Liars and Killers and the Downfall of the West

The Rich Hate the Poor and Are Trying to Kill us – so far we’re mostly so dumb that we help

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks

I now write on social media, but my regular readers know I usually try my best to offer something with some ‘book spirit’ to it, some philosophical insights, some relevant historical ideas, some ways to relate these to our modern lives and some ideas about how we might each/all do better.

I mentioned recently that I’m a thoughtful introvert, but aware enough to know that that is not the only way people think about and approach the world. I’m also an atheist, who does not disparage those of faith with ignorant sneering. I am very interested in all solutions, and I don’t pretend observable errors disprove entire lines of thought, nor that my own ideas should be (or could be) made universal.

But far more important than these ideas about ‘where I’m coming from’, I am a man of peace not by some intellectual formulation, but out of absolute necessity. I come from a cult full of child rapists and their still smug enablers. If I was to give-in to the full anger in my heart, it would destroy me.

The most interesting comment I ever heard about this was from Ben Kingsley, when he was talking about how he approached portraying Gandhi, in Richard Attenborough’s film about him. He said (I paraphrase) that in trying to understand Gandhi’s extraordinary pacifism, especially in the context of showing the formation of his character and ideas, he realized that Gandhi needed that level of mastery to overcome his own entirely righteous and otherwise consuming anger.

Of course I’m not trying to say I’m like Gandhi – only that we all come to ideas and positions for different reasons. Those who are grounded in literally life-saving motivations, can sometimes become frustrated by others, who are playing with ideas and word patterns as if they are mere logic puzzles, with no human cost associated with them whatsoever. Even more frustrating are those who actively seek out rationalized vexations in a never-ending quest, so that they always have something to blame for being miserable as human beings. I don’t play that (or like it).

Anyhow – today I want to move a bit faster than usual, though of course, being me, there will be history and ideas aplenty. The first idea I need, just to be able to speed-up my usual pace, is a funny threshold that I have noticed myself, ever since I was a teenage ‘radical’ (in my own mind).

When we have a feeling of anger or mistrust about ‘them’, we are immediately willing to consider and seriously contemplate far more shocking sets of data and explanation ideas, than we are in those areas or about those groups which we consider “in-groups” or “one of us.”

What this means is that we are much more skeptical about serious criticism directed at things that we like, and far too credulous when it comes to satisfyingly nasty ideas about ‘the opposition’.

As I mentioned a few pieces ago “Conspiracy Theory” was a phrase literally invented by the f#cking CIA as a cultural weapon, (that is, as a way to train us ‘normal’ sneering halfwits to stay blind to CIA malfeasance instinctively) because CIA has done nothing but conspire against American democracy and the interests of normal American citizens ever since their inception (really).

Sadly, pretty much everyone in the west now has a little circuit installed in their heads which filters incoming information, and throws about half of what we actually need (to be informed citizens with some role in steering democracy) into the ‘conspiracy theory’ trash bin, unread.

Gross but true – one part of your brain (and mine) is already working for CIA for free!

Today I’m going to move so fast that some might feel their conspiracy theory alarm bells going off. I’ll try to give a nice bibliography at bottom, as well as my usual links. Believe me folks, I don’t just ramble and rant about stuff from thin air, I study like a maniac (for a half a century) and then rant!

Racing the stone boat

You know you are an essayist when – you find yourself introducing a second key cultural/philosophical concept, before you can even start to sum-up the reality and meaning of the latest news! This one is not just absolutely required for today’s purposes, its importance for understanding itself, is HUGE.

The difference between systems which openly limit speech, and ones which do not, is that in a system which allows for ‘free speech’ the powerful are obligated to control what people want to say.

Systems where the rules are much clearer, even where they are also harsher, do not rely upon the continuous generation of a seamless bewitching illusion, in order to effectively manipulate popular understanding, simply to govern. They coerce first, then persuade as a (relative) afterthought.

But when below their threshold of coercion altogether, you are in many ways more free.

Most of the arguments and energy in ‘advanced western culture’ (the long powerful but now fast-imploding illusion of western ethics, supremacy and legitimacy) is spent on crafting wonderful and emotion-stirring lies, which are carefully designed to obscure the forces players and interests truly in contention.

The reason that trick works on us so well, and keeps right on working, despite the ruinous consequences, is that we live inside a constellation of myths, anyhow.

For anyone who wonders why I keep using “BigWar/BigMedia” to denote the completely unethical scumbags in corporate media, it is because they have been complicit in every war the west has fought – lying to help justify mass murder (whipping the public into a racist frenzy) and then covering up war crimes and fresh mass murders (cause when it’s about us, it’s a conspiracy theory).

These lie promoters are not just serving power, they are faithful accomplices to mass murder – going all the way back to the Vietnam war (and much further still, but I’ll leave that aside today - no sense triggering that bell early now, is there?)

So, one of my considerations when I write (and a constant question, when I read others) is – just how much reality can one discuss, before people stop being open and considering thoughtfully, and instead their CIA BigWar-BigMedia trained immune-response kicks in, so they shut down all new thinking completely and doubt even the sound and useful clues they’ve already accepted?

