Iran, nukes, Trump, Bibi

Let's get to the nuttiest thing of the last 72 or so hours first.

That's Larry Johnson's claim Iran either has or is about to have a nuke. And note those two tense agreements, as I quote his first graf: 

Pepe Escobar and I received the following intelligence report last Thursday, which was produced by a knowledgeable source with access. I am not reproducing the entire report, but want to highlight the issue of whether or not Iran now has, or soon will have a nuke. Let me emphasize that I firmly support past US intel community assessments that Iran, until now, had no interest in obtaining a nuke.

Even Sy Hersh isn't claiming shit like that. 

Speaking of, as I said in restacking?

There’s a BIG difference between "has" and "may have" in the first graf on Iran and nuclear weapons. The rest of Johnson's piece smells highly breathless; at least as “breathless” as some of Sy Hersh’s writings here on Substack.

Yes.

Then, The Dissident linked to it in his own moderately breathless piece. 

I had a longer comment/restack on that, to which I added an additional note, only on the restack, referencing his response to my comment. Here you are:

There's a big difference between the header saying Iran "has developed a nuclear weapon" and the subhed saying "Iran MAY Now Actually Develop a Nuclear Weapon." BIG difference. 

Johnson at your link also tries to go both ways, using both "has" and "may have" in the first graf. 

The rest of Johnson's piece smells highly breathless; at least as “breathless” as some of Sy Hersh’s writings here on Substack. And, it's not the first breathless thing he's uttered here or on You Tube in recent weeks. Or in the past decade. 

As co-founder of VIPS, I believe he signed off on the majority report about the 2016 hacking that believed all the "Forensicator" bullshit and that helped goose the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Per the one comment, Dissident said he'd edited; you wanna tell Larry Johnson to edit as well? 

== 

The Dissident has since responded to the version of this that was a comment on his site. He further explained the editing while noting Johnson’s claim is “unconfirmed.” The reality is Johnson’s claim is almost certainly fact-free on Iran “May Actually Develop” and totally fact-free on “Has Developed” and there’s no need to have given him the time of day.

And, yes, Larry Johnson is a nutter.

So's Pepe Escobar.

Beyond what I said about Johnson in that note, he also appears to be playing footsie at times with John Helmer of borderline antisemitism fame and other things.

And, as briefly referenced in my response to The Dissident, per a full decade ago and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, Johnson is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, the majority of whom, via Patrick Lawrence, signed off on the Forensicator bullshit, bullshit called out by Duncan Campbell, bullshit that helped goose the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, bullshit for which, AFAIK, Johnson remains unapologetic. Per his Wiki, that would not be the only shark-jumping for which he remains unapologetic.

And, the nutter photo? Of Johnson as defender of Free Dumb? From his website, where the photo's a clickable link to this Free Dumb defender event. James Webb is the closest thing to a non-nutter on non-Nat-Sec Nutsacks™stuff of the names I recognize or took time to google. Man, there's grifting there if they're charginpg $999 a pop and getting people to pay.

Thirty-six hours later, The Dissident checked in with people like Mearsheimer and found out for himself the non-proliferation portion of the facts, which I already knew. I didn't even bother with him, because I knew the nuke angle itself was silly. As John said, Russia and China are opposed to proliferation and Pakistan is not a friend of Iran. John didn't even bother mentioning North Korea. He did note that, also contra Johnson, the idea of exploding a single nuke is itself laughable. You just threw away your deterrent. 

There's at least one commenter still defending Johnson on The Dissident's follow-up.  Actually, several more than one. One got butt-hurt when I mentioned Johnson's backstory, then said it was above not only his knowledge level but his interest, then got butt-hurt over my nom de plume to boot. I said "got it on you not wanting to learn more" and "I'm crushed."

Contra other commenters there, Ted Postol actually said that Iran could level up its current enriched uranium to bombs-grade for 20-30 weapons in weeks. Personally, I think months is more likely, and I doubt that Iran would actually build out the two-state U235/U238 bomb he describes. (Think of a thermonuclear without the second, fusion, stage.)  Other commenters there engaging in a bit of hand-waving on that, too.

Also, re Postol, launching the old-tyme gun-mechanism bomb from a ballastic missile has never been tested. 

Also also, two months ago, he was saying 10-11, not 10-20. See here. That said, he blames Biden for not resuming Obama's deal after Trump 1.0 killed it. 

And, per Trump on Press the Meat and NBC's fact check June 7, it cites other unnamed experts as "months or possibly more than a year" on timetable of creating a nuke that would fit on a missile.

Finally, per this piece, there's rumors the Pakistani foreign minister has said something about an Iranian demonstration and more. That right there stresses the need for accurate information, and it also indicates where Johnson's source is. Some blabber either at mid-grade in the ISI, or in some Western intelligence service monitoring the ISI, probably got some info 24 hours early. Besides, the ACTUAL rumor was that Pakistan's foreign minister shared info about Iran's nuke program in general.

==

Trump and Bibi?

Mearsheimer, June 2, appeared to halfway believe there was some semi-existential break between the two, after Trump gave Netanyahu an F-bomb yelling and told him not to attack Beirut.

Reality? Everybody from Zionist Trump-whisperer Barak Ravid on Axios to PBS have reported that yes, this happens but that both say it's no big deal.

For that matter, what if this was some sort of performance theater? 

What's next from and vis-a-vis Iran?

First, in the week ahead, we will find out whether President Masoud Pezeshkian or Iran's remaining top mullahs, even without an appointed successor to Grand Ayatollah and Supreme Leader Khamenei, have more control in the country, I do believe. That's in part as divisions seem to be arising between Pezeshkian and other avenues of leadership over targeting the Gulf Arab states. More on that here.

That said, Iran can target "Israel abroad," just as Israel has targeted "Iran abroad" in Hezbullah. Or the US abroad, and I don't mean US military bases in Gulf Arab states. It's done this, or tried this, all before, per the Atlantic. 

THAT said, would Trump really be dumb enough to send ground troops to Iran, after mocking Shrub Bush for Iraq, and starting the Afghanistan withdrawal process? Dumb enough or egotistical enough, he would. At a minimum, he's not ruled it out.

THAT that said, per Palestine Will Be Free, is Trump stupid enough to listen to junior grade Zionist neocons in Merikkka and the likes of Naftali Bennett, if not Bibi himself, and do something to Turkey? Speaking of, how craven will Turkish President for Life it seems Reccep Tayyip Erdogan look over the next week? 

What will NOT be next is Trump admitting any responsibility for killing at least 175 kids in a school bombing. What will also NOT be next is capitalists discontinuing betting on war. What will also also NOT be next is Trump admitting Netanyahu played him for a fool rather than him refusing to green-light an Israel-only attack. (The Dissident's Internet Archive link to a WaPost piece kept resending me to "captchas" time after time and never would load.)

Finally, in all of this, don't forget about Noam Chomsky as militarist. 

==

Monday Morning additions:

First, Trump continues to show this war is as Netanyahu's lackey, saying Bibi will be in on on peace talks. 

Second, we have dueling UN resolutions as the Israeli-US lackeys among Gulf Arab states laughably expect Russia to also pick their side. 

Third, and huge, Ms. Unchristian, Karoline Leavitt, refuses to rule out a military draft. 

Fourth, with Ayatollah Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, elected to succeed him, and beyond the smears of Graeme Wood at the Atlantic (not linking) aside, it appears that President Pezeshkian has been shunted aside as far as having final say-so on attacking Gulf Arab states and that will actually ramp up.

As for Wood? Dishonest over Russia-Ukraine four years ago. When I got to the graywall-paywall on his piece about Khamenei fils, I was barfing. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ scribe. The dood IS a member of the CFR.

John Mearsheimer talks truth about Russia-Ukraine

Kudos to The American Conservative, whatever one thinks of it otherwise, for doing an extensive transcript of Mearsheimer's Nov. 11 presentation to the European Parliament, specifically as part of an EP commemoration of Armistice Day.

Video is here:

And, with that, let's dig into the transcript. 

First and up front, the relevance to the date:

Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.

Mearsheimer later down gives a "realist" take on both World War I and II:

Remember that the U.S. entered both World Wars to prevent Germany and Japan from becoming regional hegemons in Europe and East Asia respectively. The same logic applies today.

