance to the Americans following the 1993 World Trade Center attack - I say "oddly enough", because it was another World Trade Center attack, the World Trade Center attacks, almost a decade later which finally provided the intermediate-range impetus for his ouster); and felt that in his absence, the resultant chaotic turbulence would render his country not only utterly ungovernable for its own people, but an ongoing nightmare for any foreign imposer who might dare to deign to try.

In this he was largely proven correct - with the added interest that the Iranian influence that the West had so accomodatingly backed Hussein to counter in the 1980s ... was also now expanding across Mesopotamia to an eventual high-water mark not seen since the height of the Sassanids, some 1,400 years before.

Why do I mention this? Well, in the newspapers this week there have been any number of 'retrospectives' upon the decade that is shortly to draw to its inexorable close. More than a few of these have - understandably - made reference to the Arab Spring events that dominated headlines in late 2010 on through 2011.

The general emotional tone and tenor of these brief blurbs upon faintly-footnoted hardly-even-history has been that it was an idealistic series of uprisings that - with the exception of Tunisia - basically either fizzled out, or were forcibly snuffed out. And even in those handful of instances wherein this didn't happen, the resultant civil breakdown was held to be more than a bit unfortunate in practice. (Either because it didn't remove Assad from Syria, and never mind all the other occurrences there; or because it didn't just neatly stop being a breakdown in Libya with the ouster of Gaddafi; and I'm entirely unsurprised that I'm yet to see anything more than a brief mention of the word "Yemen", as applies either Houthis or Saudi-authored humanitarian crisis there - it's an inconvenient particular-narrative for the leitmotif of the anthology, one supposes)

There have also been frequent citations for ISIS in these roundups; which is again entirely understandable. Indeed, it would be more remarkable if there weren't mention for the self-declared Caliphate and its actions. Rarely, since the Nazis, have any temporarily-prominent group of generally labelled "Evil" antagonists cast such an incredibly deep and looming shadow within the popular imagination.

And while the metanarrative on ISIS has thankfully moved on somewhat from the heady days of just a few years ago, wherein you'd occasionally encounter Western headlines defiantly insisting "How Saddam Hussein Gave Us ISIS" (seriously - that's a real headline, from the New York Times in 2015) through to a subtly unspoken recognition that maybe, just maybe, it's the lack of a Saddam Hussein more genuinely responsible for same ...

... the "confession" has meant nothing.

It won't be too many years into the new decade forthcoming - months only, perhaps - before we'll find yet another chorus of bright-minded idealists (and it is a curious thing to consider, that George W. Bush was arguably something of a 'liberal intergovernmentalist' in these regards) clamouring for yet another oppressive Wall to be brought tumbling down.

Which, from rather far away, may indeed seem the ideal thing to do. Even as, from up much closer - where one is in danger of being struck by the rubble nor the shrapnel which naturally comes a-tumbling from such a de-walling - this is instead looked upon as a far more nightmarish scenario. Even before we consider what comes after in the gap where once the Wall might have redoubtably, if despotically stood.

The 2010s, much like the 2000s and the 1990s before them, were supposed to be a successive and ultimately successful era in the ongoing - allegedly inexorable - march toward a Borderless World. A reversal of whatever tottering, faltering stumbles had come to characterize the concluding years or months of the past one; with new, fresh enthusiasm and vigour marshalled towards the making up for lost time and of lost ground ensuing.

That's certainly how it started, anyway.

But the signature thing of the Borderless World, is that it is a World wherein all manner of Fences have been torn down, helter-skelter and pell-mell. (Thus affording any number of opportunities for McWorld and its state-level bearers-of-premium-content to run rampant, bite off more than it can chew, and thence not-critically-reflect on just why it is that it's facing push-back in any variety of forms)

Perhaps the 2020s may be different. It is certainly a combination of numerals at least semi-oftenly linked to clarity of vision, especially and particularly in hindsight.

I wouldn't bet on it, though. If you're convinced that the Eschaton has already become Immanentized - that you're already living in the End of History, and you're just waiting somewhat impatiently (and tantrum-throwingly) for everybody else to realize this and catch up ... then the supreme Fence, that is really more of a suspended road-way girded by parapets and pylons, of understanding causes have effects, movements ripples, and the flows of events a narrative logic more powerful than their initiators ... well, that's all got to go.

