This is heart-breaking

Lebanese Civil Defense confirmed late on 23 April the death of Amal Khalil, Lebanese journalist and reporter for Al-Akhbar newspaper, who was deliberately targeted by Israel and trapped for hours under the rubble as the Lebanese government awaited permission to rescue her.



Khalil was reporting in south Lebanon’s Tayri with fellow journalist Zainab Faraj when the strikes took place.

A civilian vehicle accompanying the journalists – who were in a separate car – was first hit by an Israeli drone, killing the two people inside it.

Khalil and Faraj exited their car and took cover behind a tree upon the first strike. Contact was then made with ambulance teams and Lebanese army intelligence, yet the Red Cross was not allowed to act until receiving clearance from the US-led ceasefire monitoring mechanism.

Another drone strike hit right near the journalists' vehicle shortly after, prompting them to shelter near a house.

About an hour later, amid reports that access to the site was being refused and that UNIFIL was asked to avoid the Haddatha–Bint Jbeil Road, a warplane hit Tayri. It was later confirmed that the house where they were sheltering was targeted.

The Red Cross was not given approval to move until 10 minutes after the Israeli warplane struck home.

Rescue workers reached and rescued Faraj, who was seriously wounded, while also retrieving the bodies of the two who were killed in the first strike.

Israeli forces fired at the rescue teams as they attempted to reach Khalil, halting search efforts, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.



“After nearly three hours of being besieged in the town of Tiri in south Lebanon, journalist Amal Khalil remained in direct contact with the relevant authorities and was reported to be in good condition, until the enemy deliberately targeted her and photographer Zeinab Faraj in a second airstrike,” wrote Lebanese journalist Dr Marwa Osman.

“She was alive for so long, talking to her family and colleagues from under the rubble. But the imps in the Lebanese presidency and prime ministry took all the time they needed to grovel at the feet of the enemy through the US terrorist mechanism, until Amal died of the wounds she sustained from the Zionist strikes on Lebanese land,” she added.

Many others were also outraged by the failure to rescue the veteran journalist, who spent her career covering Israeli war crimes and Lebanese resistance against occupation.

“The US ambassador, in his capacity as custodian of the ‘mechanism,’ did not grant permission for a bulldozer to access Al-Tayri to clear the rubble in search of Amal Khalil,” journalist Hassan Illaik reported.


The Lebanese presidency released a statement condemning Khalil’s killing, saying it was “aimed at concealing the truth of [Israel’s] aggressive acts against Lebanon.”



“Amal Khalil passed away in the place dearest to her heart, in the region with which her name was synonymous, on the most volatile front line, in the deep south … For Amal Khalil, the cause of resistance was not a trivial detail, but rather deeply rooted in her convictions, daily actions, and professional choices. She chose the south, even though the media organization where she had worked for nearly 20 years hadn't asked her to settle there,” wrote Al-Akhbar.

“On the contrary, she had been based in Beirut offices since the launch of Al-Akhbar. However, as she recounted on more than one occasion, she couldn't remain in Beirut long while the voice of the South called to her. So, she left and chose daily confrontation with the enemy, who had repeatedly threatened her. Yet she never backed down.”

Khalil had previously received death threats from an Israeli number, telling her to leave Lebanon “if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.”

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz yesterday announced that Israel wants to renew the (unprovoked and illegal) war on Iran and return Iran to the dark and stone ages. "We are waiting for the green light from the U.S., first and foremost, to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty and to return Iran to the dark and stone ages by destroying Iran's major energy and power facilities. This time, our strikes will be different and more deadly, and will deliver further devastating blows to the most painful places, which will shake and collapse the regime's foundations."

Romania and many European countries and the UK (American satellite states) the UK are helping the US bomb Iran.

Spy fiction

"Lord" Mandelson, the close friend of Epstein, was the eminence gris who mentored McSweeney and made Starmer Labour leader and therefore PM. Starmer became Labour leader months after Epstein died so I do not pretend Epstein himself was necessarily involved. Starmer used what were clearly false accusations of anti-semitism to clear out Corbyn and anti-Israel Labour MPs. The media approved. One Israeli spy was found to have been involved in the rebuilding of Labour. There is a big spy story here involving the CIA, MI6, Israel and the Epstein class. Jonathan Cook, Declassified and Peter Oborne know more about this.

