peterms
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Posts posted by peterms
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27 minutes ago, blandy said:
Afghanistan, absolutely no. The US went because it wanted to kick someone after the twin towers The UK later sent a few troops with the statement that (Labour's John Reid" he hoped a shot would not be fired - the aim was support to rebuilding Taliban destroyed schools, Dams, hospitals, an protecting the women and children particularly from the Taliban's horrors. Sure it escalated (unsurprisingly to many) but it was nothing to do with "gas".
The involvement of the US in Afghanistan has for decades been linked with gas interests. The immediate precipitating cause of the invasion was that they had fallen out with their former friend and protege bin Laden, but Afghanistan's importance as a geographically key part of the exploitation of the oil and gas reserves of the wider region has been a central reason for US interest.
This piece, written just after the US attack in 2001, discusses these background issues.
QuoteOil and gas are not the reason the US has attacked Afghanistan, but Afghanistan has long had a key place in US plans to secure control of the vast but landlocked oil and gas reserves of Central Asia. Though the primary US motivation is to destroy Osama bin Laden’s sanctuary in Afghanistan, another, rather more pecuniary objective is also on the agenda, particularly in the search for an alternative government in Kabul. With the Taliban out of Kabul and the search for a new Afghan government on center stage, one criterion on Washington’s mind will be how best to make Afghanistan safe for a couple of billion-dollar pipeline investments.
In the case of the great natural gas and oil fields of Turkmenistan, immediately north of Afghanistan, the US government has for a decade strongly supported plans by US-led business groups for both an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan to the Arabian sea via Afghanistan and a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. Such pipelines would serve important US interests in a number of ways:
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Drawing the Central Asian oil states away from the Russian sphere of influence and establishing the foundation for a strong US position
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Thwarting the development of Iranian regional influence by limiting Turkmenistan-Iranian gas links and thwarting a plan for a Turkmenistan-Iran oil pipeline to the Arabian Sea.
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Diversify US sources of oil and gas, and, by increasing production sources, help keep prices low
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Benefiting US oil and construction companies with growing interests in the region
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Providing a basis for much-needed economic prosperity in the region, which might provide a basis for political stability.
For much of the 1990s the United States supported the Taliban’s rise to power, both by encouraging the involvement of US oil companies, and by implicitly tolerating Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two of its key regional allies, in their direct financial and military support for the Taliban. The Taliban, which is committed to a particularly primitive vision of Sunni Islam, had the added advantage for the US of being deeply hostile to Shia Muslims in neighboring Iran (as well as within Afghanistan).
A crucial condition for building the pipelines is political stability in Afghanistan, and for a time the US believed the Taliban could provide just that. Had it not been for the Taliban’s apparent tolerance of the former US-supported Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban’s highly visible extremely repressive attitude to women and other social issues, the US would most likely have continued its support for the Taliban, and the construction of the pipelines would have got underway in the late 90s. Certainly Iran believed that the US was behind Pakistani and Saudi support for the Taliban as part of a long-term plan to contain Iran. But as so often before, US foreign policy based on the principle of "my enemy’s enemy is my friend" helped generate the conditions that allowed the New York and Washington atrocities to be conceived.
The key to Central Asian politics is economic development in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, all of which are amongst the poorest parts of the former Soviet Union. Most are authoritarian dictatorships of the most dismal kind. For the past ten years the US has been wooing the governments of these countries, and opening the doors for profitable investment by US companies.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan make up the eastern side of the Caspian Sea Basin, beneath which lie oil reserves to rival those of Saudi Arabia and the world’s richest reserves of natural gas. If you read the trade newspapers and websites of the world oil industry, words like "fabulous", "huge", "enormous" flow across the pages describing the Caspian Sea Basin gas and oil fields. But more importantly, these words go together with "undeveloped", "isolated" and "politically unstable". There are billions of dollars to be made there, but the possibility of realizing these fabulous profits hinges on one crucial issue: how is the gas and oil to get to its potential markets? While the countries of Central Asia may be floating on a sea of hydrocarbon, they are far from both actual seas and centres of industry. – and deep in the heart of Islam...
The reference to supporting the Taliban as a way to contain Iran is also interesting, in view of the more recent way that Isis has been at times tolerated or supported as another threat to and drain on Iran.
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4 hours ago, blandy said:
Iran is in breach of various money laundering (to sponsor terrorism) laws and obligations, but there's no "legitimate" action against the Iranians responsible.
