Around town

 

X is responsible for the golden age of aphorisms

Never were so many aphorisms coined, published and disseminated globally.  

This is why bad actors like the USA and the European Union are held to account in a way that was impossible at the turn of the century. 

This is why EU 'President' Ursula von der Leyen says suppressing free speech misinformation is her first priority. 

These advertisements were removed last year from the London Underground

'Transport for London (TfL) have removed fake adverts from the tube that claimed the BBC was covering up Israel’s “crimes”. The advert showed what appeared to be dead bodies covered up by large letters in the logo of the BBC, with an Israeli army helmet hanging on the side of one of the letters. The poster proclaimed “we don’t cover Israel’s crimes, we cover them up.” 

'Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) reported this obviously illegal poster to TFL, which acted swiftly.

'A spokesperson for TFL told UKLFI: “… this poster was not authorised by Transport for London or our advertising partners. As such, we have instructed our teams and contractors to remove any that are found on our network.”'

From the site of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) which reported the ads. 

Why were they obviously illegal? 

Because they were an example of fly postering or because their content was illegal for some reason?

The organisation is very keen to suppress criticism of Israel.  Has anyone in Parliament suggested the UK allowing free speech as she did before the Race Relations Act 1965? Nigel Farage did years ago but free speech is almost the most important issue there is.

Lawrence Wilkerson thinks the negotiations with Iran are another US trick

More from Col Lawrence Wilkerson in his podcast with Professor Diesen yesterday.

'So I think what we're looking at is another Kabuki show that will wind up with again for a third occasion the Iranians thinking they're in a diplomatic exchange when the bombs fall again. And this time it'll be just as ineffective as before, except it will kill a lot of innocent civilians in Iran. And if it includes, as some are telling me it will, a small ground element to try and snatch uranium, we'll have some prisoners of war and some dead people on the screen in Iran.'

The podcast is here.

Holocaust

"For every drone, ten buildings in Beirut will be destroyed."

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich

Cenk Uygur

@cenkuygur

·

11h

And he’s saying this about invading Israeli soldiers. So, for every time Lebanon defends their own territory, Israel is going to attack ten times more. This is Nazi logic. If your victims dare defend themselves, kill ten times as many. Why are we funding the Nazis?

And he's not saying they'll destroy ten military buildings each time, he's saying they'll destroy civilian buildings and murder ten times as many civilians for every Israeli soldier attacked in Lebanese territory. So, the Lebanese must surrender, otherwise, they'll be butchered.

'My son wants me to leave some Lebanon for him to destroy later. I told him don't worry, there will be enough for everyone.'

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich

"Netanyahu is the most able consolidator of all the dark impulses of Israeli society … [However], the Messianic drive to settle the greater Israel predates Netanyahu, as well as the overall brutal, racist degradation of Palestinians … [Very noticeable] is the subservience of the “opposition”; I don’t recall anything like it in the past. If you look at the governments that went to wars in 1973 and 1982, they faced considerable opposition, within the Knesset and outside of it, on the very issue of whether the war was justified … None of that is left today … In Lebanon, the Israeli armed forces are using Gaza tactics, attacking hospitals and killing medical staff, while in Iran they have engaged in what has been rightly described as chemical warfare on account of strikes on fuel depots.

"As to the Labor Party … [there are] a handful of MKs that are obsessed with displays of liberal values and with welfare legislation when genocide is in full force and Apartheid shifts from de facto to de jure. The other “opposition” parties are either led by generals (Golan, Eizenkot) who offer zero alternatives to military dominance, or by right-wing neoliberals (Bennet, Lapid). The only representatives of left values in the Knesset are the Arab MKs …"

Idan Landau, Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, who has been imprisoned on several occasions for his refusal to serve in the IDF, quoted by Alastair Crooke

“It’s ironic and tragic that a movement that began as an attempt to free Jews from persecution, to give them a place of their own – a process of emancipation, liberation, humanitarian aspiration – ends its path as a racist and violent one … It became more and more likely that without a constitution that protects rights for everyone, Zionism, once it became the ideology of a state, would give up on the option of becoming a normal state for its citizens … There were attempts to redirect the process. The most important came in the early 1990s with Oslo. That attempt was blocked, very aggressively, with Netanyahu’s encouragement, with Rabin’s murder. Not enough is said about the fact that Rabin’s blood is on Netanyahu’s hands. Netanyahu was the main beneficiary of one of the most successful political murders of the 20th century." 