Russia could attack a NATO member in just a few months, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday. He said he doubted that the US would defend Europe in such a case. Tusk is the madman not Viktor Orban. Europe needs to make peace with Russia and stop paying for the Ukraine, to have a good relationship with China too and stay out of American wars.

Caitlin Johnstone

I don’t mind admitting that I hope the US and Israel suffer a crushing, devastating defeat in Iran. I hope this war collapses the entire US empire. My only loyalty is to humanity, and being on Team Human in today’s world means being against the US empire and against Israel.  

April 14

The More Murderous Israel Gets, The More We Hear About "Antisemitism". Meanwhile, in real life, people are being mercilessly butchered in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine by Israel and its allies. The uglier it gets, the more aggressive the concern-trolling about “antisemitism” becomes. 

March 30

Is Dugin right?

 

Alexander Dugin

@AGDugin

We witness total collapse of the West. An absolute fall. Trump was the last hope to save the West. He is now revealed as pure nothing. Corrupted perverted zero. Less than zero. No way out.

4:05 PM · Apr 19, 2026

Iran is a fairly normal country, not a demon

Max Blumenthal is a courageous investigative journalist. His investigations took him and his journalist wife to Iran just before America attacked. He found a normal country. In Tehran women rarely wear hijabs. Some people he spoke to told him they loved America but not its government. Many were worried about the very large number of Mossad sleeper cells. This is a talk given at a conference organised by my favourite American Republican politician, Ron Paul.




Max Blumenthal is not courageous because he went to Iran but because he confronts received opinion and US government lies. He is on the left but was optimistic about Donald Trump after he won in November 2014.

"Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!”

This is the day when people claim that the saint was not that saintly, was off white and (a prentice error) Turkish. But he's the patron saint of England and Romania, my country.

Yes I am wearing a rose.

Romanian icon on glass of St George.

Iran wants to wreck Trump’s presidency as she destroyed Carter's

Robert Pape says Iran intends to destroy Trump’s presidency so will continue the war at least until November, to develop an atom bomb and be the fourth power in the world. It's hard for me to see how they can fail to achieve these things so I wonder why they have stopped fighting. A war until Christmas is a catastrophe not just for America but the world economy (Russia and Iran excepted). Israel also wants the war to continue.

Pape cannily said that Trump's enemy in this war was not Iran but Obama. 

Why does the European Union "president' not talk to Iran or Russia?

 (Fun fact. When she visited China she had to go through immigration like an ordinary person which was droll.)

Comments on a Facebook thread by journalist Pelle Taylor

[It doesn't matter what country he's talking about. I actually don't know which one it's about. What he's saying applies everywhere.]

On the one hand, I don't know these human rights claims. Our media have been so poisoned by the lies and propaganda of the intelligence agencies; I don't know what to believe. This is not to say that human rights abuses don't happen, but I can't believe it just by the words of the Western mainstream media that they happen, so I don't know what to believe.
Second, I think our warmongers use these invented or real human rights abuses to make wars on countries that only make the situation worse, as we've seen in the Middle East. I know that, for instance, you talked about the Uyghurs, but I'm not an expert on China. I do know that this has been studied well by people, friends of mine like Piers Robinson, who say that the UK specifically used Islamists to destroy Syria, sided with the really bad guys to destroy the country where I have several acquaintances from. Syria seemed like a pretty normal society, presumably if you didn't cross the regime, but they had a National Health Service and could go to the beach in bikinis and live a pretty normal life. The human rights circus is part of the military industrial complex.

Interestingly, one of the Syrian girls I know was part of the student movement that protested against Assad in 2011. She then got a scholarship to Syracuse University in the US. She's not anti-American by any means, but she said that the student movement was quickly infiltrated by hard men with guns who shot at the Assad security forces.

 

When they fired back, the Western headline was "Assad shooting his own people, killing peaceful students." Basically, it was the Maidan playbook a few years before the Maidan coup. 

 

There's so much out there reported at face vaue by a credulous and corrupt media. There was a 60 Minutes show where a masked Mossad agent said, "The world's a stage and we are the directors. Everything you see is fake," or something like that.