All of which means that talking about culture and politics is now a lot like cult-deprogramming!

Okay now – strap-in, folks – I’m hitting the turbos!

Globalists ARE the Epstein class – that’s why they’re scary. When your entire society is being actively parasitized and destroyed from within, hollowed out economically, culturally and in terms of rights and citizen thriving for decades in a row without pause, right in front of your eyes, we are not talking about a conspiracy theory – but a clear and long existing conspiracy FACT!

The western provoked and demanded war on Russia was already a huge capitulation to our fascism – so was the western world wide fear/anger politicization of illness caused by the US military industrial complex run amuck (like CIA, way beyond any sound democratic citizen supervision).

My friends, the old arguments are nothing but nostalgia – obsolete – it’s that simple, we are into the hundredth page of this creepy script now – and everyone we hear, is still trying to blame the page before this, for starting it.

Did you know the Iranians are referring to this war as “Operation Epstein Fury?” Quite rightly, too, but as I mentioned above, it is (darkly) hilarious how selective the readings from Epstein in BigMedia have been, thus far. Very much like the grotesquely racist war coverage, even in countries which are officially opposed, or else tactically abstaining without clearly opposing (the double chicken-shit play, favoured by most of the proudest hypocrite-shill nations, like my own, Canada).

The thing about Epstein which is really scary is that he instantly PROVES the left right political divide was a scam, this whole freakin’ time. People, Noam Chomsky was palling around with Steve Bannon!

So far, the single scariest quote from the files that I’ve come across (sourced from multiple directions) was an email from a Hollywood director, to Epstein.

“I was thinking about that discussion you and Bill Gates were having, about how do we get rid of the poor people? I have an idea.”

The reason that one gave me double chills, was because it fits perfectly with the scariest quote I ever heard from someone pretending to give a shit about the environment (despite being a scheming, relentless, honourless, backstabbing cut-throat monopolist his whole damn life).

While discussing carbon footprints and population numbers, and with a big smile on his face, Bill Gates looked right at the camera and said: “Obviously, one of these numbers has to go to zero”

This next is powerful circumstantial (but very powerful) rather than ‘smoking gun’ clear, but...

Peace in Israel (the 1990s Helsinki process take on a two-state solution) was the last great chance for a stable peaceful Israel well-integrated with the local nations and economies. That is, for an Israel which was more solid and stable than a western proxy crusader state, directing long term war against Islam. It was likely destroyed by Epstein’s hold on Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak.

Not on my house, please!

Okay now – before we even get into the question of this latest (more insane than any in memory) war – let’s quickly review the extraordinary economic shitstorm we were already in, anyhow.

Before Trump entered office and started his utterly incoherent tariff war on everyone (actually a shakedown for the world’s lunch-money, by the world’s increasingly senile and infirm bully) the RCMP in Canada had already compiled a (thankfully leaked) report predicting mass civil unrest in Canada because of rapidly declining economic conditions. This is before Trump, and war.

And folks, this is Canada. I live in Toronto, the biggest city. When they built our newish police headquarters, they gave it glass walls, then put a rock-garden of loose fist-sized stones all around it, and didn’t even notice for a decade, until we won the world series, and a celebratory mob drew near (after which they glued all the stones down firmly, with concrete). My point is, we just don’t do riots. Protests, definitely. But unrest ain’t us – which makes me even more worried for my friends afar, with even worse economic prospects ahead, and far lower cultural thresholds for mass disturbance (looking at you, England and France). Canucks might seem a simple folk to some, but we are lucky enough to have plenty of resources at least. Ain’t gonna run out of food.

AI is another very big chip on the modern playing board (superb insightful essay below, about impact on work and what models might work for economies in future). But just as that scary quote from the Epstein files is much more scary when you add Gates, I can’t help suspecting that one part of what is being hidden behind the AI hype, is a major war between banking factions.

I used to disdain economics, even while I was a maniac for history. I now regret that a lot, because the same can be said about the second world war. Two sets of capitalists fighting for banking dominance, yet still paying licensing fees and still actively manufacturing for the ‘enemy’. (Only “Catch 22” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” catch the madness)

The next insight came from the strangest of sources, Aleksander Dugin, who noticed that the American deep-state was so deeply in control of the US government (for more than a half century now) that the only way Trump could have taken power is with the backing of a B-faction within that deep state. A faction of super-powerful who have a different plan, and have planned.

The other bankers. The second team of secret string-pulling creeps. But please note, both teams always use us as endlessly expendable pawns of no consequence or moral weight whatsoever.

So, when you’re thinking about the advocates of bold new AI governance, especially those who have long participated in tasking computers with assassination and mass murder campaigns, and also in violating the rights (and psychological health) of citizens wholesale with ‘workarounds’ to escape morality with legal loopholes, add the idea of the B-team of would-be dominators of the world.

