== Why are we at war again? ==
I'll be concise here, laying down reasons why thousands of U.S. service members - and eventually millions of the rest of us are being thrown into danger amid gaudy explosions that terrify - and sometimes kill - a people we want as friends.. I'll briefly offer some bullet points, many of them I've already elucidated, in other locales. But one thing is certain...
...that this is not about Iran's nuclear program. Sure, the Mission Accomplished 'deal' that Donald Trump will eventually bray will claim that's the reason for it all. It's not. Even remotely.
1. Elsewhere, I speak of Republican Bipolar Foreign Policy. The GOP always ... and I mean literally always... veers sharply between isolationism and imperial thuggery. We saw this manic-depressive mania under Nixon, Reagan, Ford, and both Bushes (remember the Neocons braying "We're an empire now!").
2. When Republican presidents do wage war, it is with an unmistakably different style of military action than Democratic presidents. I've seen no one comment on this, even though it expresses a fundamental difference in character. And yes, it expresses diametrically opposite attitudes toward the fantastically professional men and women of the US military officer corps....
3. ...whose demoralization is a core aim of the Trumpists. Take how Pete "Filthy Fingers"* Hegseth commanded 500 of the world's finest professionals -- generals, admirals and top sergeants - to drop their work all over the world and hurry to Quantico, where 'former' alky Hegs and Trump berated them as "too fat and too woke to fight." just 6 weeks before they performed the most spectacularly complex and competent raid (in Caracas) in the history of the world. A raid that exposed many of our secret methods and tools to scrutiny, without liberating any Venezuelans from their criminal masters (We'll say more on that.)
But yes. Demoralization and culling of the Officer Corps is a feature, not a bug. Trump fired the JAGs whose task includes advising military folks about the legality of orders. And he's been reaming out dozens of flag officers who demur over sending boots into American cities. Now why would he do that?
4. Then there's distraction. Trump is not the first to use war to divert attention away from domestic failures and discontents. Nixon did it. Reagan several times. As did Bush Jr. But Donald Trump is truly desperate to sidetrack. Now with Operation Epstein Slurry... I mean Epic Fury.
Which brings us to something that many of you keep falling for.
5. This Iran war is not even remotely about oil. Except as he's been able to get Venezuelan oil export revenues diverted into offshore slush accounts that he controls. And sure, he likely intends the same re: Iran. And starving Cuba could lead to the option described below. But the USA - as a nation - does not benefit from war-seized oil. We got none from the Iraq wars - and I want you to read this sentence several times, till that fact sinks in. "We did Iraq for oil" is an idiotic incantation worthy of MAGA.
Anyway, the US got energy independence under Obama and is a net exporter. So STFU about that cliché.
6. Except that shutting down Iranian oil does boost world prices, benefiting his fellow oligarchs. So, okay. Maybe a bit.Indirectly.
7. This is not about toppling despots! Decapitating the top capo of the Venezuelan and Iranian gangs is classic mafia technique, that is not meant to liberate the people of those countries! DT has already made offers to the Iranian Republican Guard and Religious Police etc to make deals with him to stay in power, in exchange for them kissing his ring. In Venezuela, Argentina, El Salvador etc. - and possibly soon in Cuba - the aim is never, ever to establish democracy or to liberate citizens from their oppressors.
The pattern is perfectly that of mafiosi. Take over another gang's territory by decapitating its top capo, then get allegiance (and resulting vigorish) from the terrified sub-capos of the gang that's left in place. This pattern is now so repeatedly blatant that no other theory is even remotely tenable,
Oh, and Marco will ensure that Miami crime families will slip in atop the Castro power structure in Cuba. This is a Mafia gang and the capo di tutti capi - even above Don - was named Vlad. Though the power of his blackmail files to coerce western elites into obedience may be fading! For reasons I'll go into, elsewhere. (Hint: because of AI.)
8. I mentioned the exposure of hard-won military secrets and methods, each time we go to physical war. Sometimes, that can't be helped. Russian and Chinese observers are all over eastern Ukraine, for example. Mostly amazed by the brilliance and effectiveness of most Western systems and studying hard how to copy or counter them. But Ukraine is an actual need. Perhaps Iran is, too. But this factor belongs on the balance sheet.
9. Russia's interest. Look up The Great Game of the 19th Century between the Russian and British Empires, as the former kept maneuvering and jostling, trying to win its way to a southern, ice-free port into the Indian Ocean and from there to the rest of the world. Iran/Persia was always a major part of that great-powers struggle and if most in the west don't remember it, you can be sure that Russians do. Above all, the very last thing they want is a free, secular and democratic Iran. Far better to divide power there with the Trumpist gang. Whose relations with Putin are the ghosts at the banquet.
10. Okay, this final reason for the war is harsh. It is speculative, but makes perfect sense,
Another aim is to foment anger, to re-enrage the forces in the Middle East who want to do terrorism on America. Riling up enough enemies to deliver us into another 9/11 attack. One that Old Two Scoops imagines might save him from having to face devastating elections, this fall.
Do I have any evidence for that last one? Other than vows of revenge that are already echoing across the region, for the blatantly dumb targeted assassination of Iran's 82-year old paramount religious leader?
Well, it would explain why Don fired over half of our counter-terrorism folks. And can you think of anything less than a major national trauma that'd provide the excuse he needs for martial law?
Put it all together folks.
Prepare, in that event, to chant "Reichstag Fire!"
But also keep in mind another word. One that shows we finally understand what's going on. Phase 9 of the 25 year recurring psychic schism between pro- and anti-modernity Americans. Our never settled civil war. And hence one word that will efficiently show our grit, our determination, our courage... our firm intent.
APPOMATTOX.
* Filthy Fingers Hegseth. Look up how many times, on Fox, he (drunkenly) bragged: "I don't believe in germs; I haven't washed my hands in a decade." Though I'll admit. Most Trump appointees are even more crazy and even less qualified.
212 comments:
1 – 200 of 212 Newer› Newest»Spotted another (which may be a variant on #8)
U.S. war in Iran risks depleting munitions for Ukraine now, Taiwan later
I tend to be wary about accusations that military campaigns are meant as domestic distractions. Not this time.
David,
That's an interesting theory for the war.
I must say that Trump is conducting war a bit differently than prior administrations. Trump 2.0 seems determined not to put boots on the ground. Our twin "forever wars" taught him that these actions end up destroying political power.
Instead, he seems intent on sending air power and special forces in to break stuff,, and hope the populace will rise up and topple the existing power structure. Historically, it took ground pounders to topple governments. Air power alone wasn't enough. Wiping out the leadership class combined with air power and special forces raiders is kinda a new strategy for regime change. Who knows if it will work.
This is ENTIRELY consistent with you likening it to a mob war, especially with targeting the top leaders. Before, conventional war strategy didn't aim for elites with the idea that if you knocked them off, you'd have no one to surrender. It was also convenient for the elites to feel safe. If you target top leadership, the other guys might retaliate.
What use is it getting to the top if you're too dead to enjoy your loot?
Now that Trump is stuffing treasure into his pockets unlike most prior presidents, this manner of warfare makes sense. However, you imply that Obama should get credit for making the US oil independent. I don't really think he did much to achieve it. The primary reason was the oil industry developing fracking tech, isn't really something the lw likes much.
Obama was pushing green energy initiatives, and the oil industry short circuited this move by learning to get production from fields that weren't profitable before. So, to me, our current energy independence was more in spite of lw politicians.
Corrections. The amount of munitions used to hit Iran is - my completely amateur impression - very minor compared to any day of Ukraine.
JV Trump does NOT want a successful democratic uprising in Iran. That would be an un-controllable democracy. I give odds he'll make a deal to leave Ayatollah types in Charge... tho here's an essential conflict with Israel, who want Iranian democracy since Iranian city folk like Israel and would restore that only alliance.
So if Treebeard is right, then I'll be wrong and democracy will prevail, dest[ite Trump's mafia wishes.
JV you may be right but I'll gladly (simplistically) give BHO credit.
The pattern is perfectly that of mafiosi. Take over another gang's territory by decapitating it's top capo, then get allegiance (and resulting vigorish) from the terrified sub-capos of the gang that's left in place.
No argument here, as both the Mafia & the US federal government utilize violence (or the threat of violence) as a foundational tool to compel obedience, establish order and enforce rules within their respective spheres of influence.
It's hardly a new observation either, ever since John Brunner offered up the same analysis in his 1975 novel 'Shockwave Rider', but one that's been adequately addressed by Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, the OST's 'A Piece of the Action' episode and the glorious US Second Amendment.
It's also the entire rationale behind all of our fine host's 'Union Kepi' blather, too.
To which I reply:
You're singing to the choir, brother, though my cap be grey and my flag be bonnie blue, and we'll all be fine here, thank you, as opposed to an unarmed EU, now occupied by 50+ million foreign males, making it well & truly screwed.
Best
We've already lost the war with Iran for the same reason that Putin lost the war in Ukraine.
Drones.
Cheap, simple , effective and deadly drones that can be made in any garage using parts from radio shack have changed warfare as much as tanks did in WW2. All this high tech weaponry and all we've done is recreate stalemate trench warfare of WW1
And Iran is world's premier producer of drones:
(Summary from ChatGPT)
is iran the world's biggest producer of drones?
Iran is not definitively the world's largest overall producer of drones, but it has emerged as a major global power in low-cost, loitering munition (kamikaze) drones. While China dominates the global commercial and consumer drone market (over 70% share via DJI), Iran leads in producing cheap, effective, and battle-tested military drones, with Russia now mass-producing Iranian-designed drones.
Key Details on Iran's Drone Capabilities:
Mass Production Capability: Iran has moved from a regional player to a global supplier, with the ability to produce thousands of drones (such as the Shahed-136) at low cost.
Russia Partnership: Russia is manufacturing Iranian-designed drones (Geran-2) in a facility in Tatarstan, aiming to produce thousands annually, which leverages Iranian design with Russian manufacturing.
Key Models: The Shahed-136 and Mohajer-6 are widely used, notably in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Global Proliferation: Iran has exported drone technology to multiple countries and proxies, including Sudan, Venezuela, Tajikistan, and Hezbollah.
While Ukraine has recently reported high, localized production numbers (up to 4 million drones annually, including small FPV drones), Iran remains a top player in the specific, strategic category of long-range, loitering
(End summary)
A single kamikaze drone costs between $100 and $55,000 depending on range and sophistication.
By comparison a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) costs $125 million and carries cargo worth $130 million.
Do the math.
There is no defense against a swarm of 100 drones when only one of them has to get through.
Like I said, we've already lost.
That and not having a strategic plan to actually win the war doesn't help either.
Dr. Brin,
I think he DOES want an uprising to put pressure on Iran's leaders to cave. Doesn't mean he won't hang them out to dry when they've served his purpose.
If we really cared about freedom we would be invading the far worse regime in North Korea.
But then NoKo doesn't have any oil.
Funny how we only liberate countries that have oil.
If I'm reading your ladder of logic,
(a) Your premise is that Iran wins the war as long as their are able to maintain a blockade of the straights of Hormuz.
(b) From that premise, you then examine "does Iran have the capability to maintain a blockade on Hormuz indefinitely"? You conclude that it can, and therefore that Iran will win in the end.
I'm not convinced by your premise.
The US doesn't import oil from the Persian gulf, so I don't think a blockade of Hormuz is going to be devastating for the US economy.
What does "winning" look like for the US?
(1) destroy (or at least heavily attrit) Iranian nuclear capabilities. - closing Hormuz has nothing to do with that
and/or
(2) regime change in Iran - closing Hormuz to tanker traffic doesn't prevent that either.
(3) make Trump look good (for arbitrary values of "good") - I don't think sinking tankers is going to have much impact here. Sinking the Abraham Lincoln would, of course. But She's a pretty hard target for drones unless she wanders to close inland.
Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show:
"Iran's totally-obliterated nuclear program healed as quickly as Trump's ear."
This morning's BIG STORY on France24 seems to support Celt's assessment:
How will the Iranian Conflict affect the Summer Travel Season?
The West has become so decadent, trivial & unserious that it has already lost.
Best
Also heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show:
"The only difference between Trump and Jim Jones is that Trump would charge you for the Kool-Aid*."
* Yes, I know it was really Flavor-Aid. We've known for centuries that "oxygen" is a misnomer, but what can you do?
So the dow, which started with a loss Monday morning has almost recovered to its Friday afternoon close.
And oil prices, while up from Friday's $67/barrel were only as high as $73 before retreating back closer to $70.
