The politics of fear has really taken hold in the US -- just as I was beginning to think that maybe Americans were fed up with it. Clearly, I read the wrong Americans. I should make a point of staying in touch with what the pollsters call "the low-information" Americans.
Of course the shooting is an anti-Muslim act -- a terrorist act. What else are we supposed to assume when three Muslims are slaughtered, execution-style, by what Goldberg recently called "a white man with a weapon and a grudge."
We've now got about a dozen of 'em patrolling the Canadian-US border. Harper recently gave the US permission to patrol right up to the border (there used to be a limit to how close the US could come for the purpose of spying, but Harper drools all over the US when it's being its most paranoid).
What Obama is not telling you is that the sanctions aren't about Iran's enrichment program. They are about the fact that Iran has dared to sell oil in currencies other than the petrodollar -- and now it's even threatening to exchange oil for gold. India is one of the two willing oil-for-gold customers, which is why it keeps getting bribed and threatened. China is the other customer, which is why we're hearing Cold War II rhetoric.
I just keep thinking of what all those bazillions of dollars spent on the current GOP clown parade could do if they were redirected at green energy. Or on preventing the accelerating extinction of the world's great apes. Or on the effort to protect our resources of fresh clean water or on the peoples who drink contaminated water because they have no other choice.
PS "Intimate partner violence is pervasive in
U.S. society. Nearly 25 percent of surveyed
women and 7.6 percent of surveyed men
said they were raped and/or physically
assaulted by a current or former spouse,
cohabiting partner, or date at some time
in their lifetime; 1.5 percent of surveyed
women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men
said they were raped and/or physically
assaulted by a partner in the previous 12
months."
Ahmadinejad is doing what he does best: pushing Israel's buttons. That has been useful in that it has provoked a rise out of Israel that exposes Israeli irrationality. Only problem is it's risky. Given Bibi's highly refined strategies of manipulation, a provoked Israel can always get a rise out of Washington, which has resulted in "crippling sanctions" against the Iranian people, sanctions which are all too reminiscent of the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq resulting in the death of half a million children, which Albreit found "worth it." In sum, Ahmadinejad is good at getting both Israel and US to expose their dangerous idiocy, but he has paid a price for it.
This news is all good for Stephen Harper and his tarsands. The more filthy oil we can sell overseas, the more jobs we will create in the tarsands and environs. Canadian drivers will suffer, of course, but they are of no concern to Harper.
On the bright side, maybe more Canadians will give up their cars and start taking public transport.
This whole business is really quite disgusting. The sanctions under which the Iranian people are struggling to survive are a replay of what was done to the Iraqis between the wars in the Gulf. Perhaps when a million and a half Iranian children die of hunger, the US-Israeli war against Iran can begin. This is as cowardly as was the Anglo-American destruction of Iraq. Is it any wonder that the West is in shameful decline?
If I were Japan, India, China, So Korea, and Turkey, I would put my collective foot down. I would get all my petroleum-consuming industries to collectively boycott the US and Israel and demand that they stop this Iranophobic stupidity.
Empires often meet their end by outsiders getting fed up with them. I wish that would happen to the US (and it's spoilt-brat vassal Israel) so that Americans could get on with the crucial work of saving their democratic republic, which is currently disintegrating before the eyes of the world.
As Jeff Greenfield said last night on Charlie Rose, of the 3 people vying for election to the White House in 2012, none are electable. Neither Newt, Mitt, nor Obama can manage to break 50 percent.
If I were an American, I would be voting for Gary Johnson in November -- not because I'm a Libertarian (far from it), but rather because all three of the above don't appear to have much use for democracy.
An American told me this morning that in voting for Johnson, I would be "wasting" my vote. I think America is the only democratic (sic) country where it's believed that a vote cast for a candidate who almost certainly won't win is a vote wasted. I guess that's what "winner takes all" politics means.
"...Barack Obama was deeply alarmed by the degree to which tensions with Iran had been ratcheted up ..."
Well, he was out front on the ratcheting up of these tensions. Maybe, just maybe, he did some reading of his critics, who were warning him that he was playing with fire and was mistaken in thinking he could control the rhetoric.
It appears that Obama woke up just in time, and read the riot act to the Israelis. Lots of Israelis, together with the lunatic fringe of American Zionism, are not happy about it. The fire has not been put out yet. Watch for moves on the part of the Mossad.
There is no offer that is gonna appeal to the Iranians. They want their nuclear program and almost certainly threshold capability. To my knowledge, this is not denied to those signatories of the non-proliferation protocol. Israel just better learn to live with that.
For a historian, Gingrich certainly doesn't read much history. He seems never to have heard of Khalidi,for example -- not to mention all the so-called "new" Israeli historians.
Thanks for this, Juan. It goes into my private collection of "best articles" on Israeli-Palestinian history.
