Tag: Assassination

Warmongers Press

After the assassination of the Iranian scientist I have been saying and writing that it was all an attempt to get Trump to start a war with Iran.

For at least 20 years Israel has been lying about Iran’s search for nukes….some times they are months away and others they are a few years away….in other words there is NO consistency t the accusations.

Israel has wanted the US to solve their Iranian problem for decades….so they take small steps to try and push a reaction by Iran that would justify an all out attack.

As time has elapsed since the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on 27 November, the chances for quick retaliation are fading away.

After the assassination, in an operation east of Tehran attributed to Israel’s Mossad, senior Iranian leaders have used harsh language to promise revenge, not only against Israel but also the United States and Israel’s new allies in the region, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Among those vowing retribution were President Hassan Rouhani and military confidants of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, including former Defence Minister Ahmad Wahidi.

But the inflammatory rhetoric subdsided. Gut feelings made room for cool-headed decisions. The first question to be asked is, why? Why did Israel decide to kill him?

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-scientist-killing-israel-lure-war-failed

Warmongers who have the president’s ear like Cotton and other diehard war enthusiast they keep pushing as well…..

Since Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in an apparent Israeli plot, the US and Israel have been warning about threats in the region. Despite Iran’s clear desire to make it to January 20th without a military confrontation with the US, anonymous officials are hyping the threat of Iranian retaliation for Fakhrizadeh’s death.

On Monday, an anonymous US official told The Associated Press that Washington fears Iran may take advantage of US troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this reason, the official said the US might have to hold off on the planned departure of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz from the Persian Gulf.

In September, the Nimitz was deployed to the Persian Gulf to send a message to Iran. The US official said the ship must remain in the region “for some time to come.” The official added that an additional fighter squadron might be sent to the Middle East. The US recently deployed B-52 bombers to the region and moved a fleet of F-16 fighter jets from Germany to the UAE.

US and Its Allies Stoking Fears of Possible Iranian Attacks

So the question is….will Trump take the bait and help Israel and start a new endless war?

What are the chances?

Following his election loss Donald Trump reportedly sought options to strike Iran. The president’s senior advisors dissuaded him from doing so, though it’s unclear if he settled on a different option. Then, on 17 November, both Israel and Saudi Arabia reinforced their agreed message that that Iran can never possess nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. Netanyahu spoke to Biden by phone about Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s repeated offer that Iran was willing to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, which was negotiating during the Obama-Biden administration. At that point, nothing appeared out of the ordinary when it came to Iran. There also appeared to be a coalescence of interests between Trump (for his remaining days in office), Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran.

Opinion – Is the Next Middle East War on the Horizon?

Will there be a 2021 surprise?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

RFK Dead!

There is lots of history happening around us but we should not lose sight of the history that preceded today’s situations….

Today 06 June 1968…the probable next president was shot and killed…

Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.

The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bobby-kennedy-is-assassinated

Americans lost their best chance of ending the war when RFK was killed.

Let us look into the possibilities if he had lived and become the president….

Historians have long wondered what would have happened had Robert F. Kennedy lived. What if he had continued his 1968 presidential campaign 50 years ago? Could he have forged a working-class political coalition that might have cauterized the nation’s racial wounds, arrested the slide into polarization and won working-class white support for the Democratic Party? Could RFK have built a multi-racial coalition featuring African-Americans and working-class whites?

These what-ifs have received more than modest attention from historians. In 1968, RFK was “the last liberal who could reach both races as well as both generations,” wrote historian John Morton Blum. At the time of his murder, Kennedy was beginning to construct “coalitions of supporters that cut across race and class lines,” historian James T. Patterson has argued. But beyond animating decades of historical scholarship and political analysis, the questions also emerged from a series of developments in 1968 that had begun to make Kennedy the unlikely face of a black-white lower-income political coalition.

https://www.history.com/news/rfk-what-if-he-lived

More thoughts of a what if…..

Most of us take history as a given, that things had to turn out as they did. But that assumption ignores the question, “What might have been?”

What might have happened if America had continued its World War II alliance with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam instead of siding with French colonialists in the postwar world? What if President Eisenhower had embraced the Brown vs. Board of Education decision the day after it was issued and ordered school desegregation to start within a year? And would there have been an invasion of Iraq if Al Gore had been elected president in 2000?