And please remember, those who are not in control but feel it close, are way more willing to smash stuff that those in control both extract profit from, and are also obligated to maintain.

---

There is a ton to be said about AI on the cultural and human level, and what it is and isn’t – but I want to zoom-out to a whole different perspective for a moment – just to do a reality check.

If you take away the buildout of DataCentres (mostly for AI) and growth of gambling revenues, (hilariously accounted as a GDP positive) the US economy has not had ANY growth in three years.

Problem is, there are already huge problems finding enough power for these data-centres, and the plans to build new generating capacity are literally decades slower than the plans for AI growth.

All this while these tech companies are cross-investing on a staggering scale (meaning any hazard or headwinds for one, risks crashing the whole interlocked network of co-financiers). Some estimate the AI bubble is roughly five times bigger than the dot-com bubble. Some say eight.

Meanwhile, McKinsey reports that so far, the vast majority of corporations are finding AI of much less use than was promised (though the essay below makes the other argument, well).

So – even without any of the new tariff or war stresses, we were already running very close to the bone, gambling on long-shots for which we had not planned adequate infrastructure, and lying hard, to make it seem as if this (or any of the last ten versions of the casino game) was a ‘plan’.

In contrast, the Chinese have the most solar in the world, the most wind power in the world, the most coal, the most nuclear under construction, the most... you get the picture. Power, they got!

Some of you may have heard BigMedia say “China gets most of its oil from Iran” which is true (although they are building extra pipelines to Russia at top speed, for more resilience). But if our media was even slightly honest they’d first admit, petroleum products represent only 5% of China’s energy mix! Not even green-boasting (washing) Germany has done that well.

And on top of all this, the Chinese are perfecting a new technology for thermal power generation which promises to improve the efficiency in every generator in the world (condensed Co2, instead of steam, with that huge inescapable energy loss, every time you change the state).

Funniest thing about AI (in years)? The huge creaky overcapitalized American AI bubble companies (all the ones you’ve heard of) are now shrilly complaining that the cheaper Chinese models which are killing all their business models, have been using their AI models to train.

They’re evil! Why, they’re outright stealing, what we already stole from every human on earth!

(We so dumb now, and never more so than when we righteously accuse, from on high).

So – yeah, any hope of western economic growth, let far alone dominance of the technological future, is effectively dependent on a pyramid scam, which will only pay off, if we all get fired!

Meanwhile, in other news...

I’ve been trying to make this point for many years now, and it is one of the main things which first brought me out of tribalism, and into a more balanced humans and solutions first approach (f#ck ALL dogma).

War is always the wrong answer. People promoting war that can be avoided are always evil. Suckers who buy into ANY OF their excuses are always complicit, ignorant or not.

As Russia expert Steven Cohen (perhaps the wisest ever member of the CFR) famously said, “There is only one party in Washington. The war party.”

W is a war criminal, because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also, were not ever justified. Our BigMedia obscures this now, but the hijackers from 9/11 actually did most of their training and planning in Hamburg, and some in Florida too. Afghanistan was just a place where Osama had fought (with the CIA) for decades already, so they were fine with hosting him, and simply asked for proof he was involved, before they would agree to extradite him. (look it up, if you doubt)

But Obama is a war criminal also, because destroying Libya and Syria using mass terrorism and mass starvation (among other overt war crimes) was never justified in any way whatsoever. People here fail to understand, smashing Libya didn’t just wreck the most prosperous and independent Black run nation on earth, it screwed up all of Africa, by releasing a flood of weapons into the hands of (almost always western sponsored) terrorists, continent wide!

Obama didn’t just steal more wealth from black Americans than anyone in history (while making already rich bankers whole, even saving their insane bonus payments for destroying the world economy), he also did more to screw up Africa, than anyone in decades (though the ground for this was greatly prepared by W).

As I mentioned earlier, the war against Russia, planned all the way back in the Clinton era (most of W’s most evil strategists worked for Clinton before W, and Obama, after) but finally set into motion under whoever was working the Biden sock-puppet at the time, was again, insane, unjustified, one hundred percent provoked, planned, armed, funded and controlled by the west.

For those who still have a hard time getting there – fourteen thousand dead civilians, ‘kay?

That’s how many Ukrainian citizens who were Russian speakers were killed by Ukrainian forces armed and trained by the west, BEFORE a single Russian unit crossed the border. And those are the official UN observers numbers, not some strange conspiracy theory – even though it’s about us!

So now, when I say war is always the wrong answer, please come with me beyond tribalism to behold the astoundingly hollow shell that is modern western democracy.

Almost every major power in the west has responded to Trump’s insane call to raise defence spending to five percent of GDP with a big fat yes. That isn’t five percent of discretionary spending, folks, that’s five percent off the top – and it absolutely means destroying our social programs, wholesale. I mean things like universal health-care, social safety nets, cheap education, cultural funding, home care stipends, all the key supports for the weakest in our society. All the thing which citizens have come to see as rights, earned through our hard labour and taxes. Gone!

