Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
Trump for all his faults might do something, he hates the Iranian regime, the UN won't, for starters Russia and China are allies of Iran and have a Security Council veto
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Given Mandelson was one of the Libs and has been shown to be entirely self-serving, is it any wonder some want to "own" them in the way they have hitherto "owned" us?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
THAT’S your takeaway. THAT????
That was YOUR takeaway not mine... "He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”" being your comment, no? Astonishing to me that that was what you took from all this but not entirely surprising seeing as this is the warped lens through which you seem to view the world.
No. I did right by Montefiore by explaining what I had to snip from his comment because it was simply too long for Vanilla. I didn’t want to distort his position
We seem to have gone through a remarkable series of destructions of what appeared to be timeless bits of the ancient and especially post WWII universe.
A current working list:
Israel as a bit of democratic light in the middle east NATO The United States as global policeman and ally and protector of the west The Conservative party The Labour party The two party system The UN The WTO The rules based order The monarchy Nuclear non proliferation The deal following the fall of the Berlin wall.
Most of those still exist, just not as strong as they were
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
THAT’S your takeaway. THAT????
That was YOUR takeaway not mine... "He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”" being your comment, no? Astonishing to me that that was what you took from all this but not entirely surprising seeing as this is the warped lens through which you seem to view the world.
Ol' Leon suffers from the Nick Griffin paradox. Loads of young women were abused in Bradford but no one believed the fashy rsole when he brought it up.
Strangely the "protect our women and girls" mob are curiously quiet about the worlds most notable grooming gang, in particular. I wonder why.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
Could you not make that argument everywhere though? Is there anywhere that the native population has not been displaced? And what of man? Why does he have right of dominion over nature in lands where there was no man? (Out of Africa and all that?)
It's like finger nails on the blackboard for me, but myself and yourself are fighting a losing battle on this one I'm afraid.
It's been going on for decades sadly. Doesn't always leak into private life though.
One which does, and drives me mad, is "i'm based in..." and "Where are you based?".
Oh, and chefs adding "off" to everything. "Bake it off" "Fry them off" et al.
There is a new horror creeping in here and elsewhere; “hard agree”. I’m guessing this abomination is an Americanism but it’s becoming the grey squirrel of comments driving out our native “I totally agree”. Needs culling.
"To be fair"......
I have noticed a rapid increase in the use of 'perfect' by people I am speaking to on the phone in last year or so e.g. doctor's receptionists etc
e.g. "Can you make an appointment tomorrow at 10am?"
"yes, I can."
"Perfect."
I have feeling this one is the Aussie's fault???
Which Aussie? Or do you have the apostrophe in the wrong place?
*which would be a novelty in the land of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
We already know about the gerrymandering situation. I think voter suppression in the mid-terms is going to be hard to do. They don't have that many goons, and the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open if people have been blocked from voting. If they try to stop people voting in one place then even if they succeed in doing that in that particular place, they'll light a fire under Dem turnout everywhere else.
The presidential election is more dangerous because a lot of people have committed crimes and they'll have nothing left to lose but if the Dems can get a decent swing this time they'll control most of the legislatures and governor jobs, which closes down one of the main avenues Trump would have in a overturning a lost presidential election, namely to get the states to sign off on the wrong electors, then get SCOTUS to say, "it's not our place to second-guess the states".
"the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open" - the problem there is that this administration simply carries on, when the courts rule against them.
OK, how many polling stations are they going to do this at, with whose army? ICE can't even subdue Minnesota, city #22 by population.
They manage to frighten off minorities, quite well. See the reports of business seeing a collapse in customers.
Sounds like a recipe for voter suppression.
It sounds like a recipe for voter suppression but also a recipe for incredible turnout organization. ICE target people who are on their own and bundle them into vans. Once communities see signs of this they're going to organize early voting, and organize people to go together and protect each other. There's loads of institutional knowledge about this in the US from the era of Black voter suppression, plenty of people had to deal with it in living memory. Activate that kind of threat in an election that usually only gets like 45% turnout and you could easily increase the opposition vote.
Why do you think Trump is trying to ban early voting and voting by mail ?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
THAT’S your takeaway. THAT????
That was YOUR takeaway not mine... "He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”" being your comment, no? Astonishing to me that that was what you took from all this but not entirely surprising seeing as this is the warped lens through which you seem to view the world.
Ol' Leon suffers from the Nick Griffin paradox. Loads of young women were abused in Bradford but no one believed the fashy rsole when he brought it up.
Strangely the "protect our women and girls" mob are curiously quiet about the worlds most notable grooming gang, in particular. I wonder why.
Any news from Leicester Foxy? Something serious has gone on but no details coming out at De Montford.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Given Mandelson was one of the Libs and has been shown to be entirely self-serving, is it any wonder some want to "own" them in the way they have hitherto "owned" us?
I salute your whataboutery, sir.
It’s still a poor effort - 2/10
Come on people, channel your inner Northern Irish!
*which would be a novelty in the land of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
We already know about the gerrymandering situation. I think voter suppression in the mid-terms is going to be hard to do. They don't have that many goons, and the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open if people have been blocked from voting. If they try to stop people voting in one place then even if they succeed in doing that in that particular place, they'll light a fire under Dem turnout everywhere else.
