Juan Cole for Informed Comment Oil prices hit $120 early Monday morning in Asia, for the first time since the initial shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But today’s increase was different, since the price skyrocketed fully 30% in one day, something that hasn’t happened for decades. In response, the South Korean […]
In the fourth quarter of last year, 43% of public-sector employees said they used AI at least a few times annually, according to Gallup polling.
The Senate is on track to pass President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on institutional investors in housing as part of a larger package of measures.
A group supporting Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., is dropping more money to attack businessman Nate Morris in the Republican Senate primary.
Republicans tacitly acknowledge that the administration’s hardline rhetoric on mass deportation risks alienating voters.
In the second week of an inept narcissist's spiraling war - not even of choice but of whim - that's killed over 1,500 people and wreaked widespread havoc, almost as grotesque as the witless carnage itself is the "slopaganda" issuing almost daily from a White House evidently run by 14-year-old gamers who splice real combat footage with Call of Duty-esque video games to create tacky war porn celebrating "JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY." Millions of us wanna know: "What the fuck is wrong with you people?"Under Trump we will have no more wars - I am peace," once intoned the hollow reality-show specter now spreading mindless death, terror and economic mayhem across 12 countries. To date, US and Israeli airstrikes have killed over 1,255 people in Iran, mostly civilians, including perhaps 300 children, the youngest an 8-month-old girl; at least 12,000 Iranians have been injured. Also dead are about 400 people in Lebanon, over 50 in surrounding countries, and 8 US service members. Bombs have struck at least four schools in Tehran; after strikes this week on oil refineries and storage facilities, Tehran residents woke to plumes of dark smoke and black rain falling in what many viewed as a genocidal attack on infrastructure that mirrors that of Gaza. It's become clear from Trump's flailing rhetoric he didn't expect or plan for a war, just a fast, hard, "kill their leader and they fold" move like Venezuela, always a delusional goal, so they could pick a pliable new leader. Instead, after sloppily killing all their own choices for successors, they got the far more extremist, now angrier son Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, a hardliner with close ties to Iran's most ideologically rabid, repressive clerics - and, after Trump's blithe assertion he'll kill him too, with nothing to lose. The outcome, deemed "the blueprint for a generational blood war," also pissed off rich Gulf states who've been courting him with investment pledges. One Dubai oligarch "at the heart of a danger (we) did not choose": “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war?”The slapdash incompetence of his "short-term little excursion" quickly exposed a wildly erratic take on what he actually called his "performance" not governance, more improv than coherent strategy. The rationale kept shifting - no nuclear weapons, people free, regime change - as did the language: A "47-year-conflict" became an "imminent threat." ("Words, what are they for?") The promise Iranians' "future is yours to take" became the demand for imaginary "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" He bounced ideas off journalists, was surprised neighboring states got drawn in, ignored likely consequences - what oil? - had no contingency plans and rudely rebuffed allies. To the UK's offer of an aircraft carrier: "We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”Not so fast, said Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian, who warned their enemies “must take their dream of the Iranian people’s unconditional surrender to their graves." Then he apologized to neighboring countries for strikes against their U.S. bases. In response, Trump crowed they were ready "to cry uncle" and declared it "the first time Iran has ever lost in thousands of years." MAGA voted for an isolationist America First leader; they got a raging, idiotic, ignorant warmonger who launched more military attacks on more countries in a year than any president, and who doesn't give a shit about Americans. Asked if we should be worried about retaliatory attacks from Iran, he shrugged, "I guess...When you go to war, some people will die.” Aka, whatever. But lookit these cool, macho videos celebrating Epic Fury! - YouTube www.youtube.com Within days, the White House, or the puerile gamesters running their social media account, moved on from simply glorifying the violence to transforming it into video games, “gamifying" it by seamlessly merging video footage of actual U.S. strikes and explosions with bellicose clips from Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat. They also interspersed real kill-footage with popular action flicks and TV shows - Braveheart, Gladiator, Top Gun, Iron Man, even Saul Goodman and Walter White: "I am the danger" - complete with relentless, churning techno music to get your jingoistic heart racing. The result, both cringey and chilling, is to render real-life pain, blood, death, grief, terror, destruction, displacement mere cartoon entertainment, stripped of humanity, unworthy of empathy.In a rare move, the gaslighting profanity of the videos prompted a "call to conscience" from Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, who decried the "profound moral failure" they represent. Seeing "real war with real death and real suffering treated like a video game" was "sickening," he wrote, war and its brutality become "a spectator sport" and a moral crisis. "Our government (is) thrilled by the destructive power of our military, addicted to the 'spectacle' of explosions," he wrote. "The American people are better than this." Maybe, some of them. But the malignant narcissist with the warped world view and his fanboy marveling at the capture of Maduro as "the most gangster thing I've seen in my life," are still hideously, obliviously "locked in" to the atrocities. So are, of course, his loyal buffoonish minions, strutting and gloating over America's bloody, illegal "victories." "We're marching through the world," declared giddy, craven lickspittle Lindsay Graham to a laughing Maria Bartiromo on Fox. "We’re clearing out the bad guys." All praise to "Ronald Reagan plus," "the greatest commander in chief of all time." He doesn't want "a fair fight," just "a quick one," he said, joining the bully ranks, and to make lots of money. Committed to being the cringiest cheerleader on the vile team, he even brought props; he waves "Make Iran Great" and "Free Cuba" hats, and smirks, "Stay tuned." Oh puke. Who asked America to clear out the bad guys? Who