The Syrian woman's story could be a description of the CIA Mossad operation in Iran in January of this year - a regime change operation that failed thanks to Russia and led to the US Israeli attack on Iran in February.

Biden would have attacked Iran?

Glenn Greenwald who's a Jewish American Democrat 4 hours ago on Substack.

"Biden's negotiator and adviser for Israel and Lebanon was Amos Hochstein: born in Israel, served in the IDF, whose family still lives in Israel.

"He said on Face the Nation this Sunday that had Biden won a second term, there was a strong possibility that the US would have bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. Also says he supported Trump’s “Operation Midnight Hammer” last year."

The late Queen's 100th birthday today

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen was born one hundred years ago today. 

Had the old King died five years sooner she would have been Empress of India. 

She lived long enough to entertain Ceausescu and Donald Trump and open innumerable drop-in centres in deprived inner city areas. 

Her first PM was Winston Churchill, her last PM was Liz Truss. What a falling off is here. 

During her reign the British flourished as never before and were reduced to servitude to the USA and the EU. A country that had colonised so much of the world was now a colony in many senses. 

Many things were worse when she died than in 1952 but even more were possibly better.

"Comparisons are odious."

"There is properly no history, only biography." Disraeli

Quotations

“I’ll be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.” Tucker Carlson

"At the beginning of the week I went up to Rome because the Pope had sent me a message that he would like to see me. It was all very nice & informal – not a bit like the Vatican of Pius XII (when I get home I’ll send you a horrible photo of me & the Pope). The Pope talked to me for twenty minutes about why he liked my novels! He had read The Power & the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, Brighton Rock, & Stamboul Train! He gave me a rosary in a nice little case for Vivien [Greene, his wife], a medal of himself for me, & a beautiful leather bound edition of The Gospels in an edition limited to 140 copies. All the monsignori were very cordial, & the Pope didn’t go in at all for a talk about “the duties” of a writer. He said there would be always things in my books which offended some Catholics, but not to bother about that." Graham Greene writing to his lover Catherine Walston after meeting Pope Paul VI on 13 July 1965.

William Perry, US Defense Secretary 1994-1997, considered resigning in opposition to NATO expansion

This tells you so much about the nature of the American empire.

William Perry, the US Defense Secretary between 1994 and 1997, considered resigning in opposition to NATO expansion:

“It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said [we] don’t agree with that argument… Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point…. the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path.”

Mearsheimer thinks Israel not Iran is the enemy of Western values

Israel has decided not to prosecute the IDF soldier that desecrated a statue of Jesus Christ in Lebanon.  He has merely been rebuked.

Much, much more importantly several Christian villages have been completely destroyed by Israel in southern Lebanon.

John Mearsheimer said in the last two or three days that Israel is a much greater threat to Western values than Iran because Iran is not an apartheid state and never attempted let alone carried out a genocide. 

Of course he always uses the word apartheid inexactly (by his definition all the European colonies in Africa would qualify as apartheid states including South Africa before 1948). Nor do I express any opinion on whether the holocaust in Gaza qualifies  as genocide. Whether it does or not the IDF certainly killed far more than even the 80,000 Arabs that the Israelis and Hamas agree on.  Credible reports indicate that hundreds of thousands of civilians died. One report says 450,000, another 600,000.

Professor Mearsheimer is obviously right that Iran never did anything remotely comparable to that. Nor to the CIA Mossad MI6 regime charge attempt in January or the US-Israeli assault on Iran in February  (The UK helped the US.)

I have argued here for many years that Iran is no threat to the West. 

But instead European countries made Iran and Russia their enemies because America wants it. 

Now America is obviously Europe's enemy too.

We need an end to Nato. Europe and Great Britain should not be dragged by the American chariot into the US deep state's war against multipolarity.

On Saturday Trump tried to “use the nuclear codes” on Iran and was stopped by General Dan Caine

According to retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson: During an emergency meeting on Saturday Trump tried to “use the nuclear codes” on Iran and he was stopped by General Dan Caine. According to Johnson “there is seriously something wrong with Trump”. Why do the media not report this?

Note. Since I wrote this it has been reported on British television. 

American defence analyst Brian Berletic on X

 First Principles: Why the US Will Continue War with Iran 

The US' primary goal is global primacy.

