Author: Tony Wikrent Page 2 of 48

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 05, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

A German Journalist’s ‘Civil Death’

Patrick Lawrence, March 31, 2026 [via defenddemocracy.press]

… With the seizure of his spouse’s bank accounts last Friday, Dogru and his family now face what amounts to a starvation blockade of the kind the Trump regime (not to change the subject) currently imposes on Cuba and Israel imposes on Gaza.

This story reads like something out of Dostoyevsky or Kafka, I have to say. We are talking about a family of five going hungry in the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany as punishment for… what?… for seeing with his eyes open, for thinking about what he sees, then commenting on what he sees?

I would love to suggest various ways readers could support the Dogru family, but there are none. Were someone to donate so much as a loaf of bread to help sustain them the German authorities would count it a criminal offense punishable by a prison term of up to several years.

Strategic Political Economy

Why we need rationing, now

Richard Murphy, April 02, 2026 [Funding the Future]

The UK is in a war economy, and most people don’t realise it yet. The Middle East conflict has already cut global oil supplies by around 20% and gas supplies by roughly 30%. With approximately half of all UK food imported, and global fertiliser supplies under severe pressure, the shortages hitting our shelves and energy bills are only the beginning.

Markets cannot solve this. When supply collapses, markets ration by income and those with money survive; those without do not. That is not a policy choice. That is a failure of government. The energy crisis and emerging food shortages demand an active UK state response.

Drawing on Lord Keynes’s approach at the start of World War II, and John Kenneth Galbraith’s wartime work in the United States, this video argues that the only credible response to this supply chain crisis is a combination of government-led rationing and a serious redesign of the tax system.

It means government intervention in the economy at a scale not seen since the 1940s.

The alternative is leaving resource allocation to the market, which will transfer wealth upward, destroy social cohesion, and risk public unrest. That is not how to manage a war economy. That is a policy choice to let the poor bear the cost of a crisis they did not create.

[TW: Interesting! Can the consequences of Trumpanyahu war be used to drive a regime change of political economy away from neoliberalism? We must try….. ]

Not Getting It Together 

Aurelien, via Naked Capitalism 04-01-2025]

…It’s not so much that numbers can be confused with reality, as that reality in the end is nothing but numbers, and decisions are made and workers rewarded without any kind of real-world check. Everything is possible, therefore, because ultimately everything is numbers.

The modern political class, increasingly dominated by those who have worked in finance, or its close relative management consultancy, therefore largely consist of people with little experience of the real world. Over the last forty years, unsurprisingly, this way of thinking and working, combining symbolic manipulation of numbers and the ticking of symbolic boxes, has become the default in government, and even the military and diplomacy. So the emphasis now is not on the capability to do things and achieve actual objectives, but on the skills of making the numbers look right, and proving that you have carried out the correct steps in the correct order. That is all the system knows how to do….

…It is the nature of a crisis that most attention is focused on transitory daily issues, such that the big picture, if there ever was one, disappears from view. I know from personal experience that in a crisis every long and exhausting day is overwhelmed with meetings, telephone calls, video-conferences, unexpected news or initiatives, requests for interviews, media statements, questions in parliament … the list goes on and on. For those like me who had the temerity to ask what the point of all this was, and about longer-term objectives and plans, the response was typically “we’ll worry about that later.” And quite soon, of course, it’s later, and the system realises that it has no idea how it got to where it is, especially because it actually wanted to be somewhere else. But by then it’s too late.

So the real problem is not so much that the left brain dominates, as that the two modes of thinking are never brought together. This means that quite a lot of left-brain work can go on effectively on auto-pilot, because it develops a life of its own. Thus, ideas for using US ground troops in Iran can rapidly be developed at a technical level, with force composition and generation, potential targets, entry points, logistic resupply, ISR etc, all without the questions of “why are we doing this?” or “what do we hope to achieve?” ever being posed. But of course the output of such activities can be easily expressed in whizzo graphics and AI generated simulations, and it provides the planners with something to do….

Thus, statements of faith in an ultimate Ukrainian victory, or of a future “Free Palestine,” or of the inevitable defeat of Iran, have to be seen, even more than most political statements, as symbolic and metaphorical. They are not deduced from the facts of the situation, nor do there have to be actual processes capable of making them happen. They are battle-cries, slogans for chanting, descriptions of fantasies and in certain cases nightmares. The problem arises when the extreme right-brain thinking that has always characterised politics, exacerbated by the ignorance of modern politicians about real life, collides with the extreme left-brain culture of our modern world as exemplified in government systems, without any transmission mechanism to enable them to work together….

The greatest challenge, as often, is intellectual. Our masters will have to recognise that chains of consequence and causality do actually exist, that Father Christmas is a right-brain myth, and that there are hard limits on what can actually be done, and hard requirements about what needs to be done, and neither can be circumvented with words. In particular, they need to abandon the delusion that only finance matters, and that numbers on paper represent the underlying reality of the world. (Not even Pythagoras would have suggested that you can eat numbers.) This is most obvious in the endless, earnest discussion of what the Iran War will do to “the price of oil.” In a few cases, pundits even realise that “the price of oil” might affect the prices of other things as well. But from their point of view, “price” and “oil” are two different concepts. The idea that there might just not be enough oil, and that that lack may have practical consequences other than price doesn’t get much of an airing. After all, surely if the price goes up, new suppliers will come forward? That’s how the market works, isn’t it? Isn’t it? The idea that the world will soon lose some of its supply of oil-based products, and that this is a hard limit that cannot be got round, has only just begun to register, and, to the extent that it has, pundits appear to believe that we can substitute, say, solar power for oil, and all will be well. Can you use solar power to make fertiliser? Indeed, can you make solar panels at all without oil-based products?

…I doubt if any western country is now equipped, organisationally or even intellectually, to handle problems caused by scarcity of food. Western states now enjoy little absolute food security—a problem I discussed in some detail last year—but our governments are far from even beginning to grasp the nature of the problem, let alone its implications. Ah well, it will be said, people eat too much and anyway too much food is thrown away. Indeed, but that’s not the answer….

As it happens, there is a lot of experience of what happens in situations of severe shortage, and the answer is that the rich buy what they want, the poor buy what they can, and organised crime steps in to put those with money in touch with those with things to sell. The capacity of western states has been radically reduced over the last couple of generations, even as the power of organised crime has grown. We can imagine what shortages of basic medicines would do, and who might wind up controlling their retail sale. In reality, attempts by government to control the availability of everyday necessities will lead nowhere and arouse public opposition. The Internet will have a field day: it will be worse than Covid. This shortage of food doesn’t really exist you see, it’s just the Davos brigade trying to kill off as many people as it can, this time by hunger….

Trump’s planning war crimes

Richard Murphy, April 02, 2026 [Funding the Future]

Donald Trump has signalled his intention to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure, power stations and desalination plants, and that is a war crime under international law. The law is unambiguous: military gain does not justify targeting civilian populations and the infrastructure they depend upon, and pre-announcing an attack does not reduce culpability. This is the reality of the Iran war that the world urgently needs to confront….

…There is a deeper ideological logic at work here, which is neoliberalism. Neoliberal economics reduces human beings to units in a system, economic cogs with conditional worth. When civilians are treated as expendable targets in a war in Iran, that is not aberration. That is the neoliberal system working as designed.

Margaret Thatcher applied the same logic to UK communities in the 1980s, treating unemployment and social harm as acceptable costs of economic policy. Trump’s Iran policy is the modern expression of that same ideology, now directed at Iranian civilians on a far grander and more lethal scale. The mindset is identical; the human cost is simply larger.

The collapse of moral constraint we are witnessing in the US-Iran conflict is a systemic danger. Neoliberalism, combined with distorted justification, is overriding both international law and basic humanity…

Never doubt that dangerous ideas are a threat to humankind

Richard Murphy, March 31, 2026 [Funding the Future]

…This is the consequence of neoliberal thinking. When, as that philosophy does, you reduce people to being cogs in a machine, those cogs become expendable. Margaret Thatcher treated people in this way when managing the UK economy with supreme indifference to its population in the 1980s. Donald Trump is treating the people of Iran in this way when managing his maniacal war agenda in the 2020s. There is a difference in the scale of the contempt shown, but the indifference to human suffering that underpinned both courses of action is similar.

The fact is that the courses of action required to fulfil the neoliberal agenda of ever-increasing the wealth of a few in society at cost to many have been presumed by all those who subscribe to this ideology as justification for their contempt for their fellow human beings, and as an excuse for the suffering that their ideology has caused to billions around the world….

