Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: "The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs....I'm not attacking her for being dumb but the… pic.twitter.com/aL9PyyWyyf
twitter | Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: "The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs....I'm not attacking her for being dumb but the idea that dumb person has no, and the White House Press Secretary is in the same category, who's no idea she's dumb, she really thinks like she won the prize, she's the most impressive, like: "I'm White House Press Secretary because I'm the best talker in America." It's so crazy and yet the smartest people I know are very often sort of, they have humility."
Slate |What do you mean by the “weaponization of safety”?
The language is about wanting to make Jewish students feel safe. But there isn’t that other side of the conversation, which is: Are Palestinian students feeling safe? Some students are afraid of doxing, and there aren’t conversations about that.
OK, so the school policies have changed. Are there any other ways things have changed in recent years for student activists?
I
do think that one of the things that has changed is that there are ways
universities are, for example, deactivating access cards, taking
students out of dorms, and rapidly creating material
consequences—consequences relating to housing, tuition, fees, expulsion,
etc. Those move much faster, in large part because of technology.
You can, by a click of a button, deactivate students’ cards. It’s
increased the speed at which universities can respond.
And
then, for example, with things like Twitter or TikTok now, there’s the
difference between a university president making a statement that’s
posted online, versus in the past, when that might have just been an
email or in a student newspaper.
What does that conversation occurring publicly mean for this whole dynamic?
It
allows for more scrutiny. So when colleges and universities, for
example, created statements in 2015 and 2016 about anti-Blackness and
police brutality, a lot of those statements were about standing against
hate, etc. And then in 2020, as colleges and universities were once
again creating the statements, there were student groups that brought up
the 2015, 2016 statements being like, What have you done since then? Students are able to say, “You posted about this, and we’re trying to hold you accountable to that.”
What
do you think drove schools like Columbia to take such a dramatic
disciplinary step in these cases? Do you think this situation was
specific to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or standard for any kind of
protest?
I
think colleges and universities feel like this is very complicated.
There’s less of a desire to make a stance, and colleges and universities
are wary of making statements; often, statements are 500 words or less,
and there needs to be, like, a book. So, I think that that’s part of
what makes universities nervous.
Looking
at Columbia, as an example, this is a PR nightmare for them. To arrest
students now, when there’s so much scrutiny, and then to do it in such a
cruel way—students have been talking about only having 15 minutes to
collect their belongings, that their belongings were thrown in the trash
immediately. And to do that on a scale of 100 students, and then to
double down on that, and then say that they’re doing it for safety,
doesn’t make a lot of sense. So what that tells you is that Columbia is
likely facing a lot of pressure from people who do not want students to
be protesting. To the point where they’re making what seems like a very
irrational decision.
nakedcapitalism | This measures is so far under the radar that so far, only Friedman and Matthew Petti at Reason seem to have noticed it. And Petti has pointed out that the Secretary of the Treasury can designate any organization to be “terrorist-supporting organization,” so the does not think, as Friedman seems to, that any other measures are needed to allow an Administration to try to financially cripple not-for-profits engaging in wrong speech.
Note that the messaging depicting Hamas as somehow behind the campus protests has increased:
And Aljazeera has already produced evidence of Zionist groups trying to stoke confrontations at the demonstrations (hat tip Erasmus):
Mind you, not-for-profits are already subject to mission and censorship pressures by large donors, witness the billionaires who loudly said they would halt donations to Ivy League schools if they “tolerated anti-Semitism,” as in did not quash criticism of Israel. But as you will see, this is a whole different level of censorship.
First, we are hoisting Friedman’s entire tweetstorm. She stresses that not only does this bill create a star chamber when existing laws allow for crackwdowns on terrorist supports, but that it could be easily extended to other types of establishment-threatening speech.
A bipartisan bill would give the secretary of the treasury unilateral power to classify any charity as a terrorist-supporting organization, automatically stripping away its nonprofit status….
In theory, the bill is a measure to fight terrorism financing…
Financing terrorism is already very illegal. Anyone who gives money, goods, or services to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization can be charged with a felony under the Antiterrorism Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And those terrorist organizations are already banned from claiming tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Nine charities have been shut down since 2001 under the law.
