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As all informed observers knew except Donald Trump, the US does not have enough missiles.
It therefore has had to pause its agression against Iran.
The Pakistanis are trying to get Iran to agree a ceasefire, I presume at the USA's request.
I hope Iran does not fall for this ruse again.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz admits on TV that the weapons stockpiles are heavily depleted but he blames Biden for that.
'I think from every indication that I have, there is no more division in Iran. It is wrong to say that there are hardliners, moderates, soft ones, whatever. There is no IRGC. There is no Iranian military. There is no Guardian Council. There is no Ayatollah. There is no Majlis. They are one. They are Persia, if you will. And they are 93 million strong, being killed every day by us in war crime after war crime after war crime, about which Hegseth said nothing. But they are resolute.
'And here’s what I said earlier. With the help of a very sophisticated Chinese satellite, and probably backups from Russia, Iran has the capability to deliver some of the most sophisticated ballistic missiles in the world on targets throughout the region at their direction. In other words, you have a first list of targets that they have hit now. You have a second list of targets that they have hit a number of. And then you have a third list, which they’re just starting on. I think they have a fourth and a fifth list, and I think those are the lists that will throw the world into global depression.
Ray McGovern, 86, a very loveable former CIA man, and another former CIA man of a much more recent vintage, Joe Kent, agree that 99.44 percent of the intelligence the US receives about Iranian nuclear capacity comes from the Israelis 'and this was the same with Iraq'.
Israel invented fears of an Iranian bomb in the 1990s to keep the US in the region.
I doubt they believed in the Iranian nuclear weapons threat until the current war, but it's probably going to be a self fulfilling prophecy now.
I have seen several former intelligence officers say Israel is the main reason the US invaded Iraq and that this has been hidden since the consequences were what they were.
Ed and David Miliband are not the first brothers to be British Foreign Secretary
The Marquess Wellesley and his younger brother the Duke of Wellington both were, the latter very briefly. He held all principal ministerial offices concurrently for three weeks in November–December 1834 while the country waited for Sir Robert Peel to return from Italy, where he was on holiday, and then remained Foreign Secretary under Peel till the government collapsed in April 1835.
I try to avoid the words genocide and terrorism and wish everyone would. The word terrorism is impossible to define - the word genocide has a definition but discussing it changes the subject from what happened to a legal dispute. I read a left-wing historian recently saying the word genocide is used for polemical purposes not for spreading understanding. The word holocaust on the other hand means a burnt sacrifice so that word is straightforward.
Of course the new British cabinet has to do what it's told.
Israel apparently is going to take part in what may be a big and disastrous war. We as so often will be on the wrong side. Meanwhile the British Chief Rabbi wants it to be illegal to wish death on the IDF though not on the IRGC.
Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.Shakespeare's Sonnet LV
Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary is an inspired appointment.
It stops his net zero reign of terror, gives us a Foreign Secretary who prevented the UK intervening militarily in Syria because of dodgy allegations and he is one of the very few senior British politicians left who has been outspokenly critical of Israel.
The fact that Stephen Pollard and the Daily Telegraph are furious is reassuring.
Mr Burnham is only the 15th Cambridge Prime Minister and the first to kiss hands since Stanley Baldwin who first did so 103 years ago and was one of the best ones.
31 went to Oxford. 8 went to Scotch universities, 2 to European ones and one, the unlamented Sir Keir Starmer, to Leeds.
Better stick to Oxbridge and Scotland in future?
Lloyd George and Churchill didn't go to university. An equally great or greater one, Pitt the Younger, went to Cambridge at 13.
The new PM read English which is a very much better preparation than PPE or Law. In an age when so many of the people who rule us have no cilture he has read poetry.
I expect he'll be terrible but what a pleasure to see the back of the mendacious, murderous Mendelson-McSweeney protégé Starmer.
I suspect we're really ruled by the international deep state and the secret services whichever party is in power.
The new Prime Minister is a cradle Catholic who said he is not particularly religious. He is the first Catholic Prime Minister unless you count Boris, who was baptised a Catholic for some reason but brought up vaguely Church of England.
