Washington is on edge this morning after congressional leaders were briefed on a strike on Iran and the military deployed assets for the pre-dawn attack only to have President Donald Trump rescind the order. Democrats briefed on the attack urged Trump to deescalate and he appears to have heeded such calls, not only from congressional leaders but some in his own Administration. Frankly, the decision to pull back is reassuring for many who felt like there was an orchestrated effort to push the U.S. into a war with Iran — a war reportedly encouraged by allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
I have never hid my disinclination for such attacks or my view that presidents (and Congress) routinely ignore the constitutional requirements for declared wars. I continue to view economics, not military force, as the primary driving force for change in the world. That may be a bias from my time at University of Chicago but I believe that our wars, particularly in the Middle East, have shown a poor record of success while costing us trillions as well as thousands of dead soldiers, sailors, and airmen. In this case, it would seem that the placement of the mines and the targeting of an unmanned aircraft were designed to control possible damage and loss of life. That does not mean that the United States should not respond. However, I am leery of using military force in the region with no long-term plan other than the desire of some for a long-awaited war with Iran.
One of my hopes was that, as a businessman, Trump would not be so keen as some like John Bolton to see war as a viable avenue for global political influence. There are reports that Trump gave Iran a prior warning of the attack and sought a dialogue as an alternative to war. Trump reportedly canceled the operation when the estimate of projected deaths rose to 150.
The attack was reportedly designed to minimize Iranian deaths by hitting installations in the early hours. Media is reporting that on Thursday night, the military was moving forward with the attack deployments of planes and ships in position when Trump rescinded the order.
The response to the shooting down of the unmanned, $130 million surveillance drone risked touching off a powder keg in the area and possible closing the key Strait of Hormuz to shipping.
The media has reported that National Security Adviser John Bolton (a long advocate of military force and proponent for confrontation with Iran) was supportive of the strike. CIA Director Gina Haspel also supported a strike according to these reports. However, Pentagon officials reportedly voiced their concerns that we could easily find ourselves in a full-fledged war that could escalate out of control.
On point…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/persecution-driving-christians-out-of-middle-east-report
Persecution of Christians ‘coming close to genocide’ in Middle East – report
Millions uprooted from homes, says UK-commissioned report, with many jailed and killed
Pervasive persecution of Christians, sometimes amounting to genocide, is ongoing in parts of the Middle East, and has prompted an exodus in the past two decades, according to a report commissioned by the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
Millions of Christians in the region have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against, the report finds. It also highlights discrimination across south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and in east Asia – often driven by state authoritarianism.
“The inconvenient truth,” the report finds, is “that the overwhelming majority (80%) of persecuted religious believers are Christians”.
Some of the report’s findings will make difficult reading for leaders across the Middle East who are accused of either tolerating or instigating persecution. The Justice and Development (AK) party of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for instance, is highlighted for denigrating Christians.
Hunt described the interim report – published on Thursday, based on a review led by the bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen – as “truly sobering”, especially since it came as “the world was seeing religious hatred laid bare in the appalling attacks at Easter on churches across Sri Lanka, and the devastating attack on two mosques in Christchurch”.
Hunt, an Anglican, has made the issue of Christian persecution one of the major themes of his foreign secretaryship. “I think we have shied away from talking about Christian persecution because we are a Christian country and we have a colonial past, so sometimes there’s a nervousness there,” he said. “But we have to recognise – and that’s what the bishop’s report points out very starkly – that Christians are the most persecuted religious group.”
He added: “What we have forgotten in this atmosphere of political correctness is actually the Christians that are being persecuted are some of the poorest people on the planet. In the Middle East the population of Christians used to be about 20%; now it’s 5%.”
“We’ve all been asleep on the watch when it comes to the persecution of Christians. I think not just the bishop of Truro’s report but obviously what happened in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday has woken everyone up with an enormous shock.”
The interim report is designed to set out the scale of the persecution and a final report in the summer will set out how the British Foreign Office can do more to raise awareness of the issue.
The report shows that a century ago Christians comprised 20% of the population in the Middle East and north Africa, but since then the proportion has fallen to less than 4%, or roughly 15 million people.
In the Middle East and north Africa, the report says, “forms of persecution ranging from routine discrimination in education, employment and social life up to genocidal attacks against Christian communities have led to a significant exodus of Christian believers from this region since the turn of the century.
“In countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia the situation of Christians and other minorities has reached an alarming stage. In Saudi Arabia there are strict limitations on all forms of expression of Christianity including public acts of worship. There have been regular crackdowns on private Christian services. The Arab-Israeli conflict has caused the majority of Palestinian Christians to leave their homeland. The population of Palestinian Christians has dropped from 15% to 2%.”
The report identifies three drivers of persecution: political failure creating a fertile ground for religious extremism; a turn to religious conservatism in countries such as Algeria and Turkey; and institutional weaknesses around justice, the rule of law and policing, leaving the system open to exploitation by extremists.
The report says: “The rise of hate speech against Christians in state media and by religious leaders, especially in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, has compromised the safety of Christians and created social intolerance.”
In findings that may pose difficulties for the UK as it seeks to build relations across the Middle East, the report states: “In some cases the state, extremist groups, families and communities participate collectively in persecution and discriminatory behaviour. In countries such as Iran, Algeria and Qatar, the state is the main actor, where as in Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt both state and non-state actors, especially religious extremist groups, are implicated.”
“In 2017 a total of 99 Egyptian Christians were killed by extremist groups, with 47 killed on Palm Sunday in Tanta and Alexandria. Egyptian Christians were continuously targeted by extremist groups during 2017 and 2018.
“Arrest, detention and imprisonment are common in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. For example in the course of six days before Christmas 2018, 114 Christians were arrested in Iran with court cases left pending as a form of intimidation. Though most cases in Iran involve converts, indigenous Christians such as Pastor Victor, an Assyrian Christian, with his wife, Shamiram Issavi, have also been targeted and imprisoned.”
It also highlights how states, and state-sponsored social media, sometimes incite hatred and publish propaganda against Christians, especially in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. “The governing AK party in Turkey depicts Christians as a ‘threat to the stability of the nation’. Turkish Christian citizens have often been stereotyped as not real Turks but as western collaborators.”
In Saudi Arabia, the report says, school textbooks “teach pupils religious hatred and intolerance towards non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews”.
The report says freedom of religious belief can also act as a means of helping those suffering gender discrimination, since there is clear evidence that female Christians suffer disproportionately.
Defending the claim of genocide, the report says: “The level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”
The eradication of Christians and other minorities on pain of “the sword” or other violent means was revealed to be the specific and stated objective of extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, north-east Nigeria and the Philippines. An intent to erase all evidence of the Christian presence was made plain by the removal of crosses, the destruction of church buildings and other church symbols.
“The killing and abduction of clergy represented a direct attack on the church’s structure and leadership. Where these and other incidents meet the tests of genocide, governments will be required to bring perpetrators to justice, aid victims and take preventative measures for the future. The main impact of such genocidal acts against Christians is exodus.”
Referring to the universal declaration of human rights, the report concludes: “The challenge that faces us at the beginning of the 21st century is not that we need to fight for a just legal system, it is rather that to our shame, we have abjectly failed to implement the best system that women and men have yet devised to protect universal freedoms.”
“I think we have shied away from talking about Christian persecution because we are a Christian country and we have a colonial past,
A more plausible explanation is that Christian villagers in Iraq and Pakistan are not the sort of people Britain’s senior civil services gives a rip about. Pass the claret.
And, of course, Barack Obama is nothing if not honorary Eurotrash.
….Christian persecution because we are a Christian country….more likely because it is absurd to believe Xtians are systematically persecuted. Oh and sorry you were spurned by a black man.
meet some Christian Arabs if you think they’re not systematically persecuted. There’s about 100 years of immigration the US from Lebanon supplying many fine people that can easily educate you.
and Lebanon’s never been all that bad for them either. Some decades were worse than others.
The ironic thing is that horrible autocrats from the Assad family have a good record of harboring Christians too; many of the Arab Christians who had to run from the Turks went to Syria
And for all the complaining one hears from assorted voices, Israel is a good place for Arab Christians too.
Our wonderful ally Saudi? Maybe the worst. Whatever military regime has our approval, in Egypt? Not all that nice either.
Recall the attack against Christians in Sri Lanka during Easter Sunday and how Obama and Hillary described it.
Obama: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.”
Hillary Clinton: “On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence. I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers in Sri Lanka.”
They could not utter the word Christian for political animus against Christians.
Calling Obama Eurotrash is being charitable
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/22/barack-obama-hillary-clinton-tip-anti-christian-ea/
Text of the Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges (2003)
I want to speak to you today about war and empire.
Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill — theirs and ours — be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.
We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.
The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world’s population which is Muslim, most of whom I’ll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess — the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq — we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.
“Modern western civilization may perish,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, “because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good.”
The real injustices, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East, will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed we will swell their ranks. Once you master people by force you depend on force for control. In your isolation you begin to make mistakes.
Fear engenders cruelty; cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante’s circle the damned remained motionless. We have blundered into a nation we know little about and are caught between bitter rivalries and competing ethnic groups and leaders we do not understand. We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien creed. Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus.
Hedges stops speaking because of a disturbance in the audience. Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow takes the microphone.
“My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other’s opinions. (Crowd Cheers) If you wish to protest the speaker’s remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate but he has the right to offer his opinion here and we would like him to continue his remarks. (Fog Horn Blows, some cheer).
The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away. The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry — the only two ministries we bothered protecting — is self immolation.
As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, that will begin a long bloody war of attrition; it is how they drove the British out and remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators. But within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah and was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of Southern Lebanon.
As William Butler Yeats wrote in “Meditations in Times Of Civil War,” “We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair.”
This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq.
We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides’ history. Read how Athens’ expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.
This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war — if we do not understand how deadly that poison is — it can kill us just as surely as the disease.
We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.
We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity — for evil — and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone.
War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press — remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem — have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence — death — is hidden from public view.
There was no more candor in the Persian Gulf War or the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. But in the age of live feeds and satellite television, the state and the military have perfected the appearance of candor.
Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true — it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong.
War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
(A man in the audience says: “Can I say a few words here?” Hedges: Yeah, when I finish.)
Once in war, the conflict obliterates the past and the future all is one heady intoxicating present. You feel every heartbeat in war, colors are brighter, your mind races ahead of itself. (Confusion, microphone problems, etc.) We feel in wartime comradeship. (Boos) We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those who will insist that the comradeship of war is love — the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war’s intoxication.
Think back on the days after the attacks on 9-11. Suddenly we no longer felt alone; we connected with strangers, even with people we did not like. We felt we belonged, that we were somehow wrapped in the embrace of the nation, the community; in short, we no longer felt alienated.
As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship — that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime — is within our reach. We can all have comrades.
The danger of the external threat that comes when we have an enemy does not create friendship; it creates comradeship. And those in wartime are deceived about what they are undergoing. And this is why once the threat is over, once war ends, comrades again become strangers to us. This is why after war we fall into despair.
In friendship there is a deepening of our sense of self. We become, through the friend, more aware of who we are and what we are about; we find ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Friends probe and question and challenge each other to make each of us more complete; with comradeship, the kind that comes to us in patriotic fervor, there is a suppression of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-possession. Comrades lose their identities in wartime for the collective rush of a common cause — a common purpose. In comradeship there are no demands on the self. This is part of its appeal and one of the reasons we miss it and seek to recreate it. Comradeship allows us to escape the demands on the self that is part of friendship.
In wartime when we feel threatened, we no longer face death alone but as a group, and this makes death easier to bear. We ennoble self-sacrifice for the other, for the comrade; in short we begin to worship death. And this is what the god of war demands of us.
Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.
(Boos cheers, shouts, fog horns and the like) [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0520-13.htm]
This is a bit old, but its still worth a read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwar/comments/1ik5sc/text_of_the_rockford_college_graduation_speech_by/
It’s ‘worth a read’ to illustrate the rancid mentality of a fraction of our chatterati.
Hedges offered this rant at a college graduation ceremony. What kind of self-centered pr!ck does that? The youths are there to mark and celebrate their personal accomplishments, not to listen to what some wanker thinks is wrong with the world. The booing grew so intense the college president finally intervened, told him to sit down, and moved to the next item in the program.
“Rockford College’s most prominent alum is Jane Addams, a pacifist who was booed off the Carnegie Hall stage for opposing US intervention in World War I. Addams was the founder of Hull House, a non-profit social service agency, the first president the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and a Nobel Peace Prize Winner.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2003/5/21/new_york_times_reporter_chris_hedges
Rockford College invited Hedges. Oops. What were they expecting?
“The youths are there to mark and celebrate their personal accomplishments, not to listen to what some wanker thinks is wrong with the world.”
How sad for these “youths.” Time to grow up.
Someone recorded the event:
https://youtu.be/BAmkMndtH24
Those of TIA’s mindset wouldn’t let Hedge’s speak. Hypocrites.
A good life-lesson:
TIA’s false “take”: “…the college president finally intervened, told him to sit down, and moved to the next item in the program.”
Nope. Hedges finished his speech. And he finished it with the following words. (TIA gets it wrong, but is so certain that he’s right — which is often the case — as we see in his numerous comments to this blog. He’s one of those guys who wrongly believes that he has it all figured out.)
“Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.”
Darren Smith wrote an excellent article nearby on the abortion topic.
he wrote:
In the pro-choice analogue it is akin to saying that babies born as the result of rape or incest are un-persons who might be legally subjected to life sanctions, namely death, due to their status of which they are blameless.
