Why Did Trump Stop The Attack On Iran?

  Last Thursday,  Trump called off an attack on Iran which had been planned as retaliation for Iran shooting down a drone over its waters.

   For some reason, people who don't believe Trump's official story "Killing 150 people as revenge for an unmanned drone, is not proportional".

  Why not?  That is obviously true.   Killing 150 people in retaliation for no person dying is clearly not moral or right, in any moral compendium.

    So, many people have come up with their own fanciful explanations.  The most bizarre one is that the US called off the retaliatory attack because they suddenly realized that Iran was capable of shooting down objects at high altitudes.
    This makes no sense.  Iran shoots down an object at high altitude and the US plans an attack based on that excuse, but then calls it off because they realized that Iran can shoot down objects at high attitudes?   Ridiculous.

    More likely is the story in this article.   The US, which did manage to attack Iran with the Stuxnet virus a few years ago (and then the virus spread.  Whoops!), thought that they could do it again.  They attacked the computer controls of Iran's defense apparatus, thinking that once Iran was helpless, they could attack without consequences.

    But when they realized that they had failed and Iran would be able to defend itself, they called off the attack.
    That makes sense.  I still appreciate that, for the first time in my memory, a president talked about dead bodies on the receiving side of US aggression.   That is a refreshing change from the usual emphasis of Americans Only.


 

Protecting Shipping and International Trade in the Gulf

  Trump announced that the US is tired of "protecting" international shipping in the Persian Gulf, and told other nations to step up and help.

   In the meantime the Trump Administration slapped more sanctions on Iran and top diplomats in Iran, with the stated goal of stopping ALL oil shipments from Iran to other countries.

   I see a contradiction in these plans.  

   But it will be interesting when other countries who depend on Iranian oil send their warships to the Gulf to protect those shipments, and claim that they were told to do so by the USA.

Loose Lips Expose Terror Plots

   Two years ago, after Trump was in office for four months, the media and the Democrats went ballistic, because he warned Russia of a terrorist plot against one of their airliners.   Well, more ballistic, because we all remember that the media was All Trump All The Time, 24/7.
    The general tone of the blitz was that it was Absolutely Outrageous for Trump to try to save a civilian airliner from being blown apart in mid-air (the way that had happened over Egypt, during Tight Lipped Obama days, when a Russian civilian airliner blew up over Egypt, killing 224 people, including 17 children, just after Russia joined Syria in their fight against ISIS in Sept.  2015).
   The reason given was that the information Trump gave them came from Israel, and protecting their sources was deemed much more important than the lives of hundreds of people.   They also claimed that Trump shouldn't declassify classified information without permission.   They claimed that the plot was another ISIS plot, but that the US should have let ISIS blow up another plane, because......classified.
"If true, it is another indication that you cannot possibly control this guy," Wayne White, a senior intelligence official at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration, told POLITICO.

    Interestingly enough, in recent days,  a New York Times article  stated that the US is attacking the Russian electric grid, but that the "intelligence community" didn't let Trump know about it, for fear that he would tell the Russians again.
    They just don't trust Trump to let them destroy another country's infrastructure unimpeded.   
    Not only is that a mind-blowing step forward in having the Paper of Record  substantiate that there is an unelected  secret team that actually runs things in this country, but they casually mentioned that the reason they didn't tell the elected president of their scheme was because he had warned the Russians of a previous scheme in 2017.

   Oh, you mean the "ISIS terrorist plot"?  That was actually a US plot?  How very interesting.   

 

Worthwhile Advice

Old Farmer's Advice:

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered... not yelled.
Meanness don't just happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about, ain't never gonna happen anyway.
Don't judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
Don't interfere with something' that ain't bothering you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every morning'.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
If you get to thinking' you're a person of some influence, try ordering' somebody else's dog around.
Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and enjoy the ride.
Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just shoot you!

War on Iran- How Will It Play Out

  I am happy that Trump called off the US military attack on Iran.   This was a good thing.   It is very sad that people are unable to simply point that fact out, without the obligatory litany of "things that are bad about Trump" recitations.

