Bill and Hillary Clinton refused on Tuesday to testify in the House’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, escalating a monthslong battle with its Republican leader, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, who quickly said he would take steps to hold them in contempt of Congress.
“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” the Clintons wrote in a lengthy letter to Mr. Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, which was obtained by The New York Times. “For us, now is that time.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton wrote a lengthy letter to Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, refusing to testify in Congress.
Mr. Comer’s relentless efforts to force them to testify reflect his overall approach to his panel’s Epstein inquiry. He has sought to deflect focus from President Trump’s ties to the convicted sex offender and his administration’s decision to close its investigation into the matter without releasing key information. Instead, he has worked to shift the spotlight onto prominent Democrats who once associated with Mr. Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Jeffrey Epstein visited the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was president,” Mr. Comer said on Tuesday, speaking to reporters after holding Mr. Clinton’s scheduled deposition with a chair left empty to call attention to the former president’s absence. He added: “No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing. We just have questions.”
Mr. Comer has repeatedly threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they failed to appear for live depositions behind closed doors, typically a first step in referring someone to the Justice Department for prosecution. He had set a deadline of Tuesday for Mr. Clinton to appear, and Wednesday for Mrs. Clinton.
But hours before the deadline, the Clintons made clear that they had no intention of presenting themselves on Capitol Hill to be questioned by Mr. Comer and members of his committee. They did so by submitting an eight-page legal letter laying out why they considered the subpoenas “invalid and legally unenforceable,” then followed up with a scorching missive that they signed jointly, promising to fight Mr. Comer on the issue for as long as it took.
…
Editor:The Clinton Victimhood:
Mr. Comer’s insistence over months that the Clintons appear, the lawyers said, “brings us toward a protracted and unnecessary legal confrontation.”
Citing specific case law about congressional subpoenas and constitutional precedents, the lawyers wrote that the subpoenas were nothing more than “an effort to publicly harass and embarrass President and Secretary Clinton and an impermissible usurpation of executive law enforcement authority.”
The committee’s attempt to compel the Clintons to testify in person ran afoul of limitations on Congress’ investigative power that have been outlined in cases before the Supreme Court, the lawyers said.
And they noted that the Supreme Court had stated in the past that there must be a “nexus” between the investigations’ legislative aims and the witnesses from whom information was sought. Mr. Comer had not established why the Clintons’ appearance would be relevant, they said.
The lawyers encouraged Mr. Comer to “de-escalate this dispute.”
Reader look at the picture of Beddoes that predomintes her latest War Mongering Propaganda!
Where does Iran go from here?
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
Two months ago I asked readers of this newsletter whether they thought Iran’s regime would survive the next five years. The results showed a near dead heat: 38% of voters thought the Islamic Republic would endure, 39% thought it wouldn’t and the remainder weren’t sure. Given the scale of the protests in recent weeks, the horrific violence of the crackdown in the past few days and the possibility of American intervention, I’d like to hear if our subscribers’ predictions have changed—please cast a fresh vote in our poll. How will it all end? That’s what I want to explore in tomorrow’s Insider show.
Iran has been shrouded by a state-imposed digital blackout since January 8th, making it difficult to accurately assess the scale of the protests and the brutality of the authorities’ response. But the information that has emerged—often via Iranians’ patchy access to illegal Starlink terminals—suggests that thousands have died so far. Washington DC, where I have been this week, is full of speculation about how and when Donald Trump might intervene. He has promised on Truth Social that “help is on its way”. It is hard to see how military force can directly help those demonstrating on the streets. Striking installations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for instance, is unlikely to paralyse the regime. Large-scale attacks could cause significant casualties. Nonetheless, if I were a betting person, I’d wager that Mr Trump will do something.
To help make sense of what has happened so far—and what might come next—I’ve invited two of our Middle East correspondents, Nick Pelham and Gregg Carlstrom, and Adam Roberts, our new foreign editor, to take part in tomorrow’s Insider show. They’ll join Edward Carr, my co-host and deputy editor, as we consider Iran’s path forward. Nick and Adam visited Tehran only two months ago and I want to ask them if they had an inkling then that this sort of unrest was brewing and how it compares with the protests of 2022 and 2009. Nick has been reporting on Iran for 25 years and has many contacts there. I’m keen to know if he’s managed to reach them and, if so, what he’s heard about the situation on the ground. While in Washington this week, Nick and I took the opportunity to talk to Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince of Iran and son of the last shah, so we’ll also be hearing from him during the show. Some protesters have been calling for the return of Mr Pahlavi, who reportedly met with Steve Witkoff last weekend, but is he really a credible alternative to the ayatollahs? I’ll be asking the panel to weigh in.