The pro-abortion warriors often wield like a club “rape –> pregnancy –> abortion” scenario. Yet the data from the Guttmacher organization indicates
In both surveys, 1% indicated that they had been victims of rape, and less than half a percent said they became pregnant as a result of incest.
https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/journals/3711005.pdf
Pro-aborts use rape to buttress their political ideologies. As Karen stated below Democrats use rape to advance their ideologies which is to say they victimize women all for their political calculus. They disregard life but lust for power and greed. Abortion$ = $$$ for Planned Barrenhood.
A woman has come forward to accuse Trump of raping her. Laughable of course because she just now makes her claim to sell her new book, and it coincides with Trumps re-election. We’ve been down this road with Justice Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill (not to David Brock for setting her story straight (or is it gay?) and of course Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser’s “repressed memory”.
It gets better though. Not too surprisingly rapist Virginia Lt Governor Justin Fairfax is considering running for Governor, crediting his rape victims as bolstering his run. Maybe he will carry with him on the campaign trail, corpses of infant babies who have been dismembered from partial birth abortions to rally his mongrel base.
https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/fairfax-thinking-very-seriously-about-run-for-governor-says-scandal/article_37b579fe-cefa-56f7-b021-5a951782b62a.html
Link to Carroll’s account.:
https://www.thecut.com/2019/06/donald-trump-assault-e-jean-carroll-other-hideous-men.html#_ga=2.126299469.1768427431.1561243170-2103738972.1554173363
RAPE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST TRUMP..
MORE CREDIBLE THAN THOSE AGAINST CLINTON
Jaunita Broaddrick told her story nearly two decades earlier, first to the media, and then later in a book. She had recounted how, in 1978, Clinton asked her up to his hotel room. How he allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to pull away. How he allegedly bit her lip, then later told her to put ice on it. How she sobbed. How she told some of her friends. How she didn’t tell the police. Clinton denied her accusations.
Republicans and conservatives rallied to her cause then, and they did so once again in 2016. Democrats and liberals, not so much — although in the wake of the #MeToo movement, some have since acknowledged the credibility of Broaddrick’s claim.
But today there’s another woman with a similar allegation, against a different powerful man. Her name is E. Jean Carroll. She, too, says that she was raped — by Donald Trump.
Carroll tells a story about how she was alone with a man. How in 1995 or 1996 that man, Trump, allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to fight back. How she tried to push him away and tried to stomp on his foot. How he penetrated her. How she ran out the door. How she told friends. How she didn’t tell the police. Trump also denied the accusations, calling them “fake news” and adding, “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”
But Trump called Broaddrick “courageous,” and if Broaddrick was courageous, then certainly Carroll is as well. For Carroll’s story is at least as compelling as Broaddrick’s — if not more so.
And that is because Carroll’s claim, for a number of reasons, actually rests upon a significantly stronger foundation than Broaddrick’s.
Before she went public with her story, Broaddrick had repeatedly denied that Clinton had assaulted her, even under oath: In an affidavit she had submitted in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment case against Clinton, Broaddrick had sworn that the allegations “that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies … are untrue,” that the press had previously sought “corroboration of these tales,” but that she had “repeatedly denied the allegations.” (Disclosure: I provided behind-the-scenes pro bono legal assistance to Jones’s lawyers.)
For another, Carroll’s account is supported by the sheer number of claims that have now surfaced against Trump — claims in which women have accused Trump of engaging in unwelcome or forcible sexual conduct or assault against them. These claims — all denied by the president — far outnumber the publicized sexual misconduct incidents that involved Clinton, which mostly concerned rumors or allegations of consensual affairs.
And as if to bring things full circle, Carroll’s account is also of course supported by Trump’s depraved remarks on the “Access Hollywood” video, of which there was simply no equivalent in Broaddrick’s case. Whatever else he may have done, Clinton never made a video like that. What Trump described on the video is exactly what Carroll says he did to her.
Finally, no controversy involving Trump would be complete without at least one utterly brazen, easily disprovable Trumpian lie. In his statement denying the rape allegation, he added the claim that “I’ve never met this person in my life.”
‘They are playing with very dangerous territory’: Trump denies sexual assault claim
Speaking to reporters June 22, President Trump denied allegations made by magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump attacked her in 1995. (The Washington Post)
If Trump had even bothered to glance at Carroll’s published account, he would have seen a photograph of himself and his then-wife, Ivana, from 1987 ― in which he was amiably chatting with Carroll and her then-husband. By making the absurd and mendacious assertion that he never even met Carroll, Trump utterly annihilates the credibility of his claim that he didn’t assault her.
Republicans or conservatives who promoted Broaddrick’s charges would be hypocritical if they fail to champion Carroll and condemn Trump.
Edited from: “Republicans Believed Jaunita Broaderick. The New Rape Allegation Against Trump Is More Credible”
Today’s Washington Post
RAPE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST TRUMP..MORE CREDIBLE THAN THOSE AGAINST CLINTON
Well, the e-mail blast from David Brock has gone out this morning.
My suggestion, Peter, is that you try to demonstrate that Donald Trump knew Jill Carroll from a cord of wood, something votaries of Christine Blasey Fraud could never do in re Brett Kavanaugh. Then we can get to everything other incredible feature of her account.
(There isn’t any doubt that Clinton and Broaddrick were acquainted and in the same venue during the time she specified).
Tabby, in your haste to dismiss the article, you missed this vital passage:
“Speaking to reporters June 22, President Trump denied allegations made by magazine writer E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump attacked her in 1995. (The Washington Post)
If Trump had even bothered to glance at Carroll’s published account, he would have seen a photograph of himself and his then-wife, Ivana, from 1987 ― in which he was amiably chatting with Carroll and her then-husband”.
You mean he and Ivana crossed paths with her at some gala eight years earlier? You get one point (the one point Christine Blasey Fraud couldn’t earn).
Hey, absurd was there and as a Trump supporter he demands the truth at all times. You can’t pull that BS here PH!
All 20 of them are lying gold diggers.
Has Peter only met 5 people in his life so he remembers each encounter? Being a credible interpreter of fact is not something anyone should associate with Peter.
A famous person being photographed at an event with someone does not mean they personally knew her. She has made allegations against 6 other men. How would someone who’d been assaulted by 6 different men go into a dressing room with a strange man to try on lingerie? Sorry, but I know rape victims. They are afraid of men for quite some time.
I have been at events before with perfect strangers I would never recognize decades later. Didn’t know them then, wouldn’t know them now.
Any criminal accusation should be investigated. This reminds me of the women who came out of the woodwork against Kavanaugh, and later were found to have lied or recanted. Or their story weakened to, well, he was standing by the Solo cups.
I am gravely concerned that Democrat women may have weaponized rape allegations to terrorize conservatives and defraud voters. Vote didn’t go your way? An opposing party nominate someone to the Supreme Court? Then use other means.
In addition to the criminal accusation, the allegations of fabricated claims should be investigated, as well.
Her memoir accuses 21 men of everything from sexual misconduct to rape.
21. Men.
She said that her intention for going to a dressing room was to get a 6’3″ man to try on a bodysuit that fit her, over his clothes. She had bad experiences with 21 different men (I don’t know what the count was by 1996). Since she went to an event that he attended, she knew he was married. Yet she went into a dressing room, purportedly to stretch a lace bodysuit that fit her over a 6’3″ tall man in a suit. Yeah, right.
21 might be partly explained by her exceeding good looks and being 5′-11″. She was “Miss Indiana University”, won “Miss National Cheer Leader”, and was also Miss Logan Park at about age 10 (girl scout thing when she was allegedly indecently groped by the regional head of the Boy Scouts). Several of her 20 assaults occurred when she was not of age.
Maybe just bad luck.
Maybe.
It is unusual for 6 different men at different times to assault the same person. Not impossible, but unusual.
Here, Carroll made an allegation without a witness, without evidence, from 23 years ago based only on her word. At least with Broaddrick, someone saw her with a bitten, bleeding lip after her meeting with Clinton. She told people at the time. I still don’t think her case would hold up in court.
Having known rape victims, it also seems unusual that someone who had bad experiences with 21 different men would go into a dressing room with a strange man to try on lingerie. Possible, but unusual. That she would be raped in a dressing room at a department store, and no one heard.
I have a problem with anyone coming forward decades later with an accusation and zero evidence. It’s like they want it both ways. Some real victims avoid the problems that reporting it to the police would have caused for them at the time, but then they want to be believed years later without evidence. They might have had convincing reasons at the time to stay silent, but there’s a price for that.
It’s unfair to the person they accused, because by that point, it’s impossible to prove innocence or guilt. Most people don’t save their engagement calendars forever, although I’ll bet that becomes a trend for men.
Cosby was caught because he admitted drugging women before having sex with them. Women who didn’t know about each other or the details of the other cases came forward with similar stories.
Both the allegation of criminal conduct, and of a fabricated story, should both be investigated. I don’t envy the detectives this job.
May be just a career.
21 might be partly explained by her exceeding good looks
ROTFL
https://www.google.com/search?q=jean+carroll+in+1996&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUgt_OxIPjAhXumOAKHf9YCWsQ_AUIESgC&biw=1228&bih=704#imgrc=oUvrsyU-2qi0bM:
Well not good looking enough for a player like absurd, but for most of us Miss Indiana University and Miss American Cheerleader would get her in the door. Of course she might have won based on her inspiring words about world peace during those competitions.
Absurd, imagine her naked but for strategically placed copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and see if sap …..ahem…..rises.
There was one other aspect of her story that stood out to me. She said she couldn’t tell if he was half way or all the way in. That was clearly mocking his size.
I’ve never known a rape victim to make a joke about her assault, or joke about the size of her attacker’s equipment. It would be excruciatingly painful and traumatic. It seemed weird. Granted, just became I’ve never heard a victim talk that way doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
It also seemed strange that a wealthy man would rape anyone right there in a popular department store in NYC during business hours. He wasn’t concerned that anyone would come investigate? Would a store ever be that empty?
It is also troubling that she wrote a book on the topic of the sheer number of men who have engaged in sexual misconduct against her.
There are a few red flags. This needs to be investigated.
Another aspect of this story that seems odd is that the woman is even older than Trump. He would have been about 50? at the time of the alleged attack, and at least at that age, I don’t think Trump had much of an interest in “older women”.
This should boost her book sales, anyway. I haven’t looked into all of the other accusations she’s made; at a glance, it looks like being “sexually assaulted” is something of a norm for her.
But I’ll have to check out all of the names and all of the accusations she has in the book she’s selling.
That’s another element which indicates this is fantasy. Bill Clinton was an any-port-in-a-storm / it’s-always-raining sort of sexual adventurer (see period pix of Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky, or the 26 year old Hillary Rodham). There’s no indication DJT is of similar kidney.
Bill Clinton seemed to be driven by an obsession to be desired. I can’t understand why he wasn’t investigated for his repeated trips to Orgy Island, which was staffed by trafficked women and minors. That deal stank.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, seems obsessed by beauty, as a status symbol. I will say that one of the advantages of being monogamous and loyal is that these types of accusations would be less common, or at least carry less weight. I think Pence is rather smart to never be alone with any female not his wife. The press mocks him and calls him a chauvinist because he won’t take dinner meetings with females, but in this political climate, he’d be mad to.
I think every man ever considering politics should stop using apps, and instead use paper calendars, detailing all of his errands and engagements, and save them forever.
That Solo cup story jaded a lot of people about sexual assault claims, and that’s very sad for real rape survivors.
Being accused of rape or even inappropriate sexual behavior is not that common with politicians, so your suggestions for avoiding this would be more on target if they included “just don’t do it”. This leads more creedence to the charges against both Clinton and Trump because they are unusual in the number of charges and in Trump’s case, his admission to this kind of behavior. While it is true that we can’t take all accusations at face value, the recent “me too” movement – mostly against celebrities, not politicians – is distinguished by how they have mostly hit their targets with few if any false charges.
Here is her accusation against Les Moonves, who was ousted out of his career when multiple women came forward with decades old accusations that could neither be proven nor disproven. Most of them said that he came on to them and then froze them out at work when they rebuffed him.
Note the similarities about a powerful man completely overcome in her presence, spontaneously attempting to rape her in public – in this case, an elevator.
https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/les-moonves-sexual-assault-e-jean-carroll-accusation.html
“As detailed in the upcoming New York cover story, Carroll says she was working on an article on Moonves for Esquire and that he followed her to an elevator after the interview and cornered her. “He steps into the elevator behind me,” Carroll writes, “and his pants bursting with demands, goes at me like an octopus. I don’t know how many apertures and openings you possess, Reader, but Moonves, with his arms squirming and poking and goosing and scooping and pricking and prodding and jabbing, is looking for fissures I don’t even know I own, and — by God! — I am not certain that even if I pull off one of his arms it won’t crawl after me and attack me in my hotel bed. Hell, I am thrilled I escape before he expels his ink.” Carroll adds that she did not include the experience in her Esquire article, “I am a member of the Silent Generation. We do not flap our gums. We laugh it off and get on with life.””
Les Moonves’ response to allegations:
“When reached for comment by The New Yorker, Moonves acknowledged three of the women’s stories, but insisted they were all consensual encounters. “In my 40 years of work, I have never before heard of such disturbing accusations,” he said. “I can only surmise they are surfacing now for the first time, decades later, as part of a concerted effort by others to destroy my name, my reputation, and my career. Anyone who knows me knows that the person described in this article is not me.” The CBS Corporation, meanwhile, said it takes these new allegations “very seriously.””
Sexual assault is a terrible crime. It is disturbing when women wait for decades and then accuse men in power when it is no longer possible to prove the charges or defend against them. How to weed out the truth from fiction? I have no idea what Les Moonves has done, or if he’s the next Weinstein.
