General Smedley Butler, War is a Racket
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If our corporate media were even capable of doing their ostensible job …
On many matters ‘quality’ media serve us tolerably well but this truth enables a greater lie. They need to show good faith even when doing so may embarrass those in high office. (Not only does their long term capacity to influence opinion and manufacture consent depend on it. So too, on pain of losing market share, do their business models.) But the trust so gained helps them mislead us, more by omission than commission, on matters critical – above all the vilifying of states and leaders in the way of empire designs – to the power they ultimately serve.
… each new war on a West Asian or North African people would see them emblazoning across their front pages and broadcast headlines the lies used to justify the previous one.
They’d also offer constant reminders of the US General Wesley Clark revelation that, as early as November 2001, Washington was planning for regime change in seven countries in the region, beginning with Iraq and ending with Iran.
The gangsters foreign policy schemers had planned on a five year project. In the event it’s taken closer to a quarter century to get to Iran, with several targets so far missed on the way, though you have to hand it to them, they got Syria – and those who called me an Assad apologist are oddly silent.
But of course, on matters of war our media are not capable, for reasons gone into many times on this site – here and here and here for instance – of doing their ostensible job; of holding power to account.
That’s a structural and systemic impossibility.
Over to Mark Taliano, in a short and to the point piece today:
The Great Betrayal
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called Iran the “principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East” even as Iranians defend themselves from the terror of the US/Israeli criminal war of aggression against their nation even as they mourn the US/Israeli terror attack that slaughtered 165 young Iranian elementary school girls, characterized by UNESCO as “a grave violation of humanitarian law” , even as they mourn the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Shaheed Ayatollah Khamenei, assassinated by a U.S/Zionist terror bombing.
War is Terror and the US/Zionist attack on Iran is Supreme International criminality that violates Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, which states that
all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
The war on Iran also derogates Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution which assigns power to declare war to Congress.
Additionally, as reported by CNN, Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional staff in a briefing [on March 1] that Iran was NOT planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first.
CNN, March 2
But there is more. In opposition to the imperialism of the US and its allies (including Canada), which support ISIS and al Qaeda as strategic assets in Syria and beyond to destabilize and destroy and balkanize and plunder, Iran has always been a force of stability. As an example, Iran supported the legitimate, elected government of Bashar al-Assad and its fight against Western imperialism, Western terrorism.
Catastrophically, but predictably, imperial forces have now installed as President of a balkanized, sectarian Syria a founder of al Qaeda/al Nusra front in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani now known as al- Sharra.
As the new Western-supported Syrian regime terrorizes minorities, including Christians, and seeks to whitewash its genocide of Alawites, as Western-supported Apartheid Israel continues its genocide of Palestinians, PM Carney falsely demonizes Iran and supports the Big Lie of the “War on Terror”.
This war lie continues to generate support for permanent unending Western perpetrated war and terror as Washington seeks global hegemony to the detriment of humanity but to the perceived benefit of the “Epstein” class.
This is the betrayal.
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I have heard from an Iranian friend who has relatives in Iran that a deep sea change was alaready underway. Khamenei and the religious maniacs were slowly relaxing their grip, perhaps not easily or willingly but it was happening. Persian music, poetry and culture were beginnng to return and be celebrated. OK in the homes not so much in the public but things were evolving. And of course Persian culture and history is very different from the nomadic Arabian experience. (Though I don’t think Trump and the White House remotely understand this.) As you know I hate religious shit that controls anyone but I also know that meaningful healthy change has to evolve from within the system itself. No one outside can fully understand it simply because, even though we may observe things, we have not lived and experienced it. We can help but not initiate or control that change. Iran is a vast and beautiful country with three thousand years of civilisation, exprience and culture in its DNA. Netanyahu and his cronies look at this wonderful country (not the religious shit!) and they are filled with envy. If it can’t have it wants to destroy it. And as Jonathon Sachs has explained, the Israeli lobby owns U.S. Congress through a mixture of bribery and blackmail. Just my pscho-political take before breakfast on what is way more complex. And now I hope the move goes well and you are soon enjoykng your new home. What is your new address? I have something for you.
You couldn’t make this up:
https://t.me/intelslava/83689#
Lets not forget the pounding that Lebanon is receiving.
Laith Marouf has a Specials message:
‘Stop your messing around
Time to think of the future
Time to straighten right out
Creating problems in Town
A message to you *udy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO0KFZCm0DI
Meanwhile, some non-Narrative control update sources:
https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/usrael-iran-war-update
“What we need, at the end of this war, is a new Nuremberg for all Western politician and presstitutes who supported this war and who should be either executed or imprisoned for the rest of their life!”
Amen to that
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/liar-liar-bases-on-fire
“… as a general rule, the side that is really winning is much more likely to tell the truth, and the side that is losing is, far more often than not, lying through its teeth.
– William Schryver”
Michael Hudson: Negotiations as Cover, War as Policy
https://michael-hudson.com/2026/03/negotiations-as-cover-war-as-policy/
“…..So the United States has declared economic war against the rest of the world to try to maintain its control that it no longer can exert through the institutions that it put up at the end of World War II in 1945, when it was in a position to dictate the kind of U.S. based international order based on the U.S. dollar and on U.S. veto power in the UN, the IMF, the World Bank. ….
….the U.S. saying we’re rejecting the whole principle of international law that’s been developed for the last four centuries, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, all the way through to the United Nations Charter. We are dictating the rules, and we are rejecting any rules made by other countries. And you had a speech, I think, yesterday or maybe this morning by Hegseth saying this is a war to kill people who don’t agree to U.S. control.* I mean, he did. I think it just came across on television. But it’s a declaration of war against the world……”
*This begs the question, in the context of events in Minneapolis and other parts of the USA, as to just who exactly is covered by this approach?
Even service personnel in the USA are being targeted as a threat to National Security for criticising Israel…….
https://old.bitchute.com/video/JooDLA6fWC42/
(You will need TOR to access this as Bitchute has been blocked in the UK)
at a time when commanders are briefing lower ranks that Trump has been annointed by God to bring on the end times/Armageddon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVOVqG6Mh40
Consequently, it would seem reasonable to anticipate that regardless of whatever identity you have and where you are that the exceptionalist manifest destiny supremacists running the West consider anyone and everyone on the planet as a legitimate target for extermination who does not agree with them.
The rational and stark conclusion is that the situation has become existential for everyone.