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/390629-what-would-the-world-look-like-if-robert-kennedy-had-lived

I believe the world would look a lot different if RFK had lived and made it to the presidency.

Thoughts?

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Death Of MLK, Jr

An important day in American history was basically ignored.  I realize that history is the furthest thing from most people’s minds…..but some of it is just too important….

The virus is sucking all the knowledge out of the days…yesterday we overlooked an important day….a day we should never forget…..the assassination of MLK. Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr-assassination

Further Reading:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr

This day should never be pushed aside…no matter the crisis….MLK’s memory is too important to the nation to be marginalized for any reason.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Assassination Investigation

Closing Thought–19Feb20

Nope this is not some BS about some Iranian general…this is about famous assassination….that of Malcolm X in 1965……

In case you did not pay attention in history class….I can help….

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/malcolm-x-assassinated

Looks like there may be a new look at this crime and those that were convicted….

Three men were convicted of assassinating Malcolm X in 1965. One of those men confessed, but the other two always maintained their innocence. Now, after the release of a Netflix documentary, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is considering reopening the case over what critics say was a botched police investigation. Coverage:

  • The trio: Three members of the Nation of Islam were sent to prison. Mujahid Abdul Halim (known then as Talmadge Hayer and Thomas Hagan), admitted he was one of the gunmen in New York City. But the other two men convicted, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (then known as Norman 3X Butler) and Khalil Islam (Thomas 15X Johnson) said they were innocent, per the Innocence Project. Halim backed them up.
  • Still fighting: Islam died in 2009, but Aziz is now 81 and hoping to clear his name with the help of the innocence group. He served 20 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit.
  • DA’s office: The office is starting a “preliminary review” to decide whether the case should be reopened, reports WPIX. The six-part Netflix documentary, based on the work of historian Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, unearthed new evidence about the killing.
  • Who did it? The documentary suggests that Halim and three other members of a Nation of Islam mosque in New Jersey did the shooting, reports the New York Times. Halim and Islam (both known as “enforcers” of strict church doctrine) belonged to Malcolm X’s former mosque in Harlem. No evidence tied them to the crime and the documentary suggests they could not have been at the scene when the shooting took place.
  • Booker connection: One of the accused briefly appeared in a campaign ad for then Newark Mayor Cory Booker in 2010. Booker says in the film he had no idea about the assassination connection. “What got us hooked,” Rachel Dretzin, one of the film’s directors, tells the Times, “was the notion that the likely shotgun assassin of Malcolm X was living in plain sight in Newark, and that many people knew of his involvement, and he was uninvestigated, unprosecuted, unquestioned.” That man, now dead, denied involvement to the New York Daily News in 2015. The other suspected gunmen also are believed to be dead.
  • The background: Malcolm X was shot after splitting with the Nation of Islam and renouncing leader Elijah Muhammad, notes the Washington Post. Up-and-coming figure Louis Farrakhan wrote at the time that Malcolm X was “worthy of death,” and the civil rights leader’s home was firebombed only a week before his assassination.

A bit late…..by 55 years……

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“He Said Bad Stuff”

I am as most already know that I like foreign policy and conflict management…..I have studied many forms of the execution of foreign policy but I have never heard of one that is actionable because of Rhetoric.

Most Americans know that we recently killed a top Iranian general in an airstrike…..there is a story that there were plans to attack American embassies and a couple of other reasons for the assassination.

But Trump has said now that he was killed because he said “bad things”……seriously?

President Trump has struggled with legal justifications for the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, failing to back up claims of an “imminent” threat, claiming that didn’t matter because of bad things he’d done. On Friday, Trump suggested to donors that Soleimani was killed not because of what he did, but because of what he said.

Trump made the comments at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser, saying that he heard Soleimani’s comments, and asked “how much of this shit do we have to listen to?” Trump made no mention of any threats in his decision to kill Soleimani.

This is particularly noteworthy because it represents another example of the president changing his story on the controversial assassination, one which very easily could have led to a major war with Iran.

Claims of an “imminent threat,” true or not, are always made by the US military after an attack because it is one of very few legal pretexts established for carrying out an otherwise aggressive attack. Being insulted by what Soleimani was saying, naturally, is not a legal justification of any sort.

