BREAKING: NZ must be clear – we will not go to war with Trump against Iran

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
94
7793

 

All morning there was this sudden building drum beat for war by America against Iran and it started booming in our social media feeds…

…this sudden declaration to pre-emptively strike was immediately followed by Right Wing pundits in America being leaked war propaganda…

…and then suddenly, the astounding announcement that Trump had ordered an assassination drone strike against Iran’s Gen. Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds force at Baghdad’s international airport…

Pentagon says US airstrike killed powerful Iranian general, at direction of President Trump

The Pentagon says the United States military has killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, at the direction of US President Donald Trump.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

An airstrike killed Soleimani, architect of Iran’s regional security apparatus, at Baghdad’s international airport Friday, Iranian state television and three Iraqi officials said, an attack that’s expected to draw severe Iranian retaliation against Israel and American interests.

The Defense Department said Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the US Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.

Jesus fucking wept! Trump has just launched action that could be the start of war and in a twist of fate, Trump himself actually foreshadowed this ver action in a tweet he made in 2011…

…I can not shake my head enough in disbelief at this fucking madness!

Let’s be clear as New Zealander’s – if Trump is insane enough to start war with Iran WE DO NOT GET INVOLVED!!!

Fuck being an ally to a sociopath and fuck sending any military aid to this utter insanity!

Trump has started something here with this assassination that could be as all encompassing as September 11th.

Look, I have real problems with Iran-it’s a totalitarian Theocracy employing a ruthless & mutated version of Islam & their human rights record is appalling-BUT that Theocracy exists only because of a 1953 CIA coup & Trump’s assassination only creates war no peace

This is madness.

As if the Planet didn’t have enough to deal with from the climate crisis, and while most of the educated world is desperately trying to stamp out fires, Trump is actively lighting one and pouring petrol on it.

This will end in disaster.

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94 COMMENTS

  2. Iran has cut all planned tv broadcasts and is just showing photos of the General accompanied by prayers. Raw Story Link Here

    One of the general’s last communications in response to Trump’s threats was, “If you begin war, we will end it”. Link here

    Chris Hayes covers it here as “Hugely consequential”

    Headlined on Aljazeera and on Huffington Post

    From the US, “We’re back to preemptive wars now! Dick Cheney might as well be president.” CommonDreams link

  3. The planners have had this waiting for 20 years now…and they have just the right muppet with just the right set of problems at home to get it started…And it nicely sets up a big items to suck news focus away from global warming for a while doesn’t it? A protracted war is just the ticket isn’t it? Trump can do what he wants and get in again. Boris can sneak his shitf*ckery through…Russia will have harden itself in readiness…and of course the rest of the planet will just f*cking burn…What we need right now is much much less of America

    • What we need right now is much much less of America, you are so right Wade Bishop. Does anybody believe things would be any different with that other murderous slag in charge? Reminds me of John Pilger interviewing an ex cia buffoon, who stated in no uncertain terms that muricans were exceptional and all the little people of the world should just get used to doing what murrica tells them to. Imagine if Iran had assassinated that fat heap of shite pompeo, we would all be expected to go in to mourning, and traipse along behind while the warmongers invaded another country. Maybe somebody can tell me what gives these murderous scumbags the idea that they have the right to just go around the planet killing people??? Surely gives a new meaning to the word terrorist!!!
      posted 08.45pm 3/1/20

  4. Martyn Bradbury you’re obviously a hater and the use of foul language to get your point across is offensive. How your articles get published surprises me. The problem with the Middle East is religion and it will always be the case. Now it’s Muslim fighting Muslim, Muslim fighting Christians and it will never end. America should stay out of it and seal the borders to let them sort it out themselves and take care of their own refugees. History takes it back further than the Crusades which were incidentally to take back lands that were taken by Islam armies who conquered by far worse means than the so-called Christian Crusaders. We only need to look at the fanaticism of jihadists to understand what I say.