Trump’s assault on 2026 Election

Trump Will Not Accept the 2026 Results. These Are the Legal Weapons to Force Certification

W. A. Lawrence, Mar 29, 2026 [Glass Empires]

Trump is not attempting to win the election. Trump is attempting to establish the outcome as settled before certification, because a public that accepts inevitability becomes far easier to override.

Since January 2025, actions to expand federal control of election administration have moved from proposal into execution. Courts have blocked portions on constitutional grounds. Legal countermeasures stand ready. Effective use requires speed, coordination, and sustained pressure applied before administrative strain.

American elections transfer governing authority through a statutory and constitutional process requiring convergence of canvassing, certification, judicial review, and final recognition within fixed time limits….

Stage one is voter roll disruption before the election. The SAVE America Act forces all 211 million registered voters to re register in person with documentary proof of citizenship before November, generating mass eligibility disputes designed to overwhelm certification administrators at the moment deadlines permit no unresolved claims.

A parallel draft executive order carries identical provisions for unilateral imposition under a declared national emergency if the Senate fails to act. Trump confirmed the fallback, stating the requirements will govern the midterms whether approved by Congress or imposed by executive authority….

Trump signs executive order creating national voter list, restricting mail-in voting

[Associated Press, via Drop Site Daily: April 1, 2026

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to create a national list of verified eligible voters and seeking to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on state-approved lists. Voting law experts say the move unconstitutionally usurps states’ authority to run elections. Federal funding could be withheld from states that do not comply.

Nearly Two Dozen Democratic States Hit Trump With Elections Lawsuit

Finn Hartnett, April 3, 2026 [The New Republic]

Officials from 23 different states (and the District of Columbia) are taking Donald Trump to court over a brazenly unconstitutional executive order that looks to limit Americans’ voting rights.

The executive order, signed on Tuesday, banned the U.S. Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots to anyone not on a preapproved list compiled by the USPS itself. Trump and his cronies like to claim mail-in voting is rife with fraud—despite a lack of evidence and the fact that the president likes to vote by mail himself. But the executive order’s solution to this is sketchy at best. Why, and how, does the USPS get to choose who can vote by mail?

Perhaps even more insidious is another section of the executive order, which calls on the federal government to compile its own list of voters in each state, which will then be sent to states 60 days before each federal election—presumably along with a bunch of threats that they better not find anyone who doesn’t match their list voting….

Letters from an American, March 31, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, Apr 01, 2026

…Trump is ordering the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to work with the Social Security Administration to create a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state. The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to voters on the list, and to mark each ballot with its own unique barcode. It threatens any states refusing to cooperate with the order with a loss of federal funding and directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate anyone wrongfully distributing mail-in ballots. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that “there is no such thing as a federal list of citizens. It does not exist.”

“This is unconstitutional on its face,” election law expert David Becker told Yunior Rivas of Democracy Docket. “The Constitution clearly gives the president no power over elections….

State Dems must stop ICE from stealing the midterms

Cory Doctorow, March 31, 2026 [Pluralistic]

Writing for Jacobin, Eric Blanc points out that Democrats don’t have to sit by passively while Trump – who repeatedly promised that if you voted for him in 2024, “you won’t have to vote anymore” – steals an election:

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/ice-trump-election-theft-laws/

…On March 13, the New Mexico state legislature passed a law banning armed federal officials from showing their fascist asses anywhere within 50 feet of a polling place or ballot drop-box:

https://www.koat.com/article/new-mexico-prohibits-armed-agents-voting-sites/70729595

Other blue states like “California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington” are contemplating similar laws.

It’s a start, but as Blanc says, what the fuck are the other blue statehouses waiting for? This is a white-hot, hair-on-fire emergency. There isn’t a moment to spare. This should be on the agenda for every union, at every demonstration, at every DSA and Democratic Club meeting. As Blanc says, if we wait until November to find out what Trump is going to do, it’ll be too late. The time to act is now.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 29, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Tell Your State To Pass This No-ICE-At-Our-Precincts Model Law. Now.

Josh Marshall, March 27, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

 I found a piece of model legislation published on March 9th by the Brennan Center.

War

Plans, Platforms And Projectiles — The longer-term meaning of the Iran war.

Aurelien, Mar 25, 2026

…the lack of a strategy for Iran—as opposed to a generalised aspiration to do harm when the opportunity presented itself—meant that the US was not really prepared for this war, and that the effects on US power and on its economy and its political and military system, will accordingly be a lot more severe than they might otherwise have been….

…For this reason, as for others I’ll touch on, it seems highly unlikely that there will be a “deal,” with Iran, let alone a detailed agreement. If you can’t even decide what you want, it’s hard to persuade someone to give it to you….

[TW: Worth reading to the end and their discussion of the high-tech “platform warfare” the US developed during the cold war, and which all its expensive weapons systems are oriented around, versus the “projectile warfare” which is now emerging in the context of drones and inexpensive precision guidance. It appears that the Iranians decided to orient their military to “projectile warfare” and are damn good at it.]

America is Achieving Full-Spectrum Energy Dominance — And Nobody is Paying Attention 

[BettBeat Media, via Naked Capitalism 03-23-2025]

…I have said it many times, and I will say it again: the United States does not lose wars. If it did, it would stop waging them. Whether Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or Libya — failed states are not failures of Empire. They are the victories of Empire. And Empire is on a roll.

Now the same chorus rises over Iran. Left and right, the refrain is identical: this will be a disaster, America is overreaching, Iran will be its graveyard. The same voices. The same blindness. The same century-old script….

…Medhurst argues that the United States, far from stumbling into another disastrous West Asian quagmire, is executing a calculated seizure of the planet’s energy supply — and that the wars on Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, and now Iran are not separate blunders but sequential steps toward a single goal: total energy dominance. He coins a term for the endgame: the “petro-gas dollar” or the “LNG dollar.” Let us see if the term deserves to stick….

Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War: ‘Command of the Reload’ Governs Endurance 

[Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies]

Iran’s Ultimatum

“We are at war with the Epstein people. The people eating, frying, and raping kids…”

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 22, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

War

Beijing to Tel-Aviv and Washington: “Israel will cease to exist the moment it uses a nuclear weapon!”

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, 20/03/2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

In the following paper, we will present the reasons why a nuclear war in the Middle East is now quite possible, the deterrent intervention of China which interrupted a period of dangerous tolerance of Israel by the great powers, and the relationship between what is happening in West Asia and what is happening around Ukraine and the American continent, particularly in Cuba….

These statements, and most likely the information it possesses, provoked an unofficial but very harsh statement from Beijing. This is the first time a major power has interrupted the unprecedented tolerance enjoyed by Israel and its lobbies, a tolerance that has now led humanity to the brink of the abyss.

…Specifically, Victor Gao, vice-president of the Chinese Institute for China and Globalization, when asked what the two nuclear powers, Russia and China, would do if Israel used nuclear weapons, he stated to the American The Cradle, that “the moment Israel uses a nuclear warhead against any country, it will be considered the number one enemy of humanity, it will be the demise of Israel as a state, as a regime, as a country.” He simultaneously warned Prime Minister Netanyahu, the government of Israel, and its armed forces that they will be considered enemies of humanity and responsible for whatever happens, in an indirect but clear reference to the Nuremberg trials that judged the Nazi leaders. Mr. Gao made it clear that what he says does not concern condemnatory statements but an advance notice of actions. He congratulated Mr. Trump on his statement that Israel will not use nuclear weapons and expressed the wish that he acts effectively in this direction.

Mr. Gao adds that any use of nuclear weapons by Israel will lead to an explosive proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and their use would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and the transformation of the entire region into an uninhabitable zone.

Mr. Gao makes also a reference to the Epstein archives.

The Chinese warning has been phrased in a… Chinese way. Mr. Gao is the head of a small party allied with the Communist Party and holds no government position, so the responsibility for his statement cannot be directly attributed to the Chinese leadership or the CCP. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it constitutes an unofficial but authoritative expression of the Chinese position on the matter. And to leave us in no doubt on the issue, the Chinese Academy distributed this specific excerpt of Gao’s statements under the characteristic title “What would China do if Israel dropped a nuclear weapon?”….