The new bill would allow the feds to shut down a charity without an official terrorism designation. It creates a new label called “terrorist-supporting organization” that the secretary of the treasury could slap onto nonprofits, removing their tax exempt status within 90 days. Only the secretary of the treasury could cancel that designation.
In other words, the bill’s authors believe that some charities are too dangerous to give tax exemptions to, but not dangerous enough to take to court. Although the label is supposed to apply to supporters of designated terrorist groups, nothing in the law prevents the Department of the Treasury from shutting down any 501(c)(3) nonprofit, from the Red Cross to the Reason Foundation.
Petti explains that an initial target appears to be Students for Justice in Palestine, which he says have not had enough of an attack surface to be targeted under current law; in fact, Florida governor DeSantis had to shelve a plan to shut down Students for Justice in Palestine when confronted with a lawsuit.
Petti explains that his concerns are not unwarranted:
Under the proposed bill, murky innuendo could be enough to target pro-Palestinian groups. But it likely wouldn’t stop there. After all, during the Obama administration, the IRS put aggressive extra scrutiny on nonprofit groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names. And under the Biden administration, the FBI issued a memo on the potential terrorist threat that right-wing Catholics pose.
The Charity and Security Network, a coalition of charities that operate in conflict zones, warned that its own members could be hindered from helping the neediest people in the world.
“Charitable organizations, especially those who work in settings where designated terrorist groups operate, already undergo strict internal due diligence and risk mitigation measures and…face extra scrutiny by the U.S. government, the financial sector, and all actors necessary to operate and conduct financial transactions in such complex settings,” the network declared in November. “This legislation presents dangerous potential as a weapon to be used against civil society in the context of Gaza and beyond.”
I urge readers, and particularly donors, to alert the fundraising and executive staff at not-for-profits, particularly the journalistic sort, so they can object to this legislation. It would likely not survive a Supreme Court challenge in its current form, but that’s an awfully heavy load to have to carry, plus the legislation might not be subject to an injunction in the meantime.
Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...What vessel do they choose? The… pic.twitter.com/ugF3bMgxcx
Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...
Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...
What vessel do they choose? The weak. It's weak men and women who are instruments of evil. The weaker the leader, the more evil that leader will be...
Unfortunately we reached the time in American history where every leader is either a woman or a weak man pretty much...Mike Johnson...but he's a weak man and that's the man you should be afraid of....
Weak people just become a host for evil, an empty building that evil occupies, possesses even. And that's exactly what's happening to Mike Johnson. That's absolutely crazy what Mike Johnson is doing, but not because he's evil, it's because he's weak and therefore susceptible to evil..."
APNews | “Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
“There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over
into the vilification of Judaism.”
The protest encampment sprung up at Columbia on Wednesday, the same day that Shafik faced bruising criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she hadn’t done enough to fight antisemitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago following widely criticized testimony they gave to the same committee.
In
her statement Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible
and that she understands that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt
important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,”
Shafik wrote.
Over the coming days, a working group of deans,
school administrators and faculty will try to find a resolution to the
university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes
would resume.
U.S. House Republicans from New York urged Shafik to resign, saying in a letter Monday that she had failed to provide a safe learning environment in recent days as “anarchy has engulfed the campus.”
In
Massachusetts, a sign said Harvard Yard was closed to the public
Monday. It said structures, including tents and tables, were only
allowed into the yard with prior permission. “Students violating these
policies are subject to disciplinary action,” the sign said. Security
guards were checking people for school IDs.
The same day, the
Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee said the
university’s administration suspended their group. In the suspension
notice provided by the student organization, the university wrote that
the group’s April 19 demonstration had violated school policy, and that
the organization failed to attend required trainings after they were
previously put on probation.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee
said in a statement that they were suspended over technicalities and
that the university hadn’t provided written clarification on the
university’s policies when asked.
“Harvard has shown us time and again that Palestine remains the exception to free speech,” the group wrote in a statement.
Harvard did not respond to an email request for comment.
At
Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them
with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New
Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear
in court later, he said.
Protesters set up tents on Beinecke
Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to
end any investments in defense companies that do business with Israel.
In
a statement to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter
Salovey said university officials had spoken to the student protesters
multiple times about the school’s policies and guidelines, including
those regarding speech and allowing access to campus spaces.