The goal should be justice, which is difficult to obtain without evidence. Without having to prove a claim, what’s to prevent any woman from destroying any man she chooses, based on her word alone?
The bad guys are supposed to be put away, through a fair process that protects the innocent.
Karen defines a real problem but doesn’t offer a solution – women are often hesitant to report assaults in real time for reasons related to fear and shame. If they later, at a greater distance from fear, and with age from shame, want to report the incident Karen implies without saying so clearly, that it’s too late and they should shut up. Or of course they are lying, as she also implies is true of the multiple accusers of
Moonvees and Trump. I’m a male adult who has been around the block, and even have been alone in public with women not my wife – unlike our VP – and no one has accused me of sexual assault. Itis true that if I was it would not sell many books, but neither have most of the accusations against these guys. No on except those parties will know with certainty the truth and that’s a fact. Still advocating for continued silence of the kind Karen favors is not the best answer. Something tells me the accused in these two cases should count their avoidance of jail as a break enough.
Her entire explanation was that she went into a dressing room to put a ladies lace bodysuit on Trump, over his suit. The guy’s 6’3″. The bodysuit was in her size, because Trump had asked her to try it on.
So, how was this supposed to go? Putting a size, let’s say 8, over a 6’3″ man in a suit. Over his clothes.
What? That doesn’t make any sense.
A woman abused by 21 men went into a dressing room in an eerily deserted, popular department store in NYC, the most populated city in the country, because she planned to shove a little bodysuit on a fully dressed, tall man. She was raped but no one heard it or came to her aid. (Reminds me of the satire cartoon that the best defense against a mugging in NYC is to job with a fake open chest wound. No one would bother you then.)
Carroll said she told two journalist friends at the time. That means that two journalists kept this quiet before, during, and after the election of Donald Trump, as well as during the long years when he was a celebrity beforehand.
We can’t say it’s not true, but we also can’t say it is, based only on someone’s word. It is important if two people corroborate her story that she told them in 1996 that Trump raped her. However, I’ve had a friend tell me her ex did something terrible and it wasn’t true. I know of a woman who has accused virtually every male tradesman she’s ever encountered of coming on to her. We’ve also heard of outlandish stories that turned out to be true, like Bill Cosby’s.
That’s why this needs to be investigated to see if there is some sort of evidence at all.
It is not critical to Carroll’s story that Trump would remember meeting her.
“Early one evening, as I am about to go out Bergdorf’s revolving door on 58th Street, and one of New York’s most famous men comes in the revolving door, or it could have been a regular door at that time, I can’t recall, and he says: “Hey, you’re that advice lady!”
And I say to No. 20 on the Most Hideous Men of My Life List: “Hey, you’re that real-estate tycoon!”
https://www.thecut.com/2019/06/donald-trump-assault-e-jean-carroll-other-hideous-men.html#_ga=2.126299469.1768427431.1561243170-2103738972.1554173363
PS The # 20 is chronological, not a rating.
Carry on carrying that water Karen and take a break when it gets too heavy.
Yeah, I can see how my saying all criminal allegations, including this one, should be investigated, as well as the allegation that it’s a fabricated story, could be considered carrying water. Right then.
The photo was considered by the media proof that Trump knew her and lied about it. Obviously, it is not.
Karen, you’re clearly trying to minimize and cast doubt on Carroll’s story. Perhaps you should mention the 20 (that number again) other claims against Trump as well as his bragging about doing exactly what Carroll said he did to her in your ruminations. None of us know what happened except him and her and while weighing the allegations you fall on one side – his. Take a break. We all know he’s a scumbag, the only question being how big a scumbag he is.
The photo is proof that Trump met her previously, so I’m not sure what you are faulting the “media” for – whatever “the media” even means.
PS As I’m sure you must be able to figure out on your own, no “investigation” will prove or disprove allegations of rape from 20+ years ago and without witnesses other than friends who may have heard the story then. But even that doesn’t prove it happened. We’ll all pass judgement on our own.
Which means it may unjust to wait decades to accuse someone, without any evidence, and when too much time has gone by for the accused to clear his name.
This could become the new political weapon of the future. Maybe this will be an October surprise every 4 years. Maybe both sides will start doing it.
Is it fair to destroy anyone based on decades old accusations based on nothing other than someone’s word? We read about high profile people being taken out without any recourse, because there is literally nothing they can do to clear their name.
It will do its job, and taint the accused, who can do nothing about it.
Delayed reporting is a common problem for juvenile victims of assault. They have been groomed or feel shamed, and so they don’t come forward until years later. Then, however, their description of details inside a priest’s private rooms, for example, can still be considered evidence. In such a case, multiple victims describing rooms they never should have had access to, or similar scenarios, can help. Time lapse is still a problem, even then.
Are you saying that someone wronged in the past and in a way not now provable should do the right thing by continuing to keep their mouth shut?
I don’t agree with that.
“Karen, you’re clearly trying to minimize and cast doubt on Carroll’s story.”
No. I am truthfully stating the problems with her story. I compared and contrasted hers with Broaddrick’s, including the common issue of decades passing. Failing to point out flaws would be biased. That is why I also pointed out flaws in Broaddrick’s story.
Don’t you do that? Read an accusation and truthfully tally up the positives and negatives in the story? Your defensive reaction to logical criticism sounds politicized.
The photo is proof that she was at the same event as Trump, not that he knew her, or that he raped her in a dressing room. She did not claim to know him or be associated with him. Rather, she claimed when they met at the department store that he called her that advice lady, because she had a column in a paper.
I know rape victims. I went to visit one in the hospital whom I would have walked right past if I didn’t know her room number. Her head looked like a pumpkin, she was so swollen. I didn’t recognize her standing right in front of her.
I would never, ever, excuse rape. You have called me a lot of names over the past few days, but excusing rapists is absolutely beyond the pale. I also would never, ever excuse anyone lying about rape.
Let the investigation happen. Whatever the truth is, hopefully it will come out.
Don’t believe or disbelieve a woman based on political expediency or gender. Do so based on evidence.
It is disgusting for rape allegations to be used for political purposes, either supporting or denying them. The politics of everyone involved is immaterial.
Anita Broderick is irrelevant to whether Trump raped Carroll. Why bring her or anyone else up? Everyone will believe Carroll’s story or not depending on what they know of the accused and what they learn of the accuser. Clearly you won’t believe her and I admittedly will, absent new evidence of who she is. NO evidence, short of someone trustworthy saying she told them she was going to hatch a lie to damage Trump o convincing interviews with her friends from the time will prove or disprove her story beyond what we know now.
As to the photo, it proves he met her and had a conversation of indeterminate length with her and her husband. It is not necessary to her story that he knew her from that event though it leads some credence to him knowing who she was. Nothing you said hit the target, whether it be her or “the media”. By the way, she had a TV show as well as a magazine column.
I have called you a liar in recent days over your continued and fully conscious attempts to misrepresent specific facts.
Of course she is. It hardly pretends to be other than what it is: an invention.
As for the ’20 other women’, the ‘allegations’ are on the order of ‘he was a masher on an airplane’.
Anon — the woman is a mentally ill nut case. listen to her interviews. she makes no sense.
He said he NEVER MET HER. Details are important here. The photo proves that claim is a lie, but you’re still willing to believe him despite photographic proof. There is something truly wrong with you Trumpsters.
He said he NEVER MET HER. Details are important here. The photo proves that claim is a lie,
I’m sure Trump remembers every random person he meets – by name – 30 years after the fact.
“The photo proves that claim is a lie…”
No, it doesn’t. (And I’m not a “Trumpster” or a Trump fan.)
The photo proves Trump was wrong. We don’t know whether he was lying or not. What are the odds?
The accusers story does not depend on the photo either way. She was a minor celebrity – she had a TV show – , apparently knew her way around NYC society on a certain level, and was very good looking.
At this late date, it’s just another sideshow — another distraction.
The photo only proves what it shows: They were at the same party and there was apparently some banter among the four people in the photo.
Her motives are suspect, no matter what might have happened.
His motives are always suspect.
True enough, but it doesn’t matter, IMO.
Trump’s words, as we know: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/e-jean-carroll-donald-trump-not-my-type_n_5d11d9b0e4b0aa375f5282dc
It’s a clip that ought to be played over and over again in the run-up to the next election.
a — I’d say there’s something truly wrong with this woman accusing Trump. Listen to her “story” and her interviews. She’s a nut case. Clearly.
“She’s a nut case. Clearly.”
Is she?
Trump’s words, as we know: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/e-jean-carroll-donald-trump-not-my-type_n_5d11d9b0e4b0aa375f5282dc
I want to share a typical excerpt from the column E Jean Carroll wrote for Elle.
A quick read of this and I discredit anything she has to say about Trump. I will put in a few asterisks that indicate what a dishonest and manipulative person she probably is.
“Dolls, in honor of ELLE’s twenty-fifth anniversary, I thought I’d reveal how the Ask Eeee column started. It all happened after I was fired as a writer on Saturday Night Live—a hilarious interlude that has lent a lovely piquancy to my subsequent advice on how not to be fired. Anyway, after I was canned, I started writing for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Outside, covering sex and adventure and sometimes both! ****** In 1993, this led ELLE editor Amy Gross to ask me to lunch at the hottest restaurant in New York—damn, I wish I could remember the name!—and inquire if I’d like to write a monthly advice column. I nearly passed out, I was so ecstatic! I was (and still am) riotously opinionated and don’t mind making readers say “Yikes!”—because every time I’m wrong, hundreds of readers are kind enough to set me straight. So after 17 years of answering questions, the question I find myself answering in this column is: What have I learned? I can tell you, the letters have taught me plenty! Herewith, according to Auntie Eeee…
1. That it’s impossible to distill everything a woman should know into a list of 25 things. Also, every woman should know that it’s impossible to get the 25 things in the right order. Where do I put, for instance, “Life is short. Don’t waste it trying to make everything perfect”?
2. How to change a tire, how to change your hair color without going to a salon, and how to change a man.***** (Regarding the dude: Tell him what you want him to do, reward him when he does it, and ignore him when he doesn’t do it.******)
3. If you don’t question what you believe in, you end up making the same mistakes over and over. When we find ourselves in a romantic quagmire ******* or struggling for an eternally denied promotion at work and our old ideas aren’t working, we must, must, must ask ourselves two questions: (A) Is this idea I’m acting on even effing true*******? (e.g., Am I so irresistible that this time he really is going to leave his wife?*********) And (B) What would happen if everyone in the world believed this idea and behaved as I’m behaving now? (This is our old friend Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative—view every action you take as a universal law. Meaning, if you’re considering lying to your boss to save your job, imagine a universal law that says everyone must lie to his or her boss.*********)
When it comes to sex and love, question (B) has a great way of yanking the blinders off and giving you a clearer picture of what’s actually going on. Speaking of which…”
https://www.elle.com/life-love/ask-e-jean/q-and-a/a11408/ask-e-jean-25-things-every-woman-should-know-512948/
I hear all 6 of these things compressed into the beginning of an essay and I KNOW with METAPHYSICAL CERTAINTY that the women who wrote it is, to be kind, A PROBLEM
Thanks for the link to the article. The whole thing has a bad smell to it.
Juanita Broaddrick had visible injuries. She could prove where Clinton was and where she was.
However, there is a price you pay for not coming forward at the time. I believe Broaddrick was telling the truth because Clinton settled other allegations, she had visible injuries, she could prove both of their whereabouts at the time in question, she had exact dates, documentation that she had access to him, and people recall her being upset at the time. She had a witness who discovered her just after the incident with a bleeding, bitten lip. There were 5 people she told, contemporaneously, not years later when he was President. On the other hand, she did not go forward to the police and denied it at one point. It is a fair assessment that the passage of decades weakens her case.
The woman who has accused Trump has nothing but her word. We have seen the Left physically assault Trump supporters for no other reason than they were triggered by seeing a MAGA hat.
No human being should be believed based on nothing but her gender. That goes for Broaddrick, too. I believe her based upon the evidence she can provide, but do not believe her case would win in court due to the passage of time. E Jean Carroll claimed that Trump raped her in the dressing room of a department store. She said they went from his asking her opinion on a gift, to the lingerie section, to a dressing room, to rape. First, where in Hades was everyone else in the store? How is it possible that no one would hear a struggle? How did Trump not emerge with his face bleeding? No one heard her fighting? He didn’t have a mark on him? How did she end up in a lingerie section with Trump, and later in a dressing room? Did he have a Solo cup?
Carroll claimed she was sexually assaulted 6 times with 6 different men and has gone after high profile men before. What the heck is going on for one person to have 6 different men try to assault her? Outside of Haiti?
Her only proof is a photo of Trump speaking with or shaking hands with her husband at an event. Thousands upon thousands of people have their photo taken with Trump over the past 40 years.
For anyone to believe Carroll, then there has to be something besides her word that he raped her in a dressing room.
Rape is a soul killing, deadly serious crime. Making up an allegation is a form of assault.
How could anyone prove they did not rape anyone in a dressing room on an unknown day 23 years ago? How could he prove she was making it up? She cannot prove it happened, and he cannot prove it didn’t.
Any criminal allegation should of course be investigated.
There was a crime? Strikes me as she said she said on the release of her new book and the launch of Trump’s campaign
nada
Carroll has two friends from that time who claim she told them when it occurred.
No one should be physically assaulted for wearing a hat, but Karen fails to mention that people on the right kill people in America because of their race and religion.
I also did not mention wife abusers and killers of kittens. Or the polar bear game. Or racist attacks on whites, African Americans, Asians, Latinos… Where I live there is a lot of racist tensions between blacks and Latinos.
