I planned on writing a post about how the Russians were the ultimate winners of the Iran War, what with all that petroleum and natural gas they have. Truly, the Russian’s have got God by the balls (Как бога за яйца поймал).Windfall after windfall is accreting in an economy that is supposed to be in the doldrums. The reverse is true: Trump’s witless pursuit of war against Iran is effecting the collapse of the entire global economic order, except those nations trading with, well, you guessed it: Russia. I can’t fathom right now. How does one convey the stupendous amount of boomerangishness happening? It’s like karma grew a pair of balls and teabagged the entire Western order.
That said, I failed to write the post. Instead I got profoundly distracted by Col. Larry Wilkerson’s disturbing prediction that Israel will more than likely use up to 15 nukes on Iran to settle the conflict. Watch the video yourself. It’s a mercifully brief 7:03 minutes of terror. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I ain’t kidding. I’m dumbfounded. Dismayed because he makes a plausible case for Israel’s use of nukes.
If Israel opts for nukes the entire calculus of war changes. Nukes virtually guarantee the inclusion of other great powers in the war. I’ve taken to joking lately that we’re watching Armageddon. I didn’t mean literally, but now? I’m really at a lack for words.
We’re all going to die.
Afterthought #1: Before we all perish in flames, some more shitty news: sales of newly built houses fell a full 17.6% nationwide. In the Northeast it was a rout: down 44%. Adding insult to injury, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Dollar Tree are all racing to the bottom by reducing prices. Not goody, vewwy baddy.
Afterthought #2: The spread between home-sellers and home-buyers in San Antonio, my town, has widened to an astonishing 114%. That’s absolute brutality to home-builders. So, the end of this credit cycle is going to include the following macro events: housing crash, credit crisis, energy shock and at least one Too Big To Fail will fail, just as Lehman Bros and AIG did in 2008. Oh, and the AI bubble will unravel. Wow, that’s almost a perfect storm.
bruce wilder
Do we think the Mossad assassinated Charlie Kirk to prevent a significant fraction of Christian evangelicals turning against Netanyahoo?
I ask because I have noticed that that meme is floating on the zeitgeist.
Yves Smith in a comment said she thought the idea — whether true or false — is likely to be communicated to Trump as an implicit threat.
The Israeli habit of assassinations and decapitations, in an information vacuum, has an effect on both elite and popular thinking. The American Narrative now takes a very dark and conspiratorial view of the 1960s assassinations.
AIPAC’s heavy-handed political donation strategy is gradually making a psychological impression on the political expectations of the wider, usually unfathomably ignorant. If the U.S. is about to plunge into an economic depression and political upheaval straining the close partisan balance keeping the uniparty together. Who knows what the political Id will throw up.
Feral Finster
Does anyone really think that Israel would *not* resort to nuclear weapons if necessary or advantageous at the moment?
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Nukes virtually guarantee the inclusion of other great powers in the war.
I’m not so sure about that. In fact, I will be placing my bet on Polymarket that should Israel or America nuke Iran, no nation will come to Iran’s defense, at least not directly.
I have also placed my bet at Polymarket that America and/or Israel will not nuke Iran.
In the meantime, may all of you live long and happy lives, both mentally and physically.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but after I placed my bet at Polymarket that Iran would make good on its promise and bomb the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier should America and/or Israel bomb Tehran’s power grid, the sailors on board sabotaged the vessel and it had to make its way to a distant port for repairs.
What a bunch of cheaters. It’s like betting at the casino. When it’s all netted, the House always wins. But I bet because I can’t help myself. What else am I to do with all this loot?
