“Lame duck” is the phrase for that state politicians get into when their term is running out: By not being re-elected or simply reaching the end of their final term.
The present president in the US tries all he can to make it appear as if he was in full control of the situation and not the least bit ‘maimed’. Addressing the nation, as it were.
Yet, the signs are there: Claiming that votes were wangled at the time in 2020 and that the US-voting system is unreliable, not to say in danger of overthrowing itself, is a bit ‘rich’ by such a person – when you think of what happened in 2016:
The New York Times and the (then still reliable) Washington Post reported on the fact that elections had been influenced strongly by Russia, by order of Putin himself. In 2016, already.
Yet, nothing ever was said by Trump himself about that…
Why would he? It was in his favour.
If there had been insecurities they would have been fixed long ago by this time. (Catchword: Cybersecurity).
10 years later.
The contacts between the two heads of state (wouldn’t want to call them ‘leaders’… they miss out on so much that makes a good one…) were known long before that. Trump’s family members regularly visited there…
Let’s hope and pray that not only he in terms of peace but also voters in the US will finally see the light – and smell that rat that just might be a last, though feeble attempt to change any laws, in his favour again…
The Supreme Court has a majority of 4 justices, selected at the time from his followers…
It’s been reported more than once and the present president of the USA, whose name I try to avoid naming, even publicly praised himself for it: The scare tactics he chooses to employ. Scare them and then get the deal made into your, that is his, favour.
Cruel, selfish and completely given to the idea that money rules, and power is better, the ‘more the merrier’, for decades he has been part of a group of people who believe that a person is ‘good’ if they have money.
Actually, looking at US-American history, it’s only partly surprising that so many people there believe it:
Religious beliefs are at the bottom of all that.
The Puritans were the largest group to enter the North American continent and originally, in turn, Calvinists.
Calvin, a Swiss protestant, among many other ideas postulated that a human was God’s favourite if wealthy. By granting people wealth God would show his special grace towards them.
Is it surprising that over 300 years later the founding myth of the US, used as a ‘badge of courage’ and a sign, makes people believe strongly in this idea?
Basically: “Be rich and you are a good person”…?
History of mankind and actual events show nicely, how true it is that greed makes people cruel and violent.
The working uranium enrichment control contracts with Iran were cancelled in 2018 by the first administration of this president. Working contracts, officially confirmed by the IAEA.
Additionally, also historical pattern, starting a war is one of the best-liked ‘tools’ to divert attention from graver or downright illegal internal affairs.
The present president of the USA was found guilty on 34 counts of bribery, molestation and corruption in front of a US court of law. He was heavily incriminated in relation to the so-called Epstein papers.
That’s why he needs sensation, a war, to make people forget about all the other atrocities.
When the first settlers came to the country that is now called the USA, they were looking for religious freedom. Freedom for quite some time was not for all, even there. Viewed from over here, we see all those facts that make it hard to celebrate, especially these days. A bitter reckoning, mostly.
Yes, they made it. Somehow. But the ups and especially the downs are memorable. When someone like the present president from the extreme right is at the head of a government that does everything to revert back to times we have put behind us for more than 300 years… it can become irritating. Namely: feudal structures: A ‘king’ who claims the whole power for himself and would, if he could, reign for ever. Have everybody do his bid.
It’s awfully amazing that someone like that could actually ‘be flushed to the surface’, scum, in a country claiming to be the oldest existing democracy. Due to money: Paying for the necessary advertisements, these days mostly online.
Lives have been lost. The peoples of America, of the whole continent, close to complete obliteration, just because settlers felt they had the right to the land… Cruelty, hatred and death daily; around the world, the latest the war against Iran. For what?
Greed. Power. Money. Oil.
I feel it to be a challenge in face of all this and many more facts, to mention all the fine aspects too:
Literature, arts, painting, music and movies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Harper Lee, George Gershwin… a long and impressive list that here can show only a very few.