I have never seen so many blatant efforts to unseat a lawfully elected President by any means possible, or such open harassment and violence against people because of political beliefs. You can walk around wearing a Che Guevara shirt in safety, and he killed thousands of people and imprisoned gays. But not a MAGA hat.
Any contemporaneous accounts would be part of the investigation, as well as her history of accusing men of sexual misconduct.
I found out that a woman I’d known lied about her ex abusing her. Never happened. She lied for years, apparently, about many things. We all thought she had a string of bad men. I would have been a witness corroborating her story that her most recent ex stalked her and threatened her, at the time. That he couldn’t let her go. However, it did not happen. What I was actually witnessing was her lying about him to get showered with attention, and get her coworkers to harass people for her.
Women and men can both lie. Let the investigation move forward without prejudice.
No Karen did not mention lots of things but in never ending attempts to cast herself and fellow Trumpsters as a persecuted minority and “leftists” as physical bullies, she did mention MAGA hats triggering assaults. Gee, that’s one of the worst things to happen in modern America! By the way, I live near towns you would not want to wear an Obama shirt in after dark, let alone Che Guevera – though they might not know who that is.
Poor Karen. She suffers so for her beliefs!
MAGA hats are per se offensive because they stand for White Supremacy, racism, xenophobia, including caging of young choldren, misogyny, chronic lying and all of the other bad things Trump stands for. Note, please, that I’m not talking politics or policy–I’m talking VALUES that are un-American, which MAGA hats stand for. Wearers are aware of this, too, and, like their orange hero, they like to stir things up for the sheer pleasure of upsetting people who disagee with them–a pathetic form of flipping off America.
“MAGA hats are per se offensive because they stand for White Supremacy, racism, xenophobia, including caging of young choldren, misogyny, chronic lying and all of the other bad things Trump stands for.”
You made a bigoted, ignorant statement.
Of course MAGA hats don’t stand for any of that. They stand for supporting Donald Trump’s election.
That means that when you harass people wearing MAGA hats, you are being intolerant against opposing political opinions and using violence, oppression, or intimidation to try to silence them, just like any fascist.
Obama destroyed access to healthcare for the unsubsidized middle class. I lost my healthcare because of him. And yet, I feel no desire to physically attack or degrade anyone wearing a Hope and Change hat or shirt. Because I’m not a Leftist, I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and mistakes, and can wear whatever they want.
I assume you meant “children”. The photos of “caged” children was from the Obama era. The border isn’t made out of linked hotels. It’s in desolate areas. BP is overrun with thousands of illegal migrants at a time. Many of those children are not with their parents, at all, but rather members of a cartel, pedophiles, or human traffickers smuggling them into pedophile sex rings. Of course you separate the children from the adults to prevent the latter from frightening the former into lying. If you don’t like it, then blame the parents who send their children into the hands of the cartels because our Democrats created policies that made kids into passports past our legal immigration process. We have created an inducement for kids to be put into danger.
Would you prefer that all the kids be kept together with the adults they came with, and the ones with sex traffickers are out of luck?
Meanwhile, the right wing racist who murdered the young woman in Charlottesville is asking for mercy.
It’s not like he knocked somebody’s hat off – give him a break!
“Meanwhile, the right wing racist who murdered the young woman in Charlottesville”
He is a neo Nazi that no side wishes to claim but if one wished to accurately portray the political leanings of the Nazi’s in Germany they would be on the left side of the aisle not on the right. They were bred from communists and racists forming their own left wing fascist regime which then turned on its brothers that were competing with them.
they would be on the left side of the aisle not on the right.
I realize you want to stick it to Anon and other leftoids for their various and sundry frauds, but discussions which include sentences like this are as useless as Karen’s 1000 word yammers about ‘socialism’.
“, but discussions which include sentences like this are as useless ”
DSS, it is a matter of putting things in their proper perspective. This guy was crazy and not really acceptable to any political side but then we have to recognize Anon is crazy as well.
He’s actually a certifiable head case and it’s difficult to believe the circumstances would meet the criteria for 1st degree murder were this a common-and-garden homicide case. That requires evidence of premeditation, depraved indifference to human life, or that the defendant was committing another felony (e.g. a robbery or a domestic burglary). Either Virginia’s an eccentric jurisdiction or this is a political verdict.
the kid is a schizophrenic who was under terrible stress all day due to failed policing
inn every generation, kids who don’t fit in, will take up with whatever gang will have them
not much sense in making too much out of it, but the antifa got their victim and they will dance in her blood until the sun goes down
Allan, I really don’t understand what you are saying. I’m anti war. That means I do not accept the death of millions of people.
Regime change isn’t a “mistake”. War isn’t a “mistake”. Killing people through sanctions isn’t a “mistake”. These take a lot of planning to implement. Intelligence is fixed around the policy and people are propagandized into supporting all of these things, including by use of false flags. If you go to Zero Hedge you will see an article by George Washington’s blog. In that post is but a small list of false flags, not just by the USG, but by many governments, used for the purpose of killing millions of people. False flags are not “mistakes”. They are planned.
Sometimes I think it is difficult for people to accept what their own govt. is doing. It is your own govt., not me, who finds it acceptable to kill millions of people. They have already done that. It is your own govt. who starves others in siege warfare called sanctions and it is your own govt. who has engaged in blood curdling torture. I haven’t done any of those things, no would I do them.
These statements are not a matter who me being right or wrong. They are simply the truth.
“The first causality of war is truth.” I do understand it is painful to see that one’s own government is causing harm, committing war crimes and acting in a completely lawless manner. However, that is what is happening and it is no mistake.
Mistakes go all different ways. These actions always go the same way. That’s not a mistake, it’s a plan.
As painful as this may be, I am hoping as many people as possible can work through that pain, be honest about what is happening, and rather than tolerating/cheering on or excusing a govt. which is engaging in mass murder and other war crimes, stop it.
I have never taken a different stance, no matter which party has held the presidency. Not even once.
“Allan, I really don’t understand what you are saying. I’m anti war.”
Anti war, what does that mean? Do you think most people are for war? That would be a ridiculous assumption. Most people don’t want war but sometimes a people have to act and go to war. Where did the anti war movement take us in the 30’s? To a devastating World War with the destruction of Europe and elsewhere with millions of dead. Maybe if Germany knew that any war would cause them to lose they might not have advanced starting WW2. The anti war position at that time might have cost millions of lives for nothing.
“Regime change isn’t a “mistake”. War isn’t a “mistake”. Killing people through sanctions isn’t a “mistake”. These take a lot of planning to implement.”
That is a very simplistic statement one that we expect from a child but not an adult that has a reasonable knowledge of the subject matter.
I’ll ask you. Some Germans wanted to kill Hitler because they realized the devastation he would create. That would have been regime change. Would you have been against regime change? I don’t think so. When Hitler crossed into Czechoslovakia if Hitler were stopped with a war, would that have been a bad thing? I don’t think so.
The US government has done some bad things frequently with good intentions and sometimes not. However, the good it has done is a lot greater than the bad. Sometimes no action leads to all bad. Would you like to be living under the Third Reich? I don’t think so.
“I do understand it is painful to see that one’s own government is causing harm, committing war crimes and acting in a completely lawless manner. However, that is what is happening and it is no mistake.”
You have to look at more than one side of the coin to draw conclusions. That is something you are not doing.
This discussion is not political or based on party. It is based on the assumption that in the process of doing good some bad might be created. You sound as if you don’t want to do anything bad which means you never do anything good. The idea is to do more good than harm while constantly imrpoving one’s record.
It’s actually quite difficult for an adult to both talk like a 9th grader and be pretentious at the same time but Allan accomplishes this feat almost every time. I for one am impressed.
Anon, it gets more difficult with you because not only are you ignorant but you are also a liar.
I tried to reach you Allan but it just isn’t possible. i did not lob personal insults at you but that’s all you are doing back at me after having done it in the first place. Do you really think that’s an “adult” discussion?
You are misrepresenting what I am saying which is called, creating a straw man argument. I am all for discussing things but two people have to be willing to be honest and not attack others personally for having a different viewpoint. That’s how we learn things. If both people aren’t committed to this, there is no possible conversation. So believe as you will. I won’t try again.
Jill, you know nothing, you learn nothing, you have no opinions that aren’t stereotyped postures, you leave not a trace of grace or elegance in anything you say. Everything you say is a set of animadversions based on falsehoods. You want to be treated with respect, be respectable.
Better watch out Jill, absurd speaks for all of us here.
Absolutely, you guys are just too smart, brilliant even to make counter arguments and I am very afraid to say anything around such brain trusters! OMG!!! 🙂
You are actually trying to threaten a poster on a blog for writing something? WHOA! If I were you, I’d just ignore posts which upset you with facts you don’t like to hear!
I correct you as a matter of course, Jill, and have done so on this thread. But one thing I don’t do is try to reason you out of positions you were never reasoned into. As with Natacha, I don’t get paid to listen to you, so I do it only sparingly.
What does this clown get paid for and who is that loose with his coin?
Jill, I thought my reply to you was quite bland but blunt. The one thing I think you might be entitled to have an objection to was my statement “we expect from a child but not an adult”. Yes I could have left that out but I feel you have more to offer than what your statement represented. Would you have preferred if I thought you had less intelligence and treated you as if you were a simpleton? Where would that get either of us? How would that move the discussion further.
” I’m anti war.”
Do you think everyone else is pro war?
Everytime you create an argument about the US it seems you look at only one side of the picture. Don’t you think you should look at both sides? Do you think you can do a lot of good without doing some things that turn out badly? Look at your arguments. Don’t virtue signal. You open yourself up to this type of response because your attitude appears to be one side is pro war and your side is anti war. That is not true and is not something to be believed.
Anti war, what does that mean?
Of course the designation is inane for anyone who hasn’t joined some odd anabaptist sect (and if she had, she wouldn’t be snarling at people on the internet). It’s just a pose. If’s very seldom that red haze politics is anything else. Chris Hedges is a tool.
DSS, the statement is a strange one that I think Jill will recognize after she thinks about it for a bit. It’s sort of insulting to anyone that doesn’t agree with her and has an “honest” and “different viewpoint” since it appears to the other side that she is accusing them of being pro war. That is what stops a reasonable discussion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-oil-factbox/strait-of-hormuz-the-worlds-most-important-oil-artery-idUSKBN1JV24O
I think the one thing “being anti-war” means is that if Iran decides to impede or shut down shipping in the Straits, you ask them to please reconsider rather than using military force, or the threat of military force, to keep that vital shipping lane open.
About 35 years ago, Midge Decter published a critique of the political writings of the literary critic Irving Howe. Howe was (and remains) one of the more benign portside public intellectuals. She noted that a consistent feature of his political writing (which could be found both during his Trotskyist period and after, when he was much more attuned to the Democratic Party) was a refusal to consider and assess the choices actually available to policy-makers. Everything was a pose struck in front of an audience (which consisted of the sort of people who wrote for or subscribed to the publications where he placed his work). Howe had a much better attitude toward his social and cultural matrix than did a cretin like Victor Navasky, but he was still, at a fundamental level, unserious. The 20 year old Trotskyist trying to shoehorn discussion of war and diplomacy into a Marxist scaffolding (first depose the capitalists, then we can fight the war) sounded ridiculous. The 50 year old professor / opinion journalist dithering over a course of action in VietNam was pathetic.
Nothing any of us says is likely to have the least effect on anything else. We don’t have to make real decisions. But most of us try to think as if we were making a real decision with a defensible object. Victor Navasky made a career of striking poses – complaining all the time in regard to actions taken or not taken in venues of which he knew nothing and with intstruments about which he knew nothing. That’s Jill. It’s just that she doesn’t have a moneybags spouse to distribute her spew to 100,000 like-minded subscribers. Natacha’s not much different. She just adds prolixity, repetitiveness and pathetic sexual jealousy to the mix (most manifest in her absurd rages against Kellyanne Conway).
Wait, “…pathetic sexual jealousy to the mix (most manifest in her absurd rages against Kellyanne Conway).”
Say what?
I mean “sexual jealousy” and Kellyanne Conway would be “pathetic”, I agree, but “unfathomable” or “impossible” would be better adjectives.
Jill – does your anti-war position mean that you would never support a war? For instance, do you believe our involvement in WWII was wrong? Could we have negotiated with Hitler to stop killing all the Jews? Was there anything anyone could say that would have induced him to stay within his own border and stop being a homicidal maniac?
I can understand wanting war to be the last resort, but not the complete anti-war stance. It paints you into a corner.
Switzerland wasn’t really neutral. Money laundering for people who were killing Jewish men, women, and children, and then seizing their assets isn’t neutral. Without the rest of the world doing the hard work, Switzerland would have fallen, too. There were plans in place for an invasion, which was merely delayed.
Switzerland wasn’t really neutral. Money laundering for people who were killing Jewish men, women, and children, and then seizing their assets isn’t neutral.
For crying out loud. Read Winston Churchill on Switzerland’s stance.
Jill – does your anti-war position mean that you would never support a war?
Of course it doesn’t mean that. You honestly think Chris Hedges ever had an issue with Arab brigands or Latin American reds?
All I know of Churchill and Switzerland was that he liked the country and traveled there since he was a boy. What is a good source that you recommend? I enjoy reading about Churchill. The man was a font of dry British humor, and led an interesting life. There is so much myth about him. I’m still not sure if the story about him nearly drowning as a child actually happened or was just a story.
I don’t know about Jill, but I have known people who are complete pacifists and can’t conceive of supporting war. That’s why I asked.
Real pacifists are emotionally detached from public affairs. Their minds are on the next world or on the mundane business of their lives. That’s not Jill.
