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Bombing Iran Is Part of the USA’s Compulsion for War War War

Twenty years ago, one day in June 2005, I talked with an Iranian man who was selling underwear at the Tehran Grand Bazaar. People all over the world want peace, he said, but governments won’t let them have it.

I thought of that conversation on Saturday night after the U.S. government attacked nuclear sites in Iran. For many days before that, polling clearly showed that most Americans did not want the United States to attack Iran. “Only 16 percent of Americans think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” YouGov pollsters reported, while “60 percent say it should not and 24 percent are not sure.”

But as a practical matter, democracy has nothing to do with the chokehold that the warfare state has on the body politic. That reality has everything to do with why the United States can’t kick the war habit. And that’s why the profound quests for peace and genuine democracy are so tightly intertwined.

On Saturday evening, President Trump delivered a speech exuding might-makes-right thuggery on a global scale: “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

More than ever, the United States and Israel are overt partners in what the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 called “the supreme international crime” – “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.”

Naturally, the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are eager to festoon themselves in mutual praise. As Trump put it in his speech, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” And Trump added: “I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”

A grisly and nefarious truth is that, in effect, the Israeli military functions as part of the overall U.S. military machine. The armed forces of each country have different command structures and sometimes have tactical disagreements. But in the Middle East, from Gaza and Iran to Lebanon and Syria, “cooperation” does not begin to describe how closely and with common purpose they work together.

More than 20 months into Israel’s U.S.-armed siege of Gaza, the genocide there continues as a joint American-Israeli project. It is a project that would have been literally impossible to sustain without the weapons and bombs that the U.S. government has continued to provide to the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.

The same U.S.-Israel alliance that has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has also enabled the escalation of KKK-like terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in the West Bank. The ethnocentric arrogance and racism involved in U.S. support for these crimes have been longstanding, and worsening along with the terrible events.

The same alliance is now also terrorizing Iranian society from the air.

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Ad Titans Promise To End Censorship Bias To Gain Power

Two of the world’s most powerful advertising firms, Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG), have formally agreed to dismantle their involvement in politically driven advertising coordination, marking a major policy reversal amid a growing federal crackdown on viewpoint-based censorship in the media economy.

The firms, who are set to merge in a $13.5 billion deal approved Monday by the Federal Trade Commission, will be subject to rigorous compliance mandates and are now bound by a commitment to cease all current and future coordination aimed at directing advertising revenue based on political beliefs.

The consent agreement represents a rare and forceful rebuke of ideological collusion within the advertising sector and comes following allegations from media outlets that they were demonetized and blacklisted by advertisers over their political views or coverage.

Under the terms outlined by FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Omnicom and IPG must fully cooperate with federal investigations into past practices and submit regular reports demonstrating compliance.

The proposed order “imposes restrictions that prevent Omnicom from engaging in collusion or coordination to direct advertising away from media publishers based on the publishers’ political or ideological viewpoints,” the FTC said.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The new conditions prohibit the merged entity from participating in any initiative that influences ad placement based on ideological or political criteria. In addition to annual reporting, the companies must provide immediate documentation to the FTC upon request and support inquiries into previous coordination to blacklist media organizations.

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Trump Never Has Been a Sincere Advocate of Realism and Restraint

Even before President Donald Trump ordered B-2 bombers to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and plunge the United States into another Middle East war, it should have been apparent that he has never been committed to a foreign policy of realism and restraint. Other actions during the initial weeks of his second term already had unsettled supporters who hoped that Trump would adopt a more sober, “America first” policy.  Enthusiastic backers believed his boast that he would promptly bring the war between Ukraine and Russia to an end.  Their broader underlying assumption was that the United States would no longer waste American lives and financial resources on armed ideological crusades around the world.

Trump’s subsequent waffling on the Ukraine-Russia conflict confirmed his lack of commitment to meaningful policy change that would take the United States out of the line of fire.  His knee-jerk support for Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians did the same for expectations regarding a new, more balanced perspective on that issue.  The president’s subsequent approval of U.S. support for Israel’s new war of aggression against Iran, along with his demand for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender,” should have eliminated any lingering doubt about his toxic hawkishness.