My colleagues and I will also assess the likelihood and prudence of foreign involvement in Iran. What would a Trumpian intervention look like? Perhaps an attempt to repeat a Venezuela-style raid? Perhaps a back-room deal is being cooked up with some elements of the regime? Mr Trump will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, making a big speech in front of the business world’s elite. I can imagine how he would relish the opportunity to show off American power once again.
I’ll wrap up tomorrow’s show by asking my colleagues what they expect to see happen now. The situation in Iran is highly uncertain, but what are the possible scenarios? Is a democratic transition still a pipe dream? Are there figures within the regime who could bring about change? My team will be answering these questions and yours too. Please tell us what you want to know via the Q&A feature on the episode page and, once you’ve watched the show, please write to me with your thoughts at insider@economist.com. See you tomorrow.
Scott Ritter & Allies offer alternatives to Beddoes War Mongering !
Scott Ritter: Iran’s Missiles will DESTROY US Bases & Israel if Trump Attacks
Headline: Venezuelans believe Donald Trump has offered them a better future
Sub-headline: An exclusive poll for The Economist also reveals an overwhelming desire for democracy
SEEN FROM Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, the small hours of January 3rd were terrifying. Bombs fell, helicopters and planes roared overhead and confusion reigned. By dawn perhaps 100 people were dead and Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader since 2013, had been seized by American special forces. Yet shock and fear quickly gave way to something else: happiness. According to exclusive polling for The Economist by Premise, a research firm based in Virginia, Venezuelans inside the country are pretty pleased with the dramatic turn of events, even if their vision for its future differs from that of President Donald Trump.
The survey offers one of the first glimpses of Venezuelans’ reaction to the snatching of Mr Maduro. Conducted via mobile app, it asked 600 Venezuelan residents their views on the raid, their expectations for the future and their opinions of various figures. The results are weighted by age and sex to reflect the national population.
Editor : The Reader needs only read the highlited paragraph to view this wan attempt at providing ‘data’, Conducted via mobile app assomehow indictive of the reality of what Venezuelans actually think? Maduro abduction by American Thugs is heaverly garnished with more ‘data’, see the attached … what to name it but Propganda?
Editor: this is a Propganda Behemoth created by 600 respondents …
Editor: Reader Note that Binyamin Netanyahu is a defendent in The Iternational Criminal Court Case: The particulars below:
About Defendant
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, born on 21 October 1949, Prime Minister of Israel at the time of the relevant conduct.
Arrest warrant issued on 21 November 2024
Accused LastName
Netanyahu
Accused FirstName
Benjamin
Charges
Allegedly responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.
Episode summary ( Editor: provided by The Economist)
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, says he wants to be remembered as a leader who helped secure the country’s future. With three stretches in office under his belt—and getting ready to fight for reelection again this year—does he think he’s succeeding? Zanny Minton Beddoes, our editor-in-chief, and Edward Carr, deputy editor, travelled to Jerusalem to put the question to the prime minister directly. They ask him about his approach to domestic division, the threats Israel faces abroad, and whether his grip on power is helping or hurting the country he claims to protect.
Editor: It doesn’t take long for the Reader to become aware of the attempt at a kind of obtuse manipulation, via the utter absence of a readable, reliable and searchable transcript! Which renders this Economist essay as the only logical choice ?
Editor: the full text is this Economist essay is below:
Editor: Reader note that Zanny Mention Beddoes was one of Jeffrey Sacks cadre of Neo-Liberals who desended on the remaines of the Soviet Union!
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist
By Peter Passell
June 27, 1993
…
And even his sympathizers acknowledge that Sachs’s high profile and world-class impatience could generate a backlash in a nation still adjusting to the reality that it is no longer a superpower. “There’s a real dilemma here,” says Stanley Fischer, an international economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You have to make a lot of noise to get the attention of the West. But the more noise you make, the more you make it seem that the reform program is a Western program. And that could be the kiss of death.”
Still, Sachs’s brand of “shock therapy” has worked elsewhere. And there is good reason to believe that Russia’s future will turn on how well its leaders learn the catechism of change that he has worked so hard to promulgate.