==
Shortly after Yalta, Winston Churchill said of Switzerland: “Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. She has been the sole international force linking the hideously sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans to keep herself alive?”
I agree in regards to religious pacifists.
There are those who are complete isolationists, or who cannot ever see a reason for engaging in war beyond our borders. I don’t have a read on Jill, but perhaps you are right.
That is a great Churchill quote. I wonder if he voiced this comment because of the condemnation against Switzerland. They benefitted from Nazi money stolen from the Jews they killed. The Nazis stored Jewish plundered art, and capital there. They played both sides, but many in the military and government were Nazi sympathizers.
There was an invasion planned, but it was down on the list of priorities, as the Swiss were cooperating so nicely with the Nazis already.
They were not neutral towards the Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Their policy only protected the politically oppressed. They turned away most Jewish refugees, and they taxed Swiss Jewish citizens for every Jewish refugee they allowed to temporarily stay in camps. I can understand the Swiss not having room to take on a lot of refugees, but they did give them much help, either. Any Jew going through Switzerland had their passport stamped with the red J for Jew stamp, making it easier for the Nazis to apprehend them.
Since Switzerland doesn’t have raw materials, they negotiated with the Nazis, allowing them the use of their railways for uninspected sealed crates, in exchange for raw materials.
Switzerland not only received stolen art and gold from the Nazis, taken from the Jews they murdered, but they refused to give most of it back to the heirs after the war. That got them in a lot of hot water later.
http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2016/2/14/was-switzerland-neutral-or-a-nazi-ally-in-world-war-two#.XRDtaS3MxhE=
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/readings/sinister.html
To be fair, the US turned away a great many Jewish refugees, who truly were asylum seekers and no threat to anyone. And our country had stolen gold that it had not reconnected with heirs, either.
About Allan’s distortions down-thread:
Galloway received an apology AND “substantial” damages in the Christian Science Monitor case:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/galloway-accepts-substantial-libel-damages-1.974017
“Mr Galloway’s lawyer Mr Mark Bateman accepted a formal apology during a brief hearing at the High Court in London. “The allegations… that (he) opposed the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq and, thereafter, the recent conflict in Iraq, because he had been paid by the Iraqi regime, are false and without foundation,” Mr Bateman told the court.
“He said the Monitor now accepted there was no truth in the allegations and had paid the MP substantial, undisclosed damages.”
“About Allan’s distortions down-thread:”
What you are quoting is not at issue. What is at issue is who the man is. That is something you know little about.
Maybe you were drinking last night, Allan. You said:
“In addition it was an apology not a win. Sometimes it is easier to settle with an apology than to go to court.” (Allan’s words)
So again: Galloway got an apology, but he also received monetary compensation — just as he did with The Telegraph. Here’s the relevant quote from the article:
” the Monitor now accepted there was no truth in the allegations and had paid the MP substantial, undisclosed damages.”
As far as knowing who the man is? You’re apparently in the dark, as you often are.
“Maybe you were drinking last night, Allan.” … and maybe I wasn’t and you are just plain stupid. I think my explanation is a lot better. Think logically if you can think at all. If Galloway couldn’t make the case in the US would that mean the same circumstances never happened? That question is likely too hard for you but I will give it a try.
“Without going to war”
US Holds All the Cards in Showdown With Iran
Victor Davis Hanson
In May 2018, the Donald Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal.
The United States then ramped up sanctions on the Iranian theocracy to try to ensure that it stopped nuclear enrichment. The Trump administration also hoped a strapped Iran would become less capable of funding terrorist operations in the Middle East and beyond, proxy wars in the Persian Gulf, and the opportune harassment of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The sanctions are clearly destroying an already weak Iranian economy. Iran is now suffering from negative economic growth, massive unemployment, and record inflation.
A desperate Iranian government is using surrogates to send missiles into Saudi Arabia while its forces attack ships in the Gulf of Oman.
The Iranian theocrats despise the Trump administration. They yearn for the good old days of the Obama administration when the United States agreed to a nuclear deal that all but guaranteed future Iranian nuclear proliferation, ignored Iranian terrorism, and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in shakedown payments to the Iranian regime.
Iran believed that the Obama administration saw it as a valuable Shiite counterweight to Israel and the traditionally American-allied Sunni monarchies in the Gulf region. Teheran assumes that an even more left-wing American administration would also endorse Iran-friendly policies, and so it is fishing for ways to see that happen in 2020 with a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden presidency.
Desperate Iranian officials have already met secretly with former Secretary of State John Kerry and openly with Sen. Diane Feinstein, likely to commiserate over Trump’s cancellation of the nuclear deal and to find ways to revive the Obama-era agreement after Trump leaves office.
To that end, the Iranians wish to disrupt world oil traffic while persuading China, Russia, and the European Union to pressure the United States to back off sanctions.
Iran hopes to provoke and embarrass its nemesis into overreacting — or not reacting at all. If Trump does nothing, he looks weak to this Jacksonian base of supporters. But do too much, and he appears a neoconservative, globalist nation-builder. Either way, the Iranians think Trump loses.
After all, Iran knows that Trump got elected by flipping the blue-wall states of the Midwest — in part by promising an end to optional interventions in the Middle East. Accordingly, Iran hopes to embarrass or bog down the U.S. before the 2020 elections. In Teheran’s view, the challenge is to provoke Trump into a shooting war that it can survive and that will prove unpopular in the United States, thus losing him the election.
Iran, of course, is not always a rational actor. A haughty Tehran always magnifies its own importance and discounts the real dangers that it is courting. It harkens back to its role in the 2003-2011 Iraq War, a conflict which proved that U.S. efforts could be subverted, hundreds of American soldiers could be killed, public support for war could be eroded, and a more malleable American government could be transitioned in.
But what worked then may not work now. The United States is not only the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, but also the soon-to-be largest exporter of energy — and without getting near the Iranian coast. Likewise, American allies in the Middle East such as Israel are energy independent. America’s Arab friends enjoy seeing competing Iranian oil all but off the market.
Time, then, is on the Americans’ side. But it is certainly not on the side of a bankrupt and impoverished Iran that either must escalate or face ruin.
If Iran starts sinking ships or attacking U.S. assets, Trump can simply replay the ISIS strategy of selective off-and-on bombing. The U.S. did not lose a single pilot to enemy action.
Translated, that would mean disproportionately replying to each Iranian attack on a U.S. asset with a far more punishing air response against an Iranian base or port. The key would be to avoid the use of ground troops and yet not unleash a full-fledged air war. Rather, the U.S. would demonstrate to the world that Iranian aggression determines the degree to which Iran suffers blows from the U.S.
Of course, Tehran may try to stir up trouble with Israel through its Syrian and Palestinian surrogates. Iran may in extremis also stage terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. And it may lie that it has already developed enough fissionable material to launch a nuclear missile.
But the truth is that America has all the cards and Iran none in its game of chicken.
Because Iran is losing friends and money, it will have to escalate. But the U.S. can respond without looking weak and without going to war — and without ensuring the return to power of the political party responsible for giving us the disastrous nuclear deal that had so empowered Iran in the first place.
All these wars were planned
Trump doesnt want these wars……these wars were planned years ago by insane neocons.
Global Warfare: “We’re Going to Take out 7 Countries in 5 Years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”
Video Interview with General Wesley Clark
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166
VIPS Memo to the President: Is Pompeo’s Iran Agenda the Same As Yours?
DATE: June 21, 2019
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President.
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Is Pompeo’s Iran Agenda the Same As Yours?
After the close call yesterday when you called off the planned military strike on Iran, we remain concerned that you are about to be mousetrapped into war with Iran. You have said you do not want such a war (no sane person would), and our comments below are based on that premise. There are troubling signs that Secretary Pompeo is not likely to jettison his more warlike approach, More importantly, we know from personal experience with Pompeo’s dismissive attitude to instructions from you that his agenda can deviate from yours on issues of major consequence.
Pompeo’s behavior betrays a strong desire to resort to military action — perhaps even without your approval — to Iranian provocations (real or imagined), with no discernible strategic goal other than to advance the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He is a neophyte compared to his anti-Iran partner John Bolton, whose dilettante approach to interpreting intelligence, strong advocacy of the misbegotten war on Iraq (and continued pride in his role in promoting it), and fierce pursuit of his own aggressive agenda are a matter of a decades-long record. You may not be fully aware of our experience with Pompeo, who has now taken the lead on Iran.“
https://consortiumnews.com/…
The “deep state” has a “deep bench.”
Gina Haspel and Christopher Wray are recent additions.
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious scandal in American political history.
The co-conspirators are:
Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Comey, Christopher Wray, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Laycock, Kadzic, Yates,
Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove, Steele, Simpson,
Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper, Azra Turk, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills,
Brennan, Gina Haspel, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power, Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Holder, Brazile,
Sessions (patsy), Obama et al.
Diane L4D: People Who Feel Inadequate In Life Get Purpose And Strength By Trolling
Glenn Greenwald: People Who Feel Inadequate In Life Get Purpose And Strength By Calling For War
Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date June 22, 2019
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/06/22/glenn_greenwald_people_who_feel_inadequate_in_life_get_purpose_and_strength_by_calling_for_war.html
Glenn Greenwald called out journalists and columnists pushing for a war with Iran and lamented that people who have been continually wrong are often hailed as the voice of authority and reason in an interview with FNC’s Tucker Carlson on Friday. Greenwald specifically took aim at Jeffrey Goldberg of ‘The Atlantic’ who he said got a promotion for being wrong about the war in Iraq.
“Jeffrey Goldberg’s articles won a national magazine award for creating a grotesque conspiracy that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people,” Greenwald said.
“Not only should he not be in journalism, he should be out of decent society,” he continued. “And yet, when it came time to compete for whether he was going to stay at “The New Yorker” or go to “The Atlantic,” the owner of “The Atlantic” gave him and his children, rare exotic horses to lure him away from “The New Yorker,” and he now runs one of the most important magazines in the world.”
“You turn on MSNBC, there’s Bill Kristol. You open up ‘The New York Times,’ there’s Brett Stevens, Marc Thiessen in ‘The Washington Post’ and they’re all embedded in Washington culture, the think tanks especially, and they only become important and enlivened when the U.S. is at war. They get all kinds of psychological, economic and political benefits from it at everybody else’s expense,” Greenwald said.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Glenn Greenwald cofounded “The Intercept.” He joins us tonight. So Glenn, the reaction to the President not going to war last night has been really striking, very little celebration about it in certain quarters, outright attacks. You saw — we just played tape of CNN’s National Security analyst attacking the President for it.
Liz Cheney, Congresswoman from Wyoming attacked the President. Others did, too. What about Washington makes war the first resort for both parties every time?
GLENN GREENWALD, COFOUNDER, THE INTERCEPT: Well, first of all, there’s an obvious answer, which is it is exciting, so it drives media ratings, it makes people buy newspapers.
Adam Smith, in “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, wrote about how when a country becomes an empire, the people in the capital never get any risk for more.
So Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol and David Frum and the people who cheer war are never put at risk, but they get excitement and purpose from it. They get kind of a feeling of power.
Ben Shapiro on Twitter today said, “Let’s show Iran that we can match them.” That’s something that people say when they go through life feeling inadequate, and without any kind of purpose or strength, so it gives people strength.
And then there’s also this much deeper issue that after the Iraq War, almost nobody other than Judy Miller, the single scapegoat, there was no accountability for the people who lied to the country into the war.
So you look at someone like Jeffrey Goldberg, who for “The New Yorker” was writing award-winning articles, claiming that Saddam Hussein was in an alliance with Al Qaeda making people believe that Iraq did 9/11, is he out of journalism because of that? No, he has been promoted. He’s the editor- in-chief of “The Atlantic.”
You turn on MSNBC, there’s Bill Kristol. You open up “The New York Times,” there’s Brett Stevens, Marc Thiessen in “The Washington Post” and they’re all embedded in Washington culture, the think tanks especially, and they only become important and enlivened when the U.S. is at war. They get all kinds of psychological, economic and political benefits from it at everybody else’s expense.
CARLSON: If you claim that there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, 9/11 and Saddam, it is clearly untrue. How in the world could you stay in journalism? I mean, do you know — how could Jeff Goldberg go on to run one of the most famous magazines in English?
GREENWALD: The amazing thing is, Tucker, the more you promote war, even if you get it wrong, the more you’re going to prosper. That is the sickness, the pathology of the DC media and political class.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s articles won a national magazine award for creating a grotesque conspiracy that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
Not only should he not be in journalism, he should be out of decent society. And yet, when it came time to compete for whether he was going to stay at “The New Yorker” or go to “The Atlantic,” the owner of “The Atlantic” gave him and his children, rare exotic horses to lure him away from “The New Yorker,” and he now runs one of the most important magazines in the world.
You see that all throughout the media, the same people who not just lied about Iraq, but who cheered all kinds of wars in Muslim countries, prosper from it, they get promoted, they continually get treated as the voices of authority and that’s why this continuously goes on.
CARLSON: It is so mind bogglingly corrupt, it’s hard to believe it happens in our city and in our business. Glenn Greenwald, thank you very much for that perspective. I appreciate it.
GREENWALD: Thanks, Tucker.
Glenn Greenwald tweet:
“Why does Washington inherently and reflexively love war? Part I:”
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1142238772496621568
Glenn Greenwald: “The pathology in the DC media and political class: the more they cheer for war, the more they prosper – @JeffreyGoldberg edition:”
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1142239632387706880
Trump said that he felt that killing up to 150 Persians in retaliation for the destruction of an unmanned drone was excessive. I agree. However, this is an opportunity for black projects for sure. Sabotage. Cyber Warfare.