It's a bit of a Wild West. Like @Awol said much earlier, the bloke's a serious force behind hundreds of deaths, a ringleader and he got targetted as a consequence of Iran pushing further, of US (and Trump) motives, all of which are dishonourable.
A complex post. Most of what you say is true. The sentiments in the bit I quote, I reject.
The money laundering rules are not about money laundering, which the US and others are ok with, but about punishing Iran for not falling into line with the US.
The dead man apparently did more than the whole US armed forces to counter Isis.
This seems like a very stupid move.
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47 minutes ago, Xela said:
The guy shouldn't have been sacked for being vegan.
He wasn't. He was sacked for communicating details of the pension scheme investment choices, as I understand it. I don't know why that should be confidential, or disclosure a disciplinary matter. I think no decision has been reached yet on whether the dismissal was lawful.
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2 minutes ago, Davkaus said:
Yup, and the one thing I'm wary of is the crazy bastards coming out of the woodwork and trying to push the limits of 'reasonable' making us all look bad.
I'm not sure it makes anyone look bad. If you don't have some claims that are found to be unreasonable, you never really define what the boundary is between reasonable and not reasonable. It's only putting forward an argument, to test it. If the person making the claim seems to have an exaggerated sense of entitlement, I can see people resenting that, but just making a case for something shouldn't be resented.
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Just now, Stevo985 said:
I think that sounds perfectly fair enough to me.
Yes. The examples that arise in the next few months will perhaps try to establish where things go beyond what is fair and reasonable, and try to draw a line of some kind.
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21 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:
Nobody is saying they should have the right to impose their lifestyle choices on you. Just that they shouldn’t be treated differently for having that lifestyle choice.
But the impact of deciding that veganism (or rather ethical veganism, which is a different and far less widespread belief) falls under equalities legislation is in part tgat employers should make reasonable adjustments; in other words, that someone holdimg that belief should be treated differently, in some respects and where it relates to that belief.
As an example, I would think that someone could request that the employer provide them with a different seat if the existing office furniture contains leather, perhaps.
That's not imposing beliefs on others in any strong sense, but it is about requiring them where practicable to make adjustments to arrangements, behaviour, design and so on where it seems reasonable and proportionate to do so.
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5 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:
If Soleimani is carrying out terrorist attacks, he's a rogue agent who should be picked up and arrested; if (as clearly seems to be the case here) he's an agent of Iranian foreign policy then it should be dealt with at a state level - diplomacy, sanction, war - that sort of thing.
On that point:
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1 hour ago, Davkaus said:
As with all of these kind of protections, it's subject to reasonable accommodations
It will be interesting to see what kind of adjustments are considered reasonable. In the case of an employer with a works canteen, for example, it would be reasonable to offer vegan dishes. Would that extend to having a wholly separate food prep area to elimiinate any possibility of vegan dishes being prepared where meat had been prepared? Cost and practicality would come into play. For employers with no canteen but an area where staff can heat up and eat their own food, is it reasonable to create a separate vegan area?
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3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:
I think the fairest thing would be to let the Iranians have a free go at assassinating Trump and then calling it a draw.
Thing is, Trump may be a sad, comic and incompetent figure, but at least his gut instinct is against ever more military involvement, even if he doesn't manage to rein in all the advisers going the other way. I wonder for example what the response to last year's faked CW incident in Douma would have been if the US president had similar instincts to the hawks - probably a lot worse.
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4 minutes ago, snowychap said:
Hmm. I'm not sure we ought to rely upon the immediate response of Dominic Raab as an indication of where the Government might be in a week or a month or more (I don't think we ought to rely upon the immediate response of the Prime Minister, either).
You do him a disservice. Why, only months ago he demonstrated his geopolitical awareness by noting that a lot of goods pass through the port of Dover. We have much to learn from him.
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It's a very strange move by the US, and it seems to be a direct result of realising their strategic mistake in killing Iraqis and calling them "an Iranian-backed militia". That move led not only to the storming of the embassy (which the US and compliant media are trying to claim was inspired and guided by Iran), but also reconsideration by the Iraqi parliament of the very presence of US forces in Iraq.
Elijah Magnier wrote about this here, just hours before Soleimani was murdered.