Attacking Iran is driven by a desire to isolate Russia and China further by eliminating a partner and fully controlling an economically vital region of the world.

Part of this isolation specifically for China involves cutting off energy exports from Iran to China.

The US can also use its own war of aggression against Iran to implement a defacto blockade on all or much of the energy leaving the entire Middle East to China and also many of China's largest and most important trade partners.

A collapse in consumer demand means a collapse in demand for Chinese production the US has been complaining about and desperately trying to target for years. 

The US is also using this opportunity to normalize a global blockade of all Iranian ships just as it has the "shadow fleet."

This has always been expanding toward a general, global blockade. 

Everything is aimed at a more direct and serious confrontation with both Russia (whom the US is still waging proxy war/covert war on) and China.

Because of this fundamental reality, no "peace" of any kind was EVER possible with Iran unless Iran and its allies could physically impose it on the US which at this point is still not realistic or possible.

So the war will inevitably continue and only the excuses of why it will continue remain to be crafted and presented.

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim on X

 Some have said that claims that Israel uses dogs to sexually abuse prisoners are antisemitic blood libels. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of evidence. The organizations that confirmed this include B’Tselem, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Council on American-Islamic Relations. 

Here is the testimony of survivors: 

1) "Nihad" (50-year-old father, Ofer Prison): In an interview with Anadolu Agency, Nihad testified that during a pre-dawn raid on January 14, 2024, Israeli soldiers ordered a police dog to sexually assault him. He described it as "the most painful moments of my life" and noted that the assault left him with deep physical wounds and long-term trauma.

2) "A.A." (35-year-old father, Sde Teiman): Arrested from Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, A.A. told the PCHR that soldiers took him to a corridor away from cameras, stripped him naked, and unleashed dogs that urinated on him before one dog raped him anally for approximately three minutes. He emphasized that the dog appeared "trained" and "knew exactly what it was doing".

3) "Halim Salem" (Pseudonym, West Bank Detainee): Testified to Middle East Eye that while he was forced to kneel with his head in a toilet, guards brought in a dog that "mounted and raped" him. He recalled that when he screamed, the guards beat him for "disturbing the dog".

4) "Wajdi" (43-year-old, Gaza Detainee): Recounted to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that during interrogation, he was tied naked to a metal bed and raped by both a soldier and a dog while other soldiers filmed and mocked him.

5) Mohammed Arab (Al Araby TV Correspondent): While detained at Sde Teiman, he told his lawyer he witnessed soldiers forcing dogs to rape prisoners. He stated, "They teach their dogs to have sex with prisoners. Can you imagine?".

6) 18-year-old Gazan Detainee (Sde Teiman): Testified to PCHR that while he and other captives were being raped with bottles by soldiers, there was "also a dog behind us, as if the dog was raping us," serving as a form of extreme psychological and physical humiliation.

7) 48-year-old Detainee (Al-Shifa/Military Outpost): Reported witnessing a dog maul another man’s genitals until the victim bled to death in his arms.

8) The Committee to Protect Journalists and Middle East Monitor have collected dozens of testimonies from journalists who reported being subjected to "dog attacks" and sexualized torture during their detention.

I talked to two guards in Sde Teiman, on more than one occasion. One had seen this happen and said it was too awful to talk about. The other said that he had heard about it from others and believed it was true. This happened. This is happening still. The evidence is too overwhelming.

Former head of MI6 (M) wrote that Putin may pray for mountains in Ukraine as a buffer against the West

"Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man, a great supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers, and ask God: ‘Why didn’t you put some mountains in Ukraine?’ If God had built mountains in Ukraine, then the great expanse of flatland that is the North European Plain would not be such encouraging territory from which to attack Russia repeatedly. As it is, Putin has no choice: he must at least attempt to control the flatlands to the west".
J. Scarlett, ‘Introduction’, In Marshall, T., 2016. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything about the World, London, Elliott & Thompson, 2016, p.1., (acknowledgments to Professor Glenn Diesen)

Why is the US Israeli empire pathologically obsessed with taking over Iran, Lebanon, Russia, China, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba?

It's an interesting question to which I don't know the answer.

Do empires empires act unthinkingly to destroy competitors, like bacteria destroy other bacteria? I don't think the British empire was like that. Many countries asked to join the British empire and were refused.