"We just had no military strategy for winning against Vietnam. We had no military strategy for winning in Afghanistan. We had no military strategy for winning in Iraq and we have no military strategy for winning here. But the point is that once you get into these things, it's very hard to get out. No question. And you look for ways to escalate and it's kind of like a wing and a prayer. You know, maybe something will happen that we don't foresee. And if we just double down, maybe, you know, we'll be lucky." John Mearsheimer yesterday talking to Chris Hedges
Iranians and Americans see deaths differently. The Americans kill civilians without qualm but do not have the fortitude to sustain losses on their side whereas with Iranians it's the other way around.
2 US servicemen were killed in Jordan by Iranian missiles, at least 3 to 5 more soldiers aboard the medical evacuation flights will ‘probably not make it’ and there are 15 more soldiers with life-threatening, very severe injuries whose fate is also still unclear. I hope American public opinion forces an end to this unprovoked and unnecessary war.
Americans do not take much interest in the foreigners they kill but they do dislike their own soldiers dying, though the price of petrol which they call gas matters to them more and therefore to their politicians.
Meanwhile Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Chief of Staff to Colin Powell at the US State Department has said this:
‘We do not want anybody to remember the Palestinians as they disappear into that dark night underground under rubble, to be soon turned into whatever it is Jared Kushner and his boys have planned for them.
'But we've all forgotten about that. And that is fundamentally evil that we have done that.
'This is not the equivalent of Hitler's Holocaust, but it's very close. And if it keeps on at the present rate, and it really is 250,000–300,000 Palestinians under that rubble, and I think Ralph Nader's right about that, I think it is, this could match anything that's happened in the last century….'
From a Daily Telegraph story.
"Not only would 24 per cent apparently side with hostile foreign actors [China, Russia, Iran], but 61 per cent appear to believe that the contract between citizens and the state is “broken”, largely because politicians fail to deliver on their promises. This disillusionment cuts across age, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Almost a third are open to the view that non-white people can never be as English, Scottish or Welsh as white people."
Reminder: the United Kingdom is not at war with China, Russia or Iran.
Britain has no political interests in the Far East, the Middle East or even, come to that, Ukraine beyond wanting a durable peace and the Strait of Hormuz reopened.
Reminder: the Strait was open before the USA attacked Iran, it became a war zone and Lloyds of London closed it.
One reason for wanting NATO dissolved in 1992 as was said at the time was that it would expose Europe and Canada to getting involved in American adventures.
The Guardian scooped the world on 27 June 1944 with the news that a hundred thousand Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz and put the story near the top of page 4. The liberation of Auschwitz was on the back page of The [London] Times the next year. Auschwitz grew rapidly in importance and changed the way the world thought, changed politics and even changed Christianity. The killings in Gaza and now Lebanon will change everything too though this is not yet widely apparent.
Gaza and Epstein (the two things are connected) have already removed Sir Keir Starmer from office.
I recommend this article by Paul Holden about his ascent to power and defenestration here. It starts thus.
'It’s hard to hear exactly what the heckler shouts to Sir Keir Starmer from the floor of Labour’s September 2024 conference, but snatches are caught on the ambient mics. “Does that include the children of Gaza?” is heard before the camera zooms in on the delegate. He is young, only a teenager, and he’s quickly moved out of the conference hall after saying something about “bombs” and “Palestine”.
'It’s the first Labour conference since Starmer was elected as the first Labour prime minister in 14 years, and it is conducted with the swagger and brio one would expect of a triumphal political project. Even so, Starmer’s response was extraordinary.
'“This guy’s obviously got a pass to the 2019 conference,” Starmer jokes.
'The hall erupts in laughter and applause, some rising to their feet. Starmer, who has so often been criticised for failing to show that he enjoys politics, basks in the response, plainly savouring the moment. “We’ve changed the party,” Starmer explains in a sing-song tone.
'The day after the heckler interrupted Starmer, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 41,495 Palestinians had been killed by Israel’s assault on the Gaza strip. 11,355 were children. A week before, the Gaza health ministry published a 649-page document listing every identifiable person killed in Gaza. The first 12 pages are exclusively of babies under one year old.'