Quote...On 27th December 2019, several rockets were fired from unidentified attackers against the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, north of Iraq. In this base, as in many others, Iraqi and US military are present on the same ground and within the same walls, even if they have different command and control HQs. Two Iraqi policemen and one American contractor were killed and 2 Iraqi Army officers and four US contractors were wounded.
The following day, Defence Secretary Mark Esper called the Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister to inform him of “his decision to bomb Kataeb Hezbollah bases in Iraq”. Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper to meet face-to-face, and told his interlocutor that this would be dangerous for Iraq: he rejected the US decision. Esper responded that he was “not calling to negotiate but to inform about a decision that has already been taken”. Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper if the US has “proof against Kataeb Hezbollah to share so Iraq can arrest those responsible for the attack on K1”. No response: Esper told Abdel Mahdi that the US was “well-informed” and that the attack would take place “in a few hours”.
In less than half an hour, US jets bombed five Iraqi security forces’ positions deployed along the Iraqi-Syrian borders, in the zone of Akashat, 538 kilometres from the K1 military base (that had been bombed by perpetrators still unknown!). The US announced the attack but omitted the fact that in these positions there were not only Kataeb Hezbollah but also Iraqi Army and Federal Police officers. Most victims of the US attack were Iraqi army and police officers. Only 9 officers of Kataeb Hezbollah – who joined the Iraqi Security Forces in 2017 – were killed. These five positions had the task of intercepting and hunting down ISIS and preventing the group’s militants from crossing the borders from the Anbar desert. The closest city to these bombed positions is al-Qaem, 150 km away.
What is the outcome of the US bombing of the Iraqi security forces?
Iran had been struggling to achieve consensus among various Iraqi political parties. In Baghdad, it had been impossible to unite them to select a new Prime Minister following the resignation of Adel Abdel Mahdi. Political parties, above all groups representing the Shia majority, were divided amongst themselves and incapable of selecting a suitable candidate. Protestors were occupying the streets and the Hashd al-Shaabi flag was not tolerated in Baghdad square.
The US bombing of the Iraqi security forces’ positions fell as manna to Iran. Secretaries Pompeo and Esper’s actions were in perfect harmony with the goals of the IRGC-Quds brigade commander Qassem Soleimani. The two US officials broke the Iraqi political stalemate and diverted the country’s attention towards the US embassy and the break-in of protestors to contest the US bombing of Iraqi security forces.
Members of Hashd al-Shaabi and other Iraqi forces units, along with families and friends of the 79 (killed and wounded) victims demonstrated outside the US embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Flags of Hashd al-Shaabi were flying over the entrance of the US embassy. The withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq became the priority of the Iraqi parliament, and even of Moqtada al-Sadr.
The US paid the price of thousands of killed and wounded and trillions of dollars to maintain a zone of influence, military bases and a friendly government in Iraq, but they have failed to achieve these objectives. Irresponsible and erroneous analysis of the situation in Iraq and its dynamics has proved that its authors are detached and isolated from that reality.
The US may end up being pushed out of Iraq and Syria. It may move to Kurdistan. But if the parliament fails to reach an agreement over its presence in Iraq, US forces will no longer be in a friendly environment and may be targeted by various Iraqi groups, bringing back memories of 2005.
One single rushed decision emanating from inexperienced US policymakers, evidently following the advice of think tanks, has dealt the US a setback in the region. Was the advice of neocon think-tank analysts shaped by incompetence, or simply by their agenda? They are indeed separated by a great distance from realities on the ground in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, and US policymakers are clearly not getting sound advice on the region.
All this plays into the hands of Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, whose only need is to capitalize on American mistakes in the Middle East. The US is making Iran stronger, demonstrating the truth of Sayyed Ali Khamenei’s comment: “Thank God our enemies are imbeciles”.
Presumably the more deranged policy advisers in the US are hoping to provoke Iran into a reaction which can be met with a major escalation by the US, in the hope of somehow retrieving the situation by moving to all-out conflict.
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10 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:
It tastes like anal seepage in whatever form you cook it.
I'm just wondering how you, er...no, forget it.
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6 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:
I don't have huge issues with meatless Mondays, but why can't we have celeri free days? Like all days. Shit tastes like an industrial solvent and that's being nice. Hate it. Hate it. And I'm inclined to eat anything so that's saying something.
Are you talking about raw celery, which I see no reason ever to eat except in a post-apocalypse scenario?
