continued iran baiting; when will it end? we shudder to think…
‘On Eve Of 4th Of July Parade U.S. Attempts To Lure Iran Into Shooting Down Another U.S. Plane’, July 3, 2019, moonofalabama.org
“Today a manned U.S. reconnaissance plane entered Iranian airspace in a clear attempt to provoke Iran into shooting it down. Such an incident would have created an occasion for Trump to give the American people a special 4th of July fireworks.”
“The case today is not in doubt. The U.S. military definitely tried to provoke Iran into shooting down another one of its planes.
The US Airforce RC-135V Rivet Joint are signal intelligence planes that snoop on other countries.
The plane flew over the islands Abu Musa and Sirri in the Persian Gulf which are Iranian territory and Iranian airspace. It falsely signaled that it was an Iranian plane.
The aviation transponder of the U.S. spy plane was set to a code that is associated with Iran. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defined (pdf) 24-bit addresses that identify the type of the plane and the country where a plane is registered . The 24 bit codes for Iranian registered airplanes begins with the country identifier 0111 0011, written in hexadecimal as 73.
As @GDarkconrad pointed out, this isn’t an accident, the USAF did this with Venezuelan codes off the coast of #Venezuela too. US reconnaissance planes are impersonating the codes of the countries they are conducting reconnaissance on, endangering future civilian flights.”
“This morning the U.S. spy plane willingly penetrated Iranian airspace. It squawked a fake code which showed ill intention. This happened on the 31st anniversary of Flight 655. The Iranian military would certainly still like to take revenge for that mass murder. It was a huge provocation likely intended to lure Iran into shooting it down.
Whoever came up with it, and those who signed off to allow this incident to happen, will now be disappointed. Iran clearly did not fall into their trap.
The world owns a big thank you to the Iranian air defense crews on Abu Musa for their disciplined behavior.”
Had Iran shot the plane down it would have been clearly within its rights. But imagine it had done so. A manned U.S. reconnaissance plane, not a drone, would have come down and the crew would be dead. U.S. media would scream for revenge.
It would have happened on the eve of Trump’s 4th of July speech which will be followed by the military parade and overflight he ordered. 5,000 people from military families are invited to the event.
An ideal TV situation to announce that the U.S. Commander in Chief ordered to ‘obliterate’ Abu Musa island, the castle that controls the Strait of Hormuz, with maybe a small nuke. The U.S. public would have loved those 4th of July fireworks. Newspapers would headline “Commander In Chief Demonstrates His Resolve!” Trump’s approval rating would soar to above 80%.
It would take days until the information that the flight was an intended provocation would enter the news. U.S. media would simply ignore it just as they ignored the evidence about Flight 655. The island would be unusable for Iran but the wider environmental damage from a small, kiloton range nuclear device would be minimal. No one in the U.S. would care about it.
One wonders who came up with such a nefarious plan. Was it Trump, the great showman, himself? Was that the reason why he ordered the military to join the 4th of July parade on such a short notice? Or was it John Bolton or ‘we lie, we cheat, we steal‘ Mike Pompeo? Some minion at the CIA or CentCom?”
‘Iran fury as Royal Marines seize tanker suspected of carrying oil to Syria’; Iran summons UK ambassador over incident off Gibraltar as tensions escalate over nuclear deal, July 4, 2019 [who wrote that stupid title?]
“Tehran responded by summoning Britain’s ambassador to its foreign ministry to explain what it described as an “illegal seizure”, which had been earlier described by the UK as enforcing the EU’s sanctions regime against Syria.
It is understood that the ambassador, Rob Macaire, reiterated the British position during the meeting, saying: “[The UK] welcomes this firm action by the Gibraltarian authorities” to enforce sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Marines from 42 Commando were involved in the overnight seizure, with some landing on the ship’s deck by rapidly descending down ropes suspended from a Wildcat helicopter, and the rest following up via speedboat.
MoD sources said British troops were at all times acting under the direction of the Gibraltar police. The marines provided the technical expertise to allow the tanker to be boarded at sea.