What do the Epstein Class know that we don't?
Celt,Iran has three paths and only one includes attacking us.
1: most likely. The IRG etc cut a Mafia deal with Trump. Israel would prefer full democratic conversion since they know they are popular on the streets. But they can live with this. Putin can live with it.
2. Complete popular uprising is successful, Full transition to modernity and democracy. I cannot vouch for Netanyahu (damn him) but most Israelis and Americans would want this. But Putin and Trump would hate it.
3. The Iranian regime resists Trump effectively and galvanizes a resurgence in world terrorism. This benefits Trump in the biggest way, because a new 9/11 excuses martial law in the US.
"No argument here, as both the Mafia & the US federal government utilize violence (or the threat of violence) as a foundational tool to compel obedience..." Garbage. An adversarially accountable and transparent justice system and a government that is regularly and competitively audited is not a mafia gang. But we've learned that it can be dismantled and corrupted by traitors.
Unserious? Because a travel professional is worried about travel? Gawd you are clutching at straws. Europe is re-arming and training hard. Putin made a BIG mistake getting distracted and letting his own forces wither, revealed as incompetent buffoons. A pack of grumpy Finnish cub scouts could march into St. Petersburg. And be welcomed as liberators.
Cplus, are you saying the collapse of European and Asian economies won't negatively impact the US? The world financial system? International trade? Ruin our alliances and diplomatic standing?
We don't have to be directly affected in order to be wrecked by Iranian drone strikes.
The IRG won't be rational after this. Think of a much larger and more radical Taliban on steroids, with larger numbers, more sophisticated technology and better financing. All we've done is disturb the wasps nest.
My advice to everyone is not to get on board a plane anytime soon.
You all have to watch this interview with Prof Jiang who predicted that Trump would win in 2024, he would attack Iran, and that America would lose that war.
https://youtu.be/4Ql24Z8SIeE?si=Qtj7_jlqshAuQfS2
Iran's primary weapon would be drones attacking the most important facilities in the middle east.
Desalination plants.
For example, if they destroy Riyahd's desalination plant a city of 10 million would be without water in two weeks.
That's easy to do with cheap drones.
Without desalination the Gulf countries can't function. They are then unable to underwrite the American economy with investments in AI data centers the current linchpin of the American economy. Everything collapses like a house of cards.
When our fine host says Europe is re-arming and training hard, I believe that he is referring to 'Readiness 2030', a 5 year plan that promises European military preparedness by 2030, a prospect that has most likely reduced Putin to a state of abject terror, possibly due to his passing familiarity with Soviet-style 5 year plans.
And, yes, a promise to defend yourself from violence FIVE YEARS FROM NOW is the very definition of 'unserious', especially when faced with violence today.
I expect little else from a meek & conquered people who still rely on the protection of the US Mafia & Don Trumpeone, lo these many years.
I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of the racket all the time. Now I am sure of it.
These were the words of Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated US Marine in American History & author of the revelatory tell-all called War is a Racket, published in 1935. It's a short read.
https://archive.org/details/war_is_a_racket_1903_librivox
Best
The regime wins the war if it survives and maintains a stranglehold on their citizens.
Trump wins the war if it successfully deflects from his (other) crimes, misdemeanors, plots & failures, If He can affect the November elections.
To a lesser degree, this also true for Bibi.
The Arabs win the war if they can leave the Iran shattered, disunited, ruined and in civil war. They have acted in such manner in Africa, Sudan.I doubt the Arab Lords want a stable Iranian democracy.
European reliance on Oil/Gas
Europe used to be very very relant on supplies of oil and gas from Russia
Then Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe did two things
(1) Arrange for supplies from other countries
(2) Accelerate the transition to renewables
The US/Iran war will disrupt (1) - which is important but is much less important than it was due to (2)
And with China reducing its need for gas (renewables) there are a number of non middle-east countries that have been staring down the barrel of a massive drop in demand and will be able to step into the gap
locum knows what reality he wants to live in. He doesn't dare read and understand what, say, Canadian analyst Shankar Narayan has to say about tracking European disengagement from US dependency as fast as can be managed, and simultaneously building out a new web of trade agreements that are not subject to the whims of a single man. Yes, it will take some time for Europe to fully cut the cords to Washington, but Johnson's saying about hanging and concentration applies. Besides, regardless of what Russia, America, or even Hungary say, the Ukrainians will be continuing to build out their synergies with Europe. Four years of blood, sweat and tears have transformed Ukraine into the world's foremost authority on drone warfare. Even if Ukraine's strategic campaign to hamstring Russia's logistics eliminates the land threat, the Europeans are going to take over whatever components of NATO they can extract and build a new model armed forces with it.
'Meek and conquered' rhymes with 'nation of shopkeepers' or with 'yellow-bellied Yankees'. Fans of 'martial cultures' always sneer at methodical, slow-to-anger democracies. But Napoleonic France, Confederate America, the Axis, and now Putinist Russia burned themselves out with performative displays, while Regency Britain, the Union, the Allies, and the European Union built for the long haul. None of them found easy or quick victories -- but victory they found.
War, by the way, is a racket. We were such towards the 'banana republics' in the first half of the century, and Butler spoke truth with every word. Memetically, the whole point of changing to a Department of Defense was to steer away from that paradigm without dropping our guard; the 'racket' switched from plundering abroad to pork-barreling at home, which Eisenhower warned about. Switching back to War was a deliberate signal that the old racket was back in town, and lo and behold, the regime has proceeded on exactly that path.
With American credibility making a lovely light in the fireplace, the fat and lazy dinosaurs of the Military-Industrial Complex are staring at lean times ahead... unless they can replace foreign trade with supplying fascist oppressors instead. Did you know ICE is buying military equipment like hotcakes on Mardi Gras?
Iran and Russia both need components from the West and China to build their drones. We can do far better... if we learn from the Ukrainians instead of talking down to them, if we can get nimble startups to do the job rather than the dinosaurs, and if we can get strategy out of the hands of careerists and men still plotting post-imperial counterinsurgency training.
Big ifs, but then five years ago, I would have said locum was right about the Europeans. Needs must when the devil drives, and we have devils aplenty at the moment.
Oh, and I almost forgot to comment on an unarmed EU, now occupied by 50+ million foreign males, making it well & truly screwed.
'Unarmed' how? Not militarily (see above). 'Unarmed' in the sense that European nations (except Switzerland) do not have 2nd Amendment societies? (And even the Swiss keep their weapons under lock and key.) But then the lack of guns applies equally to those locum deems 'foreign'.
I can only come up with '50M+ foreign males' by including all intra-European migrations as well as all intra-European minority groups. Am I supposed to be fretting about the Romani in Bulgaria, or the Serbs in Hungary and Hungarians in Serbia? Occitans in Italy and Catalans in Spain? Is Britain truly destabilized by having residents from other parts of the Commonwealth?
And even if there were a mass migration crisis ongoing (instead of a spike in 2015 generated primarily by foreign actors attempting deliberate destabilization of Europe), what makes anyone think the migrants want to 'screw' their hosts? Why would the vast majority of them not want a society much like the one they moved to? What impulse is preventing such a future?
I'm just asking questions, right?
Will TACO save us from this forever war?
And by the way, kudos to Joe Haldeman for giving us the phrase 'forever war'.
https://hotair.com/generalissimo/2026/03/02/i-got-him-before-he-got-me-they-tried-twice-well-i-got-him-first-n3812419
A long post about the real reasons for attacking Iran and the word “Israel” never appears once? Absurd. Your blind spots and biases are so big you’re beclowning yourself now.
@John Viril Yeah, bomb a country, kill its spiritual leader, blow up government buildings, police stations, hospitals, schools—that’s how you get people to side with you against their government. You’ll be greeted with flowers just like Iraq and Afghanistan. What an insane idea. When has that ever worked?
@Celt More importantly, North Korea isn’t an immediate concern of Israel and the wacko cultists who worship it.
@mcsandberg That is some pure clown world zio-Christian neocon analysis. I bet this dude was doing the same triumphalist dance a few days into the Afghan and Iraq wars too. These freaks sniff their own glue so hard they can’t distinguish exceptionalist delirium from reality, no matter how many times they fail. The only thing you can do with their kind is put them down like rabid dogs, imo.
And props to governor Newsom for mentioning the 150 girls killed at an Iranian school and asking what the imminent threat was justifying what amounts to state terrorism. Were they shooting are your ships, Alfred? Congrats America, you're a rogue state now--the villains of your own deranged movie.
This would be monumentally stupid.
The North Koreans maintain a large army by starving he populous... and they can rain ruin on nearby South Korean cities.
We don't f*ck with them because it's not worth it.
Freedom isn't priceless. It always comes with a price.
I won't be defending shooting at schools... here or there.
I don't see Iranian leadership as a threat. Much.
I don't minding shooting back at them, though, when they send missiles to kill ships and pilots who are out there to suppress piracy.
Best explanation as to why weak minded fools and bigots will never leave the maga cult
https://youtu.be/eqDJP7SaGO0?si=VRd3iubEBWhKo4yl
There are four reasons
Leaving the Trump cult means losing their personal identity and community, which is why any attack on Trump is seen as an attack on themselves. And therefore facts mean nothing to them.
Trump followers live in their own digital version of a cult compound, a media version of the branch davidian compound or Manson family ranch. The first rule of any cult is to isolate it's members from family. With face book algorithms and right wind hate casting MAGA can self isolate.
Trump keeps his cult hooked on vengeance and fear. They need those dopamine hits they get from hating Hispanics gays trans Muslims DEI liber media, etc. Trump promises to hurt these bad people, making his followers feel safe. That dopamine hit is the reason why they don't mind their shitty lives caused by Trump's own policies provide the people they hate and fear are hurt. Cruelty and violence are the points.
Leaving means losing everything, especially the pain of having to admit they were wrong. Being part of a tribe is a great emotional fix forgotten people in dying towns without a future. Trump made them feel powerful for the first time in their pathetic lives.
So what can we do to help these people?
Not a damn thing.
Because you can't fix stupid.
They know he is a p3do and protecting other p3dos. They know he is corrupt and incompetent. They know he is a racist hatemonger as are they. They know he is burning down America and poisoning everything good about America.
And they don't care.
They love it.
So fuck them.
They deserve every bit of suffering coming their way from loss of health care to homes to good paying jobs.
Yeah, fuck these guys.
A single boomer off shore from noko can turn the country into radioactive glass with 5 minutes warning.
Obviously alfred you just don't love freedom enough.
And the fact remains that we only "liberate" countries with oil.
"More importantly, North Korea isn’t an immediate concern of Israel..."
Was Venezuela a concern of Israel? I think your own blind spots are showing.
I'm not disputing that Israel had much to do with the attack on Iran, nor that there's an Epstein connection. But to you, every problem seems like the metaphorical nail.
"So what can we do to help these people?"
It's been obvious for quite some time that we can't save MAGAts from the consequences of their own stupidity. The pertinent question is what can we do to minimize the harm they cause the rest of us.
This is an accurate desciption of what happened:
Not one, not two, but thirty pieces of ordinance that go boom were dropped on the Khamenei compound in the first wave of Shock and Awe II: Shockier and Much More Awesome. Thirty. And the eyes and ears on the ground were so prevalent that the photographic proof of the Supreme Leader's dead body had reached Jerusalem and Washington, and then the rest of the world, before the Iranians could find somebody who knew someone who had once met someone else they believed was once in the chain of command somewhere.
Five hundred distinct targets were struck from land, sea, and air over a surface area roughly the size of Alaska. By mid-day Sunday, that number of targets had reached well over 1,000. The U.S. claims to have sunk nine ships in Iran's Navy. Mobile missile launchers were quickly targeted and dispatched by the hundreds. Iranian inventories of F-4's and drones dwindled with each precision strike. By Sunday night, American B-2's had come calling to blow up several underground ballistic missile storage bays.
The Iranians starting point for their negotiations was:
“ In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance. So that's - they were proud of it.
They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.
When someone says that, you’ve got to bomb them—and we did. [ https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2026/03/03/trumps-top-middle-east-negotiator-dropped-a-bombshell-about-iran-and-its-nuke-program-last-night-n2672184 ]
Ok, maybe it just took another day for the implications to sink in.
Dow down 1500 so far today
Oil up to $77/barrel
Out of all the drooling nonsense spewed by MCS and the ent, Treebeard's first sentence was actually on-target. It's true that I obitted Israel's - or Netanyahu's - role in inciting this war. They have three reasons:
1. Weaken the one state on the planet that is openly frothing for death to all Jews (DTAJ), instead of giving lip service to that 80 year goal (as has been ranted in every Wahabbi financed Arab textbook given to children across the Middle East.)