The presidential election is more dangerous because a lot of people have committed crimes and they'll have nothing left to lose but if the Dems can get a decent swing this time they'll control most of the legislatures and governor jobs, which closes down one of the main avenues Trump would have in a overturning a lost presidential election, namely to get the states to sign off on the wrong electors, then get SCOTUS to say, "it's not our place to second-guess the states".
"the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open" - the problem there is that this administration simply carries on, when the courts rule against them.
OK, how many polling stations are they going to do this at, with whose army? ICE can't even subdue Minnesota, city #22 by population.
They manage to frighten off minorities, quite well. See the reports of business seeing a collapse in customers.
Sounds like a recipe for voter suppression.
It sounds like a recipe for voter suppression but also a recipe for incredible turnout organization. ICE target people who are on their own and bundle them into vans. Once communities see signs of this they're going to organize early voting, and organize people to go together and protect each other. There's loads of institutional knowledge about this in the US from the era of Black voter suppression, plenty of people had to deal with it in living memory. Activate that kind of threat in an election that usually only gets like 45% turnout and you could easily increase the opposition vote.
The plan is multiprong
Voter suppression. Change the rules so that only some people can vote, and only in person.
Voter intimidation. Try and keep people away from polling stations.
Rig the vote. Buy the companies that make the voting machines or install 'supporters' at the counts.
Deny the results. Even if enough people vote and the counts are true, Trump will declare the results are fraudulent and he won anyway
Sure but we're talking about the mid-terms:
1. The places that can do this are already doing it to the extent that they can get away with it, we mostly know what the rules are and I don't think they'll be markedly different?
2. Is what we were just talking about. Probably not enough guys to do this on a scale larger than the boost it'll give the other side.
3. Voting machines aren't what they used to be, you have verifiable paper trails.
4. Trump can say anything he likes about who he thinks is an elected member of Congress, he has absolutely no role in this whatsoever.
I'm not saying he won't try anything but what we've seen with this administration is that most of what we've seen him try is incompetently executed, with the exception of the corruption. Unlike much of the US system government the election systems are actually designed adversarially, you assume someone is trying to steal it. So if you're thinking of betting on something like "which party will control Congress" or "who will win VA-02", I don't think it figures as a big consideration. There may be localized exceptions but at scale I think it's hard to rig it.
PS One thing you might consider over (4) is how markets will settle. If Trump says "we won the House" and he demands that his underlings also say this, I wouldn't be totally confident that Polymarket or Kalshi would settle the market correctly. I imagine Betfair will be fine though.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Democrats in swing seats won't, they tend to be more moderate and conservative.
Democrats on the coast might but those seats are safe Democrat anyway and full of wokes
30,000 young protestors slaughtered in Iran. In a matter of days
THIRTY THOUSAND
@simonmontefiore is right. This is up there with the Nazis. Worse than Tiananmen
The mind blanks at the horror
China's post-Tiananmen trajectory is a problem because now every autocrat facing a challenge to their regime can imagine that they are Deng Xiaoping and on the right side of history.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
Has there been a march on Downing Street by the Left in vocal support of the resistance in Iran? If so, I missed it.
Nothing stopping Leon and others organising one. It would be a slightly odd one - "Bomb Tehran now" - but I respect anyone who protests for what they believe in.
The Simon Sebag Montefiore piece is in line with other reports trickling out of Iran and it may well be the final death toll from the regime's brutal crackdown will never be known.
Was there a window of opportunity when targeted American strikes on the Revolutionary Guards "could" have achieved something far more positive and precipitated the fall of the theocracy? We'll never know - Trump was more interested in Venezuela and the resources couldn't arrive in time.
It's not the first time we've stood by and allowed brutal regimes to slaughter their own innocents and I fear it won't be the last.
It's interesting Montefiore mentions Iraq and for all the brave words, a generation on from Chemical Ali and Saddam, it seems there are too many willing and able to kill to preserve their perversion of a faith.
Perhaps America or others will yet mete out some form of retribution or retaliation but it seems there is now no one left on the ground to follow it up but as sure as night follows day, unrest and discontent will stir again and when that happens, IF we want regime change (and we all know there are sometimes power political reasons to keep a tyrant in power), we have to be ready.
I'm left to muse on how we will react IF some of the survivors find themselves washed up on a southern English beach in the summer, getting out of a dinghy after a long and arduous journey across Europe....
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
By that stage The Little Big Horn will be portrayed as a great victory for the 7th Cavalry.
David Frum @davidfrum "General Custer won a tremendous victory at Little Bighorn, the fake news won't admit that. The Sioux were tremendously crooked, they had Arapaho fighting, Cheyenne, all illegally. Custer won if you don't count the Indians who never should have been there, frankly."
At the lack of quality in the whataboutery on display here, this morning.
Barely 1/10.
If this goes on, exile to ConHome won't be enough. Immurement in the cell with Piers Corbyn and Piers Moron will be required.
Not quite whataboutery but if I were Kemi, I'd be thinking about drawing a parallel between the trivially small amounts paid to Mandelson for betraying the government – £10k for an osteopathy course, use of Epstein's homes – and similar amounts taken by Keir Starmer for new glasses and his son's revision flat. If Angela Rayner is collateral damage, well, that's good for Kemi too.