But the British position appeared to be contradicted by Spain, whose acting foreign minister, Josep Borrell, said Gibraltar had seized Grace 1 after a request from the US to Britain to pick up the tanker laden with crude oil.
White House national security adviser John Bolton welcomed the seizure of the ship. “Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of EU sanctions,” Bolton tweeted. “America & our allies will continue to prevent regimes in Tehran & Damascus from profiting off this illicit trade,” he said.
Mr. Ambassador, the Iranian people are pleased today with UK's action to seize the oil tanker that stole oil from the Iranian people for the criminal Assad's regimd.
Happy 4th! pic.twitter.com/nRX6jQpSg1— Iranian American (@IranLionness) July 4, 2019
The UK Foreign Office faced a dilemma over the past few days knowing that if it seized the Iranian oil ship, as requested by the US, it risked deeply antagonising Tehran, which is desperate to increase its oil exports.”
“…the Foreign Office reasoned that it had a legal and moral duty to impound any ship that was heading to Syria in breach of EU sanctions. It was the Iranian’s surprise decision to enter Gibraltarian waters with its communications transponders on that left the UK with the option to impound the vessel.
In making its decision, the UK had to weigh the possible knock-on effect on the Iran nuclear deal, as well as reprisals against British diplomats in Tehran that work in an embassy that was trashed by Iranian protesters in this century.”
“Mapping data showed it sailed a longer route to the mouth of the Mediterranean, around the southern tip of Africa, instead of via the Suez Canal in Egypt.
Panama’s Maritime Authority said on Thursday night that the ship was delisted from Panama’s international boat registry as of 29 May after it received an alert indicating that the Grace 1 had participated in or was linked to terrorism financing.”
And there you have it: a report full of agitprop iron-clad innuendo, folks.
‘Iran’s ‘duty’ to seize British tanker if UK fails to release captured ship – senior official at IRGC’, RT.com, 5 July, 2019
“Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo claimed that the ship was transporting crude oil to Syria “in violation” of the EU sanctions placed on Damascus. According to Madrid, which considers the waters off Gibraltar to be its own, the British captured the ship at the request of the US. Officials in Washington, meanwhile, welcomed the seizure of the vessel, saying that it was carrying Iranian oil.
Later in the day, Iran summoned the British ambassador and slammed the seizure of the vessel as “a destructive step” and “a form of piracy.” Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Abbas Mousavi argued that the sanctions against Syria are illegal under international law and Iran does not recognize them.
On Friday, Major General Mohsen Rezaee of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who is also the secretary of the influential Expediency Discernment Council, tweeted that Iran should be ready for counter measures.
Should Britain refuse to release the ship, it is the authorities’ “duty to seize a British oil tanker,” he argued.”
On June 13, 2019 Tony Cartalucci had offered Brookings Institution’s 2009 In their 2009 paper, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), the corporate-financier funded Brookings Institution would first admit the complications of US-led military aggression against Iran (emphasis added):
‘...any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it.
The paper then lays out how the US could appear to the world as a peacemaker and depict Iran’s betrayal of a “very good deal” as the pretext for an otherwise reluctant US military response (emphasis added):
The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.
And from 2009 onward, this is precisely what the United States set out to achieve.
First with President Obama’s signing of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, up to and including President Trump’s attempts to backtrack from it based on fabricated claims Iran failed to honor the agreement.
The 2009 policy paper also discussed “goading” Iran into war, claiming (emphasis added):
With provocation, the international diplomatic and domestic political requirements of an invasion [of Iran] would be mitigated, and the more outrageous the Iranian provocation (and the less that the United States is seen to be goading Iran), the more these challenges would be diminished. In the absence of a sufficiently horrific provocation, meeting these requirements would be daunting.
Unmentioned directly, but also an obvious method for achieving Washington’s goal of provoking war with Iran would be the US simply staging an “Iranian provocation” itself.”
“How likely this is to succeed remains questionable – decades of US sanctions, covert and overt aggression, as well as proxy wars have left Iran resilient and with more influence across the region now than ever. Still, Washington’s capacity for sowing regional destruction or dividing and destroying Iran should not be underestimated.
