Absolutely BRILLIANT and spot on as usual Michael. Very refreshing to read your articles. The absurd notion that after MILLIONS of Epstein files showing nothing, releasing millions more might show something LOL.
Could be wrong, but in the long run promoting a loony "Operation Epstein Fury" theory will eventually become a propaganda victory for Israel.
Similar dynamic occurred with Trump's popularity. The press falsely accused him for years of colluding with Russia and of being Putin's lackey, took virtually all of Trump's comments out of context, and encouraged the lawfare engaged against Trump in the leadup to 2024. In the short run, he lost the 2020 election, but in the long run he rebounded!
The media could've made reality-based-arguments against Trump, but instead they chose to write novels.
Similarly, the media ("independent" and mainstream) could make strong reality-based-arguments against the US's and Israel's aggressive wars, but instead we choose to write novels.
Prepare for public opinion blowback in favor of US and Israeli foreign policy.
Iran has been threatening Israel since the ayatollah took over and has financed terror groups that have killed thousands of Jews. This is not an aggressive war by Israel but defensive to finally protect our people. Fuck you if you don't like it.
Iran has been the victim of Israel's attacks since the 1979 Revolution. I challenge you to provide good independent evidence that Iran "financed terror groups that have killed thousands of Jews". For you to claim against all basic reason and evidence that Israel's unprovoked war of aggression against Iran and Lebanon, after years of genocidal assaults on the Palestinian people in Gaza, is "defensive" is to enter the realm of fantasy.
But then, Zionism is an ideology of fantasy based on a racist notion of Jewish supremacism, such as Israel's Basic Law of 2018. Many Diaspora Jews have always loathed Zionism for that very reason, and they are becoming the majority outside Israel.
There are literally thousands of quotes of the ayatollahs threatening Israel. There is no doubt at all that Iran finances: Hamas, Hizbollah, the Houthis as well as terrorism in such places at Argentina where hundreds of Argentinians and Argentinian Jews were murdered by agents of Iran. Get your friggin head out of the sand!
Zionism is simply the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. We have 20% minority population, mostly Muslims, who live here happily and at peace. How many non-Muslims live in Arab Muslim countries? Very few and nothing approaching 20%. Funny how you accuse Israel of all the things Arab Muslims and leftists do!
Really? Yet you still failed to provide anything to back up your claims. Argentina is a fine example of Zionism and Israel's atrocities... against Jews. During the fascist junta of 1976-1983, Israel supplied weapons to the same criminal state that was 'disappearing' hundreds of Argentinian Jews. See 'Israel’s Collaboration in the Murder of 3,000 Jews by Argentine’s neo-Nazi Junta comes back to Haunt It' published on 28 April 2017 by Tony Greenstein, a British Jewish anti-Zionist.
As for Israel, an openly Jewish-supremacist state even more apartheid than its former close ally South Africa, it is anything but democratic or free for non-Jews. Arabs live under police violence, surveillance and control, as extensively reported by Israel's leading human rights organisation B'Tselem in 2021:
"The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.
B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.
The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews."
Alison's statement sums up my understanding of things. It is limited & Northern. I enjoy hearing different perspectives. Yeah Hezbollah funded by Iranian regime. I'm aware that the minority Muslim population are able to live in Israel, which I'm unsure Jews could enjoy in West Bank.
I agreeJews have the right to live in ancestral land. What happened in WWII matters profoundly for modern Israel. On the other hand Israel's response to October 7 is disproportionate.
Currently I'm interrogating why I'm so anti Zelensky & incensed by him, while until recently, beinging unaware of the imperialist agenda in the Middle East. Trump has made this glaringly obvious. Also reading & connecting with nuanced takes has helped. Brushing up on geopolitics too. Thanks for sharing comments. Definitely not my area of expertise.
The "Palestinian people" is a concept created by the KGB in the 1960s to subvert the middle east. Their creation, the PLO, was the reason for the 1982 civil war in Lebanon and nearly creating a civil war in Jordan.
If any entity could be said to have unified the Palestinian people and given them a self identity, it is Israel via its relentless hostility, apartheid, open racism, violence and ethnic cleansing of them since 1948. The Palestinian people are deeply attached to their land; Israel's atrocities will not break that link.
Oh yes, a 77 year ethnic cleansing in which the population has skyrocketed.
There was never a "Palestinian people." "Palestine" was an outsider's term referring to the entire area of Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank, which was referred to by the locals as "Southern Syria." Had it not been for Europeans dividing up what the Brits captured from the genocidal Ottomans in WW1, everything would just be Jordan. Notice how it's called "Jordan" and not "East Palestine."