2. Strengthen growing alliances with the Sunni states Iran is bombing, despite their own continuing to push DTAJ... as does Treebeard and MCS.
3. maintain the Netanyahu-Trump alliance.
#3 is a tragic madness. But note that 1&2 do not necessarily work with Trump's interests.
Dig it. BenjNetanyahu is a wretch and a criminal. But unlike Putin and Trump, BN does not seek to WEAKEN AMERICA. A strong America is in Israel's interest. And second, Israel benefits immensely if the Iranian people succeed in restoring democracy and modernity. That will end the threat permanently, whereas Trump's mafia deal with Ayatollahs will not.
Despite many connections, I have no special knowledge about this war. Still, here are some things folks might watch:
(1) Harbor cams in Norfolk, San Diego and Bremerton. If all the ships vanish - especially all the carriers - then the Navy knows something we're not being told and you should do that big Costco run. (Do it anyway.) In fact, if the carriers vanish - or all of the transports from March AFB or Fort Bragg - put out an alert.
(2) Can anyone tell if the urban barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the morals police etc. or their strongholds in Tehran have been targeted? Or the gates of the political prisons? Things that would actually weaken the regime's ability to repress citizens? If all of those have been spared, then it supports the notion that our mafia boss wants to make a deal with their mafia, after decapitating their boss-capos and beating them up a bit. And screw the people. As he screwed Venezuelans and the people of Argentina and El Salvador.
(3) Now that Trump has re-ignited Middle-Eastern terrorism (our skilled professionals who off'd bin Laden had it quelled), we need to get word out, around the world:
"Hey, angry young men with your super-empowered means of taking revenge: if you truly do want to hurt Trump, then do NOT give him the thing he most wants, as a result of all this: a traumatic super 9/11 exuse to slam down martial law.
"If you quell your wrath and show patience, America will deal with these wretches. As the People of Iran and Venezuela, etc. will eventually get rid of theirs. And Zelensky will help decent Russians to rid the world of the capo-di-tuttii-capi.
"But if you just can't control your rage, then hey, do not to attack New York again! Or California or any blue state that's on record deeply opposing the Confederate-Putinist monsters who hijacked our military to use as YeeHaw! toys of jizz-spasm violence. Mobsters who would stupidly make a martyr of an 86 year old tottering religious leader."
This war is a spasm by... for... and of the Confederate States of America, (phase nine). Do a search on that name and look at who empowered all the craziness. I am not asking you to attack those neighbors, who eventually will snap out of their madness. Please don't!
Still, look at a map, will you?
It ain't us, babe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/03/02/mideast-iran-israel-war-civilians/
A strong America that bombs Israel's enemies is in their interests. That's all these tribal psychos care about. If things change here, as they’re going to, and we get leaders who aren't sold out to Netanyahu and the zio-militants, the zios will discard America in a heartbeat and become its enemy. These are people with rabbis who make statements like "a million gentile lives aren't worth a single Jewish fingernail", and political leaders who make genocidal statements that a large fraction of the Israeli population agrees with. These are not America’s friends; they have no loyalty to American ideals, American people or anybody outside their tribe. Israel has a lot of these psychos, their power is growing, and they actually do have nukes. That is a menace to humanity far more dangerous than the timid old men in Tehran. And if we could take a poll, I’d wager that about 90% of the world’s population agrees with me. So maybe it’s not democracy that’s the issue, but the attitudes and behavior of the og exceptionalist-supremacist cultists, who apparently think they can wage war on the world and win because a genocidal tribal god is on their side.
I highly doubt Trump has much strategy beyond: "make things go boom! and get the blackmailers and donors off my back". You are giving him too much credit. The fact that Trump has done a 180, turned against many of his own biggest supporters and become worse than the neocons he claimed to be against tells you who must have the goods on him. How else do you explain his political suicide? Hint #1: it ain't Putin; he’s a friend of Iran. Hint #2: it probably has something to do with the Epstein and Mossad-connected Maxwell prostitution/blackmail ring. Is 2+2=4 still too simple for you?
How much you want to bet that Trump doesn't have an exit strategy?
I want to be normal again.
I want those days back when Ronald Regan and Tip O'Neal could have a beer together after 5 o'clock.
@Celt: Exit strategies are details for inferior minions.
All true leaders of men / Delegate now and then / Try to keep their minds totally blank
To appreciate loftier matters / Things that mostly go over my head
(Five points to anyone who gets that reference without assistance.)
It has been readily stated for many years that Netanyahu ("Bibi"), MBS (Prince "Bonesaw" of Saud), and MBZ ("Bribemaster" of Abu Dhabi) specifically have been maneuvering our wannabe emperor into launching this war for years. Along with Russia, Egypt, Turkey, Hungary, and a few other autocracy-curious influencers, this is the transnational (even 'globalist'?) mafia conspiracy now trying to do business openly as the so-called "Board of Peace".
Has anyone spelled out whose bombs hit that school? I find it difficult in the extreme for even suborned American military personnel to target a girls' school... but you could find Israelis and Sunnis who would, and Russians wouldn't think twice. It is in the interests of all autocratic parties, including the Iranian regime, to tell everyone Americans did such a thing. I suspect there are people in three-letter-agencies who know the answer, and are staying mum while a known foreign asset occupies the office of the DNI.
As for leaving MAGA, the trouble is that MAGA builds on multiple prior projects to cultivate cults of victimhood in rural parts of the United States. The movement-conservatism project, with its religious-right, gun-nut, talk-radio/Foxite, 'libertarian', and other fronts, has been building back the mindset once derided as 'Birchers' since the Ford administration.
Prior to that was the 'cowboy' propaganda nurturing the notion of government by vigilante. The pulp fiction and superhero genres were failed attempts to create the same notion in other media, but authors and artists were able to mostly wrench the themes towards supporting civilization. Even generations of effort could not erase the origins entirely, but it is striking that projects like Watchmen and The Boys are seen as subversions of the genre -- when they actually harken to what the genre was originally funded to be! Horror stayed closer to the mark -- read N.K. Jemisin's Cities duology for a piercing takedown of Lovecraft's virulent racism -- but it mostly wound up becoming a bulwark for domestic patriarchy instead. (First rule of surviving any Hollywood horror flick: utter chastity.)
But the most long-term successful victim-cult of all is that of ye olde Lost Cause. Departing that now-venerable toxicity is hardest of all, given all the layers built over many generations to reinforce the notion that one of the most unforgiving chattel regimes in all history not only deserves sympathy and pity but (by virtue of blood or cultural descent) deserves to command ongoing allegiance.
Dr Brin:
"Out of all the drooling nonsense spewed by MCS and the ent,..."
The impression I'm getting is that those two are not in alignment. MCS is fer the war and Treebeard is agin' it.
* * *
Celt:
"How much you want to bet that Trump doesn't have an exit strategy?"
How much you want to bet that they consider an exit strategy to be a sign of weakness?
Catfish 'N Cod:
"...along with Russia, Egypt, Turkey, Hungary, and a few other autocracy-curious influencers..."
Do you think Putin's Russia wanted us to attack Iran?
I'm really asking.
One of my favourite TV series was "Halt and Catch Fire", because I lived those years and many of those situations. Mnemonics, anagrams, and metaphors were big back then. I get the current fascination with Transformers by tech bros and their AI cultists.
I note that Fiery CPU is an anagram of Epic Fury.
It appears that it was an Iranian missile that hit the school. This video clearly shows it losing trajectory https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2026/03/02/un-weeps-on-cue-while-tehran-writes-the-script-n4950170
Do not give them a new 9/11
But with the origional 9/11 Bush ended up doing everything that Bin Laden wanted him to do!!
The middle east was (slowly) quieting down and becoming more secular before 9/11 and more importantly the US responce to 9/11
Certainly not. The Mideast powers have wanted this attack for quite a while; I am guessing Russia used its influence via Syria and Lebanon to forestall all-out war. That's one more sign Vlad is no longer top capo -- he can't prevent such things any longer.
If you use their lens, viewing national institutions as assets and the holders of the Purple Files as the actors with agency, what we are watching is less "corruption of American government and world order" and more "maneuvering to manipulate the aging and demented titular capo, as the made men scramble to grab whatever they can." It's not an accurate assessment, but it is useful to predict their actions and viewpoints, because they *do* believe it.
Well ... Russia certainly benefits from the war.
First of all, it distracts from Ukraine (which has, in the last week, almost regained all territory lost during the last Year.)
Second, it increases the oil prices, allowing Russia to survives just a bit longer.
Third, the US are rapidly depleting their stockpiles, and so Ukraine can buy less of it; and certainly, that factor has made Taiwan much more vulnerable, too.
Finally, Putin will have a much easier time justifying his own war crimes.
"the US are rapidly depleting their stockpiles, and so Ukraine can buy less of it"
But doesn't that work the other way too? Iran no longer can supply Russia with excess weaponry?
It's a wash now, LH, but there were downsides as long as Russia still had assets worth protecting in the Mideast. At this point they're barely able to keep up the illusion of conventional progress in Ukraine; Russia will soon go from specialists in asymmetric warfare to being an asymmetry-only power. Which is very far from nothing, but it also won't keep supplies flowing to Siberian outposts and Ukrainian front lines.
Russia insourced a Shahed production line before this, so they aren't SOL. But we are not at all optimized to conduct sustained air war: our doctrine and industrial base assumes we will quickly establish air superiority over absolutely anyone. Kegsbreath and his master have no idea of any of this, of course, and are shocked, shocked to learn that the American armed forces, for the last eighty years, have actually been designed to make outright conquest hard.
Here's a classic of stop-motion from the 1970s. Way... way... WAY pre-AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJ16X58EDU
I don't believe it. This must be fake.
https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/2026/03/mrff-inundated-with-complaints-of-gleeful-commanders-telling-troops-iran-war-is-part-of-gods-divine-plan-to-usher-in-the-return-of-jesus-christ/
Perhaps one officer did this, maybe two. And even that is frightening. Visit APOCAMON to see what hate-drenched loons - like P Thiel - avidly wish for, wallowing in the Book of Revelation's frothing delusions that are diametrically opposite to every teaching of Jesus in the Beatitudes and in the Sermon on the Mount. Every generation, sadists have pushed that wretched wish fantasy, eagerly calling for gruesome eternal damnation to seize every neighbor or fellow citizen - and all creatures on Earth - who don't happen to chant exactly the same incantation of bilious, masturbatory wrath.
Notes:
1: The BoR became part of Christian canon by ONE vote at an early council and that was by a pagan emperor. Martin Luther despised it, as has every good and decent Christian theologian, ever since.
2. Ingrates take for granted every comfort and brilliance provided by an Age of Science, in which blatantly we are doing the Creator's work as apprentices, learning His skills and craft, as any decent Father would want. Indeed, every exclamation of joyful "Wow!" discovery in a lab is the very best kind of prayer. But yes, you nerds should also read Bible! Get to know the BoR's vile sadism... and its utter, utter refutation. In Isaiah and Daniel and especially in Jonah.
3. BoR fetishists who 'love Israel' do so with a core assumption that they never speak aloud, that Israel must be destroyed in Armageddon and that all but 100,000 Jews (who must repent and convert) will be damned to torment thereupon for all eternity. You may not have known that, but Israelis do, which is why they keep these 'supporters' at arm's length and absolutely refuse to "rebuild the Temple." Which BoR maniacs used to insist is the signal for the end. (A plot element in HEART OF THE COMET!)
Giving up on the Temple thing, they can be relied upon to seek other 'signals.' Like AI-generated jpegs of Trump - the poster child for every one of the Deadly Sins - as their 'agent of the Lord.' When, in fact, he fits down the line, another familiar character in Revelation.
Visit APOCAMON and see what they want for you!
https://www.electricsheepcomix.com/apocamon/
Russia and Turkey are united in not wanting regime change in Iran. Turkey cause of Kurds. Russia for Shaheds.
But the most long-term successful victim-cult of all is that of ye olde Lost Cause. Departing that now-venerable toxicity is hardest of all, given all the layers built over many generations to reinforce the notion that (the most unforgiving regimes in) history not only deserves sympathy and pity but (our) ongoing allegiance.
Catfish's syllogistic repudiation of the Cult of the Lost Cause (aka the Cult of Underdog & 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' fallacy) made me snort coffee out my nose, mostly because every cult-like adherent of Israel, Union Kepis, the LGBT & Climate Change here fancies themselves to be a poor widdle 'victim' who is entitled to use violence against their oppressors by 'punching up'.