“Moving pictures”: To think that some of the greatest artists in that field came from Europe, again: Fritz Lang, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergmann, Wolfgang Petersen, Hans Zimmer, and many more, and, towering them all like a small yet wonderful figure of heart and brains:
Charles Chaplin.
He developed ‘the flickers’, moving pictures, into an art form, in a career of over 50 years, coming from most desperate surroundings himself. He knew. Bless his heart.
Charles Chaplin who made it clear what life is about: About empathy in the most tragic and desperate situations. About laughter and that smile he even worked into a song, whose lyrics were created a few years later, in 1954, rendered by Nat King Cole in that manner that encompasses it all: Life at its most wonderful and most tragic.
A scene in “City Lights” that plays nicely with our perception: A blind girl who through hearing the sound of an expensive car door closing assumes a passing man to be rich…
Image: Radio Deutschlandfunk (Germany), “Nach einem Luftschlag auf eine Raffinerie in Teheran ging sogenannter Schwarzer Regen auf Teheran nieder (Bild vom 8.3.2026) (AFP / ATTA KENARE)”
Prices are rising… well, what would one expect. People are being killed. Now the ‘black rain‘ over Tehran is another step towards destruction. The region going up in flames. The country scarred already and becoming another Iraq…?
It’s good to see that they are starting to act again, NATO, EU: ‘Trump’s war’ is not his doing alone, of course.
As a ‘figure head’ he ‘works’ based on the interests behind him too: The industries, most importantly the one producing weapons. The population, who as a majority depend on their ‘way of life’, namely cars for moving across country in the USA, with cheapest prices of all… they trust that any president will observe this concept, this idea, and the government will take care of petrol.
War is no heroic deed of people doing the good thing. War is not only a ‘costly affair’… it always is part of a framework of interests and needs of those in power, those with money and those with ulterior motives. Such goals are not always easy to ‘dig down to’, define.
In the news we usually get the actual event. What we need to do is more reading, to get at the facts behind the ‘images’. Reliable sources. Remember that news have statements in them, which in turn are based on interests and needs and – very often also on diplomacy.
What also helps to understand the ‘goings-on’ behind the scenes, the real motives, is this age-old concept:
“Cui bono?” – “Who benefits?”
If you ask that about anything, it will get you farther in understanding.
This is no ‘piece of cake’, especially not for those being killed and wounded every day. Being scarred for life by health risks and cruelty and greed.
We need to prove that the international community is stronger holding out against one or another country and their selfish, incompetent and greedy ‘potentates’.
Images licensed via Adobe CC, my graphics, no AI involved
The president of the USA, Donald Trump, is a criminal ruled guilty on 34 counts of bribery and corruption as well as molestation before a regular court of law of the US. At the same time ‘leader’ of one of the most powerful nations today, yet. War means death and destruction, always. No exceptions. None.
Landscapes and living areas are laid waste, people deprived of home and livelihood.
Although all the motives are clear and have been for decades, still the international community lets him and his administration act as if he was the only one around?
This is indeed a crime, because it’s killing people for no other reason but profit:
He and his administration cancelled the Uranium enrichment control contracts without reason. They were working, according to official reports of the IAEA at the time. They had been reached after ten years of negotiating.
Internally the reign of the Iranian government is nothing to write home about. But, about how many governments, especially the larger powers today, can you say that? China? Russia?
The US?
The USA where money is the sole defining attribute of a person. Where close to no protection for workers/employees exists to this day. Where weapons are sold to minors and people killed in the streets into the bargain, thousands each year. Where people from one day to another will lose house or home and live in cars, with their few belongings right there, searching for employment.
Now this country of Iran, whose conflicts in the area are heavily intertwined with the Israel-Palestine conflict and so many adjacent countries is supposed to be bombed back into the stone age? Just like Iraq?
Iran: A tradition and history that reach back thousands of years, far beyond Islam and its first advent?
Because the US need oil, cheap and fast? Because cars in the US have to be kept rolling, with cheap petrol, if as a president you want to stay in office?