IDF threatens ‘elimination’ for Russian leaders who ‘wish Israel ill’

Wyatt Reed, Mar 19, 2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

Israel’s veiled threat to Moscow came just after Russian media warned traffic cameras in Moscow were vulnerable to the same exploits that Israel reportedly used to monitor Ayatollah Khamenei’s residence before assassinating him.

Breaking the Nuclear Taboo

Peter Kuznick and Ivana Nikolić Hughes, March 13, 2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

…It would be the ultimate expression of Trump’s unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo – which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years – detonating a nuclear weapon. There are many indications that, despite the U.S. and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon. In Trump’s mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous, and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers – going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes – the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.

Since the end of the Cold War, many people who pay attention have worried about an accidental or a miscalculated stumble into nuclear war. But with Trump breaking every taboo domestically and internationally, demonstrating that he is above the law and can do as he pleases at every turn, the ultimate taboo waiting to be broken is the nuclear one….

[TW: I wonder if there will be a mass resignation of military officers as Trump stumbles aver closer to using nuclear weapons. But they would lose their pensions. So, probably secret approaches to some (anti)Republican Senators and Congressmen begging for Congress to do something? And if Trump does issue orders to use nuclear weapons, would military officers refuse? Might they even demand Trump be arrested? Trump and Hegseth have pissed all over the Code of Conduct numerous times — Hegseth this past week, by declaring “no quarter” toward Iran, explicitly violated violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996, and the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual. The commander in chief and the top civilian official at the Department of Defense should also be subject to the Code.]

Remember the Titan: The Fragility of Trump’s Golden Egg

Jim Stewartson, Mar 18, 2026 [MindWar]

GRAPH: Trump’s Pathologies

…While I hesitate to bring up the dreaded notion of bipartisanship, the best way to try to prevent the explosive scenario, to try and contain the criticality when it happens, is for the political system to present a combined show of force that draws a red line before it happens.

If he’s not given a sandbox to play in, Trump will take the entire playground.

For example, if the Democrats and 20 GOP Senators could find a way to agree publicly that if Trump engages in a preemptive nuclear strike for any reason without consulting Congress, he will be impeached and removed immediately. Even if he was not considering such a strike, just the statement would make clear to him that he is not, in fact, omnipotent….

The South Pars Pulse: Why the ‘Energy War’ is Actually a Thermodynamic Singularity 

[The Ultimate Avatar of Balance, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

…By treating the destruction of the world’s largest natural gas reservoir merely as a ‘supply chain disruption’, the geopolitical establishment is exhibiting a fatal, terminal blindness. We are no longer dealing with economics; we are dealing with physics.

The strike on South Pars is not an ‘energy war’. It is an unmodelled Thermodynamic Pulse that threatens to liquidate the biological carrying capacity of the entire Persian Gulf.

The Methane Blind Spot

South Pars/North Dome holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. When upstream infrastructure of this magnitude is ruptured, the result is not just fire and smoke (particulate matter), which the environmental NGOs are currently monitoring. The far greater threat is uncontained venting of raw methane (CH₄).

Methane possesses a Global Warming Potential (GWP) roughly 80 times that of CO₂ over a 20-year horizon. However, in the immediate aftermath of a massive, concentrated release, the ‘horizon’ is not 20 years. It is measured in weeks….

Trump says he’s ‘not afraid’ of Vietnam-style ground combat in Iran 

[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism 03-18-2025]

…Speaking from the Oval Office alongside Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, the President fielded many questions about the Iran war.

‘Are you afraid that if you put boots on the ground in Iran, it could be another Vietnam?’ one reporter asked.

‘No,’ Trump shot back, adding, ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

The Geopolitical Consequences of Defeat

[Policy Tensor, via Naked Capitalism 03-16-2025]

…The only way in which the United States can evade outright defeat is by suppressing and degrading Iran’s ability to hold gulf assets at high levels of risk and keep Hormuz closed.1 If the US cannot, through either the direct application of force or indirectly through military coercion, accomplish this strategic objective, the outcome will be indistinguishable from strategic defeat, even if the war ends in a ceasefire, for then Iran would’ve demonstrated for all to see that the United States does not, in fact, have the military means to impose its will on the gulf.

This means that the dynamics of the interdiction campaign are decisive.

If the interdiction campaign rapidly degrades Iran’s ability to attack gulf assets, that would still not guarantee victory, however. For victory requires the further success of countermining operations if the Iranians mine the gulf, as they have reportedly started doing. Countermining operations are not a solved military problem either. At the very least, they will also take many months. What is clear is that, a successful prosecution of the interdiction campaign to conclusion is a necessary condition for effective countermining operations….

Burning the Lifeboats to Keep the Lights On 

[The Ultimate Avatar of Balance, via Naked Capitalism 03-16-2025]

… something important needs saying: the US’s totally aimless campaign of wanton and indiscriminate destruction in Iran is definitionally tantamount to terrorism. An operation requires a stated strategic objective to qualify as a “war” or military action of some sort, legitimate or not. Trump’s clumsy bomb-fest—during which he proudly boasts he can “bomb” certain Iranian targets “for fun”—does not fit that description, and as such definitionally qualifies as a campaign of terrorism against a sovereign state and its civilian population. Let’s not even mention what the US is currently doing to Cuba, with the blockade having collapsed the nation’s entire electric grid as of yesterday.

The closest the US has come to stated goals in this debacle in fact align with definitional terrorism: the US wants to create economic hardship and infrastructural pain in the country which would spur the populace into overthrowing “the regime”….

 

Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New Phase 

[Simplicius, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

Things really hit the fan earlier today after Iran’s largest natural gas field, the South Pars, was struck by Israel. This field reportedly accounts for 75% of Iran’s natural gas production and 80-85% of its electric grid….

 

Read More

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 14, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

War

US Navy tells shipping industry Hormuz escorts not possible for now

Jonathan Saul, March 10, 2026 [Reuters, via gcaptain]

The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since ​the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The ‌Navy’s assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from President Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway….

The U.S. Navy has held regular ⁠briefings with shipping and oil industry counterparts and has said during those briefings it is unable to provide escorts for the time being, three shipping industry sources familiar with ​the matter said….

The US, which has attacked Iran’s nuclear sites, once supplied the Islamic Republic with HAWK surface-to-air and TOW anti-tank missiles despite an arms-export ban. The covert deal during the Reagan era 40 years ago, known as the Iran-Contra case, became one of America’s biggest political scandals.

U.S. Begins Withdrawing THAAD Missile Defence Systems From South Korea to Replenish Losses in War with Iran 

[Military Watch, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025].

Iran targets Turkey’s Incirlik air base housing US nuclear bombs; sirens trigger panic

Manmath Nayak, March 13, 2026 [indiatvnews.com]

Ted Postol: U.S. Missile Defense Is ‘A Giant Technical Fraud’

Thomas Neuburger, March 13, 2026 [God’s Spies]

There’s a mountain of good information in this video interview/presentation by Dr. Ted Postol, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security. More on Ted Postol here. He’s truly pre-eminent in his field.

If you want to know what missiles are used by Iran, how they work, and how they defeat U.S.-supplied missile defenses, settle down and watch. You won’t be disappointed.

Iran Cows US Navy into Submission in Hormuz Standoff 

Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]

…All internal rumors point to neither the Israeli or US side having anticipated the Iranian “regime” surviving so intact.

One of the reasons for this is that in the wake of the last ‘12 Day War’ you may recall Iran carried out a massive purge of Mossad assets throughout the country, with hundreds of agents apprehended, thousands of pieces of sabotage equipment confiscated, etc. After the Mossad network was neutered, it seems the threat of color revolutions and destabilization of the leadership was no more….

The biggest development revolves around Iran reportedly beginning to deploy naval mines in the strait, although there is some contention regarding this. The US appears to be trying to minimize the panic by claiming Iran has only deployed “10 mines” and that the US has been destroying Iranian minelayers. All the while, the IRGC has released videos showing they can lay mines via rockets fired from inland.

The US has even begun making up lies about escorting tankers through the strait, only for them to be humiliatingly retracted….

WSJ reports that Iran itself is exporting “more oil than ever before” through its own straits. This is obviously perplexing: how is the US allowing Iran to do that?

On one hand, one Iranian tanker was said to be hit, presumably by US forces. On the other hand, it’s clear there may be secret allowances at play because we know Kharg Island has not been taken out, and the obvious speculation is that US is afraid to ‘rock the boat’ economically, even if it means sparing Iranian oil and letting it flow.