The intentional creation of – then withdrawal from the Iran Deal, the US’ persistent military presence in the Middle East, and sanctions aimed at Iran all indicate that US policymakers remain dedicated isolating and undermining Iran. It will continue to do so until its geopolitical goals are met, or until a new international order creates conditions in the Middle East and throughout the global economy making US regime change against Iran impossible.”
The IAEA will convene a special session to address Iran’s illicit nuclear activities. In light of its secret nuclear weapons archive, Iran must be pressured to abandon its nuclear ambitions. https://t.co/7M9XRKyDd9
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) July 5, 2019
Oh, the irony of this administration claiming to ‘support the IAEA’ now after three long years… As for who might be the true underlying authors of No Nukes/Total Hell on Iran, we can speculate Netenyahu, Bolton, Pompeo, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, along with the Iranian CIA Desk (internal regime change) as authors. As for the larger picture, of course, Iran, Russia, and China are the new Axis of Evil, quaintly described earlier as ‘The Great Competitors’ (to American hegemony) because: Eurasian Heartland geopolitics. Syria, of course, is a proxy in the Pipelineistan Wars. But as this stinkin’ Empire is losing its power, it’s more dangerous and unpredictable, especially given the dyspeptic, deranged, and volatile nature of the President.
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
first the sneak attacks on tanker ships
Iran was cool. Western media tried to spin it to their advantage. Didn't stick. (Like Argentina). Then, it was the spy drone shot down. More brinkmanship. Iran was cool. Could have taken out the tail too. Private airspace. No go. Next, US military tries a little bolder move. Send in a bigger spy plane and pretend it is Iran's. Again, Iran was cool. They see war baiting and consider the consequences.
Next, lapdog terrorist state UK does high seas piracy on an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar. Spanish loyalties to the EU kick in. Mixed up sanctions. Russian owned, Panamanian flagged. Court battles. Blatant international law ignorance. Next, Israel will pull some excusable act. How much will an oppressed nation take before striking back?
While Bolt-on may be in Mongolia, the Pentagon generals are following orders to push this destruction of an independent nation to the hilt.
Sucks being an american with a conscious. Leave them alone. Stop making enemies to justify military budgets already. Quit while you are ahead.
before this ship
seizure, i hadn't realized that gibraltar is a british protectorate. but good on madrid for trying to name the US as having given the UK their orders.
yes, i agree with you and not so much tony cartalucci:
as with the alleged iranan limpet mines nonsense, t'was mischief by the IDF, as may the next provocations be.
i suppose my biggest fear is that more flase flags and baitings of iran won't lead to that nation unleashing rockets, but given 'attacks on amerikan interests' may lead to 'limited nuclear war' on iran.
i'd added this initially, then deleted it: ‘Russians Help Iranians Dig in as Final Battle Against Great Satan Looms’, John Helmer, June 27, 2019, russia-insider.com (just the opening for now)
isn't the subtweet cartoon under bolton's ship seizure tweet great?
As the empire opts for mass murder-suicide
Donald Trump exposes its idiocy like nobody else. He (with John Bolton and Mike Pence whispering in his ear) has his own plans to overthrow the world's democracies for cheap nature (which is mostly, at this point, cheap oil, since they are busy mining the Alberta tar sands for the stuff, and tar sands are not relatively cheap). So for instance Iran, as you've pointed above. Also Venezuela, which displays his violent ineptitude in spades. As Roger Harris pointed out yesterday in Counterpunch:
The desperation of this ploy is well-illustrated by the fact that they couldn't get anyone more prominent to do their dirty work. As for Iran, gjohnsit below exposes the embargo as a fraud and a fake -- so yeah they can't overthrow the PSUV government in Venezuela, they can't keep China from buying Iran's oil, they can't invade Iran, they can't, in short, get a "win," because their whole notion of life is based on death. What else are you going to call printing $22 trillion and handing most of it to the military?