   It is depressingly eye-opening to see US reactions to the prospect of open war with Iran, though, because they do tend to revolve around previous American body counts, completely ignoring how many victims the US wars have left strewn around the world.

   One of the newer American forms of war involves simply destroying a society, its infrastructure and government, and leaving a Balkanized dysfunctional society, in which the US can make alliances with thugs and warlords for looting of resources and people.  This can be done using proxy death squads and terrorists, involving very few US "boots on the ground", as is being done now in Syria, where the US occupies 30% of Syrian territory, which only a reported 4,000 actual boots stomping around, supporting their proxy terrorists.

    This started in the 90s, where the destruction and breakup of the Soviet Union into weak and impoverished countries, made it easy for the US to literally Balkanize the actual Balkans, a process still ongoing.  The US now has a giant military base in Kosovo, where it allies with the terrorist gang formerly known as the KLA, and runs drugs and trains terrorists to further their goals elsewhere in the world.

   My Iranian friend had this to say about the US plan for Iran, as opposed to the assumptions of most Americans who are literate enough to comment on social media-

   "I keep reading posts about how a war with Iran will be different in scope and scale for the US compared with their barbaric and illegal wars against other poor peoples of the world - any conflict with Iran will be the day of reckoning for the US military. The US military will be defeated.

   The aim of the US 'war' against Iran is not about fighting on the battlefield, whereby two armies will be pitched against each other. The US war objectives against Iran are:

- cause civil unrest
- balkanise Iran, i.e. divide Iran into smaller states

   If the US achieves the above two objectives, the US will have won the war. It is that simple. These two objectives could be achieved by non-military interventions.

   Yes, the Iranian military is extremely strong, powerful and brave, but, in asymmetrical warfare powerful armies serve little purpose. With the barbaric and inhumane US led sanctions against Iran, for instance, the Iranian military can do very little, apart from embarking on an 'offensive military campaign' against the US - and the Iranian military has every right to do this. The US led sanctions against Iran amount to 'acts of war/aggression' under international law. The sanctions, with other operations (i.e. US support for terrorist groups such as MEK) are designed to cause civil unrest.

    In order for Iran to win the 'war' against the US, the peoples of Iran need to remain resilient. It is the resilience of Iranians that will ensure the US 'war objectives' aren't met - ensure the country does not descend into chaos and anarchy."

Zindebad, Iran 🇮🇷

Iranian Shootdown of Drone

In 1988 the US shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 people, including 66 children.

The US then claimed that the airliner was using a military channel, that it was over international waters, that it was descending towards the Navy ship, and that it didn't respond to warnings.

These were all lies. The Vincennes was in Iranian waters, the airliner was over Iranian territory, it was ascending, not descending, it was squawking on civilian channels, but the Vincennes used military channels to warn them.

The lies were spread around on the Mighty Wurlitzer immediately, the truth dribbled out later, and is now down the Memory Hole.

The crew got "combat" medal ribbons and the captain, William Rogers, got a Legion of Merit award.

Vice President Bush said about the incident.."I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are."

Anyone who believes what the US says about the Iranian drone has the official diagnosis "Too Stupid To Live"

Homeless Camps vs Refugee Camps vs Concentration Camps

  Here in the Land of the Free, we have a special category of people we call "liberals".   These people can be stirred up easily by the media, and I have a suspicion that there are think tanks that have puppet masters who delight in making people dance to their tunes.  They might even get their jollies from watching.

  The US has received a large number, in the thousands, of refugees from other countries recently.     Other countries routinely set up refugee camps for refugees, but the US, in previous years, either deported them, imprisoned them or turned them over to large corporations and farms to supply cheap labor.
   Now, apparently, the authorities have decided to emulate other countries and set up tent cities as refugee camps.
   The liberals have been told that these are actually "concentration camps".  You know, like Hitler's.
   And since they believe that Trump is "literally Hitler", they are screaming in indignation.

    The numbers of refugees on the border, of course, pale besides the number of homeless Americans across the country who sleep in tent cities, or in cars, or in doorways, or in abandoned houses.

     So what is the difference between a homeless tent city and a "concentration camp" tent city?

    The people in the refugee camps don't have to worry that the cops will come kick them out, steal their stuff and slash their tents.