This more than anything shows the limits of US military capability as the US is not capable of defeating its enemy swiftly enough to preclude the types of economic shocks now at danger of spilling out. They may have done it in Venezuela, but the Iran conflict more than anything else validates the Venezuelan operation was a fake with behind-the-scenes betrayal at play, rather than a determined force putting up a real fight….

Armageddon Now! Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Kevin Kirk, March 12, 2026 [Naked Capitalism]

[TW: This is a detailed summary of Isreal’s development and construction of nuclear weapons, which included covert assistance from France, Britain, and South Africa. Revelations include the dumping of nuclear waste in Palestinian areas with no safety measures at all, and how Iran has achieved some level of deterrence, including the probability Iran has acquired nuclear weapons from North Korea. ]

…Other dump sites in Palestinian territory are in the Eastern hills of the West Bank. For example, 80 barrels of Israeli waste were physically uncovered in the city of Hebron with another 120 found in the town of Al Ezareya, just outside Jerusalem.  Palestinian health authorities in the West Bank grew increasingly alarmed after their monitors detected massive radioactive, pesticide and other toxins leaching into the water supply. The IDF responded by smashing the sensors and raiding their offices, where they destroyed the data then threw all of the equipment out of a 5^th floor window….

Israel also dumps its waste on the Egyptian and Jordanian borders after ensuring that the prevailing winds will carry the radioactive dust out of Israeli territory. This is creating health problems for people living in those areas. For example, in the Al Tafila governorate of Jordan, downwind of the waste dumps on the Jordanian border, cancer rates, particularly amongst children, are up to five times more prevalent than anywhere else in the country.…

According to analysis undertaken by the Belorussian military, BELTA, the likelihood of a nuclear strike being undertaken against Iran by Israel is, in their opinion, extremely low. This is because of the Iranian threat to completely destroy Dimona (on a day when the wind blows to the north) and a massive missile attack that would destroy all of the vital services needed for everyday life in Israel, like desalination plants, power stations, ports and refineries. Iran also threatened to destroy ALL of the energy infrastructure in the Middle East, threatening worldwide energy supplies for years to come. It is definitely not in the USA’s best interests, nor Israel’s, because it would achieve the opposite effect of what this war is purportedly about: the elimination of another nuclear power in the Middle East, because Iran would undoubtedly either build a bomb or acquire one from elsewhere. North Korea (DPRK) has already developed (and tested) a bomb for Iran back in 2012. Iran paid for its development and given the passage of time it is more than possible that Iran already has nuclear weapons (two can play the strategic ambiguity game)….

How Close Is Israel to Maximum Escalation? “The situation in Israel is dire,” say many observers.

Thomas Neuburger, Mar 11, 2026 [God’s Spies]

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]

Dr. JiHoon Park | IQ 312

@Jihooncrypto

THE ENTIRE CHIP INDUSTRY IS ABOUT TO SHUT DOWN AND NOBODY IS PANICKING YET No helium. No semiconductors. No phones. No AI. No future.

Samsung and SK Hynix just went on HIGH ALERT. Ships carrying helium have stopped moving through the Gulf.

Here’s how this destroys everything — step by step:→ Helium is used to cool semiconductor manufacturing equipment→ Without it, chip fabs CANNOT operate→ There is NO substitute for helium in this process→ Most of the world’s helium ships through Gulf routes now under fire→ South Korea makes 60% of the world’s memory chips→ Samsung and SK Hynix supply Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, every AI company on Earth….

A Farewell To Arms Supplies 

Aurelien, March 11, 2026  [Trying to Understand the World, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]

The fact that a force was constituted and deployed without any real idea of what it was supposed to achieve is actually a lot more common than is often realised. History books are full of apparently stupid decisions to start wars or reinforce failure for reasons that appear insane in retrospect, as well as being generally divorced from the realities of the time. But this conceals a larger issue: such decisions are rarely taken for a single reason, and often result from the interaction of all sorts of different pressures and ambitions. They may also be based on partially or completely false understandings of the situation, or indeed just plain wish-fulfilment. Some are based on over-confidence, others on fear that waiting will make the position even worse….

If I ever write another book on history, I’m going to call it The Alternative was Worse, to underline the point that most decisions about war and peace are sub-optimal, and often the consequences of a search for the least bad solution….

It’s obvious that the current US/Israeli assault on Iran is a good case of this. It’s not so much that strategic objectives seem to change daily in Washington, as that there are a whole host of different motivations, some mutually contradictory, held by different people who go before the cameras on different occasions to say different things. All they have in common is a vague conviction that Iran should be attacked. And it’s a classic error of pundits to imagine that because many different actors in a national capital publicly support something, there is therefore a united policy, let alone an agreed plan. In many cases, vague but impressive-sounding strategic soundbites are all they can agree on, and they differ violently about everything else….

…So far as I can see, there are “cooler heads” in the sense of those who think a military campaign isn’t the best way to destroy Iran, but few who actually advocate learning to live with it. Thus, sudden changes in announced “objectives,” simply mean that another way of punishing Iran has come into favour or fashion. Linked to this, of course, is a profound, willed, ignorance about the country itself and its internal politics….

… Modernisation Theory. This began in the 1950s and 1960s with the belief that economic growth and modernisation would produce democratic, rational, secular political systems….

It’s not just Iran, either. Incoherent ideas derived from Modernisation Theory help to explain the disastrous failure in Iraq: left to themselves, and with the evil Saddam removed, the Iraqis would move rapidly along the path to a modern liberal democratic market economy, because that was the destiny of all societies. Religious forces were so yesterday, and thus could be discounted. Likewise, the arrival of the Islamic State first in Iraq and then in Syria was such a shock because the very idea of religion, not just as a political mobilising factor but as a complete and unchallengeable guide to life, had been unknown in the West since the seventeenth century….

…The residual influence of Modernisation Theory even today is such that western leaders and the media assume that every country is full of People Like Us standing ready to take over the reins of government, and that by contrast if a country is run by People Not Like Us, then the vast majority of the population must be waiting for Us to overthrow the government for them. And yes, it’s actually as dumb as that….

… So we can see the fundamental, and typical, US error in assuming that the Iranian regime was fragile, that removal of a small number of its leaders would bring the system down, and that People Like Us were ready to take over….

… very tangible hard limits brought to you by all these clever people who outsourced and globalised everything ….

Electronic Fog of War: GPS Spoofing Distorts Ship Traffic Near Hormuz

Mike Schuler, March 10, 2026 [gcaptain]

“Vessel tracks show clear inconsistencies when compared with simultaneous vessel movements and reported headings,” MarineTraffic said, noting the apparent transits are the result of satellite navigation interference rather than actual vessel activity….

The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said in its latest advisory issued March 10 that the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters remain at a “critical operational risk level” for commercial shipping amid the escalating conflict with Iran. Over the past 24 hours, more than 600 GNSS disruption events have been reported across the operational area, according to aggregated open-source monitoring and maritime reporting, with documented impacts including positional offsets, AIS anomalies, and intermittent signal degradation.

A separate update from the EU’s Maritime Security Centre – Indian Ocean (MSCIO) warns that heavy GPS and AIS spoofing is continuing across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman, adding that disruptions have also affected communications and radar systems.

The advisory states that navigation systems in the region are “highly likely to be unreliable”, urging vessels to rely more heavily on radar and visual navigation methods when operating in the area.

Why Little Was Done to Head Off Oil’s Strait of Hormuz Problem

Rebecca F. Elliott and Vivian Nereim, March 14, 2026 [New York Times]

…The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.

For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks….

I Was a US Intelligence Analyst. Here’s What a Ground Invasion of Iran Could Look Like

Harrison Mann, Mar 10, 2026 [Zeteo]

US intelligence shows Iran government is not at risk of collapse: Sources 

[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 03-13-2025]

Will the Iran Price Shock Break the World?

Matt Stoller, Mar 09, 2026 [BIG]

[TW: Remember Obama boasted about how his policies facilitating fracking had boosted US oil production? The horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing used to tap shale oil reserves allowed the US to produce 12.9 million barrels of oil per day in 2023, the highest annual average ever. In 2019, for the first time in decades, the U.S. was a net exporter of crude and refined oil. Imports of oil dropped to almost one tenth of what they had been: 2022 imports of about 1.6 million barrels per day compared to 12 million barrels per day in 2005.

