From me this week
- Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years, Part 1: COVID — NatWilsonTurner.com
- Irving Berlin Defined American Music — Let It Roll
- Short the Saudis in Combat Sports and Everywhere Else — The MMA Draw
Worth watching
- Disgraceful Degradation — Dmitry Orlov. Orlov, one of the founders of “collapseology,” moves to YouTube and makes a major change to his famous analogy that US collapse will resemble Soviet collapse.
I feel sorry to have led people down a garden path that doesn’t lead to anything specific. People wanted to know when to throw the bags full of cans of spam and shotgun shells into the back of the pickup truck and drive for the hills. Feel free to do that anytime you like, I kept telling them. But I feel that I must do better. And now I believe that I finally can. If I think about something long and hard, sometimes a good idea does eventually pop into my head. I have no idea how that happens. It just happens. or it doesn’t. And in this case, it has finally dawned on me that there was to begin with a flaw in my comparison of the USA and the USSR. They’re not quite symmetrical after all.
There is a key difference that have that I have been neglecting to take into account. Yes, they were both 20th century military and industrial superpowers, and they both espoused opposing now defunct ideologies. and my superpower collapse soup analogy applied almost equally to both of them. But there is a rather important difference between them. The US is a colonial empire much like the British Empire and other western empires were once. These empires were based on the exploitation of their colonial possessions. They sucked resources out of them while preventing their social and economic development. Along the way, they saddled them with permanent debt servitude. They enforced their trade policies through military means. But the heavy-handed tactics of previous colonial eras are no longer necessary. Instead, there is control of mass media, cyber warfare, color revolutions, the IMF, the World Bank, and the US Treasury with its endless sanctions. These are all means of coercing compliance. from countless from countries around the world. And what this compliance means is willingness to export products and commodities in exchange for US government debt.
This is the wealth pump which the US has been running for decades to drain wealth from around the world to export inflation and to subjugate much of the planet. This wealth pump has become less effective over time. But even if it stops working altogether, there is a fall back to an older American technique, piracy. How well it can be made to work in the 21st century remains to be seen. But it won’t fail for the lack of trying.
- Cold War 2.0 #84: Russia Secretly Helps Iran Develop Supersonic Missiles — Syriana Analysis, with Tarik Cyril Amar. Tarik Cyril Amar’s weekly appearances on Syriana Analysis are a weekly must listen to me. I love their dynamic, their accents, their humor, and they are subject matter experts I trust as much as I trust anyone about these topics (I trust no one about these topics).
- Russia’s Ukraine Endgame — Putin Has Lost Patience With Zelensky — Vladimir Brovkin. Former Harvard Prof Dr. Vladimir Brovkin understands Russia better than most. He’s worth listening to.
- Setback for Trump: Iran intensifies US strikes as Vance denies wedding attack — Janta Ka Reporter. Great daily anti-Imperialist news round ups, and presenter Rifad Jawaid’s vicious and hilarious commentary on Trump regime buffoonery is always amusing listening — even when covering the most awful shit.
- On Sh*t… Another Private Credit Fund Just Blew Up — Eurodollar University. My go to for coverage of private credit’s struggles.
The AI bubble and its doomers
- Did 700 AI bots actually form a civilization? — User Mag. Betteridge’s law of headlines in action. Doomerism is the other side of the coin of AI hype.
- Bill Gates Warns A.I. Is More Dangerous Than Big Tech Will Admit — The New York Times. What for the doomer swerve. He’s playing up the scary trying to save MSFT’s investment into OpenAI. This is straight bullshite.
- Dwarkesh Patel’s wildly popular but dangerously misleading account of the OpenAI Hugging Face incident — Gary Marcus. Marcus calls out the well-written and compelling AI doomer BS, with a classic Douglas Hofstadter line about Ray Kurzweil.
- Red Alert: OpenAI is poised to cross an AI safety redline — Gary Marcus. Everytime you think Scam Altman can’t make things worse, here he comes with some new outrage.
- The new Sanders-Casar Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act – and why I oppose it — Gary Marcus. I am generally politically aligned with Sanders and Casar but I do not trust them on tech issues.
