I am ashamed of my country's government but few are any better - Ireland and Spain maybe

On the day that the USA attacked Iran Professor Jeffrey Sachs watched country after country on the UN Security Council, including Britain and France, condemned Iran!

Only three countries on the Security Council condemning the attack: Russia, China and Somalia.

“Every country that condemned Iran after an Israeli-U.S. aggression hosts an American military base on its soil. They are not sovereign countries. They dare not speak. They host the U.S. military. They host the CIA. They watch their backs.”

A sleazy, brutal US administration bought by Israel and its supporters and by rich Arabs

Alastair Crooke's sources tell him that Trump approved the Israeli bombing of the Iran's South Pars oil field, which led Iran to attack the Qatari Ras Laffan gas facility where a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas was produced, costing Qatar billions and sending prices soaring. Jared Kushner, whose fund has received huge sums from Qatar, called his father-in-law to report Qatar's anger at the US and Trump therefore lied that he hadn't known about it. Was there ever a more corrupt or more incompetent US President or one with so little concern for international law or honour?

The Israelis killed Ali Larjani because he was negotiating to provide Trump with an off-ramp.

Gaza and Epstein have not changed the attitudes of many or any British and European journalists. 

They now support the US-Israeli unprovoked attack on Iran, as if their countries were at war not two foreign ones on other continents. 

I recommend Max Blumenthal who is a much better source of information than mainstream journalists.

Here he is talking to Andrew Napolitano:

'And this is the Israeli strategy. This is why the Israelis killed Ali Larjani, who was essentially running the Iranian government, because he was negotiating behind the scenes with the Gulf States to provide Trump with an off-ramp and the Israelis need to keep the US in this war for as long as possible because the Israeli goal is not the same as the US goal. 

'We don't actually even know what the US goal is, but the Israeli goal is to destroy Iran as a nation. And to do that, they need the US military to be involved for as long as possible. And Iran is demonstrating that it can not only hit back, but it can reclaim escalation dominance. And that the entire narrative that we're hearing about the Iranian military from the Israelis, which has infested our own media narrative, that their missile launching capacity is been wiped out, that their drone production is wiped out, is totally false. 

'Pete Hegseth the defe-, whatever he is, war secretary, claimed that Iran's air defenses had been flattened. And guess what happened today? For the first time in history, an F-35 was hit with a missile, an Iranian [missile]. And the pilot only escaped because he was probably on the border region in western Iran and was able to get back. Otherwise, he probably would have been taken captive. So, the US doesn't even have control over Iranian skies. This caused all the other bombers that were on their way to Iran to to basically pause and turn around after this pilot got hit.'

This is very much worse than I thought. Congress should impeach Trump now

 

You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage – probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible

Christopher Caldwell is characteristically  brilliant in the Spectator today.

'You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage – probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible. But as soon as the attacks began on Iran, the news brought talk of tactical ‘divergences’ between Israel and the United States. Israel wanted Iran wrecked and weak and was hitting oil infrastructure that the United States had warned it not to. The United States wanted the oil industry up and running – first to lay claim to the oil for Trump, as happened in Venezuela, later to prevent the tit-for-tat strikes on Middle Eastern oil that could cause a global depression.'

Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is ruled? (Count Oxiensterna)

An hour ago.

Retired Judge Andrew Napolitano: 'What are the 2,500 Marines going to do?'

Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson: 'Be killed.'

Can this be true? No. Surely Trump lives to be admired and to win.

Sohrab Ahmari in UnHerd: 

One almost wishes, however, that they had succeeded with DeSantis, who by all accounts is a competent crisis manager who has cooperated effectively with Sunshine State lawmakers to legislate his priorities. As president, DeSantis would have been an old-school, donor-beholden hawk. But we are getting the same thing with the second Trump administration, only with the chaos, messaging confusion, and sheer incompetence characteristic of the multiply-bankrupt ex-developer and reality-TV shouter.

If the United States was bound to waste $200 billion (the Pentagon’s latest ask from Congress) on another Mideast war radiating instability into Europe and beyond, would that it were under a commander in chief blessed with an orderly mind and advised by policy heavyweights instead of yes men. A president who wouldn’t be surprised by the Iranians lashing out at the Gulf — something they repeatedly threatened to do in case of attack. A president who wouldn’t suddenly beg European allies to join him in the adventure, then insult them when they declined. A president whose son-in-law wouldn’t shamelessly commingle diplomacy with the pursuit of profit.

Please click on the link about Jared Kushner receiving billions from Arab governments for his investment fund while conducting negotiations on behalf of President Trump.

Quotations

Cardinal Newman described the Church of England in 1864 as “a serviceable breakwater against doctrinal errors more fundamental than its own." Daily Telegraph

“The mathematician is only complete insofar as he feels within himself the beauty of the true.” Goethe, quoted by Oswald Spengler

"The great replacement isn’t a theory, much less a conspiracy. It’s measurable, physical reality that has changed the West more profoundly than any war." Tucker Carlson

Virginia Woolf’s diary entries on James Joyce’s Ulysses: 

“An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. … I finished ‘Ulysses’ and think it is a misfire. Genius it has, I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first-rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts.”

Iran on X

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

·

Mar 18

It's now unarguable that the war on Iran is one of the most blatant crimes of aggression in history. You now have not 1 but 2 external participants of the US-Iran talks (Oman’s foreign minister and the UK's National Security Advisor) who confirm that the US and Israel attacked despite Iran effectively meeting US conditions for a deal - ensuring it could never build a nuclear weapon, permanently.

Glenn Diesen

@Glenn_Diesen

·

12h

The US goes for massive escalation with the attack on the world's largest gas field, and then suggests to end such attacks. This tactic will not work. If Iran permits the US to decide when to escalate and de-escalate, its deterrence collapses and it will also lose the war. The energy infrastructure of the Gulf States will now burn and US escalation control remains a delusion.

Hamja Ahsan

@HamjaAhsan

·

Mar 16

I am prosecuted German for saying for a Facebook comment on the Guardian written in UK which had "Fuck NATO" and criticised Olaf Scholz as a "neoliberal-fascist pig." for demilitarisation of Germany, led by Volker Beck. Months in prison or a 12,000 euro fine. and put in an official German State Anti-semitism guide for an artwork about a fictional Fried chicken chain called Kabul Fried Chicken which had the line "No Chicken for NATO". Have all the documents. I don't return tk Germany as I fear prison.

Trita Parsi

@tparsi

·

Mar 17

The US/Israel bombed an elementary school in Shiraz, and it appears to be another case of AI identifying the target without human oversight. How so? Because the name of the school contains the word "Shahed"...