Grab a chair, kick off your shoes, chill and chat.I listened to a UK reporter this morning on the radio speaking to Amerikans at a rally in the US. They actually believe the world is under attack because they see so many muslims when they visit London. In typically blinkered fashion, they have only a microscopic understanding of the "world" that exists outside the US borders. One of them said that the UK and Europe in general were finished because they allow free entry at borders.
With any luck I expect a few of them that are a little more intelligent may change their outlook once they see their young men and women arrive home from Herr Trump's illegal war in body bags.
Trump on the march.
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Hotrodder
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Trump on the march.
On my headstone it will say: Please switch off mobile phones. I'm trying to get some sleep.
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Blaze
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Trump on the march.
That's exactly what I meant in my last para. It's the ignorance of the fact that a bigger world exists outside the US that made people vote for the clown and the other idiots in the white house circus.
It makes me wonder just what teachers out of the big cities are taught, and teach ....
In 2024, 21% of adults in the US were illiterate and 54% adults in the US have an average reading level of a 12 year old. These figures may be approximate but they are enough to indicate a trend.
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Bayleaf
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Trump on the march.
I would be interested to know if anyone can disprove any of the following - but it all sounds perfectly feasible.
"Next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.
For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.
After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability? Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it. Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?
That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.
Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis."
"Next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.
For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.
After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability? Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it. Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?
That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.
Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis."
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Blaze
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exile
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Trump on the march.
I will throw something else into the mix.
For 100 years Iran has seen people essentially taking its oil and converting it to valuable materials but getting little in return - as documented above.
In part due to their own attitudes, they have largely been denied technology to build plants in Iran to convert at least some of their oil into more valuable materials. Unlike KSA, UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, who all have plants refining oil, making raw plastics, converting methane into fertiliser and so on.
Iran has Uranium resources in the South East of the country.
So given the past extraction of their resources for the profit of others, is this a driving force to why they are keen to have their own Uranium processing facilities?
Perhaps a complete load of sphericals - or is it?
For 100 years Iran has seen people essentially taking its oil and converting it to valuable materials but getting little in return - as documented above.
In part due to their own attitudes, they have largely been denied technology to build plants in Iran to convert at least some of their oil into more valuable materials. Unlike KSA, UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, who all have plants refining oil, making raw plastics, converting methane into fertiliser and so on.
Iran has Uranium resources in the South East of the country.
So given the past extraction of their resources for the profit of others, is this a driving force to why they are keen to have their own Uranium processing facilities?
Perhaps a complete load of sphericals - or is it?
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Bayleaf
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Hotrodder
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Trump on the march.
I rarely had any interest in news and world events but I do recall catching the odd news program on TV and apart from the battle between the labour unions and the Conservatives, etc. I felt very upset watching how Israel was treating the PLO. Even today I feel troubled remembering the look on the face of Yasser Arafat as he tried to get political acceptance of a two-state solution.
On my headstone it will say: Please switch off mobile phones. I'm trying to get some sleep.
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Hotrodder
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Trump on the march.
I just ran across a headline that was more than a little thought-provoking.
"Trump administration doing all it can to get Hungary's Orban re-elected"
To me this connects three dots quite effectively. Orban, Trump, and Putin. It was Orban's veto that is stopping the 90 billion euro aid package to Ukraine.
"Trump administration doing all it can to get Hungary's Orban re-elected"
To me this connects three dots quite effectively. Orban, Trump, and Putin. It was Orban's veto that is stopping the 90 billion euro aid package to Ukraine.
On my headstone it will say: Please switch off mobile phones. I'm trying to get some sleep.
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Headers
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Trump on the march.
I remember the Shah being overturned because I worked for the CEGB and we had people out there developing a deal for a power station. When they were evacuated they brought all sorts of dodgy stuff out under the diplomatic rules. The Iranian people have never had the upper hand. There’s always someone ready to take advantage of them.
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suein56
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Trump on the march.
George Monbiot referenced the same 1953 interference here : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... sm-regimes
His article led me to read all about the situation in Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iran ... '%C3%A9tat
Iran had a rotten deal 70 years ago. If successful Mohammad Mosaddegh could have led to the country to having a completely different history.