School
officials said they gave protesters until the end of the weekend to
leave Beinecke Plaza. The said they again warned protesters Monday
morning and told them that they could face arrest and discipline,
including suspension, before police moved in.
A large group of
demonstrators regathered after Monday’s arrests at Yale and blocked a
street near campus, Bruckhart said. There were no reports of any
violence or injuries.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student
studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who
set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts,
campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a cease-fire and are
protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing
genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a cease-fire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said. ___
nakedcapitalism | Many US papers are giving front-page, above the fold treatment to
university administrators going wild and calling in the cops on peaceful
campus protests, first at Columbia, followed by Yale and NYU.
Harvard, in a profile in courage, closed its campus to prevent a
spectacle. Demonstrations are taking hold at other campuses, including
MIT, Emerson, and Tufts.
This is an overly dynamic situation, so I am not sure it makes sense
to engage in detailed coverage. However, some things seem noteworthy.
First, in typical US hothouse fashion, the press is treating protests
as if they were a bigger deal than the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I am
not the only one to notice this. From Parapraxis (hat tip guurst; bear with the author’s leisurely set-up):
I am employed as a non-tenure-track professor
in a university department dedicated to teaching and research about
Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness. One day, I arrived at work to find
security cameras installed in my department’s hallway. I read in an
email that these cameras had been installed after an antisemitic poster
was discovered affixed to a colleague’s office door. I was never shown
this poster. Like the cameras, I learned of it only belatedly. Despite
the fact that the poster apparently constituted so great a danger to the
members of my department as to warrant increased security, nobody
bothered to inform me about it. By the time I was aware that there was a
threat in which I was ostensibly implicated, the decision had already
been made—by whom, exactly, I don’t know—about which measures were
necessary to protect me from it. My knowledge, consent, and perspective
were irrelevant to the process…
The prolepsis of the decision did more than protect me—if, indeed, it
really did that. It interpellated my coworkers and myself as people in
need of protection…. I was unwittingly transformed, literally overnight,
into the type of person to whom something might happen.
My employer has a campus—three, actually—meaning that it has a
physical plant. I navigate one of these campuses as my workplace, but it
almost never figures for me as “the campus.” In fact, the
first time since beginning the job when I felt myself caught up in an
affective relation, not to the particular institution where I work, but
rather to “the campus” was when I looked up into that security
camera and felt myself being “watched” by it. Only then did I think, a
couple of months into my temporary contract, that I was not just at my
workplace. Now I was on “the campus.”
This incident with the poster and the camera occurred, of course,
some weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the onset of
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza. Against so horrific a
backdrop, and relative to the intimidation and retaliation to which
those who speak out against the war (including—indeed, especially—in the
academy) have been subjected, my story sounds banal. And it is. In its
very ordinariness, however, the anecdote is quite representative: first,
of how decisions get made at contemporary institutions of higher
education (generally speaking, without the input of those whom they
impact); and second, of the logic of a peculiarly American phenomenon I
call campus panic….
The months since October 7 have aggravated the most extreme campus
panic I have witnessed. To judge by the American mass media, the campus
is the most urgent scene of political struggle in the world. What is
happening “on campus” often seems of greater concern than what is
happening in Gaza, where every single university campus has been razed
by the IDF. When all the Palestinian dead have been counted, it seems
likely that these months will be recorded as having inflamed a campus
panic no less intense than the one that accompanied the Vietnam War.
Second, many otherwise fine stories, like Columbia in crisis, again
by the Columbia Journalism Review, and Columbia University protests and
the lessons of “Gym Crow” by Judd at Popular Information, start off
with the 1968 protests at Columbia as a point of departure. And again,
consistent with the Parapraxis account and being old enough to remember
the Vietnam War, I find the comparison to be overdone. Yes, there are
some telling similarities, like the role of right-wing pressure in
getting campus administrators to call out the cops, the device of
dwelling on the earlier uprising seems to obscure more than it reveals.
The Vietnam War, unlike Gaza, tore the US apart. Today’s campus students
are, with only the comparatively small contingent of Palestinian
students, acting to protest US support of slaughter in Gaza. In 1968,
for many, the stake were more personal. The risk of young men having to
serve was real.
