Tag: perpetual war

Ted Cruz Should Move On From Sunday School Geopolitics

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, and what he had to say proves the vital role that a good Sunday school teacher can play — as well as the damage that can be caused by one who is misinformed. It also reveals the importance of actually verifying whether what you learned when you were 6 years old is correct, and asking yourself the question: “Was what I learned 50 years ago a faithful expression of what the Bible actually teaches?” And finally, it reminds us that if you’re going to base your geopolitical decisions on a Biblical doctrine, it would be most helpful for you to understand where, if anywhere, that doctrine is to be found in Scripture.

The two discussed the subject of Israel and specifically Cruz’s thoughts regarding current goings-on in the Middle East — the stakes of which are even higher after the United States’ weekend bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites. Carlson, as is his wont, was challenging Cruz and going where few journalists dare to go, seeking genuine, meaningful responses, and not being satisfied with empty talking points.

While discussing his apparently unqualified support of the modern-day nation-state of Israel, Cruz began to reminisce about what he had learned many years ago in Sunday school: “Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.” This is not an unusual view; such sentiments are commonly expressed in American politics and by the various Christian organizations that lobby fervently in favor of Israel, describing that country as America’s “greatest ally” and declaring it an absolute must that she be supported in all her endeavors. In the American “Christians for Israel” world, it is exactly this guiding principle that stands front and center.

Carlson challenged Cruz. “Where is that [in the Bible]?” he asked. (Notice that Carlson himself knew where, citing Genesis amid his barrage of questions, which showed he was not asking out of ignorance.) “I’m a Christian. I want to know what you’re talking about.”

Cruz, however, was unable to say where in Scripture that phrase was found, and when Carlson asked whether that statement refers to the modern nation-state of Israel (a good question!), Cruz merely assumed such was the case.

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Wait, Why Is Israel Allowed To Have Nukes?

Among U.S. politicians, there’s one consistent narrative you’ll hear repeated over and over. Iran, the story goes, must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran is unstable and untrustworthy; Iran is theocratic; Iran is evil. Supposedly serious adults, like Senator Ted Cruz, will use the words “the bad guys” to describe the country, like three-year-olds playing with action figures. And because Iranians are “the bad guys,” it’s supposedly legitimate to attack and kill them in order to prevent them from ever getting that terrifying nuke. Donald Trump is considering that very move now, posting in all-caps that “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” and threatening to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. On Twitter, JD Vance echoes Trump, threatening “action to end Iranian enrichment.” But it’s not just Republicans. Trump and Vance have been egged on by their ostensible enemy, Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer, who recently condemned the president for attempting nuclear negotiations, calling him a “chicken” who would “let Iran get away with everything.” John Fetterman, the most bellicose member of the Democratic caucus, just comes out and says it: “I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians.” Both of them have repeated the “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” mantra to justify beating the drum for war. 

But there’s a sword of Damocles hanging over this whole situation, one nobody wants to acknowledge. If the possibility that Iran might get a nuclear weapon is so scary, why do none of our leaders seem to be worried about Israel, which already has a secretive nuclear arsenal of its own, and is acting more violently unstable by the day? 

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“They Don’t Know What The F**K They’re Doing” – Furious Trump Slams Israel As Fragile Ceasefire Crumbles

President Donald Trump unleashed a fiery statement to the press just moments before boarding Marine One.

Trump declared, “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing. You understand that.”

The president then swiftly turned and walked toward Marine One.

The president also unleashed a fiery statement on his social media platform, Truth Social.

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The Strait of Hormuz – Incoming Global Energy Crisis?

Supply chain constraints are inevitable during wartime. Shippers are actively avoiding the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea amid the Iranian nuclear tensions. This is a significant disruption as around 20% of global oil is funneled through this passageway.