If you think there'd be a panicked out-migration if Iran got the bomb, just think what a full-scale Israeli attack on Iran would produce. Missiles raining down on Israeli cities would drive flocks of Israel Jews into the Diaspora, and Western governments would be only to happy to accept them -- not as a way of making up for their shameless immigration policies of the 1930s but rather because Israelis are every Western government's idea of the perfect immigrants: educated, enterprising, energetic.
Bibi is playing with fire. The more he convinces Israelis that attacking Iran is the only solution, the more Israelis line up at Western embassies in search of second passports.
Maybe in those interesting rehabilitation prisons of Norway, they will screen Ridley Scott's *Kingdom of Heaven* for Breivik. The Templars come off pretty badly in it, while Salahudin is represented as a successful negotiator, who doesn't mind dwelling in paradox -- a good lesson for binary thinkers like Breivik. (Interestingly, American audiences were lukewarm about the film while Europeans understood it perfectly.)
"Not having so many men under arms or stockpiles of expensive military equipment may actually deter military adventurism of the sort the US has pursued in Iraq"
This highlights the difference between militarism and war. The Pentagon has always operated on the superstition that "if you want peace, you have to prepare for war," while in fact, if you prepare for war, that's exactly what you'll get.
Both the US and Israel seem to be freaking out over the putative takeover of Egypt by religious fundamentalists. But I guess both countries know something about religious extremism, since both are infested by their own varieties.
Whenever a government is too weak to address domestic unrest, it looks for a scapegoat. In the West, it started during the Middle Ages, and Jews were targeted. Today, it's Muslims.
Seems to me there's a US "embassy" there that cost almost a trillion dollars. Somehow I just can't see Washington leaving that hardened city-within-a-city empty.
"Erdogan has been repeatedly sandbagged and played by Israeli decision-makers, presumably on the theory that with Turkey’s candidacy for the EU going nowhere fast, and Turkey’s relations with the Arab world and Iran traditionally poor, Ankara had nowhere to go for friends but Tel Aviv and Washington."
Talk about projection! WHO'S got nowhere to go for friends?
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
The politics of fear has really taken hold in the US -- just as I was beginning to think that maybe Americans were fed up with it. Clearly, I read the wrong Americans. I should make a point of staying in touch with what the pollsters call "the low-information" Americans.
Of course the shooting is an anti-Muslim act -- a terrorist act. What else are we supposed to assume when three Muslims are slaughtered, execution-style, by what Goldberg recently called "a white man with a weapon and a grudge."
More to the point, replace the constitution with the PATRIOT act.
When did Iran last launch a war? When did Israel last launch a war?
We've now got about a dozen of 'em patrolling the Canadian-US border. Harper recently gave the US permission to patrol right up to the border (there used to be a limit to how close the US could come for the purpose of spying, but Harper drools all over the US when it's being its most paranoid).
I haven't been able to discover what damage the Dane sustained. I assume his jaw isn't broken.
What Obama is not telling you is that the sanctions aren't about Iran's enrichment program. They are about the fact that Iran has dared to sell oil in currencies other than the petrodollar -- and now it's even threatening to exchange oil for gold. India is one of the two willing oil-for-gold customers, which is why it keeps getting bribed and threatened. China is the other customer, which is why we're hearing Cold War II rhetoric.
I just keep thinking of what all those bazillions of dollars spent on the current GOP clown parade could do if they were redirected at green energy. Or on preventing the accelerating extinction of the world's great apes. Or on the effort to protect our resources of fresh clean water or on the peoples who drink contaminated water because they have no other choice.
PS "Intimate partner violence is pervasive in
U.S. society. Nearly 25 percent of surveyed
women and 7.6 percent of surveyed men
said they were raped and/or physically
assaulted by a current or former spouse,
cohabiting partner, or date at some time
in their lifetime; 1.5 percent of surveyed
women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men
said they were raped and/or physically
assaulted by a partner in the previous 12
months."
link to ncjrs.gov
Try comparing those two stats with the stats from the US. You won't find them all that different.
Ahmadinejad is doing what he does best: pushing Israel's buttons. That has been useful in that it has provoked a rise out of Israel that exposes Israeli irrationality. Only problem is it's risky. Given Bibi's highly refined strategies of manipulation, a provoked Israel can always get a rise out of Washington, which has resulted in "crippling sanctions" against the Iranian people, sanctions which are all too reminiscent of the sanctions against Saddam's Iraq resulting in the death of half a million children, which Albreit found "worth it." In sum, Ahmadinejad is good at getting both Israel and US to expose their dangerous idiocy, but he has paid a price for it.
This news is all good for Stephen Harper and his tarsands. The more filthy oil we can sell overseas, the more jobs we will create in the tarsands and environs. Canadian drivers will suffer, of course, but they are of no concern to Harper.
On the bright side, maybe more Canadians will give up their cars and start taking public transport.
This whole business is really quite disgusting. The sanctions under which the Iranian people are struggling to survive are a replay of what was done to the Iraqis between the wars in the Gulf. Perhaps when a million and a half Iranian children die of hunger, the US-Israeli war against Iran can begin. This is as cowardly as was the Anglo-American destruction of Iraq. Is it any wonder that the West is in shameful decline?
