peterms

All those contacts in Hollywood, and he can't get anyone to teach him to act more convincingly than this?

He seems to have underplayed it, as well.  He should really have been on a stretcher, with someone holding a drip in his arm, and someone walking alongside with a clipboard and stethoscope, furrowing their brow.

Seems a fair summary.

15 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Interesting, and not implausible, but would be interested to know more about the sources involved. Is there any corroboration anywhere?

You get the impression that Trump has watched a few too many gangster films.

I've not yet seen corroboration of the exact detail (though I have seen other accounts of Trump demanding Iraq's oil), but sometimes it takes time to emerge, and there would be a spinning operation to discredit anyway.

It certainly fits very well with other comments and threats Trump has been reported making over the course of years, but of course any false account would try to reflect that.

I'd say not yet proven, but entirely plausible.

Seems consistent with US style, and entirely in character for Don Trump.

47 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

What a load of fanatical numbskulls. 

Speaking of fanatical numbskulls, look at this bunch of crazed mullahs, slavering over the leader of the rogue state, sponsor of terrorism, urging him on to still greater regional hegemony.

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

saw an article the other week that referred to her as the member of parliament for Jess Phillips

Favourite words: I, me.

Favourite paper: mirror.

Favourite flower: narcissus.

A thread about some off-the-record discussions the writer says they've had with US officials.

On 04/01/2020 at 21:15, Stevo985 said:

Any tofu tips from anyone on here?

It works well as a minor ingredient in a noodle soup.  It gives another texture, and it absorbs flavours from what it is cooked with, and is reputedly nutritious.

I would use chicken or pork, but you can easily do a veggie version.

First make your stock according to your preference.  It's all about the stock.  I tend to make meat stocks from scratch but use stock powder for veggie stock, which I see as a background flavour rather than a main ingredient, but if I were doing this as a veggie dish I might make a veggie stock from scratch.

Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions, drain, and place in a bowl of cold water until needed.

Make the soup base.  Soften chopped onions and garlic in oil, with carrots and celery if you like.  Add some ground spices, maybe star anise, cumin, coriander, chili, black pepper, sichuan pepper.  Add soy sauce, fish sauce, ketchap manis, and the stock.  Taste for salt and adjust accordingly.  Add whatever veg you want, probably including mushrooms, maybe some seaweed, kale, sliced peppers, a few beansprouts if you have them, but not things that are dense and take ages to cook like chunks of carrot.  Add meat before the veg if you are using it, so that it is fully cooked,  add the cubes of tofu.  Some sliced spring onions and chopped coriander, maybe some thinly sliced red chili, to finish.  Don't let the veg cook for so long that they lose their texture - you need some firm textures alongside the soft tofu and noodles.

Chuck the cooked noodles in a bowl of boiling water to reheat for a minute or so, drain and place in preheated bowls, ladle over the soup, and there you go.  Pretty filling stuff.

You could make extra of the soup base, and freeze it in portions, so that you can throw together a soup like this in half the time.

Would also work as something to take to work for lunch,  if you have access to reheating facilities.

3 hours ago, bickster said:

You were just trying to trick the pesky vegans weren't you

Ssshhh.  They might not notice if we keep quiet.

51 minutes ago, blandy said:

On occasion even Trump's instincts are right

His instincts, as expressed over several years, seemed to be to avoid entanglement in miltary adventurism, and that was compounded by his fear of "paying for" things that others should have been paying for.  His base also seemed to want to get away from endless foreign interventions.

I'm not sure what changed, though his position on Iran has been illogical and disastrous for some time.  There's a lot of talk about "dominionism", a far right Christian belief that apparently infects people like Pompeo, mush as the "rapture" crowd influenced Reagan.  I'm sure Israel plays a part, and Netanyahu has been pressing for war with Iran for ages.  Probably that oily little slug Kushner is wittering in Trump's ear to that effect, too.  But he seemed to be able to resist the more unhinged advisers, like getting rid of Bolton.

There's a suggestion here that it's as superficial and stupid as fear of looking weak, which sounds crazy but I suppose would fit his character.

Quote

...The administration feels compelled to lie about an “imminent” attack because if that isn’t true they don’t have a leg to stand on legally or otherwise for taking such a drastic and dangerous action. If there wasn’t an “imminent” attack in the works, the assassination can’t be spun as a “defensive action” at all, and the president has no authority to initiate hostilities against another state like this. The lack of an “imminent” threat isn’t just a matter of the administration deceiving the public about why they took this action, but it also shows that the attack was both illegal and unjustifiable. The idea that the 2002 Iraq war AUMF somehow covers initiating hostilities against Iran in 2020 is ludicrous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Ryan Costello comments on the administration’s lies:

Add it all up, and you have an administration that ignored Congress while planning an assassination of a foreign general that risks a disastrous war without any plausible argument that doing so was authorized by Congress. This is an administration that has lied over matters big and small, and thinks it can get away with lying Americans into war while repeating the George W. Bush playbook that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hence, the warnings of an imminent terror threat that doesn’t appear to have existed as well as the bizarre lie from Vice President Mike Pence attempting to link Soleimani to the September 11 attacks. And, just like the George W. Bush administration had delusions about what would come after the invasion of Iraq, many members of Trump’s team are apparently deluded about what comes next. As one senior State Department official claimed, they don’t expect additional retaliation from Iran because the U.S. is “speaking in a language the regime understands.”

The decision to assassinate Soleimani appears to have been as abrupt and arbitrary as many other Trump decisions. The Los Angeles Timesreports:

 

One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.

Unexpectedly, Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors.

