No, I’m not asking for a friend. I’m asking for the thousands of innocent civilians, a disproportionate number of whom are children, being massacred by the indiscriminate bombing of Iran, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East by Israel and America.
I’m also asking for the billions of people worldwide who are being affected economically by a war in the Middle East started by a lying madman to satisfy the murderous fetishes of a genocidal maniac trying desperately to cling to stolen land. To be honest, I’m personally more angry because the road trip I’ve been planning for months to celebrate my upcoming 60th birthday has suddenly become very, very expensive.
If you’ve been following my writing, you will, of course, know that I’m referring to the two most dangerous men in the world right now. And it’s not Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un, who were probably hogging the leaderboard for that notorious distinction until Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu blossomed into full-blown insanity.
Also, for those who don’t know, The Flying Dutchman is not a person in flight, but a legendary ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever. I’m just using poetic licence here, which I don’t actually have, but will expropriate like Trump does to reality, and Netanyahu does to Palestinian land.
Within a week of starting the war to ostensibly re-obliterate Iran’s nuclear capacity, which he claimed to have obliterated in June last year, Trump bragged, as he usually does, that he had won it decisively. Confoundingly, Iran refused to just roll over and die like a good lapdog, but rained hellfire on both Israeli and American targets around the Gulf. Then they demonstrated they have more than just missiles by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, preventing around 20% of the world’s crude oil supply from reaching the rest of the world, effectively sending fuel prices into orbit.
Nothing angers the West more than having its privileges threatened. Decades of American warmongering that resulted in tens of millions of deaths around the world, moved the beneficiaries of imperialism as much as a jump in the fuel (gas?) price did. A panicked Trump then resorted to begging his more obedient lapdog allies in the West for help.
When the usually compliant allies failed to commit, Trump resorted to more threats directed at critical Iranian infrastructure. Trump is not known for being up to date on his history (or anything else of real consequence, for that matter), and was probably ignorant of the might of the Persian Empire at one time and of the legacies of great Persians like Cyrus the Great, Darius 1, and Xerxes 1. When Iran responded with equivalent threats to target more Israeli and American infrastructure, including that of Gulf countries hosting military bases, he backed off (the phenomenon I like to call the TACO tango), postponing his threat first by five days, then ten.
All the while, Trump kept insisting that Iran was both begging to negotiate with America and that he was already negotiating with them. When pressed to reveal who he was negotiating with, Trump variously claimed that he had eliminated everyone who could negotiate, or that they were afraid to negotiate, fearing assassination, or that it was a phantom high-level diplomat, or that other countries were mediating. All of which were denied, of course, by Iran, including making a mockery of the 15-point plan by Trump, as well as rejecting it outright.
So, here we are! The question remains. Who is the lying madman negotiating with? The ghost of the assassinated Ayatollah, the ghost of Hendrick van der Decken, the captain of the Flying Dutchman, or the ghost of Cyrus the Great?
Or maybe Trump is just negotiating with himself over which fantastical new lie will best keep the credulous American public entertained, and the mainstream media pleasantly occupied.
lenny unencumbered 