Similarly, conservatives then supported the military and were
typically proud of their or any family member’s service. Draft dodging
and demonization of armed forces leaders was close to unconscionable. It
took years of the major television networks and the two authoritative
magazines, Time and Newsweek, showing what the war looked like, and
intimating that the US was not succeeding, that shifted mass opinion.
KATV | Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., chastised Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Thursday over his alleged mishandling of the southern border.
Mayorkas
has been the subject of intense GOP scrutiny as the migrant crisis
continues to overwhelm U.S. sanctuary cities. While the House issued
articles of impeachment against the border czar this week, the Senate
was quick to shoot them down.
Nonetheless,
Mayorkas remains a polarizing figure on Capitol Hill. Sen. Paul
criticized Mayorkas while hearing his testimony during a hearing of the
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“How
did the murderer of Laken Riley get into this country?” the senator
asked, invoking the name of the 22-year-old allegedly slain by illegal
migrant Jose Ibarra. “What is the statute that allowed you to do it? How
could you sleep at night having done that?”
Also
slamming Mayorkas was Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who grilled him over
repeatedly changing his answers when asked about how Ibarra entered the
U.S.
“[Ibarra] was paroled into the United State due to lack of
detention capacity,” Sen. Hawley said. “You and I both know you know
this.”
You just never wanted to cop to it,” the senator added. “You testified falsely under oath.”
Mayorkas
also took heat this week from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who
suggested he “should have deported” Riley, a U.S. citizen, to keep her
safe.
"Her parents would have appreciated that," the congresswoman added.
U.S. sanctuary cities are now using significant
funding to care for migrants. New York City recently announced a $53
million pilot program to distribute prepaid debit cards to migrant
families. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston last week touted his decision to
cut back on $45.9 million worth of expenses as the city deals with an
ongoing influx of migrants.
Joe Rogan Goes Quiet as Tucker Carlson Drops Bone-Chilling Reality
“Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people who run the intel committee.”
Rogan and Carlson also touch upon the effects of technology and
social media on personal interactions and societal norms. They discuss
the negative impacts of constant connectivity, lamenting the loss of
meaningful face-to-face interactions.
"When people lie and when people bullshit and gaslight, it's more offensive now than it's ever been before," Rogan points out.
"The lies aren't sophisticated. It's something incredibly insulting and demeaning to tell me a lie when I know it's a lie."
And
then the discussion gets ominously dark as the pair reflect on the
re-authorization of the 'spying on Americans' bill (we note that the two
gentlemen met before the bill was re-authorized).
'Kiddie Porn' blackmail fear...
Stunningly,
Carlson tells Rogan that congressmen were "terrified" that intelligence
agencies will frame them with "kiddie porn" if they openly opposed the
"warrantless spying" bill.
Specifically, he says US lawmakers
"told" him that they are "worried" about being punished by intel
agencies if they oppose reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"People
don't say that because they're worried about being punished. They’re
worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of
Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I'm not guessing at that.
They've told me that — including people on the intel committee,
including people who run the intel committee," Carlson said.
"The
people whose job it is to oversee and keep in line these enormous,
secretive agencies whose budgets we can't even know - their 'black
budgets'," Carlson continued, raising his hands into air-quotes.
That it is "tyranny", not democracy, for "unelected people who are not accountable to anyone making the biggest decisions",
Carlson raged, to force congressmen to support reauthorizing
"warrantless spying" of American citizens because "they're threatened."
"They're the parents, the agencies are the children. They're afraid of the agencies. That's not compatible with democracy."
“It’s playing out in front of everyone, and no one cares and no one does anything about it,” Carlson said.
"I
think the reason is because they’re threatened. And if you look at the
committee chairman who allowed this shit to happen year after year,
they’re all - and I don’t know, people say, ‘Oh, they’re compromised or
being blackmailed,’ whatever. I don’t have evidence of that. But I know
them. And they have all the things to hide. I know that for a fact."
“It’s
not a stretch of imagination to imagine that, you know, some committee
chairman who’s allowing warrantless spying on Americans to continue, or
whatever abuse they’re allowing... It’s not impossible to
imagine that some guy with a drinking problem or a weird sex life — and
that’s very common, very common up there — that’s why they’re doing it.
Because they don’t want to be exposed,” Carlson added.