Can't have "progress" if you're too overly concerned about what's already there, and how it might dare to change un-directed in response to a bit of prodding, now, can you.

I have never been big on the notion that a lack of understanding of history dooms one to its repeating; but have instead preferred the notion that while history may not, strictly speaking, repeat ... it sure does rhyme.

With that in mind, one would hope that the reflective - the opposite - of the removal of "Fence" would be "Sense".

Yet far more often than not, its repetition regardless makes it "Hence...", instead.

Is Winston's Sudden Enthusiasm For Foreign-Owned Media A Case Of Enlightened Self Interest?

What if the New Zealand First sudden out-of-the-blue announcement of support for journalism and 'traditional media' in general, as well as two significant media companies that're looking to merge in particular ...

... was because the man apparently responsible for hand-crafting the statement in question - Chief of Staff and former Victoria politics lecturer, Dr Jon Johansson (or, for that matter, another NZF strategic mind) - had a sudden attack of disquiet/insight following recent events, and realized that probably the easiest way to try and get NZ's political press somewhat close to "on-side" going into an Election Year ... was what happened Thursday.

Now to be sure, I'm not suggesting that this was the only motivation; nor that our conglomerated political-reporting press is so incredibly cheaply wooed as the above statement might otherwise seem to suggest.

But it is difficult to avoid the thought that rolling out the Deputy Prime Minister to put on a feel-good positive-vibes press-conference *about the media*, with sufficient thickness of enthusiasm (and surprise/shock-value) that said assembled media's rendered "speechless" by the speech; in concert with his stating support for a profitable progression to the long-stymied corporate maneuverings of two of New Zealand's largest newspaper and radio companies ... is hardly likely to do NZ First any harm.

Especially as the nature of NZF's offer of support to (some) media operating here is not exactly of the 'fire and forget' one-off nature - but rather points toward a longer-term commitment and engagement. And, if it turns out that the Government has to push through legislation to bypass the Commerce Commission's previous blockage of the merger, the drawn-out expenditure of political capital "going in to bat" for the companies in question.

It's not hard to see why NZF would be seriously keen on doing something unexpected, even unprecedented, to attempt to build a positive 'understanding' with media going into 2020.

Despite the Party's polling not being *too* hair-raising for this point in the electoral cycle [it's been fairly consistently in the low four percent range for the past six months], NZF's strategist(s) will  be acutely aware of just what sort of damage a year-long run of scandals, mini-scandals, Shane Jones in general, imbroglios, innuendo, and the appearance of impropriety [whether it's actually there or not] , can do.

After all, that's pretty much exactly what put paid to NZF's time in Parliament toward the conclusion of their previous period in Government in 2008. Something which has been repeatedly pointed out over the past few weeks following the ignition of a still-as-yet-unresolved donations controversy which seems eerily similar in some of its manifest particulars to that Albatross-styled necktie of more than a decade before.

With any net tonnage of potential unfavourable headlines waiting to explode out about the Provincial Growth Fund, this Donations/Trust situation, and various other areas besides, having an array of the nation's news outlets all of a sudden *not* keen to tear shreds off you when they're not utterly ignoring you, becomes understandably strongly desirable.

Whether that's the overt intent of NZF's sudden enthusiasm for protecting the jobs of journalists and supporting foreign-owned corporate bottom lines, or not. [And really, a simple compare/contrast wtih Winston's arguably vindictive stance on MediaWorks' impending doom a mere two months before, is all that it takes to see just how seismic the shift has seemingly been here]

Also, don't get me wrong - I can see some definite upsides to an array of what's been put forward. And was quite intrigued by one of the elements in Winston's statement that *didn't* get read out loud (yet remained in the print version) around a wariness about People's Republic of China propelled content.

Although balanced against this are a few points of prickly disquiet - including my wariness about the prizing of the two sets of  'traditional media' outlets in question over "Facebook and Google". Indeed, the overt, outright hostility directed toward these more modern vectors for information which seemed to come across in Winston's words.