30,000 young protestors slaughtered in Iran. In a matter of days
THIRTY THOUSAND
@simonmontefiore is right. This is up there with the Nazis. Worse than Tiananmen
The mind blanks at the horror
China's post-Tiananmen trajectory is a problem because now every autocrat facing a challenge to their regime can imagine that they are Deng Xiaoping and on the right side of history.
Yes. And note how Tehran successfully copied Beijing’s Great Firewall. No Internet. No images. No global outrage
In a world beset by horrors this one still hits hard. It really is like a Babyn Yar, crossed with the Khmer Rouge - a nation slaying its own young clever people
It's interesting @Casino_Royale calls him, in jest I suspect, "a Lib". He was many things but a political liberal he was not. He was a centraliser wanting to take more power unto himself and his friends.
I don't know what he actually believed in - he called himself "New Labour" though some of us thought "New Labour" wasn't far removed from the thinking of the Owenite SDP.
Blair was the political heir to Owen but Mandelson brought the organisational ruthlessness the Alliance in general and the SDP in particular lacked. I'm left to muse (doing a lot of that this morning) on how Mandelson would have worked in the Alliance and the impact on 1987 had he brought the "gifts" he brought to Kinnock's Labour to the two Davids.
Perhaps a Prime Minister Owen might one day have said - "I'll know the New Alliance has worked when the Liberal Party loves Peter Mandelson" - now, there's a thought.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
Could you not make that argument everywhere though? Is there anywhere that the native population has not been displaced? And what of man? Why does he have right of dominion over nature in lands where there was no man? (Out of Africa and all that?)
The Falkland Islands were uninhabited until the British got there. The Falkland Islanders are the true native (human) population of the islands!
All of the world has seen population movements and changes, sure, but generally you see a mix of continuity and change, so the native population might not be displaced, even while other populations are also moving in. North America saw a near total replacement of one population with another in the modern era, which is less common, although equally true of, say, Australia.
30,000 young protestors slaughtered in Iran. In a matter of days
THIRTY THOUSAND
@simonmontefiore is right. This is up there with the Nazis. Worse than Tiananmen
The mind blanks at the horror
China's post-Tiananmen trajectory is a problem because now every autocrat facing a challenge to their regime can imagine that they are Deng Xiaoping and on the right side of history.
Yes. And note how Tehran successfully copied Beijing’s Great Firewall. No Internet. No images. No global outrage
In a world beset by horrors this one still hits hard. It really is like a Babyn Yar, crossed with the Khmer Rouge - a nation slaying its own young clever people
And if you want some bombing of regime buildings and Iranian Revolutionary Guard barracks in Tehran in response it is most likely to be Trump and Netanyahu doing it. It obviously won't be Xi or Putin or now Shia Iraq and it is very unlikely to be Macron or Starmer or even the Saudis doing it either
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Are elections really decided on such ephemera as that?
I suspect not - it will be the good honest pocket book questions which will decide along with motivation and ground campaigning.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
THAT’S your takeaway. THAT????
That was YOUR takeaway not mine... "He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”" being your comment, no? Astonishing to me that that was what you took from all this but not entirely surprising seeing as this is the warped lens through which you seem to view the world.
No. I did right by Montefiore by explaining what I had to snip from his comment because it was simply too long for Vanilla. I didn’t want to distort his position
You, too, are grotesque. Quite nauseating
From Mr "Hot Teens" I will take that as a compliment.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Eilish is not the first person to make this point. You could have said the same thing at any time in the last decade, or more. The Dems are doing fine in (free) voting right now, with massing swings against the GOP.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Eilish is not the first person to make this point. You could have said the same thing at any time in the last decade, or more. The Dems are doing fine in (free) voting right now, with massing swings against the GOP.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
THAT’S your takeaway. THAT????
That was YOUR takeaway not mine... "He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”" being your comment, no? Astonishing to me that that was what you took from all this but not entirely surprising seeing as this is the warped lens through which you seem to view the world.
No. I did right by Montefiore by explaining what I had to snip from his comment because it was simply too long for Vanilla. I didn’t want to distort his position
You, too, are grotesque. Quite nauseating
It is indeed grotesque and nauseating to view everything (even terrible events like this) as nothing but grist for the mill.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
Has there been a march on Downing Street by the Left in vocal support of the resistance in Iran? If so, I missed it.
Nothing stopping Leon and others organising one. It would be a slightly odd one - "Bomb Tehran now" - but I respect anyone who protests for what they believe in.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
4. Trump can say anything he likes about who he thinks is an elected member of Congress, he has absolutely no role in this whatsoever.
I'm not saying he won't try anything but what we've seen with this administration is that most of what we've seen him try is incompetently executed, with the exception of the corruption.
The concern I think is that Trump will say 'we won every seat' and at least some of the press will repeat "they won every seat' and at least some of the voters will think 'they won every seat'
Think people are still struggling to understand what's happening. Peter Mandelson is a radioactive isotope. And he's now welded permanently to Keir Starmer. The idea this can be managed by removing McSweeney, or some clever spin, or hiding behind the cabinet office is nuts.
The Simon Sebag Montefiore piece is in line with other reports trickling out of Iran and it may well be the final death toll from the regime's brutal crackdown will never be known.