…
Editor: After listening to the full interview with Netanyahu, Beddoes’s questions are at points interesting, and even pointed, though, not to the point of making Netanyahu uneasy. Though she does become heated, when discussing the suffering/deaths of the Palistinians! Beddoes even uses the epithet ‘Lefties’, though discarding it as indicative of another time and political place? Netanyahu is an adroit politician, yet he is and remaines a War Criminal, finanaced by American Money and courted by Beddoes and Edward Carr.
Newspaper Reader.
Editor: The full text of this Economist shortened version above:
Headline: Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to win Israeli—and global—hearts and minds
Sub-headline” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is determined to regain his nation’s trust and restore its image abroad
Binyamin netanyahu will be leading the Likud Party in a general election for the 12th time this year. He is already Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having spent a total of over 18 years in office. If he wins, he could become the longest-serving leader of any democracy since the second world war.
The election date has yet to be set, but speaking to The Economist in a filmed interview for “The Insider” on January 8th in Jerusalem, Israel’s prime minister was very much in campaign mode. One focus is his quest for another term. “As long as I believe that I can secure Israel’s future, to which I’ve devoted my life, both as a soldier and as a politician, as a statesman, then I’ll do so,” he says. Yet in most polls his coalition of nationalist and religious parties is well short of a majority.
Mr Netanyahu is also determined to restore his country’s international standing. Israel has emerged from the two years of war in Gaza with a gravely tarnished global image: not just among its habitual critics but also among many of its former supporters in the West, shocked by the destruction of much of Gaza and the deaths of over 70,000 Palestinians.
“I’d like to do everything I can to fight the propaganda war waged against us,” he says. “Basically, we’ve been using cavalry against f-35s, because they’ve flooded the social networks with the fake bots and many other things.” One early move, he says, could be for Israel to give up the subsidies from the United States that it uses to buy American arms.
Mr Netanyahu built his political career on his swashbuckling speeches and interviews with the international media, going back to his days as ambassador to the un in the 1980s. That reflects his belief that the way for Israel to influence governments is by winning the battle for public opinion. It is a battle Israel is losing.
The prime minister complains that Israel has been subject to unreasonable scrutiny. “I doubt that Churchill could pursue World War Two if people saw what happened there,” he says. “You’re holding this democracy, this beleaguered democracy, to an impossible standard.”
He also blames prejudice against Jews. “In the Middle Ages we were poisoning the wells, we were spreading vermin, we were slaughtering Christian children for the Passover festival using their blood…The vilifications that were delivered on Jewish people are now delivered on to Jewish state.”
He expects the ceasefire in Gaza to help. “The minute the intense fighting stops,” he says, “then the focus of international media and the horrible reporting, often absolutely false reporting that takes place there—the ease with which propaganda takes over facts, or fact checking—that dissipates.”
Mr Netanyahu will also seek to remove potential friction between Israel and its chief ally, America. In the interview the prime minister revealed that he is not seeking the full renewal of the ten-year American military assistance package, which currently stands at $3.8bn annually and needs renegotiating in 2028. For the first time in public, he talked about tapering American aid to zero over ten years. He insisted that he “will continue to fight for the allegiance of the American people”. However, President Donald Trump famously dislikes handing over money, and parts of his maga movement are increasingly critical of Israel.
Last, Mr Netanyahu believes that he can persuade Western voters that they misunderstand the nature of the struggle Israel is waging. “There is a huge battle today between the forces of civilisation, the forces of modernity,” he says. “Very fanatic forces…want to take us back to the early Middle Ages and do so with a violence that is unimaginable. You’ve seen these pictures of people cutting open the chest of an enemy, these Islamists, tearing out the heart. The person is still alive and eating the heart.” The reality, he argues, is that “Israel is defending itself, but in so doing, we’re defending Western civilisation.”
Those are strong claims, but Mr Netanyahu has been using such arguments for decades, which may make them less effective. In addition, while there is some truth to them, they are less powerful when set against the horrors endured by the Palestinians inside Gaza.
To further complicate the prime minister’s task, his message abroad will sometimes run into his election campaign at home. For example, settlement expansion in the West Bank has risen sharply during his term, as has settler violence. Members of his government are calling for annexation.
Yet, asked whether this is an area of disagreement with Mr Trump and Israel’s potential Arab partners, Mr Netanyahu deflects. Mr Trump has in the past been willing to contemplate annexation, he says. And, as for Arab leaders, he predicts an expansion of the Abraham accords. “In private conversations, you want the truth? I mean beyond the regular things? Many of them don’t give a hoot,” he says. “They don’t care about the Palestinian issue. They care about its effect on the street.”