[So, if the US is not using oil from the Middle East, why have gasoline prices in the US increased? The cost of producing oil in the US has not increased one iota because of Trump’s Epstein Fury war. But profits sire have. Over a decade ago, a number of observers explained how increases US gas prices go almost entirely to enrich financial speculators. Most prominent among these was Michael Greenberger, who served as director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration. I was saddened to learn, in searching for Greenberger’s articles on the role of speculation in gas prices, that he had passed just three months ago. ]

Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System (pdf)

Roosevelt Institute, March 3, 2010

The crisis of 2008 was predictable.  Unless we go far beyond current legislative
proposals the next crisis is inevitable.

The structure of our current financial markets does not reflect the critical mar
ket principles that once allowed our economy to flourish– principles like trans
parency, competition, and free flow of information. And it has not been subject
to the most important principle of all — the opportunity for market participants
to fail.  We all know the result. Financial sector CEOs have relied on taxpayer
support. They have benefitted from express taxpayer bailouts as well as secret
“back door” deals. They continue to lead companies that seem to make profit
but actually only thrive because of government subsidies and taxpayer support.
Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System
is the result of months of discussions among the country’s leading financiers,
market experts, academics and former regulators….

Testimony of Michael Greenberger before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
on Excessive Speculation: Position Limits and Exemptions (PDF)

August 5, 2009 [Commodity Futures Trading Commission]

Speculation and Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodities Prices

Lambert Strether, April 14, 2012 [Naked Capitalism]

The Price of Oil – Where the Outrage?

Payam Sharifi, February 18, 2011 [Naked Capitalism]

Read More

​​​​​​​Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 08, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

War

Rubio Says the US Launched a War With Iran Because Israel Was Planning To Attack

Dave DeCamp, March 2, 2026 [DefendDemocracy.Press]

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States, Israel, or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters.

“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first, before we hit them, we would have suffered much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision — we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” he said.

Rubio’s comments align with reporting from The New York Times that said when Tucker Carlson recently met with President Trump and tried to convince him not to launch a war with Iran, the president said he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch….

How The War With Iran Was Bought By Adelson Money. 

[The Dissident, via Naked Capitalism 03-02-2025]

The current unfolding American/Israeli war on Iran was in large part bought by two of Trump’s largest pro-Israel donors, the late Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam.

In 2016, when Trump first ran for president, the Washington Post reported that , “The couple gave a total of more than $21.2 million to Trump’s cause, contributing to several organizations, including Trump’s campaign, Republican committees and a pro-Trump super PAC, according to federal finance disclosures.”

This money, in large part, was given in exchange for Trump to carry out Israel’s desired policy on Iran….

Trump, looking back at his first term as president, has not hidden the influence Adelson’s money had on his Middle East policy.

During a speech to the Israeli Knesset Trump boasted, “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office. They’d call me, he’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I can think of … she loves Israel. But she loves it, and they would come in, and her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him. He was a very aggressive, very supportive of me. And, he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I’d say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the President of the United States, it doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in”.

Trump similarly boasted on the campaign trail in 2024 that, “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there. And they were always after — and as soon as I’d give them something — always for Israel. As soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else”, and last year boasted , “Sheldon was an amazing guy, and he’d come up to the office, and there was nobody more aggressive than Sheldon. he’d always say 10 minutes, it turned out to be about an hour-and-a-half, and what he did is he fought for Israel. He just wanted to take care of Israel”….

Dirty secret corporate media won’t discuss: US is reason Iran’s democracy ended and Ayatollah came to power

Dean Obeidallah, Mar 07, 2026

… the CIA together with British intelligence … devised what came to be known as “Operation Ajax” to remove Mosaddeq from power and reinstate the pro-Westen, pro-big oil Shah. [Mosaddeq was the Iranian premier who tried to terminate British ownership and control of Iran’s oil fields.]

The CIA and Britain’s MI-6 orchestrated the arrest of Mosaddegh, who was charged and convicted of treason. He lost power and remained under house arrest for the rest of his life. (In 2013, the CIA finally admitted their role in removing Mosaddeq.)

That ended democracy in Iran. In return, the Shah gave the Western oil companies exactly what they wanted and that was massive profits from Iranian oil by way of a new agreement.

But the United States under various administrations was far from done with the Shah and oppressing the people of Iran. From there, the Shah began to dismantle the judicial system, suspended civil liberties, extinguish dissent, etc.

And worse, he did it with the help of the United States. As one Iranian dissident detailed in 1979, The Shah created his brutal secret police known as SAVAK that suppressed dissent using torture and killings, all “under the friendly guidance of the CIA.”

How MI6 Laid Iran War’s Foundations

Kit Klarenberg, Mar 03, 2026

In October 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported on a leaked assessment of then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama, prepared by London’s ambassador to Washington. While identifying many areas of consensus, it foresaw a “potential clash” between Downing Street and an impending Obama administration, over Iran “his desire for ‘unconditional’ dialogue with Iran.” This was at odds with Britain’s commitment to the UNSC’s “requirement of prior suspension of enrichment before the nuclear negotiations proper can begin.” It was thus necessary to change the future White House incumbent’s thinking.

Unbeknownst publicly, during this time MI6 was embroiled in a covert operation to “develop understanding” among foreign governments of the Islamic Republic’s apparent quest for nukes, and therefore “pressurise Iran to negotiate.” A leaked CV of Nicholas Langman, longtime British intelligence dark arts specialist and head of MI6’s Iran Department 2006 – 2008, boasts how he “generated confidence” in its assessment Tehran secretly had a dedicated program to develop nuclear weapons among “European, US and Middle Eastern agencies.”

Saudi Oil Storage Filling Fast, Kayrros Says

Rong Wei Neo, March 04, 2026 [Bloomberg, via feedspot.com]

Major oil storage sites in Saudi Arabia are filling rapidly as the key export route through the Strait of Hormuz effectively remains closed to shipping, according to geospatial analytics company Kayrros.

The Ju’aymah terminal on the country’s east coast “was quickly running out of spare capacity” as of March 1, Kayrros co-founder and chief analyst Antoine Halff wrote in a post on LinkedIn. Four of the six tanks at the Ras Tanura refinery – halted after attacks by Iran this week – were full, he said.

Iraq has started shutting oil production at its biggest fields due to the closure of the strait, and Halff said spare storage capacity at the Basrah terminal was less than two days of exports. OPEC’s second-biggest producer has very few tanks compared with output levels and exports, he added….

The U.S. will cover shipping losses in the Gulf, Trump says

Drop Site Daily: March 4, 2026

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States will help cover financial losses for tankers or cargo ships attacked or blocked while transiting the Gulf, and directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide government-backed political risk insurance for shipping companies operating in the region. Trump also said the U.S. Navy could begin escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as possible.” Under normal conditions, about 80 oil and gas tankers cross the Strait of Hormuz daily, but shipping data from Kpler, analyzed by the New York Times, show only three tankers crossed since Monday. Brent crude prices hit $84 a barrel, up more than 15% since before the war and at its highest price since July 2024.

Religious war

Spencer Ackerman, 4 Mar 2026 [foreverwars]

…the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), has received “200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services” describing commanders who frame the Iran War for their soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in terms like: “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” [As a Christian I just want to point out that the signal fire imagery is not from the Book of Revelation but from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies.—Sam]

Jonathan Larsen broke the story, and quotes MRRF’s founder-president, Air Force retiree Mikey Weinstein: “Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.” ….

Iran War Cost Tracker 

[via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]

Iran’s Winning Strategy Shakes the World’s Biggest Military 

[Global Geopolitics, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]

Why the US is facing strategic defeat 

[Policy Tensor, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]

…What is the solution to this problem? If Iranian capabilities cannot be degraded for at least four months, the costs to the world economy and the United States would be intolerable. We will see a global inflation shock, global monetary tightening, a food crisis as the fertilizer shock cuts the next crop in half, and almost certainly a global recession. It will destroy the Trump presidency; it will destroy the GOP for a generation; and it would finally end the entrapment of the United States by its junior geopolitical ally.

Is there a military solution? What can the US do? John Warden’s decapitation idea was supposed to work. It did not. There is absolutely no sign of any political instability in Iran. “Zero” as a senior European official told the Washington Post….

But it gets worse still. I wrote about the implications of our mature precision strike regime that Krepinevich predicted in the early 1990s. This is “an international military order where standoff precision-strike capabilities have diffused far beyond the technologically-advanced great powers,” I wrote. But even I underestimated the Iranians.