Let's not forget that most of the Arabs in the region who fought in WW1 fought on the side of the Ottomans against the British.
There was no movement to create a "Palestinian state" after 1948 until the KGB got involved. The West Bank Arabs wanted to be made Jordanians. Every other group gets over getting their asses kicked in wars, as that's how every country on the planet has been established.
They would have gotten over it too had it not been for the communist imperialism that has created virtually all wars since WW2. They don't want a state; their leadership was simply designed to subvert.
You're right Trump didn't collude with Russia, his cronies did it for him, that's why Roger Stone, witness tampered, obstructed and perjured himself. He did this because he knew he could cover it up and have Trump pardon him so the crimes didn't see the light of day.
Like that is everything. Obviously the 35,000 or so Iranians including little girls and boys, actual toddlers, and teenagers, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and moms and dads, shot dead in January by the Regime with military style weapons for the crime of attending peaceful protests, pales against the bombing of an IRGC compound that turned out to include a nearby girls' school. First, we still don't know what exactly happened but yay, it gives the Free Palestine people and the everything is about Epstein people something to bring up constantly to distract from what is being discussed.
No one need support the reactionary, theocratic and extremely repressive government of Iran to realise that the number you state is the one being peddled by CIA funded Iran groups in Washington, DC.
Excusing a missile attack on a school as a mistake is a mark of an apologist for the crimes of US imperialism.
That figure is far from verified. Its source, as I wrote, is purely CIA-funded groups based in the USA, not any local information. If you have better quality sources, show them. The uprising in Iran was openly supported by Israel and the USA with weapons and Starlink kits, so it was far from entirely a spontaneous outpouring of grassroots sentiment, obvious though the hatred felt by many Iranians for their government was.
Tens of millions of Americans loathe their government and President. Does that give Iran the right to launch missiles on Washington, DC, to assassinate Trump and his cabinet, or to bomb the many schools situated next to military bases in the USA?
I've no idea who you think I am, to tar me with the 'identity politics' brush. For better information on this and other topics, I recommend the World Socialist Web Site.
You mean everything is about the Jews. Let's stop being coy. That's exactly what Tracey is complaining about because his jealousy of Jews goes back to his childhood.
It's true. For Western feminists it seems that allegations of sexual assault on white, American, teenage girls matter vastly more than detonating high explosives in a primary school in Iran for the purpose of extending US imperial hegemony.
Meanwhile, you ignore that young Iranian women, for not wearing their hijab or scarf correctly, for dancing in public, or even for wearing nail polish, have been shot in the eye, raped, and beaten to death by the Islamic regime's morality police. You don't care about girls, you care about your Marxist ideology and sticking it to the US.
The same US with its history of supporting, even installing, some of the most murderous criminal regimes on the planet. Saddam Hussein in Iraq... the Shah of Iran with his SAVAK torturers... the Indonesian regime that slaughtered at least half a million communists in 1965... not to mention the vast millions murdered directly by the US military in its many attacks on any country whose government stood up to its hegemony. Socialists were brutally murdered and imprisoned by the foul Iranian theocratic state shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution so we have no kind feelings towards it. Western feminism in its support for so called humanitarian interventions a.k.a. invasion, bombing and mass murder has no moral standing whatsoever.
Western feminists have gained extraordinary power in the criminal justice landscape. As have therapist's, academics. These are gender stratified labour markets. I'm not blaming women. Heaps of feminists, both contemporaneous & historical have been challenging the ' sex crimes are worst crimes' story. Punishment is usually excommunication
Carceral feminism is one of the ways so called feminists assist the punitive state in placing more and more working class men in prison cells rather than looking for restorative or transformative justice solutions to harms they cause.
Bravo Michael and I hesitate to say at times absolutely hilarious. I really wonder on the pre 2024 Trump declarations of anti war etc policies whether he believed or rather it was just the right talk for the time. I completely agree with your point that he’s all about the oil but I wonder if he was specifically obfuscating his intentions. He seems so blurtatious that it’s hard for me to think his oil fixation wouldn’t be revealed. Thank you. Kathryn from Brooklyn.
I agree that Trump cannot be absolved of responsibility for launching this war. But it's quite obvious that it serves Israeli, not American interests. I believe that the president has shown obvious signs of mental decline and was lured into the war by the Christian Zionists and Zionist Jews around him like Hegseth and Kushner by telling him that he would get to take the oil and handpick the next Ayatollah.