    • You have a limited view of history, if the Islamic nations had not distracted the Roman powers we would all be Catholic & still riding horses as the fastest means of transport. Your comment asking how Martyn gets his articles published tells us all we need to know about you although you should have read the example in the article about the CIA in 1953 as one of many USA interventions in the Middle East which have made that area the disaster zone it is today.

    • The Jihadis were helped and created by the west. The Country that exports this virulent Islamic religious hatred was created by Britain fighting the Ottoman empire after WW1 originally called Hijaz now named after a raping murdering thieving desert dwelling family called Al Saud whom had no real royalty roots until the west stepped in. Suck it up buttercup and try getting a bit more informed on historic facts before spewing your opinion.

    • Gil T Dave – Martyn Bradbury once wrote more than 60 odd words without a comma too – an old woman in Nelson counted them all up with her knitting needle. The world stopped. But at least he doesn’t say cunt – or that other dreadful c-word – or the other f-word – nor write anything approaching the sweeping ignorance and the cringing narcissism of your final sentence – nor does he probably have as much on his conscience as your nom de guerre suggests that you have.

    • The only honest response on the whole page. Al leftists use foul language or resort to physical violence to make their unsubstantial points. The Dems took out Bin Laden so the lefties applauded it. Their moral compass is broken.

      • “The Dems took out Bin Laden so the lefties applauded it”

        If you believe that. Evidence is another matter.

  5. Which other country can get away with murdering people in such a gruesome way and start boasting about it. They are barbaric and utterly uncivilised. They hate competition and have a deep desire to be loved. Am not a psychiatrist but believe if such traits were in a person, they’d soon be locked up to protect the public, or the world in case of Trumpolino.

    • Follow the Middle East policies of the US administrations of past years, it shows, they have no good understanding of the peoples and cultures there, whether it involves religion, other cultural aspects, or the needs of the people living their day to day lives.

      When you have one like Pompejo in charge, then you know that nothing good will come out of it.

      They think they can play the gun swinging Cowboy wherever they go, the Yanks of that type, and Trump proves he is actually one of the worst, worse than the Bushes were as presidents, being such a careless, idiotic President.

      That man may have had a dark side to him, but he does not seem to be one like Bin Laden or others they executed before.

      This means his death will have to be avenged, it is a matter of pride and dignity, a duty almost.

      So an escalation in an area that is already highly explosive. It is MADNESS.

      • Marc – ” Follow the Middle East policies of the US administrations of past years, it shows, they have no good understanding of the peoples and cultures there, whether it involves religion, other cultural aspects, or the needs of the people living their day to day lives.”

        Agree 100% ,but the USA has never seen the need to understand; imperialists don’t, they have their own agendas.

        And of course we should not be involved in another of America’s wars, but we have already made it crystal clear to the entire Muslim world that we are best friends with the great Satan, that our message to the US of A is, “Whither goest tho, I goest too.”

        Why, we even changed our employment laws to disadvantage our own Kiwi workers in favour of rich Hollywood moguls.

        Why, Wellington even had a Mayor who wanted to plaster a bloody great sign near the airport, saying, “Wellywood”, such is the enchantment of money-grubbing neolibs with cloud-cuckoo land, but its citizens had more sense, and better taste than she did.

        Here we are, trying to right the wrongs which we inflicted upon innocent peasants in Afghanistan, and accept that NZ’ers may be war criminals, and we do not need another Nat leader shrieking in Parliament like a gin-soused washerwoman to, “Get some guts.”

        But it would be much worse if there were no need for the shriek because yet another NZ star-struck craven NZ govt, and hungry military, have said, “Let’s do this.”

        Let’s not. We’re already a target, and we must hope and pray that innocent civilian targets in Iran and Iraq, are not being set on a path of suffering at the hands of our dubious friends.

        How many more beautiful children’s lives do we have to witness being turned into living hellish nightmares ?

        How many avaricious contractors are waiting in the wings for the fortunes to be made in the aftermath? Yes, it is madness, and a terrible omen for 2020.