Was there a window of opportunity when targeted American strikes on the Revolutionary Guards "could" have achieved something far more positive and precipitated the fall of the theocracy? We'll never know - Trump was more interested in Venezuela and the resources couldn't arrive in time.
It's not the first time we've stood by and allowed brutal regimes to slaughter their own innocents and I fear it won't be the last.
It's interesting Montefiore mentions Iraq and for all the brave words, a generation on from Chemical Ali and Saddam, it seems there are too many willing and able to kill to preserve their perversion of a faith.
Perhaps America or others will yet mete out some form of retribution or retaliation but it seems there is now no one left on the ground to follow it up but as sure as night follows day, unrest and discontent will stir again and when that happens, IF we want regime change (and we all know there are sometimes power political reasons to keep a tyrant in power), we have to be ready.
I'm left to muse on how we will react IF some of the survivors find themselves washed up on a southern English beach in the summer, getting out of a dinghy after a long and arduous journey across Europe....
Iranians are currently 7% of those seeking asylum in the UK.
We have a new? Contributor called Brixian? 59 who tried to claim last night that if Mandy goes down that Labour could claim a huge moral victory. Its good have a jolly good belly laugh every now and again.. Reminds me of the sort of crap Tim, late of this parish, used to write.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
Eilish is not the first person to make this point. You could have said the same thing at any time in the last decade, or more. The Dems are doing fine in (free) voting right now, with massing swings against the GOP.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
A sane and decent reaction. You restore my faith in PB
I don’t think this particular Holocaust comparison is problematic. I don’t believe sebag is comparing it in terms of ideology and context or anything like that - he js simply comparing it in terms of numbing scale and speed
Killing 35,000 people in a few days is not easy. It takes Nazi like levels of dedication and organisation - and utterly dehumanised killers
I’ve been to babyn yar. I went there last year when I travelled around ukraine. It’s a terrible place - I believe someone once wrote a famous novel about its terror
There is a tremendous piece of art at the site. These steel pillars which point at the uncaring sky and whisper klezmer songs and Yiddish jokes, on and on and on. Babbling the memories of the dead
And when you get close you realise the steel pillars are all pierced with gun shots, that’s where the music emerges
4. Trump can say anything he likes about who he thinks is an elected member of Congress, he has absolutely no role in this whatsoever.
I'm not saying he won't try anything but what we've seen with this administration is that most of what we've seen him try is incompetently executed, with the exception of the corruption.
The concern I think is that Trump will say 'we won every seat' and at least some of the press will repeat "they won every seat' and at least some of the voters will think 'they won every seat'
The erosion of truth will be Trump's true legacy
I mean sure but so what? Some of the voters (40%?) think dinosaurs and humans coexisted. What matters from the point of view of Betfair punters is what Betfair thinks happened, and what matters from the point of view of US legislation is, if a bunch of election losers get together and say vote for a budget, does SCOTUS think it authorizes the government to spend money?
It's like finger nails on the blackboard for me, but myself and yourself are fighting a losing battle on this one I'm afraid.
It's been going on for decades sadly. Doesn't always leak into private life though.
One which does, and drives me mad, is "i'm based in..." and "Where are you based?".
Oh, and chefs adding "off" to everything. "Bake it off" "Fry them off" et al.
There is a new horror creeping in here and elsewhere; “hard agree”. I’m guessing this abomination is an Americanism but it’s becoming the grey squirrel of comments driving out our native “I totally agree”. Needs culling.
"To be fair"......
I know I’m guilty of the “to be fair” crime occasionally.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
what matters from the point of view of US legislation is, if a bunch of election losers get together and say vote for a budget, does SCOTUS think it authorizes the government to spend money?
Bit puzzled by this, Trump is largely delivering what he promised (Either implicitly or explicity) so not sure why people aren't liking it all of a sudden
Lord Mandelson advised the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that Andrew Mountbatten of Windsor needed to "sit tight" amid mounting scrutiny over the links between the two men
In March 2011 Andrew met the Queen in her private apartments in Buckingham Palace for discussions about the scandal over his links to Epstein. Epstein sent Mandelson an email asking for "suggestions"
Mandelson responded: "On Sky it was reported that A and HMQ met to discuss JE. Try and talk later. A has to sit tight." He also advised Epstein to hire Schillings to defend his reputation.
4. Trump can say anything he likes about who he thinks is an elected member of Congress, he has absolutely no role in this whatsoever.
I'm not saying he won't try anything but what we've seen with this administration is that most of what we've seen him try is incompetently executed, with the exception of the corruption.
The concern I think is that Trump will say 'we won every seat' and at least some of the press will repeat "they won every seat' and at least some of the voters will think 'they won every seat'
The erosion of truth will be Trump's true legacy
I mean sure but so what? Some of the voters (40%?) think dinosaurs and humans coexisted. What matters from the point of view of Betfair punters is what Betfair thinks happened, and what matters from the point of view of US legislation is, if a bunch of election losers get together and say vote for a budget, does SCOTUS think it authorizes the government to spend money?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
If that were to lead to regime change in Iran with minimal loss of life, that would be great. I doubt that it would though. Has regime change ever been achieved by bombing alone?