“I
said to somebody, a very powerful person, the other day, in a
conversation in my kitchen, an elected official - holds a really senior
position...
But I was like, ‘All these
people are controlled. They’ve all got weird s*x lives, and all these
things they’re hiding, and they’re being blackmailed by the intel
agencies.’
And he said, and I’m
quoting, ‘I know.’ I was like, okay, so at this point, we’re just sort
of admitting that’s real? Like, why do we allow that to continue?”
davidstockman | What Johnson’s impending Waterloo means, therefore, is not merely the
prospect of another wild and wooly succession battle, but actually that there is no point at all in the preservation of a Republican majority and GOP House Speaker. After all, the Washington GOP has become so infected with neocon warmongers and careerist pols
who spend a lifetime basking in the imperial projects and pretensions
of the world’s War Capital that apparently the best the House GOP caucus
could do when it ejected the previous careerist deep stater from the
Speaker’s chair was to tap the dim-witted nincompoop who currently
occupies it.
The Republican party is thus truly beyond redemption. As JFK once said about the CIA, its needs to be splintered into a thousand pieces and swept into the dustbin of history.
Indeed, when you look at the calamitous fiscal trajectory embedded in the CBO’s latest 30-year fiscal outlook, you truly have to wonder about what miniature minds like Congressman Johnson’s are actually thinking. That
is to say, the latest CBO report published in March presumes that there
will never be another recession and no inflation flare-up, interest
rate spike, global energy dislocation, prolonged Forever War or any
other imaginable crisis ever again—just smooth economic sailing for the
next 30 years.
And yet, and then. Even by the math of this Rosy Scenario on steroids the public debt will reach $140 trillion
at minimum by 2054. In turn, that would cause interest payments on the
public debt with rates no higher than those which prevailed between 1986
and 1997 to reach $10 trillion per year.
You
simply don’t need paragraphs, pages and whole monographs worth of
analysis and amplification to understand where that is going. The
nation’s fisc is now on the cusp of descending into the maws of a
doomsday machine. So how in the world do these elements of Johnson’s
offering make even the remotest sense?
Speaker Johnson's Foreign Aid Boondoggle:
Indo-Pacific aid: $8.1 billion.
Israel: $26.4 billion.
Ukraine: $60.8 billion.
Total: $95.3 billion.
Apparently,
it’s because Johnson and a good share of the Washington GOP have
succumbed wholesale to neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow
excuses for warmongering. For crying out loud, Putin has no interest in molesting the Poles, to say nothing of storming the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
He is certainly no Ghandi, but well more than smart enough to recognize
that with Russia’s GDP of $2.2 trillion and war budget of $80 billion
there would be no point in going to war with NATO’s $45 trillion of GDP
and combined war budgets in excess of $1.2 trillion.
Likewise,
China’s $50 trillion debt-ridden Ponzi would collapse in months if its
$3.5 trillion flow of export earnings were disrupted after attempting to
land its single modern aircraft carrier on the California coast. And
Iran has no nukes, no intercontinental range missiles and a GDP equal to
130 hours of US annual output.
So, some Axis of evil!
Yet
that’s exactly what the Speaker said this morning after going to too
many Deep State briefings and apparently having his own johnson yanked
once too often. The Swamp creatures surely see the lad’s naivete and
blithering ignorance as a gift that doesn’t stop giving. That is to say,
a “mark” who knows nothing at all about the world from sources not
stamped, “Top Secret (lies)”.
Speaker Mike Johnson: “We’re
going to stand for freedom and make sure that Putin doesn’t march
through Europe… we’re the greatest Nation on the planet, and we have to
act like it”,
This is a critical time right now, a
critical time on the world stage. I can make a selfish decision and do
something that’s different but I’m doing here what I believe to be the
right thing. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is
critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we've gotten.
I believe Xi, Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil.
I think they’re in coordination on it. “So I think that Vladimir Putin
would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he
might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.
To
put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American
boys. My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a
live-fire exercise for me as it is so many American families. This is
not a game, this is not a joke.
Needless to say, our dufus Speaker doesn’t know the “Baltics” from the “Balkans” where Serbia and other Russian friendlies are definitely not quaking in their boots about Putin.