        • And the stealing of resources, use of mercenaries and dictating lies to the Kiwi public.
          NZ as a five eyes slut gives away information that works against our sovereignty.

        • “How many more beautiful children’s lives do we have to witness being turned into living hellish nightmares ?”

          An Eyewitness to the Horrors of the US ‘Forever Wars’ Speaks out

          Excerpts:
          “In 2010, two U.S. Veterans for Peace, Ann Wright and Mike Ferner, joined me in Kabul. We visited one of the city’s largest refugee camps. People faced appalling conditions. Over a dozen, including infants, had frozen to death, their families unable to purchase fuel or adequate blankets. When the rain, sleet and snow came, the tents and huts become mired in mud. Earlier, I had met with a young girl there whose arm had been cut off, her uncle told me, by a U.S. drone attack. Her brother, whose spine was injured, huddled under a blanket, inside their tent, visibly shaking.

          “Opposite the sprawling refugee camp is a huge U.S. military base. Ann and Mike felt outraged over the terrible contrast between the Afghan refugee camp with a soaring population of people displaced by war, and the U.S. base housing military personnel who had ample supplies of food, water, and fuel.”
          ————————-

          “The recently released “Afghanistan Papers” criticize U.S. military and elected officials for misleading the U.S. public by covering up disgraceful military failures in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials were quick to dismiss the critiques, assuring an easily distracted U.S. public that the documents won’t impact U.S. military and foreign policy. Two days later, UNICEF reported that more than 600 Afghan children had died in 2019, because of direct attacks in the war. From 2009 through 2018, almost 6,500 children lost their lives in this war.

          “Addressing the U.S. Senate and Congress during a visit to Washington, D.C., Pope Francis voiced a simple, conscientious question. “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” Answering his own question, he said: “the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

          • The dead children may be the fortunate ones, Kheala.

            Expecting a country as devoid of social conscience as New Zealand to care about the children whom we help to maim and cripple out of sight, is expecting our power-mongers to behave like the honest upright men which they do not know how to be.

            Reckon you could find many Kiwis as passionate about the quality of their kids’ crappy schools as about the All Blacks winning ?

            The step from there, to other people’s suffering children in faraway countries, is a chasm over hell – which is where everyone who colludes in, or ignores, the harming of children, deserves to go.

            There’s a few politicians in the NZ Parliament, I’d rank as lacking the genes which are supposed to differentiate humans from other animals – females, unfortunately.

    • Ahmed Asgher asks “Which other country can get away with murdering people in such a gruesome way and start boasting about it”

      Consider;
      Try the representatives of the Islamic state; – these terrorists called ISIS who graphically showed constantly how they enjoy the cruel gruesome way they line their bended prisoners in orange overallls and crop their heads off in front of the global media in shock, – remember this? https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/isis

  6. I told you so, this will cause immense anger within Iran’s establishment and also many of its people, the commander executed was held in somewhat high regard there, eventhough me may have been a dubious character.

    Joe Biden put it right in his tweet, saying Trump just threw a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, or something to that effect.

    Prepare for a wider Middle East war, that will turn the Persian Gulf into red, from the blood of the tens of thousands that may die during a long combat, reaching further than Iraq and Iran, all over the Mid East.

    I feared all along, that Trump would do a stupid thing like this one day, perhaps even start WW3.

    Iran is with its back in a corner, facing boycotts, embargoes and so forth, in Lebanon its ally Hezbollah also face challenges, from more urban liberal, pro western citizens and protesters, who demonstrated for weeks.

    For all Shiites in those places, also other places, a war would rally the majority behind them, and would save the ones in power, perhaps, or else their heads will roll anyway, should the US have its way.

    Call Russia and China onto the stage, and watch what they may do, Iran has relatively good ties with both, also supplies a lot of petroleum to China.

    A ‘Happy New Year’, yeah right.

    Prepare for petrol and gas prices to hit the roof, great for Kiwis who love their petrol driven cars, great for the local and global economy, Iran may get around to block the Strait of Hormuz, perhaps also the Red Sea oil tanker traffic.