Which doesn't mean he's entirely wrong there, either. They've certainly been prime platforms for 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' in recent years ... it's just that I am of the rather avowed opinion that various 'traditional media' outlets are no better. In fact, in some cases, appear to be somewhat *worse* due to the respectability of their ancient mastheads.

A cynic might suggest that those internet/new media platforms are far less needing of Governmental assistance, and therefore less amenable to influence here, anyway.

In any case, while I don't know that I'd go anywhere near as far as Winston's comment that local/regional news outlets are apparently as vital as a hospital or a school in a given area, I do think that there's a quite a reasonable case to be made for the state to support and assist domestic media so that they remain domestic media. Rather than mere resyndication websites for the splinters-under-fingernails scroungings of various American and UK tabloids in a futile bid for advertising revenue.

The way this has unfolded, and the precise nature of the NZME/Stuff merger proposal is not how I would have approached the problem, but then that almost goes without saying, doesn't it.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to outright state that what we have here - a situation of, for the interim period, anyway, not The State offering to support struggling local media ... but rather, of a particular political party offering to support struggling corporate media which happens to employ some local people while owning some long-standing brand-name trade-marks ('product identities', I suppose you'd call them - and that presumably encompasses some of the more prominently known and highly profiled journalists, also) - is unacceptably "problematic".

In part because the simple nature of New Zealand, New Zealand politics and New Zealand media, has *always* meant that degrees of influence, propinquity, and cheek-to-jowl that'd be frankly abominable in other countries are de rigeur here. The main difference is that this gambit of Winston's is going on *above the table* rather than under it - and is also, not to put too fine a point upon the venerable old pinstripe-suited elephant in the room, a situation of it being NZ First standing to benefit from positive media relationships, rather than being the whipping-boy of both media companies and other political parties or politicians who more *usually* have such 'cozy' rapports going, as has almost invariably more usually been the case.

I also do not mean to unfairly impugn the credibility nor impartiality of an array of this country's political (and other) journalistic fraternity. Or even, perhaps, the *editorial* cabals which sit above them like gargoyles.

But reporting upon events has never been an entirely objective pursuit; whether it's limited by the simple realities of a human viewer's vantage-point or competencies to understand what it is that is unfolding in front of them, we *always* wind up bringing some form of subjectivity to the recounting and the dissecting (er .. vivisecting) of newsworthy happenings, trends, and trend-setters.

If somebody's done you a good turn, said he understands how hard your situation's been, and pledged to *actually do something about it* and to keep you in employment and mastheads for the next foreseeable future, it's only human nature to be rather more fair towards him than, say, another *almost exactly equivalent* figure who seems to spend an appreciable quotient of your literal *every encounter* with him coming up with ever more creative ways to call you stupid, is pretty jubilant about the mass redundancy of dozens of your co-workers elsewhere in the industry, and otherwise attempts to make your daily labours as challenging as possible. And note I said "fair" rather than "favourable".

Anyway, I think I've made my point (and then some).

I'm not saying NZ First deliberately engineered this whole thing exclusively due to rampant paranoia about a re-run of 2008's year-long barrage of negative media attention leading to their snatching defeat from the jaws of victory ... I just think that however genuine Winston's intentions were in supporting regional newspapers or opposing PRC puppeteering of some portion of our press or any of the rest of it ... there's no getting around the possibility that this *won't hurt* NZF amidst a scandal-sodden beaten track as we slouch towards the next Election.

Labouring Under A False Narrative - On The UK's 2019 Election Outcome And What It Means For 'Left' Parties Elsewhere

In many ways, this should have been UK Labour's election to lose. Or, at least, do a helluvalot better on with the Cons on the back, flat, bear-trapped-and-mangled foot.

Despite key campaign issues of Brexit, out-of-touch if not downright unrepresentative political elites, and an incumbent government suffering dang near Italian levels of instability [seriously, how else to describe a situation of it being on its third leader and third election inside what would otherwise have been a single Parliamentary term, alongside a state of literal brother-against-brother civil war inside its main Caucus] ...