In
point of fact, however, it is not hard to see that the civil war and
territorial dispute between Kiev and Moscow over the Donbas and rim of
the Black Sea from Mariupol to Odessa is a one-off of Russian and
regional history and Washington’s mindless push of NATO eastward to
Russia’s very doorstep.
The light-yellow area of this 1897 map
gave an unmistakable message: To wit, in the late Russian Empire there
was no doubt as to the paternity of the Donbas and the lands adjacent to
the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. Already then, they were part of the 125
years-old New Russia, which had been assembled by purchase and conquest
during the reign of Catherine the Great.
Indeed, it was only in
1922 that the yellow area—essentially demarcating the four provinces of
Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which recently voted to
rejoin Russia—was appended to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by
the great humanitarian and map-maker, V. Lenin.
And yet
Speaker Johnson now wants to crash the Republican Party on enforcing a
map drawn by one of history’s bloodiest monsters. It’s come down to that.
The current exchange happened after Israel, in clear violation of international law, bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
The aim and success of last night's attack is yet unknown:
Israel carried out retaliatory strikes against Iran early
Friday morning local time, reportedly targeting locations in the west of
the country. Explosions were heard in the city of Isfahan, prompting
commercial flights to divert from their routes.
Senior US officials speaking to ABC, CBS and NPR confirmed the strikes. ... Iran's
semi-official Fars news agency reported at around 5:30 a.m. local time
(10:00 p.m. EST Thursday) that explosions were heard in Qahjaverestan,
northeast of Isfahan.
A senior Iranian military official in Isfahan told the Islamic
Republic News Agency that the explosions were caused by Iran's air
defenses that fired at a suspicious object east of Isfahan. Isfahan's
international airport is located just northeast of Qahjaverestan.
Two discarded first stages of Israeli ROCKS aero-ballistic missiles have been found in Iraq. ROCKS, a derivative of Sparrows ballistic target rocket, are air-launched, stand-off, air-to-ground missiles.
They may have hit something near Isfahan or they may have been taken down by Iranian air defense.
No Iranian or Israeli officials have commented the attack. The IAEA said that no Iranian nuclear facility has been hit.
As both sides are currently silent, and as there are no signs of
further escalation, the strike will likely conclude the current
exchange.
As a consequence of its strike in Damascus Israel has lost its
escalation dominance. Iran managed to penetrate its external security
screen just like Hamas had penetrated Israel's internal security screen
on October 7 2023 when it broke out of Gaza to collect hostages.
Those who moved to Israel because they thought that it could provide them with security should reevaluate their decision.
nakedcapitalism | Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s missile attack over the last
weekend, despite many reports of US and its allies urging Israel to
declare their defense against a very large-scale Iran missile barrage to
be a victory. The US and Iran both appear united in wanting to stop
further escalation. But Israel has a mind of its own, as demonstrated by
its stunning attack on Iran’s embassy grounds in Damascus which
initiated this crisis.
It’s possible that Israel could use a cyber attack to retaliate. But
that seems unlikely given Israel’s long established policy of making
hard hits back in response to assaults. It also seems unlikely given
what Alastair Crooke has described as the implicit premise of Israel,
that Jews in its borders would be assured of safety. That sense of
security took a body blow on October 7. Israelis seem almost driven to
re-establish their appearance of military potency.
The next question is whether Israel can be herded or coerced into
what would amount to a negotiated attack on Iran, as in hitting targets
conveyed to Tehran in advance so it could bolster defenses and get
personnel and high-value equipment out of the way. There is still a
possibility that Israel could engage in deception, as in communicate it
would strike certain locations, then hit different ones.
Another possibility is Israel blowing up Al Aqsa mosque. That would
be disproportionate and would set the entire Muslim world on fire. From a recent post at NC by Kevin Kirk:
So the Temple Institute Organization, based in Jerusalem (and supported by Henry Swieca, a wealthy New York financier), who are committed to building the 3rd
Temple and restoring animal sacrifice, have swung into action and
submitted an application to the Israeli police to use knives to
slaughter 5 perfect red heifers as part of a purification ritual
elucidated in Numbers Chapter 19 of the Bible. This ceremony, which is
taking place on a specially built altar situated on the Mount of Olives
opposite the Temple Mount, is set to take place in April 22nd,
which is during Passover. Once the purification ceremony has been
undertaken then the stage is set for the building of the Temple, leading
to the coming of the Messiah and the final battle between good and evil
on a hill just outside Haifa called Tel Megiddo, or, as it is called in
the Bible: Armageddon.