    • The assassination and reaction to it were convenient excuses for pre-planed war and annexation of vast resources.

  9. Gil T Dave is adopting the USA way of including a middle initial to individualise his or her name. I don’t know why as the USA people can’t find enough individuals able to think outside their foetid square. The USA is a rogue state.

    This other person blames it all on religion. So do I. The USA people spend too much time worshipping with televangelists to actually think about the New Testament messages that should be paramount in a modern state. We have to get away from this USA country that elects someone who behaves like a fairground spruiker – or a tele-religion host. I remember Jerry Falwell who was a fine example of a moving mouth. I see that he had his church in…Lynchburg, Virginia. You couldn’t make this up! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell#Apocalyptic_beliefs

    Christopher Hitchens’ opinion on Falwell was at the bottom of the scale. Falwell is now dead, (and replaced by his son at the university his father founded. Note he supports Trump which shows the close connection of the USA voting public and loud-mouth rabble-rousers.)
    [He deemed it] “extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the ‘faith-based.'” Hitchens also mentioned that, despite his support for Israel, (ie “Falwell’s alignment with “the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers”), Falwell “kept saying to his own crowd, yes, you have got to like the Jews, because they can make more money in 10 minutes than you can make in a lifetime”. Appearing on CNN a day after Falwell’s death, Hitchens said, “The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called ‘reverend’.”
    Demented is a word that will crop up a lot from now on. We will show how far along that path we are if we agree to participate in this war. Remember that Pres. Bush in 2001 declared perpetual war, and the USA keeps quantitative easing on defence – now
    2011 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/how-perpetual-war-became-us-ideology/238600/
    2016 https://theweek.com/articles/617673/how-america-waged-eternal-war-middle-east

    Defence budget :
    The approved 2019 Department of Defense discretionary budget is $686.1 billion. It has also been described as “$617 billion for the base budget and another $69 billion for war funding.”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

    And here’s a figure I plucked out of a google page: The FY 2020 U.S. federal budget proposal was $4.746 trillion, with an estimated …
    https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789

    • With due respect Greywarbler, you may be attributing an unwarranted dimension to Gil T Dave and its middle initial.

      I’m no Sigmund Freud – nor, worse luck, Jung – but this Dave is Guilty Dave, clever for making it thru’ fourth form at Dipton District High School, and counting on being the next Nat candidate for Southland, where the principle requirement is to be a short, thick dipstick who thinks that hubris is an island in the Aegean, and that teenage acne endows one with empathy for universal suffering.

  10. If it is valid for the leader of one country to say ‘They were planning evil acts against us so we went in and killed some of their leaders,’ is it valid for another country to say (and do) the same thing?

    If there is a war will the loudest supporters of Trump, those who see him as the great leader, race to line up to sign up to go and fight? Or will they trip over their bone spurs?

  12. US assassinates top Iranian general as 4,000 troops readied for Iraq intervention
    By Bill Van Auken
    3 January 2020

    The targeted assassination of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad’s international airport early Friday morning has sharply intensified the spiraling conflict between the US and Iran, placing the outbreak of a catastrophic new war in the Middle East on a hair trigger. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/03/iraq-j03.html

  13. The intercept, Bellingcat… they bang the drums of war from the controlled left.
    What do CIA partner Pierre Omidyar’s known assets in New Zealand have to say, ActionStation and the Workshop, and apparently to some extent Stuff?

  14. Shocking.

    What is the international human rights doing about the rise in political assassinations that is now common with no trial for the accused, often other civilians killed during the assassinations (including children) which is cold blooded murder and inflaming tensions in the world.

    Even worse, the government manufacture and spin of fake intelligence reports, aka Blair harassing David Kelly to his death because he did not agree Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify the unprovoked attack on Iraq by Britain and the US (and Kelly “the expert” was proved correct as no WMD were found after the invasion of Iraq, but too late for him).