Expectations for a sensible, restrained foreign policy by a Trump administration were always naïve.  As I have pointed out in multiple articles over the years, Trump’s supposed commitment to a more realistic, cautious U.S. foreign policy was largely an illusion.  He fostered that illusion whenever it served his political interests, while his opponents played their own role in the political charade by insisting that Donald Trump was an evil “isolationist” who was infecting the Republican Party and thereby undermining America’s noble leadership role in the world.

His actual conduct differed little from the policies of his openly hawkish, global interventionist predecessors. During his first term, Washington’s already bloated military budget continued to grow without interruption.  Despite promising during the 2016 presidential campaign to end the futile and bloody U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, Trump did not even reach a peace accord with Taliban forces until the final year of his term.  Meaningful U.S. troop withdrawal did not take place until he had already left the White House.

Trump forged far closer U.S. military ties with Taiwan and embraced uncompromising policies toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on a wide range of economic, diplomatic, and security issues.  He showed not a hint of receptivity to being more cordial toward Beijing.

Perhaps the biggest gap between illusion and reality during Trump’s first term was the issue of policy toward Russia.  Trump’s political opponents created and circulated the smear that he was soft on Russia at best and an outright Russian agent at worst.  Once again, the president’s track record pointed to a totally different conclusion.  Even on the Ukraine issue, Trump’s stance toward Moscow was disturbingly conventional.  Indeed, in some ways it was more confrontational than the policy that Barack Obama pursued.  Under Trump’s leadership, the United States transferred sophisticated weapons to Kyiv, trained Ukrainian troops, and conducted joint military exercises with Ukrainian forces.  Obama had prudently declined to take any of those steps.

Beyond the Ukraine issue, Trump’s policies were openly hostile to an assortment of Russia’s high-priority interests and objectives. Moscow regarded the continuation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, concluded during Ronald Reagan’s administration, as extremely important for protecting crucial Russian security needs.  Trump withdrew the United States from that treaty.  A similar pattern occurred with respect to the Open Skies agreement, a longstanding, confidence-building measure that had been in effect since Reagan’s administration.  Trump’s dismissive treatment of arms control agreements that Russia considered essential directly contradicted the idea that he practiced appeasement toward the Kremlin.

Trump’s hostility toward both arms control and overall policies toward Iran also was evident during the president’s first term.  He scuttled the multilateral agreement that the major global powers had reached to limit Tehran’s nuclear program and assure that it remained peaceful.  As an additional provocation, the White House ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, a killing carried out while he was on a diplomatic mission to Iraq, a supposed U.S ally.

Given Trump’s flagrant animosity toward the government in Tehran, it should not be surprising that he has chosen Iran to be an early target for militarily aggression in his second term.  He fully supports Israel’s new war of aggression against its Middle East neighbor and uncritically accepted Tel Aviv’s assertion that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear arsenal.  Yet most experts, initially including Tulsi Gabbard, his own appointee as Director of National Intelligence, strongly disputed that allegation.

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White House doubles down on ‘regime change’ with call for Iranian people to rise up against the Ayatollah

The White House doubled down on ‘regime change’ with Iran amid concerns the Islamic republic could retaliate after America’s military strike, saying the Iranian people have the power to decide if they want to keep Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as their leader.

‘Why shouldn’t the Iranian people take away the power of this incredibly violent regime that has been suppressing them for decades,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox & Friends on Monday morning.

Leavitt was echoing President Donald Trump‘s Truth Social post from Sunday, where he floated the possibility of ‘regime change.’

‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!’ the president wrote. 

Leavitt said the president was ‘raising a good question that many people around the world are asking.’

‘The president believes the Iranian people can control their own destiny and what he said last night makes complete sense,’ she said. Leavitt also noted the president ‘is still interested’ in a ‘peaceful diplomatic solution.’