Iran is a problem that is not going away. They still start their school days chanting, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” Iran and North Korea are going to keep pushing until there is some kind of crisis, escalated because allies will turn this into another world war, with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the US all taking sides. Both are powder kegs that we keep trying to put a lid on.
War is misery. It’s families never whole again. In my personal opinion, don’t start a war you can’t win. Avoid war whenever possible, but if it’s unavoidable, then send the message needs loud and clear not to poke a sleeping bear. We are often accused of going to war for oil, when in fact it’s more like access to oil, and preventing adversarial nations like Russia from blocking that access. The country still has to buy it on the open market just like everyone else.
However, I believe that if a country puts us in the position that we have to risk our own men and women’s lives to go fight, then we shouldn’t be pouring our own treasure into nation building. That never works. All we do is build quality roads for ISIS or some other extremists to use later. If we go to war, then the country we fight needs to pay for it, as forfeit for losing. Not a profit, but at least a partial reimbursement. Otherwise, all they are risking is perhaps a regime change and ending up with better infrastructure than they had before. That is an inducement for internal factions to encourage war with us. Instead, the message needs to be that it’s a terrible mistake to go to war with the US. We should hit hard, to win quickly. Don’t let politicians interfere with the military, other than the obvious direction to minimize civilian casualties. Shock and Awe can lead to an early surrender, and save American lives.
No more pouring money into countries that hate us. If a defeated foe really changes, and wants an alliance later, all the better.
Karen,
You have this almost exactly backward. The US has been gunning for Iran literally for years. We took out their democratically elected president, knowingly shot down their civilian airliner which included the deaths of 66 children and all others on board, have sent stuxnet into their civilian grid, are currently starving their people, and so on.
There is a clip of Bolton in 2017 saying that we would have regime change in 2019. PNAC has been gunning for regime change since 2000 and before.
Can you imagine how this would feel? We’ve had some taste of it in our own nation as Democrats, neocons (to include Bolton) and the MSM along with Lady Hillary have sported Russiagate, (now completely discredited) as a way to regime change in the US. I don’t know how you feel about all those lies, but I think this has been very destructive of our nation. Yet Iran has had the CIA and our military put all around their borders with weapons (and clandestinely within their borders) for the purpose of overthrowing their govt.
Iran is no threat to us. They need and want to sell their oil. We are preventing that through sanctions. Their people and many other people in the world are dying from our sanctions which are so draconian that the UN and other international bodies have condemned us over them.
The US is creating havoc throughout the world. We are reigning down death and destruction on nations whose leaders we don’t like, not because they are dictatorships (have you really looked at the govt. are allies have??????) but because they will not allow us to take their resources. We don’t want trade, we want ownership of this planet!
We ring their nation with bases and we are the ones provoking war. We are creating misery and it is we the people who need to stop our own govt. from continuing down this unjust, evil pathway.
We took out their democratically elected president,
We’ve never done anything of the sort. You know nothing and you understand nothing.
We can let others read about this. What you say has no bearing on reality: “Mohammad Mosaddegh[a] (Persian: محمد مصدق; IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɢ] (About this soundlisten);[b] 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was the 35th prime minister of Iran, holding office from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d’état orchestrated by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s MI6.[4][5]” wikipedia but there is tons of information about this.
x 9 does not believe in facts, and he didn’t see it on FOX NEWS. so therefore it never happened.
Your mom want’s you to leave the basement at some point today.
Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself? We do.
CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup
Declassified documents describe in detail how US – with British help – engineered coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup
The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.
On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.
“The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.
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The documents, published on the archive’s website under freedom of information laws, describe in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain’s MI6.
Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.
British documents show how senior officials in the 1970s tried to stop Washington from releasing documents that would be “very embarrassing” to the UK.
Official papers in the UK remain secret, even though accounts of Britain’s role in the coup are widespread. In 2009 the former foreign secretary Jack Straw publicly referred to many British “interferences” in 20th-century Iranian affairs. On Monday the Foreign Office said it could neither confirm nor deny Britain’s involvement in the coup.
The previously classified US documents include telegrams from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA officer on the ground in Iran during the coup. Others, including a draft in-house CIA history by Scott Kock titled Zendebad, Shah! (Viva, Shah!), say that according to Monty Woodhouse, MI6’s station chief in Tehran at the time, Britain needed US support for a coup. Eden agreed. “Woodhouse took his words as tantamount to permission to pursue the idea” with the US, Kock wrote.
Mosaddeq’s overthrow, still given as a reason for the Iranian mistrust of British and American politicians, consolidated the Shah’s rule for the next 26 years until the 1979 Islamic revolution. It was aimed at making sure the Iranian monarchy would safeguard the west’s oil interests in the country.
The archived CIA documents include a draft internal history of the coup titled “Campaign to install a pro-western government in Iran”, which defines the objective of the campaign as “through legal, or quasi-legal, methods to effect the fall of the Mosaddeq government; and to replace it with a pro-western government under the Shah’s leadership with Zahedi as its prime minister”.
One document describes Mosaddeq as one of the “most mercurial, maddening, adroit and provocative leaders with whom they [the US and Britain] had ever dealt”. The document says Mosaddeq “found the British evil, not incomprehensible” and “he and millions of Iranians believed that for centuries Britain had manipulated their country for British ends”. Another document refers to conducting a “war of nerves” against Mossadeq.
The Iranian-Armenian historian Ervand Abrahamian, author of The Coup: 1953, the CIA and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations, said in a recent interview that the coup was designed “to get rid of a nationalist figure who insisted that oil should be nationalised”.
Unlike other nationalist leaders, including Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mosaddeq epitomised a unique “anti-colonial” figure who was also committed to democratic values and human rights, Abrahamian argued.
Some analysts argue that Mosaddeq failed to compromise with the west and the coup took place against the backdrop of communism fears in Iran. “My study of the documents proves to me that there was never really a fair compromise offered to Mosaddeq, what they wanted Mosaddeq to do is to give up oil nationalisation and if he’d given that of course then the national movement would have been meaningless,” he told the Iranian online publication, Tableau magazine.
“My argument is that there was never really a realistic threat of communism … discourse and the way justifying any act was to talk about communist danger, so it was something used for the public, especially the American and the British public.”
Despite the latest releases, a significant number of documents about the coup remain secret. Malcolm Byrne, deputy director of the national security archive, has called on the US intelligence authorities to release the remaining records and documents.
“There is no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every school child in Iran,” he said. “Suppressing the details only distorts the history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides.”
In recent years Iranian politicians have sought to compare the dispute over the country’s nuclear activities to that of the oil nationalisation under Mosaddeq: supporters of the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad often invoke the coup.
US officials have previously expressed regret about the coup but have fallen short of issuing an official apology. The British government has never acknowledged its role.
In some other lifetime, you may learn the difference between a parliamentary system and separation-of-powers, including one feature: prime ministers are not popularly elected.
Iran had parliamentary institutions (intermittently) over the period running from 1906 to 1953. Mossadeq’s federation of parties never won a majority in Iran’s legislature. He was sitting in the prime minister’s chair because of horse trading with other factions therein.
Formal constitutional provisions in parliamentary monarchies leave the appointment of the prime minister with the monarch and provide for the government to be responsible to the monarch as well as the legislature. Since the legislature was prorogued at the time of Mossadeq’s removal from office, the Shah had an undisputed franchise to dismiss the ministry, which he exercised.
N.B., Mossadeq had prorogued the legislature extralegally and was seeking to disestablish the monarchy contrary to the constitution, so removing him from office was a prudent act.
You would contribute best to the civic life of the country by never opening your ignorant trap.
“64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/20/64-years-later-cia-finally-releases-details-of-iranian-coup-iran-tehran-oil/
See photo:
“Persian soldiers chase rioters during civil unrest in Tehran, August 1953. On August 19, 1953, democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence, after having nationalized the oil industry. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was re-installed in the primary position of power. Massive protests broke out across the nation, leaving almost 300 dead in firefights in the streets of Tehran. (Photo credit should read /AFP/Getty Images) “
DSS, I’m not sure what you are trying to say. Under the Eisenhower administration we did help the British remove an elected president of Iran. The US has done mostly good but anyone or any country that does good things will invariably make a mistake. The way one knows someone has never done anything good is when they never made a mistake. That is Jill’s problem. She would permit millions to be killed in order not to make a mistake that might kill a few. A relatively small mistake would destroy her record of doing nothing and she is interested only in her record of not being wrong and is totally unconcerned with never being right..
I’m not totally clear on this bit of history but my understanding is that it was a British action that Eisenhower supported and I believe regretted. Likely it had to do with the nationalization of oil and the communist threat. Was this an action that looked right at the time and turned out wrong? I don’t know. I accept mistakes made when overall the actions of the US have been very positive for the world.
Here is an analysis that we don’t really get to hear very often: “Presenting detailed derivatives analysis plus military analysis to global media would force the media pack, mostly Western, to go to Warren Buffett to see if it is true. And it is true. Soleimani, according to this scenario, should say as much and recommend that the media go talk to Warren Buffett.
The extent of a possible derivatives crisis is an uber-taboo theme for the Washington consensus institutions. According to one of my American banking sources, the most accurate figure – $1.2 quadrillion – comes from a Swiss banker, off the record. He should know; the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – the central bank of central banks – is in Basle.
The key point is it doesn’t matter how the Strait of Hormuz is blocked.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/20/iran-goes-for-maximum-counter-pressure/
Who is the king of the south?
There is an interesting debate among theologians about the book of Daniel.
One of the first considerations is the setting of this prophecy. Daniel received the message in “the third year of Cyrus king of Persia,” which was 537 or 536 B.C. according to The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Daniel 10:1). The prophecy of Daniel 11 begins with verses 2-4, which describe what would happen in the Persian and Greek Empires after Daniel was given this vision, and continues through “the time of the end” (verse 40).
This age-old conflict will likely reignite as the time of the end nears. A revived Holy Roman Empire would seek greater influence in this most vital region. And regional Muslim powers would no doubt retaliate.
Study a term called “audience relevance.” Jesus told persons living in the first C that he would return again in their lifetime. Either those persons are still alive (never died), or Jesus lied, or Jesus returned in the first C like he predicted. https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Veil-Moses-Brian-Martin/dp/1607912694
The language of Revelation (singular) is poetic, not literal, and is the same exact type of language common to the First C Ioudaios. See similar poetic language years earlier in the Old Testament. No one took such language as literal because it’s not literal. There’s no precedent to take poetic language literally. Has it ever really “rained cats and dogs?”
There is no “end of time” in Scripture. Please stop misquoting. There is the “time of the end” which is the end of the Mosaic era, the end of the Old Testament Abrahamic fleshly covenant.
Princess Trohar said:
There is no “end of time” in Scripture. Please stop misquoting.
Isa_28:8 For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.
Jer_48:26 Make ye him drunken: for he magnified himself against the LORD: Moab also shall wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be in derision.
2Pe_2:22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to ‘her’ wallowing in the mire.
Trump’s latest, right from the mouth of Hillary Clinton (seeing as they both have the very same advisors). He doesn’t want war but if there is one (we cause one) he will obliterate them. That’s called genocide. I really don’t think he cared about the 150 Iranian lives.
This nation needs to turn around fast. There are some negotiations happening so perhaps for once, sane people will be working towards resolving problems without the use of genocide.
It’s truly difficult to believe anyone would say this as a “leader” of the US, yet both Trump and would be queen, Hillary, have both urged it on. There is something horribly wrong that these types of people, who even consider genocide are in power in the US and even have fans among our people. We should be so much better.
I hate his rotten guts, but I’ll take him at face value on this one and applaud his humanitarian restraint.
PS I meant to write “rotten STINKING guts.”
Which word are you taking hims at? He said he’d commit genocide and he said he stopped the war because it would kill 150 people? As to that “word”, it now appears that another reason is coming out, our drone was in their air space.
A president should not be talking about genocide against another group of people. That is an horrific act of violence and such an evil threat to make. The fact that you think threatening to obliterate another society is the work of a “humanitarian” is just mind blowing.
Anon1 you can’t take Trump at face value on anything he says, the way he lies repeatedly everyday.
I don’t think he lies about everything. That would take too much effort. He says whatever maximizes his self esteem and it doesn’t matter to him if it’s true or not. On this one I’ll take him on his “word” in the hopes that he does actually possess a soul and some minimum self identity with fellow humans.
I can dream can’t I?
OK, I was wrong and Jill and Fish were right.
“Early in the day, the president said he called off the attack at the last minute because it would have killed 150 people in retaliation for the downing of the drone. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die,” he tweeted.
But administration officials said Trump was told earlier Thursday how many casualties could occur if a strike on Iran were carried out and that he had given the green light that morning to prepare the operation….”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/trump-ordered-attack-on-iran-for-downing-drone-then-called-it-off/2019/06/21/24f4994e-93f3-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html?utm_term=.3de24338af0d
But, the truth is ICE wasn’t ready for such a sweeping raid on such short notice, according to several news sources. He has also put the onus on Democrats to craft new immigration laws to his liking in 2 weeks’ time. Last time I checked, Republicans were in control of the Senate, so what’s stopping them?
Prior to the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran 40 years ago, I don’t remember any significant, violent clashes between the Sunnis and Shia’s in the region.
The U.S. actually encouraged the Shah to give up power, and had an unrealistic, overly optimistic view of what Khomeini & Co. Awere actually like.
The attack on our embassy, and the hostage taking, set the tone for U.S.- Iranian relations for decades.
As did they Iranian govenments sponsorship of international terrorism.
