My secrets exposed! » « We live, under the dead hand of Ed Brayton

I have opinions on Sam Harris and murdering Iranian people

I don’t like either of them, nosir.

I’m also disturbed by the fact that a MAGA zealot who favors white Christian nationalism thinks that killing other zealots who hold other religious nationalist beliefs warrant execution. Hello, United States of America, you’re just asking for it.

My secrets exposed! » « We live, under the dead hand of Ed Brayton

Comments

  2. robro says

    Ah c’mon, PZ. This isn’t about zealots killing zealots over religion…or oil. It’s almost certainly about 5 FBI interviews missing from The Files…interviews that suggest “credible” evidence. If nothing else the log of those 5 interviews suggests Pam B has tried to cook the narrative.

    It may also be about the unraveling international oligarchy. Important people are getting kicked out of their plush positions, and arrested…handcuffed even. Treatment normally reserved for brown skinned people.

  5. says

    I see and hear all these excited Iranian abroad, and all I can think is “People, you got suckered. You’re not gonna get some wonderful happy ending with Trump involved.” At best they probably get Shah 2.0, but I suspect a civil war is just as likely a result.

  6. raven says

    Two things can be true at once.

    .1. The Iranian Islamic dictatorship oppressed and exploited the Iranian people.

    .2. Trump and Netanyahu aren’t much different except it is Americans and Israelis/Palestinians.
    They aren’t the solution for the problems of the Iranian people.

  7. raven says

    What I’ve always noticed about the Iranian dictatorship that stands out.

    The Iranian leadership was incredibly incompetent. Not smart.
    They did a very poor job of actually governing a nation of 93 million people.

    .1. After the Islamic revolution, they drove out most of the educated people in Iran, such as engineers and scientists.
    They had to import gasoline because they didn’t have much in the way of refineries. It took them decades to get it together long enough to eventually build a refinery. Oil refineries are based on old technology. This isn’t that complicated.

    .2. A lot of the infrastructure in Iran is run down.
    They siphoned off and wasted much of the oil revenue they got from exporting oil.

    .3. They now have a huge water shortage problem due to drought and major mismanagement of their water supplies. They emptied their aquafers by overpumping from deep wells.

    Iran is facing an unprecedented water crisis, described by experts as “water bankruptcy” or the worst drought in over four decades, following six consecutive years of low rainfall and high temperatures. Major reservoirs, including those feeding Tehran, are at critically low levels (some below 8%), prompting threats to evacuate the capital. Nighttime water pressure cuts are widespread, and 19 major dams are on the verge of drying out.

    .4. They deliberately alienated much of the world for no obvious reason and no real gain.
    The forgot the first rule of kindergarten. “Be nice to your friends or you won’t have any.”

    .5. As we have seen twice now, Iran is a paper tiger in military terms. Their huge armed forces that they spent a lot of money on aren’t very effective and not good for much.
    When the Israeli and US planes bombed Iran, twice now, their air defenses were useless. They didn’t shoot down a single plane.
    Their missiles and drones aren’t very accurate. AFAICT, most of them miss their targets. Even the Iranians have noted this.

    They deserve to be replaced just on the basis of their incompetence at governing.
    The violation of human rights just adds more fuel to the fire.

  8. outis says

    First, welcome back, even in these inauspicious days.
    Second, whoopdedoo, another elective war!
    Who’s counting anymore? How many of these have turned to shit before? But hey who cares, the God Emperor is infallible. Even if he said a while ago that Iran had posilutely absoitively no nuc capabiliies left.
    Regime change? That would be nice, but one needs competent people to pull it off and the shower of anuses now cosplaying as the US cabinet is not it.
    No idea if in Iran there’s enough people to form a functioning, non-religious, non-dictatorial government. Those bastards had 40 years to set up and lock down their not-so-little mafia state, one needs some foundations to build on. And they were very careful at exterminating any kind of opposition.
    A good one was the 1951 Moussadeq government but… oh the irony, it was the US (and UK) who brought that one down, so heralding some very very dark decades for Iran.
    We’ll have to wait and see, but considering what came before, optimistic I’m not.

  9. says

    North Korea has nukes, and they’ve tested them. NK also has missiles that can hit the West Coast. But NK is safe because its dictator and Amerika’s dictator are buddies. And now, watch Iran become the next Gaza if it won’t surrender unconditionally to Israel. For Israel, it’s about regional dominance under the guise of security. For Trump, Gaza and Iran were just business deals.