In the election Mr Netanyahu will also face questions about the economy and the role of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox community. The economy has recovered from the war remarkably well, to a large degree thanks to continuing foreign investment in the Israeli tech sector and strong demand for Israeli weapons systems, especially from rapidly re-arming Europe.
Israel’s technological edge relies on a small, talented and mobile part of its 10m population, who are mainly from the secular and centrist parts of Israeli society, which are opposed to the current government. Mr Netanyahu brushes off the reports of an incipient brain drain as “ridiculous”. But others, including Naftali Bennett, his main challenger in the election, warn that the threat is real and dangerous.
By contrast, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties are Mr Netanyahu’s political allies. Their voters receive excessive social benefits, even though many of them refuse to enlist for military service in a time of war. Many ultra-Orthodox men do not work.
Asked about their role, he argues that ultra-Orthodox women do work and says that he will pass a law encouraging men to serve in the army. He wants to “enable the recruitment of this community”, he says, “but at the same time enable the select few to study the Torah.” That is likely to please nobody—being too much for the ultra-Orthodox and too little for everyone else.
How much time the prime minister has to dedicate to his two campaigns, for re-election and to restore Israel’s international reputation, will be partly determined by events in Iran, where mass protests are threatening to engulf the Islamic regime. For years Mr Netanyahu has called for international action against Iran. During the 12-day war that Israel and America waged on Iran last June, he flirted with regime change. Only last week in a meeting with Mr Trump he secured a public commitment from the president to join Israel in more strikes if Iran moves to rebuild its nuclear programme and continues building ballistic missiles.
Speaking to The Economist, however, Mr Netanyahu was surprisingly reticent about both Iran and Mr Trump. “It may be a moment where the people of Iran take charge of their own destiny,” he observes. “Revolutions are best done from within.” He neither endorsed nor rejected Mr Trump’s threats to act against the regime if it continues gunning down protesters.
His sudden restraint may be a response to warnings of Israeli intelligence officials in recent days that Iran may “miscalculate” and launch an attack on Israel in an attempt to divert the anger of its own people. “I’ll tell you one definite time when we would resume our military activities,” he says. “If Iran attacks us, which they might, then there will be horrible consequences for Iran. That’s definite. Everything else, I think we should see what is happening inside Iran.”
Hanging over both campaigns is the devastating Hamas attack in October 2023. International sympathy for Israel depends on people understanding that it was the greatest trauma in the country’s history. At home the election is likely to be a referendum on whether voters hold Mr Netanyahu responsible for what befell them.
Asked about how Israel was caught unawares, Mr Netanyahu says he is ready to answer questions to an inquiry which he has yet to set up. However, he avoids using the word “responsibility” and is quick to spread the blame to the intelligence services and the rest of his cabinet. The failure of October 7th was indeed a collective one. However, a man who has run a country for so long will find it hard to claim credit for all its successes while avoiding blame for its catastrophes.
Editor: Reader notice that Edward Carr plays a minor role in the questioning of Netanyahu, he is usable baggage? And that Zanny Minton Beddoes wan attemps to confront this War Criminal, and her civility resembles a kind of passive acceptance of Netanyahu Zionist Party Line! Her hope is for further interviews?
David Brooks infatuation with Reinhold Niebuhr is equal to Brooks impersination of the very tallented Mario Buatta the Princed Chintz? With apologies to the very talented Mr. Buatta. Mr. Brooks does not write political commentary, but resorts to a feckless impersonation, of what actual political commetary might resemble, a pastisch of Walter Lippmann? Here are a selection of my comments on Neibuhr over time.
