Nossa Senhora da Lapa dos Mercadores

 

Tim Maia – Nobody Can Live Forever

  One thing you have to agree with me

That nothing's for sure
Nothing's for sure
Nobody can live forever
And everybody is the same

Naval Royal Colege

 

Nossa Senhora da Lapa dos Mercadores

 

Royal Naval College

 

Greenwich

 

A night when the Oscars almost mattered

 

 

"I am a grump when it comes to all things Oscars. As I have written before, it’s not just the empty speeches, the fashion fixation, the dull box office discourse. It’s that the very idea of competition feels to me like a hammer to the art of appreciating films.

This year, some of the winners openly agreed with me. But as I watched, there was a strange sensation too. Was it a bit of hope?"

read review by John Bleasdale  

A night when the Oscars almost mattered - by John Bleasdale

Calling All Angels !

 

 JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When everyman is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams?
Confusion will be my epitaph

– Peter Sinfield, King Crimson, “Epitaph”

+ Let’s review the shifting rationales (all fallacious) for Trump/Netanyahu’s criminal attack on Iran that has quickly engulfed much of the Middle East: Israel was going to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking the US; Iran was going to launch a pre-emptive attack on Israel; Iran was going to launch a preemptive attack on the US; Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon; Iran was close to having intercontinental missiles capable of striking the US; Iran was governed by lunatics. Netanyahu talked Trump into doing it. MBS convinced Trump to do it. Trump convinced Netanyahu to do it. Let confusion be their epitaph. (It will almost certainly be ours.)

+ Marco Rubio: “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked [by Israel], that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

CNN Reporter: Yesterday, you told us Israel was going to strike Iran and that’s why we needed to get involved. But today the president said Iran–

Rubio: No. Were you there yesterday?

CNN Reporter: Yes. I asked the question.

+ The “preventative war” rationale, whichever of the shifting versions you choose, is preposterous. A preemptive strike on US targets by Iran would have done minimal damage to the US arsenal in the region and ensured the massive counter-attack the Iranians were seeking to prevent. And, even the Pentagon knows it wasn’t true…

Reporter: Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan?

Trump: Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most. I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack….If anything, I forced Israel’s hand.”

+ Sen. Mark Warner: “There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the US, then we are in uncharted territory.”

+ Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran has none. If Iran were really planning a preemptive strike on Israel, that would pretty much invalidate the notion of nuclear deterrence. Let’s get rid of them all! On the other hand, would Trump and Israel have risked launching a preemptive attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic possessed its own nuclear arsenal? Unlikely. (It’s more likely Trump would have written love letters to the Ayatollah, ala his endearing correspondence with Kim Jong-Un.) I think it’s safe to conclude that Iran had no plans to preemptively attack Israel or the US.

+ Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, told the nuclear inspection agency’s board on March 2 that inspectors found no structured effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons, despite ongoing strikes on sites like Natanz. The U.S. and Israel launched operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, damaging above-ground structures but sparing underground centrifuges and causing no radiation leaks. While leaders like Trump and Netanyahu cited imminent threats, U.S. intelligence sources and Russia disputed the urgency, and Grossi called for diplomacy to prevent escalation.

Reporter: “So, why did the US attack?”

Rubio:  “Iran is run by lunatics.”

+ Speaking of lunatics, Paul White, the spiritual advisor to Trump and head of the White House Faith Office, spoke in tongues to call down angels from Africa and South America to strike Iran…

COUNTERPUNCH 

 

 

 

Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine - Country Joe & The Fish

 

She hides in an attic concealed on a shelf
Behind volumes of literature based on herself
And runs across the pages like some tiny elf
Knowing that it's hard to find
Stuff way back in her mind,
Winds up spending all of her time
Trying to memorize every line,
Sweet Lorriane, ah, Sweet Lorraine.