  10. Allison says

    NK also has missiles that can hit the West Coast. But NK is safe because its dictator and Amerika’s dictator are buddies.

    NK was safe even before Trump was (re-)elected. Because they have (nuclear) missles that can hit the [US] West Coast.

    Trump attacks Iran because Iran can’t effectively fight back. Just like Reagan and Grenada.

  11. says

    I don’t doubt Iran needs a regime change, but the US has no business handling such an operation. Our nation clearly has no idea what it’s doing.

  12. beholder says

    It’s like the war(s) in Iraq, but even worse!

    It is disturbing how much Blue MAGA seems to be on board with war with Iran — their primary complaint is about Trump’s incompetence, and that a hypothetical “competent” regime change handled by their sports team would be even better.

  13. Hemidactylus says

    I mostly agree with PZ on Dennett. He seemed ok and I liked his stuff on free will and consciousness. He was to his detriment a hyperdarwinist and one of the worst things he did was bash Gould in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. I recall a dustup between Gould and Dennett/Pinker/Wright in the mid to late 90s. It was not pretty and kinda soured me on Dennett. Also he was a proponent of memetics. That’s just silly talk.

    Hitch was a complex fellow. His warmongering and support for the invasion of Iraq even as late as before he passed away was not cool. But of all the new atheists he was the most anti-Zionist, something ignored by his champions AND detractors. He had a history on that worth exploring. Instead now we get the great pretender Douglas Murray alongside that hateful Palestinian identity eraser Natasha Hausdorff that Coyne swoons over. Fuck all them. Read Hitch on Israel or look him up on Youtube.

    As for Sam Harris Kyle kinda echoes PZ here:

    Around 10:38:

    Oh my god. Also, by the way, Sam Harris correctly believes that Donald Trump is like a psychopathic fascist. How can you in one breath say, “This guy’s a psychopathic fascist, but also he should launch an illegal and offensive war against this country that didn’t attack us and overthrow their government and fix their political system.” He can’t even take care of our political system.

  14. John Morales says

    beholder, I remember your wanking about Biden and your “Genocide Joe” appellation and his Israel support.

    […] and, let’s not forget, a regime that could not have done any of this without the active facilitation and military support of Genocide Joe and his administration.
    (https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/09/09/this-summary-of-israels-defenses-holds-up/#comment-2235573)

    Got anything similar for the specimen who did start another war and bombing campaign, hand-in-glove with Israel? You know, the one who campaigned on a no-war ticket?

    Here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/01/trump-promised-no-wars-now-hes-a-bush-style-regime-change-president

    It turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “candidate of peace”, is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said.

    Many of Trump’s top advisers and supporters made the same pitch to a war-weary American public. The national Republican party portrayed Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, as the “pro-peace ticket”. In 2023, when Vance was still auditioning for the role as Trump’s running mate, he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”

    And yet in his first year back in office, Trump bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Venezuela. Early on Saturday, Trump launched his most extensive, and dangerous, military campaign so far: a war against Iran, which could spiral into a regional conflagration, especially as the Iranian regime sees this joint US-Israeli attack as a fight for its survival.

    —

    I should note I am a bit irritated (but not surprised) our Oz pollies are generally supportive of the USA, ostensibly.
    As are many other ‘allies’ of USA. But then, we are USA’s lapdog.

    Tsk.

  15. says

    So Harris insisted that Iran won’t “blow up on us” like Iraq and Afghanistan did? Didn’t the warmongers say back then that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq would blow up on us?

    I remember lots of people back then, on both sides of the divide, acknowledging that Iran was a bigger country than Iraq, and would thus be MORE likely to blow up on us if we tried to invade or mess with them.

    Totally amazing (and absolutely disgraceful) that Harris would hold such a longstanding grudge against Iran, while forgetting actual history that’s much more recent. It’s like he just stopped thinking around 9/11, and never even tried to learn anything since, even about that incident.

  16. John Morales says

    Raging Bee, diff is that this is a bombing campaign for regime change, not troops on the ground.

    Not an invasion, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, at least not so far.

    So your attempted analogy fails.

  17. says

    I don’t doubt Iran needs a regime change, but the US has no business handling such an operation.

    And there’s no way ANY foreign power could effect the kind of regime change we think would be better for Iran — i.e., a stable democracy, preferably secular. Even with a competent President, the US has neither the manpower, nor the skill, nor the experience, nor the in-country connections, nor the long-term political will, to impose a Western-style democracy on Iran that will be able to establish peaceful hegemony on a willing population.