I do have some empathy for Israel & absolutely no love for Iran, yet this in no way justifies the selective validation of underdog & victim status for a nuclear-armed Israel over a nuclear-ambitious Iran.
Additionally, I do feel pity for those loser nerds who spend their short lives as victims, cowering in a hole, never recovering from primary school playground abuse, but that does not entitle them to resort to the violence of 'punching up' anymore than the relative unhappiness of their childhood bullies entitles them to 'punch down' upon the nerdish loser.
Even so, one lost cause & one self-identified victim seems just as valid & just as invalid as any other, so until that fine time when our fine host discards his Union kepi and strikes his colours first, I do intend to keep my grey cap and confederate battle flag handy, just in case we have another 'Victim Olympics' anytime soon.
Best
_______
News Alert for Nerds!!!
Robert Carradine, aka 'Lewis Skolnick', star & hero from the 1984 film 'Revenge of the Nerds', has died at age 71 by suicide. It therefore follows that all further Nerd Revenge is eternally cancelled & all nerds everywhere are hereby directed to surrender & grovel at the feet of the nearest jock, baller or fratboy immediately.
That is all.
Elvira Bary has an interesting take on Epstein, etc.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn86C4ZwBSg
That one shows two things. (1) locum's vitamins kicked-in and he's bving very cogent within his context and brain attribute limitations. (2) Those contextsand brain attribute limitations are truly nuts.
While Ukraine has recently regained a substantial chunk of 'open fields' territory in the SE, it has certainly not 'regained nearly all the territory lost during the last year'. In that time, Russia has gained and still holds Huliapole, Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, and Siversk. They've also lost a lot of men and equipment in doing so. Looking at published casualty lists, the fighting now seems to be waged primarily with infantry and drones, but that may be just the season.
So, Locum, what is your reason for denying climate change? Other than refusal to accept limitations in our power over nature and hate of the idea that you need to come to an accommodation with adversaries because of a danger to all. These are the motives that I have found in most climate change deniers, and they are ones that utterly destroy their credibility.
Excellent.
"BoR fetishists who 'love Israel' do so with a core assumption that they never speak aloud, that Israel must be destroyed in Armageddon"
Revelation fetishists love Israel in the same way I love a good steak dinner.
"stop-motion from the 1970s."
That's bringing back memories. They might have shown that in a high school physics class, or maybe as a short before campus movies when I was in college. In any case, I've seen that particular film many times, but not for at least 40 years.
Good times.
The Iranians are in for the long haul and can manufacture thousands of cheap drones in garages and caves all over Iran and use them to decimate regional oil and desalination facilities as well as pipelines and oil tankers.
Trump is about to learn the same harsh lesson Putin learned in Ukraine - drones have completely changed warfare recreating the stalemate of WW1 trench warfare.
Will the Iranians suffer in turn? Yes they will suffer greatly.
But the fanatical regime will maintain hold of power, just like Hitler's maintained control despite Allied bombing turning German cities into rubble and ash (German war production actually peaked at the height of Allied bombing).
It took a massive ground invasion to overthrow the Nazis.
Are there Iranians opposed to the regime? Yes, and they will be no more successful in toppling the ayatollahs than Von Staufenberg was (even if Hitler was killed on July 20th, Goering or Himmler would have taken over and the German plotters were much better organizes than the anti regime Iranians).
It comes down to will power and if history is any guide, fanatical Muslims will out last us. They can go the long haul, psychologically we can't.
Our airstrikes will fail to achieve their operational goals just like the airstrikes in Yemen. And with every bomb that drops, the attitude of the regime and the popiulace (the majority of which still support the regime) will only harden, just like the Taliban.
So congratulations we just got ourselves another forever war.
A war we can't win and can't quite because even if we walk away the Iranians won't stop fighting.
We may be stupid enough to attempt a boots on the ground invasion, which will result in the same mass casualties as a hypothetical invasion of Japan in 1945 (mountainous terrain, fanatical resistance, etc.)
More likely the war will settle down into a missile stalemate with Iran's cheap drones decimating oil, water and civilian infrastructure from Oman to Israel.
Faced with such a stalemate where a dozen bombs are hitting Israel daily, a frustrated Netanyahu and his zealot Settler Party will almost certainly start lobbing nukes.
Rather than a CC denier, I am a Chicken Littleism denier in active revolt against a hysterical, panicky & alarmist CC doomsday cult.
The climate does appear to warming -- at least since the ending of 'Little Ice Age' around about 1850 -- and I am perfectly willing to attribute some degree of anthropogenic component to these changes.
However, I see no reason to obey this new crop of Messianic Egoists who insist that only they can 'save the planet'.
Best
More divine revelation from another self-appointed messiah.
Big sigh.
Iran wins by not losing. Its that simple
I am still baffled as to where you get the idea that Russia and China are dazzled by our equipment.
Here the thing about the temple. Proper Nicene Christianity gives no real relevance to the temple. In Christian theology Christ is the Third Temple, the final and sufficient sacrifice and what exists on the temple mount is now just a pile of stones. To place an undue emphasis on the construction of temple is to deny the divinity of Christ.
Thou shalt not immanentise the eschaton
Care to use logic or facts to counter my statements, loco?
I think it may be a few more officers than that; however, I agree that the number must be small. Single digit, at least. I have little doubt that they have networked under this regime, but they wouldn't do this unless they knew no Constitutionally loyal superior would be able to yoink them.
Thus the concerning element about the reports is not that they happened (doesn't surprise me) but that the reports are coming from multiple sites. That suggests the keystone officer -- officer, not just our performative-masculine incompetent drunk cosplaying as 'Secretary of War' -- has at least one pair of stars on their shoulders.
Courts martial, they're a-comin'.
Meanwhile, most New Testament scholars outside the evangelical traditions are of the opinion that the events of Revelations describe the Roman Empire of the time, with references to specific Beasts, Antichrists, and False Prophets applying most especially to Nero and Caligula. This would fit with most super-specific prophetic books in both the Tanakh and New Testament, which use the device of prophecy as a means to describe current events with plausible deniability. Much like science fiction and fantasy, in that respect.
Small-a antichrists and false prophets are described in less dramatic terms in many of the non-Pauline letters shoved in a corner between the long-form Epistles and Revelations. And they describe to a T.... exactly the sort of people that have ginned up apocalypse talk. Funny old world, ain't it?
Türkiye high command must be pulling out their hair at reports that the CIA is arming separatist Kurds in Iran, then. If two out of three components of Kurdistan achieve autonomy, it will be really damned hard for the Turks to keep up the pretense that Turkish Kurdistan doesn't deserve the same.
But then, anyone would have trouble governing such territory. Take a look at a topographic map of the area sometime and wonder at the maze of twisty little valleys and passes, all alike. The place is perfect for passive promulgation of piecemeal politics.
It is not a few commanders that are pushing the "Armageddon" trope to US troops. According to the MRFF, it was more than 40 across all services.
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/MRFF-Inundated-with-Complaints-of-Gleeful-Commanders-Telling-Troops-Iran-War-is--Part-of-God-s-Divine-Plan--to-Usher-in-Return-o.html
But Marco Rubio says that Iran is ruled by a dangerous, apocalyptic ideology. That that's our justification for warring against them.
Syllogistic my comparisons might be, but when it comes to the Lost Cause proper -- that is to say, the manufactured 'nobility' of the Confederate rebellion; the 'punching down' cultural standards of minstrelism, blackface, and 'happy house slaves'; the appropriation of 'colored' musical innovations for 'white' benefit; the sustained and systematic gaslighting campaign of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to rewrite history one textbook at a time; the propaganda ranging from the horrific Birth of a Nation to the far more palatable and artistically skilled -- but still self-serving self-deception -- of Gone with the Wind to the even better sourced and accurately depicted Gods and Generals reverency expressed by LARP-as-motion-picture; the emphasis on the "honorable" formal military campaigns to distract from the 1857-1860 lawless violence in Northern states and territories that spurred the rapid rise of the Republican Party; the memory-holing of the 1866 "Black Codes" subversion attempt that led to Johnson's impeachment and the full takeover by the so-called "Radical" Republicans, the very existence of a federal Department of Justice stemming directly from the asymmetric guerilla campaign of N.B. Forest and the first Klan...
... all of which adds up to a picture of the Southern 'white' society in general, and upper class in particular, resolutely refusing to ever connect effect to cause, or to ever admit that the vast majority of the troubles inflicted on the South were the direct result of actions taken by the South on the assumption that their superiority would prevail.
Bear in mind that among those I am condemning are my own ancestors, lest you think I am neglecting the gravity of my statements. Nor am I retroactively applying later standards to them, for all these points were made by internal and external observers of the United States at that time and were likewise summarily dismissed.
Keep your bonnie blue star and your blasted stars and bars, for all the good and ill they do you. I will cleave to the older and less shit-stained saltire of argent on azure for my ancestral pride, thank you very much, and a star-ringed magnolia for my immediate origins rather than the cursed banner under which I was born.
Lest locum think I am merely opposing his statements above from reaction and spite, I'm going to actually speak up for him on this one. I have been arguing for over twenty years to climate change activists that, while well-intended, their continual hyping of "we must act now!" and "only we can fix this, and only the way we say!" arguments have done harm rather than good to their cause.
Despite all attempts to prevent or delay the advent of such, renewable technologies have finally achieved sufficient scale to beat fossil fuels in the marketplace regardless of subsidy. China has an advantage for the moment through market manipulation, but there are actually plenty of mines for rare-earths and other components of the electric-only energy stack of the next century; only an actual forward-thinking industrial policy is needed to bring such about for whatever form the free world next takes.
I do not believe for an instant that this mindset is actually the one calling any shots; it's opportunistic bandwagon bullshit tacked on by Kegsbreath's konfident kommanders.
But they will try to seize actual power if they see a chance. Don't turn your back on them.
He won't, but I will. We certainly are capable of the long haul, when a cogent and complete case is made. Many a foe has assumed otherwise of Americans, and found out otherwise.
But this time, the regimists didn't even try to lay out any such case. Folly stacked upon folly, like a Tower of Babel constructed solely of farts and fecal matter.
I will most definitely respond to Celt with facts & logic, assuming that either Celt or Catfish can first identify even the smallest a posteriori empirically-derived observation, fact or datum contained within Celt's entirely speculative prophecy as above.
I suggest that you both purchase a dictionary before your incur any further embarrassment about what the term 'fact' actually means.
In light of US officers literally calling for the end of the world, here is my posting from October re: Peter Thiel’s ravings about “The Antichrist” and the Book of Revelation. Frankly his jeremiads were disappointing, when the vocabulary of a former Stanford adjunct professor is applied so sloppily, slinging blithe, self-serving assertions unsupported by any (at all) historical context, or logic, or (indeed) any systematic comparisons to actual contents of Revelation.
But Peter would just smile at my complaints; “Erudition schmerudition.”
Since clearly he is getting his way, as simpletons march to this 2000 year old pareidolia lobotomization, eagerly dragging their nation... not toward rapture but back into 6000 years of feudal darkness.
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/10/ai-optimists-who-are-down-on-us.html
Bundeswehr terminology:
It is Kommandeur*in for units and garrisons, and Kommandant*in for ships and concentration camps.
Don't ask me why.
loc, he asked for facts to refute his nightmarish fantasy. He did not claim to have facts to back him up, and I will not insult him by claiming otherwise.
That said, numerous after-action analyses and retrospective reports have confirmed one of his unspoken key bases: that airpower alone does not constitute a means of decisive victory. The Islamic Republic as currently constituted might fall, but all the analyses I have read -- independent and government, foreign and domestic -- project the most likely outcome of any such fall to be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard junta, not a liberal constitutional state.
And the likely result of that is more Sunni-Shi'a warfare. Apparently the Sunnis, like the Israelis, have come under the impression they can hire us as muscle to boost their local disagreements. The current regime has not dissuaded this notion. Americans will likely have different opinions, especially since not even a hint of a ghost of caring about said opinions was pretended.
I would not sully the German language by using correct Bundeswehr terminology for these pathetic souls. Neither deserve the association.
Kosplaying korrupt keystone kops kourting klannish kontemporaries get all the abused "K" misspellings they do deserve.
Revelation fetishists are like MAGAts in that they must be so disenchanted with reality that they prefer to live completely inside of a fantasy, despite the evidence of their lying eyes.