Some Israelis are already planning their Temple Mount project. Echoes
of Israel developers promoting their plans for Gaza post-Palestinians,
but with vastly higher stakes:
For now, we will limit ourselves to the focus of Western concern,
that of a kinetic attack on Iran. A remarkable story at the Financial
Times, prominently places as a “Big Read”, Ukraine’s air defence struggle shows risks to Israel,
departs radically from Anglosphere practice of heavily propagandized
coverage about both the Ukraine and Gaza (and now Iran) conflict. It’s
quite the twofer. It not only admits what until recently has been
verboten, that Russia has seriously weakened Ukraine’s air defenses and
the West can’t do much to shore them back up. It also provides a
detailed description of Iran’s barrage and discusses how despite claims
of success, they showed Israel vulnerability, particularly to a
sustained campaign by Iran. This is not all that different from what you
see in the independent media.
So why is the Financial Times making so many admissions against
Western interest? It’s not as if these facts are not well known among
insiders, particularly the military. My guess is this is an effort to
influence Israel loyalists in political circles, particularly the US, as
well as private Israel influencers, that escalating with Iran has very
high odds of turning out badly for Israel. Nevertheless, it’s surprising
to see so much candor while events are still in play.
US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a
victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the
US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles
and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s
consulate in Damascus on April 1.
“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the
IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran
tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military
superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with
its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.
In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”
Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were
intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the
US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the
Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the
attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was
killed.
Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by
announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli
territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.
But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if
Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate
reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger
response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.
While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a
potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next.
The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.
Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond
but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not
over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a
price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu
“that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend
itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it
does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.
Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people,
including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting
covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the
bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.
simplicius | Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.
This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.
Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.
But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km.
Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, which peeled back another layer of sophistication that included such things as possible endoatmospheric interception attempts with Israeli Arrow-3 ABM missiles.
But let’s step back for a moment to state that Iran’s operation in general was modeled after the sophisticated paradigm set by Russia in Ukraine: it began with the launch of various types of drones, which included some Shahed-136s (Geran-2 in Russia) as well as others. We can see that from the Israeli-released footage of some of the drone interceptions:
nakedcapitalism | I recently came across this piece
from the Century Foundation titled “A Bolder American Foreign Policy
Means More Values and Less War.” Its central argument is that the US
must “recenter values” like “multilateralism and human rights that are
core to its identity.”
The Century Foundation calls itself a “a progressive, independent
think tank,” and this particular piece appears to mean well but is just
as disconnected from reality than all the neocon think tanks’ war
mongering policy papers saying Washington will prevail as it takes on
Russia, China, Iran, and whoever else it feels like.
The Century Foundation authors possess a Hollywoodized idea of
America that isn’t a land filled with brutal class struggle but virtue,
which flow out into its foreign policy that stands for international
humanitarian or human rights law. I think anyone with a basic
understanding of current events or recent history knows how ridiculous
this is, and yet it is repeated ad nauseam by every purported think
tank. I suppose this is a classic example of Upton Sinclair’s saying
that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends on his not understanding it,” but I think the Century
Foundation is onto something with its focus on values. It’s just that it
has it backwards. The problem is that values are what has the US on
the brink of starting World War III in multiple locations.
So what are the core values that do have it such a position – and whose are they?
I think the story of former US President Herbert Hoover is
instructive. He had interests in mines in Russia until they were seized
by the Bolsheviks. [1] Hoover never forgot about it and remained terrified of Communists for the rest of his life – and for good reason considering how much he stood to lose.
Though Hoover got booted out of office in 1932, he played a central
role in organizing capitalists to counter worker organization both in
the US and abroad. His legacy lives on at Stanford’s neocon Hoover
Institution. Throughout his life, he remained a major admirer of
pre-Soviet Russia: “At the top was a Russian noble family and at the
bottom 100,000 peasants and workers with nobody much in between but the
priesthood and the overseers.”
