New Video of ICE Shooting Undermines Agents' Account

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From the NYT Liveblog, so I can’t provide the story via a free link. I’ll reproduce it here for folks hanging out here as we wait for MM.

Iranians voice shock and defiance in face of Trump’s latest deadline.

[Photograph of a destroyed building at Sharif University in Tehran]

With President Trump’s deadline to unleash mass destruction on Iran just hours away on Tuesday, Iranians faced the threats with a mix of indifference, defiance, and bewilderment.

Mr. Trump has vowed to level power and desalination plants, oil installations and bridges if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping route, by 8 p.m. Eastern time.

“The first thing that came to my mind is that I think Trump is under a lot of pressure, and that he has lost his mind,” said Lili, who works in the arts scene in the Iranian capital, Tehran. She asked not to use her full name out of fear of repercussions for speaking to foreign media.

Mr. Trump renewed his threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure at a White House news conference on Monday, in which he hailed the American forces’ rescue of two U.S. airmen whose jet was shot down over Iran on Friday.

“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” he warned.

Lili said she and her family had made no contingency plans at all, and they were not planning to flee Tehran. They were not stocking up on goods or bracing to hole up at home.

“We need to continue with our lives,” she said, adding there was no apparent haven to flee to: Attacking infrastructure meant almost anywhere could become a target.

Legal experts have argued that striking civilian infrastructure could be considered a war crime under international law.

Iran, apparently as emboldened by its shooting down of U.S. aircraft as Mr. Trump appears to be by the daring rescue of the airmen, put forward its own proposals and demands on Monday to end the war.

Mr. Trump called this a “significant step,” but one that was “not good enough” to change his announced deadline.

Mohsen Borhani, a law professor at Tehran University, said that as he read through Mr. Trump’s threats toward those the American president had called the “crazy bastards” running Iran, his first thought was of the founding fathers. In particular, he thought of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, “and the values that America was supposed to lead by,” he said.

“I also thought about the global order established after World War II, centered around the United Nations and shaped under Roosevelt’s leadership,” he said, referring to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “And I wondered, how it is possible for a U.S. president to undermine and discredit all American values and 250 years of human legacy?”

Mr. Borhani, a well-known political commentator in Iran, said the Trump administration was still operating under a “false assumption” that enough military pressure could force Iran’s authoritarian clerical rulers to surrender.

“Based on my understanding of Iranian society and governance," he said, “I can state clearly that even several nuclear bombs would not achieve such an outcome.”

Lili, the Tehran resident, said that as someone who long opposed her government and sympathized with the nationwide demonstrations that sought to topple it just months ago, Mr. Trump’s threats have shifted her feelings toward the United States and Israel.

Both countries’ leaders have repeatedly voiced support for Iran’s opposition and encouraged Iranians to use the war to rise against their leaders. But their warplanes are now bombing not just military sites, she said, but critical industrial facilities, universities, and schools.

“So now, we are supporting Iran and whatever government is running it,” she said.

Other Iranians made direct appeals to Americans to stop their president, arguing that whatever Mr. Trump unleashed on Iran would ripple across the globe and potentially lead to blowback against U.S. citizens.

Pedram Soltani, a prominent Iranian businessman, used his social media page to make such an appeal.

“Your president has now placed not only Iran, but also America and the entire world at a tremendous risk,” he wrote on X.

The bombardment Mr. Trump has vowed would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe,” he said. Should Iran retaliate against infrastructure in Gulf countries, as is widely expected, he said the damage to oil and other essential industries would send prices skyrocketing.

“The United States will become one of the most hated countries in the world, seen as responsible for these disasters,” he wrote. “That resentment will inevitably affect your own security and daily lives.”

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“If you can’t make ‘em see the light, make ‘em feel the heat!!” :thinking::face_with_raised_eyebrow::face_with_symbols_on_mouth:

They are in an alternate universe where none of this is happening and, if it is, it doesn’t concern them.

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David Dayden (=“dday”) was/is a regular contributor to Digby’s Hullabaloo, so he’s definitely one of The Good Guys. :thinking::nerd_face::saluting_face:

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Yeah, “I only support genocide when my when party’s leader wants it that way.”

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No; he knew he would have been assassinated had he moved to surrender prior to Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria - and even then there was an attempted coup. It was the Imperial High Command that was the problem, willing to sacrifice 20 million or more civilians. Lay the doorstep to the atomic bombings on them.

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Thanks for this.

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Just a quick reminder, Gen. Eric Shinseki made the mistake of speaking the truth about what it would take for the US to do well in Iraq.

As Army Chief of Staff, Shinseki testified to the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services on 25 February 2003, that “something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz

Of course, his truth telling wasn’t politically acceptable to the W/Cheney misadministration and he was shitcanned in favor of an earlier generation of sycophantic misleadership.

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I hope they don’t find anything!!?! :thinking::nerd_face::smirking_face::saluting_face::+1:

Something someone should’ve added to the list of double standards for reactionaries: they continue to be allowed to disregard the advice of military professionals without a political price and are allowed to remain the ‘party of national defence.’
It should be an untenable claim by now, nearly 25 years after Iraq, through Donnie’s betrayal of our allied clients and countries around the globe and well into this fiasco in the Gulf.
It’s connection to reality is a phantasm and should be untenable

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Trump’s GOP is basically a death panel.

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This o/t but… Not sure if you’ve read this young ladies Substack. This one is worth reading.
550x105

[Why the *$&@ Did Dan Rather and Donald Rumsfeld Buy a New Mexico Ranch Together in

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I’m back…
Has trump bombed any schools or apt complexes yet today?

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Soon.

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And republican cowards in congress will let trump have his fantasy

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Trump’s America
RepublicanSenators and House members are craven cowards for allowing this shit to continue
No republican up for reelection should win their elections.

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Those who voted for trump own this
Every last thing trump says is a lie … even his campain yard signs were lies.. here is one I saw in Tucson during the 2024 presidential campaign


So he starts a war Netanyahu said would be easy peasy…three days tops. Knock off old Ali Khameini and everything will collapse and you’ll be hailed a liberator…even get the Nobel Peace Prize

How’d that work out donnie?
One of trump’s common mental problems is something not generally observed and discussed. His drive of deliberate stupidity. He knows Iran has long cultural history and traditions. He is aware they are not stupid people. He also knows that their most common religion … Shia Islam, is deeply felt androoted in their everyday lives. Yet trump behaves as if he knows none of this. He approaches Iran as the Mid East version of Venezuela. The two countries could not be more different. He also knew of the importance of oil and other things coming from the Gulf states and how important those products are. He deliberatly chose stupidity and began a war.
Personally I have a problem with folk who choose a path of deliberate stupidity. It comes from an incident that occured when I was a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. The other grad student, who I knew to be aware and intelligent set a pint bottle in an old fridge in the lab
He did not tighten the screw cap on that bottle plus the bottle should’ve been placed in the lab’s chem fume hood. He knew better. He got lazy… deliberately stupid. Cycling in that old fridge set off that bottle. Ether blew up the fridge. The door of the fridge blew off and broke the lab’s water line. Lab flooded. Water seeped out the door and over night traveled the hall to stairs. Down 4 floors of stairs and then it flooded the building lobby. This scene if carnage is what I was presented with at 7:30 the next morning. Three years later I’m in Tucson for my new job and I attend a lab safety orientation meeting. The images I was presented with of what not to do in a lab…remember safety comes first with chemicals were of my old lab. I was mortified. I really dislike deliberate stupidity.
Trump is exhibit A++ of deliberate stupidity.

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