After watching the global Covid/vaccine hysteria engendered by state bureaucracies and legacy media, or the cowardly public acquiescence to unmoored security state surveillance and trampling over individual privacy rights post 9/11, I’m beyond surprise.
I only wish more could be exposed regarding the $$ motivations of all these “Slopagandist” and the addictive personalities of their followers. Sooner or later these followers will show up in droves to AA meetings:
This isn't quite the topic of the article but the point you made in the last article, that this seems to be part of Trump's general territorial expansionism, seems reasonable and I would take this one step further. Both his trade and foreign policy are based on maximizing his opportunity to bring force to bear on others and create high-stakes confrontations. The Liberation Day Tariffs (which included a 17% tariff on Israel) basically gave him an opportunity to play hardball with every country on earth. This just seems to be what enjoys.
You write entertainingly well and your points are accurately made but, to paraphrase the guy in that movie--too many words obscure the truth of the matter.
Human nature don't change. No matter the time, the era, the culture, the belief system--there must always be a Satan we must all fear, reject and revile--and not to do so defiles you with the mark of the beast.
And though Pope John XXIII tried his best, Christians really want to hate Jews and the Epstein idiocy has given everyone permission to let their worst selves come out and party like it's the Middle Ages again. It's no surprise Catholic traditionalists on the cyberwebs are having a great time with this, along with the skeeziest of Protestant preachers.
It's a good reminder that the Western Enlightenment still needs to be fought for every day because a new generation is always being born that needs to be civilized all over again.
Author: Trump launched a criminal war of aggression against Iran because he wants their oil. Trump explicitly stated that this is why he started the war.
Also author: Some people are claiming that he launched the war to distract people from the Epstein files, which is false. They’re spreading propaganda that might adversely affect Trump’s criminal war of aggression against Iran.
Tracey, in this infantile piece of garbage—which of course Taibbi just loves because it demonizes the class that rejected him—manages to champion the war while pretending that he's not championing the war. Now *that's* some propaganda!
Another massive torrent of bullshit about how no one has a more keen perspective on these critical issues than you.
Boring.
But you got in your work on the pedo issue so another $$$ should hit the bank before the weekend starts.
However, I think you should get payment in advance going forward as your paymasters are probably running low on discretionary funds even as the foolish Americans cover the largest part of the cost for their latest war in pursuit of regional hegemony.
Do you consider the fact that the Epstein files disclosed that most of the MALE financial, government, and academic leaders were also rampant and vicious misogynists to be a problem? ALL of the information in those files shows men encouraging each other to hate and prey on women. What other issues are more important than see how the entire world hates women?
And it affects my life because these men encouraged all men to hate women. Not that any man needs much encouragement to hold women in contempt — all men hate women. ALL MEN HATE WOMEN — but some men manage to keep their loathing under wraps. Epstein and Trump make it clear that men can abuse women as much as they want to and get away with it.
And how do you like your war? Enjoying Trump’s invasion of Iran yet or do you want to wait until there’s a draft and food rationing? How are you justifying the Republican illegal war?
Where? Between Trump. Epstein, and Cesar Chavez, I think the only male in public life who wasn’t a rapist, sex pest, or just simple misogynist was Jimmy Carter — and I’m not sure about him.
I find this very easy to believe. Also, your sentence would stil, be true if you removed “about Epstein’s opinions on.”
How do you like your war? Enjoying your President bombing Iran? Are gas prices high enough for you? Aren’t you thrilled Kamala Harris isn’t President now?
Karen, I Looked at some more Files email. There is objectification of women, for sure. But if misogyny is the sum total of this, why do women want Ghislaine in jail? Does internalised misogyny explain that too?
Systems level feminist backlash partially explains it. Ghislaine, in many ways didn't play by her gender role script. So she'll get policed heavily for it This is about way more than misogyny.
It's about how we think gender inequality is solved. Is it solved by the state finding reprobates & punishing them? Cause if so, women will get caught in that net too. Look at how the Belarusan dentist, Shuliak, was outted & shamed for her connection to Epstein. Think she was 20 when she met him, not a kid, a woman. Do we still care about her even though she's not a kid? I'm definitely interested in her experience, AND Ghislaine's.
Feminised poverty in part of this equation. Globally females bear disproportionate burdern of poverty eg due to burden of care responsibilities, lack of education opportunities etc. What drives women & girls to make choices that aren't ideal? Why have we reduced feminist concern to the issue of sex? Why don't we talk about power, resources, economic factors.
Nobody's mad that Epstein probably got huge tax breaks. Don't worry about that bit, just 'children & satanic sex panic'.