The core of it all is the capitalist perspective which views the planet as a repository of cheap nature -- the real, physical world is to be an object of exchange insofar as it is recognized at all, or an object of plunder if it can be gotten for free. (And as for the plans to colonize Mars, they're trading in fantasy. Nobody is going to go millions of miles away from Earth to live underground their whole lives under soil contaminated with perchlorates and destroy their bodies with 37% gravity.) This perspective is "Cartesian" because it's based on the separation of mind from body -- only in this case "mind" is Donald Trump and his puppet-masters, and "body" is an increasingly attacked planet Earth with all the people in it.
So here's one summary of the ruling class's plans for the collective future:
Are these people stupid? Psychotic? What's your guess?
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
yotta java this mornin',
amigo? hella lotta homework you've given us. ; ) i'd pretty much breezed by VZ as i would have needed to bring in the most recent assasination plots against both maduro and possibly guaido as a false flag, but as all the reports announced by VZ FM jorge arreaza translated from spanish (orinoco news etc.), tra la la, i'd chosen to tick with iran.
and yes, bolton's been tweeting up three storms about guaido and the murdering VZ military, and with all due respect to roger harris, the NYT is pretty much mainstream. (it's behind a paywall for me, so i won't be able to see if the UN said the same thing.)
@AmbJohnBolton · Jul 5 "US is proud to be supporting Interim President Guaido & the democratically elected National Assembly, which is courageously working to free Venezuela of a ruthless dictator responsible for Venezuela suffering the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 yrs." and more like that.
and with all due respect to gjohnist, guess we'll see if trump blinked just for a moment...or not. Vox ward? i stopped reading at this rubbish; sorry:
wish i had the time to read the trillion dollar boondoggle and your moser link, but homework time is over for me (weekend chores calling). i will add that the AOC/markey green new deal is a boondoggle for capitalists in its own right. dozens of new finance capital bidnesses are sprouting up to er...profit mightily from it. but...at least they're semi-honest about it. (wish i'd kept the lists i've seen in the twittererse.
more later as i'm able; thanks, cass. but yes: commodifying and financializing the natural world is what bidness does best, isn't it? (esp. amerikan bidness and compromised non-profits.)
mr. moser does cherry-pick his facts,
esp. re: why all Rs and some Ds are tanking AOC's GND. which, by the way, never mentions the US military being the largest carbon footprint on the planet, but hilariously DOES use the DOD's language: 'climate change as a force multiplier', and the buzzwords of 'zero-sum carbon' (market fixes, false solutions, and clean and/or 'renewable' energy, which sure doesn't equal 'sustainable', including with the external costs..
howie hawkins' green party green new deal does at least have a peace dividend, but has stuff like 'electric cars' (wth?), but his socialist policies are great, and that's what i wish he were running on primarily. to me...it's so baked in now that mitigation should be the focus (yeah, demilitarizing would slow things down a bit). i wish the Red Deal folks could not re-invent the wheel, but could learn from the indigenous in mexico and south america. i'd given a bunch of links to aspie corner i'd dug up with portions of the ecosocialist treatises from the cochabamba accords (bolivia), la via campesina, and Orca II (?: that dooesn't look right).
but crap, cass; i dinnae know there'd be so much homework on this thread. arrrrggh!
not sure what the problem is --
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
i'd almost quipped earlier:
I hope you won't give me/us a pop quiz! but here you are. i read it differently as moser hinting at where to look, where not to look, until at the bottom he lauds both miz gabbard's acronym, then the green part new deal and the red nation.
but as i honored you by who showing bolton's tweet re: the murderous maduro regime at the NYT, did you happen to click in? oddly, internet explorer let me in early this morning, so i scanned it, and if there's anything true in the UN report, my guess is that it's minimal.
but no, to trump's blinking on sanctions: gjohnsit used sources laden with 'insiders say', etc., and it's been russian ships carrying iranian oil to china, as iran had been down to exporting about 500,000 gallons a day on average (down from a million and a half, apparently), not enough to keep their economy alive.
will iran seize a UK tanker s some state officials have advised/warned? that might be considered 'taking the bait', so we'll just have to see.