Not because war is necessary or unavoidable, but because we westerners – supremacists one and all – simply can’t accept the idea of returning to diplomacy and fair respectful treatment of the rest of the entire freakin’ world. (Best known as Westphailianism). We either rule or else we kill.

Is that why the RCMP wrote that report expecting mass civil unrest, a few years ago?

For those who think the game of bankers using us as pawns is somehow less important than their favourite political sports-teaming, please understand. Canada signed-on to AUKUS, an insane scheme to position Australia for a future war against China, under Biden (more stupid Justin tricks).

Australia was at least supposed to get subs (that the US would control, hilarious) but we signed on to this bellicose insanity with no possible gains whatsoever. Just to practise bending and spreading for the freakin’ war state (and again, this is under Biden, not the bellicose blowhard now resident).

One party only. The war party. (more precisely, the A and B teams of the war party, contending)

---

Now let me remind you of one of the first ideas I raised today – in a society with free speech, the powerful are obligated to control what we want to say. Manipulate us, beneath our awareness.

The implications on this front are truly nauseating. I spent years joking to Catherine that it was ironic that Rupert Murdoch built his FOX brand on money from The Simpsons, since it seemed self-evident that the humour in that show was ‘progressive’. But finding Matt Groenig described by Epstein as a close friend, I wonder if I was missing it, the whole time. Was the point really to promote cynicism and acceptance of absurd injustice, all in the guise of (yes, clever) humour?

Woody Allen is now embarrassing to talk about, but to pretend he wasn’t hugely culturally influential would be stupid. Chomsky is becoming more embarrassing to talk about, and again, the cultural reverberations of his sharp critique without any solution, are impossible to calculate.

One of the strangest pieces of the Epstein question is about Ghislane Maxwell, and her own role in the culture of the younger millennials especially, the 4-Chan generation. Some journalists have suggested that she was the single biggest most influential user on that platform, which itself had huge influence on millions, but in so specific a demographic, many others have never heard of it.

I have been a tech guy since I was a kid, I’ve worked as a technician, sold computers, wrote small but useful programs, even tried to write some games (fun times), but I’m still way too old to click properly with 4-Chan or the far more familiar (and yes I know, very different) Reddit.

The short version? 4-Chan is the great incubator from which we get modern meme culture! (actually one of the funniest breakout mediums for the ‘citizens voice’ since rap music, though just as chaotic in terms of ethical directions, and also subject to periods of majority misdirection).

But again we have to ask, how much was this supposedly ‘rebellious’ stream actually controlled propaganda, ultimately crafted to serve the A-team of planetary rulers (the 1% of the 1%).

I’m not saying this is a for sure. I’d rank it a strong maybe which helps explain how we’ve all come to feel more and more powerless, even while feeling as if we’re ever more critical and informed.

Just a reminder (to myself, as much as you) in a representative democracy, it works the other way.

So here’s the thing that the news will never report honestly. While we have spent decades proclaiming our glorious free speech, even while being twisted around into confused and insecure emotional pretzels by advertising, commodification of human interactions, and non stop propaganda (all a continuous flow of corrupted and very hard to distinguish data), many other cultures around the world have kept making and promoting genuinely serious people.

When you are rich as hell and also a psychotic bully who points nuclear weapons at the world, (or you act like the little brother of the scary guy with the nukes) you can get away with an awful lot of cheerful illusion and incompetence, indulge in cultural slop, back economic foolishness.

But when your happy illusion model comes up against serious people (as in the case of American AI gamblers facing down Chinese long term infrastructure planners) your model collapses back down into the real thing it always was, and would always have been seen as, if you weren’t so good at lying. To be clear, there will still be such a thing as American AI – it just won’t dominate the entire world, the way they not only hoped and expected, but planned their investments based on – because you just can’t make people pay ten thousand times more for something 5% better.

There were lots of tech companies left after the dot com bubble – but a hell of a lot of bankruptcies, too.

---

Now, to the war by the west on the rest – which was obvious to the world during the period of the war in Vietnam, and a wave of right wing coups in many other countries of strategic interest to the globalist powers – but then became much harder to see after that war ended – only to emerge once again as the always dominant strategy of empire, after the attack of 9/11.

But wait – before I forget. The other three million pages (at least) of Epstein documents which have still not been released? They cover his activities from 1999 to 2002. The years just before and after the September eleventh event which put America back into permanent war mode.

Meaningful? Coincidence? We’ll have to keep watching that one. A lot of sleuths working their way through the trove of releases, so we can expect many more revelations. We also have to wonder – if this truly horrifying stuff was what they were most willing to share, how much worse is the rest?

I have discussed Michael Hudson’s absolutely crucial economic ideas a few times over the last few years, don’t want to repeat myself (but have discussed many aspects, in far greater detail). The TLDR? The Vietnam war bankrupted America, which caused the rupture of Bretton Woods (the gold-backed dollar system set up by America, after WWII) and forced the US to find a new way to give their dollars value. The result was the petrodollar – where America lets OPEC mess with oil prices (because American producers also get more profit when they go up, even if consumers get screwed) but in exchange, the Gulf states had to sell all their oil in US dollars, and then re-invest their profits in the US market – but without ever gaining strategic control of any American industries (really, investment without commensurate corporate voting power was a condition of the deal – which alone proves it was a scam).