... Labour managed to lose while fielding one of the longest-running Euroskeptic MPs as its nominal Leader, and facing off against the literal second coming of Tory-Etonian born-to-rule privilege [the first coming being David Cameron ... inside a pig] spouting Ancient Greek.

Now, the 'received wisdom' going into the Campaign, was that while the British voting public might be 'sick' of ongoing Brexit shenaniganry ... this was in fact a soft-cover for much of the electorate actually being opposed to the whole thing going (any further) ahead.

And therefore, that by singular 'virtue' of not being a pro-Brexit party, UK Labour would stand to do well (particularly when buttressed with a whole lot of policy on just about everything else under the Sun).

Clearly, this didn't happen.

The "new" 'received wisdom' is going to be to turn the whole thing into an anti-Corbyn finger-pointing jamboree . As in ... "it wasn't UK Labour taking a soft-Brexit-Skeptic stance which lost votes ... it was Corbyn muddying the waters by refusing to allow Labour to take an overt anti-Brexit stance that's to blame! That and him being actually left-wing!"

Except the size of the Conservative victory, and the somewhat unexpected places in which it was bourne out seat-by-seat ... show that this is a completely untenable interpretation of events. (It also completely glosses over Corbyn's actual electoral record as leader - the 40% of the popular vote Labour attained under him in 2017, for instance; and the fact that even the 32.1% of the popular vote Labour got this week, is somewhat larger than the 29% under Gordon Brown in 2010 or the 30.4% under Ed Miliband in 2015. If you are attempting to make Corbyn look like the problem, preferably in order to scream "I TOLD YOU SO" in favour of some return-to-business-as-usual neoliberal as having been the better option for leader, or the logical 'choice' to take over now that Corbyn's exited the position ... then it does not do too well to cogitate upon just how much better he performed as compared to his two overtly 'orthodox' predecessors. Would rather defeat the narrative, that.)

It shall be persisted with, however, precisely because the sorts of people pushing this line are reflexively incapable of self-criticism or conceding that they've gotten things wrong. It's their preferred metanarrative up against the world, and if there's some dissonance or disagreement between the two ... then it is clearly the world which is in error. Besides, nobody likes to wear the crown of blame, and it's much easier - more fun, too - to shift it elsewhere onto somebody who represents various sorts of antitheses to what you despise, anyway.

The real horror for those of us out here in the rest of the Anglosphere, is that a whole swathe of notionally-"left" parties which might have serious shots at gaining or maintaining power ... will take rather similar "lessons" from UK Labour's defeat. They'll brand it "Corbyn's Defeat". They'll shout that "SOCIALIST ECONOMICS CAN'T FLY!" They'll claim that allowing anybody even *somewhat* on the side of the people in a 'populist' issue liek Brexit *anywhere near power and leadership* is an automatic recipe for disaster.

I sometimes think that these sorts basically think the future both is and should be Liberal Democratic [ha] Technocracy Forever. And they're professionally engaged in the card-house-construction of ever less tenuous headcanonry 'explanations' for why this *doesn't* appear to actually resonate with much of anybody who isn't already either a LibDem or a Technocrat.

In short .. the *actual* lessons quite simply aren't going to be *allowed* to be learned. Because to do so doesn't just risk 'empowering' "the wrong ideas" and forces, it entails undermining core components of their incipient world view. And that kind of cog-dis is exceedingly painful for any has-be-would-been ideologue to have to endure.

Partially, this has probably been downright deliberate. In much the same manner as the Democratic Party in the USA moving to clamp down on its 'insurgents' lest they actually prove to be electable next year ... the idea is simply to 'wait out' both the incumbents in office/government, and the insurgents in their own party even though it's plainly an election-losing strategy.

Indeed, as the saying goes, that isn't a bug - it's deliberately designed that way.

What To Make Of National MP Parmjeet Parmar's Gandhi Statue Proposition

Backbench Opposition MPs are occasionally curious creatures, as are social media advert-targeting algorithms. Due, no doubt, to an ongoing quirk of the latter, I found myself presented with a sponsored post from National's List MP based on Mt Roskill, Parmjeet Parmar, calling for the enshrinement of a Gandhi statue here in Auckland to coincide with the latter figure's 150th birthday and asking me to sign a petition in support of same.