    The only regime-change Trump and Beginyahu will get us is a new set of ayatollahs who are more theocratic, more intolerant of dissent, more militant, and more hateful toward America and Western values. Which is probably what Trump and Beginyahu really want — a permanent excuse for a permanent state of war with Iran.

  18. badland says

    The wanker beholder:

    blue MAGA

    You gotta step outside your Facebook echo chamber more often boo, this shit never gets less embarrassing to read.

  19. Corey says

    Harris is wrong. But so is characterizing him as a MAGA white Christian nationalist.

  20. John Morales says

    Corey, theoretically.
    He talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. And what people do says more than what they say.

    Fact: By championing the military strikes on Iran, Harris is walking in lockstep with the MAGA administration and the Israeli right. This functions as intellectual cover for their platform.
    I mean, he makes claims about atheism, but he is providing the moral and philosophical justification for a war initiated by a coalition of MAGA loyalists and Christian Zionists.

    Right? There is no functional difference between a “MAGA zealot” wanting to bomb Iran for nationalist reasons and Sam Harris wanting to bomb Iran for secular reasons.

  21. chrislawson says

    robro@2–

    While this dismal exercise sure looks like it was dreamed up to distract Americans from Epstein coverups, ICE thuggery, chaotic tariffs, cognitive decline and dismal polling, there is still plenty to examine about why the Trumpista circus chose this particular action at this particular time.

  22. chrislawson says

    @18–

    Yep. “Blue MAGA” is an astonishing new low, even for beholder.

  24. says

    Any “solution” also needs to consider the meaning of “Iran.” It’s not quite as much a conglomeration as “the United States of America” (or even Canada), but neither is it a homogeneous entity like Denmark, or even a conglomeration of three or four closely related groups like, say, Germany. And its modern borders (just like the rest of Southwest Asia) were essentially drawn by colonial powers (still blinded by their 18th-century concepts of sovereignty) to divide up their unfettered access to natural resources and ensure control of trade routes.

  25. says

    …there is still plenty to examine about why the Trumpista circus chose this particular action at this particular time.

    It could be random, or it could be a matter of which group of haters or warmongers had his ear recently. And that would be Netanyahu and AIPAC, who have been banging the “bomb Iran” drum for years anyway.

    And maybe it also has something to do with Gaza. Bombing Iran and screaming about nukes and regime-change sure does serve to distract us from his upcoming genocide-profiteering Board of Peace actions.

  26. Silentbob says

    I haven’t watched the video but love it already for the thumbnail alone. X-D

  27. lasius says

    @24 Jaws.

    So, what’s those three or four closely related groups that make up Germany?

  29. badland says

    The wanker beholder: ‘here’s why I’m mad at the Dems for Trump bombing Iran.’

  30. Silentbob says

    I apologize now for being flippant before I watched this video. I’ve watched it now and it’s very important and powerful and everyone should watch it.

  31. francesconic says

    Has everyone memory holed the westernising, secular, American supported Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, installed in supreme power by Britain & America by destroying Iran’s democracy ? A ruler so bad Islamic Fundamentalism seemed a better option. One suspects partially at least because western interests stands no chance of infiltrating fundamentalist islam. I suspect a substantial portion of Iran will not equate anything American, Secular or Westernising with freedom because of the Shah’s rule. And that is on the United States who chose cheep oil over practicing it’s professed ideals.

  32. lasius says

    @31 francesconic

    As German cabaret artist Volker Pispers said when talking about the history of the middle east:

    “Imagine being so fed up with Merkel, that putting the pope in power seems like a good idea.”

  33. mordred says

    Just found someone online arguing Dumpf is defending the US and their European allies against Iran’s attacks on their military installations and citizens in the middle east. The attacks that were a (foreseeable) reaction to the US bombing Iran…

  35. StevoR says

    @12. Trump helping bad faith troll “beholder” :“It’s like the war(s) in Iraq, but even worse!”

    Its NOT worse – yet. It probly eventually will be.

    It is disturbing how much Blue MAGA

    Not a thing troll. However much you might lie about it & falsely claim otherwise..

    seems to be on board with war with Iran — their primary complaint is about Trump’s incompetence, and that a hypothetical “competent” regime change handled by their sports team would be even better.

    False. Of course, the fact that you are attacking the Democratic party which has nothing to to do with and not criticising trump for, y’know being Netanyahu’s favoured POTUS choice and doing this war for him is very telling. Never any criticism of Trump and the Repugs from you is there?

