Gaza changes everything

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’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.'

Alon Mizrahi, an ex Israeli Arab Jew on X

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

All Romanians I speak to think this, but I haven't asked many

I asked the bank teller, a women in her fifties, who do you want to win the war, America or Iran? Iran she answered unhesitatingly. "America makes wars all over the world and doesn't care for anybody." 

I don't think she is a particularly good teller but as a political analyst I can't fault her.

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. (Matthew 11:25)


He might have added unto bank tellers and cab drivers.

Former US Ambassador to KSA Chas Freeman this week

"Zionism is as incompatible with non-aggression as Nazism was." 

"It takes a lot longer to build a missile interceptor, two or more years, than it does for the Iranians to build missiles. So they [Iranians] are actually increasing their supply of missiles and drones while the US is depleting its."

An unanswerable question seen on Facebook

Can someone explain to me why if Israel protects itself from hostile Muslim neighbours that somehow does something good for the West?

George Kennan who in his Long Telegram of February 22, 1946 said the US should contain Soviet Russia and later opposed the cold war, Nato and the arms race

"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented." In his foreword to the book The Pathology of Power by Norman Cousins (1987).

Bastille Day reflections

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."

This is not 1938 but 1939

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.

'Israel Eyes Two Fronts: Iran Today, Turkey Next' - Chas Freeman, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

'There's a quote from Bezalel Smotrich who said that Witkoff told him the Palestinians in Gaza 'are Nazis and I'm not going to allow Israel to have to live alongside Nazis'. This is an indication of how insincere and incompetent and biased and ineffectual Mr. Wickoff is, if he did say that. It shows that he is a bloodthirsty Zionist. Of course the people who are behaving like Nazis are not the Palestinians but the Israelis. They are the ones conducting genocide. They are on the offensive. They are trying invading neighbouring countries. Palestine is defending itself to as best it can which is not very well.'

'He said the Islamic Republic of Japan attacked us with 111 missiles and we have to respond. ....This is a typical of someone who is suffering mental deterioration. He is clearly in the grips of dementia.'

Lindsey Graham

"I like the structural path we are on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and economic support, they will fight to the last person." Lindsay Graham (2022)

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said at the weekend that Israel is destroying everything in Southern Lebanon

“I said that Southern Lebanon would become Gaza. We would apply the Rafah model.

We would destroy everything there. We would deal with them in exactly that way.

And that is what we did.

The infrastructure has been destroyed.

Homes in 24 villages along the border, villages that had existed for hundreds of years and were used by Hezbollah as military outposts against Israel have been demolished.

The army systematically flattened the villages with bulldozers and explosives.

Ninety percent of the houses are gone.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 homes have been destroyed.”

A very bad man has died

Lindsay Graham is dead.

The Politician, dead and turned to clay,

Will make a clout to keep the wind away.

I am not fond of draughts, and yet I doubt

If I could get myself to touch that clout.

(Belloc)

Deploring the joy expressed at Ann Widdicombe's murder I feel a hypocrite but I feel absolutely no sadness about Lindsay Graham's death.

I never disliked a politician more.

He called for the US to attack Iran in 7 October 2023 and wanted Iran flattened like Hiroshima.

I do not rejoice but Clarence Farrow put it best when he said "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read many obituaries with great satisfaction".

Not many in my case. Very few but his yes.

Actually I am lying to myself and you. I am pleased he is dead, simply because while he lived he was doing enormous harm. Though if he was murdered this I strongly condemn like the murders of Arabs and Persians. 

Miss Widdicombe by contrast was a retired spinster living in a cottage in the countryside who did no-one any harm and who stood by Harvey Proctor when he was accused wrongly of paedophilic crimes. Homosexual lobbyists let him hang in the breeze.

Conspiracies

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".

Murder most foul

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.

Axis of evil

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.

Jewish-Canadian writer Aaron Maté a few minutes ago

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.