*which would be a novelty in the land of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
We already know about the gerrymandering situation. I think voter suppression in the mid-terms is going to be hard to do. They don't have that many goons, and the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open if people have been blocked from voting. If they try to stop people voting in one place then even if they succeed in doing that in that particular place, they'll light a fire under Dem turnout everywhere else.
The presidential election is more dangerous because a lot of people have committed crimes and they'll have nothing left to lose but if the Dems can get a decent swing this time they'll control most of the legislatures and governor jobs, which closes down one of the main avenues Trump would have in a overturning a lost presidential election, namely to get the states to sign off on the wrong electors, then get SCOTUS to say, "it's not our place to second-guess the states".
"the courts are still functioning and will do things like ordering polling stations to stay open" - the problem there is that this administration simply carries on, when the courts rule against them.
OK, how many polling stations are they going to do this at, with whose army? ICE can't even subdue Minneapolis, city #46 by population. [edited]
There is one Rubicon which Trump and the republicans have not yet crossed:using violence to discipline their own side.
The protesters were able to pressure ICE, despite it's greater fire power, because although the ICE goons are themselves destroying it, in their heads they are still living in a democracy in which the opposition of the pubic can outweigh orders from above. That's not the case in Russia,where ordinary grunts know their officers can and do have soldiers shot.
In Germany, a significant turning point was the Night of long Knives, where Hitler took out Rohm and the leadership of the Sturmabteilung, which was a Nazi paramilitary organisation.
In my view, the question is not whether the Trump regime can organise electoral fraud, but whether they can intimidate those hedging their bets - which includes both R and D politicians - into going along with it. If we see significant political figures being subject to violence or extrajudicial action especially Republicans , that is a sign that the danger level has gone up a lot. Trump obviously has no issue turning on his allies - eg, the whole of the rest of NATO. But doing so against US politicians would risk breaking his alliance, unless he has some casus belli.
Is the Mandelson scandal the final nail in the coffin that is McSweeney’s time in No10? Labour MPs tells @_tomscotson the PLP “direction of travel” is towards Starmer’s CoS having to go. Even some PM loyalists think Starmer may have to remove him to shore up his own position.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
Of course the areas that are densely inhabited today are also the areas that did have native Americans, eg the Pacific Northwest, the Mississipi Valley, the Southwest and Eastern woodlands were all well-inhabited.
Much of the Great Basins, Rocky Mountains and parts of the Great Plains had no permanent inhabitation.
So, I always thought Andrew got a bit of a rough ride in terms of maintaining contact with Epstein. Even sex offenders need friends. We obviously don't know what Andrew was saying to him (at least, I haven't seen anything), but that from Mandelson is just so weird.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
Finders keepers, losers weepers. It remains an accepted principle of international law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius Although I realise some see international law as hopelessly woke.
We have a new? Contributor called Brixian? 59 who tried to claim last night that if Mandy goes down that Labour could claim a huge moral victory. Its good have a jolly good belly laugh every now and again.. Reminds me of the sort of crap Tim, late of this parish, used to write.
Tim is on X, still talking about internal Labour politics every day, but not mentioning Mandelson at all
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
If that were to lead to regime change in Iran with minimal loss of life, that would be great. I doubt that it would though. Has regime change ever been achieved by bombing alone?
As far as outside actors are concerned? Yes. Lybia for instance.
There are people on the ground willing to liberate themselves, the problem is they are seriously outgunned. Bombing can help level the playing field.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
Could you not make that argument everywhere though? Is there anywhere that the native population has not been displaced? And what of man? Why does he have right of dominion over nature in lands where there was no man? (Out of Africa and all that?)
The Falkland Islands were uninhabited until the British got there. The Falkland Islanders are the true native (human) population of the islands!
All of the world has seen population movements and changes, sure, but generally you see a mix of continuity and change, so the native population might not be displaced, even while other populations are also moving in. North America saw a near total replacement of one population with another in the modern era, which is less common, although equally true of, say, Australia.
We are all Tanzanians. We all come from the Olduvai Gorge.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
And that's why the Democrats have a massive problem. They will be asked that question repeatedly and they won't be able to help themselves from equivocating. It's the new "transwomen are women".
By that stage The Little Big Horn will be portrayed as a great victory for the 7th Cavalry.
David Frum @davidfrum "General Custer won a tremendous victory at Little Bighorn, the fake news won't admit that. The Sioux were tremendously crooked, they had Arapaho fighting, Cheyenne, all illegally. Custer won if you don't count the Indians who never should have been there, frankly."
Bit puzzled by this, Trump is largely delivering what he promised (Either implicitly or explicity) so not sure why people aren't liking it all of a sudden
Trump voters had wildly different opinions about what he would do. Some people believed the vibes, some people believed what he actually said, and a lot of people believed neither; For example a lot of people thought the tariffs were just a negotiating ploy and he wouldn't actually do them
The madder the policy the truer this is: People who didn't know a policy was mad thought he would do it and it would work, because he said it would and he was a successful businessman. People who knew that it was mad thought it was obvious he wouldn't actually do it, because that would be mad.
So great is the secrecy around the De Montford incident that I can only assume it involves mis-gendering by someone woke and police are worried that social media might implode.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
Have a look at the ISW site on this. This is yesterday's comments about the sparring that is going on. If the US is going to go in, it won't be to save the Iranians. It will be about something of concern to the GOP media schedule.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
If that were to lead to regime change in Iran with minimal loss of life, that would be great. I doubt that it would though. Has regime change ever been achieved by bombing alone?