I'd disagree on I, both on Wilson's motivation and the reality of the world stage at that time. But, hold on to that hegemony idea for a few paragraphs.

Then some of the specifics of what's gone wrong, including some of the lies by the US and/or EU. 

First, the EU-NATO relationship is succinctly spelled out:

Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe.

Exactly, EU. You still don't have that rapid reaction force; you still must hide behind the skirts of NATO. Post-invasion political science, with NATO expansion, has seen membership of the two organizations more closely align, too.

Next, it's post-Cold War unipolarity vs the start of multipolarity, which Mersheimer dates to 2017. Gee, what happened in the US then?  Anyway, here you go:

Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and contrary to what many Europeans think, it is not a threat to overrun all of Ukraine, much less eastern Europe. After all, it has spent the past three and a half years just trying to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine. The Russian army is not the Wehrmacht and Russia—unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War and China in East Asia today—is not a potential regional hegemon.

OK, the pre-2014, if you will, stage has been set. Gee, what happened in 2014? 

But first, a side note on Israel. Noting the "special friendship" there, Mearsheimer adds this will always distract the US from elsewhere, no matter who's in the White House. 

Well, one more bit of final stage-setting, including a warning for the people to whom he's speaking at that moment:

Europe and the U.S. foolishly sought to bring Ukraine into NATO, which provoked a losing war with Russia that markedly increases the odds that the U.S. will depart Europe and NATO will be eviscerated. Let me explain.

Eviscerated, it will be. German carmakers, and to a lesser degree, others in Europe, bet wrong on both hybrids and full electrics, and China is eating their lunch more than Tesla, which has faced more of a backlash than in the US. A fair amount of the electronics world is either US companies building shit in China, or Chinese companies building shit ever faster, followed by Japan. Where's today's Nokia? Where's Europe sit on solar panel construction? Where's Europe sit without Russian natural gas? Oh,in the hands of either US or certain of the Arab petro-klepto states, even worse than it does on oil, where Norway and the UK have a fair amount still.

Then, truth vs lies.

The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them. 

First, there is no evidence from before February 24, 2022 that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. Proponents of the conventional wisdom cannot point to anything Putin wrote or said that indicates he thought conquering Ukraine was a desirable goal, that he thought it was a feasible goal, and that he intended to pursue that goal. 

When challenged on this point, purveyors of the conventional wisdom point to Putin’s claim that Ukraine was an “artificial” state and especially to his view that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” which is a core theme in his well-known July 12, 2021 article. These comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. In fact, that article provides significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. For example, he tells the Ukrainian people, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!”

There you are. 

Was Russia trying to conquer all of Ukraine, or was it indeed a "special operation"? Mearsheimer says the latter:

Second, Putin did not have anywhere near enough troops to conquer Ukraine. I estimate that Russia invaded Ukraine with at most 190,000 troops. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the present commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, maintains that Russia’s invasion force was only 100,000 strong. There is no way that a force numbering either 100,000 or 190,000 soldiers could conquer, occupy, and absorb all of Ukraine into a greater Russia.

Note the Ukrainian agreement. (Mearsheimer notes Russia also had some idea about NATO upscaling Ukraine's armaments kit.)

Next, the various sabotaging of peace talks:

Immediately after the war began, Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war and work out a modus vivendi between the two countries. This move is directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and make it part of Greater Russia. Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow began in Belarus just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine. That Belarus track was eventually replaced by an Israeli as well as an Istanbul track. The available evidence indicates that the Russians were negotiating seriously and were not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass region. The negotiations ended when the Ukrainians, with prodding from Britain and the United States, walked away from the negotiations, which were making good progress when they ended. 

Furthermore, Putin reports that when the negotiations were taking place and making progress, he was asked to remove Russian troops from the area around Kiev as a goodwill gesture, which he did on March 29, 2022. No government in the West or former policymaker has seriously challenged Putin’s account, which is directly at odds with the claim that he was bent on conquering all of Ukraine. 

Fourth, in the months before the war started, Putin tried to find a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis. On December 17, 2021, Putin sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg proposing a solution to the crisis based on a written guarantee that: 1) Ukraine would not join NATO, 2) no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders, and 3) NATO troops and equipment moved into Eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to Western Europe. Whatever one thinks of the feasibility of reaching a bargain based on Putin’s opening demands, it shows that he was trying to avoid war. The United States, on the other hand, refused to negotiate with Putin. It appears it was not interested in avoiding war. 

Fifth, putting Ukraine aside, there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin was contemplating conquering any other countries in eastern Europe. That is hardly surprising, given that the Russian army is not even large enough to overrun all of Ukraine, much less try to conquer the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Plus, those countries are all NATO members, which would almost certainly mean war with the United States and its allies. 

In sum, while it is widely believed in Europe—and I am sure here in the European Parliament—that Putin is an imperialist who has long been determined to conquer all of Ukraine, and then conquer additional countries west of Ukraine, virtually all the available evidence is at odds with this perspective.

This is all known to people who know, including the people whom Mearsheimer is addressing. It's the "Boris Johnson sabotage" in the first paragraph.

Finally, a bit of "look in the mirror":

What is the basis of the claim that NATO expansion was the principal cause of the Ukraine war? 

First, Russian leaders across the board said repeatedly before the war started that they considered NATO expansion into Ukraine to be an existential threat that had to be eliminated. Putin made numerous public statements laying out this line of argument before 24 February 2022. ... 

Second, the centrality of Russia’s profound fear of Ukraine joining NATO is illustrated by events since the war started. For example, during the Istanbul negotiations that took place immediately after the invasion began, Russian leaders made it manifestly clear that Ukraine had to accept “permanent neutrality” and could not join NATO. The Ukrainians accepted Russia’s demand without serious resistance, surely because they knew that otherwise it would be impossible to end the war. More recently, on June 14, 2024, Putin laid out Russia’s demands for ending the war. One of his core demands was that Kiev “officially” state that it abandons its “plans to join NATO.” None of this is surprising, as Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. 

Third, a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war that NATO expansion—especially into Ukraine—would be seen by Russian leaders as a mortal threat and would eventually lead to disaster. 

William Burns, who was recently the head of the CIA, but was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, wrote a memo to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about bringing Ukraine into the alliance. “Ukrainian entry into NATO,” he wrote, “is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” ... Burns was not the only Western policymaker in 2008 who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. At the Bucharest summit, for example, both Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they understood it would alarm and infuriate Russia. ... 

It is also worth noting that the former secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said twice before leaving office that “President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.” Hardly anyone in the West challenged this remarkable admission, and he did not retract it. 

To take this a step further, numerous American policymakers and strategists opposed President Bill Clinton’s decision to expand NATO during the 1990s, when the decision was being debated.

Well, there you are. 

Let me add that this is the same Merkel who said Germany and NATO deliberately used the Minsk accords as an "appeasement" stall tactic to help rearm Ukraine. 

That's just half of his speech. 

Mearsheimer then goes on to the course of the war so far, then prospects for a settlement.

PEACEful settlement? Unlikely, he says. 

Consequences? This is selected from a LONG pull quote. Read the full thing.

For starters, Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has already lost a substantial portion of its territory and is likely to lose more land before the fighting stops. Its economy is in tatters with no prospect of recovery in the foreseeable future, and according to my calculations, it has suffered roughly 1 million casualties, a staggering number for any country, but certainly for one that is said to be in a “demographic death spiral.” Russia has paid a significant price as well, but it has suffered nowhere near as much as Ukraine. 

Europe will almost certainly remain allied with rump Ukraine for the foreseeable future, given sunk costs and the profound Russophobia that pervades the West. But that continuing relationship will not work to Kiev’s advantage for two reasons. First, it will incentivize Moscow to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs to cause it economic and political trouble, so that it is not a threat to Russia and is in no position to join either NATO or the EU. Second, Europe’s commitment to supporting Kiev no matter what motivates the Russians to conquer as much Ukrainian territory as possible while the war is raging, so as to maximize the weakness of the Ukrainian rump state that remains once the conflict is frozen. 

What about relations between Europe and Russia moving forward? They are likely to be poisonous for as far as the eye can see. Both the Europeans and surely the Ukrainians will work to undermine Moscow’s efforts to integrate the Ukrainian territories it has annexed into greater Russia as well as look for opportunities to cause the Russians economic and political trouble. Russia, for its part, will look for opportunities to cause economic and political trouble inside of Europe and between Europe and the U.S. ...