Professor Omer Bartov interviewed in Ha’aretz

"You said that Israel is at war with Hamas. Let me ask you a simple question. Why are you shooting children in the skull and in the chest? why are you killing journalists? Why are you killing medics? Why are you killing UN workers?" 

Norman Finkelstein

Ana Kasparian on X

 

Col Lawrence Wilkerson sees a 60-65% chance of war between Russia and Nato, provoked by 3 Nato states

He was Colin Powell's Chief of Staff and is more impressive than his cowardly former chief, who did not run for president for fesr of assassination and didn't resign in opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

'I think he's [Putin's] pretty much 60-65% sure he's going to have to go to war with NATO at some point. What that war is going to involve and how big it's going to become will be principally up to NATO because I don't think he will want to widen it after he punishes some little upstart NATO member. Uh there's three of them that come to mind immediately who are doing things they shouldn't be doing and supporting things they shouldn't be supporting whether it's US or British or whatever troops on their soil doing it or their own people doing it. So I think we're in a very dangerous situation here and I'm glad that Putin is in Moscow, frankly, because he is probably as circumspect a leader in the world as there is along with Xi Xing Ping with regard to this sort of thing. But he's not going to take it forever and ever. He's going to respond one of these days and he's going to respond in a way that he's gonna cause us to have to step aside, step back, move away or, you know, double down and I don't I still I can't figure out what Trump's strategic calculus is if he has one. I don't think he has one. I think he just acts.'

Here is the podcast.

Media bias is the air we breath

 

Good news from the Middle East

Points made by former US Ambassador Chas Freeman talking to Glenn Diesen today.

"I tell my friends in China that the United States is now agreement-incapable."

"Any fondness that the Iranian people previously had for the United States is now pretty much erased."

At one point he says the Iran war has had no positive consequences but then lists a number. USA and Israel are much less powerful. Most of the Gulf monarchies are disenchanted with America, Israel’s new best friend the United Arab Emirates excepted.  Iran will get the bomb and Nato is largely finished.  

Indeed it's an ill wind that blows no good.

'You have members of NATO now denying the United States the use of their airspace or their bases. You have publics that are very turned off by both the United States and by Israel. You have the revelation that the bases in Europe for the most part are there not to defend Europeans against a mythical Russian threat but to provide 'lily pads' from which the United States can project power into West Asia and it's projecting power into West Asia to do things that almost nobody in Europe approves. But you opened all this with questions about  the viability of the state of Israel and this [the end of Nato] is a situation like that question which unfolds only with time. There's nothing instant about it, very likely. So it will be like Hemingway's  famous description of bankruptcy  which happened gradually then suddenly.'

Why do I look forward to an Iranian  bomb? Obviously because it will prevent further American attacks on Iran. 

The word terrorist should be avoided but if you want to use it then the murder of 49 Iranian leaders was clear terrorism. 

Except terrorist means a fighter of whom Americans disapprove. That excludes the IRA whom they funded. 

Brian Berletic: US-backed Terrorists Kill 16 in Pakistan as Part of Years-Long Campaign to Target China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (part of China's BRI)

As the US pretended to engage in diplomacy with China, US-backed terrorists have been/still are attacking Chinese citizens, Chinese investments, and diplomatic missions around the world - including in Pakistan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan - all as part of an ADMITTED campaign to target and disrupt China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

This most recent attack reported on by FT admits: 

A bombing near a railway track in Quetta in south-western Pakistan killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more, according to state media.

The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group, claimed “full responsibility” for the attack, which they said had targeted a train carrying security personnel, according to a statement from the group that was seen by the FT.

and that: 

The BLA has also targeted China-backed infrastructure and Chinese workers in the region, including the Gwadar Port, the flagship of the $62bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. CPEC is a centrepiece of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road overseas infrastructure investment programme.

As far back as 2011, US policymakers discussed using BLA to target BRI projects in Pakistan - like in the National Interest piece titled, "Free Baluchistan" which says: 

Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests...