- Taxpayers Must Not Be on the Hook for Bailing Out the AI Industry — Truthout. Oh but we will be.
Politics and corruption
- Michael Needham — The White House Hack Tells All — John Helmer. A great piece on one of the newest idiots in the Trump administration, possibly the least qualified Deputy National Security Advisor in US history.
- How a Brazilian Billionaire Helped Shape Trump’s Beef Import Plan — The Wall Street Journal. Joesley Batista met with Trump a day before the president announced a plan to waive tariffs on beef imports, angering farmers and ranchers.
- A Crash Course Into the 14 Names on Rep. Thomas Massie’s Epstein List — bekahdayyy. Fine folks.
- Rahm Emanuel: ‘You Don’t Like My Ideas? Show Me Yours’ — Rolling Stone. This asshole….
- Rahm Emanuel and Brothers to Donate $550,000 to Train Palestinian Pediatric Doctors in Israel — Haaretz. Cynical.
- Democrats shocked after 2 members cross aisle to help Republicans — CNN. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez rescued a GOP procedural vote, reportedly to clear the way for Golden’s lobstermen bill. It also let Johnson proceed to messaging votes Democrats oppose, including a resolution condemning socialism.
Also worth your time
- Paid actors, AI writing: How a new kind of video business cashed in on America’s divided politics — Semafor
- US Crude Oil Production Is Showing A Lot Of Weakness — HFI Research. Not good for Team America.
- Spy-scammer shootout — Events in Ukraine. Ukraine just over the top insane.
Feral Finster
Orlov has been predicting imminent collapse for 20 years or more. Sort of like how Kunstler was a Y2K Doomer before he was a Peak Oil Doomer, then a GFC Doomer, etc..
Nat Wilson Turner
@feral I’m well aware. I’ve been following him for a long time and over that time I’ve watched the US go on a relentless downward slide.
The US economy did collapse in 2008 and has been faking it ever since.
We are currently watching the US military collapse in West Asia (IIRC you called it the opposite way).
Predictions are hard, if not impossible. They’re still interesting.
I respect that he’s adjusted his call — he’s still predicting a US collapse, he’s just saying we’re gonna choose to go down the hard way and take everyone we can with us.
I fear we’ll start and lose a series of wars in LatAm and then we’ll turn on each other and viciously.
Feral Finster
If the US collapsed in 2008, the bond markets still never got the message.
The US will go nuclear rather than lose to Iran. No, the world will not do jack.
spud
Nat Wilson Turner:
I fear we’ll start and lose a series of wars in LatAm and then we’ll turn on each other and viciously.
i am leaning more towards Lenins analysis that the rich will band together to rape the world, then turn on each other because they eventually run into those that protect their sovereignty.
we are watching it play out in real time.
free market economics is impossible to sustain. capitalists simply cannot help themselves. their eyes are huge, their stomachs are small.
they pig out like a porky pig cartoon, only to find themselves flat on their backs, sicker than a dog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq_q9HYDCX8
Pigs is Pigs (1937) – Feeding Torture Sequence
this time, they thought they had the world in 1993. i remember the old donahue show where a PIG ceo said, we don’t need you anymore, he meant american workers who got a share because of the new deal on wards, because we now have the world.
they are turning on each other really quick now , the implosion that might happen, will be heard around the galaxy. and anyone with ill gotten gains, may have no safe havens anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efopIZR_xY&t=276s
No, Argentina’s Economy is Not Booming
Last year, Argentina’s Milei was on a high: with GDP growing and inflation falling, his future looked rosy. A year later though, and it all appears to be heading in the wrong direction. So, in this video, we’re taking a look at Argentina’s economy and try to figure out what’s gone wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWy7GxC0hQ
Are the US and Argentina Teaming Up on the Falklands?
In a speech on Thursday evening, Argentine president Milei addressed the nation on the Falklands Islands. In this video, we’re taking a look at the speech and whether we could see Argentina and the US teaming up on oil drilling nearby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efopIZR_xY&t=276s
taxes, i mean texas is beginning to see they were hoodwinked, to late now suckers!