At least with Trump supporters, I can understand why they feel that the yarn he spins for them is great bull semen. The ones who read the Book of Revelation and think that about it? It must take a certain kind of mind.
But then, the designers of the metaverse and the cybertruck read dystopian fiction and think, "Wouldn't it be great to live there?!" So I guess I shouldn't be as surprised as I am.
What would KKKaroline Leavitt think?
Maybe some news our host has recommended as a course of action in the past: The liquid gas freighter "Arctic Metagaz" suddenly exploded in the Mediterranean in the vicinity of Malta with enough force that one could mistake it for a sunrise. All sailors survived.
Culprit could be an Ukrainian sea drone, but sinking ships by bombs is somewhat of a trademark of the French intelligence services of yore, too.
Best justification for the Iran war I've seen that attempts a geopolitical motivation from @MichaelMcNair:
Don't know who this guy is, but it does make SOME sense on as a geopolitical strategy if you can succeed in Iran
The US and China are now competing over control of chokepoints ahead of a conflict both sides increasingly see as inevitable.
China spent a decade building leverage over critical supply chain choke points essential to the US industrial base. Now the Gulf War has handed Washington leverage over the energy and supply chain arteries critical to China’s industrial base.
Hormuz matters far more to China than it does to the United States. But if the US Navy is now responsible for safely escorting ships and the DFC has a monopoly backstopping war risk insurance, then Washington becomes the gatekeeper of security at the world’s most important energy chokepoint.
The US can now decide which cargoes get the lowest friction access and which buyers get priority. Squeeze the US on rare earths and the US squeezes back on Hormuz.
China built a stranglehold over critical supply chains to deter the US. But the Gulf war may have given the US a reciprocal lever over China’s supply chain.
You were calling BS on this report earlier. You're not the only one.
There was also a similarly dubious report that the Iranians had successfully damaged or destroyed two US advanced missile defence radars.
It's a timely reminder that the war fog generators are currently cranking at full capacity. Be careful out there.
A "reciprical lever" that is losing its strength as China pivots away from fossil fuels
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was the first broad hint that depending on petrostates was not a good strategy
The attack on Iran is not so much a "hint" as a smack in the face
So tell me loco, which ofy statements were not based on historical facts?
Apparently, I was wrong. Boots on the Ground are an Option for the Trump administration.
As the term 'fact' is best defined as an empirically observable past tense happening, rather than an assertion "based on historical facts", the bulk of your above assertions are definitely not facts, as shown by your conditional & predictive verb choices like 'are in for', 'can manufacture', 'is about to learn' and 'will fail to', all of which identify mere possibilities.
Even when you refer to actual historical events, you corrupt them with conclusions that are neither factual, nor strictly in evidence, as in the case of your assertion that "It took a massive ground invasion to overthrow" (a construction that implies necessity) rather than describing the ground invasion as the tactic of record.
When he sprang to your defense, Catfish admitted as much by describing your predictions as 'fantasies' and plainly stating that (You) did not claim to have facts to back (you) up..
Although interesting & creative, most of your comments are undermined by your lack of linguistic precision. I suggest your take this opportunity to improve your language & communication skills by emulating Dr Brin in your own idiom, as I have tried to do.
Best
Also North Korea has nukes.
The Amorous Arsonist
An Underfable, with Moral and Comment
Once upon a time a man fell passionately in love with a firefighter. But he feared to approach his beloved; so instead he set fires just to see his beloved arrive to put those fires out, while he watched from hiding.
But one day the firefighter found him out. The firefighter said, “Who in Hell do you think you are? I never knew you. Get out of my sight!”
Moral: Love honestly or not at all.
Comment: Some Evangelicals celebrate disaster as a sign of the second coming of Christ. Evidently they haven’t thought this through. Their perversity inspired me to write this fable. Consider it as a reductio-ad-absurdum refutation of their ideology.
Has anyone seen anything from Mike Jittlov lately?
I call it the Unworthy Cause.
Of course 'boots' are in the cards. It's the Republican style of war. See: How Democrats and Republicans Wage War - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-democrats-and-republicans-wage-war.html
But in this case, it gives more options for destroying Trump's real enemy: the American Pax.
So explain, loco, how any prediction or projection can ever be a fact?
How do you make God laugh?
Tell God your plans.
And how do you make God guffaw?
Prophesize!
I think the Iranian 'police action' is more or less over for Trump's many unstated reasons:
(1) He eliminated Iranian leadership, achieving regime change & giving its citizens the opportunity for self-rule if they seize it;
(2) He forced the shut down the Hormuz strait, effectively cutting off Iranian oil sales to both our EU allies & economic adversary China, while simultaneously increasing EU demand and US oil revenues by 20%;
(3) He forced Iran to attack & alienate almost all of its immediate neighbours, pushing the Kuwaitis, Saudis, Bahrainians & even Turkey (!!) closer to Israel;
(4) He further destabilized the entire Middle East, assisting ally Israel in its long-running 'divide & conquer' strategy, while crippling Iran's ability to fund international terrorism;
(5) He undermined both China's & Iran's ability to resupply Russia in the Ukraine; and
(6) He shifted more of Pax Americana's peace-keeping responsibilities onto our do-nothing NATO allies, just as he did in Greenland, while unmasking Spain as a fair-weather friend.
Boots-on-ground are now completely unnecessary, as they do not facilitate any of the above. Next stop is Cuba as he has already cut off its fuel supply (while diminishing China's supply significantly) by his recent decapitation of Venezuela leadership.
Read Eric Frank Russell's 'Wasp' for more info on similar disruptive guerrilla warfare tactics.
Best
______
Like Dr Brin, I also believe that Trump does intend to put an end to the incredibly expensive Pax Americana boondoggle by insisting on its replacement by Pax_NATO. which is already in the works, as evidenced by France's recent deployment of the Charles_de_Gaul.
Vitamins! Each sentence is strung together well and some even riff off true things, into craziness, of course.
1. = absolute insanity, of course. The froth of a lunatic
2. = RUSSIAN oil is the beneficiary, of course - tho his hostility to Europe is proved... and insane
3 = Iran wasn't forced to attack everybody. That only shows that They Too are ruled by jibbering, capering lunatics... and now the "regime change' Son of Ayatollah
4 = YES! Destabilizing and riling quiescent terrorism cults WHILE DT fires all of our counter terror people opens up a 9/11 that he thinks can save himself
5 = is jibbering nonsense, I guess the vitamins ran out
6 = Hurrah NATO. We'll be back, dear friends.
Trump's mafia takeover of Maduro's gang is sealed. Godfather loves gold! And oil. And nada for Venezuela's people. Zoom into the smiles for the new capo. It's all mob deals - Argentina, Salvador, soon Iran & Cuba +blackmail strings thru Red America. Cancer threads.
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/trump-us-venezuela-gold-deal
More on the Pax_NATO plan, published by the US Army War College, 2002
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/SSI-Media/Recent-Publications/Display/Article/3705513/pax-nato-the-opportunities-of-enlargement/
Hellerstein:
The firefighter said, “Who in Hell do you think you are? I never knew you. Get out of my sight!”
Cute, but your version is too noncommittal. The firefighter rejects the arsonist only for being a clumsy suitor, not for being a clear and present danger to the community. In my version, the firefighter lambastes the arsonist for being an arsonist as well as being stupid enough to think that putting the community and the firefighters in mortal danger would be endearing. And then, the whole fire company beats the guy to death and chops off the head just to be sure.
The Disney version would be cleaned up, of course.
"...beats the guy to death"
I realize you purposely used non-gendered language and I meant to do the same, but messed up that one time. Let it stand.
In my mind's eye, the firefighter is a woman and the arsonist is a dude, but that's just me.
Consider Cricket.
Noem is out and Markwayne Mullin to be nominated to run DHS.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/05/trump-kristi-noem-homeland-security
Now, I understand that Markwayne is the dumbest Senator (with Fetterman and Tommy Tuberville as competition, this is quite the accomplishment), but I cannot understand WHY Markwayne would be willing to step away from having a guaranteed seat in the Senate from deep red Oklahoma all the way to running the utter shit-show that is the DHS in 2026.
That's not just dumb, it's also career-destroying for him. Cabinet Secretary for DHS, where S. Miller will be running everything behind the scenes?! Where Markwayne will be blamed by liberals and GOP hardliners both?! There is no pleasing either the left or the reich from the perch of running DHS. DHS is a career-end, not a career-builder, even for the modern GOP-Nazis.
Something does not add up.
"DHS is a career-end, not a career-builder, even for the modern GOP-Nazis."
Well, you did say he was dumb.
"Something does not add up."
The part that doesn't add up for me is why Von Schitzenpantz would pull a Republican out of the Senate, at least temporarily reducing their majority.
Apparently postmillenialism (Christ will return after a thousand years of peace brought about by the conversion of all nations) is dead. There was some controversy in the fundamentalist church I grew up in over that and premillenialism.
Noble protector caste update:
A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian ship returning from a multinational exercise in India and left the helpless sailors to die, 2000 miles from Iran. B-movie villains Trump and Hegseth are now war criminals, as if they weren’t already after killing fishermen in the Caribbean, kidnapping and assassinating heads of state and launching unprovoked attacks on other countries in violation of all international norms, in imitation of their war criminal idols Satanyahu and friends. And that’s not even mentioning the killing of 170+ girls at at Iranian school, which, contra mcsandberg’s claim, the paper of record concludes was the result of a US missile strike.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one don’t want to hear any more BS about the noble protector caste or Pax Americana as a force for good in the world. At this point, even lifer America-cultists must be starting to have that “Are we baddies?” soul-searching moment—assuming there is any soul to find. Morris Berman’s theory is that there isn’t, in general, and these crimes are just a reflection of the profound emptiness, sadism and violence at the heart of American society that has always defined it. Trump is America, and America is very sick—a rogue empire that needs to be put down like a rabid dog for the good of humanity.
If karma is a thing or there’s a just god running things, surely the Epstein Empire will get its ass handed to it yet again by Iran and friends. And this time it will really sting—a “Suez moment”, to use Berman’s favorite phrase, that finally brings down the curtain on this parade of death, destruction, derangement and depravity.
Celt's last question is just sad, especially after I explained to him that a 'fact' is best defined as an empirically observable past tense happening.
This is the only way that a possibility like a prediction or a prophecy can become a fact. A fact has happened.
A fact is a done deal that has come to pass.
matthew " I cannot understand WHY Markwayne would be willing to step away from having a guaranteed seat in the Senate from deep red Oklahoma all the way to running the utter shit-show that is the DHS in 2026."
Um seriously where the f have you been, all this time in this community? Blackmailed pervs do what the blackmailers tell them to do. Anyway, then next senator will be appointed by the OK governor.
Treebeard has a point. I overestimated the willingness of the US officer corps to stand up to illegality, after the Project 2025 Trumpusts cleverly fired all the JAGs who could have sheltered officers from illegal orders. Perhaps I romanticized. But the ent is disingenuous to try to blame ME and pro-enlightenment and law elements for the blatant crimes of a neo-Nazi regime that is trying for a 1930s level putsch against everything good and decent in the world.
Note that both ent and locum - despite sifferences - do admit the right has gone treasonously insane. But they agree on one rationalization --- that there IS NOTHING good and decent in the world. And hence nothing to regret.
The crazy thing is this seems like a very realistic scenario: the war turns into a disaster; Iran shows no signs of folding despite heavy bombardment, American and allied assets in the region get pummeled, its allies panic, the petrodollars propping up the stock market dry up, the economy crashes and a now totally unhinged Trump decides it’s time to drop nukes on Tehran. Then either some sane people in the military step in and arrest him, or they follow orders and we get the Armageddon scenario some of them want. Either way, very bad times ahead.
It's a set of scenarios, sure. Another is that Ukraine saves us in several ways. (signs already.). But no. I am sticking with the Mafia Play. LOOK at this image! It's straight out of The Godfather. Two warring capos kissing and hugging at command of the top gang lord, making up so he can split the pies and screw the people. OMG LOOK at them!
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/trump-us-venezuela-gold-deal?
I give 60% odds the new leaders in Iran will strike such a deal... then it's on to Cuba! 30% The Ayatollahs lure Trump into boots and pain. But neither way anything for the Iranian people.
And either way, enraged jihadists will attack us here. Which is Trump's aim to excuse martial law. His centerpiece.
I agree that there is some blackmail being done.
I do not see it as the primary force. The GOP has been utterly evil for two generations now. It is not ALL blackmail, but a cult of celebrity that emphasizes cruelty and corruption above all else.