Now, the comments left in response to this post were pretty interesting in and of themselves. If you were expecting some sort of groundswell-outpouring-of-support from the local Indian community as National presumably were when they authorized the effort [and more on that in a moment], then you would perhaps be left hanging.

Many comments therefrom appeared to be in one (or both) of two camps - those who were suggesting that while such a statue might be appropriate for/in India, it didn't necessarily follow that it'd be a good idea to have one *here* ... and those who were pretty anti Gandhi for various reasons. There were also a few other sorts of response, including an array of potential alternatives if we really were in need of an additional effigy [I put in my two cents in favour of one of NetaJI, on grounds of ... another story for another time], and at least one pointing out that there's already a Gandhi statue located in Wellington by the central railway station. Virtually all of these comments (as in, all but a literal handful out of the more than one hundred responses in that thread) were from members of the Indian community.

Now that matters, not so much because of what it tells us about the perceptions and the psychology of said community's membership - which is pretty interesting in and of itself - but rather because of just *why* the National Party apparently thought this idea would be a good issue to start campaigning on immediately on the cusp of an Election Year.

And that's quite simple.

The Indian community has generally been one of the more diverse in New Zealand when it comes to electoral behavior. Many vote for Labour. Many also vote for National. Up until relatively recently, many also supported New Zealand First. Even ACT managed to find itself an Indian candidate in its top four at the last Election.

So the Indian portions of the electorate - and I should not perhaps monolithicize it by saying it is a 'community' singular - is a battleground, as multifaceted and militantly fought over as any bellweather physical seat. And, with more than two hundred and twenty thousand Indians living here (a figure which will, admittedly, likely include quite a few who are unable to vote in the next year's upcoming General Election), a potentially rather lucrative source of political support in what's likely to be an incredibly tight contest in 2020. 

But while in previous years, the outcomes from the "Indian vote" here have been broadly consistent - Labour doing reasonably out of it, National slowly improving its vote-share, and New Zealand First also being in there as well - various events of the past year and a quarter have thrown much of that up in the air, disrupting those comfortable certainties.

That's created both a 'risk' factor for National, in terms of the potential diminishing of its own vote coming from this general quarter; as well as an 'opportunity', derived from going after the votes that've been lost by the Coalition.

The former - the problem - resulted from the Jami-Lee Ross's airing of a conversation with the current leader of the National Party in which the party's stance toward Indian New Zealanders appeared to be that they were a) cash-cows and seat-warmers when National sought to consider them at all ... and b) that they were worth perhaps only half a Chinese person even on *that* lowly score.

It doesn't take Crosby-Textor to tell you how and why *that* will have burned some bridges.

The latter, and much more recent event - the opportunity - was crafted via Shane Jones' attention-grab before last. It's an open question as to whether Jones' rhetorical enfilading of the Coalition's Indian constituency will lose them more votes than NZF might shore up or gain from other quarters for such displays; but while it might be tempting to regard the whole thing as an "NZF Problem", even despite Iain Lees-Galloway (the actual relevant Minister in the situation) expressing his opposition to Jones' comments, the fact that Jones is a Coalition Minister, whose antics are - broadly speaking - tolerated by his Coalition Partner, suggests that the fallout from that episode is unlikely to be exclusively NZF's to bear.

So, like I say - it's a situation of 'risk' and 'opportunity' for National going into 2020's tight contest as applies potentially tens upon tens of thousands of votes.

It's therefore understandable that they'd be rather keen to attempt a re-run of the 'Ethnic Strategy' which was a fairly prominent portion of both their national- and local-level electoral outreach efforts from about 2014-2016. I won't go into any great detail about it here, not least because it's probably not that interesting to most ... but suffice to say it featured National attempting to take votes off Labour by putting forward 'ethnic' candidates and occasionally downright peculiar stabs at "appealing" to their relevant communities/constituencies. And, perhaps not at all coincidentally, had its arguable not-all-that-high-water-mark just over three years ago *also* in Parmar's electorate, during her ill-starred contest against Labour's Michael Wood for Mt Roskill in the 2016 By-Election.