On The Theopolitics of Reinhold Niebuhr by Political Observer
I’ve just finished a Reinhold Niebuhr biography by Richard Fox published in 1985. That I find Mr. Niebuhr repugnant as person and Christian Moralist is a statement of my prejudice, without apology. I felt that I wanted to understand who the man was and where he came from. Those questions are answered in some detail in Mr. Fox’s biography, although Mr. Fox seems to be satisfied with hagiography rather that critical engagement with Mr. Niebuhr as theopolitician. Niebuhr appears to be a religious and political conformist swept along from Socialism to Cold War Liberalism: always a little too anxious to prove his patriotism, his Americaness. Niebuhr has become the object of a cult headed by President Obama, perhaps because of the tough minded moralizing represented by Christian Realism: which could be more accurately named Christian Imperialism. It has something in common with the Protestant Christian Politics of Woodrow Wilson, with an emphasis on the necessary use of violence, to reach political ends deemed important enough to warrant it. In the name of the greater political good, even as necessary to emancipate, if only temporarily, man from his natural sinful and irredeemable self-hood. This cliché of the Christian Tradition reeks of the self-hating Augustine, and his successors, who institutionalized the persistent, morally destructive Christian anti-humanism. Imperial Politics with a thin veneer of carefully cultivated piety is an American tradition. I would call Niebuhr hopelessly Middlebrow: more about the care and maintenance of bourgeois political respectability and the self-exculpatory, as key to ex post facto rationalizations identified as ‘Philosophy’ . I was impressed, and moved by one person’s character in Mr. Fox’s biography of Reinhold, and that was the love, devotion and steadfastness of his brother Richard. Engaging with the ‘Philosophy’ of Mr. Niebuhr using the valuable historical frame provided by Mr. Fox will enrich my further reading.
Niebuhr’s reputation as a primary American Philosopher demonstrates with stunning clarity the paucity of intellectual standards in America. He was no Sartre, Heidegger nor was even comparable to William James. He was, in fact, a tent preacher with intellectual and moral pretension. As Richard Fox’s near worshipful biography points out, time after time, Niebuhr was a craven political and moral conformist: in his days in Chicago he opined that the working class shouldn’t give up violence as a methodology and that he was Marxient thinker. Those pronouncements came back to haunt him when J. Edgar Hoover was stalking him. The political result was Niebuhr’s letter denouncing ‘The Left’, not to speak of formation the ADA, with ‘Vital Center’ author Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Protecting ‘Liberal Free Speech’ but throwing ‘The Left’ to the McCarthy/Nixon wolves and their political capo J.Edgar Hoover. Please read Schlesinger’s diary entries from the early 50’s, where he makes noises like ‘Big Jim McLain‘, the use of the word ‘commies’ is indicative of the political myopia demonstrated by sons, who edited his diaries for publication. Accurate history is more important than covering your old man’s ass! Those entries, read in the political present express both the comedy and menace of Schlesinger’s obsequious political conformity.
Niebuhr shared something in common with ‘friendly witness’ Elia Kazan: the rationalization that bound their separate careers was that they both thought that their ‘radical pasts’ should not interfere with their very important, indeed vital life mission. Kazan’s was making movies and Niebuhr’s was winning converts to ‘Christian Realism’ ,which was in sum a riff on ‘render unto Caesar’ and the central belief in ‘Inherent Evil’ of the human person. Institutional Christian Self-Hatred is Augustine’s self-loathing for being human writ large, and his later epigones.
The reader can see the why of President Obama’s admiration for this ersatz ‘American Philosopher’, both share a belief in, not just the imperfectability of the human person, but its inherent ‘Evil’, allied with a political/moral rhetoric that appeals to the aspirations of their respective audiences. Christian Realism advocates/embraces not just the idea of the saved and dammed in eschatological terms, but in terms of the Cold War ethos. That ethos has now been applied, by Obama, to the Age of The War on Terror, and the utterly catastrophic Neo-Liberal Theology, that has been operative since the Reagan era. Note that Obama never praised FDR, but was fulsome in his praise for Reagan.
Almost Marx
Here is an excerpt from Alice Bamford’s review of Amanda Anderson’s ‘Bleak Liberalism’ in the New Left Review of May/June 2017. Which places ‘Liberalism’ and its primary thinkers like Schlesinger and Niebuhr, among others, to an examination of their political mendacity: which looks like a utter betrayal of what that ‘Liberalism’ could have been. If only its thinkers/defenders had exercised something like dissent as a singular moral/political imperative of that very ‘Liberalism’. Is the Liberal thinker/actor even capable of such an act of moral imagination?