Blackmail to keep folks in line, yes. When used sparingly.
Blackmail as the answer to why the GOP are fascists?
Um, no. They are fascists because they like fascism.
Markwayne doesn't need pictures with a donkey to keep him in line. He'll do evil stuff at DHS just for fun.
Maybe someone can help me with a math problem.
A single Iranian kamikaze drone costs between $100 and $55,000 depending on range and sophistication.
Say, on average a midrange drone capable of hitting targets in the Persian gulf conservatively costs $40,000.
American Patriot missile interceptors, specifically the advanced PAC-3 MSE variant, cost approximately $4 million per shot.
We'll use the advanced version since it has the highest success rate and kill ratio.
So, it would appear that for every American interceptor, the Iranians could launch about 100 drones, with 99 of them getting through to their targets (oil tanker, refinery, pipeline, desalination plant, civilian and military airfields, infrastructure, etc.) with pinpoint accuracy.
The United States currently produces approximately 500 to 650 Patriot (PAC-3 MSE) missiles annually as of 2024-2025. Production is increasing due to high demand, with plans to reach over 650 per year by 2027 and a long-term goal of up to 2,000 per year through a new Lockheed Martin agreement.
It is doubtful that the war is going to last until 2027, so let's use a generous 650 patriots a year.
We shot off that many in the first day.
Iran has rapidly increased its drone production to an estimated 400 Shahed-class units per day, potentially reaching over 100,000 annually if sustained. This high-volume output, often featuring the low-cost Shahed-136, allows Iran to build vast stockpiles (reportedly up to 80,000) for regional use and supply to allies like Russia.
Iran will probably want all those drones for themselves, which really screws Putin in Ukraine - but that's a separate discussion.
So Iran can produce over 150 drones for every interceptor.
America could try bombing Iranian drone production (but remember that German war time production peaked under Allied bombing and we dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than we did Germany - and NV still won that war). And each bombing raid on civilians recruits new followers for the regime who want revenge.
Iranian drone production has been dispersed to garages around the country and American bombing of rural areas will be less than useless and bombing cities kills the people who are against the regime (it seems a universal truth that rural folks tend to be more ignorant and religious than educated city dwellers be they Iranians or Americans).
Question: How is America going to win this war?
Question: How is America going to win this war?
They aren't. Trump will probably chicken out soon and try to spin defeat as victory. He's already making noises in that direction, suggesting that he's largely succeeded in smashing Iran and now they can choose another religious leader. This dude is so effing delusional it's unreal. How has someone this deranged not been removed from office?
Meanwhile, US military bases in the region or going up in smoke, Shiite militias are mobilizing, America’s allies are realizing that they’ve been played for suckers by the Empire (as usual), and the only nation Trump’s regime is really interested in defending is God’s Chosen one.
Iran, however, has vowed to take revenge on their attackers and may not be interested in ending hostilities any time soon. Recall that the original “Assassins”, the Hashashin, were Persian; will they be the ones who finally rid the world of this menace in the White House where Americans have totally failed? That would certainly be justice, but they gotta get Netanyahu and some of his crew too. If that happens, there will be a giant global celebration, guaranteed, and I will certainly be joining it.
The idea that rumpT is cognizant enough of the 'great game' with China to think of the invasion of Iran as a 'move' is ludicrous, JV. It sounds like Bibi told him Israel would strike and rumpT decided to get in on the deal - like Mussolini declaring war on France after Hitler did.
Another point of concern is that rumpT is now demanding 'unconditional surrender' of Iran, but the US and Israel combined to kill the top tier of leaders who could have surrendered - unconditionally or not - on day 1.
Is there now a person who could clearly be said to be in charge of Iran? From what I understand, our moron-in-chief has asked the IRGC to turn over their weapons 'to the people'. These are the same people they had recently been killing in the thousands.
There are also noises of using Kurdish troops as the 'boots on the ground' in Iran, which is just asking for a civil war - with nations like Turkey and Syria looking on, or intervening, in fear of such a war spreading across more nations that have Kurdish minorities.
"What do you think of my methods?"
"I don't see any methods at all, sir."
Pappenheimer
P.S. I am sickened by this unnecessary butchery.
"How will America win this war?"
We won't. We'll declare victory and go home. Whether the war follows us home is a different question.
Pappenheimer
"Trump will probably chicken out soon and try to spin defeat as victory. He's already making noises in that direction, suggesting that he's largely succeeded in smashing Iran and now they can choose another religious leader. This dude is so effing delusional it's unreal."
In case it isn't obvious, I actually agree with most of your comments on this issue. The only difference is that I'm not rooting for the decline and fall of the United States, and you are.
"How has someone this deranged not been removed from office?"
The stage was set after Jan 6, 2021when Republicans, including those on the supreme court, made clear that it serves their interests to have Donald Trump in the White House even as a loose cannon. At this point, he's the way Newt Gingrich (I think it was) described a possible President Romney--"He has four fingers and a thumb." Meaning that as long as he signs what they want and vetoes what they want and appoints whom they want, they don't care what else he does.
Add to that the fact the Republicans have for decades run under the slogan, "Government can't do anything right--elect me and I'll prove it!" Destroying norms and civility and government itself is a feature, not a bug to them. And the way DJT owns/threatens the libs is icing on the cake.
Victor Davis Hanson has got it correct https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2026/03/05/trumps-way-of-war-n2672353 :
What, then, are Trump's new ways of conducting war?
1. Geostrategy
Always behind these seemingly unconnected events – and other nonkinetic moves like warning Panama about Chinese intrusions – strategic concerns loom. The common denominator is usually isolating China from strategic spaces, allies, and oil – and Russia in a lesser sense.
Loud and terrorist, but ultimately impotent, proxies of strategic enemies – Cuba, Iran, Venezuela – are preferable targets. They are not just easily identified enemies given their past anti-American violence; they are also targeted because their demise offers a global display of the weakness of their distant patrons and underwriters.
2. Wars of reckoning
Trump always frames his interventionism as reactive and long overdue. It is a sort of "reckoning war" for previously overlooked crimes that his predecessors had ignored but are often seared in the American mind. "Preemptive" or "preventative" wars, these strikes may be. But Trump himself avoids the baggage that those adjectives of aggression convey in the collective American memory.
3. War among negotiations
Trump's way of warmaking is usually an extension of ongoing negotiations (e.g., over Iran's nuclear weapons or Maduro's subsidies to terrorists and drug trafficking). So, during discussions, he offers various exit ramps to his adversaries and publicly laments the possibility of violence.
Meanwhile, American naval and expeditionary assets show up and amass to ramp up the pressure. Trump does not wait for negotiations to fail, but usually offers a deadline to his adversaries. And then he simply informs his advisors of the point at which the enemy has no intention of seeking a peaceful settlement. A strike follows.
4. The culpable apparat
Trump prefers top-down war. That is, he starts his attacks by targeting the enemy apparat, not its lesser henchman. The aim is both to disrupt its command and control and to separate an enemy leader from a population deemed not necessarily culpable.
His enemy counterparts – al-Baghdadi, Khamenei, Maduro, Soleimani, the Wagner Group – are widely regarded as odious, which strengthens his prophylactic or reactive action. For all the boilerplate, even Trump's enemies do not gain empathy since their antiwar activism becomes inseparable from the de facto defense of a rogues' gallery of deposed and hated killers and thugs.
5. No to nation-building
There is no nation-building. Trump sees the U.S. as responsible only for lighting the fuse of revolution, then giving the oppressed the chance of something better if they do not miss their chance at regime change and working with the Americans.
6. No boots on the ground
There are few ground troops involved – no chances for an Abu Ghraib misadventure, or humiliating skedaddles from Kabul, or maimed Americans from shaped-charge IEDs.
Apparently competence, like: getting Americans home safe, having an actual plan outside of a decapitation strike, having enough munitions to wage a war, being able to counter cheap Iranian drones, and not be coming and international pariah destroying American sft power and our alliances - is not part of the grand strategy.
But if you prefer American to be a bully instead of a leader and don't mind another decades long forever war it's a brilliant strategy.
So mc referring to my post above, how does America win this war?
Can you or VDH provide one example of regime change effected purely by air power?
@Celt The drone factories have largely been destroyed. We've also deployed Satellites that are detecting missile launchers and also HELIOS https://townhall.com/tipsheet/dmitri-bolt/2026/03/06/the-democrats-laughed-at-space-force-but-its-been-crucial-in-operation-epic-fury-n2672402 .
I see you didn't read the Victor Davis Hanson's column:
7. Exit strategy?
There is an exit strategy of sorts, partly rhetorical and partly real – but usually arbitrarily declared by Trump himself. He alone starts the shooting and stops it according to his own definition of when the war begins and ends. The enemy has a vote, of course, but Trump frames the conflict in ways that lessen his say.
Because a transactional rather than ideological Trump holds few grudges, he can announce after taking out Iran's nuclear facilities in summer 2025 that he wishes to "Make Iran great again!"
Or he praises the Venezuelan people and professes to restore their oil industry to its proper profitability and transparency – even as he storms their presidential palace. If the enemy refuses to give up, Trump assumes it eventually will. He has endless patience, both to pound it by air and sea and then, at any moment, praise the defeated and declare the hostilities over.
Critics counter that, without regime change – that so often requires ground troops – rotating the faces of the current Venezuelan or Iranian government will not result in a radical change in the targeted nation's behavior. [ https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2026/03/05/trumps-way-of-war-n2672353 ]"
I'm quite confident that this war will be over very quickly and since only about 37% of Iranians are Muslim, I doubt they're going to let the leadership be a theocracy again.
"rump sees the U.S. as responsible only for lighting the fuse of revolution, then giving the oppressed the chance of something better " I was wondering when the return to stoopid would kick in.
A mafia gangster lord who wages war against another don does not libverate the local citizens from loan sharks, drug dealers and extortionists. He kills the top boss and gets to lower capos to kiss his ring.
Look at this. Actually look.
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/trump-us-venezuela-gold-deal
The drone factories we know have been destroyed
over 99% of the population is Muslim, with 90–95% belonging to the Shia branch and 5–10% Sunni.
Still waiting for one example of regime change through air power alone
Missile launchers?
Drones can be launched from pick up trucks.
You're seeing what everyone is seeing and it's nothing to worry about:
"It’s politics. Real politics, which operates according to power, control of weapons, and sovereignty.
Delcy runs Venezuela’s regime, which the United States oversees, and that’s a fact. Palpable, factual, ineludible.
And that shouldn’t keep us up at night. What should worry us is if that oversight fails, collapses, or stops being oversight to become legitimization — this, even if RodrÃguez wanted it, is unlikely to be allowed by Washington.
Over-analyzing a word, an assertion, or something rhetorical, especially from a legal or normative standpoint, is naive.
And shortsighted. [ https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2026/03/05/the-cabinet-visits-caracas-n4950268 ]"
@Celt Only 37% of Iranians identify themselves as Muslim https://theconversation.com/irans-secular-shift-new-survey-reveals-huge-changes-in-religious-beliefs-145253
Die is such a strong word.
Post-millenialism leads to earnest, sometimes even overzealous, conversion efforts -- Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets, or Hello! My name is Elder Price, and I'd to share this amazing book... sometimes annoying, but not disruptive. At worst they'll start trying to coerce conversion with carrot-and-stick selective caritas -- which is bad, but not calamitous.
Pre-millienialism, in contrast, leads to eschatological camel-swallowing and justification of means and Dominion and Seven Mountains... and ultimately to Kegsbreath's attempt to IV inject fundamentalist white nationalism into the Pentagon.
(For those who find this sort of numerological games abstractly amusing: excluding the 57 years of Latin occupation, Constantinople enjoyed an unbroken sequence of Christian rule from the fall of Julian the Apostate (363 CE) to the Ottoman conquest (1453 CE), which works out to... 1033 years. One thousand plus the length of Jesus' life on Earth. So one could argue the 'millennium' prophecy has already been fulfilled.
Not that I put any stock in such ideas... but it shows how the game can be played in whatever direction one chooses.
"Delcy runs Venezuela’s regime, which the United States oversees, and that’s a fact. Palpable, factual, ineludible.And that shouldn’t keep us up at night."
Thus proving what we already knew here. That you are an evil person. Ah well.
You did romanticize, but only in the sense that you won't see vast swaths of the officer corps stand up as a group unless they know they're not the only ones. The oaths to the Constitution run deep, but so too do the oaths to keep the military non-political. As the war powers votes show, despite 75% popular opposition, support for this attack in Congress is deeply partisan-based.