The Iranians are not just deploying hypersonic missiles that the US has been unable to develop. They don’t just have the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East. Recent military developments have revealed surprising Iranian reconnaissance-strike capabilities.

The Iranians have managed to hit every single American military base in the region. But that is not the half of it. THAAD is one of the most powerful ballistic missile defense system in the world. If anything should be invulnerable to attack, it is this system. The Iranians have managed to hit and likely disabled every single THAAD battery in the region; all five of them….

…The all-important interdiction campaign to degrade Iranian capabilities has suffered a massive setback. That is why the US is rushing a third aircraft carrier to the region: because the US can barely use nearby air bases, it has to rely on naval aviation to fill in the gap….

The Failure of US and Israeli Air Defense

Larry C. Johnson, 6 March 2026 [Sonar21]

[TW: Johnson lists the known damage to US installations hit by Iranian drones and missiles.]

Iranian Attacks On Prized Missile Defense Radars Are A Wake-Up Call

Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway, Mar 7, 2026 [The War Zone]

Iran War: fmr IDF Soldier & Historian Omer Bartov 

Daniel Davis [YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]

‘Insane This Is Legal’: Democrats Allege Trumpworld Insiders May Be Betting on War in Iran 

[NOTUS, via Naked Capitalism 03-02-2025]

Monopoly Round-Up: The Epstein Class Launches a War

Matt Stoller, Mar 01, 2026 [BIG]

I’ve long noticed the endless parade of investors heading over to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, getting investments for everything from banking to artificial intelligence. Elon Musk secured money from the Saudis for his AI venture and his takeover of Twitter, Sam Altman sought billions from Abu Dhabi, Anthropic went after money from UAE and Qatar. And JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock and Citigroup are competing heavily in the region.

And this trend is not new. In the 1970s, newly wealthy oil princes suddenly found themselves with over four hundred billion dollars, and had to put it somewhere. The deposited it in American banks, who then lent it all over the world, in what was known as “petrodollar recycling.” The corporate, banking, and oil prince worlds have only drawn closer and closer since. In the early 1980s, the merger boom unleashed by the Bork revolution started in the oil patch, and endless waves of mergers have been financed by Arab money. In the 2000s, on a political level, the Bush family linked Texas, the CIA, and the Saudis. In 2013, Al Gore sold his CurrentTV channel to the government of Qatar for $500 million. And in the shale revolution of the 2010s, Texas producers joined Saudi-led OPEC to keep oil prices high.

Today, the Middle East is full of investors in every major venture in the U.S., and most of our think tanks and diplomatic corps are part of that world. Arab elites are also part of the Western establishment. For instance, the giant video game company Electronic Arts was bought with Saudi money, in part because the Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is a gamer. He also brought the top U.S. comedians to his country for the Riyadh Comedy Festival last year.

The cultures are now so close that Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan had a private jet painted with the Dallas Cowboys logo, as he was good friend with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and loved American football. Indeed, while there’s a longstanding pretense of Arab antisemitism and dislike of Israel, it’s notable that both Arab and Israeli elites, including MBS and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were extensively involved in the network of Jeff Epstein.

Dark money–funded think tanks pushed Iran regime change

[Drop Site Daily, March 2, 2026]

Conservative dark money networks funneled millions into think tanks advocating regime change, including the Center for Security Policy and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Donors Trust, tied to conservative legal strategist Leonard Leo and funded in part by billionaire Barre Seid, gave more than $2.7 million to the Center for Security Policy between 2020 and 2023, while the Sarah Scaife Foundation, financed by the Mellon oil fortune, provided over $1.6 million to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies during the same period. The groups have publicly urged the Iranian public to overthrow its government and warned of threats to the United States. Report from The Lever available here.

Why Trump is Addicted to War

Les Leopold, Mar 02, 2026

It’s obvious that Trump loves the feel of power. It no doubt gives him a rush more intoxicating than any drug. He is the ruler of the strongest nation in the history of the world, but he doesn’t have the freedom to unilaterally act on domestic affairs, although he constantly tries. The courts are in the way, as is popular dissent. Judges and citizens are preventing him from exerting his will, even making him change course by removing troops and immigration forces. And it will, he surely knows, get even worse if the Democrats gain control of either house of Congress.

But he has a free hand in foreign affairs. The Supreme Court won’t stop him and there is no international court that the U.S. recognizes, nor does he believe he is morally bound by international law. He couldn’t care less about the U.N., and he hopes that military engagement against the weak makes him look strong to the American public. Also, in Iran’s case, a war with a quick victory has the added benefit of possibly improving his paltry approval ratings by diverting public attention away from “affordability” and the Epstein files. Already the joke is that they should have called the Iran adventure, “Operation Epic Epstein.

Twitter List: Middle East Sources

Thomas Neuburger, March 01, 2026 [God’s Spies]

The list is actively curated — feeds are added or deleted based on their value as sources of information, whether they are possibly wrong or not. Many pass on videos of announcements — Israeli, Iranian, etc. — and many post war footage often from cell phone sources.

Some of these posters are strongly opinionated, so be warned, while many are less biased analysts. Not every post is of value — true of all lists — but I try to keep the percentages relatively high.

Read More

​​​​​​​Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 01, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Iran Calls Trump’s Bluff as Deep State Rebels Over War

[Simplicius, via Naked Capitalism 02-27-2025]

…Trump’s initiative is collapsing before his sallow eyes amidst internal revolts as staff leak all kinds of damaging bulletins to the press. The latest from the Pentagon stovepipe is that the US only has munitions for days of a sustained high-intensity conflict with Iran, a fact we’ve known all along….

It’s clear an internal revolt is taking place—from the potential sabotaging of the carrier by its crews, to yesterday’s sudden firing of the Director of the Joint Staff, Vice Admiral Fred Kacher….

Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute Daniel McAdams writes:

“My guess – and it is based on limited but not extensive contact with Navy warfighters – is that he holds the position that a war on Iran would be a disaster. I don’t want to be too specific, but I believe from what I know that this view is widely held among particularly Naval personnel in the Pentagon.

“It’s becoming more and more clear that many inside the Pentagon believe the US will face generational disaster if it over-commits to a large-scale conflict with Iran. The going theory cited by experts, which I agree with, is that Trump has boxed himself in by amassing a huge armada that was meant to intimidate Iran into surrender. Now that Iran has called his bluff, Trump is faced with the humiliating choices of either TACO-ing out or allowing the US military machine to be exposed in a disastrous war of attrition….

“Trump is one wrong move away from imploding his administration, and his legacy along with it. An Iran war would likely also send oil prices skyrocketing, handing Russia a massive boon that would nullify virtually every hostile economic action against its energy sector of the past year, and ensuring another huge boost to the Russian SMO efforts.

“Trump is left with few good options: we can only assume he will have to take a major compromise on Iran while gussying it up in his now-infamous style into some kind of “victory”. More than likely, he’ll lie by twisting the result of the “deal” into something it actually isn’t by announcing major restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment which will be gross exaggerations of the contractual reality; this has been the precedent that has defined Trump’s elliptical style during his second term.”

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

‘Batshit Authoritarianism’: Trump Allies Drafting Order to Give Him ‘Extraordinary Power Over Voting’

Brad Reed, February 26, 2026 [CommonDreams]

A group of right-wing activists is crafting an executive order that would let President Donald Trump unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the order being drafted by Trump allies would give him “extraordinary power over voting,” even though the US Constitution explicitly gives individual states the powers to run their own elections.

An advocate for the order, Florida attorney Peter Ticktin, acknowledged in an interview with the Post that the Constitution does not give the president any role in shaping elections, but he said Trump needed to act to prevent China from supposedly interfering with American elections.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin said. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes. That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”

The activists drafting the emergency order said that they are working in coordination with the White House….

Trump Says He’s ‘Entitled’ to Illegal Third Term as Allies Draft Voter Suppression Decree

On Friday, Democracy Docket published an April 2025 version of the draft order provided by a Trump ally, which the outlet described as “riddled with errors.”

Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms

Doug Bock Clark, February 28, 2026 [propublica.org]

…According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting. …

ICE Whistleblower Confirms What We Already Knew This Week in Democracy, Feb 27,

While testifying before Congress, an ICE whistleblower sounded the alarm on the agency’s “deficient, defective, and broken” training program for new deportation officers.

Ryan Schwank, who previously worked as an ICE lawyer in the department’s training academy, noted the standard 584-hour training program had been cut by 240 hours, and he received “secretive orders” to teach new recruits “to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.”