Jefferson Hamilton
I don’t really think Israel will just nuke Iran out of nowhere, but I also don’t see how Iran can take any “guarantee” of cessation of hostilities for the foreseeable future seriously at all as long as Israel continues to exist. The only way they get that guarantee, to my mind, is if they blow up the desalination plants and just render Israel more or less uninhabitable. In which case, yes, Israel would almost certainly nuke them. But if they’re going to do that, why would they not already have done it? Seems like they’re still not willing to follow the existential logic all the way through to the bitter end and will no doubt suffer for it in the short to medium term (not that getting nuked wouldn’t also be suffering). I also don’t think the “international community” (lol) would do jack shit to Israel in case of nuking other than the usual strongly worded letters to the editor.
bruce wilder
What else am I to do with all this loot?
The curse of liquidity! It is the cause of much mischief.
bruce wilder
I am old enough now that my political consciousness stretches back fifty or sixty years. When I was young, I thought a lot about the mentalities that caused the American Civil War and the two World Wars in Europe. I got a lot of help with that thinking. Lots of serious thinkers focused on various aspects of how and why the world plunged into injustice and self-destruction on such a scale. Adorno and the authoritarian personality. Schelling and game theory. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. Major political projects, like the EU or the nuclear treaties, centered on repairing the past and erecting barriers to repeating the “mistakes” that led to horror. Israel was one of those projects.
I don’t think individual people in leadership or generally of the political class were necessarily any better. There were always plenty of reactionaries rowing against the liberal tide. Allen Dulles. Curtis LeMay. Henry Kissinger.
It is symptomatic of a dangerous degeneracy in Western society as a whole that a figure like Benjamin Netanyahoo is not in jail already, for petty corruption if not crimes against humanity. Instead, we are idly speculating about whether Israel will nuke Iran — and nowhere in our speculations — this is how it seems to me at least — is there any rational calculation regarding applying means to ends.
Why would Netanyahoo and his cabinet of cretins think it would serve a purpose? How do they conceive their national purpose? How does the present, rather modest war serve their purpose?
At one point, the U.S. was negotiating an agreement, but that’s out the window. Maybe earlier they hoped for regime change in Iran, but that apparently has not worked out. I have no idea if they have given up any hope in that direction. Is there a Plan C? Is it just wanton destruction for its own sake? Nuclear weapons would seem to fit that “purpose” but wtf?
Joan
I am a Millennial whose only hope of home ownership would presumably be when all the Boomers finally sell their homes to move to retirement centers and the prices go down significantly. But most of my previous predictions of “Things will get better once Millennials are the adults in the room and the Boomers have retired” have not come true because now we have control via billionaires. If there’s a housing crash, well, we’ll see what happens then.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Joan: I was told a similar lie before graduating in 1993. It went like this: you’re lucky you’re a GenXer as there are much fewer of you than there are Boomers. So when you enter the job market the older Boomers will be retiring and there will be lots of jobs for you.
Dafuq?
spud
if the nukes fly, and i think they will. look for them to fly on a weekend. this weekend has me worried.
if russia and china sit it out. they are next. the hubris of thinking they are to big to fail, means they do not know what feverish psychopaths are capable of.
the stans will all get american bases with nukes in them. north korea will get wiped out, kaliningrad will be quickly over run, and all russians will be either run out, or eliminated, st. petersburg will be blockaded .
because the elite do not view european russia as being europeon, but that wedge of kaliningrad is on what they think is the actual soil of europe.
the oligarch driven pysco’s simple do not believe russia or china has the ability, capabilities, or where with all to counter god and capitalism. besides, they do not believe that the russians and chinese are fully human any ways.
with god and capitalism on their side, the feverish believe they can stop bullets
between the religious fundamentalists, and the psycho rich, its a potent movement for world domination.
no one will be safe, no one.
time to have put the fear into them is long long gone. russia has repeatedly fallen into the trap of thinking the incredible technology they possess got wasted on the ukranians only, and not both the ukranians, and any country that seized or sunk a russian asset.
instead they wined about international law.
for iran not to have hit the electric grid and desalination plants in the first few days that would have plunged israel into complete chaos, was a blunder.
as far as deflation, what prices are being lowered by your post, is stuff that is not essential or even needed.
there are alternatives out there for the people. no average american really needs a pepsi, a big mac, nor gold, bitcoin or stocks.