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article314938575.html
Texas has no income tax, but a new study shows why we still rank high for taxes By Tiffani Jackson March 6, 2026 5:00 AM
Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article314938575.html#storylink=cpy
america has no real industry left, its all fake, if and when it hits the fan, and it will, can america even survive in its present form?
i would not place a bet that it will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KChHY1kDOFQ
Only 1% of customers are holding up the AI bubble | Ed Zitron
Author of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the instability of the AI industry as new Ramp statistics reveal that the 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic’s revenue come from 1% of their customers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8kUx5_1cWc
China Will Create A Historic Memory Glut
spud
Feral Finster:
what message would the treasury bond market get?
the message i would get if i bought the bonds in the initial first offer, is to buy as many as i could get.
we just saw that in august.
the bonds on the secondary market that are being sold, points to over indebtedness, balance of payments, the trade deficits, and private sector debt, are out of control.
i am betting china thinks they can crash us by economics, a fools bet that does not take into account MMT.
a better way is through constant military and economic pressure to way way over extend the empire.
i agree, in the end, the nukes will fly. so it would be better to arm to the teeth, citizens of countries that are being oppressed, or sold out like in Venezuela, than their corrupt governments.
what a headache the empire will face then. millions upon millions of drones and other surprise stuff coming from everywhere, but the governments that sold out.
it would be constant pressure that the local military/police might not be able to, or refuse to control, leaving it up to mercenaries and american forces, that can’t even feed themselves anymore or arm themselves and repair, thanks to bill clintons disastrous policies.
Purple Library Guy
Nukes nukes nukes, what’s with all the talk about nukes? Nobody is going to nuke anybody, but if they do it will not be avoidance of defeat, it will BE defeat.
Say the US nukes Iran, and it doesn’t lead to WW III so there continue to be world politics to even talk about. The only way to reduce the chance of them doing it again is to make it impossible for them to start a war in the first place. The way to do that would be to kick them out of every military base in your region so they can no longer project power. And all the countries in the region would hate them because (a) they fucking NUKED someone and (b) fallout won’t stay in Iran. The literal, deadly kind, not the metaphorical kind. Lots of death, lots of cancer, maybe zones that are no longer habitable, ruining lives and economies. Officially or otherwise, American basing in the region would become untenable. Oil production would fall, the petrodollar would probably cease to be a thing. Someone would probably detonate dirty bombs in Israel (which would already be suffering from fallout like everyone else).
The broader international consequences are hard to figure, but they would not be good for the US. It would pretty much finish the already ongoing move from “international leader” to “international pariah”.
I realize that “It’s insane” is nothing like a guarantee that Trumpies won’t do something, but we’re talking universally acknowledged officially bugfuck crazy backfiring insane.
different clue
@Purple Library Guy,
” officially bugfuck crazy backfiring insane. ” is a good clinical description of the tens of millions of Rapturaniacs, Armageddonites, and White Power Christianazians who support Donald Trump and the Republicanfederate Party for their own separate End of The World reasons.
The ZionJewish Israelis had/have NO idea what they were/are working with when they decided to work with these Officially Bugfuck Crazy Backfiring Insane people. In their tens of millions.
Feral Finster
“The ZionJewish Israelis had/have NO idea what they were/are working with when they decided to work with these Officially Bugfuck Crazy Backfiring Insane people. In their tens of millions.”
They know perfectly well. Cultists are ideal from the Zionist perspective. They don’t even need to be manipulated. They manipulate themselves.
Feral Finster
@plg:
“Say the US nukes Iran, and it doesn’t lead to WW III so there continue to be world politics to even talk about. The only way to reduce the chance of them doing it again is to make it impossible for them to start a war in the first place.”
Like after WWII? Like how germans are literally begging America to base Tomahawks in germany please don’t leave us?
Stop kidding yourselves.
different clue
@Feral Finster,
They either had no idea that the people in question seriously intend to have Israel nuked as part of ushering in the End Times and the Return of Jesus, or else they never thought that the BugFuckers would work earnestly to bring it about.
So . . . no. They have no idea the kind of super-unstable “human” fissile material they are dealing with. And if you don’t see the risk, then neither do you.
