Israel lobbyist hints that ‘Pearl Harbor’ may be needed to get US into war with Iran

Last Friday, during question time at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy policy forum luncheon on “How to Build US-Israeli Coordination on Preventing an Iranian Nuclear Breakout,” the director of research at the pro-Israel think tank hinted that a Pearl Harbor-type attack might be necessary to get the United States to go to war against the Islamic Republic.

“I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough,” said Patrick Clawson, who also heads the Washington Institute’s Iran Security Initiative, in response to a question about what would happen if negotiations with Tehran fail. “And it’s very hard for me to see how the United States … uh … President can get us to war with Iran.”

As a consequence, Clawson said he was led to conclude that “the traditional way [that] America gets to war is what would be best for US interests.”

Intriguingly, he went on to recount a series of controversial incidents in American history — the attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the blowing up of the USS Maine — that US presidents “had to wait for” before taking America to war.

“And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked,” Clawson continued, “which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.”

“So, if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise,” the Israel lobbyist concluded with a smirk on his face, “it would be best if somebody else started the war.”

https://alethonews.com/2012/09/25/israel-lobbyist-hints-that-pearl-harbor-may-be-needed-to-get-us-into-war-with-iran/

>>17403124

Biden letting Iran’s president come to NYC despite Pompeo assassination plot

President Joe Biden hasn’t blocked Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi from entering the U.S. to speak at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in New York City next month. Raisi will attend even after an Iranian military officer was charged this month with trying to assassinate former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

For weeks, Senate Republicans have been calling for President Joe Biden to block Raisi, who the U.S. sanctioned in 2019 for his role in executing children in 2018 and 2019. Earlier this month, The Department of Justice charged an Iranian military officer with trying to hire people to assassinate Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Despite this, Raisi is expected to attend the assembly meeting in New York City as planned.

Iran has been seeking revenge against Pompeo, Bolton and other former officials from President Donald Trump’s administration for the Jan. 3, 2020 U.S. strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq.

On Aug. 2, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rick Scott (R-FL), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) sent Biden a letter demanding he deny visas for Raisi and his delegation to attend the UNGA in New York in September.

“If recent reports are true that Raisi plans to attend the UN General Assembly, the White House must deny Raisi and other Iranian officials visas to attend,” the senators wrote. “Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States—while his agents actively work to assassinate senior American officials on U.S. soil—would gravely endanger our national security, given the likely presence of IRGC agents in the Iranian delegation.”

Raisi attended the UNGA in New York last year, just months after taking office. Iranian leaders have attended and spoken at the UNGA every year since the 1950s.

The Biden administration has not yet offered a statement in response to the calls to block Raisi from attending this year’s UNGA.

In Raisi’s 2021 UNGA speech, he claimed Iran was compliant with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) while the U.S. continues to violate the agreement with sanctions.

Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran that had existed prior to the 2015 agreement. Iran has responded by ramping up its stockpiling and enriching nuclear material beyond the limits imposed by the 2015 deal.

The Biden administration is actively negotiating for the U.S. to reenter the 2015 JCPOA and for Iran to return to compliance with the deal.

In last year’s UNGA speech, Raisi also denounced the “occupier Zionist regime” of the Israeli government, calling it the biggest source of state terrorism. The U.S. had labeled Iran the leading state sponsor of terrorism multiple years in a row during the Trump administration.

During last year’s speech, Raisi also credited Soleimani and pro-Iranian paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis with stopping the spread of the Islamic State terrorist group, ISIS.

Al-Muhandis had led the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Front (PMF), whose supporters had attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in December of 2019. Al-Muhandis had been traveling with Soleimani when they were killed days later by a U.S. drone strike.

“If not for the power and role of Iran alongside the governments and peoples of Syria and Iraq as well as all the selfless efforts of Martyrs Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and General Qassem Soleimani, today ISIS would be the Mediterranean neighbors of Europe,” Raisi said last year.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/08/biden-letting-irans-president-come-to-nyc-despite-pompeo-assassination-plot/

AIPAC’s breaking spending records on campaigns, so why did it avoid tight Omar race?