Here's the writeup I produced at the time, which also runs through some of them aformentioned prior examples/manifestations/missteps.

Anyway, to bring all of this back to both the present and the immediate subject at hand ... it seems pretty straightforward why various minds at National apparently thought it'd be a great idea to approve Parmjeet Parmar MP putting out a release calling for "Auckland Council to provide a statue to honour Mahatma Gandhi in one of Auckland’s public spaces [...] such as Aotea Square or the Auckland Domain".

And then thought they'd double down by bringing the whole thing back two months after it was first announced [which was in early October, to coincide with the anniversary of Gandhi's birth] through a fresh influxion of advertising cash. (Which has, incidentally, given it a far higher response-rate and interactivity, if we compare the few dozen reacts etc. each of her postings about it on the 2nd and 6th of October got to the nearly three hundred on the 9th of December one that's been 'sponsored')

Part of it's the same reason just about any party or politically inclined organization does these sorts of 'petitions' in the first place. It's a contact-info gathering exercise that'll in theory enable the Nats to more easily connect with various portions of the electorate. By self-identifying as interested in one of their pushes, and giving them your name, email, and potentially mobile phone number (especially with the "Send me text message updates" box still auto-ticked), you're saving them the trouble of having to ferret you out or chance across you on the hustings or door-knocking, and giving them many more months to attempt to forge/build upon a connection with you through periodic emailed/txtd bluster. It's not "spam", because you asked for it. It's not "junk mail", because it's not in a post-box. It's not nearly as advanced nor useful as some of the much more data-driven analytic and outreach tools being deployed in the US these days ... but, then, we've always been [often thankfully] a few years or even decades behind them when it comes to campaigning.

And anyway, that candidate/party to individual person contact-harvesting effort is only a secondary purpose compared to what this Gandhi statue push is *actually* for. Which is a much more 'general' sense of connectivity.

As I said some paragraphs ago, the National Party likely feel they are in a situation of both 'risk' and 'opportunity' as applies the Indian swathe of the electorate. On the one hand, they are painfully aware that they have to fend against a perception that they basically see the Indian communities of this country as little more than cash-cows and window-dressing pseudo-"diversity" ... pursuits in which said party would apparently really much rather be dealing with the Chinese, thanks, anyway. That's the 'risk'.

But on the *other* hand, they're also cognizant of the fact that they're up against a Coalition which much more recently had one of its allegedly senior Ministers go on what seemed to be a sustained foray against various Indian customs, culture, community organizations, and Voice and Viewpoint(s) generally.

So therefore, what National's chosen to do is attempt to put forward something designed to show their targets that they're ... pretty much the opposite of all of that - both of their own prior 'shortcomings', and of their opponents' more contemporary tin-eared conflagrationism. A 'symbol', if you will.

What of? That National values the community in question, its cultural touchstones, its heritage, and its voice [as illustrated by having one of its Indian MPs use *her* voice to put the proposal forward]; and is 'in touch', listening to and engaging with all of the above; prepared to offer literal pride of place ... or, as the press release puts it, "prime public spaces", to same.

Except here's the problem with that. Gandhi's actually, to put it mildly, a rather divisive figure in India and the broader diaspora. I won't go into why here, but suffice to say there's *quite a number of potential reasons* from just about all possible viewpoints upon the matter. He *is* resoundingly popular with a certain sort of Anglosphere liberal, however, because of his reputation *external* to India ... and if the reaction on Parmar's recent post was anything to go by when last I'd checked it,  there's probably rather more support in *that* demographic for a Gandhi statue out there in Aotea Square than there is in much of the local Indian community.

So straightaway, it doesn't look so much like "listening" to Indian New Zealanders, as an attempt to appeal to what National thinks they *should* like (both in terms of Gandhi, and in terms of a statue of Gandhi *here*), based on some rather lazy [lack of] thinking.

There's also a bit of an irony in the actual form and capabilities of this 'Symbol', as well. For it is a rather curious maneuver, if you are facing an embedded perception that your attitude to the Indian community is that they are there to be seen and not heard except when being deployed for political/vote-garnering purposes ...