Relations between Europe and Russia will not only be poisonous, but they will also be dangerous. The possibility of war will be ever-present. In addition to the risk that war between Ukraine and Russia could restart—after all, Ukraine will want its lost territory back—there are six other flashpoints where a war pitting Russia against one or more European countries could break out. First, consider the Arctic, where the melting ice has opened the door to competition over passageways and resources. ... 

The second flashpoint is the Baltic Sea, which is sometimes referred to as a “NATO lake” because it is largely surrounded by countries from that alliance. That waterway, however, is of vital strategic interest to Russia, as is Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave in eastern Europe that is also surrounded by NATO countries. The fourth flashpoint is Belarus, which because of its size and location, is as strategically important to Russia as Ukraine. The Europeans and the Americans will surely try to install a pro-Western government in Minsk after President Aleksandr Lukashenko leaves office and eventually turn it into a pro-Western bulwark on Russia’s border. 

The West is already deeply involved in the politics of Moldova, which not only borders Ukraine, but contains a breakaway region known as Transnistria, which is occupied by Russian troops. 

The final flashpoint is the Black Sea. ... 

All of this is to say that even after Ukraine becomes a frozen conflict, Europe and Russia will continue to have hostile relations in a geopolitical setting filled with trouble-spots. In other words, the threat of a major European war will not go away when the fighting stops in Ukraine. 

Let me now turn to the consequences of the Ukraine war inside of Europe and then turn to its likely effects on trans-Atlantic relations. For starters, it cannot be emphasized enough that a Russian victory in Ukraine—even if it is an ugly victory as I anticipate—would be a stunning defeat for Europe. Or to put it in slightly different words, it would be a stunning defeat for NATO. .... 

NATO’s defeat will lead to recriminations between member states and inside many of them as well. Who is to blame for this catastrophe will matter greatly to the governing elites in Europe and surely there will be a powerful tendency to blame others and not accept responsibility themselves. The debate over “who lost Ukraine” will take place in a Europe that is already wracked by fractious politics both between countries and inside them. In addition to these political fights, some will question the future of NATO, given that it failed to check Russia, the country that most European leaders describe as a mortal threat. It seems almost certain that NATO will be much weaker after the Ukraine war is shut down than it was before that war started. 

Any weakening of NATO will have negative repercussions for the EU, because a stable security environment is essential for the EU to flourish, and NATO is the key to stability in Europe. Threats to the EU aside, the great reduction in the flow of gas and oil to Europe since the war started has seriously hurt the major economies of Europe and slowed down growth in the overall Eurozone. There is good reason to think that economic growth across Europe is a long way from fully recovering from the Ukraine debacle. 

A NATO defeat in Ukraine is also likely to lead to a trans-Atlantic blame game.... 

Then there is the all-important question of whether the U.S. will significantly reduce its military footprint in Europe or maybe even pull all its combat troops out of Europe. As I emphasized at the start of my talk, independent of the Ukraine war, the historic shift from unipolarity to multipolarity has created a powerful incentive for the U.S. to pivot to East Asia.... 

What has happened in Ukraine since 2022 makes that outcome more likely. To repeat: Trump has a deep-seated hostility to Europe, especially its leaders, and he will blame them for losing Ukraine. He has no great affection for NATO and has described the EU as an enemy created “to screw the United States.” Furthermore, the fact that Ukraine lost the war despite enormous support from NATO is likely to lead him to trash the alliance as ineffective and useless. That line of argument will allow him to push Europe to provide for its own security and not free-ride on the U.S. In short, it seems likely that the results of the Ukraine war, coupled with the spectacular rise of China, will eat away at the fabric of trans-Atlantic relations in the years ahead, much to the detriment of Europe.

He then has a conclusion with a final bit of knuckle-rapping. 

The Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on both sides of the Atlantic, along with the NAFO Nazis, Uki-tankies, etc, will surely refuse to listen to these cold, hard facts. There’s 100 other nutters like Nadin Brzezinski on Medium.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has reportedly received a draft peace plan from Trump. 

And, with the details we have, "shock me" that Trump grift is in some way involved; it's the same old claim on Ukrainian minerals he floated months ago. And, the Axios piece to which they link says Ukraine must enshrine in its constitution: No NATO. It does allow Ukraine to petition for EU membership. It ALSO calls for NATO to amend its statutes to bar this.

Leo XIV, immigration, and conservative cafeteria Catholics — plus Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ cafeteria Catholics!

If you're politically awake and not under a rock, you probably heard last week about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearly unanimously (five noes, three abstentions) passing a sternly written policy statement about humane treatment of immigrants and explicitly rebuking ICE thuggery.

Per that piece, the statement was pushed by the new pope, Leo XIV, himself. Links at the Substack piece include the National Catholic Reporter as well as mainstream media.

Let us go to that NCR piece, skipping Hale's intermediary, in part for reasons at the bottom. Here's the nut graf:

"We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care," the bishops said. "We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones."

And, read on as you desire. 

With that, off to the second half of the header.

What ARE "conservative cafeteria Catholics," you might ask?

Nothing other than the flip side of "liberal cafeteria Catholics."

You'll note there is no such thing in world as "cafeteria Catholic" without the political adjective qualifier. I have written extensively before about mainstream media getting this wrong.

That's because many of the people playing "gotcha" on liberal cafeteria Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc. on abortion and birth control fail to follow the official Vatican line on the death penalty and are therefore ...

"Conservative cafeteria Catholics," period and end of story.

There are a few who walk the Catholic walk on both. 

At the national level, I am only aware of Bob Casey, recently voted out as one of two U.S. Senators from Pennsylvania, and Dan Kildee, Congressman from Flint. So was his uncle, Dale Kildee, whom I know personally.

Within the state of Tex-ass, obviously, Gov. Strangeabbott is a conservative cafeteria Catholic. I have, in fact, called him out before. So is former state Legiscritter Drew Springer. (If you're a Catholic in a death-penalty state, and haven't pushed a bill to repeal it, you're a CCC. And, that's not FDR's CCC.) 

And, I've called out hypocrisies of conservative cafeteria Catholics on the abortion issue before, too. 

How the USCCB will play out in the conservative cafeteria Catholic heartland, with which I am familiar, either among laity or among priests in pulpits, I have no idea. That said, given that on many social issues (I'll cover this more at my other site) these people have become more and more like conservative evangelical Protestants on many issues, this may go over at least halfway like a lead balloon. 

This all said, let us not hold Christopher Hale up as some sort of saint. Beyond things like The Bulwark, bad enough, his "follows" on Substack include Bari Weiss's odious, genocide-supporting Free Press, a bunch of Obamiac / BlueAnon accounts, but not a single pro-Palestinian one. (He does have one piece about Leo condemning Israel's actions, that's paywall truncated.

Also, Hale doesn't talk about the rest of the policy document, like on "gender-affirming," or sex-affirming, health care. That's because it doesn't fit his agenda, which apparently is the ConservaDem wing of BlueAnon. That's also going to be part of the discussion at my other site. The problem there is, per the 19th website, is that Catholic hospitals are one of six in the nation, and in many smaller towns (not just "rural") the only option. That site doesn't mention that Catholic hospitals are also barred from surgical birth control, like tubal ligations, that prevent "implantation." That that said, there's way more than two sides on that issue.

Let me add that — as a secularist — I loathe people who selectively exploit religious statements for political reasons. To tie the last couple of paragraphs above together? Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, called for an investigation as to whether or not Israel was committing genocide. On the other hand, he never went beyond a call for "investigation." And, Leo himself is a weasel-shit on this. Hey White Sox bubbe, we have international organizations that have already called it a genocide.

Also, earlier, Francis said that NATO had been "badgering" Russia, which I'm sure Hale also ignores, whether Catholic or not. (He does have a post about Leo calling for peace in Ukraine.) And, since he IS Catholic, and worked for Dear Leader, we're going to invent a new version of this label: Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ Cafeteria Catholic. Beyond ignoring Francis on foreign policy, and refusing to go beyond Francis and Leo on Gaza, he's also a sheepdogging cafeteria Catholic. This is even more true since he's written for sites like National Catholic Reporter himself.

And, Hale actually LIKED a longer version of this, mashed up with part of what I'll have this week ahead on my other site, about the religious angle of the rest of the bishops' statement and Catholics vis a vis Protestants. SMH.