Pro-Israel lobby spent millions to defeat Andy Levin, a Jewish self-described Zionist who is critical of Israel, but not a dime to try to unseat Congress’s leading Israel-basher

The theory has preoccupied anti- and pro-Israel voices alike: If an anti-Israel political candidate loses, it’s because of pro-Israel money.

That theory came close to being disproved last week when Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, perhaps the most prominent Israel-critical member of Congress, nearly lost her reelection bid two years after cruising to victory — but pro-Israel donors didn’t play a role. It faces another test next week in a New York primary where a member of the Israel-critical “Squad” of progressives who was narrowly elected two years ago, Jamaal Bowman, is defending his incumbency — and where pro-Israel donors again have so far steered clear.

The lack of spending is especially noticeable in a year when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has made national headlines for lavishing for the first time in its history tens of millions of dollars on congressional races.

AIPAC officials haven’t said whether they considered entering the Omar race or what they plan to do in Bowman’s. And it’s possible that outsized spending by pro-Israel groups would have benefited Omar, not hurt her: After all, her margin of victory was far wider in 2020, when Israel donors spent big to oppose her — and possibly increased turnout by Omar’s supporters as a result.

Still, the dynamics this year are notable for challenging a number of assumptions about the role of money in politics.

One is the incumbent rule, a longstanding orthodoxy of pro-Israel giving, which posits that sitting lawmakers are too firmly entrenched to merit the expense. Even as AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, doled out $25 million on behalf of candidates in other races, making it the biggest spender of any nonpartisan PAC, AIPAC’s other PAC and their allies all bypassed Omar’s race, in part because they have forsworn taking on incumbents.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/aipac-is-breaking-spending-records-on-campaigns-so-why-avoid-tight-omar-race/

Fox's Laura Ingraham: 'Exhausted' voters may be ready 'to turn the page' on Trump

She said Americans are "exhausted by the battle" involving Trump

Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Americans may be "exhausted" with the political battle and decide that it is "time to turn the page" on former President Trump as he decides whether to run for reelection in 2024.

"People conflate Trump with people’s overall sense of happiness in the country. Donald Trump’s been a friend of mine for 25 years, and I’m always very open about this on my show," Ingraham said Monday on "The Truth with Lisa Boothe" podcast. "But, you know we’ll see whether that’s what the country wants."

She also said: "The country, I think, is so exhausted. They’re exhausted by the battle, the constant battle, that they may believe that, well, maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump."

Trump remains a top 2024 candidate among Republican voters with his popularity growing after the FBI's raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a recent poll.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/foxs-laura-ingraham-exhausted-voters-may-be-ready-turn-page-trump

Grand Theft

Walmart defies earlier pessimistic predictions, posts significant revenue bump for second quarter

Company had projected slide for Q2, but rebound suggests stronger market.

Walmart this week defied its own earlier pessimistic projections of its second quarter earnings, posting a revenue report that saw marked gains for the world's largest retailer through the middle of the year.

The company last month had said it was lowering its profit outlook for Q2, citing in part higher food prices that have come with record levels of inflation throughout the economy.

Yet its quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday showed comp sale growth of 6.5 percent for the second quarter, as well as revenue growth of 8.4 percent.

"The actions we’ve taken to improve inventory levels in the U.S., along with a heavier mix of sales in grocery put pressure on profit margin for Q2 and our outlook for the year," company President and CEO Doug McMillion said in the report.

McMillon added that the company "made good progress throughout the quarter operationally to improve costs in our supply chain, and that work is ongoing."

Walmart noted that it continues to "maintai[n] [its] outlook for back-half of FY23."

https://justthenews.com/nation/economy/walmart-defies-earlier-pessimistic-predictions-posts-significant-revenue-bump-second

Former Member of Congress Charged with Multiple Fraud Schemes

A 28-count indictment was unsealed today in the Eastern District of California charging a former member of Congress with multiple fraud schemes and campaign contribution fraud.