    Now the fake report of chemical weapons,

    The OPCW and Douma: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Accused of Evidence-Tampering by Its Own Inspectors

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/15/the-opcw-and-douma-chemical-weapons-watchdog-accused-of-evidence-tampering-by-its-own-inspectors/

    We have many people such as Edward Snowdon, Julian Assange who are whistleblowers who are now considered criminals for exposing the truth and corruption and misuse of power at government level.

    What message is sending?

    AKA Keep your head down and don’t report corruption from the political class because you will be relentlessly pursued to your eventual death by the corrupt who get away with their crimes?

    Report the Panama papers, car bomb to the journalist in Panama.

    Jamal Khashoggi, tortured in an embassy before being murdered.

    Bad time in history to report the truth. No wonder cat stories in the news is popular, those who report the truth don’t seem to live long.

  15. Remember 1941? – USA was sitting outside of the second world war while Britian was fighting for its life against the worst tyrant known to our world then.

    The US got widely critisised refusing to join the ‘Allied’ effort to overthorw the Nazi warmongering machine and Hitler.

    So now US is trying to cull the worst 21st century tyrant and you critisise them for trying to shrten the conflict???

    Unbelievale!!

    US are just showing headership.

  16. Why can’t Skynet take over already and end this insanity?
    The difference between wiping us all out, and the rather more selective killing of innocents that geopolitical wars bring, is that in the former scenario at least the bad guys get their just desserts.

  17. ” The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the United States’ shocking decision to kill Iran’s top general in a drone strike at Baghdad’s airport on Friday, triggering warnings of a “dangerous escalation” in the region.

    The targeted assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, is a sinister trap meant to push Iran into retaliation, that would then prompt Trump to escalate the situation into a far larger conflict between the United States and Iran. ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HdmcoRe8MU

    • Thank you for that link jay11 very informative. I have watched Alex and Alexander on numerous occasions on Crosstalk, but never got around to the Duran.

  18. This murder is symptomatic of a sooky, floundering president about to be impeached and whose wife shows no interest in him. If the US was serious about stopping terrorism in our world they would start carpet bombing war monger sociopaths such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, Rice, Obama, and finally saving the biggest baddest drone bomb for the dumbest fuck of the lot, Trump himself. Time for the world to turn on these genocidal bullies.

    • Not sure about the first sentence Popeye as i don’t know the family personally, but could not agree more with the rest of your reply.
      “If the US was serious about stopping terrorism in our world they would start carpet bombing war monger sociopaths such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, Rice, Obama, and finally saving the biggest baddest drone bomb for the dumbest fuck of the lot, Trump himself. Time for the world to turn on these genocidal bullies”. Oh just a thought, you could include killary in that list, and i don’t think i would be holding my breath on the impeachment front.

      • My god, how did I leave that family dynasty out. Bill, who molested a girl with a cigar in the Whitehouse, and his wife who lost the presidency to a conman gameshow host. USA has ruined this world.

  19. Kia ora Martyn
    I agree with you, and so it seems do must commenters here.
    But where does Jacinda stand? That is what counts. If she fails to condemn the political assassination of a senior official of a sovereign state, then she shows no respect for international law or for the preservation of world peace, and, incidentally provides no argument against atrocities such as the Al Noor massacre.
    I will not be at all surprised if she remains silent on the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, and only a little surprised if she blocks Brenton Tarrant from coming to trial.
    Let’s hope that in these matters at least she does have the capacity to surprise us.

  20. From Truthout

    Bernie: “Trump promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one.”

    Medea Benjamin: “Let’s be clear Trump is not responding to Iranian aggression. TRUMP IS THE AGGRESSOR. He is the one who tore up the nuclear deal that Iran had agreed to and adhered to. TRUMP IS THE AGGRESSOR. Period.”

    Stephen Miles: [Trump] “has chosen to assassinate, without congressional authorization, one of Iran’s most powerful leaders.” “He is responsible for this crisis.”