I agree that we need to address the systems that allowed Epstein and Maxwell to abuse so many girls and women. I also think that the most lurid allegations are unfounded and hurt more than help. I want Tracey to state whether he thinks the systems Epstein exploited need to be dismantled snd why he claims that anger at those systems is a waste of time?
😆 how'd you reduced it to that? Men/ boys are the prime targets for state oppression. But women are catching up fast. Nobody escapes that meteorite; no class strata remains untouched. Saying that women are more impacted by poverty isn't a victimhood narrative, it's an statisical observation. Just ask male friends… “ would you rather be born male or female?”-wait for response
You're saying Ghislaine has internalised misogyny? I don't necessarily think that's so. There's FAR more powerful ways to demonstrate contempt for women/girls than taking them to an Island, objectifying them & throwing wads of cash their way.
Stop using the word "pedophile", just stop. It's lost all meaning when you use it in the same sentence as "women". Yes he liked women, younger women. They're not babies. World leaders, conquerers, kings, noblemen, tribal leaders, etc are not "pedophiles", they're just men.
Any person who has genital contact with someone under the age of 18 is a rapist. I don’t care what men in the past thought; they were WRONG. Women deserve equal rights which includes the right to bodily autonomy. No one should have to deal with sex pests as a condition of getting an education or earning a living. If men can’t keep their pants zipped and their hands to themselves, then men need to be imprisoned.
He hated women. He constantly talked about how stupid women were. He thought of us as breeding livestock and nothing more. All of his friends agreed with him.
My comment was half baked, Karen's comment valid. Not sure why this has gained traction. Shows you can can say dumb shit on the internet & people will 👍🏼 it
What??? This would not be news at all if it weren’t for the absolutely hysterical allegations of international “child sex trafficking” and even more over the top QAnon-like sacrifice and cannibalism rituals. If that’s what you’re worried about the goalposts have been seriously shifted.
There is something kind of funny about Iranian PR using the "war for Pedos" or "Axis of Pedophilia" accusations when their entire worldview, regime and society is based on the insane rantings of a desert dwelling 'prophet' who married a 9 year old. Just saying........
Why the fuck are you so obsessed with the "pedo" framing. I dunno man, all I see is "epstein class of baal worshipping baby murderers" not "pedo". IRGC's "for the victims of epstein island" propaganda is talking about VICTIMS. Not minors. https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2034777353394512376 . But if we want to talk about little kids, we did just murder 170 of those too, after Israel has been shooting them in the head and dropping houses on them for over two years.
Whether you subscribe to the Candace Owens level supernatural explanation of "Baal worship" or not, Trump's actions here do NOT makes sense unless he is either severely mentally compromised or compromised in some other way. He either listened to crazies telling him Iran was trying to assassinate him and this would be a walk in the park, or someone forced him to do this- whether via nuclear blackmail or "pedo" blackmail.
Absolutely BRILLIANT and spot on as usual Michael. Very refreshing to read your articles. The absurd notion that after MILLIONS of Epstein files showing nothing, releasing millions more might show something LOL.
Could be wrong, but in the long run promoting a loony "Operation Epstein Fury" theory will eventually become a propaganda victory for Israel.
Similar dynamic occurred with Trump's popularity. The press falsely accused him for years of colluding with Russia and of being Putin's lackey, took virtually all of Trump's comments out of context, and encouraged the lawfare engaged against Trump in the leadup to 2024. In the short run, he lost the 2020 election, but in the long run he rebounded!
The media could've made reality-based-arguments against Trump, but instead they chose to write novels.
Similarly, the media ("independent" and mainstream) could make strong reality-based-arguments against the US's and Israel's aggressive wars, but instead we choose to write novels.
Prepare for public opinion blowback in favor of US and Israeli foreign policy.
Iran has been threatening Israel since the ayatollah took over and has financed terror groups that have killed thousands of Jews. This is not an aggressive war by Israel but defensive to finally protect our people. Fuck you if you don't like it.
Iran has been the victim of Israel's attacks since the 1979 Revolution. I challenge you to provide good independent evidence that Iran "financed terror groups that have killed thousands of Jews". For you to claim against all basic reason and evidence that Israel's unprovoked war of aggression against Iran and Lebanon, after years of genocidal assaults on the Palestinian people in Gaza, is "defensive" is to enter the realm of fantasy.
But then, Zionism is an ideology of fantasy based on a racist notion of Jewish supremacism, such as Israel's Basic Law of 2018. Many Diaspora Jews have always loathed Zionism for that very reason, and they are becoming the majority outside Israel.