That pretty much sums up the capitalist class’ enduring vision not
just for Russia, but everywhere. Ownership of Russian mines or Opium
Wars in China might not factor much into my or your everyday life, but
you can bet it’s an important part of American ruling class ideology.
Whose values? The dominant value at play there is a belief that as
Western capitalists they have a right and a duty to exploit and profit
off of every corner of the globe. Just like capital must dominate labor,
it must expand and find new sources of revenue. If governments in
Russia and China impede that progress, they must be destroyed.
Rather than bromides like more American “values,” the following are
some questions or thought exercises for think tanks to consider –
whether they want to win another war or maybe even quit starting so many
of them.
Can You Practice Realpolitik with Gangsters?
The US is a market state that is dominated by and run for
transnational capital. Its foreign policy and the military are a tool of
the American oligarchy. Therefore, any serious policy discussion needs
to deal with the fact that national interests as they’re expressed today
are not in any real sense national but representative of the interests
of a small cohort of the super wealthy.
When US officials go on about spreading “freedom,” they’re not lying.
It’s just their idea of freedom is a state devoted to high profits – free from the political whims of local populations that could degrade an investment’s expected return.
Let’s remember there likely wouldn’t be any problem with Russia had
Putin not put an end to the 1990s shock therapy administered by the
Western finance capitalists who were making a killing by pillaging
Russian resources. Like Bert Hoover, they’re haunted by that opportunity
snatched away from them, and they’ve been trying to get it back for a
quarter century now.
The question is will American capital ever voluntarily give up? Will
it ever say “okay, we’re satisfied with what we’ve got here, you do your
thing in your sphere of influence”?
It’s not like Moscow and Beijing haven’t tried. Russia for example
floated the idea of joining NATO or working out some other security
arrangement. For decades after the end of the USSR, Russia tried to be
accepted into the West’s club to no avail.
China, too, constantly repeats the refrain that the world is big enough for both Beijing and Washington. It invited the US to join it in its Belt and Road Initiative.
The US could have helped steer projects that would have benefited both
countries. While such cooperation between the two big powers wouldn’t be
a panacea for all the world’s problems, it would likely mean a lot
better spot than current one. Instead the US wanted the whole pie and
instead we got the TPP, sanctions, export bans, a new Cold War, a spy
balloon scandal, the disastrous effort to weaken Russia before taking on
China, the successful effort to sever Europe from Eurasia to disastrous
effect for Europe, and the desire to see a Ukraine sequel in Taiwan
and/or the South China Sea.
There is a lot of confusion over why the West keeps escalating in a
losing effort. Why, for example, are Western governments going around
begging for shells to send Ukraine rather than accepting the L? The
desperation seems to stem from the creeping realization that their
system is coming undone. The entire post-WWII elite American mindset is
built on the foundation of worldwide profit expansion via silicon and
fire, and if they throw everything at Russia and lose, well a whole new
domino theory could come into play – one where parasitic Western finance
capital is driven back. (Granted it might in most cases be replaced by a
more local form, but it’s nonetheless frightening for the Western
honchos.) Just look at what’s happening to France in Françafrique! And
the US in the Middle East!
The fact that the West can no longer even manufacture enough weapons
to supply its proxy wars almost certainly means that the dominoes will
keep falling.
middleasteye | It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran's massive drone and missile attack overnight, according to a former financial adviser to Israel's military.
"The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per
night," estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with
Ynet news.
Aminoach highlighted that the staggering price tag stands in contrast
to the relatively low amount that Iran had spent to launch its assault,
which some estimates have put at less than 10 percent of what it cost
Israel to stop the attack.
Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles towards Israel on
Saturday, in response to an Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria
that killed two senior Revolutionary Guard commanders earlier this
month.
Israel said its military forces and its allies had intercepted 99
percent of the missiles, but some ballistic missiles penetrated Israeli
defences and hit the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel.
"If we're talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought
down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down
with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we
actually bring down mainly with fighter jets," he said.
"Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a
David's Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of
4-5bn shekels."
David's Sling is a weapons system meant to intercept medium to
long-range rockets and missiles. The Arrow system was designed to thwart
long-range missiles, including the types of ballistic missiles Iran
launched on Saturday and of long-range missiles launched by the Houthis
in Yemen.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...