Why would the gulf states agree to a scam where their money would prop-up America, but rob them of the influence any other investor would expect, for their investment? Because they aren’t natural monarchies, or even states, and none of them are well loved by their citizens. They took the scam deal, because in exchange for using their nations wealth to protect the American economy, the Americans promised to protect their monarchies from their enemies, and also protect them from the political will of their own citizens! (A CIA specialty for a tragically long time)

I’m going to insert something here which may be offensive to some of my readers, but it has to be said, and I’m doing my best to redress a bias and an unfairness, not state an empirical truth for all time. All of my reading of Islamic history comes from English translations of ancient texts (with widely varying quality and faithfulness to original spirit) and from reading classical British ‘Orientalists’ who had a very strange imperial bias (but one so familiar to us in print, it can be filtered against, in a fairly calculable way, by most thoughtful readers of history). Like a newspaper you semi-hate, but still read, because you understand where exactly they suck.

In modern (western supremacist propaganda) terms, there is a general sense that Sunni muslims are “more like us” in some way, whereas the Shia are comparatively inscrutable and fanatical.

As Larry Johnson has very thoroughly researched and laid out, the exact opposite is the actual case. In terms of Terrorism and casualties there is no contest whatsoever, Sunni fanatics have far more blood on their hands, and while Shia groups did invent suicide bombing (notably, the Marine barracks attack in Lebanon that made Reagan pull US troops out), they stopped using the tactic thirty freakin’ years ago – so if you heard of one, it was probably a Sunni group.

Listening to and reading Alestair Crooke, a veteran of British Diplomacy and MI6, we also come to realize that a huge proportion of the scariest Sunni terrorist groups we know of (al Qaeda, ISIS, etc) have been, at least at some points, well-funded and amply supplied by the west, and controlled by them at least in part.

If you want a good rule of thumb test, ask yourself, who do they attack? If the answer is only nations and leaders that America considers enemies, then we aren’t talking about serious muslims, but cynical mercenaries working for the infidel (with many sincere dupes in the ranks, no doubt).

Okay – now to my gross oversimplification of history (and apologies in advance). Understanding the historical split between the Sunni and Shia is difficult for westerners (doubly so, because the idea of sincere belief in anything, is quite foreign to most of us). But like a lot of students, I try to come up with a ‘sense of the thing’ I can use, for general purposes.

The original split came in 632, following the death of the prophet Muhammad, when one faction felt Muhammad’s first disciple Abu Bakr should succeed him, and others favoured his cousin Ali.

But the divide did not become outright hateful until the betrayal and martyrdom of Ali’s son Husayn in 680. Husayn had been appointed to govern Baghdad (the second most important city of the empire) but while he and his small party of bodyguards and household staff were travelling across the desert to the great metropolis, the central government changed their mind about his appointment, and sent a small army of fast moving troops to ambush and kill him.

The battle of Karbala may be almost fourteen hundred years ago, but it remains vivid for Shia people, and the heroism of Husayn’s party, fighting to the last man against staggering odds, remains a symbol not of defeat – but of steadfast strength, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

(Kind of like “remember the Alamo” but if St Peter was fighting there, too).

So now here’s my unfair simplification. Even though Sunni rulers have cut far more deals with, and made far more profit for, the west (at the expense of their own people), written more Islamic history, and have also enjoyed favoured treatment by empire for a couple of centuries, I come away from studying Islamic history every time thinking – the Sunnis are the ones who put politics ahead of belief and faith, again and again. Undercutting every claim to honour with servility to the infidels (rather like my own emptily-preachy Canada, come to think of it).

The Shia are the ones who just don’t play that. They don’t ‘cut a deal’ for personal benefit, at the expense of greater principle or their society as a whole. They stick to what’s right, by their lights.

In other words, the Iranians are still a fundamentally serious people (Yemenis too – no question) in myriad ways that we westerners are very simply not. Not just in belief, but in principles.

Now let me put this in the simplest terms. America is losing this war, very very badly – and the reason so many within the military and administration warned against it, is that once the illusion of American military might has been completely discredited (as it has been now, for the whole world to see) a huge array of other scams and extortions which rely on it, are also bound to collapse.

First and foremost of these are all the artificial mini-states created by outsiders for purposes of imperial management and exploitation. Remember that petro-dollar deal? The US got to invest all the profits from the gulf states, but in return, they were supposed to provide protection.

Now that this deal has been tested, what every one of the gulf monarchies has realized is – their patrons don’t give the slightest shit about them, and all those decades of ‘investment’ was effectively theft, this whole time. They can’t take their money back out of the US market (mind you, neither can the Germans, who have been trying unsuccessfully for five years now, so that’s about American fiscal crisis, not bias), and they also can’t get the protection they paid for. Quite the contrary, being an American ally (for local aggressions) has made them all legitimate targets!