There are literally thousands of quotes of the ayatollahs threatening Israel. There is no doubt at all that Iran finances: Hamas, Hizbollah, the Houthis as well as terrorism in such places at Argentina where hundreds of Argentinians and Argentinian Jews were murdered by agents of Iran. Get your friggin head out of the sand!
Zionism is simply the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. We have 20% minority population, mostly Muslims, who live here happily and at peace. How many non-Muslims live in Arab Muslim countries? Very few and nothing approaching 20%. Funny how you accuse Israel of all the things Arab Muslims and leftists do!
Really? Yet you still failed to provide anything to back up your claims. Argentina is a fine example of Zionism and Israel's atrocities... against Jews. During the fascist junta of 1976-1983, Israel supplied weapons to the same criminal state that was 'disappearing' hundreds of Argentinian Jews. See 'Israel’s Collaboration in the Murder of 3,000 Jews by Argentine’s neo-Nazi Junta comes back to Haunt It' published on 28 April 2017 by Tony Greenstein, a British Jewish anti-Zionist.
As for Israel, an openly Jewish-supremacist state even more apartheid than its former close ally South Africa, it is anything but democratic or free for non-Jews. Arabs live under police violence, surveillance and control, as extensively reported by Israel's leading human rights organisation B'Tselem in 2021:
"The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.
B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.
The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews."
('This Is Apartheid', B'Tselem 12 January 2021)
Alison's statement sums up my understanding of things. It is limited & Northern. I enjoy hearing different perspectives. Yeah Hezbollah funded by Iranian regime. I'm aware that the minority Muslim population are able to live in Israel, which I'm unsure Jews could enjoy in West Bank.
I agreeJews have the right to live in ancestral land. What happened in WWII matters profoundly for modern Israel. On the other hand Israel's response to October 7 is disproportionate.
Currently I'm interrogating why I'm so anti Zelensky & incensed by him, while until recently, beinging unaware of the imperialist agenda in the Middle East. Trump has made this glaringly obvious. Also reading & connecting with nuanced takes has helped. Brushing up on geopolitics too. Thanks for sharing comments. Definitely not my area of expertise.
Ask and you shall receive.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-hezbollah
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-will-iran-hezbollah-lebanon-rcna120046
https://ecfr.eu/article/iran-hamas-and-islamic-jihad-a-marriage-of-convenience/
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12587
Do you need any more? Because there's a lot more.
https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2024/dec/17/us-report-iran%E2%80%99s-support-terrorism
The "Palestinian people" is a concept created by the KGB in the 1960s to subvert the middle east. Their creation, the PLO, was the reason for the 1982 civil war in Lebanon and nearly creating a civil war in Jordan.
If any entity could be said to have unified the Palestinian people and given them a self identity, it is Israel via its relentless hostility, apartheid, open racism, violence and ethnic cleansing of them since 1948. The Palestinian people are deeply attached to their land; Israel's atrocities will not break that link.
Oh yes, a 77 year ethnic cleansing in which the population has skyrocketed.
There was never a "Palestinian people." "Palestine" was an outsider's term referring to the entire area of Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank, which was referred to by the locals as "Southern Syria." Had it not been for Europeans dividing up what the Brits captured from the genocidal Ottomans in WW1, everything would just be Jordan. Notice how it's called "Jordan" and not "East Palestine."
Let's not forget that most of the Arabs in the region who fought in WW1 fought on the side of the Ottomans against the British.
There was no movement to create a "Palestinian state" after 1948 until the KGB got involved. The West Bank Arabs wanted to be made Jordanians. Every other group gets over getting their asses kicked in wars, as that's how every country on the planet has been established.
They would have gotten over it too had it not been for the communist imperialism that has created virtually all wars since WW2. They don't want a state; their leadership was simply designed to subvert.
Let Israel fight its own wars.
Leave us out of it.
Israel is a central part of US imperialism. Its wars are funded and supplied by the USA.
Fuck you for cheerleading Trump and Netanyahu, the two mafioso crooks posing the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Middle East.
Palestinian people have been subject to non stop hostilities by Israel since 1948.
No, they haven't. Your hyperbole is getting tiring.
You're right Trump didn't collude with Russia, his cronies did it for him, that's why Roger Stone, witness tampered, obstructed and perjured himself. He did this because he knew he could cover it up and have Trump pardon him so the crimes didn't see the light of day.
dood, if you tomahawked 170 girls to death, the fact that you might not also be a rapist is IRRELEVANT
Like that is everything. Obviously the 35,000 or so Iranians including little girls and boys, actual toddlers, and teenagers, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and moms and dads, shot dead in January by the Regime with military style weapons for the crime of attending peaceful protests, pales against the bombing of an IRGC compound that turned out to include a nearby girls' school. First, we still don't know what exactly happened but yay, it gives the Free Palestine people and the everything is about Epstein people something to bring up constantly to distract from what is being discussed.