thinks what we need is a hat-based foreign policy? Idiotic hubris, thy name is. Meanwhile, insufferable Press Barbie Stepford, her little Christian cross front and center, has gone full, smug, North Korea agit-prop. What does Trump's imaginary “unconditional surrender" mean, she is asked. She yammers at length, dragging out the titles in an effort to bolster her gobbledygook: "It means that when President Trump, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has (sic) been fully realized, whether they say it themselves or not." And as the blessed leader of MAGA, she adds breezily, there may or may not be boots on the ground in Iran; "President Trump wisely keeps all his options on the table." And bring on the video games. - YouTube www.youtube.com Even more repulsive is smarmy, abusive, chest-thumping Christo-fascist and "day-drunk dipshit" Kegseth, who finally got a war to go with his puerile bravado. Preening in his greasy hair and patriotic pocket square, he vows to "unleash overwhelming and punishing violence,” revels in "death and destruction from the sky," brags, "America is winning - decisively, devastatingly and without mercy," and gloats of the "quiet death" - and war crime - of 87 Iranian sailors killed when a US torpedo hit their unarmed frigate heading home from a training exercise the US took part in. Among peers, he is widely reviled for his bombastic language and "moral depravity"; one advocate calls him "a very dangerous person," "out of his depth," cavalier, obtuse and so incompetent "I wouldn’t feel safe leaving him in charge of a DoorDash order."Despite all that - and reports of Pentagon excess topping $93 billion spent in one month, under use-it-or-lose-it funding rules, on furniture, ice cream machines, sushi prep tables, iPads, king crab, lobster tail, steak, doughnuts - still there he was, pig-eyed, smirking, ostensibly assuring us not to worry about reports Russia is providing Iran with intel on American troops, because "the president has an incredible knack at mitigating those risks." "Nobody's putting us in danger," he sneered. "We're putting the other guys in danger - that's our job." Then he launched into a casual genocidal rant deemed "some really dark shit." Per Rumsfeld: "You go to war with the sociopathic, bullying, self-declared Secretary of War you have," and the base war porn that goes with him. And of course the imbecile who last weekend attended the "dignified transfer" of the senselessly dead Americans he's to blame for, wearing his undignified white USA golf cap because he cares more about his "hair." He eloquently noted "I hate to do that" - see the dead, also muss his hair - but "it’s part of war. It's the bad part of war." Truth. Later, he was asked about the strike on the elementary school in southern Iran that killed up to 175 girls; though the investigative Bellingcat and multiple news outlets confirmed a US Tomahawk missile hit the school - another war crime - Trump suggested, with no evidence, it may have been Iran. Nodding, Hegseth said, "The only side that targets civilians is Iran." And the only side that would mistakenly kill a school full of kids is America.Trump went golfing, then spoke at a GOP retreat. He railed against Dems opposing the SAVE America Act, which would sabotage the mid-terms with new voting strictures; it has 'America' in its name, he whined, and Schumer is "now a Palestinian officially." He dismissed Americans' concerns about soaring gas prices, "a very small price to pay (for) World Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY." He warned Iran not to "try anything cute" to stop the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, or "Death, Fire, and Fury will reign (sic) upon them." More war slopaganda streamed from the White House: Home runs in baseball, like missiles hitting targets, as "pure American dominance." Football and missile hits as unrelenting "TOUCHDOWNS!" All, "JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY." Iran, it turns out, also seeks their own justice. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced they do not want to harm ordinary Americans who oppose foreign wars like "Operation Epic Mistake,” but they will no longer seek diplomacy and they have "many surprises in store" if America keeps attacking their oil or nuclear sites. In response to our cartoon agitprop, they also released their own LEGO-style video - missiles, explosions, a whiteboard reading, "My homeland is my life." Comments: "Begun, the content wars have," "Who would've thought a country run by religious fanatics that propagates martyrdom would not just roll over upon being attacked?" and, "Maybe I shouldn't have wished to live in more interesting times." Also, "Even their AI slop is killing ours."Trump, flailing in the face of political and economic blowback to a war against a nuclear-armed nation of 91 million people he didn't really mean to start, is struggling to figure out how to end it, or at least randomly declare victory like in elections. We are awash in mixed messages: "So is the war that isn't a war over or isn't it?" Hegseth, asked where are we now: "We're in a very strong place," "This is just the beginning," "We are giving the president maximum options," "Our will is endless." Trump, asked if it's over or starting: "You could say both," "We could call it a tremendous success right now or we could go further," "The war is very complete, pretty much," "It is won, but not won enough." For once, he was right: We're tired from so much fucking winning.It turns out the only imminent threat was, is Trump, writes David Rothkopf, who cites "the madness" of so many people around the world "buffeted by the psychosis of a single man," his "whims, impulses, ignorance, greed, malevolence, hatefulness, turning pique into economic pain, promoting the incompetent and monstrous to do his dirty work, seeking desperately to steal glory he does not deserve," and by shuttering US programs worldwide causing "the death of millions who simply had the misfortune to live in Trump's time." On Saturday, Country Joe McDonald died at 84 after a decades-long music career. Its touchstone was perhaps his electrifying performance, before nearly half-a-million people at 1969's Woodstock Festival, of his anti-war I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag, about another rich man's war and poor man's fight. May he, and too many others, rest in peace and power. "And it's 1, 2, 3, what're we fighting for?" - Country Joe McDonald"Looking at what we are confronted with today, those most likely to argue they should hold a place above ordinary people are actually, in fact, the least of us, the most contemptible among us." - David Rothkopf Iran's LEGO-themed agit-propScreengrab on X - YouTube www.youtube.com
"By the time we finally packed our bags and locked the door, our fingernails were caked in chemical grime, and our lungs were burning just from breathing inside our own living room."