  36. John Morales says

    re my #20:
    No real surprise here: https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for

    A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

    From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

    The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

    The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

    […]

    NCO Email to MRFF
    As redacted by MRFF:

    From: (Active Duty Military NCO and MRFF Client’s email address withheld)
    Subject: Unit combat readiness briefing and Armageddon
    Date: March 2, 2026 at 1:02:53 PM MST
    To: Information Weinstein

    Mr. Weinstein thank you for taking my calls and the calls of some of my colleagues as to what happened earlier this morning with our combat unit.

    Please protect my identity and the identities of those I’m speaking for as we discussed.

    Our unit is not currently in the combat zone AOR regarding the Iranian attacks but we are in a “Ready-Support” function where we could be deployed there at any moment to join and augment the combat operations as participants.

    I am a (NCO rank withheld) in our unit. This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”. He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy. Our commander would probably be described as a “Christian First” supporter. He has been this way for a very long time and makes it clear that he desires all of us under him to become just like him as a Christian. But what he did this morning was so toxic and over the line that it shocked many of us in attendance at the ops readiness briefing. Besides myself I am reaching out to MRFF on behalf of 15 fellow troops. I know you asked me about the religious views of our group who has requested help from the MRFF. I can only tell you that I am Christian and at least 10 of the others are also Christians. One of the others is Jewish and one is Muslim. I don’t know the religious or non-religious status for the other three at this time.

    I and my fellow troops know that it is completely wrong to have to suffer through what our commander said today. It’s not just the separation of church and state as we discussed Mr. Weinstein. It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command.

    I hope by sending this email to you that this will help expose these wrong actions which destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the constitution.

  37. says

    John @36: In theory, the opinions of those loony-Christian officers shouldn’t be relevant, since they’re not the ones giving the orders from the top. In practice, however, their opinions, and their overt expressions of same, strongly imply that they cannot be trusted to do their jobs in a proper disciplined manner, and might, in fact, take any opportunity to commit more atrocities than they need to, in order to provoke a greater reaction from the Iranians, and thus maybe make the war more hateful and bitter than it already is, to bring us closer to the Armageddon these slavering morons really seem to want.

    A sensible Commander-in-Chief would have fired all these jackasses long ago, whether or not he was contemplating any military action.

  38. John Morales says

    Good news, everyone!

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/09/white-evangelicals-remain-among-trumps-strongest-supporters-but-theyre-less-supportive-than-a-year-ago/

    For instance, there has been an 8-percentage point drop since early 2025 in the share of White evangelicals who support all or most of Trump’s plans and policies. And there has been a 15-point drop in the share who are confident Trump acts ethically in office.

    Trump’s approval rating among White evangelicals is also down compared with early 2025 (69% today vs. 78% then), though several other Center surveys over the past year have measured ratings near this level.

  40. John Morales says

    StevoR, that ‘analysis’ (opinion piece) by Jiang was not terrible — bits were rather good — until the end.
    Then it’s just conspiracy theory.

    And the last factor that is very important is the eschatological factor. If you look at the Epstein files, it’s clear that we are run by secret societies. It’s clear that the world is run by individuals who have a lot of power. We don’t know who they are, but they control the military, they control the national‑security apparatus. There are different names for these people — you can call them the Illuminati. And the Illuminati are composed of three major groups: the Jesuits, who control the Vatican; the Sabbatean‑Frankists, who control modern Israel; and the Freemasons, who control the national‑security apparatus of the United States. They believe that this war in the Middle East is key to the end times and to creating heaven on earth. So it’s almost like a script they’re following, even though it doesn’t make any sense.
     
    So I would say these three are the best reasons why this is happening.

    —

    BTW, are you familiar with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scams#Gambling_tricks) The Baltimore Stockbroker scam?

    (Or that past success is only a heuristic for current success?
    cf. https://theconversation.com/polling-in-the-age-of-trump-highlights-flawed-methods-and-filtered-realities-243868 )

  41. StevoR says

    @ ^ John Morales : Fair point re the Conspiracism, at the end there. Yeah. Not a fan of that or that part of that interview.

    .***

    Via today’s PBS Newshour :

    On Tuesday, Trump administration officials briefed members of Congress on the war with Iran. It comes as both chambers gear up to vote on a War Powers Act measure that could limit President Trump’s authority in carrying out strikes. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-is-a-war-of-choice-by-trump-and-netanyahu-sen-warner-says-after-iran-briefing

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