That in less than two weeks the president has repeatedly changed his justification isn’t a good sign, and that this most recent narrative was offered only during a private dinner to his donors, suggests that this was neither meant for public consumption, nor a very good justification at all.

This also came just a day after Trump warned Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to “be careful with his words” after a critical sermon. In this new context, we are clearly meant to understand that if Trump didn’t like what he said, it might easily be a reason for him to be killed.

(antiwar.com)

If they is an adequate reason to assassinate a leader then h why have we not done so for North Korea’s Kim, who has said more “bad stuff” than just about anybody?

I truly would like to know just what style of foreign policy does Trump subscribe to….that is besides the “Pasta Technique”……

I Read, I Wrote, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–17Jan20

I think most Americans agree that this Iranian general was a “bad guy”….and it is a matter opinion on whether he deserved assassination….my opinion is that he did not especially since he was carrying some peace offering to the Saudis.

There seems to be a disconnect between the officials and the American people…..a new poll shows the divide…..

A new poll from Politico-Morning Consult shows the American public substantially less on board with escalatory violence against Iran than media coverage of the situation would generally lead one to believe.

The poll showed the decision to assassinate top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was highly controversial. Despite weeks of vilifying Soleimani, only 44% support his killing, and 38% continue to disapprove.

There was a lot more unity on the response to Iran’s retaliation for the killing, with 71% approving of not responding militarily to that, and only 14% disapproving. It seems further escalating the conflict is something almost nobody wanted.

(antiwar.com)

That said….the president and his boyz have said that the US embassies were in danger is one reason he was taken out…..okay but so far their explanations have been far short of convincing…..and since their story has fallen apart the Pentagon has decided that Congress does not need that briefing they were promised…..

The State Department’s cancellation of two classified congressional briefings to address embassy security and Iran policy sparked lawmakers’ ire in Wednesday, according to Politico.

“This briefing is required by law every month, and today’s was the most important we’ve had scheduled in a long time,” a House aide told the publication. “The State Department has given us no explanation whatsoever.”

Several senior Foggy Bottom officials — including Brian Hook, special envoy for Iran, and David Schenker, assistant secretary of State for the Middle East — were scheduled to brief the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to the cancellation, Politico reported, citing a Senate aide.

Initially the embassy security briefing was to address conditions in the East African nation of Burundi, but the topic was broadened to general facility security amid U.S./Iran tensions following the U.S. killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike.

The White House initially claimed the strike was in response to an unspecified imminent threat posed by Soleimani, but President Trump later told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Soleimani was plotting attacks on four U.S. embassies, which contradicted a briefing that administration officials gave lawmakers in the aftermath of the strike. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday conceded that he had not seen intelligence showing an imminent embassy attack.

(thehill.com)

Just thought you might like to know the rest of the story……

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

OH The Barbarity!

Closing Thought–11Sep19

Awhile back the big story was the assassination of a NY Times journalist, Khashoggi, and the BS the president came up with as to not criticize his buddies in the Saudi monarchy……the world has condemned the royals for their brutality….and now a transcript of the assassination has been made public…..

Jamal Khashoggi’s murderers tried to force him to send a message to his son, according to Turkey’s Sabah newspaper, which says it has obtained recordings from the day the Saudi journalist was murdered inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate. In transcripts published by the newspaper, a forensic expert tasked with dismembering the dissident’s body discusses cutting up bodies with another member of the Saudi hit squad less than 15 minutes before Khashoggi arrived at the consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, to obtain a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. “I’ve always worked on cadavers. I know how to cut very well,” the doctor says. “I have never worked on a warm body though, but I’ll also manage that easily. I normally put on my earphones and listen to music when I cut cadavers. In the meantime, I sip on my coffee and smoke.”

According to the transcripts, the killers told Khashoggi he had to return to Riyadh because of an Interpol order, the BBC reports. They ordered him to send a text message to his son, telling him not to worry if he doesn’t hear from him, but Khashoggi refused, saying: “How can such a thing take place at a consulate? I’m not writing anything.” Saudi hit squad member Maher Mutreb tells Khashoggi: “Help us so we can help you, because in the end we will take you back to Saudi Arabia and if you don’t help us you know what will happen eventually.” Khashoggi was then drugged and had a plastic bag placed over his head, Sabah reports. His final words, according to the transcript, were: “Don’t cover my mouth. I have asthma, don’t do it. You’ll suffocate me.” The newspaper says the recordings were obtained from the country’s intelligence agency, reports the AP.