Not that I can think of, although bombing has shifted government policy significantly, as with NATO's bombing of Serbia over Kosovo and perhaps you could also note the short Anglo-Zanzibar War.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
The whole concept of ownership is something of a cultural intervention.
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example. (The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
Regardless there is close to a 50% chance Trump massively bombs Iran in the next few weeks if these reports are true or if he doesn't Netanyahu might
If that were to lead to regime change in Iran with minimal loss of life, that would be great. I doubt that it would though. Has regime change ever been achieved by bombing alone?
it would likely need big street protests to restart again too
We have a new? Contributor called Brixian? 59 who tried to claim last night that if Mandy goes down that Labour could claim a huge moral victory. Its good have a jolly good belly laugh every now and again.. Reminds me of the sort of crap Tim, late of this parish, used to write.
Tim is on X, still talking about internal Labour politics every day, but not mentioning Mandelson at all
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
The whole concept of ownership is something of a cultural intervention.
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
Seizing good quality farmland, and killing/driving away the inhabitants, is as old as human history. The only way to guard against it is by having the means to defend it.
I imagine some might claim the Normans stole England from its rightful owners in 1066.
Thats a claim, but the Normans were just the latest in the waves of immigration from Europe. The Celts had been pushed west and mingled with the Romans, then the Saxons and Angles came. Then the Danes. Then the Normans. Frankly we've been pretty stable since then...
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
Of course the areas that are densely inhabited today are also the areas that did have native Americans, eg the Pacific Northwest, the Mississipi Valley, the Southwest and Eastern woodlands were all well-inhabited.
Much of the Great Basins, Rocky Mountains and parts of the Great Plains had no permanent inhabitation.
Your source doesn't quite say what you suggest. I quote, "We found that 62 million hectares of land, or about 10 percent of the landmass of the Americas, had been farmed or under another human use when Columbus arrived." Firstly, that figure is for the Americas, not for the US. Large chunks of Arctic Canada might well have been empty, but Eilish was talking about the US. Secondly, there were still hunter-gatherers living in most of that 90%. Just because they weren't farming doesn't mean they didn't exist.
I was in Washington DC when Peter Mandelson was appointed as ambassador. There was serious dismay in the British embassy about it - not specifically because of his Epstein links, but because everyone knew he was trouble and it always ends in tears with him. Plus, Karen Pierce was a brilliant ambassador who had a great relationship with Trump’s team, and wanted to extend. It was just awful judgement by Keir Starmer and his No10 from the very get go.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
So great is the secrecy around the De Montford incident that I can only assume it involves mis-gendering by someone woke and police are worried that social media might implode.
What on earth are they coving up?
Clearly DMU has learned from Israel and Iran – keep the journalists out: no reporters, no news.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
The whole concept of ownership is something of a cultural intervention.
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
Well, there are many obvious things that nobody else owns that you can't own. The atmosphere, the sun, the stars, etc. That doesn't stop us owning other stuff.
So great is the secrecy around the De Montford incident that I can only assume it involves mis-gendering by someone woke and police are worried that social media might implode.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
Could you not make that argument everywhere though? Is there anywhere that the native population has not been displaced? And what of man? Why does he have right of dominion over nature in lands where there was no man? (Out of Africa and all that?)
The Falkland Islands were uninhabited until the British got there. The Falkland Islanders are the true native (human) population of the islands!
All of the world has seen population movements and changes, sure, but generally you see a mix of continuity and change, so the native population might not be displaced, even while other populations are also moving in. North America saw a near total replacement of one population with another in the modern era, which is less common, although equally true of, say, Australia.
We are all Tanzanians. We all come from the Olduvai Gorge.
Actually that’s not quite as certain as it was. We may have multiple origins in Africa. We may even have multiple origins worldwide
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
The whole concept of ownership is something of a cultural intervention.
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
Well, there are many obvious things that nobody else owns that you can't own. The atmosphere, the sun, the stars, etc. That doesn't stop us owning other stuff.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
The whole concept of ownership is something of a cultural intervention.
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
Well, there are many obvious things that nobody else owns that you can't own. The atmosphere, the sun, the stars, etc. That doesn't stop us owning other stuff.
"The sun" - well, there are defined property rights regarding not shading your neighbours. In many countries.
We have a new? Contributor called Brixian? 59 who tried to claim last night that if Mandy goes down that Labour could claim a huge moral victory. Its good have a jolly good belly laugh every now and again.. Reminds me of the sort of crap Tim, late of this parish, used to write.
Tim is on X, still talking about internal Labour politics every day, but not mentioning Mandelson at all
Regardless of whether one agreed with him Tim used to be pretty funny on here. He seems to have entrirely lost his wit on twitter.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos: "I have no idea of the history of this land."
Warner Bros. Discovery exec Bruce Campbell: "Nor do I."
Cruz: "That speaks volumes...that neither of you are willing to say 'hell, no.'"
While I think Billie Eilish is great, I doubt her comments are going to have much electoral impact.
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
No it is absolutely not all stolen land.