These lies are still widely believed

 

Iran threatens to expand war to Red Sea

The Daily Telegraph is the most wretchedly deceitful propaganda sheet in the world. 

Trump has just said the Gulf ceasefire is off (it was never on, always a US trick). 

Iran will protect herself as best she can (which is plenty) from the renewed US aggression and the top Telegraph headline is

<Iran threatens to expand war to Red Sea>

Inside we find:

Jake Wallis Simons

The three-word chant that demolishes the case for peace with Iran
Mourners screaming ‘death to America’ at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proves it’s nonsense to try to appease the Tehran regime

This is the funeral of a man murdered by the Americans remember, during peace negotiations starting an unprovoked, illegal war.

In other words this chant they have chanted since 1979 justifies the US making war on Iran, as if Iranians didn't have very ample reason to chant it, ampler with each passing year. I remember at the time of the revolution that chant endeared the new government to my reactionary heart. I am sure Michael Wharton (Peter Simple in the Telegraph) approved too but the Telegraph was conservative in those days.





Meanwhile Rutte of NATO backs this flagrantly illegal war because Iran levied fees to use persian Gulf in self defence after this unprovoked attack.




Please don't imagine the Guardian is not pro-Israel. In 2021 the Guardian fired US contributor Nathan J. Robinson following a sarcastic X post in which he said that the U.S. Congress is legally obligated to buy weapons for Israel, calling it a custom functionally indistinguishable from law. The U.S. editor-in-chief of The Guardian criticized the tweet as misleading, accusing Robinson of spreading "fake news" and promoting antisemitic "tropes" (dread word). Robinson deleted the tweet and apologised, but was fired anyway.

Quotations

"Solitude is not an absence. It is a form of fullness. Almost no one understands this. They call it emptiness, oblivion, cold, collapse, even pathology. And it is simply a language, the most ancient of all. Spoken by sages, eccentrics, exiles, writers and women who go out in the morning with a book under their arm instead of a companion." Sofia Proneikos, "Caryatid - The Vital Threads of The Soul"

"Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure;books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us,consult with us,and join with us in a living and intense intimacy." Petrarch

"Ah, the eternal burden of the intellectual - to pour all this knowledge into his brain through the three-millimetre aperture of the iris." Irvin D. Yalom, "When Nietzsche Wept"

"An intelligent man understands ideas. An intellectual believes in them." Alberto Moravia

"From the unreal lead me to the real, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality." Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1:3:18

From John Mearsheimer's speech to the Patriots for Europe conference at the European Parliament on November 10, 2025.

(The transcript is here.)

Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe. Turning Marx on his head, the political military institution is the base or foundation, and the economic institution is the superstructure. All of this is to say that, absent the American pacifier, not only does NATO as we know it disappear, but the EU will also be undermined in serious ways.




The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them.

The British should not feel guilty about slavery

Konstantin Krisin:

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?

I tried here to answer the question: Why do white Americans feel guilty about slavery?

Gideon Levy in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, July 5: I Thought It Was AI or Art. It Was a Palestinian Zip-tied to a Pole in Gaza

What brings a young Israeli, someone serving in a combat unit, to torture a man by tying him to a pole? Did he wrong them somehow? He's their age, after all. Did they think about his life or his dreams? About his past, present and future?
Gideon Levy


He is lying in his underwear, almost naked, on his stomach. His eyes are covered with a rag. His face is pressed against a cot on which his kidnappers have placed him. His hands are behind his back, tied with plastic zip ties, tightly and painfully. His torso is tied to the bed with cords. On his leg, there are two red bruises.
So far, a routine picture of a detained Palestinian, but this time, the abuse also includes an original accessory: a wooden pole, the top of which is covered in iron for unclear reasons. It's tied across the length of his body, looking like an African spear. One might guess that its purpose is to prevent the victim from bending, even for a moment.

Ukraine's future looks very dark

"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.

