Nuggets

Rotten to the Coren
By Michael Tennant -- "It is surely obvious to anybody with even a basic understanding of history, politics and the nature of fascism that something revolutionary has to be done within months – if not weeks – if we are to preserve world peace," writes Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun. How does Coren intend to "preserve world peace," you ask? He answers: "Put boldly and simply, we have to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran." Yes, my friends, instigating a war with nukes against a country that has not done any harm to either Canada or the United States is now, in certain quarters, the preferred method of "preserv[ing] world peace."

The Brutal 'Russian' Mafia
St. Petersburg Times (Russia) -- Being international in outlook gives Russian mobsters an advantage in drug sales, money laundering and the illegal trade of military equipment. And being mostly Jewish gives them a safe haven in Israel where many Russian Mafia types are citizens and thus immune from extradition to the United States when the feds get after them. As they did during Soviet times, crime and government function more or less as one in post-communist Russia. Today, though, the same thing may be happening in Israel, which, Friedman claims, is close to becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian crime syndicates.

The War Is Lost
Paul Craig Roberts -- Counterpunch -- Having lost the Iraq war, the neoconservatives are determined to initiate war with Iran. It is now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the neocons intentionally cooked up false intelligence in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqi and American casualties, both dead and maimed. Alarmed by the neoconservative drive to start a war with Iran before the US can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe, the CIA firmly declared that any Iranian nuclear weapon is a decade away. This undermines the neoconservatives' urgency to attack Iran now.

Comparisons with Hitler
Ken Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine -- On the Internet, there is a dictum known as "Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies" ... This law holds that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches." Anyone who has spent time on political discussion boards can see that it's true; in any charged debate (abortion, Iraq, Israel, foreign policy), it's only a matter of time before someone compares his opponent to Hitler. It's commonly understood that once Godwin's Law is invoked, a conversation is dead — and that any person who invokes Nazis almost definitely has failed to make his point. It's what philosopher Leo Strauss ... called Reductio ad Hitlerum – the absurd smearing of any opposing line of thought as "Hitleresque."