How Netanyahu pushed Trump into attacking Iran

And so Trump has backed off from his deranged genocidal threats against Iran that would and should surely constitute war crimes that alarmed even some of his supporters. He, as usual, claims success that he got a ceasefire but it is not at all clear what he got. Iran has issued a 10-point plan for a ceasefire not only contains many things that the US had rejected previously, but demands new ones.

Danny Citrinowicz, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, has offered a sobering assessment of the outcome of America’s five week war, saying the conflict was launched with “sweeping promises: regime change in Iran, the dismantling of its missile and nuclear programs, and preventing it from threatening the Strait of Hormuz.”
“And where are we now?” he asks.
The regime is still firmly in power.
Its missile capabilities are damaged still intact
It still holds roughly 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60%.
And in return?
A ‘controlled’ reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, something that wasn’t even truly closed to begin with.
Let’s be honest: this is not a strategic victory.”

Observers are suggesting that Trump was desperate for an exit ramp after his blustering painted him into a corner and so seized on this as a way out, until the next time he feels like issuing an apocalyptic threat.

So how and why did Trump blunder into this war. The New York Times had a long article detailing how Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed Trump into attacking Iran during a meeting at the White House on February 11, assuring him that it would be easy to topple the Iranian leadership and replace it with one friendly to the US,
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Why a top general was fired by Hegseth

When I read that the secretary of defense Pete Hegseth had summarily fired the army chief of staff Randy George, I assumed that George was Black because the Trump administration views only white heterosexual men as deserving of having reached high office on their merits and that any minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ person was installed despite their lack of qualifications but because of ‘woke’ ideology dominating over merit.

But Randy George was your standard issue military officer. So why was he dismissed? According to leaks, it was because George was not sufficiently supportive of Hegseth’s ‘white men only’ policy.
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Pentagon is hiding US casualties as frustrations mount

Back in the days of the Vietnam war, there came to be something known as the Five O’Clock Follies, a term derisively used by reporters attending the daily briefings by the military where they would be told how wonderfully everything was going and how the enemy was bring crushed, when the reporters knew full well that the US was bogged down in a never-ending war that was causing many US casualties. That hiding of the truth recurred during the Iraq war as well and is surfacing now with Iran. It seems to be an inevitable consequence when wars drag on much longer than anticipated and casualties mount.

American presidents, especially in their second terms when things are not going well for therm, love to go to war. It his usually a sure-fire way of shoring up public support and wrapping themselves up with patriotic fervor. But that only works if the wars are short-lived or they do not have many casualties. People seem to be willing to accept massive death and destruction of ordinary people at the receiving end of US weaponry, however unjustified, but get upset when US troops start experiencing casualties. So nowadays presidents use aerial warfare with bombing campaigns and drone strikes, forfeiting the need to put in ground troops with all its risks.

In the current war against Iran, we mainly hear reports of what the US has done to Iran and very little about the retaliation. Given that we are now entering the sixth week and also given how much Trump lies about everything, it should be no surprise that The Intercept reports that the administration is hiding the true number of casualties.
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Trump comes to Starmer’s rescue

The Labour Party came into power in the UK in July 2024 in a landslide win that saw them win 411 seats out of 650, propelled by a public that was fed up with 14 years of Conservative rule. The problem was that Keir Starmer, now the prime minister of the UK, campaigned on bland statements instead of specifics and once in power, abandoned many of the issues that were sought by the party base, hewing to a more rightward direction instead. That, coupled with incompetence and poor choice of people appointed to key positions, resulted in his popularity quickly dissipating.

Just recently, he was in deeper trouble. The fiasco over his appointment of Jeffrey Epstein’s close buddy Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US and the forced resignation of his chief of staff had raised serious questions about his judgment. Then in late February, the party suffered a disastrous defeat at a by-election where the Green Party won a seat that had been comfortably Labour.

Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.

Labour came third in the tightly contested race, 5,616 votes behind the Greens on 14,980 votes, while Reform UK finished second with 10,578 votes. The result represents a 25.4 percentage point drop in Labour’s share of the vote compared with 2024.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats lost their deposits as they won fewer than 5% of the votes, with both under 2%. The Greens’ victory in a Labour stronghold, its first ever in a Westminster byelection, establishes the party as a serious political force and a credible anti-Reform alternative.

It will deepen concerns among Labour MPs that Starmer’s party is haemorrhaging voters on the left in an effort to thwart the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform.

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Why Bondi was fired

Given her almost cartoonish expressions of support for Trump, why was Pam Bondi fired as attorney general? She had been aware that there were people who had Trump’s ear who had been pushing for her ouster but she thought that she could weather the storm or that at least he would give her a graceful way to exist, say over the next few months. But as is the case with Trump, loyalty for him is a one-way street, and he summarily fired her yesterday.

