Many years ago I was lucky enough to meet one of the last Jews from Baghdad.

His English was excellent, but his Yiddish was minimal or non-existent from what I recall.

"R.I." said that while life under Saddam Hussein was bad, the Jews weren't targeted, liquor was freely available, women went to school in modern dress and in higher education, and he made himself a decent income. He didn't go into what his business was, but it was fairly lucrative.

"R.I." related to me that after Saddam Hussein was toppled in the aftermath of OIF, all of a sudden in Iraq "the Jews became Jews."

I told him those were basically the exact words of a musician in Vienna in the 1930s named Georg Kreisler:

"Before 1938 we were all Austrians. Hitler made us Jews." [sic]

The blog monitors may wish to combine this thread with another one about the Munich Security Conference.

Likud's tactic was the same as the National Party in Suid-Afrika, divide the opposition.

The Boers secretly funded the Inkatha Freedom Party (who were Zulus) to target the ANC (who were predominantly, mot all, Xhosas like Nelson Mandela).

The Bedouins had a positive relationship in Israel for decades, many of them serving in the IDF as desert scouts.

One of the first IDF rescue missions in Gaza was to free a Bedouin.

The deplorable Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to activating a jihadist cell of young gangsters in Gaza to hijack UN and NGO food delivery trucks. This cell of quislings was later rendered ineffective by Hamas or PIJ operatives.

Hi Clownshack

Initially Israel was far left and created by the Labor Party and if anything, right-wingers in Wash DC were concerned this "socialist" state might tilt towards the Soviet axis. Israel had plenty of East European Jews and remember, the 1919-1920 Palmer Raids deported those East European Jews out of fears of Marxism.

Israel's alignment with the US came much later, after the 1950s UK/France/Israel Suez Canal crisis that Eisenhower stopped.

The aftermath of the 1967 IDF attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War is when Israel, sort of neutral between the USSR and the US, began tilting towards Wash DC.

A few years later, Nixon's support for Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War led to the subsequent oil embargo and crisis.

In the post WWII era, Turkiye (and then Iran) were the US intelligence frontline against the USSR. And then a short-lived CENTO was formed.

There is a saloon/restaurant in NYC that I occasion once in a while. One early evening, to my right and back is an NYPD Lieutenant from the Intelligence Division sitting at a table enjoying an expensive meal with a NYS judge. We nod to each other politely.

Then I'm chatting and drinking with Irish and Jewish attorneys at the bar (one was interviewed on CNN over a huge case).

In walks an elderly Italian mobster who was busted in SDNY in the 1990s for operating those phony telephone booths and other sins.

I always joked with him that I lost a lot of money in his infernal machines and we all roar in laughter. He did time at Fort Dix FCI and uses his expired BOP ID card as his "introduction card" to strangers.

Anyways, after relating some amusing mafia anecdotes to us and enjoying the drink we bought him, he says: "'Scuse me gentlemen, I gotta go to work."

He saunters right past the NYPD LT and the judge and approaches a worker in the saloon to quietly collect the money the waiter owns the mob.

There was an idea to carve out a piece of Germany to give to the Jews of Europe.

The Morgenthau Plan was the name of it, I think, and the Allies wanted to make Germany an agrarian country-- no more military-industrial complex or army.

But Cold War reality stepped in and the plan was scrapped.

The Marshall Plan then took shape to rebuild Germany and make it a military ally against the communist Soviet Union.

Then NATO formed around that concept.

Last century an elderly Israeli man told me, "after the war (WWII), Palestinians just wanted a place to live, but the Jews needed to have a country."

After centuries of Ottoman rule and then a post WWI British mandate, that made sense to me from the Palestinian perspective.

Hi DBT2:

Years ago some of my friends on the Upper East Side attended the various synagogues up there, the neighborhood where Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Epstein both lived, but I can't recall which ones.

Anyways, both predators targeted or ensnared Jews, particularly Bernie who grifted the "Gold Coast" millionaires in Great Neck.

I have suspected one of the synagogues up there was a hunting ground for these two, but this is only a suspicion.

Growing up, we knew in my family and social circle that the Trumpfs weren't Jewish because of their German name.

And can you imagine any of the Trumpfs dropping a shekel into a pishka?

"Measles cases continue to be detected in Russia in 2026, although the overall number of cases in Europe and Central Asia has dropped significantly according to the WHO, which warned of remaining outbreak risks."

The handful of USAID officers I came across in the Middle East and Africa were not snobby embassy poobah types, but basically decent Americans who wanted to help the disadvantaged people of the Third World the way JFK envisioned.

I was more proud of their work than mine.

Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Tulsi Gabbard: the three witches in MacBeth.

Good-for-nothing modern day Benedict Arnold US Army Lt General Michael Flynn (Ret) was prosecuted and convicted for lying to the FBI, a violation of 18 USC 1001.

Deputy US Marshals have nothing better to do than protect and drive around this wretch.

Good thing the Trumpf junta wiped out USAID which saved millions of people's lives and made friends for America overseas.

On every USAID package was boldly written "not for sale" and "from the people of America."

On 20 Jan 2029, the next President will have plenty of work to do to fix everything, but there simply won't be enough minutes in a day, staff on hand, or money in the coffers for him or her.

1,461 days of gross malfeasance, theft, poor diplomacy, portraits being taken down, job terminations, awful executive orders, buildings re-named, etc etc by the idiotic Trumpf junta is like a never-ending 9/11.