Oman’s Musandam Peninsula hosts a narrow passageway with Iran that is only 30 miles wide but large enough for mass oil tankers to navigate. These strategic route allows for the shipment of around 21 million barrels per day. One-third of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) primarily from Qatar, rely on this crucial route. An estimated $1.7 billion of oil can pass through this channel on an average day, and any disruption has the ability to cause ripples throughout the global economy.

The United States, India, China, Japan, and South Korea are among the many developed economies that rely on this strait for its energy needs. Even a temporary pause in shipments would cause oil prices to skyrocket and disturb international trade. Iran has repeatedly used this passageway as leverage in negotiations. The Iranian government is well aware of the power it wields and have threatened to prevent passage during times of unrest and sanctions.

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The Fog (Machine) Of War

The Fog of War is perhaps better described as The Fog Machine of War, for everything presented to the public is some version of Narrative Control, the purpose of which is to establish a context and story that’s beneficial to whomever is presenting “facts,” “news,” “information” and “commentary.”

The other motivation for flooding global media with “news,” “information” and “commentary” is to maximize profits via serving the insatiable appetite for “what’s really going on.” What’s really going on is of course a closely held state secret, the very last thing that would ever be released to the public.

Since everything is Narrative Control and exploiting crisis for profit, there’s little value in any of what’s presented to the public other than what it suggests on a meta-level, that is, what isn’t being revealed and promoted as “what’s really going on.”

It seems to me there is only one way to assemble a jigsaw that approaches the goal of discovering “what’s really going on.” The first step would be to obtain fly on the wall unfiltered intelligence summaries (unfiltered meaning not yet massaged for the political leadership) from the intelligence agencies of the three combatants: Iran, Israel and the United States. This is of course impossible.

The second step would be to obtain the unfiltered intelligence summaries from regional players, for example, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc., who have their own sources.

The third step would be to obtain the unfiltered intelligence summaries from Major Power players with a keen interest in figuring out “what’s really going on,” for example, China, Russia and the European Union intel agencies.

The fourth step would be to survey mid-level officers conducting actual operations. It would also be helpful to have access to those actually conducting post-operation damage assessments.

You discern the meta-thinking here: valuable information tends to get filtered out (or lost) between each level of information gathering, summary and presentation to the next level of the hierarchy.

At the highest level, the military leadership tends to be under pressure to control the narrative of what’s presented to the political leadership. This can play out in any number of ways: the military leadership might exaggerate the direness of the situation to obtain permission for a risky operation, or it may gloss over the situation to avoid being sacked.

What strikes me as interesting is how long this situation has been brewing. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been front and center for a great many years, and so intelligence and operational planning have been going on for many years.

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US auditors arrive in Kyiv to check for corruption

American auditors have just landed in Kyiv, and their plan is simple – to dig out what is really happening with the billions of dollars that the US has already sent to Ukraine.

The West has poured an estimated $133bn into Ukraine since the start of the war over three years ago, but for much of that time there has been little accountability or reporting on where the money went and to whom.

Ukraine has been plagued by corruption since independence and as bne IntelliNews has reported, corruption is not a problem of the system; it is the system. Ukraine has long been dubbed one of the most corrupt countries in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Part of the motivations behind the 2014 Euromaidan evolution was that former president Viktor Yanukovych is believed to have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the state.

Now that the US ardour for supporting Ukraine is beginning to cool, the Trump administration intends to hold the Zelenskiy administration to closer account. And the momentum for more transparency has been building. When the US ran out of money for Ukraine at the start of 2023, part of the $60bn emergency bailout package included several tens of millions of dollars in a special budget dedicated to accounting and audits.

Scandals have plagued the Defence Ministry, including one last year when the government was caught procuring eggs for four times the market value and heavily overpaying for dud winter jackets. Zelenskiy sacked Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in September 2023 in a military shake-up to crack down on corruption, but it remains rife. Reznikov himself was not accused of any wrong-doing.

The arrival of the US audit team has been confirmed by US State Department of contracts worth $814,806. That amount will cover the hotel accommodation of the employees who will stay in the capital of Ukraine for a month in the luxurious Hilton Kyiv hotel.