Venezuela — between the devil and the deep blue sea

What prompts this post is an AP story, seen via The Dissident, about how a Homeland Security agent, Edwin Lopez, tried to get one of the pilots who flies Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to commandeer his plane and kidnap him into US hands:

The plot was hatched when a tipster showed up at the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic on April 24, 2024, when Joe Biden was president. The informant purported to have information about Maduro’s planes, according to three of the officials familiar with the matter.

There's that.

More background:

A wiry former U.S. Army Ranger from Puerto Rico, Lopez was leading the agency’s investigations into transnational criminal networks with a presence in the Caribbean, after a storied career taking down drug gangs, money launderers and fraudsters. His work dismantling an illicit money-changing operation in Miami even earned him a public rebuke in 2010 from Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor. The embassy assignment was to be his last before retirement. 

The embassy was closed, although Lopez was still at his desk. He was handed a 3x5 index card with the tipster’s name and phone number. When he called, the tipster claimed that two planes used by Maduro were in the Dominican Republic undergoing costly repairs.

And, that's that.

This clearly was not a rogue operation.

We first know that per whom the AP interviewed:

Details of the ultimately unsuccessful plan were drawn from interviews with three current and former U.S. officials, as well as one of Maduro’s opponents. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were either not authorized to discuss the effort or feared retribution for disclosing it. The Associated Press also reviewed — and authenticated — text exchanges between Lopez and the pilot.

Followed by how this idea was "cleared":

Lopez had an epiphany, according to the current and former officials familiar with the operation: What if he could persuade the pilot to fly Maduro to a place where the U.S. could arrest him? 

Maduro had been indicted in 2020 on federal narco-terrorism charges accusing him of flooding the U.S. with cocaine. 

The DHS agent secured permission from his superiors and Dominican authorities to question the pilots, overcoming the officials’ concerns about creating a diplomatic rift with Venezuela.

OK. So, with Maduro in power now for a dozen years, the foreign policy, aka Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, portion of the "deep state" has become institutionalized.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea?

First, Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, failed the Venezuelan people by not diversifying its economy more. He should have established oilfield engineering programs, or improved those that already existed, in Venezuela. This would let native workers extract and refine the "dirty" oil from the Orinoco basin.

He could have invested other oil money in coastal resorts, including gaming. He could have done all of this while keeping Cuba's Fidel Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales propped up at 50 cents on the dollar. (My skeptical take on Morales is here. And here.) 

And didn't. And so, was already unpopular by 2002, and a coup attempt then. Indeed, part of the run-up to that coup attempt was that Chavez was basically trying to gut Petroleos de Venezuela, in part because of its workers' independence. (Side note: Non-skeptical leftists don't really like to talk about that.) While the US had advance knowledge, and swiftly recognized the coup's front man as president, there is no indication it ever gave it any assistance.

Then came the Great Recession and the plunge in oil prices. They were then kept down by the expansion of fracking in the US. 

Then Chavez died and henchman Maduro took over. I wrote my semi-takedown obit of Chavez here. (Wiki's page on Chavez has allegations that he actually died in December 2012, after re-election but before his new term started in 2013.) And, while Chavez maintained a veneer of electoral authenticity, it's arguable Maduro hasn't done that. Yes, Juan Guaidó has been a US flunky; that doesn't mean that Maduro didn't set the stage for a Guaidó to arise in the first place.

And, the 2024 election was almost certainly fraudulent. 

Hence, the devil and deep blue sea, part one.

Part two is that sanctions against Venezuela have had their bite worsened by Chavez's failure to diversify the economy, and Maduro not even trying. More on Venezuela's economy here. More on non-skeptical leftists or pseudo-leftists cutting blank checks to Maduro here.

Meanwhile, the US continues sanctions against Venezuela, except continuing to buy its oil, albeit with restrictions and surcharges, cuz Merikkka. 

Maduro is likely to live another 10 years minimum if not 20. A kidnapping rumor, along with Trump authorizing CIA covert operations which will surely fail and likely be comical, will only backfire.

As in many such cases, the US and "country X" become Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby to each other. 

As for drug-dealing allegations? Likely true. And, those drugs are being used by people in the US, including Trump supporters. See the paragraph above. 

Zionist Dems trying to "own" Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe

Yeah, for shits and giggles, its "fun" watching Senate Democrats call out the trio of the Department of Defense Drunkards, Department of National Intelligence Israeliness, and Central Intelligence Agency, respectively over Hegseth's — or somebody else's — looping Jonah Goldberg into a Signal chat. (It would have been overkill to do the "Intelligence" strikethrough a second time.) A kudo, with surprise, to Goldberg for having the Atlantic run the basics of what he had.

But? John Warner, Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly, Jimmy Gomez in the House?

All Zionists.

All cutters of blank checks for #GenocideJoe and Kamala is a Zionist Cop over the genocide in Gaza — a genocide to which the Houthis reacted with their Red Sea maritime patrols.

In other words, these Zionist Democrats are the reason that Trump and his national security advisor Mike Waltz — the person who reportedly actually screwed the pooch — are making war plans against Yemen.

And, for #BlueAnon on Shitter? "Whiskileaks" may sound funny as a trending item, but, since Mike Waltz — who now has been shown to have left a Venmo account unsecured — is the problem, not Hegseth, it's another swing and a miss.

Oh, and since the Nat-sec Nutsacks™ class within Blue Anon hated the actual Wikileaks long before Julian Assange rightly earned hatred over Seth Rich conspiracy theory promotion, it's a swing and a miss that way, too. 

On the more serious side? Waltz is a Green Beret, Bronze Stars, not going through life "(fat), drunk and stupid," etc., the level of incompetence is more scary than if it were him rather than Hegseth.

Also on the more serious side, which the Zionists in national Democrats' contingent will also NOT like? The clusterfuck, called Signalgate now by many of them, or Signalghazi by Brian Beutler, had one good thing — it outed an Israeli spy. 

That said, per Beutler? The real issue is the one of administrative competence in general — and Trump cluelessness in general, like on not knowing about US troops dead in Lithuania.

Consider this to also be a post about The Resistance 2.0, to the degree it, as a subset of BlueAnon, applauds these callouts in Congressional testimony while ignoring the hypocrisy.

Shed not too many crocodile tears for the Dalai Lama

Actually, for many people, tears for his post-1959 plight would be real.

And, this is not an apologia post for defending Xi Jinping's minions hacking computers and devices of modern exiled Tibetans.

But, as Tenzin Gyatso officially has announced that his successor, the to-be 15th Dalai Lama will come from outside China, let us take note that, even if he's being truthful in denying original knowledge himself, his brothers were major assets in a CIA campaign of skullduggery against Beijing, a campaign that also involved Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang in Taiwan. Wikipedia has a page about it that, while it gets a flag for possible "original research," is still worth a read. Indeed, per the Wiki page, before the 1949 "fall" of China, the older brother of Tenzin Gyato (who was born Lhamo Thondup), Gyalo Thondup, lived in Nanking 1947-49 and boasts about eating dinner at Chiang's table.

The backstory is that, before Beijing invaded in 1950, Tibet was not part of China. And, we'll get to backstory to that in a minute. Essentially, the Dalai Lama and other lamas ruled it as a semi-feudal theocracy. Now, it was not religiously or otherwise coercive in the way the mullahs are in Iran, let alone the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the way some Christian Right folks would like to be in the USofA, but it wasn't exactly enlightened.

Before that, Lhamo Thondup was officially declared to be that 14th Dalai Lama in 1939. His birthplace was in a northeastern borderland which has both Tibetan and non-Tibetan people and was ruled at this time by a warlord whose nominal superior was Chiang.

Even today, per the map at the top of the Wiki page on Tibet, Tibetan exiles claim a vast amount of land beyond what is clearly Tibet. The orange and red areas on the map contain, by ethnicity and/or language, Han Chinese, Mongolic peoples, peoples of Southeast Asia that live in various parts of southern China, Turkic peoples in its northern areas, etc. And, vis-a-vis this piece, ethnic Han have lived in large numbers in much of that area since the Yuan Dynasty if not earlier. (In today's Tibetan Autonomous Area within China, Beijing trod more lightly in Western Tibet in the first decades, not just first years, post-1950.