increasing their uranium enrichment amounts and percentage levels is a whole 'nother hot-potato issue. (RT had some news this a.m., but not newsworthy/trustworthy enough to bring, imo.
that's not what he's really saying.
moser's a polemicist, which is fine in it self in some ways, but he extrapolates our future in some weird ways.
i'll quote this passage:
"When Trump and the Republicans deny climate change, when Pelosi, Pallone, Perez, Biden and Obama join with Trump in sabotaging the Green New Deal or dismissing climate action as too expensive, too dreamy, not practical or too pure — they are all bold-faced liars and frauds."
and of course pelosi had called it a Green Dream, but he's lying. have you read the tome? just as a for instance: 'retrofit every building in the US with clean power' or whatever those meaningless buzzwords mean. trillions, even if could even be done without creating more climate change havoc. his link to pelosi claimed it was because pelosi thought it would interfere with bidness or something, which she hadn't said. another of his links below that paragraph went to another of his 'capitalism, militarism, and big oil' tomes. well, anyone following the debate should get that, although few do, or pretend not to.
but neither does ocasio's deal mention the US military carbon footprint. loads of appeals to identity polititics, over and over, but it's another capiitalist con in my book.
but now she's saying 'it was just a suggetion, not a blueprint. some say the basis of it had come from tom friedman, the mustache of wisdom; as to that i'm agnostic.
what will get enacted are the many forms of geo-engineering: carbon sequestration, carbon capture and storage, and rubbish like bill gates and company's scary dreams to block out the sun. what could possibly go wrong?
Haven't read it
depends on which GND
you're referring to. I'd linked to the non-pdf version when i'd featured my critique as well as others. but this seems to be the pdf version (i wasn't willing to scroll thru it, and if what you say is in it, it's been epically updated. that link doesn't even include a date, as far as i could see.
thanks for your interest, albeit this thread was supposed to be specifically about 'baiting iran'. never can control where the comments go, of course.
the plain text may be at her
house.gov website under press releases or some such. if you'd meant howie klein, or the green party new deal, irrc, there was a military (peace) dividend in how to pay for the GND. you can find it at his 2020 website.
Wasn't aware of
As to o/t, my above was merely in response to your own comments, as the thread creator, in several posts about the GND.
Re Iran: I wouldn't advise further provocations by the Trump admin, although I understand he may be doing this for either political reasons domestically or to partially satisfy his warmongering nat'l security team. This could get out of hand -- military response by Iran, leading to a US greater response, then war, regional at the outset, but likely to bring in Russia. Then we are really up the crick.
i had only meant to
discuss the continued baiting of iran, and maybe should have said that to cassiodorus to begin with. but i did him the honor of reading ten of his links that were quite off-topic in the spirit of 'no one can control where a comment thread will go.
i do get your drift, same as i get cass's, but respectfully disagree. the only portions that might pass into law are those that will feed the capitalist machine, even if a few of the hazily worded portions are included: 'promoting biodiversity, organic farming,' etc.
plain text may have been the wrong term. what i'd meant was text from which oe could copy paste. at least for me, the one i'd given you did't lend to that.
fortunately, the grayzone project has covered the UN censure of 'the maduro regime' that the NY Slimes had covered as i'd hoped cass might have as he'd brought VZ into the mix.
'Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas slams UN High Commissioner Bachelet’s report on Venezuela as a politicized collection of baseless accusations by “advocates of regime change” July 7, 2019 Anya Parampil (three short outtakes)
Nobody is obliged to support all the Green New Deal has
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
i do understanding your
thinking, cass, and here at c99% hope dies last, so i'm the outlier, as i just happen to disagree is all. for one thing, it's the sort of incrementalism that always stands in the way of sweeping awareness and change, as historically LOTE voting. also, the climate emergency began at least twenty of thirty years ago, but now that capital can profit mightily from the concept, reports are coming daily like: '45 million species are at risk!'. well, of course they're at risk. and have been for quite some time. and a lot of the risk comes not just from climate chaos, but from Big Ag factory farming and glyphosate, bT crops, and bill gates ad company's Green Revolution.
i just went and grabbed howie hawkins' ecosocialist GND and the how to pay for it has now devolved to 'cuts to the military budget' from an earlier iteration that was fairly bold, more on the order of 'close all military bases'.
but here's a serious Q: do you really believe that with so much of the world's nations running on fossil fuels, that climate chaos can be reversed in time 'to save the human species'? the feedback loops now extant seem to indicate No, but then it depends which 'scientists' one reads, doesn't it?