No military in history has hit US forces with the efficacy and precision of Iran's armed forces (notable historic exception: Vietnam's heroic Vietcong). Americans don't even know what it means to take on a proper military. And they are being destroyed (if we only knew how many US soldiers already collapsed mentally). Every position in West Asia known, every base targeted, every installation surveilled. Iran fights like a modern superpower with the spirit of a holy, native Islamic military. What a crazy spectacle.
And they are still using only a small part of their capabilities. The escalation ladder has many, many steps to climb. We are witnessing the grandest and most epic battle since the Red Army vanquished the Nazis in WW2
Can someone explain to me why if Israel protects itself from hostile Muslim neighbours that somehow does something good for the West?
A former Spanish PM has been condemned for saying the French world cup team isn't French. Trevor Noah said the same thing amusingly years ago and J-M Le Pen.
De Gaulle, who begins his memoirs saying he always had a certain idea of France, opined: "It is very good that there are yellow French, black French, brown French. They show that France is open to all races and has a universal vocation. But on condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France would no longer be France."
Nothing made me so angry for a long time.
British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood just proscribed the IRGC, bowing to the Israel lobby.
I support Iran in defending herself from an unprovoked war as do most people I know.
I think I can say that here in Bucharest sipping my coffee in the boulevard.
Saying so in the UK might get me 14 years in prison.
I am not making this up, gentle reader.
I might be arrested when I land in England like an American writer was recently for things he had written abroad.
What reasons can America have for the attack on Iran?
Iran's internal policies are no justification for attacking her, are they?
The Iranian government has done bad things but Saudis have committed worse crimes, as has Israel.
Mr Trump could claim that Iran finances Hamas and is responsible for what Hamas does, but that's simply not true.
Anyway Israel has killed probably hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians and by the IDF's own admission in August 8,900 Hamas fighters in Gaza supposedly in order to vanquish Hamas.
Hezbollah? Hezbollah came into existence to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which happened so Israel could fight the PLO, who were attacking Israel because....... and if you go back far enough you get to the British decision to give Jews a homeland in 1917.
I am a huge admirer of the British empire but this was not our finest moment. It was probably our most fateful mistake.
Israel's actions in Gaza and now in Lebanon where since March more than 4,200 people have been murdered, over ten thousand wounded and roughly a fifth of the population been displaced seem to make Israel a much worse actor than Iran.
In a logical world the Americans should go to war against Israel if protecting peace and human rights is what motivates America.
If putting America first does America should take her troops out of West Asia and I'd argue out of the whole of Asia.
The truth is that America has wanted to overthrow the Iranian government since it came to power in 1979, replacing the American puppet regime of the Shah.
Israel has been worried about Iran only since the 1990s, producing propaganda about Iran getting the bomb as a means of keeping the alliance going with America.
Yesterday Trump said the US is protecting the Strait of Hormuz for China. "I don't mind protecting it for China but it's unfair that we aren't somehow compensated."
Remember that the Strait was open until Trump attacked Iran without giving a reason.
Meanwhile the war in Russia continues.
Podcasters like Scott Ritter, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs etc say Russia is winning and that Western help to Ukraine may provoke a world war.
These ideas seem contradictory.
We do need America and her vassals or allies to give up struggling against Russia, Iran and China. Ceasefires are not enough. We need a new settlement and America to go home. America is the problem, not Iran or China. Even Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, worse than a crime a blunder, was provoked by American behaviour.
Remember that the precedent the world has to avoid at any cost is not Chamberlain at Munich in 1938 but Chamberlain going to war in 1939, a war that cost 70 million lives, left half of Europe ruled by Communists and destroyed the British empire.
This time a world war will presumably mean a nuclear war.
Israel might use nuclear weapons even in the present limited war.
Max Blumenthal has repeatedly talked about how American NGOs pretended that a US Israeli regime change psychop in January was spontaneous and grossly exaggerated the numbers of dead.
Here is Ana Kasparian telling the story.
