"Many of the pundits who pushed for war are also Israel focused. Bill Kristol– who helped promote Tom Cotton to the Senate with funding from the Emergency Committee for Israel — is deeply disappointed in Trump’s decision. Bret Stephens has been the leading “warmonger” at the Times, writes Andrew Bacevich.
The teaser for a recent Bret Stephens column in The New York Times accurately summarizes its contents: “If Iran won’t change its behavior we should sink its navy.”…
“Nobody wants a war with Iran,” writes Stephens. Actually some people do want war, almost surely including President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. So, too, does Stephens himself. The deceptive history that he chooses to propagate can have no purpose except to promote armed conflict and to impede any understanding into America’s role in planting the seeds of forever war." Weiss in Mondoweiss
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Worth reading. So many of my old "friends" are mentioned, so many. pl
https:/worth reaading/mondoweiss.net/2019/06/trumps-climbdown-defeat/
Worth reading indeed! Israel’s influence on US foreign policy reminds me of the zombie fungus that infects carpenter ants in the Amazon jungles.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/
Sheldon Adelson, one of Trumps primary funders, advocates
the use of nuclear weapons to resolve “The Iran Crisis”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCW4IasWXc
I fear for the safety of our sailors in the Middle East. I hope another derivative of the USS Liberty is not planned.
A little closer to home…
“The team behind the study say their data suggests that the parasite may be involved in reducing a person’s fear of failure and high-risk, high-reward ventures. Rodents infected with T. gondii are known to become less fearful of encountering cats.”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175045-business-students-more-likely-to-have-a-brain-parasite-spread-by-cats/
Thanks for the metaphor, Chuck! I gotta use that at some point.
Just saw that video over on MOA and I notice that it’s referred to elsewhere also. Weird at the least and scary if the man’s anything like in earnest, I thought.
Time to drop the “neocon” label? They seem in any case to be just the operatives. Looking at the extent and amount of Mr Adelson’s political contributions and reflecting that such donations must be the main engine of modern politics our affairs are now, I suggested, run for us by a gaggle of elderly Breiviks.
I may have brought this up before, but I think eventually the entire premise of monotheism needs examining, as it does frame the Western paradigm.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be that essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgment, from which we fell. More the new born, than the wise old man. The consciousness seeking knowledge, than any particular form of it. The light shining through the film, than the images on it.
This top down, father figure lawgiver is a useful narrative device for instilling generations of citizens with the prevailing social codes, especially respect for top down authority.
While confusing the absolute with the ideal might seem an obscure philosophical debate, the effect is to validate ones cultural mores as universal absolutes, than the cultural ideals they in fact are. We are no longer tribes battling the wilderness and it’s time we update the software society functions by. It is not just the increasingly inverted tribalism of Israel, but the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia and the fundamentalist rapturests in the US that need their bubble pricked.
“Nobody wants a war with Iran…” Yes. But the war already started, with the US embargo on oil exportations from Iran. Which is a deadly weapon that will kill thousands of vulnerable Iranians, and overall, will start a “regime change” processus in Iran, a deadly one. So, IMHO, I think that the Elijah Magnier explanation has to be taken into consideration, as exposed here : https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/21/iran-and-trump-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss/
The statu quo is lethal for Iran : no “warm” war (i.e Trump wins the elections, Europeans and Japan stay quiet, and the mollah regime will collapse soon or late). So Iran has a strong interest in pushing the stakes to the extreme : to force the US to start a military conflict, or to withdraw the embargo. Without military confrontation, Iran has 100% “chances” to loose. With an armed conflict which would bring chaos on the oil market and the in the world’s economy, Iran has some chances to stay alive and to reach an agreement – at least because the conflict would force Europeans and Japanese to enter in the dance, no mention China and Russia…
Ironically, that would bring the Iran position close to Israel et SA ones.
I suppose this is to counter the meme that Iran seeks the total destruction of Israel. I believe this meme propagated in the west is based on a translation of some statement made by Ahmadinejad a previous President of Iran. This has been disputed by many including if the translation was accurate but Iranian Mullahs Crazy & Evil has been a significant part of the neocon & zionist IO for some time. Of course this meme is supported by images of the hostage taking in Teheran. The fact is the ultimate authority in Iran rests with the Ayatollah not the President and there is no evidence if either the previous Ayatollah Khomeini or the current Ayatollah Khamenei have ever made statements that the policy of the Iranian government is the total destruction of the state of Israel.
The question of who can be trusted with nuclear weapons is always going to be subjective. Can the Ayatollah in Qom be trusted or the Likudniks in Tel Aviv or the guy in DC with his biggest campaign donor egging him on? It is indisputable however that US regime change policy ends when a state acquires nuclear weapons. The lesson of Rocketman vs Ghadaffi can’t be lost on Khamenei.
Most of us know what the deal is….the Israeli Fifth Column and their bought US politicians.
So how do we get rid of them is the question.
Also an ER surgeon found a particularly high prevalance in motorcyclists who ended up in his operating theater. It causes epigentic modification of neural pathways in rodents, and presumably in humans.
I’m not a financier-type, but Escobar has argued that any type of hot war will close the Straits and the resulting oil-supply disruption will cause in the complete implosion of the derivatives market, which will, in turn, implode the world economy. So, no hot war.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/24/pepe-escobar-war-on-iran-calling-americas-bluff/
But surely the Bibis of the world know this, too. Could that be why there is dissent in the ranks at AIPAC?
On a realted Israeli issue by now many of you have read news articles about the Bahrain summit where Kushner is trying to convince Arab countries to contribute $50 billion to implement the financial side of Kushner’s Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Some Arab countries are represented at the meeting but as expected the Palestinians are boycotting the meeting.
According to a meeting David Friedman, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, had yesterday with some prominent Israelis, the Kushner plan asks for the money to come only from Arab countries. No country has agreed to contribute even 1$, including the U.S. Of the $50 billion in requested contributions, $25 billion is supposed to go to Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and $25 billion to the West Bank. The money paid to the 3 Arab countries is to permanently absorb the millions of Palestinian refugees residing in their countries so they are ineligible to return to either Israel or the West Bank in any eventual peace deal.
The $25 billion in investment allocated to the West Bank will actually be given to Israeli companies to expand their operations in the West Bank to provide employment opportunities to Palestinians. The Israeli minimum wage is the equivalent of $320/month but the deal calls for the Israeli companies not to be bound by any minimum wage. In effect allowing Israeli companies access to even cheaper wages by desperate Palestinians.
There is another dimension to this proposal – in effect a stealth annexation. As Israeli companies start building facilities all across the West Bank, along with some housing for the Jewish managers of these facilities there will be no part of the West Bank that is any longer exclusively Palestinian. Thus along with existing Jewish settlements, the pressure will build in Israel to finalize the annexation since they are in control of most of the territory and the Palestinians still will be without a vote in national elections.
The travel restrictions Israel imposes on Palestinians will remain in place. Thus if Palestinians want to work in the new Israeli facilities that are supposed to be built in the West Bank, the Palestinians will need Israeli permission and travel permits to get to work and back home. The same is true of the new train route between Gaza and the West Bank where travel is restricted to those who can get an Israeli permit to make the trip.
Needless to say, Israel is in favor of this new peace proposal since everything is stacked in their favor and the Palestinians hate it. Kushner’s proposal is a big bag of nothing. It doesn’t look like it will even be unveiled publically since it could prove embarrassing.