I think the problem with the incrementalists --
What everyone learns from the struggle to establish the Green New Deal is that the elite murder-suicide consensus isn't even willing to go as far. One saw for instance Hillary Clinton's plans for climate change, which involved promoting the manufacture of a few solar panels while on the next screen the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia boasted that his regime supplied Clinton with 20% of her campaign finance money. At any rate, most elite opposition to anything even as half-baked as the GND doubtless has to do with the promotion of the GND, which poses a utopian dream in opposition to the current reality.
(The Molly Crabapple cartoon concludes with an evocation of this utopian dream.)
If it's anything they want, it's that they want us to wait quietly for our murder-suicide outcome. No utopian dreams will be allowed outside of the ones your ruling class has approved, which exclusively involve their pursuit of more money and power, eventually leading to escape homes in New Zealand where they imagine themselves sitting out the climate change mega-catastrophe, ha ha. Your ruling class has spoken.
In that regard, the inadequacies of the GND cannot yet be the primary issue with it. Maybe after it actually stands a chance, which now it doesn't.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
i did try to watch that
cartoon again...before i began gagging...again. clearly, miz 'unfettered capitalism' klein wrote the script. and yes, i've seen it deconstructed by actual socialists on twitter, most especially the appeal to identity politics in crabapple's figures, and an fdr-esque mobilization, and tra la la.
i will say that moser at least saw that at the heart of clmate change lies: capitalism, which the ecosocialists in the global south have known for decades. 'fix a capitalistic corporate problem with more capitalist profiteering'? i just don't see it. but you seem to have not answered my Q to you.
here; let me go fetch whitney webb's piece on the democrats' GND; i'd used in my critique of it months ago.
'Corporations See a Different Kind of “Green” in Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal”, mintpressnews, feb. 8, 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” initiative was unveiled on Thursday and quickly became the target of disingenuous ridicule from both sides of the aisle. But as Whitney Webb highlights in this Dec 18, 2018 piece, there are very serious reasons to be concerned.
by Whitney Webb
i've heard naomi wolf's critique was similar, but it was all in a long video, so i didn't watch/listen. but trying to find webb's again, the first hit was popular resistance, and they said that klein's original vision was to cut the military budget by half. not.good.ehough., even at that.
Yeah they're dorky.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
utopian dream?
i'll let you dream it. on later edit: to repeat myself: the bucks should be spent to mitigate the next climate disasters, as when the army corps of engineers' levies failed in new orleans, when hurricane disaster relief by the USA still hasn't happened...globally? name the nations: floods in bangladesh, famine in so many african nations (not all written by climate change), on and on. mitigation, as to me, it's all written in stone now, esp. as carbon ppm is not the largest forecaster of doom, but melting seacaps and glaciers, permafrost melting, methane unleashed on the ocean floor as the oceans heat up exponentially, and all.those.feedback.loops.
and no, it wasn't that the figures were dorky, just IP politics appeal, FDR mobilization, as well as to 'the justice dems' by naomi this changes everything klein. i will be featuring her a little bit in my coming diary on 'socialism 2019', however. ; )
sorry i'd neglected to put in the link to webb's critique above, but on a subtweet of one Justice Dems signing on she'd used i did find this:
It's all written in stone now?
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
Cannon Fodder
Did the dudes in the plane know that they had been setup to fly over Iran because their leaders were hoping it would get shot down? If they didn't they know now. And they should be pissed. And if they did how do you talk someone into committing suicide? Can you imagine what was going through their minds as they got closer to the border.