we are in a scenario like the long depression. this was wrought onto us by corrupt imbeciles who gained power from 1993 on wards. who gutted modest socialism that made capitalism barley tolerable.
and we have teetered from one economic disaster, to another. soon no matter how much money is rained on the rich, it will no longer be even considered a bang for a buck, it will be useless.
the other day Putin gave a speech in russia, where he thanked the design bureaus and the “COLLECTIVES” for the incredible technology that they have created.
i was floored, he might be getting it. that’s where all of the abundance comes from. the wealth of the soil is controlled and used by and for the people.
our wealth of the soil was blown by letting rich powerful parasites and leeches, to blackmail us into buying back what was ours, and by letting those leeches and parasites sell our wealth to others.
64% of all of our food comes from outsourced free trade blunders.
FDR put a end to that scam, and Truman would not allow it, but bill clinton enabled it again.
Mark Pontin
Ian W: ‘ …got profoundly distracted by Col. Larry Wilkerson’s disturbing prediction that Israel will more than likely use up to 15 nukes on Iran to settle the conflict … I’m dumbfounded. Dismayed because he makes a plausible case for Israel’s use of nukes.’
@Ian,
What planet have you been living on that you’ve just now realized this? That said, Wilkerson is good on logistics, but he’s out over his skis on nuclear weapons. As follows —
[1] Re. strategic effects, Wilkerson would be correct if the Israeli aim is to *try* and destroy Iranian C&C centers and subterranean facilities. But based on the depths of Cold War era US centers NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain — approx 600 meters of granite overhead, perhaps equal to 2,000 ft of regular rock cover and Raven Rock, which was built into a mountain with hundreds of feet of rock cover, Israeli boosted fission weapons mostly aren’t going to to do the job i.e. at such depths, humans might very well survive and Iranian physicists are good enough to have figured out how deep Iranian C&C centers need to be to survive nuclear blasts.
[2] Wilkerson is WRONG to say, however, that airburst nuclear detonations are necessarily worse than ground blasts, because Chernobyl. (Huh?) In fact, ground blasts, as the Israelis would have to use, are worse because produce more — vastly more — radioactive particulate matter and fallout spread than airbursts. See forex —
Chapter 3 from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
by Glasstone & Dolan, 1977, the good old DOD bible on this stuff
https://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Effects-of-Nuclear-Weapons-1977-3rd-edition-complete.pdf
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/
Or for a zippier read —
Nukes: Surface Blast vs Air Blast
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2019/ph241/abbate2/
chapter3.html
Hope this helps!
spud
Joan:
it was never the fault of boomers. you may have fallen into the divide and conquer scam.
bill clinton never garnered 50% plus one of the electorate. in fact, many boomers like me saw what he was immediately.
he was a minority president twice.
the housing situation, like almost all financial boondoggles controlling america, was done by finance, a situation that is hundreds and hundreds of years old. and as you saw with the current doge, it was the youth that gutted our government.
it was the youth that elected obama twice, and biden once.
it was the youth in finance that once bill clinton unleashed them, crushed our economy and democracy.
most people do not own their homes no matter their generation, nor matter how long they have lived in it. they are up to their eyeballs in debt, and that’s why this current credit expansion is faltering.
bubbles can go on forever. you see that in bitcoin and stocks, as long as massive amounts of fresh money is coming in, almost all debts are serviceable.
but what happens when debts become un-serviceable like 2008, and the fed will not pump money into the average american debt holders, nor will the government resurrect modest socialism of the new deal and fair deal for the average american, the bubble pops, that’s what happened in 2008.
tens of millions of average americans could no longer service their debts. obama refused to help them, but poured 29 trillion dollars into finance to keep them afloat.
you can see that with bitcoin and stocks right now, the average american can no longer afford a big mac, but billions of fresh dollars are flowing into bitcoin and stocks via the fed, as the real economy is contracting.
we never recovered from bill clintons economic blowout from 2001. bush papered over it with helicopter money and a war.
obamas 29 trillion dollar bailout, and pathetic 800 billion dollar fill the potholes stimulus, caused a minor rebound, and it started to falter by the time he left office, and in reality, only trumps covid stimulus caused a brief but minor rebound.
biden did that in, and its all been downhill ever since.
if you look at the economy of the U.S.A. from 1993 on wards, its been a step down every year with crashes, till today’s inevitable crash.
its a long depression.