The double down comes after some administration officials tried to walk back any talk of regime change.

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A Brief, Bloody History of All the Times the U.S. Caused Chaos in the Middle East

If at first you don’t succeed, make more problems for yourself. That seems to be the mantra in Washington when it comes to the Middle East. Every few years, a U.S. president asks Americans to go along with a small military commitment in the region—or starts one without asking the public. Almost inevitably, it causes bigger problems than promised.

Friends turn into enemies. The chaos allows bad actors to grow, or creates new factions with a reason to resent America. The political goalposts shift; the U.S. government discovers that a problem it didn’t care about before is actually a “vital interest.” And time after time, politicians promise that all these problems can go away with just one more decisive strike against the real cause of conflict in the region. No forever war is ever advertised that way from the beginning.

President Donald Trump is speedrunning this whole problem. Just a month ago, he was promising the end of “nation building” and grandiose “neocon” schemes. Now, he’s directly entered the Israeli-Iranian war by bombing Iran. While Vice President J.D. Vance tried to claim that “we’re not at war with Iran” and the attack would be a one-off incident, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself have both hinted that the U.S. will escalate to regime change if Iran does not surrender. Here’s how we got to this point—and some of the times we’ve seen this movie before.

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Iran fires 10 missiles at two US bases in the Middle East in retaliation for Trump bombing

Iran has launched at least 10 missiles at the United States’ biggest base in the Middle East and another in Iraq in response to President Trump bombing nuclear labs over the weekend. 

Aerial defenses were activated shortly after a ‘credible threat’ alert was issued to the Al Udeid base in Qatar, which hosts over 10,000 US troops as well as over 100 aircraft, strategic bombers and tankers. 

US bases in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain also sounded their air raid sirens shortly after the Al Udeid base was targeted by Iranian missiles. 

President Trump has convened his national security team in the White House as US targets across the world are put on high alert.  

It comes as Iran warned the United States will ‘directly pay’ for strikes on its nuclear facilities ‘rather than standing behind Israel,’ with the Islamic Republic prepared for a war lasting up to two years, a senior Iranian official told reporters.

Tehran’s mission to the UN said the US and Israel, as well as the United Kingdom, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency director personally, will all ‘bear full responsibility for the death of innocent civilians in Iran.’

Trump used 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs to hit its nuclear facilities on Saturday night, then sparked Iranian fury when he raised the prospect of regime change the next day. 

Iranian state media warning that up to 50,000 American soldiers would be returned to Washington in ‘coffins’.

Israel also launched an attack on ‘regime targets’ in Tehran on Monday, with ‘hundreds’ of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said to have been killed in a huge wave of strikes.

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Meet the Israeli fanatic running Ted Cruz’s office

After Ted Cruz’s humiliation by Tucker Carlson, attention has focused on a top staffer of the self-proclaimed “leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate.”

On June 18, former Fox host Tucker Carlson published a video which, though marketed as an interview, was more of a snuff film. Over the course of two hours, Carlson can be seen rhetorically disemboweling his debate opponent, US Senator Ted Cruz, on the politician’s determination to see the US attack Iran on Israel’s behalf.

While Cruz presents himself as a Christian Zionist moved by his own zealotry to support Israel, the politician’s Tel Aviv-driven policy line can also be traced back to his Senior Advisor for Policy and Communications, an Israeli-born Zionist lobbyist named Omri Ceren.

Before overseeing Cruz’s public relations, Ceren managed his foreign policy docket as his national security advisor. Prior to joining the Senator’s staff, Ceren served as the press director for The Israel Project, a Zionist pressure group which was forced to close down after being exposed as a de facto Israeli government front by Al Jazeera’s groundbreaking undercover investigation, The Lobby. Before that, Ceren cut his teeth lobbying for Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who relied on Ceren as a registered foreign agent lending his marketing expertise to the embattled regime.