Looking back in Tibet's history, the Qing Dynasty, at peak, had semi-full control over Tibet. The Ming, before that, claimed they did, but many scholars reject that. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty indeed controlled the area, but Chinese dynasties before that generally did not. At the tail end of the Qing, in response to "Great Game" meddling by both Britain and Russia, the Qing in the early 20th century for the first time staked a formal legal claim to the land, and began a process of "Sinifiction."

As for long ago history, before Genghis Khan and his descendants and the Yuan Dynasty, there was a "Tibetan Empire" about the same time as Tang Dynasty China, pictured above. As you can see, at its maximum, it controlled or had influence over all of today's Tibet, all of today's Xinjiang, and much if not all of today's Gansu, Yunnan and Sechuan areas of China. To the west, it went into Kashmir and Turkic Central Asia.

See Wiki's "History of Tibet" for more on Tibetan history in general.

The point of this part of this piece is that Tibet does not have something unique and special in its cultural DNA, no more than the Hopis of the US Southwest, or other modern Puebloans. With the Hopi, Awatovi should tell you that. (If that doesn't, Ekkehart Malotki has said that, contrary to legend — whether first propagated by Hopi or by Anglos — that the etymology of the word "Hopi" is NOT related to any Hopi word for "peace.")

Now, one could counterclaim that this was pre-Buddhist Tibet. And, I would counterclaim back to that? The murderous Islamophobia of the 969 Movement in today's Burma, as well as past history in Buddism; I've covered this in a bit of depth.

Back to closer to where we are now. Tibetans eventually resisted the 1950 invasion — with help from the US. The Dalai Lama himself first appeared to encourage some degree of passive resistance against China, including limiting how many troops they would send, while signing off on a 17-point agreement that he repudiated after escaping to India in 1959. What led to that was him becoming, by the middle 1950s, a symbol of resistance whether he was personally leading it or not. Per that link, he may well have lied about signing the agreement under duress.

After he fled into exile, China stopped trying to do its version of Sinification through Tibetans and rather through direct Chinese control and action. Meanwhile, Tibetan exiles continued to resist as they could.

The Dalai Lama himself, at best, made a devil's bargain with his brothers. Could he have done better? Maybe. What led to Beijing's invasion was a decision by parts of Tibet's complex leadership — but definitely not all — to boot all Chinese. It appears to be a bid for "neutrality" after Mao and the Communists had chased Chiang and the KMT off the mainland. But, it was too late for that, it would seem. Even if the Dalai Lama himself were not directly involved, as a teen, he might have been asked for thought. Today? Could he be forthcoming about what he knew and when about the CIA a few years later? I don't totally buy his claim that he was originally ignorant of his brothers' activities.

And what brings us to today is the Dalai Lama's announcement above, in a new book, which directly confronts Beijing's claim it will chose the 15th Dalai Lama.

Today, per Wiki's article on the Kashag, a Qing-era body of Chinese governance reconstituted by the Dalai Lama after his 1959 flight, Gyatso has himself repudiated the idea of full independence for Tibet or a political role for either himself or successor Dalai Lamas. On the former, what degree of autonomy does he want, and what degree of confessional vis-a-vis his ties to the CIA, and other things, will he do to get even a mildly lighter hand by Beijing? On the second? I think you are playing a political role as is. And, playing with a self-dealt bad hand by rejecting Tibetan independence.

That all said, since this is the site for non-twosiderism, isn't the regime of "godless Communists" in Beijing hypocritical for saying it will choose the next Dalai Lama rather than declaring the office abolished? (That said, Lenin and Uncle Joe Stalin didn't abolish Russian Orthodoxy, they just made it more servile inside the country.) That said, this secularist awaits the idea of dueling Dalai Lamas and anti-Dalai Lamas, like the papacy of the late 1300s and early 1400s at the end of the Avignon period. That then said, since Qing times, formalized in 1793, the Chinese government has claimed the right to select, or denote, or whatever term we should use, the next Dalai Lama. It may not always have exercised that right, but it has claimed it. And, we already have dueling Panchen Lamas. (Per the matter at hand, that link notes the Panchen Lama has traditionally been involved with selection of the Dalai Lama.)

And, otherwise? Most the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ world inside the DC Beltway knows at least the basics of the story above. They're the ones being called out for decades of crocodile tears.

THAT then said, the likes of Max Blumenthal are wrong about Xinjiang. And, good leftists like Cory Doctorow have written much more on that, so it's not just Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ talking about the labor camps, etc., there.

Zelensky IS on ever-thinning ice, whether The Resistance 2.0 knows it or Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ will admit it

A MUST READ on this issue? The piece that Der Spiegel dropped on March 3. It non-snarkily portrayed Zelensky as a would-be Churchill whose popularity had pretty much cratered on broken promises before the Russian invasion. It also notes that then-PM of Britain Boris Johnson did NOT sabotage a peace deal. It references his comment and analyzes it:

"Nobody can tell me that anyone can simply talk President Zelenskyy out of something like that, not even Boris Johnson. His closest advisors can’t even do so,” says Reznikov, the former defense minister. "The conditions laid out by the Russians were completely unrealistic,” says Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the Ukrainian negotiators.

That's within the context of also saying Bucha, where Russia upped the ante on war crimes (of which Ukraine is not innocent, whether at Bucha or more broadly) was also a deal-breaker at the time. 

As for realness or unrealness? Ukraine's insistence, per Wiki, at least before Trump became president, that Putin and other top Russians be prosecuted for war crimes and that it surrender all lands, including I presume the Donetsk and Luhansk that were supposed to be guaranteed autonomy under Minsk, is more unrealistic than Russia's stance today and, AFAIK, in mid-2022. If you want back the post-2022 lands, Zelensky, I can buy that, even if it's not totally realistic? Crimea? Even if I discount Putin for lying levels at 50 cents on the dollar, blame the US and the Maidan. Per Counterpunch, the likes of John Mearsheimer had Putin worried the Crimea would be like an aircraft carrier: 

Mearsheimer presents the basic outline of Putin’s response to the coup. If Ukraine joined NATO, the Crimean port of Sevastopol would serve beautifully as a US/NATO military launching pad. The act of incorporating Crimea into Russia was “not difficult given that Russia already had thousands of troops at its naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Those forces were augmented by additional troops from Russia, many of them not in uniform. Crimea was an easy target because roughly 60 percent of the people living there were ethnic Russians, and most preferred to become part of Russia.

You're not getting it back. On the third hand, Yeltsin did pledge to respect Ukrainian territory; presumably, at least in 2000, Putin accepted that. On the fourth hand, in light of Counterpunch, the Maidan made that null and void.

That said, on the other side, the level of demilitarization of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted, along with just what constituted "denazification," were unreal on the Russian side. The latter was perhaps face-saving, but there was no way Ukraine was going to shrink its army by two-thirds or whatever. See this long piece for all the issues being faced at Istanbul in spring 2022.

None of this is to say that Johnson's framing of Zelensky had no effect. His referencing Zelensky as a new Churchill would have increased his willingness to dig in. But, he already had the support of his full government, and a vast majority of the populace, at the time.

One other thing must, MUST be raised here, which I already knew, but is further backgrounded by Der Spiegel. Per the Ukrainian constitution, Zelensky can “undeclare” martial law and ask the Rada to approve that; he can then hold an election after all.

We have parallels in the US. We held midterm elections in 1814, even though the British had burned the White House in late August and the threat of further invasion stood overhead. The first Tuesday following the first Monday in November was not a uniform election date then and many states held elections on other dates. Per Wiki, the dates were April 26, 1814, to August 10, 1815. Eight states were between Aug. 29 and Oct. 11, 1814, in the shadow of the Aug. 24 burning. Of more direct relevance yet? On Sept. 25, 1862, Lincoln declared nationwide martial law and nationwide suspension of habeas corpus.  We still held midterm elections. Later, tho not nationwide, Lincoln both declared martial law and suspended habeas in Kentucky, starting July 4, 1864. The presidential and lesser elections that fall were still contested in Kentucky like elsewhere. To add to that? More than once, and most recently since the dustup in DC, Zelensky has promised to resign — with new elections following — in exchange for Ukraine getting into NATO. So, you're wrong, Ms. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ fellow traveler at The Dissident. Zelensky just said you're wrong.