Feral Finster
Russia simply wants to to join The Club, to be allowed to sit at the grownups’ table. “We write plays, we write symphonies, we are cultured europeans!” they cry out.
Nobody cares.
China merely wants to make money selling stuff and hopes that the Americans will turn on them last.
Ian Welsh
The author of the piece is Sean-Paul Kelley, not Ian Welsh.
spud
Feral Finster:
correct. they are that dumb and naive. power must be met with power that puts fear into them.
elkern
Yeah, it’s scary. I don’t doubt that Israel – and not just Bibi – wouldn’t hesitate to use nukes if they felt ‘existentially’ threatened.
Sadly, Israel has locked itself into a meta-strategy where they depend on a psychology of dominance to (1) keep their ‘enemies’ (…”neighbors”) at bay, and (2) maintain their own feeling of security. All of Israel’s neighbors have been forced to accept (or pretend?) that “resistance is futile”, and Israeli’s have come to believe that this is the only way they can survive.
This makes Iran’s strategic dilemma more acute. If Iran’s retaliation against Israel is actually effective – that is, painful enough to convince Israel to stop attacking Iran – then it inherently punctures Israel’s security framework, merely by showing that someone *can* resist. Such a challenge to Israel’s collective ego would likely be interpreted as a threat to Israel’s very existence, and the feeling that they *have to* Push The Button.
My only thought for preventing such a calamity is the expectation that Israel unleashing Nukes would (or at least *should*) lead the rest of the world to view them as a pariah nation.
The decent version of this would be a simple shunning, leaving Israel completely isolated: a complete ban on trade and travel. Let ’em have their little chunk of god-forsaken (and/or god-ordained) desert, let them try to live there without *any* external resources. I suppose we’d have to accept refugees – first, the Palestinians they’d kick out, then exhausted Jews, as they realize that sheep farming is hard work.
The more likely version is, essentially, *global* pogroms. I hate that idea, but I consider it to be a logical consequence of Israel nuking Iran (or anybody), and I hope that Israelis know this.
I hope that Israel recognizes that it’s attempt to provide a safe haven for Jews is close to guaranteeing their extinction.
Mark Level
Another great SPK joint, thank you. I’d been waiting on this one, I mostly ignored the Markets ones, ‘coz not being an addictive type (for the most part) I don’t speculate or bet on the market. Might’ve bought one lottery ticket in my entire life, & nothing came of it. Also my dad had a fortune from legitimate (boring) business (insurance), once he sold his company, signed as an advisor for one year with a future non-compete, he started getting into idiotic get-rich-quick schemes and lost maybe 40% of his fortunes. Not just 1 scheme, 3, each one nuttier than the other. The first one was with a guy in Puerto Rico, “Andy”, he only lost about half his stake. It was a classic scheme, “the Spanish Prisoner”, I had read about this one in the NYRB many years ago. About 3 years after that, “Andy” was in the news, he’d gone onto bigger fish than my dad and brought down the PR government. Dad mailed me a newspaper (this was in the last century) and I translated it for him. Learned one new word, the Spanish for “John Doe”, “fulano.”
I wonder if LAS is joshing us with all the Polymarket bets. Yes, the House generally wins. Coincidentally I’m listening to a Stanford University podcast, “Philosophy Talk” right now, topic is addiction. I’m not a germophobe nor afraid of alcohol or drugs, but Gambling is mostly dumb. Used to play poker with fellow coworkers and generally won, ‘coz I learned to only bluff occasionally, they never saw it coming. Okay, long digression.