Todd Blanche sounds like a real classy guy.

Gotcha, Corky.

Dummkopf Trumpf: "I care about the people of Iran who are living under a brutal regime."

"Geo Group is "cautiously participating" in the procurement process for running the warehouses and evaluating select sites, the company's greedy executive chairman, good-for-nothing George Zoley, told investors during an earnings call. Retrofitting warehouses to store people might be challenging, he warned. DHS wants to hold as many as 8,500 people in some of the several warehouses it has purchased with American taxpayer funds in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Texas.

Geo Group is one of the two biggest companies in the inhumane detention business: Roughly 34% of the people in ICE custody are detained at Geo Group's concentration camps. The Florida-based company says it has space for 6,000 more detainees at its own facilities.

~snip~

In 2019 Geo Group was found to be working detainees for pennies a day and then gouging them $3.25 for a can of tuna and $11 for a tube of toothpaste in the lockup commissary. In 2017, Geo Group executives partied lavishly at Dummkopf Trumpf's Miami golf resort after landing a $110m federal contract. That contract came months after they donated six figures to a pro-Trumpf super PAC.

Many privately-run ICE gulags have been condemned as being filthy concentration camps that dehumanize people in brutal conditions with poor plumbing and sanitation, as well as undernourishment, overcrowding, medical neglect and pestilence. Solitary confinement, still practiced in the US, is considered a harsh and unusual punishment in other countries, but ICE detainees have been subjected to this torture.

Sources:

Hard to believe he's Bobby's son.

Politico reports (Thursday 12 Feb 2026):

"House Republican leaders have informed lawmakers that they can no longer attend the Munich Security Conference as an official delegation.

Logistical arrangements for the delegation were handled by the office of House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast and the USMC.

Speaker Mike Johnson's office notified lawmakers that all official travel, including the Munich visit, is canceled due to a potential Homeland Security Department shutdown.

Lawmakers planning to attend privately will need to secure their own accreditation.

This situation breaks a long-standing precedent of bipartisan congressional participation in the Munich Security Conference.
The funding impasse in Washington is impacting transatlantic diplomacy.

Approximately two dozen members had planned to attend the conference.

Some lawmakers, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Yassamin Ansari, still intend to travel to Munich despite the official
cancellation."

~snip~

USSECSTATE Marco Rubio will be attending the conference. One wonders how many congressional delegates this time-wasting Empty Suit will ask to join him on the USAF plane which will take him there for free in First Class comfort and luxury. The good-for-nothing imagination-less puppet will be driven back and forth between his five-star hotel and the Munich conference with a motorcade and PSD, all paid for by our tax dollars.

Bon appetite you worthless emperor jackass.

*** US Smuggled Thousands of Starlink Terminals into Iran to Foment Dissent; Trumpf Warns Iran ***

"The State Department purchased 7,000 Starlink terminals several months ago with the aim of providing them to anti-government elements inside Iran, and that about 6,000 were smuggled into the country in January after the Iranian government cut internet access as part of its crackdown against the protest."

On 31 Dec 2025, the IDF alerted its citizens to be prepared for an imminent three-front war against the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran. This is a war that Israel will start, but will need some sort of provocation from Iran to make it "legit" for the Western mainstream media.

Dummkopf Trumpf and ICC-indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu have been plotting to attack Iran for months, creating false issues like "caring" about Muslims getting killed in Iran when the IDF, with US support and money, killed 72,000 Muslims in Gaza.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

After meeting the disgusting Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House, Dummkopf Trumpf brayed:

"We have to make a deal with Iran, otherwise it's going to be very traumatic, very traumatic."

"I don't want that to happen, but we have to make a deal," Trumpf sniveled to reporters in the White House when asked whether his thinking on Iran has changed following his meeting yesterday with the murderous Benjamin Netanyahu.

This homicidal maniac should have been immediately detained by US CBP inspectors at IAD airport based on the INTERPOL Red Notice ordering his arrest for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, in accordance with international law and the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment.

Another indicted war criminal, Russia President Vladimir Putin, does not want regime change in Iran nor does he want a disruption to drone manufacturing in the country which he needs for his war against Ukraine. Also, Russian oligarchs have invested billions of dollars in Iran which Putin doesn't want to see imperiled.

Dummkopf Trumpf is caught between Scylla and Charybdis: His domestic AIPAC supporters here in the US and his foreign handler in the Kremlin. And both have damaging kompromat on the geriatric morbidly-obese pedophile blighting the White House.

The millions of members in the American antiwar movement are watching these events closely and will not vote for a politician this November who receives money from AIPAC or supports the US or Israel attacking Iran.

Links:

FTA:

"The US intelligence officer's whistleblower highly classified complaint was based on a foreign-intelligence conversation collected by the National Security Agency (NSA) . The conversation included a discussion about a person close to Dummkopf Trumpf and at least in part concerned sensitive issues related to Iran. DNI Tulsi Gabbard, the most underqualified political hack to ever lead an intelligence organization, kept the report for eight months locked in a safe until it reached Congress in heavily redacted form last week.

CDI should never be sat on without action and is a gross dereliction of duty.

("CDI" is a US Army and FBI counterintelligence term meaning Credible Derogatory Information.')

Senior Trumpf junta apparatchiks bleated that the claims about the sinister Jared Kushner were demonstrably false, but declined to offer more specifics about the conversation on grounds that doing so could expose a highly sensitive surveillance method."

~snip~