Zelensky, as Der Spiegel makes clear, doesn't want an election because he's almost certain he'd lose. And, I read through him enough to think that, for this and other reasons, he wants the end of the war to be very far away, per his March 3 statement. (One other reason is that he fears for his life if a peace treaty has any real land concessions. On that, I can't blame him; the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and fellow travelers are deadly serious.)

More here from Spiegel:

He has a powerful challenger in Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former head of the armed forces, who everyone believes is going to go into politics.

Second, once this war ends, Zelenskyy will have to take responsibility for an odious deal with Russia, which is likely to force Ukraine into difficult concessions. "Sixty percent of people want a deal. But when he signs, even these 60 percent will gather in front of the president’s office and protest against it,” says a close associate of the president.

"Zelenskyy will become a scapegoat. Everyone will pin their dashed hopes on him,” says Golovaha, the sociologist.

Can't argue with any of that. 

If that's not good enough? Ivan Katchanovski:

Those who claim to be pro-Ukraine are in fact pro-Zelensky. Pro-Zelensky does not mean pro-Ukraine. He is no the same as Ukraine.

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) March 4, 2025

That's the bottom line.

Beyond elections? Zelensky's idea to make the EU into a covert NATO for Europe is laughable. EU members that aren't in NATO have even less desire to spend more on defense budgets than do NATO members, in my opinion. Yes, EU head Ursula von der Leyen is proposing a spending hike; call me when it happens, as in, not just approved by EU member states, but when it happens. Beyond that, with Germany already staring at recession, a stare that helped trigger its snap election, the US now staring at a recession that will spread abroad and more, there's just no appetite for this.

As for the "Churchillian" angle? Spiegel nails that. Zelensky has an image investment:

"I think Zelenskyy is not yet psychologically prepared for the end of a war in which he is not the victor,” says Fesenko, the political scientist. The president, he says, has literally become one with this war, Zelenskyy demonstrates this by his beard, his paramilitary outfit and his evening addresses. "If he were to suddenly stop giving speeches and start wearing a suit and tie again, it would come as a shock to the Ukrainians.”

Exactly. He either can't, won't, or some mix of the above, on not letting go. And, this isn't new:

"Zelenskyy is consciously playing the role of Churchill, and he plays it well,” says historian Yaroslav Hrytsak. "But he won’t play it to the last consequence because he still can’t utter one sentence that Churchill said: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’”

There again, it's hard to tell whether it's "can't" or "won't" that was in the driver's seat. But, the result is the same in any case. 

Anyway, go read the full thing. Zelensky wasn't alone in thinking that Ukraine could make the war end with a Russian capitulation. We're talking his advisors here, not Boris Johnson or US Nat-Sec Nutsacks™.

As for the war itself? No, Russia hasn't had millions of casualties, contra Trump's blather. It's had a lot fewer, relative to population, than Ukraine. And, though Zelensky had great military PR with his excursions into Russian lands last summer, with Trump cutting off the US military pipeline, that bird is very much coming home to roost now.

None of this is to excuse Trump's version of American empire, which would not come with actionable security guarantees. None of this is to excuse Bagger Vance's sandbagging.

But? Even were Kamala Harris president, and trying to push Zelensky half as hard toward a peace with concessions, and without a shakedown, Zelensky would still resist just as much. 

That said, after both US and European media posted 48 hours of blather from Trump surrogates, while Zelensky and his team smartly kept radio silence, he has now said he still wants to see progress — but with a vacuous statement that doesn't indicate anything has changed on his end. Per Binoy Kampmark, he in all likelihood won't change.

On the last hand? Vladimir Putin as president of Russia is as much an obstacle as Volodymyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine, as noted up near the top. He, too, wants a maximalist solution, because of how much he's invested after the initial failure to blitzkrieg Kyiv. You should have read Colin Powell. This all said, I don't think he believes his own bullshit or his internal press clippings as Zelensky believes HIS own bullshit or Western press clippings.

To summarize? Zelensky is in trouble, but even if Kamala Harris were president, would still be obstinate. Putin is still greedy, despite the fact that, contra the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, Trump is not his puppet. And, Trump is always greedy. A recipe for continued disaster bubbles on the stove.

Politico's futurists? Half wrong, and the "right" aren't black swans

Politico invited 15 futurists to make 2025 predictions, and here's my take. Most are laughable, and most the non-laughable ones aren't black swans. Only one, near the end, fits the bill.

Largest cyberattack in history? Semi-no brainer that AI could be hacked and cracked in service of a cyberattack. And, possibly, the largest in history.

A new Iran nuclear weapons deal? No fucking way, not after Trump 1.0 assassinated Soleimani.

Secessionists on the march? No, Congress is not approving an Oregon-Idaho border shift. Neither is the Oregon Lege, and maybe not Idahell's, for all I know. And, no, some off-the-wall weathervane statement by Trump ain't changing that fact on the ground, and therefore, this event won't trigger something bigger.

A new pandemic, and spreading because of wingnut reactions to COVID public health? Possible in 2025. Probable? You can't give odds on something like that. But, that doesn't make it a "black swan."

Trump-Xi alliance emerging? Yeah, a degree of rapproachment might happen, but probably not enough to call it an "alliance."

A two-state solution? No fucking way. At a minimum, Bibi will have to be voted out of office PLUS a credible non-Zionist alternative emerge on the "left" in Israel. At a maximum, the Saudis and other Gulf states will have to threaten economic action which US oil doesn't leave them fully in a position to do today. There's a reason why I mock the likes of John McLaughlin as Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, and stuff like this is it.

Market crash triggers a global panic? How big a crash? We're due for a recession in the US as I type, plus, per the Trump-Xi story, at some point, some Chinese bubbles will burst. So, not a black swan.

Climate action becomes the new norm? For whom? Shock me that this was written by climate change Obamiac Katharine Hayhoe, who has a hopey-dopey book out, too, per this section. 

Unexpected geopolitical alliances and realignments? Bryndan D. Moore, tho not listed as one of the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, comes off like one. No, Trump ain't getting some massive realignment in the Middle East and Moore doesn't mention one elsewhere. Bye.

South Korea's secret nuclear weapons program? THIS I might just buy, and for such a program to have remained secret for this long? Black swan indeed. Plausibility? S. Nathan Park is at the Quincy Institute and thus NOT one of the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. I'd ponder this one.

An unvaccinated military? Not likely. Joint Chiefs on down would push back hard against Trump listening to Brainworm Bobby on this one.

The people of Belarus could see freedom? Highly unlikely that Aleksandr Lukashenko falls; almost certainly not happening unless Putin falls first, or Lukashenko pulls a Prigozhin and marches on Moscow. Evelyn Farkas IS a Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ and one having the female version of a wet dream, as of course, if this DID happen, NATO membership for Belarus would be mentioned next.

Loss of power? Yes, we have an aging infrastructure in Merikkka, but a Cuban or Puerto Rican event ain't happening here.

The temptation to reach for the nuclear toolbox? Interesting, Jeff Greenfield, but why focus on Russia?

Decisive breakthrough in quantum computing? Isn't this just as much just around the corner as peaceful nuclear fusion?

Warmonger Joe ups the game again in Ukraine

Warmonger Joe is doing it again, OKing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to use ATACMS in long-range use. 

Semafor doesn't even cite anonymous Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in poo-poohing Russian President Vladimir Putin's concerns — it just does so, in clear editorializing. (The NYT, at the first link, at least has that fig leaf, and it also notes specific possible responses by Putin.) Nor does it call bullshit on Zelenskyy's offer to replace US troops in Europe with Ukrainian ones. (I'll bet other MSM have also been letting that one fly.) Anybody who's seen Ukrainian draft-dodging and the violence when Ukrainian draft officers land a fish know how that would turn out.

Biden OKs new Israel attack on Iran; MSM, others complicit

Per the second half of the header, I want to expand on a restack note I did about Ken Klippenstein's piece last Saturday about the first half of the header.

First, the meat, which gets at both halves of the header:

Two Top Secret documents outlining Israel’s preparations for a large-scale attack on Iran – which would be Israel’s largest, and here’s what’s most interesting: the mainstream media is silent. Colleagues at some of the biggest media outlets, from The New York Times to NBC, tell me that their outlets are aware of the documents. But it’s been days and no one in the sanctioned elite press is reporting on them (Axios only just reported their existence but declined to publish the documents themselves). As with the J.D. Vance Dossier, which the entire media knew about but refused to publish, it appears the media has once again lost its nerve – and its sense of what’s news.