This is good now the whole affair can be heard by the world…..and maybe the Saudis will lose some of their prestige in the world of geopolitics….but I doubt it.

Cash will buy them a lot of respect and tolerance……even though  they behead people almost daily (another act of barbarity).

Any thoughts?

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Rasputin….Rasputin…..Let Down Your Hair

Or was that Rapunzel?

This post is not a nursery rhyme instead about the history of Russia early 20th century…..and one of my favorite figures in Russian history.

Grigory Rasputin…..a Russian monk that became the center of Russian foreign policy……the story goes that he was so hated that a few Russian military officers invited Rasputin to a party knowing he would not resist because of his love of drink and fast women…….Rasputin got drunk and the officers poisoned him, stabbed him, shot him and eventually drowned him…..any way his influence over the tsarina was eliminated……

But his life until his death was fascinating……

Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin (1872-1916) was the infamous ‘holy man’ whose ability to heal the Tsar and Tsarina’s son Alexis led to his being adopted as a supreme mystic at court.  Growing in influence to the point where he effectively dictated policy he was eventually assassinated by a group of court conspirators in December 1916.

Born in 1872 at Pokrovskoye in Siberia to a peasant family, Rasputin’s limited education left him without the ability to either read or write. Even at a young age he earned himself such a reputation for devoted debauchery that his actual name of Grigory Yefimovich Novykh was replaced with the surname ‘Rasputin’ – Russian for ‘debauched one’.

https://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/rasputin.htm

His life is interesting but the circumstances around is death and damn well fascinating……

The mysterious Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a peasant who claimed powers of healing and prediction, had the ear of Russian Czarina Alexandra. The aristocracy held negative views about a peasant in such a high position, and peasants disliked the rumors that the czarina was sleeping with such a scoundrel. Rasputin was seen as “the dark force” who was ruining Mother Russia.To save the monarchy, several members of the aristocracy attempted to murder Rasputin. On the night of Dec. 16, 1916, they tried. The plan was simple. Yet on that fateful night, the conspirators found that killing Rasputin would be very difficult indeed.

The next time you play Triaval Pursuit and the hstory question is….who in history was strangled, stabbed, shot, poisoned and finally drowned?  You will know the answer.
History is just great stuff…..plus it is always good to learn stuff…..
A New Year and more history to delight some and dismay others……
Class Dismissed!

Those Lying Eyes

First the big guns came to town….SecDef and SecState and waltzed in front of the US Senate and lied their asses off…..that may not be fair….they were told what to say to Senators (The Trump Line)……and apparently it was all bullsh*t.

To their benefit I will say that some Senators were put off because the CIA head was not in line to brief and they, Senators, wanted to know why…..

Their threats and bitching got the CIA director a trip to brief a few Senators……

Last week’s Senate briefings surrounding a challenge to the Yemen War were less about the limited testimonies of Mike Pompeo and James Mattis than about the conspicuous absence of CIA Director Gina Haspel. That, and reported admissions from the secretaries that she was forbidden from attending the closed door briefing, fueled a lot of anger in the Senate, and by extension growing resistance to the Yemen War.

In a sign that the White House fears losing the war vote outright, they’re now letting Haspel hold her own briefing Tuesday, for a very limited audience of what the administration believes are “key” senators, mostly committee leaders.

The focus of this briefing will be Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the CIA’s assessment that the Saudi Crown Prince was involved. The murder is adding to pressure in Congress to stop supporting Saudi wars, and Yemen would be the obvious choice in that regard.

Letting Haspel testify is a concession to the Senate, but the big question will be what she says. Clearly the whole reason she wasn’t allowed in the first place was fear she’d back the CIA’s assessment and hurt the Saudis. If she still does that, it would be strange to think it would placate any senators.