Finely diced and simmered in good oil with onion and carrot, or with onion and green pepper for those of a Creole persuasion, it's a great base for many dishes.
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Got a ham half price, which seemed about right compared to the full price. Good for lots of things. Seems like an end-of-christmas thing.
First, boiled in water. Place in big pan in cold water, bring to the boil, as soon as it's boiling discard all the water and replace with fresh cold water (to get rid of the excess salt from the curing). Bring to the boil again, add an onion, carrot, celery, couple of bay leaves, simmer gently for an hour or two, skimming and removing any scum.
Remove the ham and leave to cool, keep the stock for soup, maybe lentil, or pea and ham. It makes great soup.
I then baked it later, with a glaze made with brown sugar, date syrup, red wine vinegar, and some freshly ground spices: star anise, cumin, coriander, cardamom, cloves, chili. No salt. Put some glaze on, basted every few minutes with a little more - the aim was to have a hint at the edges of the ham, not be drenched in it. Baked for about an hour in a medium oven, about 170.
Made a Cumberland sauce: ginger (chopped fresh, or powdered), mustard powder, lemon and orange juice and their rinds in julienne strips, redcurrant jelly, port, all simmered until delicious.
Served with homemade chips, and cabbage sauteed in olive oil and a little lemon juice.
Lots left over, could be sandwiches, croquettes, served with egg and chips, whatever.
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On 31/12/2019 at 08:00, LondonLax said:
I’ve clicked on the Twitter threads and the posters have reposted the deleted tweets, the reposts are able to be read (one was just the guy asking for money).
If it’s an attempt to suppress the posters message it has not worked.
It's algorithms. They commented last year, after some people complained about being "shadow banned", here.
QuoteWe do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
We do rank tweets and search results. We do this because Twitter is most useful when it’s immediately relevant. These ranking models take many signals into consideration to best organize tweets for timely relevance. We must also address bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or detract from healthy conversation.
As a specific example, if a search result has 30,000 tweets, here’s what we take into consideration when ranking:
- Tweets from people you’re interested in should be ranked highly
- Tweets that are popular are likely to be interesting and should be higher ranked
- Tweets from bad-faith actors who intend to manipulate or divide the conversation should be ranked lower
They do also intervene with real people making judgements, in response to requests to ban something. This seems very prolific, oddly, in its use against gender-critical feminists and in support of trans rights activists. I'm sure the propaganda operatives of the intelligence services are not shy in requesting some things are removed, given the effort they put into trying to control what we hear about, so I suppose that both algorithms and personal judgement come into play to some extent. Having someone categorised as a "bad faith actor" would be an obvious point of leverage for propagandists. (You may also be aware that Facebook censor on political grounds, and have used the very right-wing Atlantic Council to form judgements on what should be censored).
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28 minutes ago, bickster said:
I see there's plenty of tinfoil left over from the Turkey, I'll not bother to help you understand what going on in future
Leaving aside the silly digs, which I shall try not to respond to:
What I can see is that a very large proportion of tweets about the specific issue of the involvement of senior OPCW staff in suppressing evidence are currently invisible, and it seems a small proportion of other tweets are also invisible.
I suppose any technical issue would not differentiate between tweets according to type of content, ie political or apolitical. I'm sure that I see more political ones than tweets about cats or hockey or cake, because of who I follow. I do understand that this means that my twitter experience is not a representative cross-section of the whole of twitter. And I do see that a very large proportion of tweets about the OPCW suppression of evidence have gone missing, like a third to a half of some threads. If this proportion is replicated across twitter, then that will be a truly massive amount.
Is that what has happened, do you think?
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42 minutes ago, bickster said:
I doubt it, it's been going on all day, some people can see them btw, others can't. They are still there. Even the bloke that wrote one of the tweets you posted believes them if that makes you feel better
I don't see it happening on all sorts of random threads I've clicked on.
Just a coincidence, I expect.
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7 minutes ago, bickster said:
@petermsit's a glitch, it is not twitter censoring anything
It is happening right across the twittersphere. Even my taxi accounts are affected, unavailable posts all over the place
I imagine they will all be restored very soon, in that case.
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And yet more censorship of information about this.
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Another account being censored. Someone really doesn't want this stuff getting attention.
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...and now Twitter is censoring some tweets about all this.