The reason the Americans can’t protect them is technical, but also obvious (why this war was always crazy). They don’t have enough air defence missiles, and those missiles don’t work for shit anyhow (except against aircraft, to the pilots of which, they are truly terrifying – which you would kind of expect as a bare minimum for a multi-million dollar bullet, no?)

I mentioned the US ‘canister load’ system a few times before. This system is a near universal launcher for smallish missiles (roughly car size, rather than tower size), and can launch both the famous Patriot anti-air missile, and also the tomahawk attack cruise missile (some of which are always nuclear armed).

The canister load system, which does not reveal whether it has a defensive or offensive missile in it, until the missile is launched, is also why so-called ‘anti air’ bases in Poland and Romania are actually wildly provocative aggressions against Russia. Just like the USSR parking Nukes on Cuba was seen to be, during the Cuban missile crisis.

Now (benefits of years spent wargaming, back when it was based on reality, instead of fantasy) each Aegis class missile destroyer in the US fleet holds roughly one hundred canisters, total, for both air defence (patriots) and distance attack (Tomahawk) missiles. No re-arming at sea (Clinton scrapped that whole class of ships, decades ago). Got to return to a (safe) base, to load up again (and the distance to a safe base is increasing fast, even though Iran denies attacking Diego Garcia).

To intercept one missile or drone, two or sometimes even three Patriots must be launched, to be sure one of them has a chance of hitting it – and even then, it depends on what they are trying to hit. Drones they can do (that is, four million dollar missiles can usually shoot-down 70 thousand dollar drones, fairly reliably, though at a cost exchange rate which is ludicrous and ruinous).

But when it comes to missiles, even the most modern (and expensive) variants of the Patriot struggle to intercept even the slower older models, and the newer faster ones are not ever caught (same lesson which might have been learned in Ukraine, had anyone been paying attention to realities, instead of comforting BigMedia delusions).

Last time I shared a great video from Ted Postol, one of the foremost experts on missilry in the West (and the kind of wonderfully cantankerous professor universities used to be built on and of). After much reviewing of footage from this war, he estimates Patriots are intercepting roughly five percent of incoming missiles, tops.

And that’s at a cost of five to ten million per try (depending on version and number of missiles).

This is why all the US carriers are staying so far away that they can only hit Iran with stand-off weapons, (and even then, those weapons too are badly range-limited). They simply have no effective missile defence for their carriers at all, and they are too scared of losses, to close to the range that would make their strike power ‘on paper’ (as planned) fully effective (using cheap dumb bombs in number, rather than fast-depleting hard to replace hyper expensive distance weapons – the military equivalent of the double chicken-shit play I described in politics, above).

What all of this means is that America is still using war systems designed in the 1980s, to crush any enemy of the time with ‘astounding’ technology, in an era when their technology is completely obsolete, and their production capacity (for cheap new systems like drones) has been offshored very nearly entirely. (Try and build a US drone, without a Chinese motor, I dare you!)

Meanwhile – the Iranians have been planning for this war, for almost exactly as long as they have been NOT WORKING ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Seriously folks, the CIA themselves, as recently as last November, officially stated that the Iranians hadn’t advanced their nuclear weapons research one bit since 2002.

But they sure as hell watched closely, when America came back to Iraq to finish the job of utterly devastating what had once been an advanced industrial country, with a highly educated and largely secular citizenry. They watched American reliance on Air Power, they watched America (and vassals like the UK) conduct infantry operations which would have been impossible without insant access to bombs from the sky, any time, day or night, and they took notes.

Instead of trying to compete with the American airforce (staggeringly expensive) they decided to leapfrog that generation of military technology altogether and concentrate on missiles. But missiles are no good if you can’t launch them. So instead of relying on mobile launchers (those infamous SCUD trucks of Saddam’s, so expensively hunted, to so little effect) they built entire missile cities entirely underground – and not just under dirt – under mountains!

In each of these missile cities (dozens of which are distributed around the country, and can still function independently, even when cut off from central command) are thousands of missiles which can be rail-trucked into place at a launch portal which is quickly opened, then closed again, before it can even be plotted as a target!

Yes, early in the war we had lots of reports of air strikes hitting mobile launchers – but please watch the video below, for more on that (weapons-eating decoys are also weapons in themselves).

Americans often like to enthuse about courageous pilots flying HARM (homing anti-radar missile) sorties – heroically flying directly into the teeth of enemy AA weapons. But as my Serbian chum laughingly reminded me, in their war, they used to jury-rig microwave ovens, to spoof American HARM attacks! (Successfully, and often).

The simple truth is, the Americans can’t destroy Iran’s strike capability, they can shut off a couple of doors in a missile city with a bombing raid, but the Iranians just use other doors, and clear the debris from the bombed ones so they can use those again, also. No victory there is possible with any US weapons, let alone those in theatre.

