What They Said

"Khameini was, by the standards of the Islamic republic, cautious. 

"Not only was he a handbrake on a nuke - he rejected IRGC proposals to build ballistic missiles that could reach Western Europe. 

"None of this has been explained to a British audience by the media."

Aaron Bastani

No, there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian civilization. Christianity stands every ancient belief on its head.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

'As a Jew, and the child of Holocaust survivors - my two greatest hates are for antisemites and Zionists....'

Eric Kraus

'Never try to understand women, women understand women and they hate each other.' 

Al Bundy

Trump has been incredibly foolish. History is little more than a catalogue of the crimes and follies of mankind. (Gibbon)

 

Max Blumenthal 11 hours ago

Max Blumenthal explains here that every ballistic missile fired by Iran was fired to drain interceptors already badly depleted from the 12-Day War. Once they were gone, the newer Shahid drones got through. Iran just spent $20 million to deplete US interceptors worth 3 or 4 billion and US has lost 80% control in the region. A report suggests that Gulf countries are withdrawing their investments from the USA if the US fails to provide them security. 

<Everything Mohammad Marandi said is coming true.

First of all that that the negotiations were a sham and that Witzkoff and Kushner were dedicated Zionist ideologues who were going to be pushing Israeli terms in order to cross Iran's red lines so that Trump could believe that he had to go to war and blame Iran. 

That's number one. Number two, Iran would have to launch a regional war when it was attacked in order to escalate the economic pain and exercise its economic leverage, which means either partially or totally closing the straight of Hormuz. It's partially closed it. Ships are reluctant to cross. Iran doesn't even have to mine it to prevent them from crossing. This was inevitable.

Iran had to launch a regional war and go all out because if it had just tempered its response as it did during the 12-day war to avoid escalation, as it's always done in the past, the Israelis would come back for more and they essentially control Donald Trump. And so Iran would just be delaying the inevitable. 

Iran was wrongly said by many analysts and not just neo-conservative Likud analysts that Iran was at its weakest point. Iran is actually at its strongest point militarily, which helped color Israel's calculus on why it had to do this. And so this was all very predictable. And Marandi said that the US and Israel will pay a heavy price.

And while Iran will also face heavy heartbreaking losses - as we know the Israelis according to their Dahiya doctrine attack civilians in order to force concessions from the leadership and the US will be following that doctrine - Iran will be suffering but they will gain a strategic advantage in this war and they gained that strategic advantage early on. So everything Professor Marandi predicted is coming true right now.  

Every objective going into this war to the extent that there were any objectives at all for the United States has completely failed and been repudiated not just by the IRGC but by the Iranian population. Regime change was I mean I don't know how anyone could have believed that this would take place but Trump was actually convinced by the Israelis that if they assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei  and his general staff or generals from the IRGC that Iran would collapse. And that delusion was fueled by bogus propaganda about the two days of rioting in Iran, where it was believed in delusional neoconservative and think tank lanyard circles on K Street in Washington that the Iranian people were primed for this massive revolt to topple the Islamic Republic. That was exposed as sheer fantasy by the massive unprecedented rallies of Iranians coming out in squares to voice their defiance and we see it night after night in squares across Iran and it was not just hardcore supporters of the Islamic Republic coming out. So regime change has been repudiated.>

Professor Mohammad Marandi is a supporter of the Iranian government but seems worth hearing.

"$200 a barrel is not outside the realms of possibility in 2026”

Lots of people have asked if this is America's Suez moment - a successful military operation that demonstrates, because of economics, that American hegemony is over, like the US response to the Suez adventure in 1956 showed the British and French were paper tigers. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard presents the analogy today in the Telegraph. 

He is a Cassandra but Cassandra was right and he is sometimes right. He was right to predict the Russian attack on Ukraine before most people. I was convinced it would not happen.

This does look like the moment the American or the US-Israeli empire is defeated and it is punishment for Netanyahu's hubris, but the USA has been defeated before, in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and by the hardy Houthis in the Red Sea. 