Ever since, the US has backed armed militants across Eurasia to target and destroy Chinese projects, kill Chinese citizens, and even have attempted to assassinate Chinese diplomats in what is a US dirty war on China. 

Don't listen to what the US is saying, watch what it and its proxies are doing... 

Sources: 

FT: https://archive.ph/WhWII#selection-2049.0-2056.0

National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/free-baluchistan-4799

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture received no answer from the Israeli government about dogs trained to sodomise prisoners

Two months before Nick Kristof's report about dogs trained by Israelis raping Arab prisoners the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture wrote to the Israeli government asking for investigations into sexual assault of Palestinian detainees, including with dogs. She got no response. 

American analyst Brian Berletic says the US will never make a lasting deal with Iran because it wants to rule the world

The world was much smaller when Alexander ruled it. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler sought to rule the world and nor did England, which was content to rule a quarter of it, but America does.

This is from Brian Berletic today and yesterday. He has become my favourite analyst along with former Ambassador Chas Freeman, Professor John Mearsheimer and Professor Jeffrey Sachs. 

Mr Berletic underestimates the power of Israel and the Israel lobby. Just as we now know Kim Il Sung manipulated Stalin and Ho Chi Minh manipulated Soviet Russia much more than the other way around, Netanyahu most certainly manipulated US presidents. As Bill Clinton said after talking to him 'Who's the f-ing superpower here?

China is trying to build faster than the United States can destroy.

The US hypothetically seeking a constructive role among nations rather than seeking dominance over them is for a nation that wants to be stable. The current US strategy is driven by a desire to be supreme. Historically, when a great power chooses supremacy over stability, the transition to a new international order usually happens through a major crisis - like a world war - rather than a “grand bargain.

People never read for pleasure so much as today

A study published in the journal iScience by researchers at the University of Florida and UCL found that daily reading for pleasure in the US fell by over 40% between 2003 and 2023. Reading encompassed books, magazines and newspapers in print, e-book or audio formats but not newspapers and magazines online. 

Probably the figures or other Western countries are similar. Romanians are more bookish though.

Max Blumenthal says at least $2.8 billion has been made by investors with White House inside knowledge

Max Blumenthal says at least $2.8 billion have been made by insider trading based on insider information about posts by Trump on Truth Social. 

$2.8 billion is serious money. Who made the money? Anonymous trading accounts. 

Questions are asked about the role of Barak Ravid, a former Israeli spy who writes for Axios and regularly breaks stories that move markets.

America was always a very corrupt country. It had become much more corrupt in the quarter century before he came to power (think the Clintons, the invasion of Iraq) but Trump has further immeasurably corrupted America and the corruption spreads beyond America.

On the other hand, I am still pleased he won in 2016. 

Had Hillary won she said her top priority would have been regime change in Syria. 

It was the fall of Assad that led to the attack on a weakened Iran. 

Seen on X

People can easily argue that Palestine is irrelevant to Britain (they’re wrong, on multiple levels, of course) but Palestine is the moral test of the world.

It is the centre of everything. How you react, who you defend, and who you abandon is the supreme litmus test of humanity.

The Decline of the American Empire

If only Trump had won in 2020 his second term might have resembled his first. 

I am sure had he been in the White House Russia would not have invaded Ukraine.

World war would therefore not have become a  danger. 

I imagine, though it's impossible to know, that he would not have attacked Venezuela, killed people in boats on the high sea, prepared an invasion of Cuba or demanded Greenland and Canada. 

He would not have deteriorated mentally in office. 

I don't know whether he would have launched an attack on Iran, which he did for what reasons he never made clear but on  a sugar high after Venezuela. I doubt it but nobody knows.  

As it is he seems to have achieved something that seemed impossible: to be as bad as or worse than George W Bush and Biden.

But there are very good reasons why he won the White House twice and those reasons strongly suggest that America is in decline. 

A dog called Lucy

There's a clip on X posted by Rami Abdu, the founder of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor,  of a purported French aid worker saying: “We found a mass grave in Gaza containing 300 bodies. Small children were killed with their hands tied behind their backs".  