Because the weapons’ producing industry is the largest and most powerful over there?
Where are EU, UNO and NATO these days? What if another member would do the same…? Any of them?
Russia and Putin are scorned for their attack on Ukraine, for other internal reasons. Have been so for years? And Trump does the same thing now… To cover up, too. As so often has happened throughout history: Make war on a ‘common enemy’ to distract attention from internal affairs and shortcomings.
Netanyahu of Israel was and is a well-known hardliner against Palestinian territories. He has driven Israeli settlers there for almost a decade now. He has lost the support of his own parliament as well as the majority of the people of Israel. Which is a fact even on platforms such as LinkedIn.
Stop this madness now! Start using reason again. Stop selfish, cruel and completely ruthless people such as the present president of the US and his administration.
Note 16th March 2026: Acting like the true ‘scary’ ‘deal maker‘ he has publicly declared himself to be: Trump, this sorry excuse for a man, of course, uses every lever he can get hold of. Beware, and just wait a little… Neither NATO, UNO nor EU will bow to your conditions:
You have all the oil you need…? Now…in dependence on Russian oil, for the time being… but it is only reasonable that in the long run this will not be sufficient or satisfying to an economy as dependent on oil and fossil fuels as the USA:
Rather make Iran succumb and get oil from the largest fossil fuel recovering industry in the world on the cheap… hey?
Who do you think you are fooling here…?
We all know by this time that messages in front of cameras are one thing; but often just as much marketing and boasting or pressurizing as anything…
Setting the whole of the Near East on fire – nice and calm sitting in front of screens thousands of miles away.
Some stunt.
Really…? – Rather embarrassing if it wasn’t so cruel – one is reminded of just so many boys playing at tin soldiers…
It is clear to anyone who follows politics closely: Mr Trump, President of the USA, is desperate. Nothing else explains the behaviour towards Iran: The USA are even historically famous for their need of oil. Of fossil fuels.
The economy in the USA is failing and has been for years just as it has everywhere else. The pandemic has taken its toll.
The weapons’ industry in the USA is the most powerful of all. When you don’t make war, you don’t need to produce weapons.
That’s why wars are so ‘profitable’: The president profits from the ‘noise’ and news around apparent enemies that have to be fought. No one will look at his criminal record anymore. (Link to New York Times article.)
The industry producing weapons also profits: The storage spaces will be lightened of their ‘burden’ and new weapons have to be bought.
With the tax payers’ money, to boot. And the soldiers that might die?
Let them not fool us: Iran’s internal politics are cruel and brutal towards their population, against human rights and especially those of women.
But this is not about Iran’s population: This is about its oil and the power and the money. It’s between Iran and the USA.
Later, March 1st 2026: What will happen, if a new government actually would be instated in Iran that of course would be cheek by jowl with the US? For decades the Palestinians had to try and hold their ground. Ground that was originally theirs to keep as per agreements after the founding of Israel.
What will happen to Iran itself? A copy of Western civilisations, with the values and particular ways gone…?
What will happen to its oil and the USA’s needs…?
Hopefully enough people will start thinking about this early. The factions inside and outside of Iran are even now distinctly discernible.
Let’s hope that a fate like that of Iraq will be spared them. Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had been supported for decades by the USA as well. They even helped him getting ‘up’. When he started to become too independent, his fate was sealed.
Iran’s history for over two centuries now has been determined by its resources, above all: Oil. The ‘black gold’ that since industrialization has been the most coveted resource of all. Iran has lots of it. And it is the largest oil recovering industry of the world.
The present government is cruel internally. The rules and regulations are restrictive and deny basic human rights to all, especially to women.
It is the dreadful choice of ‘hell or high water’: All foreign powers since the 18th century, especially then-Russia, the Soviet Union and now Russia again, France, Great Britain and a little later the USA tried constantly to grab hold over Iran’s politics and thus its oil. Its resources are rich, such as gas, but oil exists in abundance.
And can be extracted with ease, the modern facilities in place.