Trump's election prevented Hillary and the deep state from overthrowing Assad and replacing him with 'moderate rebels' - that might have been another defeat for America (and for Syrians but the US deep state does not care about Syrians).

I hope some politicians in Europe campaign for independence from America.

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's article:

'“In our view, $200 is not outside the realms of possibility in 2026,” said Simon Flowers, the chairman of energy consultants Wood Mackenzie.

'I am also called done-to-death and all-played-out' (a line from a parody of DG Rossetti's verse)

 

Chronicle of a defeat foretold (by me anyway)

It was pretty obvious that the Iranians would not rise up after the murder of more than forty of their leaders. Why would they? They did not during the CIA Mossad arranged violence in January, intended to provoke an uprising and the overthrow of the government by force with Mossad help. Former senior British diplomat Ian Proud thinks the same and runs through the reasons why America has lost this awful war here. 

Obviously America has no interest in invading Iran and no means of doing so and absolutely no justification for attempting to do so. 

I quote Ian Proud:

So if we assess Trump’s stated purpose for this operation, it rests of two claims which history will show not to be true, and on a belief in the outcomes of US military action – that it would precipitate an Iranian revolution – that was deluded and which lays bare the weak strategic analysis underpinning US action.

I therefore predict the following:

- Whether it stops now or stops later, the US will not be able to declare a decisive military victory against Iran. Rather it will be seen as an epic failure;

The Romans were defeated by the Persians in the most humiliating fashion possible multiple times. The emperor Valerian lived the rest of his life as a human footstool for Shapur

 

This is not someone I followed on X till just now. I know nothing about him but I think this post is brilliant and probably true. 

I hate to say I told you so but I told you one week ago that it looked like America would lose this war.

I was also right to oppose the Iraq war and the Anglo-American intervention in Syria.

@calvinfroedge

The Romans were defeated by the Persians in the most humiliating fashion possible multiple times The emperor Valerian lived the rest of his life as a human footstool for Shapur It wasn't because they were more powerful, it was because they had better tactics and strategy Iran is fighting an asymmetric war against the United States. The Trump regime is already stumbling in the face of this threat. Logistically and financially, neither the US nor the world can handle these disruptions. Iran has been there for thousands of years and will weather the storm. Like the Roman emperors before him, Donald Trump will be humbled by the Persians. His legacy will be one of failure and humiliation, similar but much more extreme than Richard Nixon. This war will go down in history as the greatest strategic blunder ever committed by the United States. It might end the Empire. The economic and geopolitical consequences that will arise from this event will shake the foundations of the world as well as the United States. Work on preparing yourselves and your families for the utter calamity that will befall the world in the coming years.

Piers Morgan, once a big fan of Israel, shifted his view like many others

 

More from Stanislav Krapivnik on Neutrality Studies

Stanislav Krapivnik is a former US Army officer, supply chain exec and military-political expert, now based in Russia. He was born in Lugansk during the Soviet times, emigrated to the US as a child, served in the US army, did not like what it was doing in the former Yugoslavia, quit, and returned to Russia. 

The US always kills civilians, no matter how much they always want to deny
that. We all do that. Yeah, you do. Every single freaking time. I mean, you have to have a 15-minute memory not to know that they do this every single time. Every single freaking conflict, they start targeting. I mean, I was serving, we were targeting you know, when I was a cadet, just to understand this, too. when I was a cadet. so we did infantry tactics every week for about once a week for about three hours. We did infantry tactics every single week in several years worth. So I consider myself very competent at commanding on infantry. we had a special forces sergeant that was our instructor. And you know what he taught us? Double tap everyone. No, really. If you don't need a tongue, while the battle's going on, you can kill the enemy no matter what. Even if he's, you know, of course, after if he surrenders, you're not allowed to shoot him by Geneva Convention, which is the law of the land of America because it's a it's a treaty that was ratified by Congress. You're not allowed to shoot prisoners of war but yeah we were taught unless you need a tongue (tongue is the Russian term, but you need somebody to speak, you know, somebody to interrogate) you double tap everyone.