This country is nuts. Insane.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
good golly miss molly!
i'm embarrassed to say i'd never even thought of that. oh, no, they couldn't have known, could they? nah. but yes, they do know now, and sure, they'd be pissed as all giddy-up.
nuts. insane. too stupid to yield to a multi-polar world. and your line from strife delivery about says it all.
That is the first thing that came to my mind!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
good on, ya.
me? nopers (blush).
You are a goober! lol!
What commander would order such a thing?
Want to bet nobody gets court-martialed?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The same type of people who came up with
Operation Northwoods. Some military gents thought that it'd be a great idea to bomb their own ships and blame it on Cuba. Or fly a few planes into buildings for the same thing. This is why 9/11 being an inside job wasn't so far out of reach for some people. This had been planned before.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
okay...
That was a joke, wendy
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
i'd already noted that
i hadn't even thought of snoopy's great question, and said that at least the crew couldn't have known. so no, i don't get why you'd called me a goober and the rest of whatever else you'd said. if you're kinda sorta apologizing for snark gone wrong, i'll accept that.
lol!
I now realize how sensitive you are, and will start my joke comments with something like "this is my attempt at humor coming atcha!".
Or not comment at all.
More likely, not comment at all.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
All that is needed now is for UK to ship a cargo of kittens
Seems that the UK will sail off the coast of Iran some sorta of vessel sure to cause world opinion to go against Iran and justify bombing them. Like maybe some (empty) hospital ship going to India to cure poor children with cancer. Or a cargo vessel full of teddy bears and kittens for the poor children of Africa.
Seems to me that the neocons are trying to force Trump into war given he declined his chance with the drone strike.
dunno who's directing the play,
but yes, well said. gotta say, though, my fave agitprop from the guardian was;
kewl, dudes.
i know it's early for most of you,
but i'm awake since before first light most mornings. tonight's closing song will be (and yes, i know this was pre-1973 when there was a draft. (ending it was the shrewdest thing those masters of war mofos ever did). but the best anti war song ever, and richie havens owns it now. my thanks to both him and the mind-boggling song-writer peter yarrow. hard not to cry every time i hear this... g' night.
Tell the people they are safe now
Hunger stopped him, he lies still in his cell.
Death has gagged his accusations
We are free now, we can kill now,
We can hate now, now we can end the world
We're not guilty, he was crazy
And it's been going on for ten thousand years!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozX0KazFoDk]
Such a great beautiful song and Richie Havens was a favorite
I was living in Boulder Colorado in the late 60's when they shut off all traffic on a big part of Pearl Street downtown, turning it into a great place to walk, with bookstores, restaurants, bars, a place to hear/watch musicians,jugglers,craft people, you name it,all along this mall.
One day walking past a Club on the mall club I saw 'Richie Havens Tonite!'on the marquee and right in front of it was a small group sitting around listening a guitarist that I saw in the same spot almost every day, but clapping along in rhythm on one of the benches was Richie Havens,so I stuck around.
He was so warm and friendly to everyone like they were all people he knew well and liked whenever anyone introduced themselves and it was Richie asking about their lives not talking about his own.
Of course he obliged when people asked for a song but first asking everyone else to join in on the song, and if we didn't know the words hum, or clap along so it was a very warm feeling among all these strangers and the music felt that way.
Then Richie handed the guy back his guitar,asked to hear more from him to which the guy gladly complied and Richie joined in with everyone else until it was time for him to go but not before thanking all of us for it.
Such a humble warm person and it was interesting to watch up close his style of playing guitar, open tuning and a lot of hard strumming but what also got my attention were his fingers, I mean that guy had big hands and really long fingers that made the guitar neck look mighty thin.
Crazy thing but I can't remember even one song we all sang that day but I certainly remember very well the warmth, the good feeling, among this group of strangers.
my aplogies for missing
this; i must have had the tab open for too long. what a wonderful wee havens vignette, and from my old stompin' grounds too!. ; ) he really is the man, isn't he? it is kinda funny you can't remember one song, though...but that's a long time ago now.
he does exude warmth and so much soul, even on film. his performance at woodstock: mmmm, mmmmm.
now there's a whole walking mall downtown, musicians, jugglers, and what not. heck, i even used to sing on the mall when i was in massage school in the early 70s. ; )
Did you ever go to Walt & Hanks Bar on Pearl St.?