No one need support the reactionary, theocratic and extremely repressive government of Iran to realise that the number you state is the one being peddled by CIA funded Iran groups in Washington, DC.
Excusing a missile attack on a school as a mistake is a mark of an apologist for the crimes of US imperialism.
But killing 30,000 of your own people is fine? For you it's all identity politics.
That figure is far from verified. Its source, as I wrote, is purely CIA-funded groups based in the USA, not any local information. If you have better quality sources, show them. The uprising in Iran was openly supported by Israel and the USA with weapons and Starlink kits, so it was far from entirely a spontaneous outpouring of grassroots sentiment, obvious though the hatred felt by many Iranians for their government was.
Tens of millions of Americans loathe their government and President. Does that give Iran the right to launch missiles on Washington, DC, to assassinate Trump and his cabinet, or to bomb the many schools situated next to military bases in the USA?
I've no idea who you think I am, to tar me with the 'identity politics' brush. For better information on this and other topics, I recommend the World Socialist Web Site.
You're the fucking king of unverified.
As for "identity politics," if you don't like the label, stop using identity politics in your arguments.
Sure, I'll get my news from the most corrupt, mass murdering ideology this planet has ever seen. Great idea.
That is nonsense.
I don't care what Iranians do with other Iranians, nibba
You mean everything is about the Jews. Let's stop being coy. That's exactly what Tracey is complaining about because his jealousy of Jews goes back to his childhood.
Michael is jealous of the Jews?
Do tell.
Mmm have you talked to many feminists lately? They would vigorously dispute this 😴
It's true. For Western feminists it seems that allegations of sexual assault on white, American, teenage girls matter vastly more than detonating high explosives in a primary school in Iran for the purpose of extending US imperial hegemony.
Meanwhile, you ignore that young Iranian women, for not wearing their hijab or scarf correctly, for dancing in public, or even for wearing nail polish, have been shot in the eye, raped, and beaten to death by the Islamic regime's morality police. You don't care about girls, you care about your Marxist ideology and sticking it to the US.
I'd rather see American women in hijabs than all fat and ugly with their creepy tattoos and low cut blouses. Yech.
Things that happen to females in the global South matter a LOT but most modern feminists don't care.
The same US with its history of supporting, even installing, some of the most murderous criminal regimes on the planet. Saddam Hussein in Iraq... the Shah of Iran with his SAVAK torturers... the Indonesian regime that slaughtered at least half a million communists in 1965... not to mention the vast millions murdered directly by the US military in its many attacks on any country whose government stood up to its hegemony. Socialists were brutally murdered and imprisoned by the foul Iranian theocratic state shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution so we have no kind feelings towards it. Western feminism in its support for so called humanitarian interventions a.k.a. invasion, bombing and mass murder has no moral standing whatsoever.
So your issue as I suggested is not about the girls' school. Now it's about Indonesia. Best of luck.
Western feminists have gained extraordinary power in the criminal justice landscape. As have therapist's, academics. These are gender stratified labour markets. I'm not blaming women. Heaps of feminists, both contemporaneous & historical have been challenging the ' sex crimes are worst crimes' story. Punishment is usually excommunication
Carceral feminism is one of the ways so called feminists assist the punitive state in placing more and more working class men in prison cells rather than looking for restorative or transformative justice solutions to harms they cause.
Bravo Michael and I hesitate to say at times absolutely hilarious. I really wonder on the pre 2024 Trump declarations of anti war etc policies whether he believed or rather it was just the right talk for the time. I completely agree with your point that he’s all about the oil but I wonder if he was specifically obfuscating his intentions. He seems so blurtatious that it’s hard for me to think his oil fixation wouldn’t be revealed. Thank you. Kathryn from Brooklyn.
I agree that Trump cannot be absolved of responsibility for launching this war. But it's quite obvious that it serves Israeli, not American interests. I believe that the president has shown obvious signs of mental decline and was lured into the war by the Christian Zionists and Zionist Jews around him like Hegseth and Kushner by telling him that he would get to take the oil and handpick the next Ayatollah.
They’re not even pedophiles, technically. https://anniegottlieb.substack.com/p/get-your-perverts-straight?r=16gkv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Half of the time I don’t even read Michael for the content. I read cuz his writing style is so damn good
Excellent analysis.
