“Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”
“I do,” Dunbar told him.
“Why?” Clevinger asked.
“What else is there?”
"They don’t instantly burst into enlightenment. The Zen guys really have a corner on that whole instant bursting thing." (Jed McKenna, Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything)
Victoria Nuland dismisses John Mearsheimmer's statement that no evidence has shown that Iran helped cause the October 7th attack with a condescending smile and mock amazement.
@Partisan_12 Typical “oh my goodness” 3x response….the telltale sign of someone with no substantive answer to a fact, so they pivot to an emotionally charged reply to rile up others who are equally brainwashed.
@Partisan_12 Mearsheimer made a great point of Iranians not even knowing about October 7, 2023, which happened after Netanyahu funded Hamas for years and after a stand down order.🤨
POMPEO🤡: You don't let a radical regime close off the global economy by firing Shaheed missiles.
Stephen Walt: You do know, Mike, that we started the war.
POMPEO🤡: No, no, no.
Stephen Walt: They weren't firing those missiles until Israel and the United States attacked Iran.
"Was it not precisely the discovery of a discrepancy between words, the medium in which we think, and the world of appearances, the medium in which we live, that led to philosophy and metaphysics in the first place?" (Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind)
Well, it turns out I was wrong: you can purchase an electoral victory. Somewhere between $20 million and $30 million was spent by President Trump and his supporters to defeat Rep Massie.
The greatest amount of money ever spent in a primary campaign was enough to do the dirty deed.
This is deeply disappointing, because it shows that advocates for another country – Israel - supersedes those who actually advocate for our own country. And it shows that the super wealthy elite in America can crush even a popular politician, like representative Massie, because they can outspend him, no matter how much he gathers.
This is a dark day for American democracy, because it shows how little the people matter anymore.
Let me tell you what is “that simple”: they want to kill us, @SenRickScott, bc our government *is* killing them. We launched an illegal and unconstitutional war, against our own interests, and when we launch nearly 14,000 air strikes against them, Iran will strike back and try to kill us.
If u don’t want them to kill Americans or Israelis - and i strongly do not want that - then find a way to get the war over and stop giving them a reason to return fire.
It’s that simple.
Activist: "You can graze sheep underneath solar panels. It's called agrivoltaics."
Farmer: "I've read the brochures."
Activist: "Best of both worlds."
Farmer: "The panels shade the sward. Productive species die back. What grows is what tolerates shade and compaction. Sheep won't finish on it."
Activist: "But the trials show it works."
Farmer: "The trials run three years and measure ewe presence. Not lamb growth rates. Not finishing weights. Not what the soil looks like in year fifteen."
Activist: "It's still better than nothing."
Farmer: "It's a 30% stocking rate, a steel frame I can't plough around, panel-cleaning chemicals running into the watercourse, and a 40-year lease I can't break."
Activist: "But you're getting energy AND lamb."
Farmer: "I'm getting a third of the lamb, a maintenance contract, and a field my grandson can't farm."
Activist: "You're being negative."
Farmer: "I'm watching a thousand-year-old way of feeding people get traded for twenty-five years of subsidised electricity. Negative would be the polite word."
Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated Marines in U.S. history.
He received two Medals of Honor, one of only 19 Americans ever to do so.
He spent thirty-three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising to Major General.
In 1935, he wrote a book called War Is a Racket.
He said:
"I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
One of the most decorated Marines in American history said this.
In 1935.
It is not assigned reading.
The football stadium still says, "Thank you for your service."
But the general who explained what that service was actually used for is still kept outside the official mythology.
"Brahman is consciousnesses; the impersonal, featureless infinite. Maya is the creator of the dreamstate, and Atman is the aspect of Brahman that beholds Maya's creation. They are not entities, they are tools for understanding.…." (Jed McKenna, Dreamstate)
Secretary Hegseth now joins President Trump and vice president Vance, in having explicitly admitted that there was no imminent threat of a nuclear breakout. Thus, there was no justification for this war, under any circumstances.
The very weak attempt the secretary makes to try and explain away his admission is not credible. Because one cannot simultaneously argue there was an “imminent threat“ and also hold that all the nuclear material is still buried under a mountain somewhere. It’s impossible for them to coexist.
Moral framing in the media has hardened into something far more extreme—and it is actively undermining the possibility of compromise and peace. Conflicts are reduced to simplistic moral binaries, reinforced by emotional cues that dictate how events must be interpreted. Complexity and historical context - whether it is NATO expansionism and its role in the Ukraine war or decades of efforts to defeat Iran - are purged from the narrative as they do not conform to the assumed moral clarity. Any attempt at objectivity is dismissed as a moral failure. This culture of self-righteous certainty, cloaked as moral clarity, promotes a single, unexamined narrative that denounces mutual understanding as appeasement.
That’s not how oil facilities work. Pipelines don’t just “blow up“ because they can’t store enough oil. That’s a lie.
If that was a risk, then five of the six GCC countries would already had their pipelines explode, and none have. Literally, the systems are designed with failsafe safety measures to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Plus, Iran is definitely not three days away from full storage capacity. It takes a lot longer than that to reach that level.
If an Iranian pipeline suddenly “blows up” in the next three days the likely culprit will be a US missile, and that will trigger a massive retaliation from Iran.
If Trump is trying to be cute again, it’s going to “blow up” in all of our faces
China isn’t just trading through Iran — it’s building a sanctions-proof system.
Railways that move good and soon even OIL over land.
No Navy. No chokepoints. No blockade risk.
A backup corridor the US can’t touch.
In Washington they barely even know it exists.