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The F-35 Ages Worse Than the Planes It’s Meant To Replace

As the U.S. grapples with ballooning federal budgets and increasingly necessary spending cuts, the military remains ripe for austerity. In February, the Pentagon suggested cutting $50 billion per year from its budget over the next five years—a good start but nowhere near enough, considering the Trump administration is floating a defense budget of nearly $1 trillion.

A recent government report detailed even further evidence that the F-35 stealth fighter jet is a program that deserves to be scrapped.

“The F-35 Lightning II aircraft (F-35) is the Department of Defense’s (DOD) most ambitious and costly weapon system and its most advanced fighter aircraft,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in April 2024. “However, DOD’s projected costs for sustaining the F-35 continue to increase while planned use of the aircraft declines.” (There are three primary variants: the F-35A, the F-35B, and the F-35C, which are primarily for use by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy, respectively.)

“DOD plans to use the F-35 aircraft through 2088 and plans to spend over $2 trillion on acquisition and sustainment,” the GAO noted, even though the department also “plans to fly the F-35 less than originally estimated, partly because of reliability issues with the aircraft.”

Nonetheless, the report expressed some optimism over the F-35’s future: “As of August 2023, the program was meeting or close to meeting 17 of its 24 reliability and maintainability goals, which are aimed at ensuring that the aircraft will be available for operations as opposed to out-of-service for maintenance,” it noted. At the same time, even though the DOD planned to fly the crafts less than anticipated, that reduction in flight hours meant the various military branches “are now projecting they will meet most of their affordability targets (i.e., the amount of money they project they can afford to spend per aircraft per year for operating the aircraft).”

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tossed even more cold water on the F-35’s viability. It turns out that not only do the F-35s not age particularly well, they don’t particularly offer a competitive advantage over the planes they’re supposed to replace.

“As F-35s have aged, their availability and use have decreased,” the CBO detailed in a report—”availability” being a measure of “the number of hours that aircraft are both mission capable and in the possession of operational squadrons,” as a percentage of that fleet’s total flight time.

“The availability and use of F-35s have been lower, in some cases much lower, than those of other fighter aircraft of the same age,” the CBO continued. “For example, the average availability rate of a 7-year-old F-35A has been about the same as that of a 36-year-old F-16C/D and a 17-year-old F-22.” The fleet’s target availability rate is 65 percent, but all three F-35 variants range between 50 and 60 percent.

The F-35 means to replace previous-generation aircraft like the F-16, but instead, the obsolete models are running circles around their intended replacement. (The F-22, like the F-35, is a stealth aircraft, which the F-16 is not; the report notes that stealth crafts “have different maintenance requirements” and lower availability than non-stealth fighters of similar ages.)

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I’ll Slug You, and If You Resist, I’ll Slug You Harder

U.S. messaging to Iran, courtesy of President Trump, is quite simple: We slugged you (with our bombing attacks on three nuclear sites in your country), and if you don’t like it, we’ll slug you again, even harder, much, much harder.

Iran’s only real choice: “unconditional surrender,” according to the president.

Well, it’s a strategy, I suppose, the one of the abuser, the bully. Do what I want, else you’ll get slugged. Try to fight back, I’ll slug you much much harder. Oh, by the way, I believe in peace. And you can have peace by totally capitulating to me.

Another way of looking at or labeling this stategy: Bombing for Bibi. Yes, I know it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu behind it all. But he’s the chief flatterer, the skilled string-puller, the master manipulator of Trump. Not that it’s entirely hard to manipulate a narcissist who’s driven by money and consumed by his own ego.

So, we have to look to Iran to show a measure of restraint, since the U.S. and Israel won’t. If Iran chooses to fight, especially to hit back at U.S. targets in the region, all bets are off as our country stumbles into what could become World War III.

As Jimmy Dore put it today, No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. A warmonger. Someone proud to joke about bombing Iran – and crazy enough to do it. Does it really matter if the warmonger is named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden – or Donald Trump?