Yeah, the US is using terrorist attacks. You're right. You're using bait and the bait is to kill off the emergency services and to kill additional people and it's inhumane, it's a war crime but when did the US care about war crimes?

Stanislav Krapivnik tells Pascal Lottez 'the Americans have no plan. They never had a plan. Trump was convinced four days and that's it.'

Stanislav Krapivnik is a former US Army officer now based in Russia. He was born in Lugansk, emigrated to the US as a child, served in the US army, did not like what it was doing in the former Yugoslavia, quit, and returned to Russia. Here he is talking to Pascal Lottez on the latter's podcast yesterday about the Iran War. I didn't know much about his story when I posted this but his Russian sympathies (he is a Russian-American after all) do not necessarily invalidate what he says. It is good to listen to Russian, Chinese and especially Persian voices.

"We're about to enter a much worse phase for two reasons. Obviously, now it's become an oil war and we're watching it step by step  evolve and it gets worse for two reasons. One, the Americans have no plan. They never had a plan. Trump was convinced four days and that's it. You know, we're in day nine and the oil markets have have panicked. They're finally starting to really realize that this is long-term, so oil hit 110. It's not stopping."

"Why are they here? Well, they finally start coming out. They're here because of the oil. I know. It's a shock. Everybody's shocked. They want oil....."

"You know it's  the best commercial for any nation in the world to nuke up.  North Korea, it's not been touched, plenty of resources, will never be touched by America because, you know, they can reach out and touch America. That's that's the lesson for every single nation that has anything worth taking. Arm up. I'm not talking conventionally. Arm up with nukes. We're gonna have an unfortunate thing by America's stupidity. It is every nation that can is going to nuke up. 

"The other thing is you're dealing with Israelis - first of all we know that this all started because of the Israelis. As we heard the big word salad from Marco Rubio and then Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, and they went blah blah blah. Lots of lots and lots and lots of words. And you boil it all down to, well, we weren't planning on doing this, but the Israelis were going in and we had no choice. Sure, you had a choice. You could have gone, Iran, we're not in this. Have fun with the Israelis. Don't touch us. We're not touching you. That would have worked real well. But then the donor class would be very very upset with you, wouldn't it? And Marco Rubio's chances would be president would be zero. That's the big difference to the 12-day war last year in June, right? That when Israel attacked and the United States said, "We are not we are not part of this" until the very end. I mean, we know that they were part of it. We know that they prepared, but this time it's a completely different game."

"And Trump came out with this insane statement of what the war aims are and he keeps repeating that at the moment Iran must unconditionally surrender or else we continue. So in that's the language that they used with Japan at the end of the second world war before they dropped the nuclear bombs on them and you know that was the war aim and it was achieved by completely like bomb bomb bombing and killing the civilian population and it seems to me that this is very much what they're after at the moment here. I mean the the Red Crescent just published actually a letter saying like look the in in the first one week we've we've had 6,668 civilian structures that were bombed, 5,500 residential units, 1,000 commercial units, 14 medical centers, 65 schools and so on and so forth. Seven red crescent relief workers have been killed in in this thing. And the pictures that reach us from the bombing of the oil drilling or refining stations is apocalyptic. We can see in Tehran, the ditches, the burning. I mean the ecological disaster that the US is now wreaking on Iran and actually the entire region because this stuff is going to spread all over the place is in in any way, shape or form just like horrendous, like apocalyptic is the word to use, so in a sense the Iranians were not as lucky as the Ukrainians of dealing with a civilized army  on the other end. But here we have people who wreak havoc on a massive scale on their city centers."

"What can you make out of the way that the US is implementing the war?"

"This isn't the US, this part. Let's be honest on this. US wants resources. This isn't getting resources. US wants the infrastructure intact. The problem here with the US why Trump is saying unconditional surrender. He wants anything to end this war at this point because he's fucked, pardon my French.  I don't have any other words. That's the best word. Sometimes you got to use words like that to describe just how Trump had is his presidency is over. His and possibly a lot of other people's chances of ever becoming president are over. He's burning the chances for for the others as well."