... to then attempt to solve the problem by installing as a political stunt a statue nobody seems to have asked for in a highly public place - where it, by definition, can *only* be seen and not heard.

Statues, rather like some Opposition Backbench MPs, with the occasional exception of 'Res Ipsa Loquitur', are only rarely able to speak for themselves.

Why Elon Musk's "Victory" In Recent Defamation Suit Was A Joke

I am pretty appalled at the outcome of the recent defamation suit launched against Elon Musk in retaliation to his statements that the plaintiff, Vernon Unsworth, was a "pedo".

Now if you've just joined us down here in the peanut-gallery of this *particular* Musk-incepted three ring circus, a little background material is probably going to be helpful.

As you may remember, mid-way through 2018, a soccer team of Thai youths and their coach went missing amidst rising waters in a labyrinthine cave-complex, sparking a massive international rescue effort that raced against the clock to try to get them out alive. Unsworth was one of the key figures in this campaign, having significant local knowledge (including of the cave-system, which he'd been working to map) as well as diving experience. Indeed, so salient was his importance to the successful outcome of the operation, that he's been personally honoured by both the Thai and English monarchs for it (the latter with an MBE).

In the aftermath of the rescue, he made a statement in the course of an interview about a submarine which Elon Musk had sent to the site in order to assist, noting that it was rather ill-fit for purpose and seemed to be more of a "PR stunt" than a serious effort to help. And also suggesting a perhaps superior location for it to have its maiden spelunking voyage.

Musk, it seems, did not respond well to such criticism - and took to Twitter to call Unsworth a "pedo guy" and "sus[picous]".

Now, this is a pretty grave thing to say, I think many would agree. It did not take the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein a little over a year later to make people a lot more sensitive to the possibility that accusations of paedophilia made by the famous might just have something to them. The behavior in question (the sexual crime, I mean, not twitter-flapping insults) is quite rightly regarded as one of the more heinous possible crimes; and regardless of a lack of evidence, the mud thus flung almost invariably appears to stick. It is therefore entirely and eminently understandable that Unsworth felt Musk's public assertion toward him meant he'd been"effectively given a life sentence without parole.”

So you'd think, therefore, that the resultant defamation action would be one of the more simple open-and-shut cases of reputational protection, most anywhere in the world. But, of course, this being America, you'd be wrong.

One of the defences to a defamation action, in most circumstances, is Truth. It's not a total defence, but it's probably one of the best possible ones to have access to. [The most amusing, for my money, is "No Good Name To Blacken", when it comes to the plaintiff, but despite Musk's ongoing antics, I digress] The insinuation if one *does not* choose to sue for defamation when such a lurid allegation is made against you, is that it's because the accuser has just such a defence handy. Or, in other words, as Unsworth's lawyer put it - “The challenge that was thrown down by Elon Musk was that if you don’t sue it’s true,”

But the Americans really do rather like their free speech. And as I have often observed, free speech over there seems to almost inexorably carry with it the freedom to be downright obnoxious with it. Musk therefore launched a defence built around the idea that he wasn't actually seriously accusing Unsworth of being a paedophile, he just meant to seriously insult the guy - and that therefore, rather than being defamatory, his tweet was in fact constitutionally *protected* verbiage.

Now, you may or may not think that this is, on the face of it, absolute balderdash. I certainly find it difficult to agree that prohibitions upon the state restricting freedom of speech (which are not, and never have been absolute - even in EagleLand ... "shouting fire in a crowded theater" being a canonical US Supreme Court example of *non-protected* speech, for instance) should mean that it's all of a sudden complete and total open slather to say or to print the most abhorrent of apparently-not-slander about another private citizen. It seems to mean, per this recent decision 'vindicating' Musk, that there is and can be no actual restitution and no real shield against blatantly false accusations being made as any malefic malcontent may damn well please - provided that it's meant as an insult, rather than as a supported statement of supposed fact.