The audit comes as Trump has been leaning on the Ukrainian presidential administration to cut a ceasefire deal with Russia, but Zelenskiy has proved reluctant to do so. Some experts have speculated that audit comes as part of the pressure Trump hopes will push Zelenskiy into cutting a “quick and dirty deal” with President Vladimir Putin.

A group of 80 to 100 people is in charge of a comprehensive audit, according to reports, checking how funds for military and humanitarian support, logistics, security and security were spent.

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Tame the ‘Rising Lion’ Before It Eats Us!

Israel’s government, which has undertaken, with prevaricative impunity the illegal occupation and theft of Palestinian water sources, farmland, homes, property, and energy resources through ethnic cleansing and the execrable crimes of mass starvation and genocide in Gaza, has further escalated a world crisis by the preemptive bombing attack on Iran, through a self-proclaimed “Operation Rising Lion.”

This deadly deceit is of monumental proportions that one must struggle with the horrific reality it presents.

Attempting to label such crimes as a defensive strikes does violence to reason. The historical record will show that Israel’s oft-repeated insistence on the Iranian nuclear weapon threat was a contrivance to justify an arms buildup funded almost entirely by the American taxpayer.

America’s so-called defense of Israel’s freedom has been turned into a protection racket of such dimensions as to make the mafia blush. That racket has its own devises. Democratic and Republican Administrations, alike, have been contemplating an attack on Iran for decades. President Trump’s assurances of avoiding war while working closely with Netanyahu damages the President’s credibility, either he was not telling the truth or he was misled by people in his own foreign policy establishment.

Israel’s government now defines freedom thusly: Freedom to commit genocide, freedom to starve a defenseless population, freedom to wage aggressive war, and freedom to posture and to lie about all of their inhuman actions before the entire world and to demand everyone agree or be smeared as “anti-semites.”

Demanding Iran remove its nuclear energy production was an intentional nonnegotiable demand, which all participants in the JCPOA understood. It was the first Trump Administration which cancelled the agreement to limit Uranium production to 3.6% enrichment, necessary for the production of electricity for Iran’s nearly 90 million people.

Once that agreement was terminated, Iran was continually subjected to charges they were seeking to enrich uranium for the purposes of building a nuclear weapon, which gave the US and Israeli hawks opportunities to conjure mad mullahs with nukes whose sole purpose was to destroy Israel. So, the attack on Iran would be a practiced deception of a morally depraved “Do unto others before they do unto you.”

There is a body of international law which forbids preemptive strikes, but when it comes to Israel, international law does not apply, which makes one wonder why in the world Israel would want to remain in the United Nations or, conversely, why the UN would want them in. But that is an issue for the General Assembly.

Imagine Iran’s predicament if it had acquiesced to Israel’s other non-negotiable demand that it remove its ballistic missile systems. It would not have been able to respond to the attack. Israel sought the unilateral disarming of Iran, in order to bring about its own version of “shock and awe,” heavy bombardment, then with U.S. help, invasion and regime change.

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How Trump’s Weakness Betrayed America’s Interests in Iran

In mid-February 1945, a dying Franklin Roosevelt, on his way home from his final meetings with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta, met with Saudi King Ibn Saud on the deck of the USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt.

An account of the conversation from the Office of the Historian of the US State Department reads, in part:

His Majesty called attention to the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs and the crisis which has resulted from continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by the Jews. His Majesty further stated that the Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their lands to the Jews.

His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honor of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.

The President replied that he wished to assure His Majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people. He reminded His Majesty that it is impossible to prevent speeches and resolutions in Congress or in the press which may be made on any subject.

His reassurance concerned his own future policy as Chief Executive of the United States Government. His Majesty thanked the President for his statement and mentioned the proposal to send an Arab mission to America and England to expound the case of the Arabs and Palestine. The President stated that he thought this was a very good idea because he thought many people in America and England are misinformed.