I knew this because I read the news with a sceptical historian's eye and have continuously said so since it happened. People have been disbelieving and even accused me of diffusing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
This was the moment when I completely gave up on the mainstream media and on the American British defence establishments. Only the Financial Times mentioned mysterious men in black involved in the riots.
I used to dismiss conspiracy theories but all secret services do is conspire (and in some cases murder).
Since January I no longer believe a word the US adjacent international defence establishment says or the media in the American controlled information space, which includes most of the world outside a few "enemy countries".
I am very shocked by her murder and mourn the wonderful Ann Widdecombe, a great Englishwoman and Catholic convert, but what's wrong with calling her a "virgin", "spinster" and "old maid" as Adam Bolton did?
I remember browsing through a dictionary of offensive words and phrases in 1994 and read that old maid was offensive as it suggested an unmarried woman didn't have sexual experience and thought that the world had gone mad.
In fact it had gone bad.
This is certainly no time to speak ill of the dead but I wonder why she and so many British conservatives gave the IDF complete support in Gaza. I don't understand it, perhaps because I've lived in an all white, extremely Christian country since the 1990s.
One can't help for a moment when reading about her murder in a village to think of Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple but Margaret Rutherford, whose father killed her grandfather, refused for a long time the role because murder is not to be treated likely, anywhere in the world.
There are lots of people on the internet expressing their hatred for Miss Widdicombe hecause she was a conservative and believed in Christian sexual morality.
One hopes she died painfully which reminds me of this.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) posted “Hurrah! She’s dead!” in response to the death of Ann Widdecombe.
Why is it noteworthy that an unmarried Christian lady is a virgin?
AJ Balfour lived without sex and that didn't arouse comment. He did some snogging with pretty girls in summer houses one biography suggested.
Edward Heath's lack of a sex life wasn't discussed when he was PM but is now. When I was a pretty undergraduate and lunches with him I noticed I made a hit with him and looking back I am sure he was a non practicing homosexual.
The US deep state and Israel have brought disaster to the world starting in 2001. Nobody is held responsible.
The new axis of evil consists of America, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and American vassals like Frau Ursula Von Der Leyen, Mark Rutte, President Nicușor Dan and most of NATO. The other Gulf states are peeling off after Iran's victory because they have to.
America is now the evil empire, what Reagan accurately though undiplomatically called the USSR.
It imposed sanctions on a third of the world's population, announces that it does not care about international law, attacks countries without provocation, murders, kidnaps, acts as a pirate arresting vessels on the high seas at its whim.
Please watch this short clip. George Yeo Foreign Minister of Singapore understands perfectly the new situation.
He compares the NATO bombing of Kosovo with the Russian invasion of Ukraine to point up the lack of Western consistency.
I am completely on the Ukrainians' side against the Russians but Anglo-American folly in trying to make Ukraine a Western democracy from the 1990s onward led to the war.
Compare the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the NATO invasion of Afghanistan, the American invasion of Iraq, intended by some to be the forerunner of an invasion of Iran, the Turkish and Anglo-American interventions in Libya and Syria, the Israeli invasions of nearby countries from 1967 onwards and the US attack on Iran after the CIA, Mossad and MI6's regime change operation failed.
What do they all have in common? All were completely illegal, as was the NATO bombing of Serbia, which I supported but all the Romanians to whom I spoke opposed.
Please don't think NATO is a defensive alliance.
Looking back September 11 2021 was the moment when the USA should have seen the consequences of allying with Israel and moved away.
However when attacked by foreigners people want revenge, just as so many Iranians who may previously have been well disposed towards America do now.
Here is Alastair Crooke in a four minute clip explaining where we are now.
About one-third of the world, including Iran’s 90 million people, live under crippling US sanctions.
So under the current order, the US gets to crush foreign economies at will. By contrast, Iran is not allowed to use its own economic coercion over the Strait of Hormuz to raise money for the damage caused by an unprovoked US-Israeli war of aggression, and to help ensure one doesn’t happen again.
And the entire region, already hurt by decades of US-Israeli wars, has to suffer the consequences.