The economic consequences of the war

Former British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance) Sir Jeremy Hunt said in the House of Commons that the Treasury's "rule of thumb" was that "a 20% increase in energy prices meant 1% more on inflation and 0.5% less on growth."

Iran might keep the Strait of Hormuz almost closed for months except to her friends like China. 

Reminder: high energy prices benefit Russia.

Never trust the judgement in anything of people who cheer on this war, a war for which no clear reason has yet been given.

You should not respect them any more than you should the people who say with a straight face that Epstein was probably working for Russia. 

Israel during the Falklands War was led by the man who blew up the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, killing 91 people, 28 of them British

 

Begin's Irgun and other Jewish terrorists killed about 750 British soldiers and police in Palestine. 

In 1947 he disbanded the Irgun and founded a party. It merged with other fringe parties and became in 1971 the Likud, which he led. Albert Einstein, who turned down the chance to be the first President of Israel, described him as a fascist. Netanyahu was a key figure in Begin's government.

Pete Hegseth: "Death and destruction from the sky all day long. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it ... we are punching them while they are down"

The USA is acting in Iran as Israel is doing in Gaza.

Graves of some of the 180 dead from the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.

Scott Ritter thinks America has lost the war

Andrew Napolitano: Why would Trump's people have indirectly sought ceasefires twice in 12 days?

Scott Ritter: Because we lost the war. And they know it. This war can't be won.

....they sought the ceasefire early on to prevent what's happening now which is a global energy uh security crisis and  the destabilization of the global economy because of high energy prices. Um now that this happened they need to reverse this. They need to end this. So they're asking for a ceasefire. The Iranians are 100% correct because a ceasefire today simply resets
the map. Iran has suffered so much, sacrificed so much to achieve the
position they're at today where they have strategic superiority over both the United States and Israel in this conflict. Israel is defenceless. The Gulf Arab states are defenceless.

Iran's getting ready to turn up the heat. Uh the Gulf Arab states are defenseless and the United States. There's nothing the United States can do to stop Iran. The people that will will win in the long run will be Russia, which is in sitting in the cat bird seat right now, China because China will have a strategic relationship with Russia and Russia will provide them with the energy. India is going to be a disastrous loser. You only have to look at the lines of Indians trying to fill up their canisters with gas. India picked the wrong side. They chose Israel over Iran, a fellow BRICS member. So India is going to pay a horrible price. Europe is going to collapse and the United States is going to suffer the consequences as well because even though we're energy independent in theory, we're not. 

Podcast here.

John Mearsheimer quotes The Lancet's estimate that the USA murdered 38 million people between 1971 and 2021

"From 1971 to 2021, the U.S. murdered 38 million people.”

“38 million.”

"And this is the same U.S. that now wants to 'liberate' Iran."

 [This is the clip.]  

No British conservatives said they wanted war between America and Iran beforehand but when an illegal war starts for no clear reason they support it

 

They support this war despite the evidence that Epstein was working for Israel.

Even though it began with the cold blooded murder of about 49 Iranian leaders and continued with the killing of 170 schoolgirls. 

And the evidence of what the Israelis are doing in Gaza (and in Lebanon, Iran now, etc).

O, is it all forgot? All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?

From Bowyer Nichol's Words and Days (1895): the entry for today.

O, is it all forgot?

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Sc 2

IN  the  morning  of  our  days,  when  the  senses  are

unworn  and  tender,  when  the  whole  man  is

awake  in  every  part,  and  the  gloss  of  novelty  fresh

upon  all  the  objects  that  surround  us,  how  lively

at  that  time  are  our  sensations,  but  how  false  and

inaccurate  the  judgments  we  form  of  things!  I

despair  of  ever  receiving  the  same  degree  of

pleasure  from  the  most  excellent  performances  of

genius,  which  I  felt  at  that  age  from  pieces  which

my  present  judgment  regards  as  trifling  and  contemptible. 

