When Greek meets Greek

Sweet are the uses of adversity. Iran has been released from prison by this war and is or will be, Robert Pape predicts, one of the five most powerful countries in he world. It looks as if Trump hopes to intimidate Iran by sending troops close to Iran - Iran will not be intimidated. Iran is in an extraordinarily strong position, all thanks to the outrageously illegal unprovoked and murderous war that Trump has launched (compare Putin in Ukraine and Milosevic in Kosovo). The conman, as we now see him to be, was conned by Netanyahu. When Greek meets Greek.

Everybody who thinks without preconceptions about the US, Russia, China, and Iran and who ignores the media babble now sees with surprise that the US is the terror state. Iran and the Houthis are behaving bravely and even, I'd say, in a measured and moral way.

Professor John Mearsheimer on Tuesday: "If there were Nuremberg trials right now where the Israelis and the Americans were brought before the court President Trump along with President Netanyahu and many of their advisors would be hanged." He was talking about the attack on Iran though he said exactly the same thing last year.

Interestingly he says that a quarter to a third of Israelis will be ultraorthodox by 2050. They do not serve in the army. The secular socialist Israel of fifty years ago is long gone. Meanwhile Israel is occupying southern Lebanon where a previous Israeli occupation created Hezbollah.

This is my prediction

The war ends when Iran says and Iran will keep the Strait in their hands till America leaves the Middle East. That would be good even for America but a terrible terrible humiliation for Trump. Zugswang. Iran wants to destroy Trump’s presidency as she destroyed Carter's and will succeed by continuing the war till the November elections.

April Fools

Volpone:

Fools, they are the only nation
Worth men's envy, or admiration:
Free from care or sorrow-taking,
Selves and others merry making:
All they speak or do is sterling.
Your fool he is your great man's darling,
And your ladies' sport and pleasure;
Tongue and bauble are his treasure.
E'en his face begetteth laughter,
And he speaks truth free from slaughter;
He's the grace of every feast,
And sometimes the chiefest guest;
Hath his trencher and his stool,
When wit waits upon the fool:
O, who would not be
He, he, he?

Coleridge: "Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether." 

Irish comedian Dave Allen (1936–2005): "I still think of myself as I was 25 years ago... Then I look in a mirror and see an old bastard and realise it's me".

Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian revolutionary who fought the Bolsheviks: "War is when your government tells you who your enemy is, revolution is when you figure it out for yourself." (Acknowledgements to Christopher Newbury.)