America only got Israel to stop bombing children because they were worried about higher petrol prices. This tells you almost everything you need to know to judge America, once an if not moral at least moralistic country.

The Americans have hit 50 schools in Iran.

Yet some people in the UK and Europe want the Americans to win this illegal war.

This is Robert Tombs writing in the Daily Telegraph on June 11 2023. 'This seems the almost invariable pattern, whether in the fall of far-flung empires or in revolutions within single states. No one expected a French Revolution that would bring Louis XVI to the guillotine. No one expected an upper-class rebellion in Palermo in 1848 to turn the whole of Europe upside down. Who thought the suicide of a street trader in Tunisia in 2010 could do the same to the Arab world? The German empire collapsed in 1918 only months after it had nearly won the First World War. Despite emerging victorious from the Second World War, the French and British empires began unravelling just as Paris and London were planning new colonial partnerships.'

I hope that the US-Israeli attack on Iran will start the unravelling the American empire and am confident it will - but how long will it take an dhow bloody will it be?

Omar Bartov the Israeli historian and holocaust scholar condemns Gazan genocide

I read twice Omer Bartov's harrowing book about Jews murdered in his mother's small town in WW2 Ukraine, I reviewed it here and and I visited the town. I recommend it highly though he admits at the start that he feels angry about the events whereas though this is understandable a historian should aim to be dispassionate.




In this clip he says Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza, a conclusion he reached reluctantly, and though Israel is redeemable Zionism has morphed into something irredeemable.

Larry Johnson who briefed John F Kennedy says 'We have to really think about an arc of resistance rather than of terrorists.'

Larry Johnson was in the CIA from the early 1960s and briefed presidents from Kennedy to Bush 1. He says Pakistan is now sending troops to help Iran. His latest podcast with Scott Ritter is very good.

"What that tells me is that there is an arc of not evil, an arc of resistance and that the Iranians in my view to their credit were also insisting that Lebanon be included here as eventually Palestine will also have to be included. So, the Iranian regime, if you will, the Iranian government has put itself on the line not only for Iran, but for the Lebanese who are being attacked by Israel, for the others that are being attacked by Israel. That's almost sort of idealistic. It's not very narrowly
focused. And I think that's to their credit. And so we have to really think about an arc of resistance rather than of terrorists. And you have to make sure you realize that Iran is not the chief terrorist sponsor in the world and that Iran was not working on a nuclear weapons still. And that was clear, but the head of national intelligence refused to say it this year after having said it since 2007.

We're all Iranians now

We're all Iranians now. At least since 2000 America has become a much bigger threat to world peace than the old USSR ever was. 

In fact back in the 1980s my callow young self saw that the cold war kept the peace. 

Now Iran is fighting to break the American empire with great courage, manliness, intelligence and arguably even morality, all things the US appears singularly to lack in this war. 

I wonder though why Iran agreed to this sham ceasefire. They surely don't trust the Americans. 

I think they are making a mistake. The Americans have some reason for wanting a pause.

I doubt if Iran can force the US out of the Middle East but it would be good for everyone, most of all the US and Israel, if they do. 

A close (and very philo-Semitic) Romanian friend, whose child learns Hebrew at the Jewish School, said to me a week ago "I support Iran! Not because I am left-wing or right-wing but because they were attacked'. I imagine most middle-of-the-road people agree.

Rape in Israel

American podcast star Ana Kasparian has read out the most damning report on Israel's prisons. Sexual torture is organized state policy, endorsed by the highest authorities. Women are raped for days. Men are raped by dogs. Fire extinguisher nozzles are inserted into bodies.

Her information comes from the Israeli media. I knew much from reading Ha'aretz.

Western media don't report this.

There is as far  i know no proof that Hamas men committed rapes on 7 October and by now there probably would be had it happened.

Jewish Currents: Iran Is Not an Existential Threat - Iran poses no significant danger to Israel, let alone the US.

