Author: peterimrich
If you’re a lefty, or a marginally sane human being, you’re probably pretty weary by now, worn to a frazzle by the daily flood of crazy sewage draining from the White House, from Fox “News,” from Trump on Twitter, and from the spectrum of right wing news sources that have so successfully been making insanity seem routine. We’ve gotten used to words like “gaslighting” to describe the fog we have been walking around in for such a very long time. Up is down, evil is good, right is wrong.
T.S. Eliot, about a century ago, predicted the world would end with a whimper, not a bang. As a sometimes shouting, sometimes whimpering lefty, I’m sure it doesn’t matter much, but it sure seems like he may have been right. At this rate, it seems like we’re doomed.
In such darkness, it grows increasingly hard to stay awake.
But we must.
Whatever happened to Iraq? Is it not an independent country with a democratic government thanks to the 2003 US invasion? So says Washington.
The murder of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani suddenly shone a strobe light on ‘independent’ Iraq, and what we saw was not pretty.
Welcome to the new Imperialism 101.
The US plans permanent occupation of numerous nations worldwide, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and other countries it attacked preemptively.
It’s up to officials of these countries and mass public opposition to end US occupation through the power of resistance.
Pentagon bases are platforms for endless wars, including against host and neighboring countries.
So-called status of forces (SOFA) agreements establish the framework under which US forces operate abroad — serving its own interests at the expense of occupied nations and their people.
Chalmers Johnson explained SOFAs in 164 countries as follows, saying:
So fuck it. Just kick back and watch or read some heartwarming Fox News, which tells them that though five percent of the world’s land mass is becoming an uninhabitable inferno, US firefighters there are being cheered at airports. Those that are left.
via The Real Story in Melting Australia | The Smirking Chimp
Global losers of the Century have perfected the art of loss all around. (ODT)
“We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Thursday, remarks many interpreted as an admission that Soleimani did not actually pose a grave and immediate threat to American lives.
Report: Trump Ordered Iran Strike Because of Impeachment Fears – Mother Jones
The plot and lies thicken. Propaganda is quick the truth takes longer to come out and Trump can’t stop it. (ODT)
Critics said the Post reporting undermines the Trump administration’s claim that it assassinated Soleimani due to an “imminent threat” to American interests—and indicates the general’s killing was part of what was meant to be a far more sweeping effort to damage the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“This suggests a mission with a longer planning horizon and a larger objective, and it really does call into question why there was an attempt to explain this publicly on the basis of an imminent threat,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank, told the Post.
This is the man who pulled the trigger on the death of 176 Passengers a global terrorist posing as a President needs to be sacked and tried. (ODT)
Trump Officials Had No Idea When Or Where ‘Imminent’ Iran Attacks Would Happen
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted Friday that despite the lack of specifics, the attacks were really, really imminent.
via Trump Officials Had No Idea When Or Where ‘Imminent’ Iran Attacks Would Happen | HuffPost Australia
mainstream news organizations are now taking the president’s evidence-free claim that the Iranians were planning to “blow up” an American embassy at face value on social media.
He is all yours America (ODT)
via Friday News Dump: Trump Lies His Ass Off At Ohio Rally, And Other News | Crooks and Liars
Trump turns Saudi religious hatred of Shiia into political propaganda against Iran and in doing so is creating the unity that never really existed (ODT)
Coalition forces stood aside as Saddam’s tanks, with helicopters overhead, smashed their way into Shia cities like Karbala, Najaf and Basra, and then began their mass executions.
Three decades later, the US and its allies are still making the same mistake, treating the millions of Shia in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Afghanistan as if they were Iranian agents.
Down the centuries, the Shia have been one of the most savagely persecuted religious minorities; they fear today that in the wake of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, they are once again being demonised, as Donald Trump denounces all who oppose the US in the Middle East as Iranian proxies.