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
What parts of the US were not previously inhabited? OK, maybe bits of Alaska.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
Also, the whole idea that you can simply rock up to a piece of uninhabited land and claim it as yours seems something of a cultural invention.
Finders keepers, losers weepers. It remains an accepted principle of international law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius Although I realise some see international law as hopelessly woke.
We stole Ascension Island off the Dutch, to ensure that St. Helena was more secure for holding Napoleon. It was about the only place anybody could have used to launch a jail break.
I was in Washington DC when Peter Mandelson was appointed as ambassador. There was serious dismay in the British embassy about it - not specifically because of his Epstein links, but because everyone knew he was trouble and it always ends in tears with him. Plus, Karen Pierce was a brilliant ambassador who had a great relationship with Trump’s team, and wanted to extend. It was just awful judgement by Keir Starmer and his No10 from the very get go.
Comments
You, too, are grotesque. Quite nauseating
But she's right. The US is all stolen land.
Think carefully. You could be on a charge.
Come on people, channel your inner Northern Irish!
1. The places that can do this are already doing it to the extent that they can get away with it, we mostly know what the rules are and I don't think they'll be markedly different?
2. Is what we were just talking about. Probably not enough guys to do this on a scale larger than the boost it'll give the other side.
3. Voting machines aren't what they used to be, you have verifiable paper trails.
4. Trump can say anything he likes about who he thinks is an elected member of Congress, he has absolutely no role in this whatsoever.
I'm not saying he won't try anything but what we've seen with this administration is that most of what we've seen him try is incompetently executed, with the exception of the corruption. Unlike much of the US system government the election systems are actually designed adversarially, you assume someone is trying to steal it. So if you're thinking of betting on something like "which party will control Congress" or "who will win VA-02", I don't think it figures as a big consideration. There may be localized exceptions but at scale I think it's hard to rig it.
PS One thing you might consider over (4) is how markets will settle. If Trump says "we won the House" and he demands that his underlings also say this, I wouldn't be totally confident that Polymarket or Kalshi would settle the market correctly. I imagine Betfair will be fine though.
Democrats on the coast might but those seats are safe Democrat anyway and full of wokes
Was there a window of opportunity when targeted American strikes on the Revolutionary Guards "could" have achieved something far more positive and precipitated the fall of the theocracy? We'll never know - Trump was more interested in Venezuela and the resources couldn't arrive in time.
It's not the first time we've stood by and allowed brutal regimes to slaughter their own innocents and I fear it won't be the last.
It's interesting Montefiore mentions Iraq and for all the brave words, a generation on from Chemical Ali and Saddam, it seems there are too many willing and able to kill to preserve their perversion of a faith.
Perhaps America or others will yet mete out some form of retribution or retaliation but it seems there is now no one left on the ground to follow it up but as sure as night follows day, unrest and discontent will stir again and when that happens, IF we want regime change (and we all know there are sometimes power political reasons to keep a tyrant in power), we have to be ready.
I'm left to muse on how we will react IF some of the survivors find themselves washed up on a southern English beach in the summer, getting out of a dinghy after a long and arduous journey across Europe....
David Frum
@davidfrum
"General Custer won a tremendous victory at Little Bighorn, the fake news won't admit that. The Sioux were tremendously crooked, they had Arapaho fighting, Cheyenne, all illegally. Custer won if you don't count the Indians who never should have been there, frankly."
https://x.com/davidfrum/status/2018748106960232601?s=20
In a world beset by horrors this one still hits hard. It really is like a Babyn Yar, crossed with the Khmer Rouge - a nation slaying its own young clever people
Much of the land was not previously inhabited, so who was it stolen from?
And many Native American tribes willingly sold land to settlers. How is purchased land stolen?
Some was stolen. All is just nonsense.
It's interesting @Casino_Royale calls him, in jest I suspect, "a Lib". He was many things but a political liberal he was not. He was a centraliser wanting to take more power unto himself and his friends.
I don't know what he actually believed in - he called himself "New Labour" though some of us thought "New Labour" wasn't far removed from the thinking of the Owenite SDP.
Blair was the political heir to Owen but Mandelson brought the organisational ruthlessness the Alliance in general and the SDP in particular lacked. I'm left to muse (doing a lot of that this morning) on how Mandelson would have worked in the Alliance and the impact on 1987 had he brought the "gifts" he brought to Kinnock's Labour to the two Davids.
Perhaps a Prime Minister Owen might one day have said - "I'll know the New Alliance has worked when the Liberal Party loves Peter Mandelson" - now, there's a thought.
All of the world has seen population movements and changes, sure, but generally you see a mix of continuity and change, so the native population might not be displaced, even while other populations are also moving in. North America saw a near total replacement of one population with another in the modern era, which is less common, although equally true of, say, Australia.
I suspect not - it will be the good honest pocket book questions which will decide along with motivation and ground campaigning.
So please stop it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris
https://unwatch.org/after-security-council-meeting-balks-on-iran-30-ngos-demand-unhrc-urgent-session/
Those two countries are not exactly progressives.
There's only one country with the power to intervene against the murderous Iranian regime, and it's currently sending Witkoff and Kushner to negotiate with them.
But Monteviore is essentially correct; it is not hyperbole to compare the Iranian regime with that of Stalin at Katyn for example.
