Coming Soon - War with Iran?

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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jun 14, 2019 2:33 pm

somebody otherwise reasonable on Facebook annoyed me when she wrote:
Can we please stop using the term "false flag"? It has been propagated by white supremacists and other assorted people on the Far Right. When we use their language, we plug into their narrative and way of thinking.





in response to that, I wrote:Such groups have sought to appropriate many fine terms to their own ends, including freedom, justice, liberal democracy, life, antiwar, anti-imperialism, and civilization. These are not "their language." Our response cannot be to cede to them whatever words they wish to seize! I will not allow them to determine my vocabulary or my agenda. It would be even worse to preemptively give up a word simply because we heard them use it. (The only terms that are truly "their language" would be terms that were coined within their own milieu, such as "cultural Marxism" or "Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy.")

False flag is a term with specific and useful meanings. According to OED, the first, "a deliberate misrepresentation of someone's affiliation or motives," was used as far back as 1524. The second, "A flag used to disguise a ship by misrepresenting its nationality, allegiance, intent, etc." dates back at least to 1824. The third, most relevant here, is given as "An event or action (typically political or military in nature) secretly orchestrated by someone other than the person or organization that appears to be responsible for it." For that the oldest example OED gives is from Congressional testimony in 1982, by which time it was clearly a common usage within the military.

As I wrote above, I don't think false flag is the right term for yesterday's absurd accusations by the United States. We do need a different term for it. But why do I say that? Because clearly, going by definition 3, the only power "that appears to be responsible for" the outrageous attacks on the Japanese and Norwegian tankers would be the United States itself, or one of its proxies or allies such as Saudi Arabia, UAE or Israel, or US-supported terrorist groups such as the MEK or various offshoots of Al-Qaeda and other international jihadis. If the CIA or its friends didn't do this, then they are quite possibly the ones being false flagged! In no way does Iran appear to be responsible, and the idea is patently insane. Thus, Pompeo making self-evidently false claims of Iranian responsibility doesn't qualify the event as a false flag. It merely underlines the high likelihood that Pompeo himself is involved, or else intended as the beneficiary, of a US covert op or US ally attack on two tankers in the Gulf.

I submit the attacks send an unmistakable message, in this case specifically to the Japanese prime minister among others, to shut the fuck up and accept total American supremacy on the question of whether the Trump-Pence-GOP regime and its terrorist allies will launch a genocidal new war on the people of Iran, plunge the entire region into escalated hostilities, and murder as many fucking people as they please. It reminds me of the apparent US response to the Chinese announcement of a peace initiative during the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999 (although one cannot be as certain in that case).
Last edited by JackRiddler on Fri Jun 14, 2019 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jun 14, 2019 2:45 pm

RocketMan » Fri Jun 14, 2019 1:32 pm wrote:The response, even in MSM outlets has been of general, bemused incredulity. No one is of course demanding US accountability, I guess they're running down the clock on the "aberrant" Trump administration and hoping that a Biden/Warren administration returns to the Way Things Were... Which ain't gonna happen but there's such a general feeling of unreality, that's what they must be hoping for.


Yeah, bemusement or cynicism is really the worst response. When they threaten genocide with a prospect of global nuclear escalation, one should always take it seriously and never excuse it as incompetent growling or mad-dog strategy.

But long as I'm quoting my hits, I did call it that the Trump regime would have trouble running a New War operation almost two years ago:

Thus, even before the overwrought character from Queens completed his long climb from the middle level of the New York-New Jersey development gangster milieu to cast himself as the Beheader of the Washington Establishment, we had long ago descended to the gutter territory of Bush-era adviser Michael Ledeen and the brutish dictum attributed to him: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

Far from small or crappy, Iran is surely the Trumpistas’ dream target, as it would have been Ledeen’s, as it once was Cheney’s. I suspect many would also agree with that among the Democratic as well as Republican senators and representatives who wore out their knees and palms jumping up to give standing ovations to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 address to the Congress (featuring his usual harangue for a preventive war on Iran). But the prospect of a definitive break in the Transatlantic alliance (and even of a possible military defeat throughout the Middle East) may make Iran seem a touch infeasible, as the Bush mob was forced to acknowledge in 2007. (But wait, did I just cite feasibility as a concern for this latest group of idiots? Put nothing past them and you will likely turn out right.)

[...]

The Long History of Reality Presidents and the Weakness of Trump

But please accept my apologies, I am getting so very far ahead of myself! Perhaps by now it is clear that I don’t think the exact identity of the “crappy little country” matters that much to the psychos in charge, although of course it will have great significance to the tens of thousands or more who are to be sacrificed to assuage their sickness and secure higher profits for the war industry. What really matters comes before the main act and constitutes the enabling act: the quality of the pretext, the ostensible casus belli that will be discovered, confabulated, or arrive one sunny morning from the sky. While these devices (whether serendipitous or constructed) have always worked to set up a carte blanche for American Carnage against brown foreigners in the past, even a sure thing can run into a first failure. Unlike in 2003, or unlike even in 2001, propaganda preparations for a coming war on any of the above have not been conducted in a fashion that sits very deeply with the American people. The present regime (and the presidential campaign that preceded it) has done better and more consistent work in preparing them to sacrifice for a war with Mexico than for one with Iran.