At the Nasser Hospital in 2024 a mass grave was discovered with over 300 bodies after an Israeli raid. Israelis blamed Hamas.

Mr Abdu seems to like Hamas. In 2024 he posted in Arabic before deleting the post that, "the world does not deserve these fighters" referring to Hamas fighters.  

It's a point of view, one that might get him 14 years in prison if he repeated it in the United Kingdom. 

He was one of the sources for the New York Times story about dogs being trained by Israeli guards to sodomise prisoners.

That story caused outrage from the Israeli government and many American supporters of Israel.  

The stories of Hamas gang rapes on October 7 in the New York Times were shown by Max Blumenthal to be lies and the New York Times took the allegations off its site without retracting them. Hardly anyone noticed and people continue to talk about the rapes.

People believe what they want to believe but the Western media tell their readers little about alleged Israeli atrocities and spend much ink complaining when a singer leads a chant of "Def Def to the IDF" at a pop concert. 

Meanwhile the warm hearted Israeli public is angry about an Israeli settler beating a dog called Lucy.

Quotations

He knew that the causes of hatred and mainsprings of popularity are determined by the price of food.
Lucan, Pharsalia 3.55-56 (translated by J.D. Duff)

The Financial Times is an important part of MI6 Information Operations. These stories are not the byproduct of an editorial board of journalists, but a psychological operations team working out of Vauxhall. I saw it firsthand in 1998 with Operation Mass Appeal. 

Scott Ritter

Chay Bowes

@BowesChay

·

23m

A new record has been reached on Mount Everest- 274 people have reached the summit in a single day. How long before the Starbucks and McDonald's open?

Brian Berletic today

The US isn't trying to open the Strait of Hormuz - it is literally blockading it and perpetuating a war that ensures insecurity around it indefinitely.

The US is engaged in a controlled demolition of Middle East energy exports and a large part of the global economy.

It is playing games to manage prices and markets as it does so - NOT trying to find a way "out" of consequences everyone in Washington knew about before launching the most recent war of aggression.

The US simply doesn't want things to collapse overnight - just like it managed Europe's decoupling from Russian energy (which is still taking place).

Theories otherwise are based entirely on believing US statements at face value, as if the US is in the habit of telling the truth especially when things are going poorly?

All while the US feigns seeking peace with Iran and Russia, it continues preparing its proxies in the Asia-Pacific for war with China.

After 80 years of false analogies with Hitler the shoe finally fits

Pascal Lottaz reposted

Trita Parsi

@tparsi

It is difficult to fathom how people can commit truly evil acts, such as genocide and the murder of children. What is even more difficult to comprehend, is others ENJOYING and CELEBRATING images of those evil acts. But that is what you get in Israel now, with parties of people watching and cheering videos of Israel blowing up villages in Southern Lebanon.

Here is the clip.

I remember Israelis paid to watch scenes in Gaza by telescope

The inhumanity of the USA is comparable with that of the Israelis. The New York Times reports today that the Pentagon tested an experimental PRISM missile packed with 180,000 tungsten pellets on an Iranian sports hall killing 21 girls who were playing volleyball.

The American empire has its origin with Pearl Harbor and bases its legitimacy on its defeat of Hitler's Germany, Japan and much later Communist Russia, though the USSR fell apart for internal reasons.

Now, as happens to all empires even imperial China, America in trouble.

It is abandoning its heroic myth (I use the word myth to mean a sacred narrative that defines a society's core values, rather than a story that's untrue).

This is a huge mistake and sign of how decadent it is.

Hypocrisy is vice's tribute to virtue (Rochefoucauld), after all.

Without it man cannot bear too much reality (to adapt TS Eliot).

The USA didn't really have the moral high ground very much after 1991 but people, especially in the rich countries that were American clients, thought it did.

Though I remember the Daily Telegraph saying under Clinton that US foreign policy made the USA resemble the armed wing of Oxfam (a British charity that gives money to starving people).

That ain't so bad, but that was in the last century.

Do I have any readers who regret that the USA has not won its unprovoked war against Iran?

Not many, I imagine.

I expect I have some who hope who hope the USA succeeds in doing whatever it is trying to do to China.

The habit of siding with America is hard for some to break.