(The Holocaust comparison is problematic, since it was different in kind.)
The erosion of truth will be Trump's true legacy
Think people are still struggling to understand what's happening. Peter Mandelson is a radioactive isotope. And he's now welded permanently to Keir Starmer. The idea this can be managed by removing McSweeney, or some clever spin, or hiding behind the cabinet office is nuts.
Its good have a jolly good belly laugh every now and again.. Reminds me of the sort of crap Tim, late of this parish, used to write.
Yes, you are right some plots of land were willingly sold to settlers, although most deals were coercive or the tribes and settlers had very different ideas over what rights were being sold.
So, the US is mostly stolen land.
'Labour in freefall and the rise of the Green party and Reform'
......With friends like these maybe they really are in trouble
I don’t think this particular Holocaust comparison is problematic. I don’t believe sebag is comparing it in terms of ideology and context or anything like that - he js simply comparing it in terms of numbing scale and speed
Killing 35,000 people in a few days is not easy. It takes Nazi like levels of dedication and organisation - and utterly dehumanised killers
I’ve been to babyn yar. I went there last year when I travelled around ukraine. It’s a terrible place - I believe someone once wrote a famous novel about its terror
There is a tremendous piece of art at the site. These steel pillars which point at the uncaring sky and whisper klezmer songs and Yiddish jokes, on and on and on. Babbling the memories of the dead
And when you get close you realise the steel pillars are all pierced with gun shots, that’s where the music emerges
We don't know what's going on in Leicester.
Lord Mandelson described Jeffrey Epstein's release after he served his sentence for child sex offences as 'Liberation Day!'
Mandelson asked Epstein how they should celebrate
Epstein responded with a crude joke about two strippers: 'With grace and modesty (these are the names of two strippers')
Mandelson asked: 'How is freedom feeling?'
Epstein responded: 'She feels fresh, firm and creamy'
Mandelson replied: 'Naughty boy'
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2018990917315702849?s=20
Lord Mandelson advised the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that Andrew Mountbatten of Windsor needed to "sit tight" amid mounting scrutiny over the links between the two men
In March 2011 Andrew met the Queen in her private apartments in Buckingham Palace for discussions about the scandal over his links to Epstein. Epstein sent Mandelson an email asking for "suggestions"
Mandelson responded: "On Sky it was reported that A and HMQ met to discuss JE. Try and talk later. A has to sit tight." He also advised Epstein to hire Schillings to defend his reputation.
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2018991161973547235?s=20
https://x.com/bryansgunn/status/1919387961923154146?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
The protesters were able to pressure ICE, despite it's greater fire power, because although the ICE goons are themselves destroying it, in their heads they are still living in a democracy in which the opposition of the pubic can outweigh orders from above. That's not the case in Russia,where ordinary grunts know their officers can and do have soldiers shot.
In Germany, a significant turning point was the Night of long Knives, where Hitler took out Rohm and the leadership of the Sturmabteilung, which was a Nazi paramilitary organisation.
In my view, the question is not whether the Trump regime can organise electoral fraud, but whether they can intimidate those hedging their bets - which includes both R and D politicians - into going along with it. If we see significant political figures being subject to violence or extrajudicial action especially Republicans , that is a sign that the danger level has gone up a lot. Trump obviously has no issue turning on his allies - eg, the whole of the rest of NATO. But doing so against US politicians would risk breaking his alliance, unless he has some casus belli.
Is the Mandelson scandal the final nail in the coffin that is McSweeney’s time in No10? Labour MPs tells @_tomscotson the PLP “direction of travel” is towards Starmer’s CoS having to go. Even some PM loyalists think Starmer may have to remove him to shore up his own position.
https://x.com/adampayne26/status/2018985256561557847?s=20
Of course the areas that are densely inhabited today are also the areas that did have native Americans, eg the Pacific Northwest, the Mississipi Valley, the Southwest and Eastern woodlands were all well-inhabited.
Much of the Great Basins, Rocky Mountains and parts of the Great Plains had no permanent inhabitation.
There are people on the ground willing to liberate themselves, the problem is they are seriously outgunned. Bombing can help level the playing field.
The madder the policy the truer this is: People who didn't know a policy was mad thought he would do it and it would work, because he said it would and he was a successful businessman. People who knew that it was mad thought it was obvious he wouldn't actually do it, because that would be mad.
What on earth are they coving up?
https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-february-3-2026/
If you can't own something nobody else owns, then what exactly can you own?
https://x.com/KHarveyProctor/status/2018717329387848067
I was in Washington DC when Peter Mandelson was appointed as ambassador. There was serious dismay in the British embassy about it - not specifically because of his Epstein links, but because everyone knew he was trouble and it always ends in tears with him. Plus, Karen Pierce was a brilliant ambassador who had a great relationship with Trump’s team, and wanted to extend. It was just awful judgement by Keir Starmer and his No10 from the very get go.
https://x.com/tnewtondunn/status/2018994223022801298?s=20
What about #Justice4TheBeakerPeople ??
The owner of Twitter is inciting murder, according to the owner of Twitter.
https://bsky.app/profile/number10cat.bsky.social/post/3mdzka4tbqc23
When the history of this bizarrely tragic government is written, a little tropic archipelago near nowhere will be oddly prominent