Perhaps more importantly, the present regime is remarkably weak, despite its open authoritarianism and ambitions to redefine reality by pronouncing its own facts, in the way of Orwell’s novel 1984. Submitted: The remarkable thing about the Trump regime is not that it is a Reality TV show (with one of the best-known and most successful Reality TV producers in the starring role). Rather, it is that most American viewers do not actually buy into this administration’s televised reality. That is unprecedented.

[...]

As of today, thanks to a long-running trend to no longer suspend disbelief that has only been accelerated by the ascendancy of the Trump, the status of the White House as the entertainment bureau of the federal government has never been as obvious to a majority of the citizenry, whether or not they can muster the energy to notice or care.

[...]

Politics always involved theater. Modern democratic electoral politics merged with the news and entertainment industry long ago, and for decades they have been developing in tandem. More recently a large part of the audience has been lured into treating the results as media critics, rather than as sovereigns or citizen-participants with an actual stake in the proceedings. As interesting as anything Scaramucci said is that we all treat the identity of the White House press agent as though it is vitally important. As a result of this twisted form of transparency, however, the pretext for a new war may backfire, especially insofar as the war (or the triggering event likely to precede it!) involves numerous casualties of the precious American persuasion.

Think of the WMD lie in 2002-2003. Granted, its falsehood was transparent – it was a laugh riot to pretty much the whole world outside an Anglosphere bubble. Ultimately it failed to prevail even as a myth, and this despite the regime’s exploitation of the irrational and powerful emotional boost of 9/11. All that being said, however, the WMD lie was still a complicated, long-running and professionally crafted P.R. campaign, one involving separate teams of dedicated fabricators at the White House, in the Pentagon, at various intel agencies, at the New York Times, in Italian intelligence, at the Washington think-tanks, among Iraqi expatriate networks, and multiple other locations. At the height of the campaign, most Americans believed it. After all, “sixteen intelligence agencies” were in agreement with the fabrication.

Now, of course, the only such consensus of the intelligence “community” (nowadays numbered at 17, I seem to have missed the new birth) is on the claim that “Russia hacked the 2016 election.” That story may be no less implausible, but its very existence means that a lot of national security insiders are hostile to the Trump Show’s existence, and many of them may be loath to faithfully support whatever spur-of-the-moment back-story is served up for the war pretext.

My assertion, in short, is that a new international aggression cannot be justified via the discredited Twitter Thumbs alone; yet the possessor of these appendages seems bold and demented enough to believe himself capable of it. Unlike Cheney and Rumsfeld’s, his crew is not a long-running criminal enterprise of security state insiders with experience and reach and a specific war plan long in mind (however stupid it may have been). Cheney and Rumsfeld’s crew sprang its high-level leaks, but not on the first day. Trump’s crew is more akin to an open cocktail party for villains of opportunity, most of whom jumped in during his rapid if evitable rise, like the Mercers and Bannon, or who were borrowed afterward from the Prince-DeVos family and the Kochtopus; the latter having at first opposed him. The secretaries may be prepared to ritually bow and scrape before His Manhattan Majesty at the opening of the cabinet meeting, but what unites them? An ideology of extremist capitalism, to be sure, but that makes them all into junior John Galts, looking out for number one. Shared egomania, possession of wealth plundered in scams (much like the Trump Organization’s history), and a proven ability, as Mooch might put it, to stab friends and enemies without distinction, in the front and in the back: A ripe set-up, if ever a “New War” psy-op was to flop.


Go here to find out the parts I got wrong.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/04 ... part-2017/
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Elvis » Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:33 pm

False flag is a term with specific and useful meanings.


And I can't think of a ready synonym—so removing "flase flag" from language would tend to extinguish the concept itself; "no such thing."

(That's why we mustn't let MBA-speak expropriate and ruin "synergy"; can you think of a good synonym?)
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Grizzly » Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:48 pm

Image
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Crisis initiation is really tough...

Postby Harvey » Fri Jun 14, 2019 9:46 pm

"Crisis initiation is really tough so we'll just make it happen." Not entirely a direct quote but..

I have to admit, I hadn't seen this before, quite bald. By 'crisis initiation' I think he means 'wage aggressive war.'

Patrick Clawson, Institute for Near East Studies.* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... d=40274332




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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jun 14, 2019 10:22 pm

.