Terrance John “TJ” Cox, 59, of Fresno, is charged with 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, one count of financial institution fraud, and one count of campaign contribution fraud.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-member-congress-charged-multiple-fraud-schemes

Nine Members and Associates of Genovese and Bonanno Organized Crime Families Charged with Racketeering and Illegal Gambling Offenses

Defendants Include a Detective with the Nassau County Police Department Charged with Obstruction of Justice and Lying to the FBI

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/nine-members-and-associated-genovese-and-bonanno-organized-crime-families-charged

Jab Injuries Global

https://www.jabinjuriesglobal.com

The Psychological Warfare Apparatus Creates False Beliefs

Fighting the Sleep of Reason – Reporting, Class, Independence

An increasingly large number of people now agree that information of all kinds in the countries of North America, Europe and their Pacific allies is deployed overwhelmingly to serve the interests of Western corporate oligarchs and the politicians who front for them. Outlets including news media and NGOs, academic and scientific journals as well as international institutions have practically all been fully integrated now into the long standing, global psychological warfare offensive of the West’s ruling classes. At home, they work relentlessly to control the perceptions and behavior of their countries’ populations. Overseas, they seek constantly to mobilize international opinion against countries like Russia and China, governments from Syria to Venezuela, political movements like Hezbollah, and even individuals, like Julian Assange, who resist them.

The main purpose of this vast psychological warfare apparatus is to create false beliefs which over time harden into false memories. The process consolidates ruling class control domestically while also facilitating their present and future crimes of aggression around the world. Populations in the West are deliberately misinformed and misled by means of plausible misrepresentation, blatant distortion, systematic omission and downright lies. Categories of information such as journalism, academic and scientific research, investigation by NGOs or briefings from international institutions have all been deformed, distorted and devalued by their abuse so as to further the domestic and global interests of the Western oligarchies.

Since long before 20th Century public relations and psychology, the fundamental way to manipulate mass consciousness, from the Holy Inquisition to the enthronement of Science, has been to encourage submission to authority. The Milgram experiment is a notorious example, although, in one respect, itself a cause for optimism. Other more insidious means sow ruling class messaging among otherwise trusted contrary sources. Concentrated corporate control of information and communications resources has made possible mutual constant universal reinforcement between all varieties of mass media and information outlets. Like magicians, governments and corporations understand very well that suppressing resistance depends on disappearing contrary information by every means possible, including censorship, mass distraction and sensory overload.

An apparently hardly noticed corollary of this systematic perversion of good faith reporting, research and investigation has been a collapse of rationality. In Western public life, it is now effectively forbidden to compare and contrast rival versions of events which contradict the general received wisdom propagated by Western government and corporate approved information outlets. So political and intellectual argument in North America and Europe has become ever more narcissistic, self-serving and ultimately irrational. This applies also to supposedly progressive or even radical outlets which in their coverage of international affairs still depart from essentially neocolonial assumptions of Western superiority.

Over the last fifteen years or so a growing number of independent writers and reporters have sought to challenge the false information spread by well coordinated and concentrated corporate and government controlled networks of mutually reinforcing information outlets. This development has notably sharpened the relation between information and class. More clearly than ever the production and distribution of information has become a vast theater of propaganda operations controlled by a multinational intellectual managerial class with shared imperatives. They promote and enforce a class monopoly of access to information outlets for producers of information and similarly a corresponding monopoly of distribution outlets, both mainstream and ostensibly alternative, for its consumption.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/fighting-sleep-reason-reporting-class-independence/5790247

Alexander Vindman Goes to Ukraine War Zone

https://twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1559494049450672129

Steve Bannon Drops a Truth Bomb on the Grand Old Party: “Voters Are Done with the Ancient Regime of the Republican Party”

Steve Bannon: Most importantly is the end of the ancient regime of the Republican Party. The McCain faction was taken out two weeks ago. We now got Alaska with Murkowski. And, of course, the Cheney junta up in Wyoming is about to be brought down by the people of that great state about MAGA policies. It’s not just that she’s going after Trump but she’s a neo-liberal, neocon. This party, 85-90% of the people who vote in this party are not neoliberal neocons. They don’t want to fight forever-wars. They don’t want a burgeoning administrative state. You know Cheney and Bush had every opportunity to cut that. They increased it…

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/steve-bannon-drops-truth-bomb-grand-old-party-voters-done-ancient-regime-republican-party-video/

Dr. Mercola - Difficult Times Ahead, Breaking Free from the System & Becoming Self-Sufficient

https://www.bitchute.com/video/VQNzoLKu3HcQ/