  21. Donald Trump is just an insane and unstable little man with an over-inflated ego of himself and his penis(sorry to seem crude there).

    A friend in the States voted for him but these are her words: “I am afraid that I voted for Mr. Trump. I had a totally different picture of him during the elections. Being a business man I thought he might put our country in a better financial state. But I don’t care for his attitude at all. He makes too many enemies to get things done”

    Some weeks ago I was chatting to an American woman at a bus stop. She had only been in NZ for a couple of days and was really loving it(NZ). I asked her about Trump. She called him a misogynistic womaniser.

    History tends to repeat itself when it comes to having insane people as leaders of a country. Germany had Hitler. Uganda had Idi Amin. Zimbabwe had Mugabe. And Aussie currently has Scott Morrison.

    And what will happen to the world if Trump gets in again? Well if there is much of a world left by the 2020 US elections he may have taken the entire planet, himself included, to extinction.

    One tends to wonder what other life-forms on other planets make of nutters like Donald Trump? How can such a arrogant little man like Trump have so much power and yet no-one has the guts to stand up to him in the US and say “Enough is enough. We don’t want wars anymore”.

  22. This provocation of Iran has happened barely two weeks after Trump launched the new arm of the US Military, the Space Force

    The Space Force will build on the work of the existing US Space Command . SpaceCom was created in August. The Space Force will be led by the same Air Force General as SpaceCom.

    Although there is already an Air Force focused on space warfare, SpaceCom “will be developing specialised systems and preparation for “Star Wars”-type showdowns”. Other countries, including Russia and China, are also focused on developing their space war-fighting capabilities.

  23. Good luck with the space force. I presume everybody is aware that us astronauts have for the last ten years or so been traveling to the international space station on Russian Soyuz rockets because they had no safe transport of there own?

    • 100%.
      Any space station on a warfare footing will have to be robotic.

      Russia has out stripped the USA in missile design, missile defense, and by a long way.
      The USSR and now Russia have experimented with space based weapons for decades.
      China has joined Russia in weaponised space developments.
      China has its own space station where the US uses a part of a Russian space station.

  24. Two Democrat Senators have just signed off on a War Powers Resolution in an effort to stop him from going to war with Iran.

    “I just filed a resolution to prevent Trump from starting a war with Iran. The President wants to pretend that Congress doesn’t exist, but it’s our clear Constitutional duty to debate and vote before allowing him to rush into an unnecessary war.” – Senator Jim Kaine – tweeted at 8.44 am 4th Jan.

    “For years, I’ve been deeply concerned about President [Donald] Trump stumbling into a war with Iran,” said Kaine (D-Va.). “We’re now at a boiling point, and Congress must step in before Trump puts even more of our troops in harm’s way. We owe it to our service members to have a debate and vote about whether or not it’s in our national interest to engage in another unnecessary war in the Middle East.”

    The Senate is obligated to vote on the legislation, as War Powers resolutions are privileged.

    Co-sponsor is Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who says that the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) provide no authorization for waging war against Iran and calls for the president to remove troops from engaging in hostilities against Iran within 30 days “unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” Link Here

    • A new Bill has now been introduced by Bernie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) that would “bar any Pentagon funding for “military force in or against Iran” without congressional approval”.

      Sanders and Khanna criticized their fellow members of Congress for handing President Donald Trump a $738 billion military budget that did not include any safeguards against a war with Iran.

      “Congress now has an opportunity to change course,” Khanna said. “Our legislation blocks Pentagon funding for any unilateral actions this president takes to wage war against Iran without Congressional authorization. Enough.”

  25. WW2 was won by the ‘allies’ with help from USA, Britian and Russia.

    Most are now seen as tyrants by many here now.

    So take your pick and support who wins the next world war; – and we hope they will rule with compassion over you all and give your fredom of choice how to live.

    Freedom and democracy is easily lost here, so choice wisely.