(antiwar.com)

After the briefing the Senators came before the cameras and made the case of MbS being a killer……

Senators came out of a closed-door briefing with CIA Director Gina Haspel on Tuesday with some pretty unequivocal opinions about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in Jamal Khashoggi’s October death. What you need to know:

  • Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker put it like so: “If the Crown Prince went in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes.”
  • NPR points out that when senators were briefed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, Mattis said there was no “smoking gun” that showed the crown prince’s hand in the murder. Sen. Lindsey Graham picked up that thread Tuesday, saying there may not be a smoking gun, but there is a “smoking saw,” a reference to the bone saw allegedly used to dismember the journalist in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. He added there is “zero chance” the crown prince, whom he described as a “wrecking ball,” didn’t play a part, reports the AP.
  • And the New York Times has this from Sen. Richard Shelby: “All evidence points to that, that all this leads back to the crown prince. This is conduct that none of us in America would approve of in any way.”
  • The Washington Post’s take: “Senators put themselves in direct opposition to the White House, making clear that the evidence they heard had convinced them beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
  • And while they were fairly united as it relates to Prince Mohammed, the Times sees senators as being much less unified when it comes to where to go from here, on the heels of last week’s vote to consider ending the US’ involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The Hill has much more on the efforts and sticking points around the legislation here.
  • The AP reports that vote set up debate on the resolution, but when, or even whether, that will happen is unclear, as senators are considering whether to amend the measure, and, if so, how.
  • As for who was allowed to participate in the briefing, the Post reports only Senate leaders and the ranking senators on select committees involved in national security and Saudi policy as it relates to Yemen were included.

Politico reports Rand Paul didn’t number among them, and he wasn’t pleased with that, saying all senators should have heard Haspel’s testimony. “There are eight people in Congress who get briefings on intelligence. That is not democracy. That is not democratic representation nor is it democratic oversight. I think the very definition of the deep state is when the intelligence communities withhold information from Congress.”

My apologies to Haspel for I thought that her time away from first briefing was that the admin was trying to get all lies to confirm their, the admin, position.

And now that the “rest of the story” has been told there seems to be a “showdown” in the Senate brewing….

The Senate is barreling toward a floor brawl over how to respond to Saudi Arabia’s role in the slaying of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Senators took a significant step this week advancing a bipartisan resolution to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, marking a sharp break from President Trump, who has stood by Riyadh and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, even in the face of reports that the prince personally ordered Khashoggi’s death.

But now, lawmakers need to figure out what a final bill will look like as they prepare to take a next step of bringing the resolution up for debate — and a potentially raucous floor drama. The war powers fight is uncharted waters for a Senate that has repeatedly rejected attempts to challenge the White House’s war authority.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/419214-senate-headed-clash-over-saudi-arabia

It will be telling by the conclusion of this Senatorial fight……admin and Senate at odds…cannot end well for either side….but will win this battle?

To Kill A President

Almost from the very beginning there have been those that have thought that killing a president would solve all the problems…..and unfortunately this president is no different…..

A North Dakota man has admitted stealing a forklift as part of a bizarre plot to kill President Trump last year. US Assistant State’s Attorney Brandi Sasse Russell says Gregory Lee Leingang, 42, stole the forklift and made his way to the motorcade route before Trump arrived to speak at a refinery in Mandan on Sept. 6. 2017, the Grand Forks Herald reports. “The intent was to basically try to get to the limo, flip the limo and get to the president and he wanted to kill the president,” Sasse Russell told a federal court Friday. As part of a plea deal, Leingang admitted attempting to damage government property and “attempting to enter or remain in a restricted building and on grounds while using a dangerous weapon.”

Leingang was arrested after the forklift became stuck in a gated area. Public defender Michelle Monteiro told the court the Bismarck resident was “suffering a serious psychiatric crisis during this incident” and his mental health has improved after seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist in prison. She said Leingang pleaded guilty in state court to stealing the forklift and setting two fires the same morning. He received 15 years for those crimes and 5 years for an unrelated burglary charge. Leingang will be sentenced on the federal charges Feb. 15, and Sasse Russell says she is considering making the federal sentence concurrent to the time he is serving on the state charges. (In 2016, a British man who admitted plotting to kill Trump was sentenced to a year and a day in federal custody.)

That puts Trump in good company (something he is not too fond of doing in person….I mean finding good company)……

From Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama, a look at presidential assassinations and failed attempts.

http://timelines.latimes.com/us-presidential-assassinations-and-attempts/

Notice as we get into the twentieth century the presidents involved in assassination attempts have gone up…..I wonder why that is?  (Geez!  That was sarcasm people!)

This has always been there and I guess it will continue to be so……