We can never again trust the American, British or Israeli governments - we have met the enemy and he is us

When the distinguished British journalist Peter Hitchens saw that the invasion of Iraq (of which his brother Christopher had been a leading proponent) had been a terrible mistake it made him rethink what had been an article of faith for him and most people of his generation and decide that Britain going to war with Germany in 1939 had also been a mistake.

He was right. England and France's declaration of war led to the fall of France and Japan's attack on the British empire and in the end to half of Europe being ruled by Bolsheviks.

We learn about the past from the present, much more than the other way around. 

Similarly the failed attempt over recent days by the CIA and Mossad to bring down the Iranian government removes my doubts about the 2014 revolution in Kiev. 

Yes, it was from the same script. 

This does not justify Putin's invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 but it fully explains them. 

He was provoked and retaliated in a way that the Americans had not predicted. 

They should have done.

After all they have experience. They have brought down about a hundred foreign governments.

Why were Americans meddling in Ukraine at all? 

They started in the 1990s when they set up pro-Western newspapers. 

They did so from all sorts of motives which we could dissect and critique, largely a hangover from the Cold War. 

But behind the motives was what Nietzsche called the will to power.

Below is a CIA memo from March 1953 reviewing its clandestine activities to overthrow the democratic Iranian government that year: a. Mass propaganda means (press, etc.) b. Poison pen, personal denunciations, rumour spreading, etc. c. Street riots, demonstrations, mobs, etc. 5 months later the Prime Minister Mosaddegh was gone and the Shah became an absolute monarch or dictator.

What they said

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” André Gide.

"Propaganda is very effective if you don’t know it’s happening to you. That’s why westerners are far more propagandized than the populations of nations with overtly authoritarian governments." Caitlin Johnstone. This is why most Romanians are profoundly sceptical and refreshingly cynical about American propaganda.

"There was a time, long ago, when you could park your lazy butt in a large benevolent company and reasonably expect to retire from it in 30 years as a bitter, broken shell of your former self, living out your miserable life on a subsistence retirement income. But things won’t be so easy in the future.” Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, who died two days ago of cancer. 

I am bored by all Gaza analogies

I am very bored by people on both sides using what is happening in Iran to make points about Gaza. 

Why are people complaining that pro-Palestinians do not protest about Iran? The protestors were protesting because Western governments were helping Israel. 

Why would they march in protest against Iran? What notice would Iran take? It would be a march in favour of the West doing what it is doing, inflicting terrible things on Iranians through sanctions.

The pro-Palestinians for their part ask why people who grieve for Iranians do not grieve for Gaza. 

This question is a very fair one - the answer is that such people are hypocrites. But this point is equally boring. 

My X feed is a torrent of misinformation. I am horrified by the untruths and gullibility.

Dr. Maalouf ‏

@realMaalouf

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It took 10 weeks for the death toll in Gaza to reach 20,000, including thousands of Hamas terrorists. The Islamic regime killed that many Iranian civilians in just 1 week. Yet all the so-called “human rights” activists who protested for Gaza remain completely silent. Weird.

Of course 20,000 have not been killed. That's as many as in two weeks of the very bloody Battle of the Bulge, as Scott Ritter pointed out yesterday. The figure comes from a US pro-Israel organisation with no evidence and repeated by CBS which was bought by Larry Ellison to relay Israeli propaganda.
Of course Israel has launched a regime change operation. Of course Israel wants hegemony in the Middle East and to make Iran a failed state or Israeli puppet. 
This does not mean we should not sympathise (very much) with the good idealistic Iranians swept up in it who hope for change. We need not sympathise with the murderers, agents provocateurs and the people who set fire to mosques, who are Mossad assets. 
One has to weep for the people in Gaza and the people who died when their telephones exploded in Lebanon and so on and also - despite their neo-con supporters - for the millions of people in Iran who hope for freedom and in some cases have died or been injured. 
Those Iranians are probably as sad about Gaza as anyone in London.
                                

Social media makes the world very argumentative.
Winning arguments unfortunately very rarely changes people's minds. 

It makes them angry instead, which people enjoy. It releases aggression and gives them an excuse to be unpleasant. 

War makes people angry, even war on another continent in countries that are nothing to do with them.

Mass murder makes people very angry indeed, especially (strangely enough) if they support the murders. 

The Iranian riots are simply a continuation of Israel's 12 day war against Iran last year

Max Blumenthal tells a very different story about Iran from the BBC and I find I trust him.

Here he is talking to Judge Andrew Napolitano yesterday.

'The Mossad is taking credit for what took place but we're not even allowed to say what took place....

'These are militarized riots that are destroying entire Iranian cities. Cities have had their marketplaces burned down. Mosques have been burned on camera in cities across Iran, including in the middle of Tehran. Huge mosques have gone up in flames, security officers have been beaten to death on camera in the street by gangs of men. There have been gun battles between police and gunmen. Where are they getting the guns from? Iran isn't like the United States where everyone owns assault weapons. Burnings of fire stations. Something like 50 banks were burned in one night in Tehran. Torching of civilian homes, attacks on judges, public prosecutors who have been killed. It's an unprecedented violent rampage across Iran. And the videos that you see, which are very plentiful, and the monarchist forces that are principally behind these assaults make no secret of what they're doing and promote it on their own social media channels. You see bands of masked men carrying out mayhem and violence that no society would accept. 

'And what Iran has sought to do is provide security for its citizens as any country would do. And they're left with a choice. Let this mayhem continue and escalate and become Syria in 2013 where armed gunmen take over large sections of your cities and then you have to bring in tanks and and air strikes in order to prevent them from taking over the government as al-Qaeda essentially did last year in Syria or you have to get in the streets and engage with them and use your own weapons.'

The British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said "Iran would very happily wipe out the UK if it felt it could get away with it. It has tried to kill people on our soil. It is an enemy." She said two years ago that Israel and Ukraine were fighting proxy wars on our behalf. She does not understand geopolitics and trusts what she is told. She seems to me a fatuous person.

Nury Vittachi is a Sri Lankan journalist turned novelist living in Hong Kong, who takes a keen interest in the CIA: 

Nury Vittachi

@NuryVittachi

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20 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PROTESTS IN IRAN 1. Allegations of “mass casualties” among Iran protesters are not dependable. They come from a group called Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Center for Human Rights in Iran is NOT in Iran. It is in New York. 2. Is it an Iranian group? No. It is financed by the CIA-adjacent National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC and related bodies, specializing in disinformation.