Yet while ostensibly offering a defence of ‘political liberalism’, Anderson’s case rests on a near total abstraction from politics as such. Despite the pivotal role played by their thought in her narrative, the record of Anderson’s chosen Cold War liberals is never examined. Clergyman Niebuhr approved the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, applauded the development of the H-bomb, and advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Schlesinger colluded with (and lied about) the us invasion of Cuba, backed Kennedy’s wars in Indochina and counselled Americans under Johnson that ‘we must hold the line in Vietnam’, even telling Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, architect of escalation under both presidents: ‘You have been one of the greatest public servants in American history, and your departure from the government is an incalculable loss to this nation.’ Aron never spoke out against the French occupation of Indochina, or torture in Algeria; Camus not only refused to condemn France’s Algerian war, but backed the Suez expedition against Egypt. Berlin witch-hunted Isaac Deutscher out of a job in the British academy. Such particulars of the past, however, are too mundane for reference on the nebulous plane at which the history of ideas enters Bleak Liberalism.
How can one dismiss the Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr? Because his special brand of intellectually inflected political conformism fits so handily in this modern age of outright attacks on citizens, by their own government? Of drone attacks on civilian populations, argued by government agencies to be the locus of terrorist activities? Of preemptive war against states possessing weapons of mass destruction? That he is a Christian Theologian add luster to his varied career as political apologist for the Cold War and the National Security State. While some might even argue that he is the thinking man’s Billy Graham, with a more persuasive intellectual resume. With his ally Mr. Schlesinger singing his praises, as an intellectual leader, and with their creation of what was to be the ADA, a refuge of Liberals anxious to establish their credentials as anti-communists: freedom of political expression for right and left wing social democrats only! One need only read Mr. Schlesinger’s tedious and self-congratulatory diary entries of the period; with his penchant for the use of the word ‘commie’, to identify political dissidents of that benighted age in America.
As for Mr. Niebuhr’s status as political philosopher, he has an intellectual breadth and a seemly ever changing, evolving set of ideas tending toward conservatism as he aged. The addition of the fallen nature of ‘man’, the sine qua non of the Christian mythology, appealed to the deep stain of Puritanism still active in the American consciousness: the world historical battle between good and evil as background. He was a public intellectual with something to offer Liberal and Conservative thinkers, a kind of Cold War Pragmatist, perfect for our age of suspicion, our age of terror, peopled by intellectual pretenders of all stripes.
I find the public career of Mr. Andrew Sullivan puzzling, disappointing even infuriating. I started reading him when he was writing for The New York Observer and subsequently as he and Christopher Hitchens kept the debate of 9/11 within the bounds that they thought as reasonable, intellectually and politically acceptable, two stern enforcers of their continually evolving master ideas.
The two rhetorical policeman dismissing the charlatans who dared to express an opinion outside the the ken of these two intellectual capos. Vicious, dismissive and utterly ruthless to those they identified as unfit to comment on the most recent American Wound. Part of the collection of jingos and war mongers in the American intelligentsia that announced themselves in the subsequent day and weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Both became enthusiasts, celebrants of the Iraq War and just as quickly became disenchanted of their momentary celebration of the martial spirit, in the name of the honored dead and the need for retribution, even though their was no connection between the 9/11 perpetrators and Iraq, none.
That sorry, dismal, murderous folly is almost behind us or so Mr. Sullivan instructs us in his latest essay titled An End in Sight. He congratulates President Obama and, of course, himself in the process. But let me point to one telling paragraph:
“My view entirely. I’m struck too by his Niebuhrian grasp of the inherent tragedy of wielding power in an age of terror – a perspective his more jejune and purist critics simply fail to understand. This seems like a heart-felt expression of Christian realism to me:”
It is totally appropriate that Mr. Sullivan should frame his argument using the name of Niebuhr and his intellectual child ‘Christian Realism’ to add a certain theological/political gloss to his argument, that bit of cosmic melodrama that so appeals to his inflated sense of himself as a modern seer, prophet.
In that regard Mr. Niebuhr and Mr. Sullivan are kindred spirits in the celebration of God and the political realism, the Christian Realism that recognizes the importance of the state, as the indispensable political actor that can bring their respective religiously inflected politics into the realm of the actionable, the real. In a way, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Niebuhr, in their respective personal and historical contexts, are acolytes of the dyad of state power/masculine power.
Headline: Scott Anderson on Why Iran’s Real Revolution Might Be Coming
Sub-headline: Yascha Mounk and Scott Anderson discuss how economic collapse has created the conditions for regime change—and what this could mean for the country.
Editor: Never forget that Yascha Monk is the amauences to Intelectual Pretender Francis Fukuyama! Let me offer The Reader this brief selection of from this- what to name it but propganda, that arrives at the most unpropitous historical moment, while Venezuela and Greeland awate. Given this context, what might a prudent action plan regarding Iran be?