3 amazing pieces of news (to me) from Ray McGovern

 

In his latest podcast Ray McGovern  who was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990 and briefed presidents, says the the USA deliberately hit the Iranian school killing over 180 girls, possibly intended to provoke a retaliation by the Iranians that would justify more intense US bombing.

He says the Israelis have admitted that they attacked Egypt in 1967 not because they thought Egypt would attack Israel but because they saw a good opportunity.

He says George W Bush in his autobiography said he intended to attack Iran in 2008 but was deterred by a CIA report saying Iran stopped working on developing an atom bomb in 2003, the same advice Tulsi Gabbard said she received from the CIA a year ago.

Quotations

“As more than 1,000 Iranian men, women and children lay dead after days of bombardment from U.S. and Israeli missiles, the official White House X account on Thursday evening posted a video of scenes from popular action movies spliced with actual strike footage from their war on Iran. The clip was captioned: ‘JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY.’ A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening. Hundreds of people are dead, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, including scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school that day. Six U.S. soldiers have been killed. They are also dishonored by that social media post. Hundreds of thousands displaced, and many millions more are terrified across the Middle East.”

Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago yesterday

"It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life."
Edith Hamilton, Saturday Evening Post (27 September 1958)

Jeffrey Sachs: We Are Probably in the Early Days of World War III

I agree with most of what Professor Sachs says but he is a liberal whose heroes are FDR and Kennedy. FDR made so many mistakes because he was a Wilsonian liberal and gave away far, far too much to Stalin. Read Sean McMeekin's 'Stalin's War'. Nixon is much more impressive.


<I think we are absolutely befogged right now when it comes to Washington. The only public outlet we have is Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social. These are the ravings of a madman.>

<We are probably in the early days of World War Three.>

You don't "accidentally" bomb a school TWO TIMES. 168 children and 14 teachers were killed. It was a massacre.

Ben Norton on X:

Reuters confirmed that the elementary school in the Iranian city of Minab was bombed TWICE by the US military, 40 minutes apart.
This was intentional. You don't "accidentally" bomb a school TWO TIMES.
168 children and 14 teachers were killed. It was a massacre.

Netanyahu's Great Escape

After the cold war ended there was and is no reason why America should support or subvent Israel, so the Israelis invented the threat of Iran. Be careful what you wish for because it may come true but before it did the Israelis, people of a nervous disposition, had already believed their own propaganda.

Similarly Hamas was fostered, succoured and paid by Netanyahu to ensure that a two state solution never happened. October 7 2023 was the consequence of that policy and of his gross negligence in withdrawing soldiers from the kibbutzim and ignoring warnings that Hamas was up to something.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor wonders if he knew beforehand what Hamas would do but I do not believe that.

In a normal country his career would have been over but he used Hamas to destroy the Gaza Strip and half a million of its inhabitants and he is using the putative threat from Iran to achieve, as he says, 'my dream for 40 years'.

He is as clever as Bismarck, unfortunately.

What puzzles me is that almost nobody outside Israel wanted the Americans to attack Iran but now they have murdered in cold blood the Iranian head of state and about 48 other leaders, something unprecedented but out of the Israeli playbook, most of the British conservative press and politicians not only strongly approve but suggest that those who don't are traitors: the Reform Party most of all but normally sensible people like Daniel Hannan (he approved of attacking Venezuela too), Alison Pearson, etc etc.

Traitors to England or is our scepter'd isle now considered joined at the hip with the USA and Israel?

Tony Blair is very much in favour of shedding more young men's blood. Sir K Starmer is letting England down badly by raising legal quibbles about the war being illegal or in other words mass murder.

Israelis are now saying they will kill the new leader of Iran and murder anyone involved in appointing him. One country is responsible for all the problems in the Middle East. Great Britain, my country. We created the Jewish homeland in Palestine but  this does not relieve Israel of the responsibility for incessant murders. 