I recommend this very cogent article in Jewish Currents. I quote

It wasn’t until the 1990s that Israeli and American leaders began describing Iran as a threat to the Jewish state. But this change in rhetoric didn’t occur because Iran’s attitude toward Israel changed. It occurred because Iraq, Israel’s chief bogeyman, had been brought to its knees. With Saddam Hussein hobbled by the 1991 Gulf War and then a decade of brutal US sanctions, the Islamic Republic took its place as Israel’s foremost regional competitor. “Nothing special happened with Iran,” retired Israeli Brigadier General Shlomo Brom told Parsi, “but because Iraq was removed [as a danger], Iran started to play a greater role in the threat perception of Israel.”
To be sure, Iran did grow stronger in the ’90s as a result of Iraq’s decline. It also began backing Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s recognition of Israel. And in the early 1990s, Iran restarted its nuclear energy program, which had begun under the Shah. It was this cocktail—Iran’s hostile rhetoric, its nuclear program, and its support for armed anti-Zionist groups—that birthed the current conventional wisdom that Iran represents an existential threat to Israel.

But this claim has never been borne out by Iranian behavior. Despite its antipathy toward Zionism, and its efforts to resist Israeli and American power, the Iranian regime has shown no willingness to imperil itself by trying to destroy Israel. To the contrary, it has repeatedly sought to defuse conflict with both Jerusalem and Washington, if only because it recognizes their vastly superior power. In May 2003, after the Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran sent the US government a secret message: If the US lifted sanctions, ceased trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic, and accepted Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, Iran would end its support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, pressure Hezbollah to disarm, place its nuclear program under international inspection, and support the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which offered to recognize Israel if it accepted a Palestinian state and a “just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.” According to Richard Haass, then head of policy planning at the State Department, the Bush administration spurned Tehran’s offer because “the bias was toward a policy of regime change.”

The way we live now

From an opinion piece in the Washington Post on 8 April by Marc A. Thiessen advising Trump on five things to do in his [unprovoked] war against Iran.

"Fourth, carry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations. Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed."

A left-wing  Spanish Member  of the Cortes has just likened Netanyahu to Hitler but she might have likened Trump to  Hitler. I am somebody who until now always hated Hitler analogies.

Pluck the moment

Robert De Niro: 'Now is now. Then is then. And the future will be what the future will be. So enjoy the moment while you are in it.'

Seen this afternoon

 

South Korean President Lee, addressing Israel

"It’s disappointing that you don’t even once reflect on the criticisms from people around the world who are suffering and struggling due to your relentless anti-human rights and anti-international law actions." 

He said this after posting  a video of IDF soldiers throwing a young Palestinian off a rooftop and commenting that "there is no difference between this and the Japanese wartime sexual slavery issue we raise, the massacre of Jews, or wartime killings." 

Israel's Foreign Ministry responded that his post was "unacceptable" but President Lee stood his ground.

Why don't England, France, Germany and Romania say this?

Professor Norman Finkelstein

 

“Israel is now a madman.”

“It didn’t get its way with Iran, and so it is totally destroying Lebanon now.”

“It is in a state of catatonic lunacy.”

“I’ve said this for years. Now it’s the consensus.”

“Israel is a lunatic state. A lunatic society."

World turned upside down

In a world gone mad few things are any longer incredible but this is.

A report claims senior Pentagon officials, including Elbridge Colby, invited the Papal Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre to a meeting and warned him that the US can act however it wants and mentioned the “Avignon Papacy.”  

When the popes were in exile at Avignon  their sovereignty  was curtailed by military pressure from the French kings. 

Vatican sources say it was sufficiently serious that the planned US visit by the Pope is cancelled. 

However Damian Thompson does not believe the story and I trust him always.

Liviu Mihaiu, one of Romania's most respected writers and intellectuals, just posted this on Facebook. I agree with what Professor Mohammad Marandi says here . 

He has a habit of being right. I must start watching him regularly.  He correctly predicted 3 or 4 days in how the Iranian war would pan out.

Deb Finkle is a Canadian Communist and probably Jewish. I agree with her here.

I also agree with Ann Coulter here. She was once devoted to Trump. I mentioned these points here before, with reference to Biden financing Netanyahu's holocaust in Gaza. Reagan or Carter would not have done this and Kennedy or Eisenhower absolutely wouldn't have done so.

<Reagan shows why you need a man of high moral character in the White House.