The mainstream media has generally decided that it won’t publish classified material, in effect deputizing themselves as enforcers of the national security state’s secrecy regime. They did this last year with highly classified Ukraine documents they refused to publish (which my editor published at Newsweek).

To put it bluntly, major media are petrified of running afoul of the national security state. And not without reason. My decision to publish the Vance Dossier got me thrown off X (Twitter) and links to the story were blocked on the platform along with Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and even Google Docs. Let’s see if that happens again here.

There you go.

First, the second half.

Although Ken didn't use the word "cowed," I did in my note. I think that's a fair inference of his implication, as he DID use the word "petrified."

(And, so far, neither he nor I appear to be thrown off Twitter.)

Rather, as noted in the second half of the header, "complicit" is the word.

This is different than the Vance dossier. This is Israel, and the mainstream media run that up the flagpole and salute that, period and end of story.

It may be in part fears about the national security state/deep state, but I think that's secondary, and even the secondary falls into two parts.

The bigger of those two parts is fear of loss of access. The "elite press," as Ken calls them, is also the "inside the Beltway" media, as Ken knows. Or "access journalism," as Ken also knows.

Within that, the stenos of the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ Fighting 101st Keyboarders (thanks, Atrios), definitely don't want to lose access to insider intelligence sources. It's like a domestic version of being embedded.

Now, the leaks themselves.

As Ken knows, DC is a one-industry town, and the coin of the realm / grease that oils the machines, after money itself, is leaks.

From the White House and executive branch, leaks are almost always deliberate with political purpose.

(Genocide Joe now says he is "deeply concerned" about this, and his Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ spox John Kirby says the Waffle House doesn't know whether it was a hack or a leak. Sure you don't. That said, the Beeb says it explicitly mentioned Israel's nukes. But, that's a head fake to think that makes it a hack, not a leak. Could it be forged? Different question, but still highly doubtful.)

So, what IS that purpose?

One, per the "complicit," is to test just how complicit the MSM is. Now we have an update on that.

Two and related, is to prep the stenos for when the attack might actually happen and know what to ask.

Three? A pseudo-shot across Bibi's bow. As Ken notes, we spy on Israel. This lets them know what we know. But, per the oath for trial witnesses about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it surely does NOT tell ALL that we know. And, it may not have only truth in there, as far as the "nothing but," either.

As a pseudo-shot, in other words, this is another of those red lines that Genocide Joe continues to lay down on Israel for US public consumption that he has no intention of enforcing. This also is in the context of the presidential election, with early voting underway in many states. It's another way, via Genocide Joe, for Kamala is a Zionist Cop to look tough as well, even as she continues moving her own Overton Window right. Darth Cheney and the kiddies and sellout adults at Voters of Tomorrow who have Lincoln Project connections surely approve.

Three, part 2? Let's not forget, as many people know, and as Ken put in a previous post, but didn't link to in this one, that Merikkka just put a THAAD battery in Israel — with a US crew to run it to boot. That basically says "Do what you want to, Bibi, I got your back." That said, both that THAAD and the Iron Dome must suck if a Hezbollah drone was able to target Bibi's house.

Four? Ken calls out the Beltway stenos again in a new piece. Here's a key takeaway:

“Covert UAV operations” were observed on October 15, the NGA says, indicating that Israel’s RA-01 stealth drone was initiating a flight or returning from one, likely over Iran. Israel is flying stealth (covert) drones over Iran? That’s a story in itself. This would be a capability similar to the U.S. RQ-170/180 drones, which are super secret and barely ever mentioned in the U.S. media. But they are known to operate out of Chabelley airfield in Djibouti. Are they overflying Israel to take a look and thwart its “concealment” methods?

Complicit indeed is the MSM for not reporting this.

Ken also notes how part of US spying ON Israel is informed BY Israeli intelligence.

With that all in mind? And, the explicit mention of "nuclear"? We're now at the point of discussing what type of leak this is, as in, "political" or "principled"? (That said, principled leaks still have political angles.)

These docs showing up on an Iranian Telegram channel could be seen as supporting the "principled" angle, if the leaker is deeply serious about making sure all the Middle East players know. And, the "nuclear" is probably part of what pisses Biden off. The US now knows that Israel, and the rest of the world, knows that, behind closed doors at least, we openly discuss that Israel has nukes.

And, with all this? Any idea that a Harris administration could restart some sort of 2015 non-proliferation deal with Iran is toast.

Bankshotting off Zionism for .... I"m not sure what

Russ and Pam Martens' "Wall Street on Parade" is generally very good — when it sticks to writing about the banksters.

When it ventures beyond that, it generally falls into generic Blue Anon territory. In the past, for example, they've seen fit to attack Russia for various things in the Russia-Ukraine war without batting an eye at similar issues done by Ukraine. Things like war crimes.

So, Tuesday, when the pair wrote about "Deadly, Exploding Pagers ...," but only tacked Israel's pager bobby-trapping to the end of a piece about the newest revelations on Chinese hacking?

It came off as clickbait at a minimum.

By ignoring that the US has — albeit without explosives — done what Israel has done in supply-chain hacking, and nearly a decade ago, it came off as American exceptionist, Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ division post, not just the bankshotting off Zionism, but the attack on China.

In both of that, it came off as trivializing what's happening in Lebanon, and Gaza before that.

They wrote one piece about Gaza since last October.

(They've actually written in the long past a few pieces about Snowden, per Bruce Schneier's piece about NSA hacking. I didn't search too hard as their search window doesn't actually go in strict chronological order on newest to oldest.) 

Back to the matter at hand? The Schneier link was posted within a piece from Tuesday, which went up about the same time as the Martens', which said that none of this is new. And, also not new here in Merikka. Bruce notes that the FBI created a shell company back in 2019. There's Stuxnet, of course.

This is the bottom line:

But now that the line has been crossed, other countries will almost certainly start to consider this sort of tactic as within bounds.

So, are the Martens going to bitch when Russia bobby-traps Ukrainian cellphones? Or, looking retrospectively, what if Dear Leader's CIA had used that, rather than a drone, to off Anwar al-Awliki?

Per their original post, the idea that we can stop this? Doubtful. We get a lot of tech goods from China. And, not just oil, but a lot of other raw materials, like heavy metals, come from Russia and are fungible.

They also raised the issue of gas price gouging in 2022. Problem? Gas prices were actually higher when the emergence from the Great Recession started in 2012. Was there price gouging then? Yes, there was a brief spike in 2022, but for the whole year? Nope. More pricey in 2012.

Again, they're often very good when talking about the banksters. Hit and miss elsewhere. And, yeah, some of their takes on the Russia-Ukraine war left me predisposed to be a bit skeptical about their other non-bankster writing. Speaking of, they decided they had to haul in the Wagner Group along with Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein about shady people banking at JP Morgan Chase.

Weaponizing anti-Chinese sentiment as hasbara deflection on Motorola and Lenovo

By now, you've probably heard about the weaponized pagers that killed several apparent Hezbollah members, and one child and counting.

You've probably heard the speculation that this was by Mossad, asserted by Hezbollah and not denied.

(Update: "Someone" blew up Hezbollah walkie-talkies Wednesday.)

You've probably heard that these all may have been Motorola pagers.

And, you may have heard that Motorola is owned by Lenovo.

And, you would have heard either ignorance or misinformation — possibly hasbara. Or whatever the Farsi equivalent of hasbara is. Or just laziness by US Twitter. Or some combination of all of the above.

That's because about all you've heard, from a Motorola ⇒  Lenovo connection claim at a lower level, to the idea that Motorola pagers were involved? It's all wrong.

Let's unpack, from lower to higher levels.

Motorola Solutions is one half of what emerged from a 2009 split of Motorola. The OTHER half, Motorola Mobility, which is NOT in the pagers business (AFAIK) was eventually acquired by Lenovo. Motorola Solutions includes the Motorola Solutions Israel Ltd., founded in 1964.

It took me a minute of Googling to find the background info on the Israeli company, confirm it was true, then go to the Wiki page for Motorola and see the split. The Wiki for the parent company adds that Motorola Solutions is the legal successor to the old Motorola, too.

And, a subpage on Motorola Solutions specifically documents their ties to Zionist settlements.