Dan Kelly
‘They either had no idea that the people in question seriously intend to have Israel nuked as part of ushering in the End Times and the Return of Jesus’
This is a response to this:
‘They know perfectly well. Cultists are ideal from the Zionist perspective. They don’t even need to be manipulated. They manipulate themselves.’
which is a response to this:
‘The ZionJewish Israelis had/have NO idea what they were/are working with when they decided to work with these Officially Bugfuck Crazy Backfiring Insane people.’
You guys continue to talk past each other because there is a difference of opinion / different perspective on where power lies…although there is some overlap.
‘The ZionJewish Israelis had/have NO idea what they were/are working with…’
This reads as at minimum a victim card (the poor Jewish establishment has no idea who they’re cozying up to!!!) and even borders on an apologia for their wanton barbarity.
‘…these Officially Bugfuck Crazy Backfiring Insane people…’
The Jewish Supremacist Zionists aren’t ‘Bugfuck Crazy Backfiring Insane people’ ?!!!
Oh, I see. They are, but their insaneness isn’t on par with the insanness of those who they are in bed with!
It couldn’t possibly be that they themselves are every bit as – if not moreso – insane.
Perhaps a deeper power analysis is necessary for some clarity here.
‘Cultists are ideal from the Zionist perspective. They don’t even need to be manipulated. They manipulate themselves.’
I’m not sure what this means exactly.
It doesn’t play the victim card but it does lend credence to the idea that the Zionists – while powerful – are nevertheless simply in bed with ‘cultists’ who ‘manipulate themselves.’
I mean, the Zionists themselves are cultists, right?
The ‘Zionists’ don’t manipulate themselves?
Where is the line or distinction between Zionists and non-Zionists?
And the Zionists – Jewish Supremacists – have lots and lots and lots of power, right?
Particularly given their minuscule numbers as a percentage of the overall population. In fact, it is the literal living reality of what is so often casually or angrily dismissed as ‘the stuff of conspiracy.’
So let’s return to this:
‘the people in question seriously intend to have Israel nuked as part of ushering in the End Times…’
Who are the people in question and where is the separation between them and ‘Israel’ which I refer to as the genocidal entity?
If the ‘US establishment’ uses nukes on Iran who is going to respond?
Russia will not – they are thoroughly ‘Zionized’ or whatever polite term one wants to use.
China will not – they are uber-pragmatic and they are in bed with the genocidal entity themselves just like Russia.
Simply consider that neither Russia nor China used their UNSC veto power to stop the sick ‘Board of Peace’ which in fact legitimizes the genocide and affords absolutely no agency to the Palestinians.
Why did Russia and China abstain?
This is just the most recent of many many instances of these two alleged ‘resistance’ entities in fact being in bed with their supposed grand enemies.
India won’t do a fucking thing.
N Korea?
Pakistan?!
There seems to be a severe lack of understanding of the most basic power dynamics involved.
vmsmith
When I see these sorts of geopolitical forecasts of collapse, etc., I think of this memo from Lin Wells in April 2001 in preparation for the U.S. military quadrennial defense review:
— “If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France.”
— “By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany.”
— “By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan.”
— “By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said ‘no war for ten years.'”
— “Nine years later World War II had begun.”
— “By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a “police action” was underway in Korea.”
— “Ten years later the political focus was on the “missile gap,” the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam.”
— “By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region.”
— “By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our “hollow forces” and a “window of vulnerability,” and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen.”
— “By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet.”
— “Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting.”
“All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly.” -Lin Wells
spud
you cannot count on russia or china. is putin falling for a pause again? and why return to the g-20, who can’t even make things anymore.
china thinks they are safe behind their borders and to big to invade. but hillary said we will ring you in, both need to understand, and they will not it seems, that this project is 500 years old, and that asia is the key to world domination.
the people they are dealing with, who are behind the scenes, have only one gear and speed, and no brakes. the brakes would not do any good either, they would quickly over heat and lose their braking power. that’s it.
both russia and china are huge military powers, dwarfing the west, but both are scared of a ottoman empire, way past its due. a empire that is crumbling internally, and externally right before their eyes.
they think its a just a waiting game, its not, the powers behind the throne could care less, they just want more, ever more.