Israel does not have to behave the way she does. 

Trump is a murderous madman but there is method in his madness.

It's clear that Netanyahu would have attacked Iran anyway and Iran would have responded by attacking America bases. America theoretically could have cut off Israel, ended its alliance and reassured Iran - but Iran would not have believed Trump who lied about peace negotiations last summer and anyway this is not how US politics works. US politicians are bought.

Netanyahu had snookered Trump.

Seven hours ago on Truth Social. Trump is murderer and going mad, but there is method in his madness.

Shortly before that was this exchange (I quote the Times of Israel). 

“They are among the most evil people ever on earth. They cut babies’ heads off. They chop women in half — take a look at October 7. Take a look at one they’ve done over the last 47 years,” Trump tells reporters aboard Air Force One, appearing to conflate Iran and Hamas.

“I know nothing about a desalination plant. They’re complaining about a desalination plant. We complain about the fact that they shouldn’t be chopping babies’ heads off,” Trump adds.


While there was initial testimony of babies beheaded on October 7, it was never verified by Israeli authorities.

The forty beheaded babies story was a lie by a settler politician which Biden repeated but it was established to be untrue. One baby died on October 7 2023 in crossfire. (There is no proof, either, after all this time, of any rapes on 7 October by Hamas men.) Iran and Hamas are different things.

Fred Weir, veteran Canadian correspondent in Moscow says 'Unintended consequences are beginning to cascade". There will be very many more

"As recently as last September the Atlantic Council was confidently predicting [https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/.../why-china-and-russia.../] that the project would remain bogged down indefinitely as China kept its options open by stringing Russia along, but never committing to building the thing.'


March 5 (Reuters) - China will push forward early-stage work on the Power of Siberia 2 project, while building the China-Russia Far East natural gas pipeline under its 2026-2030 five-year plan, which was released on Thursday.

Peter Hitchens is right except I do not think America wanted the invasion of 2022

'I cannot think of any important threat to European security since the end of the Cold War, apart from the relentless American goading of Russia which eventually achieved its desired end in 2022.' Peter Hitchens 30 minutes ago 

America has been the threat to European peace for decades. 

Neville Chamberlain told Joseph Kennedy that the Americans were the reason we went to war with Germany, but that's another and murky story.

Phelim McAleer strikes again!

Phelim McAleer: To win the war with Iran, US must have the courage and self-belief to be committed to defeating the enemy - radical Islam

​So, will America win this war? That’s the only question worth asking right now. It seems that since World War II, America has become spectacularly bad at winning wars. From Korea to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, it can fight with all the shock and awe on the planet but always eventually loses.

....It is lucky in one respect: Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. This is not the last war. The people are more open to America and the West. They are an ancient culture that predates Islam. There is no Sunni/Shia split in the country to fuel unrest and a low-level civil war.

America needs to treat Islamist Iran the way it treated Nazi Germany (one of the last wars it won). Germany was deNazified. They were clear - Nazism was evil and its leaders were imprisoned or executed. Do Americans have the courage and self-belief to do that in Iran?

You cannot have a war against an abstract noun. Michael Frayn said that talking about the war on terrorism. You can't have a war against radical Islam and the war in Iran is not one.

Barbara Amiel spoke for me when she said she would never forgive the Ayatollah Khomeini for making her defend Salman Rushdie. I shan't forgive Donald Trump for making me take the side of the Iranian government. What incredible folly and wickedness on Trump's part - what diabolical cunning on Netanyahu's.

It is obvious that America will lose unless Trump stops now and finds some specious reason to declare a victory. Even then Americans will stink in the world's nostrils as mass murderers and aggressors - I hate Hitler analogies but after 80 years of specious ones (Nasser, Saddam, Milosevic) they finally are apposite and even inescapable with both Trump and Netanyahu.

What is the difference between this war and the German invasion of Poland? 

What is the difference between what the Germans did to the Poles and what the Israelis did, financed by Biden and Trump, to the people in the Gaza Strip?