But it’s a lot worse than that (for Trump, the gulf-states and the petrodollar also) when we start to talk about ground invasions. Iran is the size of western Europe and very mountainous. Perfect terrain for defenders to ambush/slaughter huge numbers of attackers. (Sparta vs Xerxes in reverse)

Beyond that, people just don’t understand the way the military works in Iran. Not only do they have a standing army of a million well trained men ready to fight (and powered by that Husayn ethic of honourable sacrifice, that is, with a belief that gives them courage, we doubters lack) – there are also another million well trained and armed militia (the Basij) who are ready to defend their home town at a moment’s notice, from anyone foolish enough to try their luck.

For America to actually take Tehran would require at least a half a million frontline American combat soldiers (not counting the multiples of that, in reserve and support positions). Many times more than the size of the current US army. In other words, it would take a draft, which would mean a return to far greater public scrutiny of military adventurism (not with my son, you don’t!)

But more to the point, it would require some practical way to get that many troops and all the supplies required to keep them going in the field, into the theatre safely in the first place.

American troops are currently fleeing from bases all around the region. Every base from which they staged outside attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria has come under sustained attack by Iranian missiles and drones. Day after day, relentless. US soldiers are cowering in luxury hotels, because the mighty bases (imperial outposts) they built to ‘defend’ the gulf states are in flames!

Please remember that to defeat Saddam the first time, took a six month steady buildup into a half a dozen fully equipped and one hundred percent ‘safe’ American bases in the region, before the very first attack sortie was flown. “Shock and Awe” came from the luxury of perfect safety.

Okay so – what about the whole Hormuz angle, anyhow?

We are talking about two thousand kilometres of coastline covering one of the oldest strategic choke-points for world trade over which humans have strategized. Iran doesn’t need destroyers to control it (they don’t have that kind of Navy, anyhow, in a serious way) once again, just like skipping aircraft altogether and going straight to missiles, they didn’t bother with a heavy blue water navy, they worked on small (hard to hit) incredibly fast and maneuverable attack boats with very compact missiles, some remote controlled, and some piloted. They also have underwater drone technology (developed by Ukraine, reverse-engineered by Russia, and shared) and several kinds of mines. Please note – not only does the west have almost no minesweepers left, we haven’t trained much for that (highly specialized) duty in about a quarter of a century!

So yeah, Iran can hang on until they hear a deal they like – which means a deal which actually addresses the principles. No more stealing (sanctions) no more madman murder shit, either (you can take the origins of that entirely just resentment all the way back to ‘sweet’ Jimmy Carter – or even further back to the CIA coup against their popular democratic leader Mossadeq in 53).

In the meantime, what is going wrong is a whole lot worse than you think – because BigNews has spent so long saying “Look at the scary thing in my hand” (like a magician, palming a coin with his other hand) while simultaneously pacifying us with “Don’t panic, we’re still the best” signals, that it is actually possible that they don’t even remember journalism was supposed to be more than just (corrupted) state serving propaganda. It was (and IS) supposed to empower citizens.

If you don’t think about or read about the energy business, you might just think a bunch of taps have been turned off temporarily, and we just have to resolve the crisis and then turn the taps back on again – and after a temporary financial dip, we’ll all be humming along again.

Nope.

With both oil operations and natural gas fields shutting down operations (because every single tank which could store spare production in the entire region is now either full, or burning) means many weeks or sometimes even months of work, before the flow resumes at previous rates – and that’s only if all the ‘taps’ (not just wells, but also refineries) haven’t been blown-up, as many already have! More likely to come.

Europe, which is still led by crazies who would rather kill Russians than serve their own people, has completely shot itself in the foot. They thought they could replace cheap Russian gas with much more expensive gas from Qatar and the USA – but Qatar has just declared force majeure (act of god allowing violation of all standing contracts without penalty) for up to five YEARS.

And how much do you want to bet that Trump will rip up (incredibly profitable) contracts with European suckers (leaders) and leave them freezing next winter, just to keep US prices down for political advantage?

Worse still, sulphur and hydrogen production are also messed up by this blockage.

Just like the utterly disastrous and mass murderous war that the US (and pusillanimous vassals) planned for decades and then finally launched against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy, there is an office somewhere in CIA where someone calculated exactly how much mass starvation would be caused in the poorest countries in the world, by this disruption to food supplies, then said “Yeah, go ahead and do it” anyhow. (Sickening stuff, but it is sickening too, that we’re so used to it we don’t notice).

Sulphur you say? Why yes, not just for fertilizer (crucial) but also for mining handy things like copper, which we are using rather a lot of, lately (and certainly can’t build weapons, infrastructure or industries, green or otherwise, without).

Hydrogen? What, for party balloons? Yeah no, for microchip production. Crucial. No substitute. So much for re-armament to fight China in 2027 (the original plan).

Also important to note, you can’t really store hydrogen long term. So no one has industrial-scale ‘reserves’ of any size, so the market is set to go insane (and we can also all expect $150 dollar a barrel oil plus, within two or three weeks, tops).