One reason that the president ordered the attack seems to be the fear of appearing weak:

Trump was also motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone, officials said. Trump was also frustrated that the details of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked weak, the officials said.

The president made a terrible decision that puts more Americans at risk in part because of his own insecurity and vanity, and he ordered the military to commit an act of war against another state without any legal justification. Congress and the public need to make it absolutely clear that we reject war with Iran. The first thing Congress can do is to approve Sen. Kaine’s war powers challenge to the administration. The president has recklessly led the U.S. into an unnecessary conflict, but there is still a chance to halt it before more lives are lost.

On the point about "imminent attack", the claimed justification for this act, Craig Murray has explained where the notion comes from, and what nonsense it is.

Quote

In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence.

Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts and judges, would accept. Including me.

What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal meanings of either “soon” or “about to happen”. An attack may be deemed “imminent”, according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb strike – and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such strikes – because of “intelligence” you are engaged in a plot, when that intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.

I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade. Here it is in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government service (the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli Governments is classified information).

So when Pompeo says attacks by Soleimani were “imminent” he is not using the word in the normal sense in the English language. It is no use asking him what, where or when these “imminent” attacks were planned to be. He is referencing the Bethlehem Doctrine under which you can kill people on the basis of a feeling that they may have been about to do something.

The idea that killing an individual who you have received information is going to attack you, but you do not know when, where or how, can be justified as self-defence, has not gained widespread acceptance – or indeed virtually any acceptance – in legal circles outside the ranks of the most extreme devoted neo-conservatives and zionists. Daniel Bethlehem became the FCO’s Chief Legal Adviser, brought in by Jack Straw, precisely because every single one of the FCO’s existing Legal Advisers believed the Iraq War to be illegal. In 2004, when the House of Commons was considering the legality of the war on Iraq, Bethlehem produced a remarkable paper for consideration which said that it was legal because the courts and existing law were wrong, a defence which has seldom succeeded in court...

8 hours ago, Awol said:

I thought it was just a thread of three Trump tweets? He said the US has identified 52 Iranian targets (one for each hostage taken by them in 1979), to be hit immediately, should there be any retaliation against US assets or people for the drone strike that killed Suleimani. 

I thought that was quite a significant development, even if written in the usual crayon. 

Ah ok, thought you meant the thread as a whole with the various comments.

Yes, it's a bizarre threat, like a child acting out a fantasy of being a tough guy.  It's a pity his bone spurs don't prevent him tweeting these threats.

Is this a voodoo ceremony?

This, however, is a thread which conveys a little more.

14 minutes ago, Awol said:

Well, this is interesting.. Worth reading the entire thread. 

 

Really?  I spent minutes trawling it, and it's the usual gibberish, knee jerks, retailing received opinion and so on.

What have I missed that is worth reading?  Can you link to it specifically, rather than the whole mess?

I don't press it.  Just drain it, cube it, pat dry with kitchen paper, coat with cornflour and fry in a wok in batches, using enough oil to half cover the cubes, about 1cm deep.  Works.

I don't bother seasoning the cornflour if I'm doing the Ottolenghi recipe above - there's so much going on in the sauce, you wouldn't be able to tell if the tofu was seasoned.  I add cumin and coriander and Sichuan pepper and chili to the black peppers before adding to the garlic/ginger in making the sauce.  It's not for those who only like subtle flavours.

In a milder dish, maybe season the cornflour, but give it a go without the pressing.  You want the surface of the cubes to be pretty much dry, but still able to let the cornflour adhere, and then to fry it quickly to form a crust.

49 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Imagine a Labour PM being unavailable for comment, on an extended holiday whilst the US is assassinating people and we leave the EU in a few weeks time.

 

Mustique come back?

Sorry.

2 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

did you coat it in something? Not just season, a good proper coating.

Agree with that.  Ottolenghi does it in cornflour for this recipe, which I can recommend.

Black pepper tofu.

Quote

800g firm, fresh tofu
Cornflour, to dust the tofu
Vegetable oil, for frying
150g butter
12 small shallots (350g), peeled and thinly sliced
8 red chillies, thinly sliced
12 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp chopped ginger
5 tbsp crushed black peppercorns
3 tbsp sweet soy sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
4 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
16 small, thin spring onions, cut into segments 3cm long

Cut the tofu into 3cm x 2cm blocks and toss them in cornflour, shaking off the excess. Pour in enough oil to come 0.5cm up the sides of a large frying pan, and bring up to frying heat. Fry the tofu in batches in the oil, turning the pieces as you go. Once they are golden all around, and have a thin crust, transfer to a paper towel.

Remove the oil and any sediment from the pan and throw in the butter. Once it has melted, add the shallots, chillies, garlic and ginger, and sauté for about 15 minutes on low-medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the contents of the pan are shiny and totally soft. While you wait, crush the peppercorns, using a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder. They should be quite coarse.

When the shallots and chillies are soft, add the soy sauces and the sugar, stir, then stir in the crushed pepper. Warm the tofu in the sauce for about a minute, then add the spring onion and stir through. Serve hot with steamed rice.

We have a veggie moving in with us - looks like I'll be doing lots of veggie dishes.

23 minutes ago, blandy said:

Osama was no protege, nor friend

They were on the same side, for a while, with bin Laden fighting alongside the mujahadeen, and US money and arms being channelled to the mujahadeen via Pakistan, another of those large, covert CIA programmes.

US involvement is not about making the world a safer place.  It is keen on stability where that furthers its interest, and keen on instability and the breakdown of the rule of law where that might benefit the US.  I don't suppose we're disagreeing on that.  But I really don't think the other countries you name come anywhere near the US in the destabilising stakes.