So responding to SPK’s direct points– 1st paragraph, Yes, everything Trump does is “witless”, erratic, words written on water. The NatSec “community” (ironic word, though these monsters do have a sort of community of predators; sadly, the commoners in USA do not form community or organize to fight back) has become increasingly moronic, trapped in their own Plato’s Cave, ever since 1945. See McNamara, supposedly very smart, during the Vietnam War, and it’s only downward progress since then. (Victories in Grenada and Panama don’t count, if I swat a fly that doesn’t make me a great warrior.)
Your point about supercharged Karma is certainly true as well. Now, I thought I’d read these wise words on IanWelsh.net, but looked back and evidently not: somebody pointed out the obvious, that every Empire ends its reign in a desperate Hail-Mary pass to keep its Hegemony. See Athens and the Delian League, etc. Also the great story of the regional King who went to the Oracle of Delphi and asked about the efficacy of starting a war against a Neighbor. The Oracle told him, “If you start this war, you will destroy a great Empire.” He did, and (irony alert) it was his own.
2nd paragraph: Larry Wilkerson is both experienced and very smart, no question. Suppose Israel blew off even 3 Nuclear Weapons, Tactical or larger? Well, there’s downwind effects to be seen, first for Pakistan to the East, possibly to Ukraine and then Russia, etc. Pakistan is nominally a US Ally, but that ends that. And all the people who are like “Russia, Putin’s weak”, I am not sure they’d just sit this out and not respond, proportionally. Now I will concede that Putin is an awfully moderate figure, very cautious, lawyerly, but he does have more hardline people in the government and he does not, alone, make such decisions.
So Wilkerson and Larry Johnson were just on Nima’s program, and here’s what the Symps in the region did, they are all still frightened of the Hegemon. Seemingly even the Euro-Slugs are now even more afraid of the US Empire as Trump’s war has clearly failed, everyone knows, (A) Bibi commanded him to do the cowardly sneak-attack, li’l Narco openly admitted this, it’s the Epstein Compromat; (B) They had no “Plan” except slaughtering schoolchildren (the Gaza Model), and a magical overthrow of “the Regime” would follow. Thorough fail.
So from memory, “leaders” from KSA, Bahrain (already collapsing), Qatar (who had co-ownership of the Pars oilfield, were attacked and still grovel), UAE (a fly, some people say it’s slightly bigger than Chicago’s O’Hare Airport), Egypt, Turkiye (openly threatened by the Zio-State, named the next Enemy #1, Jordan, Libya, Syria (the head-choppers), Kuwait, Pakistan, and they all pretended the US didn’t start the War, demanded that Iran stand down and not attack OR they’d enter. Well, do you think the Iranians are frightened in the least? Any more than the Russians were afraid in Feb. 2022 that the pip-squeak, corrupt Banderist regime would kick their asses, even with tens of billions of Euros, $, etc? We see the result. Plus, survival is Existential for them, AND USRial has killed off all the more naive leaders, replaced with “hardliners.”
Let’s suppose they hit Iraq and tens of hundreds of Pakistanis die in the “fire and fury” President Fatass raves about. Pakistan has many nukes, will they respond by attacking Iran (a fellow victim) or passively stand by and allow future Nuclear Clouds to hit them?
Now, the Zionist State is a Death Cult, openly, so I’m not saying such idiocy, Pyrrhic actions are impossible, or even unlikely. If they feel they’re close to destruction, a Samson Option is quite possible. Bring down the Temple on everyone, themselves included? If the 3rd Reich had had Nukes, could anyone have stopped Hitler from using it. Of course not. So I guess I’m mostly agreeing with Sean’s 3rd and 4th paragraphs. Is there even ONE sane statelet of these US-created family dictatorships that will back out of being Zionist Stooges (even though half of Saudi Arabia and as far East as the Euphrates are ancient “Zion” in their kooky fairy tale.) Jew-hater and “Christian” Zionist Mike Huckabee agrees with Netanyahu, Egypt and the rest are all theirs, Land deed from Yahweh. If we do get the Apocalypse does militant Jeebus return (Huck’s wish) or a Jewish MShICh = 358, also the numeration of Nechesh, “the Serpent that seduced Eve” not coincidentally? All pretty Loony Tunes, imo.