The expansionism was/ is another issue. Prior to the Islamic Republic, there was not the kind of Iranian presence in Lebanon, in Syria, and other parts of the Middle East.
And our overthrow of Saddam was a gift to Iran, a Shia- majority country but a fairly secular country under Saddam. And the Saddam regime was a counter-balance to Iranian expansionism in the region.
With very few exceptions, we’re not allied with “good guys” in that region. Those kinds of leaders and regimes are few and far between.
But we do have interests in the region, and because the U.S. shares the concerns over Iran expansionism with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations, we have a military presence and capability.
And if there is solid evidence that the Iranians were responsible for the attack on the Japanese oil tanker, we have other nations without a military presence in the region, but certainly economic interests to see that their commercial shipping is not restricted or attacked in international waters.
To the degree that Trump has a coherent, cohesive foreign policy view, I think he leans toward isolationism. But the U S. and global interests in that region are so vital that I think the Trump/ Pompeo view is that we need to check Iranian expansionism, and respond to threats and attacks against U.S. and allies assets in that region.
If this heightened tension does lead to military action against Iran, the U.S. had better make sure that our allies are on board with that action,
and get some of them to participate in any major military action against Iran.
With very few exceptions, we’re not allied with “good guys” in that region. Those kinds of leaders and regimes are few and far between.
With the exception of Saudi Arabia, the Arab monarchies are benign. So are the political factions in Lebanon, Hezbollah the exception. Israel is unproblematic. Cyprus is unproblematic. The post-Soviet republics haven’t caused substantial trouble to anyone, though the internal situation in most of them leaves a great deal to be desired. The Maghreb republics west of Libya haven’t been troublesome in the last 20 years.
The problem characters in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia would be the Taliban, factions within the Pakistani military and intelligence services, the government of Iran, the government of Turkey, the Sadr organization in Iraq, various underground factions among the Sunni Arab population in Iraq, the government of Syria and various insurgents therein, the Hezbollah, Al Fatah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, factions in Libya, &c. Abusive internally (aside from the governments listed above) would be the governments of Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, the Sudan, and (in smaller measure) Algeria and four other post-Soviet states.
Iran, of course, has been nothing but trouble in the Near East for 40 years, for no reason other than that’s how they roll.
Absurd,
That’s a good overview….I’ll reread it a couple more times to see if I can poke holes in it.🤔😉
I was thinking primarily of the major Arab/ Sunni nations, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Strong alliances with the U.S., but repressive regimes. ( How’d that “Mubarek must go” directive from Obama/Hillary turn out?)
I think Jordan’s government is still moderate, but I was more familiar with King Hussein than his son’s leadership/ policies.
The moderate factions in Lebanon don’t really have controll of much of their own country, with Hezbollah entrenched in the South.
Even an Israeli offensive around 2006? couldn’t uproot or significantly degrade their capacity.
I don’t think they’ve been lobbing missles at Israeli for quite a while, but I’m sure that the Iranians have kept them well-stacked if they decide to start up again.
Lebanon slaughtered Christians. It’s a bit more stable now, but the balance was destroyed long ago. I knew Lebanese Armenians who were still deeply affected by what they saw. One of their friends, a teenage girl, was captured by the Muslim forces. The Armenian forces were told to stand down. To taunt them, on the other side of the wall, they could hear her literally being raped to death. When she’d bled out, they threw her broken, defiled body over the wall at their feet.
Between Turkey and Lebanon, Muslims have created an enmity with Armenians that cannot be understated. Never forget is not only in regards to the Holocaust. It is still taught to Armenian schoolchildren. They never got the world’s acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide.
“Lebanon” did nothing of the sort. The Lebanese state was a legal fiction between 1976 and 1990 and there was ample sectarian violence perpetrated by militias associated with every major confession.
Are you disagreeing that there were Christian massacres in Lebanon during the Civil War, or saying you don’t blame Lebanon itself? The balance of power shifted when a significant migration of Arabs, eventually calling themselves Palestinians, left Israel and came to Lebanon, turning on the Christians, because they just cannot seem to get along with non-Muslims anywhere, apparently. Under the French, there were numerous religions coexisting. We’re seeing this in some parts of Europe, too, where massive migration from anti-semitic regions has led to anti-semitic violence in Europe. Amazingly, prejudices do not evaporate upon setting foot on new soil.
Christians and Muslims fought, and there was a diaspora out of Lebanon. There are still some Christinas left behind.
It’s not PC, but the facts are that Muslim majority countries are not very tolerant of other religions, and generally tend to abuse human rights. Dubai comes to mind as one of the most cosmopolitan, but it’s a tourist destination. There are still strict rules for women, and foreign maids are routinely abused. You can leave your suitcase on the road and expect to find it there, untouched, an hour later, as they still cut people’s hands off for stealing.
I can understand why you wouldn’t blame the government of Lebanon, although many of those involved are part of the government today.
My remarks are perfectly plain in their meaning, You use them as an excuse to run off at the keyboard yet again.
It’s also known as “diarrhea of the keyboard” and Karen S has a bad case of it.
My Dad was at the Pentagon during that time. If I recall correctly, he told me that the Shah made an enemy of the imams when he privatized the souks, and took them out of the religious clergy’s hands. His efforts to make the country more secular pitted him against the clergy.
They fed false information to the CIA, and President Carter, who accused the Shah of human rights violations. The clergy used the US as a tool to help them overthrow the Shah, a bitter sting that many Persians who fled to the US still feel today. My Dad thought Carter was a nice man, personally, but made terrible mistakes for our country.
The US is partly responsible for Iran’s slide into more extremism. The Shah was turning the ship around, a little bit at a time. Tehran was practically cosmopolitan compared to today, complete with women’s fashion.
There is now a long running chess game, sunni and shiite, between Saudi Arabia, and Iran, with Russia and the US also taking sides and squaring off.
You are right. There are no good guys anywhere near the Gulf, except for the one, tiny Western nation, Israel. The one with all the guns pointed at it. Other than that, we are forced to ally with people with terrible human rights records. No women’s rights. Abuses of Christians, gays, foreigners. The list just goes on and on. But in order to try to slow the expansion of Russian influence and terrorism, we ally with countries who don’t share our values, but instead have financial and military benefits.
No, Karen. The Shah alienated broad swaths of Iranian civil society. If the Shah hadn’t been terminally ill and terminally indecisive, he might have been able to ride it out, but he wasn’t and didn’t. You didn’t have hundreds of thousands of people marching through Tehran for carnival.
It was organized by the imams. People marched against a relatively secular leader and favored the ayatollah.
You mentioned that there was a civil resistance to the Shah, and that was true, but it was in support of an Islamic Republic governing the country. This revolution was fueled by the imams, who claimed to have the hear of Allah. They accused the Shah of being Westernized, and therefore wicked. Imams found fertile ground in the resentment of the people for his austerity measures. People sure like to waste money, but not tighten the belt.
The Shah diminished some of the power of the clergy, and they struck back, hard. Having lost the support of the US, the Shah fell.
The Iranian Revolution might never have happened had the imams not decided the Shah had to go. The CIA assisted in a coup against Mosaddeq, and then we burned the Shah. (More examples of how we have “meddled” in other countries.)
Every time Iran makes more trouble, it is a reminder that we are in this mess because we withdrew our support of the Shah. It is possible his rein could have survived the face-off with the clergy. Not certain, but possible. Saudi Arabia has struck a more longer lasting balance with its own religious leaders.
I knew a woman whose entire family was massacred during the Revolution, because her father was an officer in the military. She still trembled and had difficulty speaking when she recalled that night. She fled to America.
Iran went from a relatively chic place to where a girl can get arrested for wearing nail polish.
A bit of what George Galloway had to say about the “oil for food” mess:
“Have a look at the real oil for food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad when $US8.8 billion [$11.6 billion] of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch,” he said.
“Have a look at the other American corporations that stole not only Iraq’s money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
“Have a look at the oil that you didn’t even meter, that you were shipping out of the country selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where.”
Here’s the full text of that article:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/us-guilty-of-oil-for-food-scandal-not-me-galloway-20050518-gdlcg9.html
British MP George Galloway today sought to turn the tables on US politicians alleging he pocketed Iraqi oil kickbacks, and accused the United States of unparalleled corruption and waste in Iraq.
The fiery left-wing politician came to Congress to defend his name against allegations he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal funds from the UN Oil-for-Food program during Saddam Hussein’s regime.
But he said it was his US accusers who must answer for the “disaster” caused by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the deaths seen since.
“I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq, and I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies,” he told a Senate panel.
“Everything I said about Iraq turned out to be right, and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people have paid with their lives,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee.
He said US military action against Iraq was based on “a pack of lies”.
He vehemently denied ever receiving oil kickbacks from Saddam’s regime.
He dismissed the hearing as “the mother of all smokescreens”, saying the relentless focus on alleged UN wrongdoing by some US politicians deflected attention from the far bigger transgression of the US-led invasion.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader,” he told the panel, calling the charges against him “utterly unsubstantiated and false”.
“You have nothing on me … other than my name on lists … many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet Government in Baghdad,” the pugnacious politician said.
Several US congressional committees are carrying out investigations into scandals at the UN Oil-for-Food program.
The $84.7 billion humanitarian program was designed to allow UN-supervised sales of Iraqi oil to buy medicine and food to lessen the impact of international sanctions against the people of Iraq.
But millions of dollars in kickbacks are said to have been paid to foreign officials, who in turn made contributions to Saddam.
The US Senate committee said it had “detailed evidence” Mr Galloway received about 20 million barrels of oil in allocations from the Saddam regime.
Mr Galloway, who was drummed out of Britain’s ruling Labour Party because of his opposition to the Iraq war, swept aside those charges.
“Who paid me hundreds of thousand of dollars? The answer is nobody,” he said.
And far from being an avid supporter of Saddam, as congressional accusers have alleged, Mr Galloway said he had been an active opponent of the regime.
“I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do, and than any member of the British or American governments do.
“I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein at a time when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.”
Mr Galloway proudly waved his anti-war credentials at the hearing.
His scathing denunciation of the Iraq venture left some US politicians squirming in their seats, particularly when he urged them to refocus their UN investigations from the world body and onto the role played by Washington.
“Have a look at the real oil for food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad when $US8.8 billion [$11.6 billion] of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch,” he said.
“Have a look at the other American corporations that stole not only Iraq’s money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
“Have a look at the oil that you didn’t even meter, that you were shipping out of the country selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where.”
Now we here from Autumn.
Autumn?
I don’t think Galloway is still a member of Parliament. He has been described as “a prostitute for extremism” and a “champagne socialite”, among other things. So I can see why he has something of a following for those who find those qualities appealing.
I don’t think his attempted career in broadcasting has gone very well. There have been allegations that he’s managed to cash in on his relationships with foreign governments, but I don’t know uf those have been substantiated, or there’s been any allegations of criminal behavior.
Why don’t you do some research and educate yourself.
Galloway has said a lot of things: On the disappearance of the Soviet Union he found that to be “the biggest catastrophe of my life,”
You really are a brainless wonder, anonymous.
Taken out of context, by “Allan” — who appears to be a black-and-white thinker.
Galloway back in 2002:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/16/iraq.interviews
‘He says his political position is no different now than it was then; that while there are so many politicians marching across the ideological spectrum without explanation, he has stayed put. What is that position? “I am on the anti-imperialist left.” The Stalinist left? “I wouldn’t define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe.”‘
He rightly opposed the war in Iraq, so he has that going for him.
Galloway’s not a perfect guy. What politician is?
So here’s the sum and substance of Galloway’s support for the Soviet Union:
‘Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe.””
Anonymous, you know nothing about Galloway and that is why you have to find quotes he made defending himself. He is a far leftist, so far that some of our leftist friends would object to him. You wouldn’t because you are brainless.
“Anonymous, you know nothing about Galloway…”
And you’re a complete idiot, Allan.
“And you’re a complete idiot, Allan.”
I love these signs of affection anonymous constantly demonstrates. She even quotes herself for these are the same words she has used time and time again. How nice it must be to be brainless and not have to worry about trying to figure out something new to say.
More spew from Allan:
“How nice it must be to be brainless and not have to worry about trying to figure out something new to say.”
On this page alone, Allan has used the word “brainless” seven times to describe various people.
“On this page alone, Allan has used the word “brainless” seven times to describe various people.”
Anonymous, the word fits your species so wear it. While doing so, though I am not sure how many times on this page the word brainless was used, it was not used to describe “various people” as you say. It was used only to describe one person, you.
Allan’s a toxic, abusive guy.
Allan old boy:
There is more than one person who posts as “Anonymous.”
“There is more than one person who posts as “Anonymous.””
Who cares? One has to be pretty stupid to use the same moniker as the brainless one.
Proof that all the people predicting Trump had an itchy “button” finger and would be recklessly laying down nuclear strikes were lying.
This president obviously “gets” proportionality and military necessity. Obama didn’t – his use of lethal drone attacks was four times Bush’s, with corresponding increase in collateral civilian deaths and maimings.
Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers
By S. E. Cupp May 8, 2019, 2:00pm CDT
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/8/18619206/under-donald-trump-drone-strikes-far-exceed-obama-s-numbers
Funny s… Jean. Keep then coming
Jean L.,
Sen. Cruz did joke in his 2016 primary campaign that Trump’s impulsiveness might find us waking up one morning and finding out that Trump had “nuked the Netherlands”.
So far, at least, that has proven to be hyperbole.
If the Iranians are in a course where they’ve decided to directly attack assets of the U.S. or its allies in the international waters of the Straights of Hormuth, or elsewhere, that will not end well for a them.
If they misread Trump’s restraint this time as something that the U.S. will repeat, that would be a big mistake.