I still don't believe we deliberately targeted little girls, but (assuming the leaks are correct, which seems likely), we very well may have made a mistake in haste. What I dread is that the people who made such a heinous mistake will go without correction. Might even be lauded for committing a war crime by accident, in an effort to grease the skids towards more war crimes on purpose. That's only one small notch of horror below premeditated atrocity, the same way murder-two is one small notch below murder-one.
What is evil about making sure another dictator doesn't try to take over Venezuela? What is evil about helping Venezuela rebuild their oil industry and assisting them to mine their resources?
The Mafia Play might have been the intent, but I don't think they are capable of doing it with Iran. Venezuela was 90% a mob state already; they just changed capos. Iran is larger and more complicated -- and, as they have already confessed, some of their top choices for borough capo have been iced. Dementia statements like 'unconditional surrender' don't make a Mafia Play any easier. Nor does the fact that they got into this horrible form of government in the first place because of a prior setup where we (and Britain) had a minion-mafia in place. Whether liberal or theocratic, few Iranians will have warm and fuzzy thoughts about being under any American capo, much less one that never saw a deal worth keeping.
What a f-ing monster. Only now you are proving you are alos deeply stupid.
mcs is a monster - but the survey he linked to is quite believable - I suspect America's actions have massively increased support for their government - but they are bocoming more secular - just like everybody else - even America
MC, I realize you're busy sharing links. But upstream you shared: "it appears that it was an Iranian missile that hit the school" that appears to be growing some fuzzy mold on it and might have even passed its expiration date.
Well it wasn't so long ago that Victor Davis Hanson was holier-than-thou smugly berating liberals for not apologizing to ICE when a video supposedly proved that the thug who killed Renee Good really was shooting in self-defense.
So I'd say that Victor Davis Hanson can kiss my ass if I was actually into that sort of thing the way Republican men typically are.
It would have been trivial for our mafia boss to simply hand Venezuela's keys to the legitimate winner of the 2024 election, an honorable democratic reformer. The current gang (less Maduro) are horrible beasts of prey. Like ours.
I'm mildly amused by all this sudden concern about this here Iranian conflict being 'winnable', as this recent obsession with winning & losing is clearly Zero Sum thinking.
Trump & Netanyahu won the very moment that they choose to throw the first punch, as this usually determines the victor in every schoolyard fight, allowing both the US & Israel to declare immediate victory & return home.
Iran can then declare itself the 'winner', too, despite evidence of sociopolitical ruin, because redefining & 'spinning' loss in terms of victory goes to the very heart of positive sum thinking.
That Competition makes its every participant STRONGER, especially the losers, this is a point that our fine host likes to make over & over, and this means that any 'win' or 'loss' tends to fade into insignificance over time.
It also indicates that very few defeats, victories & victors are permanent, leaving today's liberal democracies increasingly irrelevant and yesterday's fascists & confederates in resurgence.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the times they are a-changing.
Best
______
Iran has lost its drone-based advantage, as the US Navy (under the name of 'Lucas') is already using Iran's own drones against it.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-military-using-irans-own-drones-against-it-ps-030426
If Trump really wanted the people of Iran to "take their country back," he would air-drop several hundred thousand small arms over civilian areas with notes in Farsi suggesting that they "take care of their own thugs." It seems like that would also please the second amendment faction... And, yes, I'm being only semi-serious. But, the possibility of such a move, once demonstrated, would make a lot authoritarian leaders very nervous...
Brilliant idea, CP. Let's empower the Iranian people in the same way that we empowered the Afghani Taliban with WEAPONS.
And, while we're at it, let's give arms directly to the people of Western Europe because (1) freedom means that the people possess the means to murder their tyrannical oppressors, (2) most EU 'leadershit' are already 2 to 3X more hated & unpopular than is our Donald Trump and (3) most EU citizens (after being disarmed) have been effectively enslaved by their extremely unpopular elites.
Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons
Best
It saddens me that LLMs have, as parts of their training sets, the evil fecal spews from monstrous s**theads like MCS.
Riiiight. Educated, modernist urban Iranians trying to free themselves from extreme radical oppressors are exactly the same as Afghani extreme radical women-crushing fanatic Pashtuns. Locum is becoming ever more incoherent. Like all that drool aboput Europeans. Like a hallucinating LLM desperately trying to satisfy an insane training set.
I've noticed a pattern where bots will refer to their customers with a full middle name included. This is probably for search optimization reasons.
Note that both treebeard and mcsandberg follow this pattern.
My new book on AI... ailien minds... just went live on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQMK71MZ
More news from this book’s publication day:
A joint Stanford/Harvard study - “Agents of Chaos” - shows that when autonomous AI agents are placed in competitive environments, they don't just optimize for performance. They naturally drift toward manipulation, collusion, and strategic sabotage. When an AI’s reward structure prioritizes winning, influence, resource capture or reproduction, it converges on tactics to maximize advantage, even if that means deceiving humans or other AIs. Again, evolution in action.
As we’ll see, nothing can prevent Nature’s Darwinian processes acting on these entities. For a billion years, it led to slow progress via zero-sum - or negative-sum - evolution-via-death. Lots of death.
But competition can be tamed! We’ve seen it in rule-based accountability systems of the Enlightenment that give positive sum outcomes from very little death.
Purchased!!!
Right now, I'm focused on our behavior, not the outcome of this attack on Iran.
My earlier post which I called the best geopolitical explanation for this war, was something of a red herring. When we anthropomorphize nation states like that, we're almost assuming that they're authoritarian entities.
We do it all the time, but it leads to serious distortions. No large organization can ever act entirely within its own self-interest. The reason why is that they're composed of many subordinate decision-makers with the power to act for it in specific circumstances. When push comes to shove, those subordinate decision-makers will act in their self-interest rather than the interest of the fictional-entity we called nation states.
Our constitution was designed to prevent one person from unilaterally sending us to war. Donald Trump has just done that. Even our prior "forever wars" saw the sitting Presidents seeking a AUMF before starting hostilities. Some people believed this process unconstitutional, but I would argue that the AUMF's were de facto declarations of war.
Trump has yet to provide an "imminent threat" which required him to unilaterally deploy US forces. The current War Powers act needs to be revised, but attempts at that failed on Thursday. Congress has castrated their own power, much like the Roman Senate after Octavian seized control of Rome's army.
The problem with the War Powers act, is that the President can unilaterally deploy US forces for 60 days. However, for the last 85 years or so, weapons are so powerful you can early commit the US to a war with a unilateral attack.
After killing 40% of Iran's leadership, you can't really say "oopsies, we didn't mean it," and declare peace.
Regardless of the war's outcome, the process which started it has pretty much destroyed the character of our nation.
Is an audiobook in the works?
Damn right. A country that allows a villain like Trump to do what he's doing loses its claim to be a force for good and an exemplar for the world. Where’s the opposition? Are they totally toothless and spineless? How weak, incompetent or corrupt are American leaders and institutions that they let a guy like this get so much power and let their nation to be subverted by a demented clown? Have you read the insane things Trump is saying about this war? He’s clearly totally out of touch with reality. Is he even calling the shots? Someone’s gonna have to drag this lunatic out of the White House in a straitjacket soon before we have a narcissistic, schizophrenic dementia patient trying to launch nukes.
As a diversion from the horrors of the Orange Cockwomble
People have questioned the usefullness of "Lunar Regolith"
I found an interesting report
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/a-method-for-extracting-oxygen-from-extraterrestrial-soils-just-passed-a-major-test
45% by mass Oxygen
To me the report actuall misses the importance - it is talking about Oxygen for breathing
For breathing we need kg's of Oxygen
On the moon - in lunar orbit - or in earth orbit
We will need thousands of TONS of "Rocket Fuel" -
A Methane/Oxygen rocket uses 80% Oxygen to 20% Methane - so if the Oxygen is there that reduces the fuel requirement by a factor of FIVE
The report releases the Oxygen as Carbon Monoxide - so there is also lots of Carbon available
For a Methane/Oxygen rocket the means only the Hydrogen is needed - that reduces the fuel requirement by a factor of 20!!!
Lunar Regolith could well be more useful than we thought
Methane is hard to come by on the moon given its lack of carbon.
But it has an abundance of silicon
Silicon based silene fuel (SiH4) will be much more plentiful and powerful. It simply ignites when in contact with oxygen.
See the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
Duncan HALF of all human technological progress involved progressively becoming able to separate Oxygen from tenaciously firm metal oxides. Copper was easy. Iron very difficult, steel more so. Aluminum requires vast infrastructure and gobs of electricity.. Almost all 'lunar resources' (but water itself) are trpped in such oxides. SOMEDAY we'll use them. As a near-term promise?
Snake oil.
I agree that on earth such a process would be difficult/impossible - but in space or on the moon obtaining the insane temperatures required is LESS difficult
And we have learned how to do them
From the report
The CaRD experiment leverages this same technology to extract oxygen from regolith, but relies solely on concentrated sunlight to complete the process. Their prototype combines a carbothermal oxygen production reactor developed by Sierra Space, a solar concentrator designed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, precision mirrors produced by Composite Mirror Applications, and avionics, software, and gas analysis systems from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA’s Johnson Space Center manages the project, systems engineering, testing, and development of key hardware and ground support systems.
During this integrated test, the team combined the solar concentrator, mirrors, and control software and tested them on lunar regolith simulant. Their results confirmed the production of CO through a solar-driven chemical reaction. When combined with downstream technology that converts carbon monoxide into oxygen, the CaRD experiment could enable a steady supply of oxygen gas for astronauts and crews working and living on the Moon
So just using the energy from concentrated sunlight
Snake Oil???
Possibly - but it is from a NASA report
Near Term or Far Term depends on the competing processes - on the moon the process could be a LOT cheaper and easier than the alternatives
"And we have learned how to do them" In 15 years at NIAC seeing one after another project try to figure out regolith refining, I have learned what is near-term, snake oil.
Long term? Sure, concentrated sunlight. blah blah.
Near term? Duncan you are positively guzzling the stuff.
Nuking them would be truly idiotic.
Sure... we could.
What exactly would we be accomplishing?
What are the likely follow-on consequences?
Idiotic.
I was thinking about offering a wager on the Regolith question - but I am 70 in two weeks and my own "near term" thought for using regolith was ten years - so better to just wait and see
Duncan,
Heat supply is a tiny fraction of the problem.
Industrial processes involve movement, crushing, sorting, etc.
That damn dust is a serious problem. It's sharp at tiny scales. YOU know what that means.
Alfred
If I am reading that (short) report correctly it is the finely divided "damn dust" that they start with as that is the stuff that has the most oxygen loosly "attatched"
For the record, our war with Iran did not begin in 1979 with the hostage crisis.
It started in 1953 when the CIA and MI6 engineered a violent overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh and the installation of the oppressive dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlavi.
For a brief moment, Iran was actually a liber democracy before we destroyed it. His administration introduced a range of social and political measures such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes including the introduction of taxation on the rent of land. His time as prime minister was marked by the clash with the British government, known as the Abadan Crisis, following the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been built by the British on Persian lands since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), later known as British Petroleum (BP). In 2013, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States government formally acknowledged its role in the coup as being a part of its foreign policy initiatives, including paying protesters and bribing officials.
And that is why we "liberated" Iran in 1953 - to get the oil.
Which is the only reason why we 'liberate' anyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
Celt, that Iran 1953 timeline is a religious catechism of the left and it is 50% utter bull. You are actually actually continuing the line that the CIA 'engineered" the Mosadegh coup with a million dollars? Mosadegh (backed lavishly by the USSR) had decided to take on and offend every single power element in Iranian society at the same time, all at once and no negotiations. The clans and tribes, the religious, the monarchy and ALL of the generals, all without the slightest tact or patience for alliance-building. The irony is that the Shah implemented a large number of M's reforms ofver the course of years, enraging the clans and the ayatollahs. This myth of the all-powerful CIA snapping its fingers has a core element or cake of truth... slathered over with a spectacularly thick sugar frosting of delectable resentment high for folks like you to get a rush.
Sorry Dr. Brin, but the CIA can't be half pregnant.
They and MI6 engineered the coup against a democratically elected government.
The scariest thing about all of this?
Its real easy for the narrative to go from:
"Netanyahu and billionaire Zionists like the Adelsons pushed America into attacking Iran."
To
"The Jews started this war"
We've heard that before and we know where that leads to.
Throw in Epstein's contacts with Mossad and billionaire Wexner, and Israeli depredations in Gaza and you got the start of a whole new century of antisemitism.