….Later, as part of his new role combating the so-called “war on fraud,” Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration will withhold $259 million in Medicaid payments for Minnesota – another move driven by anti-Somali racism.

Cuban man’s death at El Paso tent camp was result of “spontaneous use of force,” ICE says 

[Texas Tribune, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

Witness who saw friend fatally shot by immigration agent in Texas last year dies in car accident 

[AP, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

High school students protesting ICE remain jailed days after police assault in Pennsylvania 

[WSWS, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

Monopoly Round-Up: Trump Loses on Tariffs, Has His ‘Withdrawal from Afghanistan’ Moment

Matt Stoller

Trump’s DHS kills again–this time a US citizen and a blind immigrant

Dean Obeidallah, Feb 26, 2026

There are two reasons why Trump’s Department of Homeland (DHS) agents—be they ICE or Customs Border Patrol (CBP)—so easily kill people. First, they have been told by Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and others in the Trump regime that they are immune from criminal prosecution. And second, Trump, Vance, Miller and others have dehumanized immigrants—and even US citizens who oppose them—to the dangerous point that they don’t view them as human beings….

The most recent horrific case involves the death of Shah Alam, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee in Buffalo, New York. Alam–who has only been in the United States since 2024—doesn’t speak English, is blind and per his family can’t use a cellphone nor does he know his family’s phone number….

CBP knew that Alam didn’t speak English, they knew he was blind, they even knew he had a lawyer given they just picked him up from prison. Add to that the CBP’s statement admits they knew where Alam lived, noting they dropped him at “a location near his last known address.” (A random coffee shop miles from his house,)

Well then why not drop him at his actual last address?! Or why not simply make a phone call to his family or lawyer!? As Alam’s son told the press, “Nobody told me or my family or attorney where my dad was dropped off.”

Shortly thereafter the family filed a missing person’s report when their father could not be located. But sadly he was discovered days later dead. The exact circumstances surrounding his death are still unclear….

Bufalo Mayor Sean Ryan noted in a statement, “A vulnerable man − nearly blind and unable to speak English − was left alone on a cold winter night with no known attempt to leave him in a safe, secure location,” He added, “That decision from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unprofessional and inhumane.”

Journalists Jailed by ICE Are Revealing the Horrors of Incarceration 

[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 02-22-2025]

ICE Took Their Papers—and Won’t Give Them Back 

[Mother Jones, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

Trump Cheers Lethal Doxxing 

Ken klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

…From the killing of Bin Laden in 2011 to the present, the US (and Israel) have conducted more and more regular decapitation strikes, a method of warfare that is nothing like the many failed attempts to take down Saddam Hussein. Aided by ubiquitous surveillance, tippy-Top Secret techniques, and artificial intelligence, individuals can now be found and tracked in real time….

What Trump celebrated in the State of the Union—and what no one has really named—is this practice that I call lethal doxxing: the acquisition of someone’s most sensitive personal information revealing their up-to-the-moment location, followed by the lethal part. It’s doxxing at nation-state scale, with a kill chain attached….

And as with Internet doxxing, the information age has made this easier than at any point in human history. Maybe that’s why ICE is so paranoid about it, treating doxxing as a life-or-death threat to their officers.

The killing of Mexican cartel leader “El Mencho” is just the latest indication of a quiet shift toward lethal doxxing as a routine instrument of diplomacy, statecraft, warfare, or even just revenge. That shift, scarcely discussed at all in the mainstream, has taken place for reasons that make it likely to outlive the Trump administration….

Trump’s ICE is now holding a political prisoner for one year—and unless we speak up, she won’t be the last!

Dean Obeidallah, Feb 22, 2026

Donald Trump’s ICE is doing exactly what he wants. And now they are holding a political prisoner for nearly a year in an ICE detention camp simply because 33-year-old Leqaa Kordia dared to champion views the Trump regime opposes. This should concern all Americans especially given the recent warning from concentration camp expert Andrea Pitzer—who explained on my SiriusXM show that history tells the Trump regime building massive ICE detention camps will ultimately be used to imprison political prisoners….

That is why the case Leqaa Kordia demands far more attention given it’s a sneak preview of what we can expect from Trump for not just immigrants–but also U.S. citizens. Leqaa is a 33-year-old Palestinian woman with family in Gaza and the United States. Her mother is a US citizen living in Paterson, New Jersey—which is where Leqaa was staying and working as a waitress until she taken by ICE….

Trump’s War on the Constitution

Josh Marshall, February 27, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

It’s a cliché and more or less true that the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” language can mean whatever Congress wants it to mean. That is not only because in this area Congress’ decision-making is certainly un-reviewable. It is because the Constitution’s writers were intentionally expansive in their definition. They were most focused not on statutory crimes but misrule. I wanted to take a moment to note that what we have unfolding in Minnesota is really a definitional impeachable offense.

I say this with no expectation that he will be charged with it, let alone convicted and removed from office, certainly not under Republican rule. But these are precisely the kinds of abuses of power, unconstitutional actions, that are most squarely within the impeachment mechanism’s meaning.

President Trump first undertook what amounts to an invasion of the state, with poorly trained and abusive paramilitaries creating menace, mayhem and death. The aim of this action was to terrorize and dominate the state. It wasn’t about immigration enforcement. Now, having been forced to scale back at least the visibility of their invasion of the state, they are resorting to cutting off budgetary support for social services programs. This money is distributed pursuant to congressional law. The executive branch has no right to impound it based on some vague definition of not being a good “custodian” of the money.

I don’t expect to get much disagreement when I say these are illegitimate actions. I doubt even the administration expects this decision to withstand judicial scrutiny. These are abuses that go far beyond statutes or criminal law. The president is elected to see that the laws are carried out, ensure the national defense and prosperity and provide civilian leadership of the armed forces. He has no right to go to war with states or regions he disagrees with politically, or has a vendetta against, or to try to coerce or punish them into compliance.

The fact that Trump won’t be impeached for this, at least not this year, shouldn’t obscure the fact that he should be, that these are the basic forms of misrule that merit removal from office, that quite apart from the statutory legality of specific actions, the entire class of actions — coercion by violence and theft of funding — is ruled out entirely.

Donald Trump, Jeff Epstein and the Politics of Impunity TPM

Josh Marshall, February 23, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 22, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Don’t Be Fooled By the Corrupt Court’s Tariff Decision

Josh Marshall, February 20, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

The depth of the Supreme Court’s corruption has forced us to find new language to describe its actions. Today’s decision, undoing Trump’s massive array of tariffs that upended the global financial system, is a case in point.

We say the Court “struck down” these tariffs. But that wording is inadequate and misleading. These tariffs were always transparently illegal. Saying the actions were “struck down” suggests at least a notional logic which the Court disagreed with, or perhaps one form of standing practice and constitutional understanding away from which the Court decided to chart another course. Neither is remotely the case. There’s no ambiguity in the law in question. Trump assumed a unilateral power to “find” a national emergency and then used this (transparently fraudulent) national emergency to exercise powers the law in question doesn’t even delegate….

This is a case where the legal merits of the President’s action were just too transparently bogus even for this Court to manage and — critically — his actions and the theories undergirding his claims to the power were, for the Corrupt majority, inconvenient. The architect of the current Court — the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo — was behind the litigation that undid the tariffs. That tells you all you need to know. In this case Trump’s claim to power was neither in the interests of the Republican Party — the Court’s chief jurisprudential interest — nor any of their anti-constitutional doctrines. So of course they tossed it out. This may sound ungenerous. It’s simple reality.

Indeed, today’s decision is actually an indictment of the Court. These tariffs have been in effect for almost a year. They have upended whole sectors of the U.S. and global economies. The fact that a president can illegally exercise such powers for so long and with such great consequences for almost a year means we’re not living in a functional constitutional system. If the Constitution allows untrammeled and dictatorial powers for almost one year, massive dictator mulligans, then there is no Constitution.

Part of the delay of this ruling is the fact that most major corporations were afraid to bring litigation because they didn’t want to go to war with the president. But that’s also an indictment of the Supreme Court’s corruption. Because they made clear early on that there was little, if any, limit they would impose on Trump’s criminality or use of government power to impose retribution on constitutionally protected speech or litigation. So that’s on the Court too. But it’s only part of the equation. The Court also allowed the tariffs to remain in place while the government appealed the appellate decision striking down the tariffs back in August. Let me repeat that: back in August, almost six months ago.