During the reign of the last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a few very rich profited and lived in luxury, a thin layer of the society’s strata that over here are called the middle and upper middle classes also lived a fairly wealthy and quiet life.
But there was no freedom of arts, press or opinion. The Savak, the shah’s secret service was present everywhere. Would someone try and criticize the shah’s politics openly, they would rather quickly find themselves in prison, the Evin prison close to Tehran to this day is world in-famous for the cruel conditions and torture of political prisoners. It was founded during the shah’s reign.
To boot, oil at the time was basically in the hands of the US, sold to them at dumping prices, the shah lived and reigned from their grace. And they removed support when the uprisings began to become huge in 1978 and 1979.
The larger part of the Iranian population at the time, though, not only lived in the country. They were poor to starvation point, and uneducated, many were not even able to read or write.
For decades they tried to make it known and finally protested so often and in such large groups that the shah finally had to leave. That was in 1979. It enabled Ayatollah Khomeini to come back, who had had to flee the country some years previously.
He seemed to promise freedom, finally: Freedom of thoughts and ideas, of press and a more just distribution of the country’s wealth. Many a fine journalist and educated intellectual was taken in at the time.
But as soon as the government was instated, any and all ‘enemies’ of the Islamic Revolution and the ‘Islamic Republic’ were hunted down and killed or imprisoned. The freedom of opinion or press or basic human rights were denied again. Ancient Islamic laws were reinstated and especially the restrictions for women in terms of clothing, education and choice of profession were made much worse again.
A few hopes had been attached to leaders in the late 1990s and early 2000s but in vain. Some few lessened limitations were soon to be tightened again.
It is over 40 years now. The third generation of young people are living under harsh restrictions.
Yet, the international community, above all the USA to this day constantly put Iran under pressure:
Especially the Trump administration has in both its times in office committed about every political misdemeanour possible:
The contracts in regard to the control of uranium enrichment that had been reached after over 10 years of negotiation have been cancelled by Trump during his first stay in office. At the same time severe limitations and restrictions to trade and international business have been imposed upon Iran. They are not only still in place but tightened every now and again.
Making the living conditions inside the country so much worse.
What is the motivation for the USs meddling, the constant pointing of fingers, threatening and blaming Iran alternatively?
Easy to figure out really: No one would lift a finger very probably, if Iran wasn’t so rich in resources.
Iran and Persia to this day for a lot of fine reasons ring in people’s ears with wonders and a thousands of years’ old culture, reaching far back beyond Islam’s advent.
If anything, a free government and political culture of its own, unmolested by outside powers will be Iran’s salvation.
Image by Dorothe Wouters, and general content, from Pixabay
“Negotiate the hell out of them”… da…rn it. – I’d like to say that directly sometimes to the people concerned at present trying to reach an end to that war, that was unnecessary in the first place, if…
Yes, if people would do their homework, people in power learn from history, and those who know:
Diplomats, for centuries learned ‘at their mothers knee’ what is essential in any kind of politics you may want to conduct:
Realize that in politics it is about money, power and – 3rd party interests, those of your own country as well as those of others.
Know your opponents’ interests as well as possible.
Realize that it is about power-balance just as much as saving face!
The one-time elegance of manners stems also from here: Get to realize that treating the opposing party with respect and the usual formalities makes all the difference.
Learn to be patient! Patience – without giving up, or in – is the most important characteristic of successful negotiating.
The Thirty Years’ War in Europe raged exactly that: 30 years.
Whole regions were wasted and cities laid bare because of plundering, murder and legions of soldiers passing that had to be kept, resulting in hunger, starvation and more death.
The weapons’ industry and its entourage are the only ones – if they survive it – that profit from a war.
So, let’s keep telling them: We want peace, we want a power-balance, at least. We want that cruelty and useless destruction to stop, now.
The Thirty Years’ War took 5 years to end it. 5 years of negotiations.
Patience is the order of the day. Not more profit from yet more weapons.