After watching the global Covid/vaccine hysteria engendered by state bureaucracies and legacy media, or the cowardly public acquiescence to unmoored security state surveillance and trampling over individual privacy rights post 9/11, I’m beyond surprise.
I only wish more could be exposed regarding the $$ motivations of all these “Slopagandist” and the addictive personalities of their followers. Sooner or later these followers will show up in droves to AA meetings:
“Hi. I’m Jeremy, and I’m a Slopa-holic.”
“Hi Jeremy.”
By the way, “Slopaganda”. Is that copy righted?
This isn't quite the topic of the article but the point you made in the last article, that this seems to be part of Trump's general territorial expansionism, seems reasonable and I would take this one step further. Both his trade and foreign policy are based on maximizing his opportunity to bring force to bear on others and create high-stakes confrontations. The Liberation Day Tariffs (which included a 17% tariff on Israel) basically gave him an opportunity to play hardball with every country on earth. This just seems to be what enjoys.
You write entertainingly well and your points are accurately made but, to paraphrase the guy in that movie--too many words obscure the truth of the matter.
Human nature don't change. No matter the time, the era, the culture, the belief system--there must always be a Satan we must all fear, reject and revile--and not to do so defiles you with the mark of the beast.
And though Pope John XXIII tried his best, Christians really want to hate Jews and the Epstein idiocy has given everyone permission to let their worst selves come out and party like it's the Middle Ages again. It's no surprise Catholic traditionalists on the cyberwebs are having a great time with this, along with the skeeziest of Protestant preachers.
It's a good reminder that the Western Enlightenment still needs to be fought for every day because a new generation is always being born that needs to be civilized all over again.
Author: Trump launched a criminal war of aggression against Iran because he wants their oil. Trump explicitly stated that this is why he started the war.
Also author: Some people are claiming that he launched the war to distract people from the Epstein files, which is false. They’re spreading propaganda that might adversely affect Trump’s criminal war of aggression against Iran.
Tracey, in this infantile piece of garbage—which of course Taibbi just loves because it demonizes the class that rejected him—manages to champion the war while pretending that he's not championing the war. Now *that's* some propaganda!
Thank you for pushing back against MT’s misguided or disingenuous whitewashing of Trump and his DARVOing of the the Epstein saga.
Another massive torrent of bullshit about how no one has a more keen perspective on these critical issues than you.
Boring.
But you got in your work on the pedo issue so another $$$ should hit the bank before the weekend starts.
However, I think you should get payment in advance going forward as your paymasters are probably running low on discretionary funds even as the foolish Americans cover the largest part of the cost for their latest war in pursuit of regional hegemony.
Do you consider the fact that the Epstein files disclosed that most of the MALE financial, government, and academic leaders were also rampant and vicious misogynists to be a problem? ALL of the information in those files shows men encouraging each other to hate and prey on women. What other issues are more important than see how the entire world hates women?
In your analysis this is about misogyny? If so, how do you explain the imprisonment of one WOMAN for these alleged egregious crimes
Where is the explanatory power of misogyny in Ghislaine Maxwell's imprisonment?
Maxwell accepts the idea that women are all useless and glommed on to a man to justify her existence.
Have you read any of those emails? Do you deny that Jeffrey Epstein and all his friends held all woemn in contempt?
How does this affect your life?
I am a woman, & I don’t give a crap about Epstein’s opinions on women.
And it affects my life because these men encouraged all men to hate women. Not that any man needs much encouragement to hold women in contempt — all men hate women. ALL MEN HATE WOMEN — but some men manage to keep their loathing under wraps. Epstein and Trump make it clear that men can abuse women as much as they want to and get away with it.
“ALL MEN HATE WOMEN.”
You sound like a crazy person.
Clearly, you need to meet some better men.
And how do you like your war? Enjoying Trump’s invasion of Iran yet or do you want to wait until there’s a draft and food rationing? How are you justifying the Republican illegal war?
Where? Between Trump. Epstein, and Cesar Chavez, I think the only male in public life who wasn’t a rapist, sex pest, or just simple misogynist was Jimmy Carter — and I’m not sure about him.
I find this very easy to believe. Also, your sentence would stil, be true if you removed “about Epstein’s opinions on.”
How do you like your war? Enjoying your President bombing Iran? Are gas prices high enough for you? Aren’t you thrilled Kamala Harris isn’t President now?