I was always on the pool table up front, other than that I hung out up 'on the Hill' by the University in The Golden Cue Pool Room (still there when I last visited) and lived just north of town on Joe Hess's place across from where the big mobile home Lee Park got built.
I think that Joe's place had a lot in common with Steinbeck's 'Tortilla Flats',a lot of wine was drank, the chickens and goats wandered all over the place so you had to keep the front door or they'd be in there too and Joe would sometimes get calls from angry nearby residents telling him some of his horses (and/or goats) were loose, trampling down and eating their yards and shrubbery.
Joe would apologize then tell them he was 'sending some of my boys to catch them, then he'd tell us to let them eat another 10 or twenty minutes then go get them.
One last story. One day the call was about one of his ponies called Blaze that had been tethered to a big tire out in the field that had been seen trotting down the highway with the tire bouncing behind him, and for that we all left immediately to get him before the Sheriff's office could impound him. He was hard to catch and the traffic he caused didn't help.
I also had a girlfriend that lived in Ward where I lived at times in that cabin right beside the Post office and with a population of about 80 everyone knew everyone that came around.
Whenever you drive the Lee Hill Road to Boulder at your last high point coming down the mountain that mobile home park stands out as an eyesore, now it looks better than other mobile home places because they planted trees and did a lot of landscaping work.
But I will never like it and I remember myself and a few others that Joe let live on the place tried to think of a way to stop it from being built, we knew our sabotaging of the equipment only slowed it down but we did it anyway.
Joe knew the old man that sold the property(for 100k around 1969) and so we were allowed to continue to ride horses on that big piece of land until we got a legal notice about 'trespassing'.
I have many many stories around happenings around that 'stomping ground' as you mention it which where I did a lot of 'stomping around' all around the place myself.
Small world indeed.
i'd been to tom's tavern,
but to neither shannon's nor walt & hank's that i can remember. i don't know how to play pool, me. i had a friend from the old days who liked some folks who hung out at tom's. oddly, she was an alcoholic, go figure. did you ever know mo siegel who'd made celestial seasonings? his wife oddly went there sometimes, and her with five kids. again, go figure. manly the bars i went to had live music, but one kinda cool thing about tom's was...it was Just a Bar.
i didn't know north boulder well, but i kinda remember it was sorta old farming land, but i love the stories you've told. ; ) ward i knew slightly, but what a hard to place to live if ya liked long daylight hours, iirc.
horse riding, oh cool! i love ponies, but i've tragically always gotten of horses...the wrong way. but i came back to mancos, co after i finished massage therapy school, it must have been 1976 or '77? i'd started college at CU in 1968, and hoo, boy, had boulder changed by the time i went back a decade later. soooo gentrified. for pay parking lots? ay yi yi!
thanks for the vignettes, and small world indeed.
oh, dan balz. i'd meant to say earlier
that i've been watching some season or other of MI-5 ('spooks' in the UK), and the US CIA is intending to bomb 'critical targets in Iran' because iran just obtained the designs for the necessary 'nuclear trigger' for making nuclear bombs.
life imitating 'art' (of a sort).
from john steppling on twitter:
(i'll need to watch and/or read the transcript later; chores 4 now)
more from iranian news:
‘Iran Ready to Enrich Uranium at Any Purity Level: Official’, tasnimnews.com, july 7, 2019
[large snip]
and here’s iranian FM javad zarif on the subject, also on july 7.
and FM zarif on twitter:
the IAEA has always claimed that iran is in compliance, and as john steppling said in the video: lots of testilyin' will go on at the IAEA meeting. jeezum crow.
spend the dollars on mitigation!
yeah, i' watching treme for the fourth time... ; )
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g81-U6uSHX8]
afro-indians
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmgXIMbT3cU]