The Coalition continued to ignore warnings about the results of climate change and now must bear responsibility for our bushfire catastrophe, writes John Wren.
This is a greater cost than the ALP’s Pink Bats add this to the NBN and let’s talk LNP Management and Scott Morrison’s future. (ODT)
We knew this was coming as far back as the last century (ODT)
The Coalition’s toxic denial of climate change is destroying us
How utterly despicable — a U.S. president blaming his presidential predecessor for a foreign foe’s reign of regional terror.
This sitting, cocksucking, motherfucking two-bit punk of a nonelected president doesn’t deserve mere removal from office; he also deserves, at the very least, a till-end-of-life federal prison term in which he gets repeatedly ass-slammed, just as he has done to Obama, an actual U.S. president, for three years.
Trump is a liar, a swindler, an obstructor of justice, a conscienceless abuser of power, a serial Constitution violator, a warmonger of an isolationist, a pissant of a coward whose inevitable removal from this earth — not through the front door of the White House, but the back door of some federal penitentiary’s mortuary — will be the most welcome event in the history of these United States.
I don’t customarily deploy the language of my second paragraph, but this sitting, cocksucking motherfucker has earned it. Fuck him.
Trump launched a reckless criminal act of state terror designed to provoke a war. Iran de-escalated the situation as of Wednesday — refusing to engage in a retaliatory cycle of violent escalation while demonstrating their military capability. Trump responded with a rambling, lifeless, incoherent slurred speech that promised to ratchet up economic sanctions without threatening further violence.
Pete Buttigieg@PeteButtigiegInnocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat. My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight.
The consequence of Trump’s recklessness
A total of 176 people were killed when a Ukrainian passenger plane came down soon after taking off from Tehran in the hours after the missile strike.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has revealed intelligence that suggests it was shot out of the sky by Iran. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Australians have the same intelligence.
“The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile,” Mr Trudeau said. “This may well have been unintentional.”
Iran was on a war footing in the hours after launching its ballistic missiles and would have been prepared for an American response from the air.
All indications point to a tragic mistake.
It won’t take long for critics to point the finger of blame at Mr Trump himself.
Even before Mr Trudeau’s press conference, Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, who served for the US military in Afghanistan, implied the President should carry responsibility.
“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat” he tweeted.
Given the rate at which greenhouse gases and global warming have resulted in the change and the extreme intensity of global weather conditions, what chance has a future recovery of biodiversity now? Particularly when the events we are experiencing now has been exacerbated by modern man’s contribution to Climate Change and in the face of scientific evidence and warnings our leaders keep denying it.
Indigenous management or management of any kind will fail unless the reduction of fossil fuels is acknowledged and the rate of contribution that increased CO2 has made to the weather with it. The warnings and predictions were made globally for what’s occurring here, now, and were scoffed at incessantly by Rupert Murdoch’s media pundits across the English speaking world. Pretenders declaring themselves experts but deserve jailing for fake news. Surely if there is a case for a class action against financial advisers there is one against Murdochians to be made? (ODT)
via The Australian bushfires have killed an estimated 1.25 billion animals
Not just Democrats, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said what Trump officials presented was “the worst briefing I’ve had on a military issue in my nine years” serving in the Senate.
Australia’s national firestorm tragedy has driven many of the usual right wing, Newscorp, coal lobby, anti-science climate change denialists back into their caves.
Stark factual reality has a way of subverting ideology and belief, no matter how strongly we cling to our chosen “views”. It’s hard to argue that climate change is a greenie conspiracy when its impacts are so evident: lives lost, homes destroyed, dreams shattered. Extreme weather events are now occurring on a global scale.
Where are Malcolm Roberts, Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, et al? Where’s that guy who regularly rings ABC Radio talkback regurgitating the dodgy claims of Rupert Murdoch’s opinionators?
The battlefield of climate change debate is now littered (figuratively) with the bodies of the denialist fallen.