Karen, I Looked at some more Files email. There is objectification of women, for sure. But if misogyny is the sum total of this, why do women want Ghislaine in jail? Does internalised misogyny explain that too?
Systems level feminist backlash partially explains it. Ghislaine, in many ways didn't play by her gender role script. So she'll get policed heavily for it This is about way more than misogyny.
It's about how we think gender inequality is solved. Is it solved by the state finding reprobates & punishing them? Cause if so, women will get caught in that net too. Look at how the Belarusan dentist, Shuliak, was outted & shamed for her connection to Epstein. Think she was 20 when she met him, not a kid, a woman. Do we still care about her even though she's not a kid? I'm definitely interested in her experience, AND Ghislaine's.
Feminised poverty in part of this equation. Globally females bear disproportionate burdern of poverty eg due to burden of care responsibilities, lack of education opportunities etc. What drives women & girls to make choices that aren't ideal? Why have we reduced feminist concern to the issue of sex? Why don't we talk about power, resources, economic factors.
Nobody's mad that Epstein probably got huge tax breaks. Don't worry about that bit, just 'children & satanic sex panic'.
I agree that we need to address the systems that allowed Epstein and Maxwell to abuse so many girls and women. I also think that the most lurid allegations are unfounded and hurt more than help. I want Tracey to state whether he thinks the systems Epstein exploited need to be dismantled snd why he claims that anger at those systems is a waste of time?
Oh please.
“Comet due to strike Earth tomorrow. Women & minorities projected to be hardest hit.”
Just stop with all the female victimology BS, please.
😆 how'd you reduced it to that? Men/ boys are the prime targets for state oppression. But women are catching up fast. Nobody escapes that meteorite; no class strata remains untouched. Saying that women are more impacted by poverty isn't a victimhood narrative, it's an statisical observation. Just ask male friends… “ would you rather be born male or female?”-wait for response
You're saying Ghislaine has internalised misogyny? I don't necessarily think that's so. There's FAR more powerful ways to demonstrate contempt for women/girls than taking them to an Island, objectifying them & throwing wads of cash their way.
Helping a pedophile who obviously hated all women qualities as misogyny.
Stop using the word "pedophile", just stop. It's lost all meaning when you use it in the same sentence as "women". Yes he liked women, younger women. They're not babies. World leaders, conquerers, kings, noblemen, tribal leaders, etc are not "pedophiles", they're just men.
Stop defending rapists.
Any person who has genital contact with someone under the age of 18 is a rapist. I don’t care what men in the past thought; they were WRONG. Women deserve equal rights which includes the right to bodily autonomy. No one should have to deal with sex pests as a condition of getting an education or earning a living. If men can’t keep their pants zipped and their hands to themselves, then men need to be imprisoned.
Epstein hated all women? Give me a break. The man was obsessed with women.
He hated women. He constantly talked about how stupid women were. He thought of us as breeding livestock and nothing more. All of his friends agreed with him.
My comment was half baked, Karen's comment valid. Not sure why this has gained traction. Shows you can can say dumb shit on the internet & people will 👍🏼 it
What??? This would not be news at all if it weren’t for the absolutely hysterical allegations of international “child sex trafficking” and even more over the top QAnon-like sacrifice and cannibalism rituals. If that’s what you’re worried about the goalposts have been seriously shifted.
There is something kind of funny about Iranian PR using the "war for Pedos" or "Axis of Pedophilia" accusations when their entire worldview, regime and society is based on the insane rantings of a desert dwelling 'prophet' who married a 9 year old. Just saying........
Hey Michael, Cesar Chavez needs defending. Please, UFW crusader Cesar Chavez needs a ride or die bro and I nominate you Michael.
Take the lurid sex (which may be fabricated) away, and Epstein & his class are still revolting.
Take the lurid sex (which may also be fabricated) away, and Cesar Chavez & Allies are heroes.
Why the fuck are you so obsessed with the "pedo" framing. I dunno man, all I see is "epstein class of baal worshipping baby murderers" not "pedo". IRGC's "for the victims of epstein island" propaganda is talking about VICTIMS. Not minors. https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2034777353394512376 . But if we want to talk about little kids, we did just murder 170 of those too, after Israel has been shooting them in the head and dropping houses on them for over two years.
Whether you subscribe to the Candace Owens level supernatural explanation of "Baal worship" or not, Trump's actions here do NOT makes sense unless he is either severely mentally compromised or compromised in some other way. He either listened to crazies telling him Iran was trying to assassinate him and this would be a walk in the park, or someone forced him to do this- whether via nuclear blackmail or "pedo" blackmail.
Epstein class seems accurate.