What Saud was saying, in other words, was: Why should Arabs have to pay the price for Germany’s crimes? Yet even then, the longest-serving president in our history recognized that when it comes to the politics of the Levant, the Lobby rules.

In the 75 years since its founding, Israel has repeatedly undermined the United States and has murdered numerous American civilians as well as 34 members of the crew of the USS Liberty. Still more, Israel poses a unique, continuing and dangerous counterintelligence threat. It acts with impunity because Congress is bought and paid for by money funneled to it from its domestic lobby, AIPAC. It treats US presidents like doormats. Bill Clinton famously asked after his first meeting with Netanyahu in 1996, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Good question.

Americans are increasingly asking themselves with regard to Israel: At what point does it become enough?

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The Constitution Won’t Save US From Trump’s War Idiocy

On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we’re in the “boasting about how splendid it all is” phase of Trump’s cyclical foreign policy approach.

Phase One: Pretend to be “anti-war” and feverishly “negotiating” to avoid escalation of this or that long-term conflict.

Phase Two:  Escalate.

Phase Three: Brag about what a genius he is.

Phase Four: Backtrack and maybe whine a little when it blows up in his face – or, rather, in the faces of the troops he puts in harm’s way.

It remains to be seen whether we’ll get the usual Phase Four (a la the ignominious but long overdue US surrender in Afghanistan after his “surge,” the Iranian strikes on US bases in Iraq after his operation to murder Iranian general  Qasem Soleimani, etc.), or whether he’ll really screw the pooch and set the Middle East on fire this time when the Iranians retaliate.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the US Constitution.

This morning, I received an email from Defending Rights and Dissent, a pro-Constitution organization with a history stretching back to the era of McCarthyism.  Subject line: “Trump shreds the Constitution. Bombs Iran. TAKE ACTION.”

DRAD wants you to write “your” US Representative and US Senators, urging them to support a “War Powers Resolution” requiring Trump to stand down, on the clear and irrefutable constitutional claim that only Congress has the authority to declare war and that Trump’s actions are therefore illegal.

Okay, yeah, I did that.

But realistically, Congress isn’t any more likely to reassert its power over US war-making this time around than it did with Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and numerous other belligerent actions/involvements.

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Democrats Got Caught in a Huge Lie About Trump’s Iran Strike

The Democrat-media complex got caught red-handed peddling yet another false narrative, only to have it blow up in its face when the facts came crashing down. 

The latest chapter in the Democrats’ never-ending war against the Trump administration centers on the successful strike against Iran’s nuclear sites. As you’ve likely seen, Democrats and their media allies wasted no time launching a coordinated campaign of phony outrage. 

Their claim? The White House recklessly bypassed congressional leadership — specifically Democrats — before the operation, supposedly violating the Constitution. It’s a laughable accusation, especially considering that they had no such concerns when Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden launched military strikes without congressional approval or proper notification.

CNN tried to stir controversy by reporting that while House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune were briefed ahead of time, Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries were only informed shortly before the public announcement, after the operation had already taken place. But as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained on Fox News, this was nothing more than a misleading narrative designed to distract from a major American victory. Leavitt didn’t just push back; she dismantled the lie piece by piece.

“We did make bipartisan calls,” Leavitt stated, setting the record straight from the outset. “Thomas Massie and the Democrats — he should be a Democrat ’cause he’s more aligned with them than with the Republican Party — were given notice. The White House made calls to congressional leadership. They were bipartisan calls.”

The White House, contrary to the manufactured narrative, conducted its due diligence and reached out to leaders on both sides of the aisle. The administration’s outreach efforts were comprehensive, but in a detail that speaks volumes, the top Democrat in the House was apparently unavailable to take a call of such national security importance. 

Leavitt revealed the specifics of the outreach, exposing the disingenuous nature of the complaints.

“In fact, Hakeem Jeffries couldn’t be reached,” she explained. “We tried him before the strike and he didn’t pick up the phone, but he was briefed after, as well as Chuck Schumer was briefed prior to the strike.”

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