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On 15/05/2019 at 17:59, blandy said:
So Yes, there is fog. No one comes out of it well. Like I said earlier - it all makes it impossible to find the actual truth for the likes of us.
Returning to this issue of the supposed Douma chemical weapons attack, some of the fog is lifting, with the emergence of whistleblowers and leaked documents.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has written a few things on this, including here.
Quote...Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma, however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether chlorine had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine. This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named Sébastien Braha. It would be up to them to clean up the Douma situation.
The situation Braha inherited from Fairweather was unenviable. According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine cannisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence. Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.
Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets, and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine cannisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report. Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine cannisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.
The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations. Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”
Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.” The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.” According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.
Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence. The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves. To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.
This astonishing story, that a supposedly independent and impartial weapons inspectorate has apparently falsified evidence at the behest of the US in order to justify escalating military action against Syria, has received remarkably little coverage. Peter Hitchens has written several things, some of which have been covered by the Mail on Sunday. Newsweek suppressed a report by one of its staff and threatened him with legal action if he tried to run the story. The BBC's correspondent in the Hague, supposedly covering OPCW, doesn't seem to have written about it, though she has managed to post several pictures of dogs.
There is a summary of coverage here, including a link to the leaked internal documents from the OPCW which Wikileaks published, including one which instructed the removal of a report from the internal information system which undermined the OPCW report, including removing traces that the document ever existed.
QuoteUpdate 27 December 2019 Wikileaks’ fourth release of leaked documents reveals more evidence of OPCW cover-up of its inspectors’ real findings.
Update 15 December 2019. Wikileaks’ third release of documents details malpractice in OPCW Douma reporting.
Update 10 December 2019. The most recent coverage has been rather indirect: first there was the tweeted announcement by Newsweek journalist, Tareq Haddad, of his resigning because his report on the scandal was spiked (a story in itself covered by Fox News and Consortium News). Then there was the mention of it in Monica Maggioni’s interview with the Syrian president for the Italian state broadcaster RAI that then did not get shown in Italy and was broadcast on Syrian TV instead (and these facts were reported by Associated Press and Al Jazeera).
Update 1 December 2019, OPCW Conference closes with consensus on other issues but with Syria reporting regarded as unfinished business by Non-Aligned States along with Russia and China. Meanwhile, Peter Hitchens meets whistleblower and intimates that there is much more is to come.
Update 26 November 2019. On the eve of the OPCW’s 24th Conference of States Parties, Wikileaks released an email revealing claims of what Peter Hitchens, writing in the Mail on Sunday, called a ‘sexed up dossier’. On the first day of the conference, the whistleblower revelations were referred to by the OPCW director general only to downplay their significance, a line uncritically followed by Reuters, AFP, CBS News, The Guardian, etc. In the evening, however, the story received prominent coverage from American TV on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
The new leak reinforced the message of the earlier whistleblower revelations that this post began by noting:
On 23 October 2019, the Courage Foundation and Wikileaks released a statement arising from a panel meeting with the OPCW whistleblower on irregular practices in the OPCW’s investigation of alleged chemical attack in Douma, on 7 April 2018. This was signed by seven figures of international standing, including the OPCW’s first director general, José Bustani.
Within hours of its release, this statement was reported in La Repubblica (Italy) and NachDenkSeiten (Germany), but no mainstream outlet in English-speaking countries mentioned it on the day. Meanwhile, though, alternative and non-Western outlets have been alive with discussion of the statement and its implications, as have social media.
This post will keep a note of significant media comment on the revelations and the issues they give rise to, being updated as and when items appear.
Links to coverage (most recent first)
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Hitchens and others have been trying to get some coverage of this by mainstream outlets like the Guardian and BBC. There was a brief interview with Jonathan Steele on the BBC World Service, but for the most part, there has been a mainstream media blackout of this issue.
Clearly the reason is not that it isn't newsworthy. Presumably they have been asked to let the story drop, in the hope that as few people hear about it as possible.
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1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:
Think Dignitas would be more appropriate.
But Jolyon Maugham in his wife's kimono, with his baseball bat, would be more spectacular.
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Israel, Palestine and Iran
in Off Topic
Posted
Also see the US "Silk Road Strategy Act", first passed in 1999 - this extract is from the 2006 revision.
It sets out clearly that the US sees the energy resources of the region as vital to US interests, and that involvement in countries in the region, and the maintenance of military bases, is required to pursue US energy interests.