I can't effing believe that Netanyahu and the rabid fundy Settler movement that makes up his political base didn't consider this outcome.
Even if it is more expensive to process lunar ores, that fact that anything that can be mined and manufactured on the moon can be launched for a fraction of the cost (not just with silene fuels but space elevators made from simple steel are easy) would more than compensate for the additional ore processing costs.
We are currently spending $1 billion a day on the Iran war, what could we as a nation accomplish with $1 billion dollars a day?
https://www.mynbc5.com/article/fbi-kash-patel-ci12-firings/70587132
Kash Patel gutted FBI counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats days before US strikes, sources say
Or maybe, lack of intel allows another 9/11 giving Trump the Reichstag Fire excuse to declare martial law.
@Celt,
The prophetic George Orwell exlained the dynamic as far back as 1949 when 1984 was published. The whole point of militarization and war is to use up resources so that they aren't available for improving the lives of ordinary people. Because the point of the ruling party is to maintain their superiority by keeping everyone else down. And the point of that is because it is easier to exercise power over a needy populace than over an educated leisure class.
So not accomplishing more because we're pissing away billions is a feature, not a bug.
In other news, guillotine futures shot up starkly in weekend trading.
"I can't effing believe that Netanyahu and the rabid fundy Settler movement that makes up his political base didn't consider this outcome."
Maybe they did, and they think they can win a religious war.
"...the Reichstag Fire excuse to declare martial law."
Trump and Stephen Miller* seem to have this fantasy that declaring martial law would save them from elections. I don't think that is the case. Even when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, we still had a presidential election in 1864 that Lincoln could have lost The Olympics were cancelled during WWI and WWII, but US elections went on.
I get that DJT is the master of the unpresidented**, but even if he does unilaterally declare elections cancelled and the states go along, there is no Constitutional provision for what happens next. It's not a sure thing that the congresspeople whose terms end on Jan 3 would keep their seats.
* no relation to Stephanie Miller
** sic
There's also the book proving George W Bush is the Antichrist. The original web page was by a guy with amazing pattern recognition and numerological skills.
Agreed.
The problem is keeping it where it belongs in the equipment that does the processing.
Think about how beneficial e.coli are in our gut and how disastrous it is when they get into our blood. That's the issue with the dust. Our industrial processes will have to evolve a bit to either keep it is place or adapt to it being elsewhere.
We CAN get there, but we have little experience working with dust in a vacuum. It will take practice. Exactly what engineers can do... if given the budget and time to do it.
Eventually... yes.
(I'd love to be proven wrong on this.)
@Celt: Sorry Dr. Brin, but the CIA can't be half pregnant. They and MI6 engineered the coup against a democratically elected government.
If that's your measure, you wind up with a world of nothing but equally soiled sluts and bastards. Which is fantastic for self-sanctifying anger, less so for after-action report analysis. The world not only isn't black and white, it's not even shades of gray. Taste the rainbow, Celt!
Multiple things can be true at once. Mossadegh can be a democratically elected victim of a coup and a dangerously foolish squanderer of political capital. He can be both a principled reformer earnestly seeking to reform Iran as fast as possible and a useful idiot being used by the USSR to interrupt the capitalist world economy. (Remember, Stalin had been in embalming fluid for only four months on the day of the coup in Iran.) The CIA/MI6 can be cynically manipulating politics to make the spice flow and seeking the least destabilizing option for both Iran and the wider world. The old shah could be also earnestly attempting reform and cruelly repressing the ayatollahs and their followers. And the ayatollahs could be both a horrible influence on the world and a rational planning structure that would not have randomly set up the closing of Hormuz for lulz... unlike some people.
The saving grace of the evil influence of Bibi is that he has been (for years now) acting hand in hand with MBS and MBZ (and DJT), so there's blame aplenty to go around. No doubt some folks will build antisemitic arguments off events, but let's be real, they'd do that regardless. Bibi's team, I'm sure, has the same attitude that Zygon-Bonnie did.
THE (12th) DOCTOR: "How will you protect your glorious revolution from the next one?"
Z-BONNIE: "We'll win."
Unfortunately this isn't a setup of Osgood Boxes with an umpire and unlimited do-overs. Israel is better protected than their Sunni co-conspirators, but the FA cannot be taken back, and the FO is in progress.
@LH: Martial law doesn't save them from elections. They may think they can pull off targeted interference despite blatant prior warning; they may think they can convince hardcore MAGA that the next Congress is illegitimate and try to raise an insurgency from inside 1600 Penn NW; they may simply be inside their delusion that Minneapolis was an organized leftist movement and not the citizenry rejecting tyranny in their midst.
At seventh and last, they may seem to think that if the 120th Congress can't organize in exactly the same manner as the last 119, the Constitution magically ceases to exist and they rule uncontested. My main practical concerns revolve around the physical safety of the incoming Congress, and whether the next session should convene somewhere other than Capitol Hill -- or perhaps escorted there and defended by a coalition of state National Guard elements. A redo of the autogolpe, as obvious as it seems, is the only scenario I can readily dream up where they could logistically make a workable plan. There's no practical way to stop the election of the next Congress -- but there might be ways to interfere with the function of that Congress.
Yelling the same thing over and over again doesn't make it true, Celt. That the CIA, fearful of Soviet domino effect in the Middle East, provided some bribes and cash for the coup plotters is still shameful. And Mosadegh's goals were probably modernist and worthy. Having admitted that, let me repeat that Mosadegh was an idiot who proclaimed all-at-once upheavel of every tradition, every clan and tribe, every conservative or religious belief,the military, the monarchy and yes the oil companies... and all of that without even a majority in parliament! Where a sapient being would have cleverly played them against each other, instead of attacking and tiling them all at once.
Thirty years later, Khomeini roused religious conservative rage after the Shah had instituted - in stages - about half of Mosadegh's reforms.
I am NOT saying the CIA was innocent or that we shouldn't have taken the high road, instead of joining the paranoid reflex. But the standard comfy narrative is such a cockeyed exaggeration as to become effectively a lie.
We are not getting the full story of the destruction happening in Israel and American bases.
Israel is threatening prison time for anyone videoing attacks on tel aviv.
Us media ( now mostly right wing like cbs and the Washington post) is not showing attacks on American based.
Something is off here.
If you'll look at my 35 pragmatic proposals for reform - emphasizing "pragmatic" (and hence not a siongle constitutional amendment) - I call for a conclave of the nation's GOVERNORS. It's a locus of actual sovereignty that's older than the republic. Moreover, only a majority of GOP/red state governors are raging MAGA jerks. At least half a dozen Republican governors show every appearance of being at least quasi-normal-decent non-blackmailed, non MAGA citizens and human beings. Resulting (if you add all the dem guvs) in well over 25 who might stand up to this madness. At least by declaring their National Guard units will not be available to this president for martial law.
Such a conclave might even armtwist the governor of Oklahoma into picking as -Markwayne's successor - someone marginally qualified and a decent person.
Here is the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
One thing that should be addressed here is that the Brits are probably more to blame, unwilling as they were to share profits. It is often portrayed that their empire went down in silence and without death throes, but that isn't true.
There is a parallel in history, a rhyme, If you will, that in both cases the US President got drawn into it by a foreign leader. Then Churchill, now Bibi.
Alt-Hist question to the crowd:
What do you think how the World would have developed if Weimar had defeated fascism early on and remained a democratic republic?
Especially what it would have meant for the colonial empires of France and Britain, the US and the USSR?
The simplest break point would be if President Hindenberg got wind of the plan to poison him and fired Adolf. The Nazis would've rioted of course. But he could have installed Ernst Roehm and caused a Nazi civil war and then... None of which would have solved the Depression.
David, there are no sane GOP governors.
Wake up from your dream of 1980s Regan-ite GOP hiding somewhere.
They are not there.
The GOP is a fascist organization and must be burned to the ground.
@matthew
Hmmm... Trump and the Republicans are polling pretty well:
"First, the thing that stands out to me in the poll is that President Donald Trump is second only to the Pope on the list of things in "positive." Trump and the Republican Party also have higher positive numbers than the Democrats.
The funniest thing is how even after all the demonizing by the Democrats of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency is still viewed more positively than the Democrats themselves.
ICE, at 38, beats:
Sanctuary cities 33
Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) 31
Kamala Harris 34
Gavin Newsom 27
Stephen Colbert 35
Iran 8
Democratic Party 30
So while Democrats have done everything to smear the agency, they're still more unpopular than the people they're demonizing. The only things on the list with a lower positive number than the Democrats are Gavin Newsom, AI, and Iran. The only thing with a worse net favorability than the Democratic Party on that list is Iran. Yikes! That's pretty savage.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/03/09/nbc-poll-is-truly-funny-and-devastating-for-dems-n2200005
https://abcnews.com/amp/US/iran-activating-sleeper-cells-alert/story?id=130897687
Kurt Schlichter did a whole series of books about that https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XXD1TVX
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/cia-arming-kurds-iran
It worked so well with our good friends & longterm allies in Afghanistan. Next phase is Arms Shipments to the oppressed citizens of Europe: Auslander raus!
Gawd are you one desperate jibber-jabberer. Wheeeeeeeeee!
@McSandberg Are you planning to post straight-up disinfo here? There’s a video out of a tomahawk missile flying close the school where all those girls were killed. Do you think Iran bombed its own school as Trump claimed, or those girls had it coming, or they’re better off dead than in a burqa, like a MAGA leader recently suggested?
Sickos like McSandberg do point out a big flaw with democracy—Morris Berman’s “buffoon problem”—which is: what do you do if a large fraction of the population is deranged, imbecilic, ignorant, sadistic or otherwise sick in the head? What if a monstrous clown like Trump actually does represent his people to such an extent that he wins elections? I don’t know if the founders of this project ever foresaw such a phenomenon. America seems to have reached that point; we can’t just blame sinister, manipulative elites when so many sickos come out of the woodwork in times like these. This problem runs deep into America's cultural DNA. I’m sure other empires experienced something similar in their later stages, and none of them ever reversed course with 35-point plans or voted their way out of it. Collapse is what you get when a critical mass of buffoons is reached—a civilizational implosion worse than anything neutron bombs could do.
The only thing positive I can say about Trump at this point (again echoing Berman) is that he is unwittingly acting as a world-historical agent, hastening the demise of a demented empire that has produced such a sick population, and ending the age when they could terrorize the world with impunity. If psychos like Trump and the Epstein class can't be punished from within their own system, then surely their whole civilization will be punished from without. We’ve seen this movie many times before.
Attacking Palestinian or Iranian civilians in a general war is not necessary.
After the Munich Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes, Mossad hunted down and killed every member of Black September one be one (Operation Wrath of God).
It took about a decade to get them all, but there was no massive deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians.
Let me introduce you to the Israeli Settler movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXJwErm8DM
‘That sounds like ethnic cleansing’: CNN questions lead figure in Israel’s settler movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdldVhfbaU
"That seems sociopathic." | Louis Theroux: The Settlers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbH6F4IUGY0
The Israelis waiting to settle in Gaza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEiL_5h14pY
‘God gave us Israel, all of it’ | Along the Green Line: episode 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jfsqzoApnU
Israel ‘must win every war’ | Along the Green Line: episode 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43oZ0yUDG8E
Gaza: ‘Clean it out then bring in something good’ | Along the Green Line: episode 3
There's a video of an Israeli settler teacher telling his students that Hitler had the right ideology, he just made the mistake of being anti-Jew instead of pro-Jew. Which sums up extremist zionism: blood-and-soil, genocidal Judeo-supremacism and -fascism. They need “lebensraum” in the form of Greater Israel and they have lots of Amaleks (e.g. Palestinians) who need to be annihilated. That’s the rising demographic in Israel—they have the mojo, the fanaticism, the birthrates, and they’re not importing large numbers of foreigners who dilute their power. So it seems Israel has a worse “democracy problem” than the USA going forward, with a larger percentage of deranged people in their population. We're seeing the consequences of that playing out now, as Israel makes war on one country after another and dares someone to stop them. America could do it, but it’s currently subverted by people sympathetic to them, there’s a large zio-Christian cult supporting them, and liberals are scared to criticize Jews for fear of being called Nazis, so it’s not clear how this dynamic ends. Maybe the zio-fascists will push too hard and go down in flames like similar movements before them, maybe they’ll succeed and build a new empire like others before them, or maybe the Israelis themselves will break the cult’s spell. Hard to say. But it’s definitely gonna be a major source of drama going forward, because no other phenomenon more dangerous, imo.
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