Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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Open Thread

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On September 19, 2026

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Information Overlord: AI Doomers Up to No Good, House of Saud or House of Cards?

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On September 18, 2026

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Nat Wilson Turner = Information Overlord = Flames Up = Phones Out = No Sense of Urgency

From me this week

From me at the Let It Roll Podcast

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw

Me Elsewhere

AI Bubble

Iran War

  • Steve Jermy: End of U.S. Military Primacy – New Strategic Thinking Required — YouTube
  • Republican launches impeachment effort against Pete Hegseth over Iran war — USA Today. “Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle/She’ll come back as fire to burn all the liars/Leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
  • Experts Declare Fuel Crisis Imminent as Global Wars Choke Out Supply — Simplicius. “This type of short-sighted, bumbling diplomacy is like haphazardly putting out random fires one at a time, all while inadvertently starting new ones. Trump thinks the US can act recklessly hostile against the entire world, unscrupulously supplying weapons to Ukraine to destroy major sectors of Russian infrastructure, ruthlessly attacking Iran, etc., and then wonders why the blowback is starting to poison the domestic economy.”
  • The Collapse of American Hegemony and Global Nuclear Risks — The Unz Review. “Raised in a family of Iranian exiles, Trita Parsi came from a background that was less than friendly towards the Islamic Republic. A few years ago, he became co-founder and vice president of the very respectable Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. That organization advocates realism and restraint in foreign policy, with its major donors being leading American foundations, including Open Society, Koch, Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. “And as Parsi explained in a recent interview, “The United States and Israel threw everything they had at Iran and they failed. As a result, the Iranians are far more confident in their capabilities than they were before.” Meanwhile, regional trust in America had completely collapsed, with the GCC countries recognizing that America could not protect them against Iranian retaliation.”
  • The End of the American Middle East — Foreign Affairs. “The American Middle East is finished. The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 has been one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region. And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security partnership.”
  • Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail — Foreign Affairs. “Trump’s War Has Brought American Strategy to a Dead End”
  • Alastair Crooke: West Asia Is Incubating a New Era of Revolutions — “A Decisive and Historic Stage” — YouTube

Ukraine

  • Ukraine: “It’s not a tragedy it’s a crime” — YouTube. “I’ve lived in Ukraine for 5 years. I’ve had a lot of Ukrainian friends, even if I’ve probably lost all of them because we see things very differently now. But still, I actually take Ukraine very seriously. I know the language. And it’s it’s not a tragedy. It’s a crime how ordinary Ukrainians are being sacrificed by their puppet regime and by Western governments who have a sick dream of inflicting a geopolitical setback on Russia. It’s a sick dream under any circumstances. What makes it even more insane is it’s totally futile. In the end, hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million Ukrainians will be dead and they on top of it will lose the war. And this is what von der Leyen wants to go on for even longer. Unbelievable. And in this case, Lavrov made some extraordinary statement about the legitimacy of the Ukrainian statehood itself.”
  • Ukraine Will Be a Cancer on Europe and Russia. Iran a Quagmire for the USA | Amb. Chas Freeman — YouTube. Ambassador Freeman is one of the few wise men left.

Saudi Oil Crisis

Gaza

Israel

Palestine

  • The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Pro-Palestine Israeli — Alon Mizrahi. “We are not the victims here, the story is not about us, and we by no means can replace Palestinian voices. Still, the truth is what it is, and you pay a price for being an anti-Zionist Israeli/Jew”

US Politics

Elections 2026

Economy

  • The Structural Incentives Of Western Capitalism Make Competing With China Impossible — Ian Welsh. “The reason VW and other German firms made so much money in China for so long is that they had, brace for it, better cars. More technologically advanced. Better handling. “But…they didn’t try and keep that lead. They let the Chinese beat them by refusing to properly re-invest their profits. “This is a constant problem in the West: our elites don’t want to compete on price. They don’t want to compete on quality. They want “moats” — they want monopoly profits just for existing.”

Ari Emanuel

Sports Business

Music

Alt Media

Predictive markets

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Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 2

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On September 16, 2026

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With the toxic and stupid Trump 2.0 regime collapsing in the polls and the useless Democratic establishment licking their chops at the prospect of another electoral gimme in 2026, it’s more important than ever to rub shitlibs’ faces in the abysmal and inexcusable record of the murderous Biden administration.

If we keep voting blue no matter who, we’re gonna keep getting what we got.

In the interest of the public good, therefore, I make my humble offering, attempting to chronicle the three mass death events the senile husk of Joe Biden nominally presided over in his four years in the White House.

I covered COVID first. That was a debacle that many Democrats exclusively blame on Donald Trump and many GOPers and Independents have concluded was a hoax or some shit, but the reality is (as brilliantly documented by Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism in real time) that Biden’s deliberately negligent policies resulted in the death and disabling of over one million Americans.

Next I covered Biden’s role in provoking the Ukraine War from 1992-2008 as a powerful US Senator who never met a war that didn’t give him a stiffy.