Who shall fight the good fight on behalf of the billionaire class to repel those hordes of scientists, with all their researched facts and evidence, before they take the castle of the plutocrats?
Don’t worry, Gina. Don’t worry, Rupert… you still have Tony Abbott and Craig Kelly, those staunch legionnaires, out there proslytising on your behalf: “Reality be damned!” they cry. “Facts don’t matter, it’s how you interpret them.”
“It’s a vision of the future”
via Australia’s Wildfire Catastrophe Isn’t the “New Normal.” It’s Much Worse Than That. – Mother Jones
It was Tony Abbott’s ludicrous, bow-legged saunter that encapsulated the man; some wag once remarked that he looked like a cowboy leaving a rodeo portaloo. His gait was an asinine affectation, the purpose of which no doubt was to reinforce his self image of a macho man, a tough guy in red dick-stickers, but instead the ape-like amble simply highlighted the novelty of his adoption of bipedalism.
via Skiddy leaves his mark – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Let’s call it pollution, unprecedented CO2 pollution which has been increasing at an unprecedented rate and the warming of the planet. Like smoking causes cancer the statistical evidence and correlations are in. Australia has seen and is experiencing the effects of that warming with 9 of 10 record-breaking years this century and a fire season like no other predicted last century and scoffed at. The most significant voice heard in recent times was PM Tony Abbott declaring the science of global warming was “crap”. It cost him his seat of Warringah. Yet the LNP have still been treating the current unprecedented fires accordingly. To Morrison, Craig Kelly, Taylor and others it still is a purely “natural event” with policies in place capable of addressing it. and still claiming we will reach our global emission obligations in a “canter”. “It’s Time isn’t it?” as we are today the worlds biggest polluter with a leadership ethically and morally in total denial. (ODT)
Australia fires: coal industry causes long-term damage as bushfires cost businesses billions
What’s more ludicrous is there is no seperation of powers in the US judicial system (ODT)
A coalition of 29 national advocacy organizations argued Tuesday that “as long as the cloud of impeachment exists, it would be a grave mistake for the Senate to allow the president to continue making lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary.”
“We cannot allow a president who demanded foreign interference in our elections and obstructed Congress to pack our courts with lifetime appointees.”
Trump’s booming share Market (ODT)
via Meet the CEOs Raking It in from Trump’s Aggression Toward Iran | The Smirking Chimp
Trump is a know-nothing President simply following plans laid down since the 80s after the 6 day war. No country in the Middle East was allowed to establish an Army let alone a number of Arabic and Muslim States and so the demise of Libya, Iraq Syria and Iran were laid out years ago by Israel and the US acting as it’s proxy their reward oil and global dominance. The greatest threat to that plan today is Renewable and clean energy. (ODT)
And there is no end in sight with Donald Trump now tweeting furiously that if the Iranian government seeks to retaliate for Soleimani the U.S. will strike 52 targets inside Iran, including cultural sites, a war crime. Congress will do nothing to stop the carnage because it is just as completely controlled by the Israel Lobby as is the White House.
The blood of the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis who will die in the next few weeks is clearly on Donald Trump’s hands as this war was never inevitable and serves no U.S. national interest. It will surely turn out to be a debacle, as well as devastating for all parties involved. And it might well, on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, be the long-awaited beginning of the end of America’s imperial ambitions. Trump has had three years to learn the lesson gleaned from Iraq and Afghanistan. He obviously used that time to learn nothing.
via Killing Inside Iraq to Punish Iran, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review
News Corp is I believe happy to amplify these fake messages.(ODT)
Online posts exaggerating the role of arson are being used to undermine the link between bushfires and climate change
The power of Education vs the Misogynist and None (ODT)
“My first reaction was that it couldn’t be further from the truth, because I am so qualified and the reality is that it’s the complete opposite,” Tobin said.
via Australia fires: Laura Tobin responds to Craig Kelly’s ‘weather girl’ insult
olddogthoughts 
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