Having written all this I just realised I knew Phelim from when he was the FT's man in Bucharest. He is - as is very clear from the article - a fool (I am being polite) and a malign one. He said to me in January 1999 that the Serbs were justified in the war in Kosovo because although the majority of people in Kosovo wanted to secede the majority of people in Serbia as a whole, Kosovars included, wanted Kosovo to remain in Serbia. I said that's the argument the British used for keeping Ireland in the UK. He looked startled and replied 'But Ireland's an island!'

We looked at one another both knowing he had said something very stupid and he never forgave me.

He published an article in 2003 in the Spectator entitled The Happy Hookers of Eastern Europe arguing, with little evidence, that girls who are sex trafficked know what they are getting into prior to going. To quote him: "According to the International Office of Migration [IOM] which rescues and shelters these women, there are an estimated 400,000 enduring this existence. But as anyone who works closely with prostitutes and who isn’t infected with victimitis knows, the IOM version of events is nonsense."

I knew nothing about sex trafficking and almost believed him till a few days later I read an article in Bucharest's Business Review (I think) going into very sad-making evidence of what trafficking involves. How does Phelim make a living?

How long will Americans support Israel? For decades to come, I suspect, but nothing is forever

"It was Korea, it was Vietnam, it was the Middle East wars, it was Afghanistan, it was Ukraine, it was Venezuela. On and on! Eventually what happens is empires overspend, overextend, and it collapses." Ron Paul who thinks the collapse of the American empire will be a good thing for America. I agree - and a good thing for the world.

Wall Street Journal two days ago

A mystery

'Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has accused Hungarian authorities of taking hostage seven employees of Ukraine's state savings bank, Oschadbank.

'Writing on X, Sybiha said: "Today in Budapest, Hungarian authorities took seven Ukrainian citizens hostage. The reasons are still unknown, as well as their current well-being."

'The employees were in two cars carrying $80m (£60m) worth of cash between Austria and Ukraine. The authorities had sent a note demanding the employees' return, Sybiha said.' (BBC)

This is spun as Hungary being a gangster state but I wonder what the truth is.

Hungary is not on the quickest route from Kiev to Vienna. That goes through Poland or Slovakia. It is on the route to Serbia.

Patrick Cockburn in the 'i' paper, 24 February 2016:

An unnecessary, illegal and very wicked war

We have the word of Senator Mark Warner who has heard all the intelligence on the subject that there was no threat to the USA to justify the war.

"The monstrosity of the situation lies both in the very fact of the aggression, the colossal number of victims in these very first days, and the lack of an adequate response from those who are killing innocent people.

"You have probably noticed that no words of sympathy or condolences were spoken. Only aggressive rhetoric.

"They managed to talk about everything except one thing: Not a single word of sympathy for the relatives who suffered the loss. Fathers and mothers who will never see their children again..."

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the US-Israeli massacre of Iranian schoolgirls


'In Gaza, Israel and Biden normalized war crimes beyond anything we have seen before. And now, Israel and Trump are using that model against Iranian civilians.'
Trita Parsi

"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when asked how long the Iraq War would last (Feb 7, 2003)

Arnaud Bertrand

Pete Hegseth said this was "the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since WWII" (which is false, but that's beside the point), so I decided to look at what happened in WW2 and... this might surprise no-one: turns out the Nazis were more humane than the Americans.

Probably the most abject part here is that the warship had many survivors - 32 to be precise (apnews.com/article/sri-…) - and the U.S. made zero effort to rescue them, despite it being required by the laws of naval warfare and simply being the honorable thing to do.

It took little Sri-Lanka, with its very modest means - especially compared to the $1 trillion US defense budget - to do the honorable thing and launch a (successful) rescue operation.

Even the literal Nazis, during WW2, rescued the survivors of ships their U-boats sank. It was considered a matter of basic honor.

The history of this is actually interesting: the Nazis rescued survivors all the way until the so-called Laconia Incident in 1942 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…).....