The New York Times reports that her main problem was that she had failed to secure convictions against people that Trump had wanted prosecuted, even though the cases against them were weak, so that even grand juries, usually so accommodating of prosector’s request to return indictments, refused to go along. But Trump doesn’t care if the people he appoints are given impossible tasks. For him, a failure is a failure, and even a sign of disloyalty to him.
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Bye, bye, Bondi

Even being an ultra-loyalist brown-noser wasn’t enough for attorney general Pam Bondi to keep her job as attorney general because Trump just fired her. She continued her sycophancy even after her ignominious ouster, saying that she will continue fighting for Trump in the private sector. This is understandable since she will be seeking a pardon for any and all transgressions committed by her.

So what caused her demise? After all, she threw a major tantrum at congressional hearings, insulted members of the oversight panel, rescinded prosecution of Trump allies, purged career attorneys who were deemed to be insufficiently cult-like, went after his foes, and praised Trump to the skies at every opportunity. All this would seem to be the kinds of things that would endear her to her narcissistic boss. Some of her appointees as US attorneys were thrown out by judges as being unqualified or not properly appointed but that kind of incompetence seems normal for this chaotic administration. Here is a timeline of her greatest hits during her time in office.
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Trying to explain stock market gyrations

I recently posted about my puzzlement as to why the stock market indices gyrate wildly based on Trump’s utterances when we all know that he both lies and changes tack on what seems like whims. Several commenters had valuable insights and now this article from yesterday tries to explain what is going on.

Markets are rallying on a familiar bet: That President Donald Trump will, once again, back down. (It’s not called TACO Tuesday for nothing.)

The Dow, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq just had their best day since May 2025, roaring higher Tuesday in large part because of a report (and semi-confirmation) that the White House is considering an end to America’s involvement in the Iran war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. CNN later confirmed Trump and his administration increasingly believe that they can’t promise to reopen the strait as a prerequisite to declaring an end to hostilities with Iran.
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How the manosphere influencers distort gender power relationships

I have been thinking more about the documentary Inside the Manosphere that I reviewed recently and it struck me how the so-called influencers of the movement that were featured in the film have taken a kernel of truth and distorted it in order to give the young men who they have lured into their sphere a false idea of how power is wielded in society. It shows how successful a sleight-of-hand argument can be when wielded skillfully against their targets, in this case young, poor men who are frustrated at their lack of success in life, be it in the area of money or with women.

The influencers first assert that it is ‘the system’ that is keeping young men down and preventing them from becoming successful. There is a kernel of truth in that (that most conspiratorial theories must have in order to gain acceptance) but the influencers then divert attention away from the capitalist system that is exploiting most people and say that a shadowy cabal is doing it. Who exactly makes up this shadowy cabal is left largely unspecified but Jews are frequently mentioned.
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Mark Twain’s War Prayer should be read by everyone

At a Christian worship service last week, defense secretary Pete Hegseth gave the following prayer.

“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Pope Leo XV issued what seemed like an apparent rebuke.

During a Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, the pope said the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US was “atrocious” and that Jesus could not be used to justify war.

“This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he told tens of thousands of worshippers. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Quoting a Bible passage, Leo added: “‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

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The barbarians attacking the rich cultural heritage of Iran

It is easy to focus on the day-to-day events in the US-Israeli attack on Iran, we should not forget that what is being attacked is much more than material things.

In an essay titled A Bitter Education in the New York Review of Books, the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra writes about the strong legacy of Persian culture that was cherished in India by intellectuals like Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore, and that is now being squandered by the current Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi and the westernized classes of Iran and India as they genuflect to the western capitalist ethos.

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India that “among the many people and races who have come in contact with Indians and influenced India’s life and culture, the oldest and most persistent have been the Iranians.” It is the kind of historical fact readily verified by ordinary experience. My grandfather was more fluent in Persian than in any other language; I grew up using Persian words in everyday conversations, eating food that originated in Persia, and listening to music whose most widespread and enduring forms—qawwali and the ghazal—were refined by a medieval poet in Persian.

For nearly a millennium, Persian was the lingua franca of Asia: the language widely used by political and intellectual mandarins and necessary, too, for travelers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, who both deployed the language in China. Indeed, if Persian nationalism has maintained a profound sense of historical continuity transcending many different political regimes, it is because of its roots in the achievements of an expansive and long-lasting Persian civilization, or ecumene. Translated into many vernacular languages, the poetry and philosophy of Firdausi, Attar, Rumi, Hafez, Sa‘di, Nizami, Ibn Sina, and Nizam al-Mulk assumed a canonical authority across Asia. Rulers everywhere, whether Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, adopted Persian ideologies of statecraft that, as Richard Eaton writes in India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765 (2019), privileged “the notion of justice and connecting economy, morality and politics.”
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