Quotations

"You get to choose your damn sacrifice. You don’t get to choose not to make one. And if you don't choose your sacrifice, time makes it for you, and it takes everything." Jordan Peterson

What life is there, what pleasure without golden Aphrodite? 

Mimnermus, fragment 1, line 1 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber)


If, as Mimnermus holds, without love and play
there's no enjoyment, live for love and play.

Horace, Epistles 1.6.65-66 (tr. Colin Macleod)

I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.”
Nancy Mitford

Trump: I was shocked to see Iranians crying at Khamenei's funeral, as I thought people hated him.

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.

America has been at war for all but 6 years since 1776. The last war initiated by Persia (Iran) was from 1775 to 1776

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.

1775-1783 - War of Independence
1785-1795 - Northwest Indian War
1798-1803 - Quasi-War with France (at sea)
1801-1805 - First Barbary War (first expansion)
1811-1813 - Tecumseh's War
1812-1815 - Anglo-American War
1814-1819 - First Seminole War
1821-1826 - Clearing the Caribbean Sea of pirates
1823 - War with the Aricara Indians
1832 - Black Hawk War
1835-1842 - Second Seminole War
1836-1837 - Creek War, Indian deportation "Trail of Tears"
1846-1848 - Mexican-American War
1849-1886 - Wars with the Apaches
1855-1858 - Third Seminole War
1855-1855 - Invasion of Fiji and Uruguay
1858-1864 - War for the Bareheaded Hills
1861-1865 - Civil War
1865-1890s - Indian Wars, Great Plains
1890 - invasion Buenos Aires
1891 - invasion Valparaiso (Chile)
1893 - Overthrow. Queen of Hawaii
1894 - US Navy suppresses a mutiny in Rio
1894 and 1896 - invasion Nicaragua
1894-1896 - Operations of US Marines in Korea
1898 - Spanish-American War
1899-1902 - Boxer Rebellion in China
1899-1902 - Philippine-American War
1901 - Colombian Civil War (seized Panama)
1903-1914 - US involvement in Honduras, Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba
1917-1918 - First World War

A series of "Banana Wars" - Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean
1915-1934 - War and cleansing of Haiti
1916-1924 - Occupation of the Dominican Republic
1918-1920 - Intervention in the Russian Civil War
1926-1933 - War in Nicaragua
1934-1941 - Operations during the occupation of China
1941-1945 - Second World War
1946-1949 - Conflicts in China, Greece
1946-1950 - Occupation in the Philippines
1950-1953 - Korean War
1954 - Operation in Guatemala (US Air Force and CIA)
1954 - First Taiwan Strait Crisis (nuclear blackmail)
1954-1975 - Vietnam War (the last military defeat of the US)

Then the US waged wars not for military victories. The task was: to punish, to exhaust, to carry out coups.

1961 - Bay of Pigs landing in Cuba (epic failure)
1962 - Landing in Thailand
1964-1975 - Secret war in Laos and campaigns in Cambodia
1980 - Operation "Eagle Claw" in Iran
1982-1983 - Operations in Lebanon
1983 - Intervention in Grenada
1984 - Operation in the Gulf of Sidra against Libya
1986 - Operation "El Dorado Canyon" - air strike on Libya
1987-1988 - Operation "Honest Endeavor" - US Navy operations in the Persian Gulf
1989-1990 - Intervention in Panama (Operation "Just Cause")
1990-1991 - War in Iraq ("Desert Shield", "Desert Storm")
1992-1998 - Occupation actions in a collapsing Yugoslavia
1993-1995 - Operations in Somalia
1999 - Bombing of Yugoslavia
2001 - Operations "Enduring Freedom" - in Afghanistan, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Western Sahara
2001-2021 - War in Afghanistan
2003-2011 Second Iraq War
2011-present - Military operations in Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.
2014 Coup in Ukraine and start of the proxy war against Russia
2026 invasion of Venezuela and attack on Iran