The strange thing about progress is that it only counts if you ignore where we started.
Every civilisation practised slavery.
The civilisation that ended it is now told it should feel guilty forever for having once participated. How does that make any sense?
"The defeat of Ukraine is inevitable. The real question is how much of Ukraine outside of the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia will Russia capture?"
Larry Johnson, former CIA man on his website Sonar21
"Russia is going to do to Ukraine what it did to Grozny."
Chas Freeman who was US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and has the mind of a first class history don, talking to Pascal Lottez on the latter's YouTube channel Neutrality Studies.
I highly recommend the Ambassador and Neutrality Studies, which was not long ago shut down by YouTube for a wholly specious reason (sending spam) but returned. Our rulers do not like to be criticised and the channel may disappear in the future.
Mr. Trump told Barak Ravid of Axios: I was shocked to see Iranians crying at Khamenei's funeral, as I thought people hated him.
He also said: "They are all there [at the funeral]. One shot and we can take them all out, but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with...They are begging to make a deal."
Mr Ravid is Israeli and "former" Israeli intelligence. There have been suggestions that millions or even billions have been made based on foreknowledge of things that he announces.
I saw this on LinkedIn. I haven't checked its veracity.
American independence has really meant the start of their forever war. Only 6 full years from 250 without a war somewhere.
Fifty members of the British parliament from six parties have written an open letter to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanding that the Russian animated series Masha and the Bear be pulled from streaming services, BBC Russia reports.
The signatories include members from Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru. The series amounts to propaganda, the lawmakers argued, and “not subtle” propaganda at that. As an example, they mention an episode in which Masha, while guarding the Bear’s vegetable garden, first puts on a peaked cap with a blue band and a red star — resembling those worn by NKVD officers — and then dons a tank crew helmet.
The letter reminds Nandy that the NKVD was responsible for the mass deportation, execution, and persecution of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. In the lawmakers’ view, the series “actively normalizing Soviet military iconography for a global audience of young children.”
The warmongering press of 1910 in all countries led to the end in sense of civilisation, certainly Edwardian civilisation, to World Wars, Communism ruling half of Europe and to the modern Middle East.
You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.
This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.
Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.
This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.
But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.
This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.
Long may your admirable country dominate the world.
Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.
I always had love-hate feelings for America but my reasons for love and for hate changed a lot over the years.
Finally I recently paid my first visit and to my surprise found I absolutely love the country.
In a sense.
I do not love America politically, America the empire. It is an international tyrant.
To wish America Happy 4th of July after Iran and Venezuela and the threats to Cuba would be like congratulating Germany or the USSR after they invaded Poland.
Of course the American Pope declined his invitation to today's party.
This is the moment for Americans to reflect on whether they are proud of their history since 2000 or 1990 or choose a date. Do they like what America has morphed into?
Trump was right to see that Western civilisation was in big danger and so was America but he is making bad much worse.
I remember the 200th anniversary and the Queen dancing with Gerald Ford to "That's Why The Lady is a Tramp".
Then America was widely loved.
Americans were what the English had been, the boyish masters of the world.
Obama got into trouble by attending the church of a black pastor who had once uttered the words in a sermon "Not God bless America. God damn America."
Now many people in the world think like that pastor and for good reasons. In Iraq, Libya, Gaza, in Iran, throughout the world.
Explosion in Monaco: Investigators leaning towards SBU [Ukrainian successor to the KGB] involvement, Figaro reports.
Can it be so?
If proven Zelensky must go (to gaol?)
Will European support for Ukraine continue?
The Ukrainians destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline with no consequences for the Ukrainian government. But Russia was the victim that time as much as Germany. This is different.
The murder of Dugin's daughter was said the loyal Western media probably a Russian false flag.
The Western media are controlled by the CIA and so American allies are protected from criticism, as you have noticed.
After eighty years of false and absurd Hitler analogies two men who really do behave like Hitler have finally come along at once. It's like waiting for a bus.
But It's not just the two men but their countries that are now rogue terrorist states. Elections won't change this.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." (Nietzsche)