Afterthoughts #1 and 2 are also insightful. Why would any US slaves who aren’t Trump/ MAGAt Cult Slaves be signing up to die for Zionists when this country is falling apart to septic tank levels? Here’s a data point: The removal of the SS Abraham Lincoln may be due to an Iranian strike, but most pundits (the smart ones, not the Fox/MSDNC fools) now believe there was a shipboard mutiny, and they set their own “Laundry Room Fire”, burning down thousands of beds and fully disabling the vessel, limping back to Cyprus . . .
We are all Gazans now (or soon). We are all Spartacus now (or soon). I don’t see ANY victory for USA Hegemon, but let’s suppose there were one? King Donald would then cancel the Midterms and declare himself Emperor-for-Life, put either Gummy Golem Jared or Speechless Barron Trump in line for Inheritance. The plebs would all be crushed, starving slaves with no healthcare, housing, etc. They can grovel and slave for the Tech Bro Oligarchy or be slain by a massive ICE conglomerate. (Btw, despite the Law that the US Mint may not create any Coin of a living Figure, the Trump Coin has been approved, soon available to the stupidest, groveling CHUDs.)
bruce wilder makes a # of good points. No, there is no Plan B, nor C. The lunatics are running the asylum.
I appreciate the first part of Jefferson Hamilton’s comment, as well as spud and Mark Pontin’s insights. But no, I don’t think both Russia and China would sit it out if the fantasy Annihilation of Iran were executed, they would be NEXT, and very soon. But responding rationally to psychopaths does not necessarily have any influence on the psychopaths.
Joan makes a good point. The “hope” that Boomer die-offs, nursing-care shifts would open up reasonably priced housing cannot and never will be allowed to happen, not in a world ruled by Tech Bros, as you say. Due Dissidence made a good point about us Boomers, the poorer ones are all dead by now (or mostly), the richer ones still doing okay. And I am a Boomer myself. As to spud’s point, I won’t dispute his take on economics, better-informed than my own. However I will throw a personal J’Accuse! at the older Boomers, scum like the Clintons, Epstein, Larry Summer, James Carville, etc. utter scum. These people started out in a “Peace & Love” drug fantasy, by the 70s were all sold-out, destroyed the Unions, shat on the working class, and adopted NeoLiberal Chaos Economics. Otherwise known as “Eating the seedcorn.”
I knew the score by 1977, a member of the Blank Generation, I can take it or leave it each time. Sex Pistols pretty shallow but the “No Future” prediction has held up quite well.
Feral Finster’s Cynicism often goes overboard into full-scale Nihilism, in my view. He is mostly correct with his original point, the Russians are a cultured society and cannot understand the intense Western racism directed at them. Did want to join the club. We have one commenter on this site who considers Russians subhumans (and Ukrainians Ubermenschen), doesn’t hide it.
But IF the USreal Monster does NOT burn down the entire planet (I’ll put the odds at an even 50/50, maybe I’m copping out, just can’t know at the moment), the Russians and the Chinese will be the new Kewl Kids. Just like the US took away the British-UK Imperial Crown, a sort of “return of the repressed”, a “rise of the (unjustly) despised” will follow.
Socialism or Barbarity or Annihilation? I know what I’d choose. I don’t know what USreal and their Middle Eastern thralls will choose.
Purple Library Guy
You forgot crypto, that’ll probably go down too.
Funny thing, both the US and Canada might do weirdly well out of this debacle because both currently have a lot of oil. But they won’t, because the oil companies involved are private (and in the Canadian case, foreign) and so the profits will go into a very few already-fantastically-wealthy hands and do the general economy no good whatsoever. If only either country had some kind of policy for managing energy to the benefit of the whole nation . . . a sort of National Energy Policy . . .