Mounk: So we recorded a wonderful, deep, historical dive into Iran in, I believe, July of last year. And I was really looking forward to releasing that episode and thought perhaps we can wait for some topical hook that’ll make that episode more relevant. And boy, did we get a topical hook over the last days.
There are these wonderful, inspiring pictures that also make me a little bit scared about what may be around the corner from Iran with just huge numbers of people taking to the streets to call for the end of the regime of the mullahs in a more open and more concerted way than probably at any point since 1979. What’s your read on the situation in Tehran and so many other cities around Iran today? Should we get our hopes up for an end to this regime?
Anderson: I think more than probably ever in the last 45 years, the regime is in serious, serious trouble. There have been moments in the past when it was in somewhat trouble.
What’s different this time with these protests? The regime in the past has always been very adept at playing one segment of society off against another. The religious against the more secular, the rural against the urban. The Women’s Freedom protests of three years ago, they were able to talk about it being—she was a Kurdish woman, the woman who was killed by the morality police—to kind of play the ethnic card.
This time, that’s not going to work because this is an economic collapse that has happened with the devaluation of Iran. So everybody is affected. Playing off one side against the other is just not going to work this time. The second thing that’s quite different is you now have an Iranian president, Pezeshkian, who’s come out in sort of solidarity, or at least in sympathy with the protesters.
He doesn’t have an awful lot of genuine power—Supreme Leader Khamenei does—but what he has is a voice, and that voice cannot really be shut up. So you have a very different dynamic taking place now than you’ve ever had before.
Mounk: So we recorded a wonderful, deep, historical dive into Iran in, I believe, July of last year. And I was really looking forward to releasing that episode and thought perhaps we can wait for some topical hook that’ll make that episode more relevant. And boy, did we get a topical hook over the last days.
There are these wonderful, inspiring pictures that also make me a little bit scared about what may be around the corner from Iran with just huge numbers of people taking to the streets to call for the end of the regime of the mullahs in a more open and more concerted way than probably at any point since 1979. What’s your read on the situation in Tehran and so many other cities around Iran today? Should we get our hopes up for an end to this regime?
Anderson: I think more than probably ever in the last 45 years, the regime is in serious, serious trouble. There have been moments in the past when it was in somewhat trouble.
What’s different this time with these protests? The regime in the past has always been very adept at playing one segment of society off against another. The religious against the more secular, the rural against the urban. The Women’s Freedom protests of three years ago, they were able to talk about it being—she was a Kurdish woman, the woman who was killed by the morality police—to kind of play the ethnic card.
This time, that’s not going to work because this is an economic collapse that has happened with the devaluation of Iran. So everybody is affected. Playing off one side against the other is just not going to work this time. The second thing that’s quite different is you now have an Iranian president, Pezeshkian, who’s come out in sort of solidarity, or at least in sympathy with the protesters.
He doesn’t have an awful lot of genuine power—Supreme Leader Khamenei does—but what he has is a voice, and that voice cannot really be shut up. So you have a very different dynamic taking place now than you’ve ever had before.
Political Observer on the Judicial Murder of Renee Nicole Good, that has pricked the conscience of these Trump Fellow Travelers! Under the rubric of ‘Acting without restraint’ !
Editor: The final paragraphs of this – what to name it? Trump is a criminal!
It will take some time for the facts of the shooting to be clarified. Former ICE officials say that, in the past, allegations of excessive force were usually investigated internally. But Mr Miller’s quip about immunity suggests that this administration is not interested in punishing agents for behaviour that might lead to accountability if local police forces engaged in it. The Supremacy Clause of the constitution, which elevates federal law over state law, can make it tricky for local prosecutors to charge federal agents with a crime they may have committed while on duty. Judges reviewing whether such cases can proceed have recently tended to decide for themselves whether an officer acted reasonably, rather than allowing a local jury to weigh in.
Mr Frey urged Minnesotans to stay calm and peaceful in the aftermath of the shooting. He is no doubt remembering how quickly protests escalated in his city after the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020. For months Mr Trump has seemed to want to provoke protesters to violence in order to justify cracking down even harder on Democrat-run cities. Recent court decisions limit his ability to deploy the National Guard the way he did in Los Angeles, but that is not the only option the president has if things get out of hand. He has long toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to send troops to cities. Once again, Minneapolis is at the centre of a storm.
Editor: Equvocation is the methodology of the scoundrel!
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