The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for it: The reporting on contacts between Trump and Putin all those years ago, when he first ran for office: The election of 2016 already had been influenced on a broad scale by Russian hackers.
Additionally, the contacts between other members of the Trump-family, such as his nephew, to Russia and Putin or his ‘entourage’, have been proven.
Not so long ago Trump could be seen practically worshipping Putin when meeting him.
Trump seems to have stated publicly even that he envied Putin his status: To be able to have people to ‘jump through hoops’ basically at his command. Something Trump has been craving and is as yet denied by the constitution of the USA.
What is going on?
I think it is safe to suppose that all this threatening scenery has been moved just as on a stage: Make us believe in the threat – and invest: In weapons and the weapons’ industry.
In return, Putin at some point will ‘get’ Ukraine. And no more NATO in front of his territory.
Which sounds alright.
Otherwise: It seems a huge campaign in order to get Trump raised NATO-members’ annual in weapons. To 5% from 3% originally. Do the maths: Depending on the gross national product, per year. That’s billions of dollars the US-way. Weapons that are produced mainly in the US. Weapons that most of the other NATO members will order from there.
Add the raised tariffs and you have your threatening setup and deals-closing all complete.
By a man whose whole history is about making huge amounts of money; who did not care a hoot about anyone, when going bankrupt on purpose in the 1960s, hurting thousands of small stakeholders and sinking them.
Who promises yet never really comes through with bettering living conditions, employment rates, for those at the bottom of society’s ladder.
Who praised himself for being that kind of deal-closer: Threaten them and be done with it. Who has done so – or at least tried – repeatedly.
North Korea comes to mind, a couple of years ago. Some threats and fears raised of actual military action in the seas close to Korea. And suddenly:
– Silence. Shaking of hands and alleviation of said threats…
At the time it seemed too good to be true already. It does so even now. Looking at all the other examples, mentioned. At Gaza. At Ukraine.
Putin and Trump: Meet the ‘family’.
Note: There are facts. There are interpretations. Most of what I cite here, is fact and can be verified.
When you negotiate it is vital to understand your opponent at the table, especially in politics, in diplomacy! All this is actually an age-old knowledge and even wisdom to use. To recall, even look it up, where necessary.
What is the logic of this war…? For over 11 years now, with a lot of public attention small step by small step a nation like the Ukraine is supposed to be conquered…? By a country like Russia…? Slowly? – Seriously?
When you look at the map of current member states below, the parts of the world that are not intended or even actual members, the first thing striking the eye of the beholder is the relation towards Russia of member states…
Would anyone stay dumb when there is a pretty obvious encroaching of powers – and a constant threat, right outside the door, as it were?
One more reason to take each other seriously at last! Not just behind the scenes, but in front of cameras too.
To let people suffer and kill them day after day, just for the obvious reason that some people rather stay greedy, and in power by selling weapons, forcing deals, in order to make more money after scaring people out of their wits… is just cruel; also a clear sign of priorities!
There are societies with more freedom and more peace on the inside than Russia at the moment, no doubt about it!
But war?
It’s wrong.
Whatever your colour, creed or conviction you are not supposed to either kill, torture or bother other people! Period!
War is not a destiny! It’s not an accident! And it’s not a chance occurrence on a rainy Sunday…!
Start thinking – and properly. Start getting counselling and stop this madness! It has gone on far too long!
Full screenshot taken at 2025-07-09 at 19-37-49 local time (UTC+1) on the NATO site itself.
Author’s Note:
“Device” can be used in several connotations, not to say meanings. One, according to Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, is this: “a method that is used to produce a particular effect“
Not everyone will find my way to reason apparent. Not everyone can connect easily to my conviction that war is bad. Should be avoided. Look into history. Or try a recent German publication by an archeology professor of high standing: “Die Evolution der Gewalt“
Additionally, using the form of addressing people in a sort of letter personally, online (or in print in former times), is one particular genre – or type of text.
I am grateful that I live in a country where opinion is still free…