NYT, Aug 13, 1982, REAGAN DEMANDS END TO ATTACKS IN A BLUNT TELEPHONE CALL TO BEGIN

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 - President Reagan expressed ''outrage'' to Prime Minister Menachem Begin today over Israel's latest bombing raids in west Beirut, saying the attacks had resulted in ''needless destruction and bloodshed.''..

Larry Speakes, the deputy White House press secretary, said Mr. Reagan had been ''shocked'' by the Israeli attacks ... 

''The President expressed his outrage over this latest round of massive military action,'' ... 

Mr. Speakes, asked whether Mr. Reagan had shouted at the Prime Minister, declined to comment. 

American officials - including, apparently, Mr. Reagan - were stunned by not only the scale of the Israeli air attacks but also the possibility that Mr. Habib's peace proposals could fall apart because of them.

Asked if Mr. Reagan had threatened to suspend American arms aid or take other retaliation, Mr. Speakes replied, ''I won't discuss that.''>

This extraordinary moment in history

Donald Trump has accused Iran of behaving "dishonourably". I am not making this up.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia says Iran bombed the East-West pipeline hours before the ceasefire was agreed. This stops KSA exporting oil without the Houthis blocking the Red Sea. Iran is playing her hand brilliantly.

David Rohde: 

“Iran offered to give away ALL of its ENRICHED URANIUM during the recent peace talks. Hours later the U.S. started dropping bombs.”

Trista Parsi:

<WOW!

Spain's Sanchez is on another level. While most European leaders only apply international law in Ukraine, ignoring it in Gaza and Lebanon, and even stating that it doesn't apply to Iran, Sanchez sticks true to principles and calls for the IMMEDIATE ARREST of Netanyahu.

"Netanyahu launched the worst possible unjustified attack against Lebanon. His contempt for life and international law is intolerable. He is a criminal that must be arrested immediately.”>

I blame  the media for being accomplices to war crimes and illegal wars.

BBC on Israel’s massacres

BBC whitewashing Israel’s killing yesterday of more than 250 civilians in Lebanon by flattening entire neighbourhoods:

“Israel says it hit more than 100 command centres and military sites in 10 minutes…”

I am sick of BBC bias. It's the British equivalent of RT, the mouthpiece of the British establishment. You see the same thing with Russia, China, Viktor Orban, immigration, abortion, feminism, climate change and on and on.

Peace in our time? It looks like Trump will invent a victory and leave, giving Iran the things she asks for. At least let's hope so

A disturbing number of Britons, it seems, would gladly see the survival of the world’s worst regime. So wrote Jake Wallis Simons a couple of weeks ago in the very pro-Israel Daily Telegraph. I am one of them because he was talking about Iran (why is it Iran has a regime and Egypt a government?) although I by no means think that it has the world's worst regime, not by a country mile.

I can think of others worse.

I am not sure America isn't one of them.

I said yesterday that peace was impossible. I saw no reason why Iran would ever accept a ceasefire because it would only allow her enemies to rearm and prepare for a fresh assault.

That is still my position but we were all wrong when we accused Trump of lying about negotiating with Iran. In some way he was talking to Tehran.

Now genuine negotiations based on the maximalist demands of Iran, which by the way seem to be very reasonable, are going to start and meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is going to be reopened with certain conditions and under the control of Iran (as it was until the British wrested control from the Shah of Persia in the 18th century).

I wrote yesterday that Trump and Netanyahu should just give up but they won't but it looks like I was wrong. It looks like this might be exactly what they're going to do, which would of course bring peace.

Netanyahu desperately wants peace not to break out and he may be cunning enough to prevent it, but I doubt it.

Trump was in a locked room and now he has found a key.

Let none of us forgive him or forget that this terrible war is certainly the fault of of Donald Trump and has enormously damaged American interests and standing in the world.

But let us remember that it is much more the fault of Benjamin Netanyahu.

He is not America's friend. He is not the friend of anybody apart from Israel and what he calls the diaspora Jews.

Why should he be? Countries do not have friends.

The two countries which seemed to me to have behaved in a very civilised and moral way throughout the last few years when it comes to diplomacy, though certainly not in their domestic policy, are China and Iran.

I note that China is said to have persuaded Iran to talk to the American aggressor.

An (anti-Zionist, of course) synagogue in Tehran was completely destroyed by the Israelis, who remarkably then issued their first apology since they started the war