The Toilet Paper Dome

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

Iran launched over a hundred missiles at military targets in Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Abbas Nilforoushan in last week’s Israeli assassination strike in Beirut.

Iran claims 90 percent of its missiles reached their target, a figure which is impossible to confirm or refute since the Israeli military is censoring information about impact location and damage. Video footage has emerged of explosions on the ground and craters from where the missiles landed, however, which means they weren’t intercepted by Israel’s so-called “Iron Dome” missile defense system.

So it turns out the Iron Dome is mostly narrative, just like everything else about Israel. The aura of imperviousness that Israel works so hard to convey to both its enemies and its citizenry has been punched full of craters as the world is shown evidence that Israel’s defenses are only good against the homemade rockets used by Palestinian resistance fighters. Iran has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that it has the ability to hurt Israel if it wants to.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says the US will be working with Israel to help make sure Iran faces “severe consequences” for its strikes, so it looks like this could get ugly.

Western officials are predictably denouncing the Iranian strike as a “dangerous escalation”, having had nothing to say about any of the horrific western-backed escalations which led to this point, like the year-long mass atrocity in Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, or Israel’s constant assassination strikes in neighboring nations.

After talking about the Iranian attack as a brazen and unacceptable escalation, State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller was asked by the press if he considered anything Israel has done in the past three weeks escalatory. Miller ridiculously refused to acknowledge any escalatory behavior on Israel’s part, saying instead that Israel had merely “done things to expand the conflict” in order to fight terrorism.

We’ve been seeing similarly bizarre linguistic gymnastics from the mainstream press since Israel began its invasion of Lebanon, with the mass media instead using phrases like “raids”, “ground offensive”, “ground operation”, and “Israel Enters Lebanon” in its headlines in order to avoid the word “invasion”. This is the same media class that used to ridicule Russia for calling its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation”.

That’s right, kids: Iran’s attacks “escalate”; Israel’s attacks “expand the conflict”. Lebanon’s attacks are “terrorism”; Israel’s attacks are “self-defense”. Russia launched an “invasion”; Israel launched a “limited ground operation”. Destroying Gaza is a “response to October 7”; October 7 was “unprovoked”. When their guys do it it’s bad, when our guys do it it’s cool.

Hypocrisy runs rife throughout the western empire because the western empire is not what it pretends to be. It pretends to stand for peace and stability when it really stands for war and domination. It pretends to stand for human rights when it really stands for tyranny and abuse. It pretends to stand for truth and justice when it really stands for lies and propaganda.

This is the dystopia we were born into, and it’s got us on a trajectory toward somewhere very bad. Buckle up.

________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2