    • Cleangreen – Good you mentioned Russia – their sacrifice in WW11 was massive. And it seems to me that if we have to choose one of these three countries, then Russia’s great history of literature – poetry – drama-music- opera, is a mighty heritage to pluck at – tho’ the New England poets were good, and Britain’s cultural heritage will always nourish – but they who plumbed the depths, they learned, and they created, and crikey –
      the All Blacks could practise their line-up leaps to Tchaikovsky. How about that ?

  26. Good bold and brave move by Trump. It will certainly remind that particular Theocracy that the American democracy has teeth and will protect its interests.

    • The Mockerycy you mean, not ‘democracy’, for sure.

      The White House is just there for the convenient, easy to buy puppies, that win a presidential competition, mostly determined by who gets the most dough from large industrial and mega rich donors.

      The strings are pulled from other quarters, the White House Puppy tends to simply execute the orders by the string pullers, in a number of easily detectable places.

      Trump is an emotive, vain, narcissistic idiot, he is a great risk, and this has nothing to do with being ‘bold’. or ‘brave’.

      His fuse is close to burning through, with the impeachment hanging over him and international players not doing as he pleases. Hence his weekly retreat to the fan base to keep up his desperate campaign.

      Trump will really lose his marbles once a real crisis will come, and it may be around the corner.

      • Not particularly Marc, simply noting that Trump/the State, is prepared to kill its enemies, and has the resources and expertise to do that in pursuit of its own best interests. Common sense really, and what hes paid to do.

  27. I think we can be certain of one thing in regards to Donald Trump snr and that is Donald Trump Jnr will not be called up to fight in Iran or the Middle East for a war his father started.

    It’s likely we will again see a grinning Donald Trump Jnr kneeling beside an animal in Africa that he has killed. And that will be the ONLY time he will hold a gun to use on another creature.

    Meanwhile Donald Trump snr will be sending young Americans to die in a foreign land and will not shed a tear at the loses.

    • JustMe – “…Donald Trump Jnr will not be called up to fight in Iran or the Middle East for a war his father started.”

      Could be because Donald Jnr and Ivana are both being touted today as future leaders of the Republican Party, and the next Republican POTUS.

  29. “It’s about the Oil, Stupid: Trump wants to end the forever wars, except the one about oil and money.”

    “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil,” Trump told us in 2013. Now he wants to correct that mistake.

    This Salon article from 2nd Nov was in response to Trump’s troop withdrawal from Syria followed by his re-sending them right back again, to secure the oil. It’s as relevant now as it was two months ago.

    Excerpt:
    “Remember the lengths the Bush administration went to counter the argument that the real reason we invaded Iraq in 2003 was the oil? It was about weapons of mass destruction, until there turned out to be no WMDs. Then it was about bringing democracy to the Middle East, until that turned out to be harder than we thought it would be. Then it was about rebuilding Iraq, which wouldn’t have needed it if we hadn’t blown the place up to begin with. Then it was about fighting terrorism, which Iraq had had no part in exporting to the rest of the world in the first place.

    “It was about anything at all except the oil, even after it was revealed that the first thing Vice President Dick Cheney did at the very first meeting of the Bush cabinet after he took office was to pass around a map of Iraq showing its oil reserves divided up between major United States oil companies.” [More at link]

  31. Dear uninformed New Zealanders,

    The Iranian regime has been at war with many neighbouring states, the west in general and a majority of its own citizens for decades now. It’s fingerprints on terrorism are right across the region and these days even extend to South America where its military in the form of Hezbollah are propping up the Maduro regime.

    Iran never confronts its enemies directly; it always works through intermediaries such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi and a dozen other factions. So Iran is unlikely to attack the US but one of its sock puppets likely will have a go.

    Successful counter terrorism operations directly attack the leadership, not the impressionable kids with the knives and the bombs. This technique was used successfully by the British in Malaya, the Israelis and in various counter insurgency wars in Africa I was able to witness. It tends to focus the attention of the enemy more than just killing their cannon fodder.

    For comparison, Obama approved 563 drone strikes on foreign soil during his time on office.