In other words, most of the time in which these illegal tariffs were in effect was because of that needless stay. The logic of the stay was that deference to President’s claim of illegal powers was more important than the harm created by hundreds of billions in unconstitutional taxes being imposed on American citizens. It’s a good example of what law professor Leah Litman — one of the most important voices on the Court’s corruption — earlier this morning called the Court’s corruption via “passivity,” empowering anti-constitutional actions through deciding not to act at all or encouraging endless delays it could easily put a stop to in the interests of the constitutional order….

The Supreme Court Fractures While Striking Down Trump’s Tariff Policy

Matt Ford, February 20, 2026 [The New Republic]

It may look like the justices made a clean break with the president, but the mess the conservative bloc made for itself raises some major questions….

The six-justice majority brought together the court’s three liberal members and three of their conservative colleagues: Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. But while they agreed on the outcome, they differed widely on the reasoning that led them there….

Roberts, on the other hand, argued alongside the other two conservatives that the tariffs were invalid under the “major questions doctrine.” Under that doctrine, the executive branch cannot invoke congressionally delegated powers in novel ways on matters of “vast economic and political significance” unless the courts decide that Congress has “spoken clearly” enough to authorize it.

In practice, the major questions doctrine has served one real purpose: It’s given the court’s conservative justices a freewheeling veto over Obama and Biden administration policies over the past decade. The doctrine has also received criticism in legal circles for its lack of a firm jurisprudential basis, for the uneven ways in which the court applies it, and for its vague and insubstantial nature. (What is a matter of “vast economic and political significance,” and what isn’t?)

While the differences between the justices may seem arcane, the implications for the court’s jurisprudence could be significant. The court’s conservatives missed a chance to bolster the doctrine’s legitimacy by applying it to a Republican president for the first time. Their failure also exposed fissures among the conservatives over the nature of the major questions doctrine itself….

We Won? The Supreme Court Checked Trump? That’s what happened, right?

Christopher Armitage, Feb 21, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

…The media frames the 6-3 vote as evidence of cracks forming between conservative justices. Look at what the split actually is. Three conservatives said IEEPA authorizes tariffs. Three said it does not because the statute does not use the word. Nobody on either side said the president lacks the authority to impose tariffs. The disagreement is over which form to fill out.

But the Court did not even strike down all the tariffs. It struck down roughly half. Everything imposed under Section 232 and Section 301 never went before the Court at all. Fifty percent on steel. Fifty percent on aluminum. Twenty-five percent on every imported car. Fifty percent on copper.(5) All still in effect. The effective tariff rate dropped from 16.9% to roughly 9.1%, and 9.1% is still the highest since 1946.(6) The Tax Foundation estimates the surviving tariffs alone will cost American households $400 a year and raise $635 billion over the next decade.(5) Not one headline I have found leads with the fact that half the tariffs survived untouched….

The Quiet Architect of Trump’s Global Trade War

[New York Times, via The Big Picture, February 20, 2026]

Jamieson Greer, a low-key lawyer from a working-class background, is rewriting the rules of the global economy at the president’s behest.

Trump EPA strips legal bedrock supporting clean energy

[Renewable Energy Magazine, via Clean Power Roundup, February 17, 2026]

President Donald J. Trump has announced the single largest deregulatory action in American history: the full revocation of the Obama-era “Endangerment Finding” and the consumer mandates that depend on it. The move could dismantle the legal justification for federal solar incentives and emissions standards.

Poll finds half of Americans describe Trump as ‘corrupt’ ‘racist’ and ‘cruel’

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sent this in an email earlier today.

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark Age 

Chris Hedges, February 16, 2026

…Francesca was placed by the Trump administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of the U.S. Treasury Department — normally used to sanction those accused of money laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations — six days after the release of her report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” which documented the global corporations that make billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinians.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control list — weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — bans her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from having her as a client. A bank engages in financial transactions with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S. are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant….

Credit cards cancelled, Google accounts closed: ICC judges on life under Trump sanctions 

[The Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 02-19-2025]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 15, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Why The Epstein Scandal Is Really A Billionaire Scandal – Barry’s Economics (YouTube)

Barry Ferns, Feb 8, 2026 [YouTube]

Everyone thinks Jeffrey Epstein was an aberration. The science says he was inevitable. This video breaks down the neuroscience, psychology, and economics that explain how extreme wealth concentration doesn’t just create inequality. but manufactures monsters.

00:00 – Introduction: The Elephant in the Room

02:04 – Part One: Power Rewires the Brain

03:30 – Part Two: The Empathy Gap and Isolation

05:19 – Part Three: Moral Licensing

08:13 – Part Four: Structural Impunity

10:50 – Part Five: Manufacturing Vulnerability

12.54 – Part Six: The Epstein Economy

15:53 – Stand-up Comedy Relief

The Epstein class and collapse porn 

Cory Doctorow, 09 Feb 2026 [Pluralistic]

… The latest batch of Epstein emails includes a particularly ghoulish exchange between Epstein and his business partner, the anti-democracy activist and billionaire Peter Thiel:

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00824843.pdf

The email is dated 26 Jun 2016, right after Brexit, and in it, Epstein writes:

• “… return to tribalism . counter to globalization. amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, as i said in your office. finding things on their way to collapse , was much easier than finding the next bargain….”

This is a perfect example of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” It’s been the norm since the crash of 2008, when bankers were made whole through public bailouts and mortgage holders were evicted by the millions to “foam the runway” for the banks:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

The crash of 2008 turned a lot of people’s homes – their only substantial possessions – into “distressed assets” that were purchased at fire-sale prices by Wall Street investors, who turned around and rented those homes out to people who were now priced out of the housing market at rents that kept them too poor to ever afford a home, under slum conditions that crawled with insects and black mold:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/

Note here that economic collapse helps the Epstein class only if society has no social safety net. If Obama had supported homeowners instead of banks, there wouldn’t have been a foreclosure crisis and thus there wouldn’t have been any “distressed assets” flooding the market.

So it’s no surprise that the Epstein class are also obsessed with austerity. Peter Mandelson (British Labour’s “Prince of Darkness”) is a close ally of Epstein’s, and also a key figure in the crushing austerity agenda of Blair, Brown and Starmer. He’s a machine for turning Parliamentary majorities into distressed assets at scale….

The thousand-plus children that Epstein lured to his island rape-camp were often “distressed assets” in their own right: Julie K Brown’s groundbreaking reporting on Epstein for the Miami Herald described how he sought out children whose parents were poor, or neglectful, or both, on the grounds that those children would be “on their way to collapse,” too.

The Epstein class’s commitment to destroying “The Economy” makes sense when you understand that trashing civilization is “much easier than finding the next bargain.” They want to buy the dip, so they’re creating the dip.

They don’t need the whole number to go up, just theirs. They know that inclusive economies are more prosperous for society as a whole, but it makes criminals and predators worse off. The New Deal kicked off a period of American economic growth never seen before or since, but the rich despised it, because a prosperous economy is one in which it gets harder and harder to find “things on their way to collapse,” and thus nearly impossible to “find[] the next bargain.”

[TW: On October 30, 2025 Patriotic Millionaires posted a summary of modern studies which prove the corrupting power of wealth. But the problem of the psycho-pathology of the rich has been known for centuries:

[“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” is repeated three times in the New Testament, in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25.

[In The Spirit of Laws, Book 5. Chapter 5, ”In what Manner the Laws establish Equality in a Democracy,” Montesquieu warned for “men of overgrown estates, everything which does not contribute to advance their power and honor is considered by them as an injury.…” ]

Why Do the Epstein Files Matter? An Expert on the Elites Explains Why

Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo, Feb 05, 2026 [via Naked Capitalism 02-10-2025]

In this can’t-miss ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, the Financial Times’ US editor and veteran columnist Edward Luce takes Mehdi on a deep dive into what it all means, and the who’s-who of those that appeared in the files, from Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Howard Lutnick, to Elon Musk, Noam Chomsky, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak….

During the wide-ranging interview, the Mehdi and Luce also discuss:

• The world leader that could be brought down by the latest release of the Epstein files (hint: it’s not Trump!)
• Epstein’s deep involvement with Israeli and Russian intelligence services
• Why Joe Biden and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t do anything with these incriminating Epstein files when they were in office….

“It’s an MRI of how things work in a culture where shame has vanished,” Luce tells Mehdi.

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