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Texas Governor Tells Lawmakers To Regulate Hemp THC Products Like Alcohol After Vetoing Bill To Ban Most Consumable Cannabinoids

The governor of Texas says that, rather than outright ban consumable hemp products, lawmakers should establish a regulatory framework that treats cannabinoids “similar to the way alcohol is regulated.”

After vetoing a controversial bill on Sunday that would have effectively eliminated the state’s hemp market, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) proposed an extensive list of policy changes that he says he would support—and which the legislature will have the chance to enact during a special session the governor is convening next month.

“Texans on each side of the Senate Bill 3 debate raise serious concerns. But one thing is clear—to ensure the highest level of safety for minors, as well as for adults, who obtain a product more dangerous than what they expected, Texas must strongly regulate hemp, and it must do so immediately,” Abbott said.

Part of the rationale behind his veto was the risk of litigation over “valid constitutional challenges” that he suggested would hold up in court. And to that end, multiple top Texas hemp companies did file a preemptive lawsuit challenging the legislation, SB 3, before the governor’s veto.

“If I were to allow Senate Bill 3 to become law, its enforcement would be enjoined for years, leaving existing abuses unaddressed,” Abbott said in his veto message. “Texas cannot afford to wait.”

“At worst, Senate Bill 3 would be permanently invalidated by the courts; at best, its implementation would be delayed for years as the case winds its way through the legal system,” he said. “We can do better.”

Rather than face the possibility of having the law enjoined, or indefinitely delayed, the governor said the state “must enact a regulatory framework that protects public safety, aligns with federal law, has a fully funded enforcement structure, and can take effect without delay.”

“Legislators could consider a structure similar to the way alcohol is regulated, with strict enforcement by an agency like the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission,” he said, adding a list of recommended policies he wants to see lawmakers adopt that include age restrictions, zoning requirements and bans on public consumption.

Here’s the full list of the governor’s recommended hemp regulations:

  • Selling or providing a THC product to a minor must be punishable as a crime.
  • Sales must be prohibited near schools, churches, parks, playgrounds, and other areas frequented by children.
  • Packaging must be child-resistant, tamper-evident, and resealable;
  • Products must not be made, packaged, or marketed in a manner attractive to children.
  • Any store selling these products must have a permit and restrict access to anyone under the age of 21, with strict penalties for any retailer that fails to comply.
  • Products containing THC may not contain other psychoactive substances (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, kratom).
  • Testing must be required at every phase of production and manufacturing, including for both plants and derivative consumable products.
  • Manufacturing and processing facilities must be subject to permitting and food safety rules.
  • Permit and registration fees must suffice to support robust enforcement and testing by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, in partnership with other state agencies.
  • An operator’s permit and warning/danger signs must be posted at any store selling these products.
  • Sales must be limited to the hours between 10:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., and prohibited on Sundays.
  • The amount of THC permissible in each product must be restricted and an individual may make only a limited number of purchases in a given period of time.
  • Labels must include a surgeon general-style warning, a clear disclosure of all ingredients, including the THC content, and a scannable barcode or QR code linking to test results.
  • Fraudulently creating or displaying manifests or lab results must be punishable as felony offenses.
  • Public consumption, consumption on the premises of any store that sells these products, and possession of an open container in a vehicle must be punishable as crimes.
  • The Attorney General, district attorneys, and county attorneys must have authority to pursue violations under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
  • Local governments must have the option to prohibit or limit stores selling these products.
  • Excise taxes must be assessed on these products to fund oversight and enforcement.
  • Additional funding must be provided to ensure law enforcement have sufficient resources to vigorously enforce restrictions.

“This list, of course, is not exhaustive. But it may provide items to consider in a regulatory system that is strict, fair, and legally sustainable,” Abbott said. “Passing a law is not the same thing as actually solving a problem. Texas needs a bill that is enforceable and will make our communities safer today, rather than years from now. Next month, the Legislature will have the opportunity to address this serious issue. I look forward to working with them to ensure that we get it right.”

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