Mark Level
Big typo– the Euro-slugs are even LESS afraid of the US than the Gulf Regional Dictatorships are. Never saw that one coming. Not a single Imperial stooge, not even Keir Starmer, would throw away their soldiers’ lives to “open the Strait of Hormuz” for the Donald Empire.
Also “tens of thousands” or “millions” of Pakistanis would likely be downwind, not the lower number my fingers typed.
And, more to Joan: All these future “promises” are 100% bullshit like the Flying Cars of my youth. No “peace dividend” in the US for domestic prosperity after senile Ronny and Bush Sr. “won” the Cold War. No “Green New Deal” as promised by the Dimmies. Their ideology was announced at Davos, “You will own nothing”, eat bugs, and be happy if we let you survive and service us (including sexually if you are young and/or attractive.)
They are as Nihilist as Finster; at least Finster knows he’s not in the driver’s seat and not getting the “rewards” however.
Thermobarbaric
Mark Pontin: the US Carrier that suffered the so-called “laundry system fires” (and the clogged toilets just prior to that) was the USS Gerald C Ford. It was making its way down the Red Sea to link up with it’s sister ship USS Abe Lincoln in the Persian Gulf but is now fleeing back to some base in Greece for repairs and most likely to relieve some (most?) of it’s unhappy and possibly borderline mutinous crew.
Btw the Abe Lincoln hasn’t covered itself in glory either. At one stage, this powerful vessel moved to within 340 km of the Iranian coastline but apparently came under Iranian attack and has now fled to a much safer one at least 1000 km away but which reduces its ability to mount effective offensive ops.
Most powerful military in the history of mankind my ass.
Thermobarbaric
Sorry my above comment re US carriers was meant for Mark Level not Mark Pontin.
Mark Level
Okay, I will look Thermobarbaric. And yes, the ship where mutiny/ fire occurred was the Gerald R. Ford, not the Abe Lincoln. I made jokes early in the “operation” about Ford’s klutziness, injuring himself and bystanders at his Golf games, joke was he played football in college without a helmet. So my call that the GRF would be a disaster ship was vindicated. Mercury just went direct today, lotsa minor mistakes leading up to it.
Oh, and breaking news. The Japanese PM Takaichi was insulted with Trump jokes about “sneak attacks” and Japan, then gave Trump billion$ for her humiliation ritual. Japan was a horrible fascist country in the 30s and 40s, evidently still is.
bruce wilder
It’s a Dragon King, not a Black Swan. Pass it on.
Bob
I have given up listening to the YouTube geopolitical hot air merchants. Especially the ex US military and intelligence people. Aren’t they the products of the same insane society and institutions that got us in to this mess?
The world ends tomorrow!
“Israel” has collapsed!
BRICS will save us all!
The dollar will be worth nothing by Friday!
China supports the resistance!
Ugh. It’s all so annoying at this point.
Meanwhile, the possibility of the demonic entity throwing nukes around should not be dismissed. The entire state is unhinged. The average citizen is completely deluded about the power their postage stamp sized country realistically has. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces when Murca pulls the plug. Meanwhile, as they spend night after sleepless night in bomb shelters, they tell each other that the missiles all fall in the sea or on open ground or that whatever just blew a hole in Yossi’s living room wall is a “fragment”.
Will China and Russia do anything? I think they are not going to take assertive action. They are going down with the rest of the empire.
Carborundum
I guess my question would be what’s the target set that requires use of nuclear weapons?
I have difficulty seeing it, frankly. The US and Israel are so far down the target list that they’re hitting pretty mundane elements of defence production and major stockpiles.
Yes, Iran’s still hanging in there and they have retained significant capability to hit strategic economic targets. However, counter-force at a distance, they’re really into beating up their opponents’ fists with their face territory and I don’t see how nukes get you anything when targeting their main retained threat (counter economic), which seems mostly to be using drone and swarm systems, which are pretty disbursed.