O, the chutzpah of those Chinese and Russians, using their veto power to protect a violent regime. Unheard of!!
My response? "That is the parched Middle East. The rest of the planet is gonna look like that from space if we don't get our ecological act together."
On the contrary: his numbers may be too modest. We've all seen what regime change involves.
If I were Japan, India, China, So Korea, and Turkey, I would put my collective foot down. I would get all my petroleum-consuming industries to collectively boycott the US and Israel and demand that they stop this Iranophobic stupidity.
Empires often meet their end by outsiders getting fed up with them. I wish that would happen to the US (and it's spoilt-brat vassal Israel) so that Americans could get on with the crucial work of saving their democratic republic, which is currently disintegrating before the eyes of the world.
As Jeff Greenfield said last night on Charlie Rose, of the 3 people vying for election to the White House in 2012, none are electable. Neither Newt, Mitt, nor Obama can manage to break 50 percent.
If I were an American, I would be voting for Gary Johnson in November -- not because I'm a Libertarian (far from it), but rather because all three of the above don't appear to have much use for democracy.
An American told me this morning that in voting for Johnson, I would be "wasting" my vote. I think America is the only democratic (sic) country where it's believed that a vote cast for a candidate who almost certainly won't win is a vote wasted. I guess that's what "winner takes all" politics means.
"...Israel and Lebanon share a big offshore field, and they are squabbling over where to draw the line."
Not to mention that most of it lies off the Gaza shore. When do Gazans get to cash in on this bonanza?
"...Barack Obama was deeply alarmed by the degree to which tensions with Iran had been ratcheted up ..."
Well, he was out front on the ratcheting up of these tensions. Maybe, just maybe, he did some reading of his critics, who were warning him that he was playing with fire and was mistaken in thinking he could control the rhetoric.
It appears that Obama woke up just in time, and read the riot act to the Israelis. Lots of Israelis, together with the lunatic fringe of American Zionism, are not happy about it. The fire has not been put out yet. Watch for moves on the part of the Mossad.
There is no offer that is gonna appeal to the Iranians. They want their nuclear program and almost certainly threshold capability. To my knowledge, this is not denied to those signatories of the non-proliferation protocol. Israel just better learn to live with that.
For a historian, Gingrich certainly doesn't read much history. He seems never to have heard of Khalidi,for example -- not to mention all the so-called "new" Israeli historians.
Thanks for this, Juan. It goes into my private collection of "best articles" on Israeli-Palestinian history.
If you think there'd be a panicked out-migration if Iran got the bomb, just think what a full-scale Israeli attack on Iran would produce. Missiles raining down on Israeli cities would drive flocks of Israel Jews into the Diaspora, and Western governments would be only to happy to accept them -- not as a way of making up for their shameless immigration policies of the 1930s but rather because Israelis are every Western government's idea of the perfect immigrants: educated, enterprising, energetic.
Bibi is playing with fire. The more he convinces Israelis that attacking Iran is the only solution, the more Israelis line up at Western embassies in search of second passports.
"Netanyahu’s four adjectives for the movements in Tunisia and Egypt are anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic."
There goes Bibi, looking into the mirror again and thinking it's a window on his neighbours.
I'm wondering how long it will take for Israel to start demanding that the US bomb Turkey, that dangerous Islamist state.
From one old Trekkie to another, thanks for this.
Maybe in those interesting rehabilitation prisons of Norway, they will screen Ridley Scott's *Kingdom of Heaven* for Breivik. The Templars come off pretty badly in it, while Salahudin is represented as a successful negotiator, who doesn't mind dwelling in paradox -- a good lesson for binary thinkers like Breivik. (Interestingly, American audiences were lukewarm about the film while Europeans understood it perfectly.)
"Not having so many men under arms or stockpiles of expensive military equipment may actually deter military adventurism of the sort the US has pursued in Iraq"
This highlights the difference between militarism and war. The Pentagon has always operated on the superstition that "if you want peace, you have to prepare for war," while in fact, if you prepare for war, that's exactly what you'll get.
Both the US and Israel seem to be freaking out over the putative takeover of Egypt by religious fundamentalists. But I guess both countries know something about religious extremism, since both are infested by their own varieties.
Whenever a government is too weak to address domestic unrest, it looks for a scapegoat. In the West, it started during the Middle Ages, and Jews were targeted. Today, it's Muslims.
Seems to me there's a US "embassy" there that cost almost a trillion dollars. Somehow I just can't see Washington leaving that hardened city-within-a-city empty.
"Erdogan has been repeatedly sandbagged and played by Israeli decision-makers, presumably on the theory that with Turkey’s candidacy for the EU going nowhere fast, and Turkey’s relations with the Arab world and Iran traditionally poor, Ankara had nowhere to go for friends but Tel Aviv and Washington."
Talk about projection! WHO'S got nowhere to go for friends?