The only card left is nuclear – and even then (according to Postol, whose authority in this case is uniquely reassuring, where he is so often depressing) they could not destroy the Iranian state, only outrage and anger it enough to ensure the complete eradication of all crusader outposts from the region.

So, yeah – America has completely lost. The petrodollar is over, so is the idea of an American security guarantee meaning anything, so is the idea of American military supremacy. All dust.

We are in for a great depression (way worse than 2008) and sadly, the crazy-rich bastards have been planning to take advantage of this moment, in the same kind of long term and serious way the Iranians have planned to confront the Americans.

Enough with the squabbling, folks, that was a product of a long period of sloth and luxury, and we can’t afford to indulge it anymore. Cross the lines, build the team. UNITE.

Or – lose. (everything)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

---

As a superb fellow substack writer (Briggs, linked below) recently reminded me, I really am a book guy at heart. So I figured it was time for me to offer not just links, but real actual deep thoughtful books to try reading for deep deep context.

So here’s the first installment of something I’ll try to do more of – a Bibliography!

The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman – how the deluded west blundered into WWI John F Kennedy had everyone in his cabinet read this, after the Cuban missile crisis.

Man’s Fate – Andre Malraux – about pre-revolutionary (but very tumultuous) China. Malraux was political, but above all perceptive. His fictionalized first-hand witness can be tasted!

The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek – I hate his monetary policy, but if you can’t answer these strong arguments, you aren’t yet a thoughtful leftist, but just a tribalist/emotionalist.

Critical Path – R Buckminster Fuller – Something deeply optimistic and original. (and the first great touchstone source of my own quest for serious non-delusional hope)

The Great Transformation – Karl Polanyi – an extraordinarily rich and interesting survey of the early evolution and phases of capitalism, studied and beloved by capitalists and socialists alike.

---

Here’s a clip of some current Chinese inflatable decoy weapons – HILARIOUS!

---

Here’s Alestair Crooke talking to Lt Col Danny Davis about the current situation

– a truly outstanding combination of relevant experience, between them

---

When I said that the super-rich have planned to take advantage of economic crisis, I’m not just making stuff up, I’m reading serious skeptical economists (and have been for years). Here’s a scary look at how interlocked all of these games have become from Fabio Vighi.

“...During the Covid emergency, large-scale monetary intervention began even before lockdowns were implemented. In September 2019, the US repo market crisis forced the Federal Reserve to inject massive liquidity through daily auctions. When the “pandemic” arrived months later, the emergency provided political justification for expanding those interventions dramatically. The crisis did not cause the intervention—the intervention was already primed, and the crisis provided the cover. Energy shocks can play a similar role. By destabilizing debt and equity markets, and threatening recession, they create the conditions under which large monetary responses become both politically acceptable and economically unavoidable. As with Covid, this is not merely crisis management—it is another case of crisis deployment.

In my earlier essay, The Programmable Crisis, I suggested that the United States and Israel initiated this war precisely to produce an energy shock large enough to cascade into a global financial crisis—one that would clear the path for a systemic reset aimed at prolonging the life of an exhausted, debt-saturated system. Seen from this perspective, the war is a trigger mechanism for that reset. To read the conflict through the familiar narrative of Iran’s nuclear programme means mistaking the decoy for the target. The Middle East war has already impacted on global markets. European gas prices spiked 25–30% in a single session, Brent crude surged above $110, and a historic $50-plus split emerged between WTI and physical Oman/Dubai crude—a sign that the paper oil market is rapidly decoupling from physical supply stress.”

Energy Lockdown

---

Here is that outstanding esssay from ‘Tree of Woe’ about how AI may reshape work and human economic input completely, along with several plausible scenarios – even a hopeful (though low-odds) one!

Tree of woe is a superb deep thinker, such that even when I disagree with his conclusions, I find my own thinking greatly stimulated, in trying to understand exactly why, and how I might persuade him otherwise. Here, he just totally nails it.

Squaring the Circular Flow

---

I’ve shared “Science is not the Answer” the fantastic site of William Briggs a few times. Not only does he promote healthy mathematically rigorous scepticism of scientism (distinct from science itself, because it is powered by idot-belief, instead of rigour) he also teaches fantastic courses in how to do all the skeptical math yourself. Not just the critique, but the tools, too – and all free!

In this piece he takes a very interesting ‘other’ look at AI, and reminds us to be properly awed by brains (they weren’t machines, and they ain’t computers, either).

The Paper Test Shows Why AGI Is Not Possible: And Why The Brain Is Different In Kind

---

Kautilya the contemplator has recently ‘outed’ himself as a former diplomat, and also outdone himself with a whole series of deeply penetrating articles about Iran’s political and military systems. Must read stuff (like Crooke, he clearly served in the region for years, and understands it on a far subtler level than western talking heads)

Inside Iran's Revolutionary Guard: The Organization Built to Outlast War

---

Finally, I’m pretty sure these are the two most effective uses of propaganda I have ever seen. Please, can the Russians get the use of this whiz-kid next? (last time they made us all smile was little big)