The Iranian leadership is a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. If they escalate the situation beyond a certain point, I think it would be based on a deliberate, intentional willingness to engage the U.S. militarily.
The US is intimately familiar with Iran’s military weaknesses.
I wanted to add that there is a timer counting down in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, especially, is running out of water. They tapped into the deep aquifers to irrigate circular wheat fields and dairy farms in the desert. It takes a drop of water thousands of years to reach the water surface in a deep aquifer. It is a reserve not to be used except in the direst emergency.
They are monoculture farming in an environment totally unsuited for it. The oasis have gone dry. Every agricultural and dairy product shipped to the ME already translates into water. One day, fast approaching, there will be no fresh water outside of desalination plants. Their shortsighted waste of resources is utter madness. The oil will either run dry, or be replaced with newer fuels. They will have no water. They have no real industry there aside from the oil fields. Most labor is imported. Should the water and economy crash, it will be the perfect environment for extremism.
Saudi Arabia and OPEC in general is a powder keg with a long match, slowly smoking.
Worth noting that the latest Iranian/Houthi rocket attacks were on a Saudi water desalination plant. They are directly attacking Saudi infrastructure – but not for transportation, for life in that area.
There isn’t much room for escalation in that conflict that won’t lead to direct exchanges of military force between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
This could get really bad. Our generation’s Archduke Ferdinand.
The Kingdom is vulnerable, and those water treatment plants are essential.
Tom:
I think part of the issue is that Iran, militarily, is a dyarchy. The mullahs and majlis have the civilian government and their own national forces, then there’s the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Reports so far implicate IRGC commandos and gunboats in the harassment raids on Gulf shipping. It’s less clear who launched on that US drone.
There are not one, but TWO uranium enrichment cascades in Iran. One belongs to the national government, one to the IRGC. If the deliberate, intentional willingness to engage the US miliitarily is on the part of the IRGC, we may be about to learn how how badly Israel, the IAEA, the Western intelligence community and our own national intelligence community under-estimated Tehran’s chiselling on the arms deal.
The IRGC has spent its share of arms deal money so far funding and equipping terror and insurgency throughout the Middle East. Saudi Arabia (irrespective of the evil their own radical clerics and monarchy have wrought throughout the Middle East) is getting bombarded by Iranian missiles launched by Houthi rebels acting as an Iranian cat’s paw. The Saudis have had squadrons of Chinese DF-3A missiles whose dismal accuracy only makes them useful if they are carrying thermonuclear warheads, and some DF-21 solid-fuelled missiles accurate enough to be militarily useful carrying nuclear or conventional weapons.
I don’t think that the Saudis are going to be deterred from retaliating against Iran because Iranian missiles were “sheep-dipped” through Yemen on their way to Saudi targets. They essentially paid for the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in large part and several sources point to at least “nuclear sharing” between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
I only mention this because were we to withdraw totally from the Gulf, pull our troops out of Iraq and Syria, close down the advanced staging areas in Oman and the military bases in Qatar, that would by no means defuse a fast-evolving theater conflict in the Persian Gulf. The American presence, on the contrary, has probably prevented a nuclear exchange between Saudi Arabia and Iran (quite possibly drawing in Israel).
For Trump’s critics out there, this isn’t the right time to pick on him about Middle East policy. It’s not like anyone in the White House before him did anything worth bragging about.
George Galloway:
‘The #Iranians CAN fight back and they WILL fight back’ – @georgegalloway
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1142110328567848960
It seems that anonymous is a follower of George Galloway an admirer of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin who all seem to be lovely people to anonymous. Did I mention that he illegally received millions of dollars stollen from the UN Oil for food program?
That is the type of person anonymous is, a lover of murderers and thieves.
“US guilty of oil for food scandal, not me: Galloway”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/us-guilty-of-oil-for-food-scandal-not-me-galloway-20050518-gdlcg9.html
(And the rest of it is just more of Allan’s crazy-talk. That could be the name of his blog: Crazy-Talk, with Allan.)
Anonymous, as stated you are the Brainless Wonder whose proof is the thief’s statement of innocence. Can’t get much more brainless than that. His admiration for Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin has been well reported but you probably think those individuals to be great guys.
Just more nonsense by Allan. Allan clearly lacks any understanding of the way the world really works.
Right anonymous, what have we heard from you? Nothing but reaction to statements made because you have nothing original to say. That is why you use quotations so frequently. Someone else has to talk for you.
Your comments reek of immaturity, Allan.
“Your comments reek of immaturity, Allan.”
I’ll accept that but what else can one do when faced with such stupidity that remains unrecognized by the bearer known as anonymous?
Allan’s utterance passes for civil commentary on Jonathan Turley’s blog?
** Galloway wins libel case against Telegraph
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/dec/02/Iraqandthemedia.politicsandthemedia
** Telegraph loses Galloway libel appeal
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/25/Iraqandthemedia.thedailytelegraph
In addition to prevailing in a libel lawsuit with The Telegraph, Galloway also won in a dispute with The Christian Science Monitor:
** “Galloway wins damages for Saddam slur”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/19/pressandpublishing.antiwar
Here’s the article:
A US newspaper has apologised and will pay damages to MP George Galloway over wrongful allegations that he was paid millions of pounds by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Christian Science Monitor accused Mr Galloway of accepting payments totalling $10m in return for promoting Saddam’s interests in the west.
Mr Galloway said today’s apology in London’s high court was a “complete vindication” after it was revealed the documents on which the stories were based were forgeries.
Mr Galloway, who was expelled by Labour after party bosses said he incited Arabs to fight British troops in Iraq, called on the government to investigate the source of the forgeries.
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“We now have in these documents evidence that a crime was committed in Baghdad against an elected British member of parliament,” said Mr Galloway outside the high court. “I demand Mr Blair [launches an investigation] to find out why these documents were forged, who else was involved and what other documents were forged.”
The Christian Science Monitor first apologised to Mr Galloway in June last year after it was revealed that the papers, dated between 1992 and 1993, were in fact only a few months old.
“At the time we published these documents, we felt they were newsworthy and appeared credible, although we did explicitly state in our article that we could not guarantee their authenticity,” said Paul Van Slambrouck, the editor of the Monitor. “It is important to set the record straight: we are convinced the documents are bogus. We apologise to Mr Galloway and to our readers.”
Mr Galloway, who says he is the victim of a political smear campaign, is now demanding an inquiry into who had forged the documents.
Rejecting the apology last year, he said: “I said from the beginning that these allegations were based on malice, fabrication and forgery and that they would soon fall apart under scrutiny. That is now beginning to happen.”
“This newspaper published on its front page in every country in the world that I had taken $10m from Saddam Hussein. That was a grave and serious libel. Of course the documents were a forgery and a newspaper of that importance ought to have made the effort, both morally and legally, to establish the authenticity of those documents before they published them
There seems to be plenty of heat around Galloway which is what you are proving. He has been censured and proving certain details are very difficult. No one said he wasn’t smart and couldn’t hide his misdeeds. However, decency is not a Galloway trait.
“Hard Left former Labour MP George Galloway has been sacked as a radio pundit after being accused of ‘blatant anti-Semitism’ in a tweet about Spurs’ defeat in the Champions League final.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-7097211/Tottenham-condemn-blatant-anti-Semitism-former-MP-George-Galloway.html
“LORD Alan Sugar told George Galloway to “shut your mouth” and branded the politician a “bloody liar” in a fiery row over antisemitic tweets on Good Morning Britain.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9217731/lord-sugar-george-galloway-shut-mouth-antisemitic-tweet/
We have a limit of two citations per post but anyone can go to the net and see what type of person Galloway is even if the news media couldn’t prove he obtained money in an unacceptable way. But my claim isn’t that he could be proven guilty of certain issues rather he is involved deeply in perverse actions that I suppose a person of anonymous’s nature finds laudable.
Galloway seems to be pretty good at winning defamation lawsuits.
That is the English system of law. In the US it is doubtful he would have won the case. Thus, you have to think a little deeper as to what the quotes you provide actually mean. That is where one requires a bit of intellect that so far you haven’t demonstrated you possess.
In the U.S.:
In addition to prevailing in a libel lawsuit with The Telegraph, Galloway also won in a dispute with The Christian Science Monitor:
** “Galloway wins damages for Saddam slur”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/19/pressandpublishing.antiwar
“In the U.S.:
In addition to prevailing in a libel lawsuit with The Telegraph, Galloway also won in a dispute with The Christian Science Monitor:”
Though the Christian Science Monitor might be an American paper the court involved was a British court so I don’t know what you are trying to say. In addition it was an apology not a win. Sometimes it is easier to settle with an apology than to go to court.
“In the US it is doubtful he would have won the case. ”
Who knows and who cares. Both the Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor paid damages to Galloway.
I’m guessing you’re not a lawyer, buddy.
“I’m guessing you’re not a lawyer, buddy.”
Guess away brainless.
Allan is NOT a lawyer.
“Allan is NOT a lawyer.”
Brainless one, that doesn’t have any impact on the opinion.
But he is childish, toxic and abusive.
But, but, but anonymous you have said that over and over again. Repetition doesn’t confirm your comment. Find your brain and try to do a better job.
So, that doesn’t change Galloway’s actions or his feelings towards of affinity towards those killers on the left. Did you ever follow Galloway in real time and see for yourself his actions? No. You are a puppet. You can’t even get an alias that seperates you from all the other generic anonymous icons. You probably are ashamed of yourself.
Allan needs to find a good therapist, methinks.
“Allan needs to find a good therapist, methinks.”
That, anonymous, is a statement that could pertain to anyone except for the last word “methinks”. You don’t think and that is your problem. Thinking involves intellect and intellect requires a brain something you seem to lack.
Says Allan, an abusive child — posing as a grown-up.
I don’t think so though you are entitled to believe what you wish. If that is so then you have been shown to be a fool by a child.
Hateful rhetoric.
Hateful? I guess that means that you think those involved in killing over 100 million people last century were wonderful guys. On the hate index you score pretty high.
Allan says: June 22, 2019 at 10:09 AM:
“I guess that means that you think those involved in killing over 100 million people last century were wonderful guys. On the hate index you score pretty high.”
Your comment is just silly, Allan; it isn’t serious.
Brainless anonymous thinks worrying about the killing of over 100 million people is silly. What can one say about such a brainless comment?
Allan and his cockamamie conclusions.
“Brainless” is his standard retort. It’s the kind of reply that one might expect from someone who is obviously quite immature.
Anonymous, I think brainless is the most reasonable word to use for you. It is easy for you to understand. Brainless, no brain. What better word to describe you? If you are brainless you are also without imagination, nuance, originality, or any other method of interesting discourse.
And yet Allan responds to each and every comment that Anonymous posts.
That is my decision just like it is your decision to be brainless.
The capacity of the Iranian military is the subject of debate. The linked tweet from this Cab Callaway guy isn’t that instructive. There was a comment a few years ago by a retired military man that Iran’s navy “could not control any area larger than a bathtub” if conflict broke out.
I don’t know enough about the Iranian military in general, or their navy’s condition in particular, to have a firm opinion on their capabilities. I do remember numerous dire warnings prior to Gulf War I as Bush 41 was about to “pull the trigger” on Saddam’s troops occupying Kuwait. “Iraq had the world’s 4th largest military”, “Irag’s military was battle-hardened from years of fighting Iran” , “Iraq has the most powerful air force in the region”, etc.
That supposedly formidable military folded like an according once the U.S. military acted decisively.
It took a bit more time to dislodge Saddam from power than it did to dislodge his army from Kuwait, but not much longer. This tension with Iran in that body of water goes back to the 1980s, when President Reagan sent the American Navy to keep the Straits of Hormuth open.
My semi-educated guess is that if there’s ironclad proof that Iran is responsible for attacks on international shipping or U.S. military assets in international water, the U.S. and its allies will severely damage whatever Iran’s military capabilities are. I think there’s more of a danger of an “asymetrical response” from Iran, where they’d use their resources deployed elsewhere in the middle-East, like Iraq or Syria or Lebanon, to cause trouble. And maybe use assets they have in counties beyond the Middle-East.
Iran has 81 million people compared to Iraq with 37 million people.
I don’t see the U.S. military engaging in a ground war with Iran. If “the worst case scenario” plays out and there’s major conflict ( I don’t think it’ll come to that), the population of Iran would be irrelevant if the attacks were geared toward demolishing their Air Force and Navy.
I think it would be roughly similar to the air war segment of Gulf War I. Saddam had a large, fairly advanced Air Force, but it could not complete against U.S. air power.
Looking at Galloway’s record and his statements, I can see why he’s been described as a prostitute for extremism, among other things. Even prostitutes for extremism have their fan base.
” Even prostitutes for extremism have their fan base.”
Tom, Galloway, Stalin, Castro et al have their fan bases right here in those that hide behind the name anonymous.
“a prostitute for extremism”
…which is a malicious, disgusting, and completely false characterization of Galloway
Educate yourself.
There was a reason why Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party, and kicked off of TalkRadio. The “educated” Anonymous somehow failed to mention that in her devotion and sucking up to Galloway.
I haven’t counted up the total number if fawning comments and links posted by someone with a bizarre fixation on a has-been British politician.
Outside of L4B, I don’t know of others who flood these threads obsessively with vacuous, repetitive comments and links about someone most don’t give a s*** about anyway.
“the number OF fawning comments”, not “the number if”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-most-insane-antics-of-george-galloway-britains-purring-dictator-loving-mp
The “educated” Anonymous neglected to post this link, so I’ll take care of that little oversight on her part.
Sure they can. Obama Financed it. But can they fight back when they glow?
?
Do you mean the pallets of cash?