I don't know whether the Motorola ⇒  Lenovo was started purely out of ignorance or not. Even if it was, it soon became weaponized. Knowing Zionists could use it as deflection and knowing US Cold War 2.0 types could use it to bash China.

At the same time, just because wingers and  Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ bash China doesn't mean things like labor camps in Xinjiang aren't true.

And, this is why I identify as a skeptical leftist. And, if other leftists don't like being called out for not connecting the dots correctly here? I'm not sorry.

That said, Motorola almost certainly is involved in NO WAY.

(Update: Fortunately, we now have a detailed AP story with actual facts. The biggies? Hezbollah decided to go away from cellphones in February, giving Mossad [presumably] nearly 8 months of work time. Second? A British expert says explosive as small as a pencil eraser would be enough, and he also details how they were likely triggered.)

Now, if these were Motorola pagers, yes, then why did Hezbollah buy them? Mondoweiss says they were ditching cellphones due to security issues, so pagers, but why Motorola? Were they Motorola? Motorola laundered through another brand name? The Mondoweiss piece doesn't mention Motorola, so this whole issue may be a red herring.

Rolling Stone links to a Tweet and claims that they resemble Motorola pagers, when the Tweet says no such thing and respondents mention Gold Apollo. And, so says Wiki. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Command is claiming Motorola, but it has "good reason" to do so. 

Gold Apollo is also headquartered in Taiwan, not Lenovo's China.

Now, per a Google Images search, Motorola services can be and are provided over Gold Apollo pagers, it appears. But, that's by the US paging service company Metrotel. Somehow, I highly doubt that Motorola Solutions Israel Ltd provides either pagers or paging service in Lebanon. Or other countries in the Middle East, like Iran. 

What that, in turn, means, is that Mossad really did some infiltration work. And, in addition to the actual killings and maimings, the fear of what it could do next is the key. (Update: The "next" has dropped with the walkie-talkie explosions, obviously.)

And, were I Rolling Stone, I'd be editing that page ASAP. Ditto any other major media outlets. And, maybe talking to legal counsel.

As for cutting through rumors and innuendo? ALL of this took just an hour or so of off-and-on checking during what's normally my busiest work day of the week. And, getting more shit right than at least one major media outlet.

Beyond that, per the Mondoweiss link at top, if these were implanted explosives, it would have likely been timer-detonated, not wifi-triggered, I'd think. Getting back to Motorola Solutions, that might imply something in a factory, or at least in a packinghouse area.

Non-twoside Russia-Ukraine 2022 peace talks thoughts

Contra US lies, the US did possibly sabotage Russia-Ukraine peace talks in early 2022. Via Aaron Maté, I note that US officials were "alarmed" at original terms. That said, Poland was perhaps even more alarmed, and I don't think it's clear that the US did sabotage the deal, hence my "possibly." 

That said, Putin was dumb to reject the security guarantees for Ukraine since they were coupled with Ukraine forgoing NATO membership, and his final version the relevant article DID sabotage, which Aaron doesn't mention. On the third hand, Crimea aside, Ukraine wanted at least some of the terms applied to its recognized borders, it seems.

And, on the fourth hand, while Russia wanted sanctions against it ended, unless the treaty had as cosigners the same countries that Ukraine had asked to guarantee its security in exchange for not pursuing NATO membership, that wasn't happening.

In short, if not for some degree of Russian sabotage, combined with some degree of Putin shortsightedness, and possible or probable US sabotage, and Eastern European NATO members concerns, the talks ground to a halt.

But, Aaron Maté, a pseudoleftist and panderer to anybody who reflexively hates the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, won't give you such nuance.

==

Side note: Per a speech last week, it looks like Putin wants to beef up and expand BRICS into something larger and more formal and broadly parallel to the Shanghai Cooperative. 

Side note 2: That link came from a John Helmer post written AFTER the NYT piece. He's had one more since. He's surely seen it; maybe the fact that Putin's sabotage is so transparent is why he hasn't written about it.

Presidential update, June 6

Yes, it is D-Day, and France's President Macron pissed off other NATO members last month by inviting Russian representatives, though not President Putin, the the 80th anniversary.

As I said on Twitter then to US Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ and their fellow travelers bitching about it? Arguably the US used the old USSR to fight a proxy war in World War II, launching the Normandy invasion only when it was relatively safe. So shut up, mongers of the current proxy war.

Now, to US presidents, and to the US in general, not yet a failed state, but yes, a failing one. (Hold on to both those thoughts, though.)

This was getting long enough, though, that I have extracted third-party and independent candidate information into a separate post.

Ditto on major international elections news.

==

A late May Quinnipiac poll (registered voters, not restricted to "likelys") shows Genocide Joe with a narrow edge over Donald Duck Trump, an edge that grows if Brainworm Bobby (and other non-duopoly candidates) are in the mix. 

Bigger takeaways, as I told Winger at Ballot Access News? These:

1. Biden needs to play up the hell out of abortion and hope that Kacsmaryk makes another dumb-ass ruling to help him out.

2. Biden needs to hope Bibi actually pretends to listen to him, as Biden pretends to be tough on Bibi.

3. Biden needs to hope Trump is convicted.

4. Yeah, I know US potential voters (poll is of registereds, not likelys) are idiots, and this proves it. Stein is third-party, but she's also a 3-time retread and 70 percent say they still don't know enough about her?

5. Per Walt Whitman, the mind of the average voter contains multitudes, and boy are they stupid.

Yep, snarking away. 

==

That poll, of course, is before Orange (Jumpsuit?)  Cheetoh was convicted. Will that small minority of Republicans who have said that a Trump conviction would be a game-changer stand by their words, or will it turn out to be nothing but poseuring for polls?

==

One more poll, also taken before Trump's verdict but likely to be unchanged by it. Among those under the age of 30, support for Genocide Joe is below 25 percent. Brainworm Bobby is now in double figures. Even more, the idea of undervoting (c'mon, kids, look past Brainworm Bobby to the non-Stein left) is surging.

==

Remember how Mike Dukakis said a fish rots from the head down? How true that is of the Biden Administration and Gaza.

Here's #GenocideJoe himself, in official White House statement, lying about the ICC arrest warrants. And, via the Intercept, arguably he's being bribed to lie about that, to let the IDF continue to commit human rights violations and more.

That's followed by Secretary of State Tony Blinken lying about Palestinian statehood's consequences. Note that Blinken did NOT say "Hamas" or "Gaza." He said "Palestine." Of course, Israel's already strangled the "two-state solution" anyway.

Of course, Blinken's OK with hooking up with Zelensky on UkiNazi turf. Azov Batallion ain't Palestinians.

Meanwhile, last week, GenocideJoe said that Israel's butchery in Rafah had NOT crossed his red line. Breaking: Biden lies like a cheap suit. And, John Kirby, his NSC spox, is rotting just below the head. What an obsequious toady. 

==

And, at the same time last week, Genocide Joe might have moved into Dementia Joe territory when he gave Ukraine's president, the Zaftig Zelensky, permission to use US weapons inside Russian territory. This is arguably more important than the Trump verdict, BlueAnon. Very arguably.

==

Biden's also anonymously spying on pro-Palestinian college kids.

==

#GenocideJoe is now also #CensorshipJoe. Klippenstein has those details, too.

==

Per Brian Beutler, Biden is a Dum Fuq on Middle Eastern geopolitics. Maybe it's the Irish Alzheimer's including stubbornness along with grudge-holding?

==

Ed Kilgore is a neoliberal squish, but in the "chess game" world, his "disaster scenarios" piece for Biden and Trump is worth half a read. 

==

Speaking of? Biden and BlueAnons thinking Trump's conviction will give #GenocideJoe a bump should look at polling in Israel. Karim Khan's announcement of the ICC arrest warrant for Bibi Netanyahu seems to have given him a bump, not top opponent Benny Ganz. Beyond that, it's going to be partially offset, or more, by Hunter Biden's trial.

==

Half of all self-proclaimed independents think Trump should drop out; that includes two-thirds of "double haters" of both him and Biden. As for voting? About one in ten Republicans say they'll be less likely to vote for him. Of those self-proclaimed independents? Of them, 16 percent more likely, 26 percent less likely, and there you have the clearest indication ever that about half of "independents" are really Rethuglicans or Democraps in drag to some fair degree.