But on the provisio that it was an "insult", instead of an "accusation", and apparently somewhat regardless of how just about anybody else might have potentially taken the remark (either as indicating something about Unsworth, or as indicating something about what Musk *believed he knew* about Unsworth) ... it's protected speech, and that's that. It really is a most curious phenomenon, saying something you *know* to be false, declaring that that's why you said it, and having that be the defence against the charge of having made a false and injurious statement. But this is, perhaps, why I only have half a law degree, rather than a fool one.

Except here's the thing: I'm not convinced that Musk's proffered explanation, that it was just some sort of off-the-cuff rejoinder, and that he just meant "creepy old man" [as the word apparently means colloquially in South Africa, or so Musk claimed], not "paedophile", actually holds up to any sort of scrutiny at all. Other than a jury, apparently, and they really can be rather difficult-to-predict agglomerations.

You see, Musk didn't just put out a tweet stating Unsworth to be a "sus[picious]" "pedo". His response when queried about his allegation - again, on twitter - was to "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."

He then doubled, and then some, down upon his accusation - hiring a private investigator to produce the evidence to support his claim [which never did actually appear - Musk asserts that this was in part due to the investigator he hired being a "professional conman" ... which rather means I cannot interject "takes one to know one" at this point, as Musk apparently didn't] ; and informing a reporter that Unsworth was a "child rapist", who had relocated to  Thailand in pursuit of "a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time."

He also declared to the same reporter his rather ardent wish that Unsworth "sues me" over the remark; which would to most people surely suggest a supreme confidence in the *truth* of what one had said, rather than some kind of deep and abiding desire to put to the test just how far the US's legal principles protecting freedom of fact-free speech were prepared to extend.

All in all, it seems pretty darn difficult to genuinely believe that Musk did not mean what everybody else *heard* he meant via his application of the word "pedo". Either in terms of "pedo" apparently not meaning "paedophile", or that this was just some kind of clearly non-factual insult just casually bandied about between regular men and not at all intended to be taken seriously by anybody except as a rough barometer of how annoyed Musk was about having his ego pricked.

Musk's subsequent conduct suggests rather strongly that by "pedo", he did in fact mean "child rapist" [that's his words], and that he certainly intended for it to be taken as more than a minor and insubstantial barb. You don't hire private investigators ['conman' or otherwise] to make insubstantial barbs with - you do so to further substantiate them. You also generally don't invite legal challenge immediately after having rather directly and repeatedly made statements of some increasing level of detail which repeat the allegation ... if you are just talking out of the place wherein the submarine was suggested to be lodged.

Or maybe you do. If you're as rich as Musk is, what's a little back-of-the-couch millions to put into batting away a defamation suit (or, as it happens, paying off the US Securities and Exchange Commission, in the aftermath of *another* demonstrably false Musk tweet that actually *was* ruled to have been illegal - money and investment, it seems, gets a far more generous shake of the sauce-bottle of justice than does 'people' under the US system).

It is to Musk's (limited) credit that he has apologized for the tweet. Although I am not entirely sure how seriously one can take an apology that comes couched in a rider of it being his absolute right to have said what, and as he did. That smacks of a certain lack of sincerity - after all, *genuine* remorse often tends to mean at least an implicit commitment to make right the harm done, and to at least attempt to avoid doing the same malefic action again.

But even despite this, and even despite the legal grounds upon which Musk won his case effectively heavily inferring that there is no truth whatsoever to his claim that Unsworth was a "pedo" ... there is little doubt in my mind that the stench of the spurious allegation's smeary label shall follow Unsworth about like a noose for the rest of his life. This is not just because such accusations tend to have an enhanced adhesion even over and above other such vicious rumours and gossipmongery ; but because if you google Unsworth's name, even in connection with the Thai rescue-effort he so heroically contributed to, the first ... dozens of hits are almost uniformly but simple headlines stating that Musk won against him in the defamation suit over his being called a paedophile. It is not hard to see how *that* can be easily misread as a vindication of the *claim*, not of its baselessness in the first instance!

Musk's effective defence was that he could do no (legal) wrong here, as nobody could take him seriously. Unfortunately, even outside this matter, many did and presumably still do.

As this sad, sorry court-verdict shows - just because it's difficult to take something seriously, does *not* mean it lacks for tangible and detrimental impact.

I feel genuinely sympathetic for Unsworth.