Amazing find. Official copy:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6LKmhDRWFc
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Elvis » Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:27 pm

:shock:
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:57 am

Caption contest......

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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Elvis » Sat Jun 15, 2019 4:05 am

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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jun 15, 2019 7:24 am

Interestingly, I've never seen an abler defender of the idea that there are some sort-of systemic and social-cultural constraints on overt warmaking by US presidents. You can't take this point away from the little arsonist. Every single major overt war launch he mentions needed its provocation. Granted there's no such limit on covert, low-intensity, gradualist, and deniable war actions, even if they eventually amount to fostering or backing genocides. But presidents can't just order overnight large-scale invasions of places that aren't Grenada or Panama. True, they can throw the Philippines and Hawaii and Puerto Rico in as extras, assuming they they can start one to help the Cubans. But they still need that damned unrelated explosion of a warship that obviously can have no relation to Spanish action unless you are incapable of basic logic. Yesiree, if it involves a higher number of US troops in combat in places outside those already claimed as US territory by Congress and thus rendered fair game for invasion or extermination of the indigenous, and if this killing and bit of being killed by US troops needs to be done in a way that white people in Vermont or Ohio might eventually notice is happening, then by golly it needs a pretext. They can't just order the invasion, they need some goddamn pretext first. What a pain!
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby RocketMan » Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:00 am

Indeed! And I suppose that, like a junkie, they need ever increasing fixes ever faster, so they get progressively sloppier with the setup. Got to have the high faster, maaaan! Though of course modern communication technology makes it more difficult, too.

But this latest tanker gambit was truly second-rate and lazy!

JackRiddler » Sat Jun 15, 2019 2:24 pm wrote:Interestingly, I've never seen an abler defender of the idea that there are some sort-of systemic and social-cultural constraints on overt warmaking by US presidents. You can't take this point away from the little arsonist. Every single major overt war launch he mentions needed its provocation. Granted there's no such limit on covert, low-intensity, gradualist, and deniable war actions, even if they eventually amount to fostering or backing genocides. But presidents can't just order overnight large-scale invasions of places that aren't Grenada or Panama. True, they can throw the Philippines and Hawaii and Puerto Rico in as extras, assuming they they can start one to help the Cubans. But they still need that damned unrelated explosion of a warship that obviously can have no relation to Spanish action unless you are incapable of basic logic. Yesiree, if it involves a higher number of US troops in combat in places outside those already claimed as US territory by Congress and thus rendered fair game for invasion or extermination of the indigenous, and if this killing and bit of being killed by US troops needs to be done in a way that white people in Vermont or Ohio might eventually notice is happening, then by golly it needs a pretext. They can't just order the invasion, they need some goddamn pretext first. What a pain!
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:40 pm

.

I really wonder if it was lousy.

Lazy, perhaps.

The empire drivers are at a stage where they don't want to pretend. It's tiring. It's exasperating. Trump is a symptom; as he asked, Why can't he just use nuclear weapons? The tanker op expresses the empire's desire slap Abe in the face for his inexcusable peace initiative. They don't want to construct a Pearl Harbor, or claim humanitarian excuses. Too much trouble. They just want to do it in the open this time. Because they can, and no one can stop them. So they seem to think. You can call it hubris, but really it's dementia. Emotional regression. Rage. Why is anyone in their way? They say what happens, not any of you. They always have! Deathwish.

.
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Cordelia » Sun Jun 16, 2019 10:34 am

liminalOyster » Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:57 pm wrote:Caption contest......


Please clarify who you're a nasty, arrogant lackey and mouthpiece for: Israeli warmongers or American warmongers?

Image

Six of one, half dozen of the other?



(Just fwiw....Clawson interviewed about tankers.)

There are fears Iran and the United States are on a collision course, with the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blaming Iran for attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman in the last 24 hours.

The tankers were carrying petrochemicals through the strategic waterway when they were rocked by explosions and set on fire.

So is this a concerted strategy by the Iranian regime, or are there other factors in play?

To answer this and other questions, The World Today spoke to Patrick Clawson, the Director for Research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and senior editor of Middle East Quarterly.

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/w ... n/11210454
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby Sounder » Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:45 am

https://israeltodaynews.blogspot.com/20 ... -2019.html

David Goldberg, the leaker has been found dead in his apartment.

Allegedly involving Rabbi's meeting with Trump promising him the next election if he would escalate the thing with Iran.
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Re: Coming Soon - War with Iran?

Postby BenDhyan » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:22 am

^ Wow, that was back in April he knew this false flag was being planned. Remember the talk recently of Trump sending 110,000 troops to the area, there may be something to this, and apparently there is if Goldberg was done in. This is very real serious stuff imo.

And don't forget the links Sounder friend....

David Goldberg found dead in his New York apartment.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

https://israeltodaynews.blogspot.com/2019/06/david-goldberg-found-dead-in-his.html
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