    • Yes, Andrew, one government’s terrorist is another government’s hero and freedom fighter, and one government’s hero and freedom fighter for justice is another one’s ‘terrorist’.

      Where is the truth to be found, you come with half truths and distortions, same as Trump and his administrations, same as the Iranian’s with their propaganda.

      The actual truth is to be found somewhere in between, but few bother studying up on things and finding out much, hence the brain washing, manipulation and lies and biased excitement and anger keep going their course, in many places.

      But that aside, it was an extreme action to authorise and take by Trump, pouring petrol in a fire that is already burning, hardly any sensible solution.

  32. Is USA once again the dog who had its tail wagged by Israelis? The Israelis who have wanted war with Iran for a long time?…this was before Trump became their dog, against the wishes of the American people who voted him in believing his promises and wanting no more wars in the Middle East

    ( …and Hillary would have bombed Iran very early on if she had won the Presidency…so what would that have made her?…especially after she took out Gaddafi

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/hillarys-war-crime-the-murder-of-muammar-gaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died/5552094 )

    Israel wants the rest of Syria’s Golan Heights …and Iran supports Syria:

    ‘Golan Heights profile’

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14724842

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-israel-golanheights-explainer/explainer-what-is-the-significance-of-the-golan-heights-idUSKCN1R22IR

    ‘How real is Israel’s Threat against Iran?’

    https://mepc.org/commentary/how-real-israels-threat-against-iran

    https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/israel-threatens-iran-says-syria-could-become-their-version-vietnam-107786

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/magazine/iran-strike-israel-america.html

    ‘Hillary Clinton: “If I’m President, We Will Attack Iran… We Would be Able to Totally Obliterate Them.” ‘
    https://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-clinton-if-im-president-we-will-attack-iran/5460484

    In the meantime China watches:

    ‘China on Soleimani killing: US should not abuse military power, we are watching’

    https://www.rt.com/news/477468-china-us-abuse-force-soleimani/

  33. guys i,m persian but i heard iran want a huge revenge cuz killed qassem suleimani and it will be ww3 for me

  34. The government of the Realm of New Zealand will not criticise the government of the United States of America for assassinating a senior official and military officer of the Islamic state of Iran within the territory of the Republic of Iraq.
    Therefore the colonial regime has no moral basis on which to criticise the Islamic Republic of Iran if it were to attack US assets (military or diplomatic) in this country.
    Millions of New Zealanders would cheer if Iranian special forces were to take out US assets in this country, but I would not be among them.
    Why not? Because it is for us, te tangata whenua o Aotearoa, to bring an end to the era of corrupt colonialist rule and the Five Eyes alliance which the regime exists to serve. That is a responsibility which can not be handed over to the people of Iran.
    Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters, by their despicably immoral support for President Trump’s murderous activities in the Middle East, have put their own colonialist military forces in serious peril. That is their decision, and it is for every New Zealander to decide whether they will continue to support such a disgraceful regime which clearly has no regard for international law, public morality, or even the lives of its own soldiers.

  35. In this context , it is apt to refer readers to this Vedic astrology writer’s predictive alert of 11 November 2019 in article -“ Astrological probable alerts for 2020” – published in January 2020 issue of Wisdom Magazine Webzine on 1 January 2020 at wisdom-magazine.com/Article.aspx/5176/.

  36. Too many he’s says she says, we need hard facts, if soleimani was ordering such bad things to happen to his own people and others then he deserved his fate. But we will never know the truth I guess. Which side do you believe?
    Was he an Angel or a Devil?
    I just want some honest facts before I make my judgement.

  37. Have any of our esteemed leaders made a comment yet, on the extrajudicial murder of an Iranian general by murrica?

  38. Hi I’m trying to find out what the most active anti-war organisation in NZ is, would be really grateful if anyone can point me in the right direction. I feel like there should be protests outside the US embassy – does anyone know if this is happening?

  39. No war is needed, just starve Iran’s people and economy to death, they will follow and do what the US wants.

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