Now we’re going to get to the grit, because Vice-President Biden had Ukraine as part of his portfolio under POTUS Obama from 2009-2016 and we all know what he did as President, even if some dumbasses still insist he bears no responsibility for the disaster he spent decades making.

No, Ukraine Is Not ‘Winning’

First I want to establish some facts about the current state of consensus reality by citing some very pro-Ukraine, pro-war authorities who are throwing in the towel.

I’m going to save a few thousand words by using images of the relevant headlines.

Up first, from The Spectator (UK) one of the most blood-thirsty, Russia-hating publications in the English speaking world:

From the “liberal” Wall Street Journal:

From former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s made killing Russians his passion project for years now, in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post (who had to give it multiple headlines so as not to upset sensitive pro-war liberal readers):

HT Simplicius

With that out of the way, let’s get into the time machine, loser, and go back with me to a time when a young Black President that so many Americans had invested with their “Hope and Change” fantasies needed to have an old racist white guy next to him at all times to make idiots and assholes feel comfortable patting themselves on the back for voting for a Black president.

And note, the point isn’t to excuse Putin for his actions. I’m not Russian, Putin’s not my responsibility. I do have the sense to treat Russia with respect, because I’m a student of history and I don’t know of a single instance where fucking with Russia ever ended up in anything but disaster whether for the Swedish Empire, Napoleon’s France, or Hitler’s Germany.

I’m an American and I’m concerned with the conduct of the elected officials who are supposed to be representing me.

Get In, Loser, We’re Going to Kyiv

Biden wasted no time in building upon the disastrous actions of the Bush/Cheney regime at the 2008 Bucharest summit which called for Georgia and Ukraine to be invited to join NATO. By July 2009, on his first trip to Ukraine as Vice-President Biden was already in Kyiv (we spelled it Kiev back then) lecturing Ukraine’s leadership and then flying off to Tbilisi telling them that NATO membership would be cost free (this is after they’d already had their heads cracked in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War that followed immediately on the heels of the Bucharest summit. Anyone remember John McCain saying “We’re all Georgians now”, as he tried to campaign for President on his desire to drag America into a war in a place few had heard of?).

Here’s some of what Biden said on that first visit to Kyiv in 2009, per the Christian Science Monitor which gave Biden that kind of tough guy headline (“Biden’s tough love for Ukraine”) that got him all riled up and gropy with the females on his staff:

Vice President Joe Biden had some surprisingly pointed comments for Ukrainians yesterday.

Speaking in front of 400 Ukrainians in a speech that was billed as an address to the nation’s citizens, Biden chastised Ukrainian officials for, among other things, their immaturity in dealing with inter-party conflicts. Evoking poet Taras Shevchenko, a national icon, Biden said Shevchenko would likely “be wondering why the government is not exhibiting the same political maturity as the people.”

Reforms have stalled and political bickering has become widespread after Ukraine‘s 2004 Orange Revolution. Coupled with neighboring Georgia‘s Rose Revolution a year earlier, the Orange Revolution was a source of hope for Western countries that democracy could take hold in states of the former Soviet Union.

Frustrated by the stalemate and lack of progress, Ukrainians have showed signs of throwing their support to opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich, a move that would more closely align the country with Russia and, according to some, could tip the country back toward authoritarian rule.

Biden’s remarks seem to indicate that Ukrainians aren’t the only ones who are frustrated. The vice president was expected to address Washington’s concerns only behind closed doors, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the weight of his public remarks were unexpected.

“Centuries from now, what will Ukrainians say of this time?” he said. “What will they say of their leaders? Will they say they returned to the past, or will they say the beginning of the 21st century launched a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But lest the news out of Ukraine been seen as all harsh, Biden was also overheard praising the country’s women. “It’s certain you have so many beautiful women,” Biden is reported to have told President Viktor Yushchenko at an unscheduled visit to a Kiev pub.

What a charmer. Note that bit about the “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia. At the time I thought all that shit was organic and awesome. I also thought Gene Sharp was the greatest man since Gandhi.

I’d love to get a poll of Ukrainians today on whether they think following the US and NATO down the garden path to war with Russia was “the beginning of…a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But let’s keep moving.

How’d That Russian Fleet Get In Crimea? Oh Yea, Legally

Turns out the Ukrainians did, in fact, democratically elect the pro-Russian President Yanukovych. Biden’s visits to the country cease for the full duration of Yanukovych’s term.

Yanukovych signed something called the Kharkiv Pact, which extended the Russian Navy’s lease on Sevastopol for 25 years to 2042 in return for a major discount on natural gas. The Accord easily survived an opposition attempt to renounce it in 2013 in the Rada.

The Yanukovych administration also oversaw the passage of a law that forbade Ukraine from entering into military alliances with anyone. Neutrality is always the first step to fascism, war, and disaster, as all Swiss people know.

2013: Ukraine Caught Between the EU and Russia in Trade Tug of War

Shit hit the fan in November 2013 when Yanukovych backed out of the EU Association Agreement, suggesting instead the “creation of a tripartite commission of Ukraine, the EU and Russia, which would work to remove barriers in mutual economic cooperation and trade liberalisation.”

Yanukovych’s reasons couldn’t have been more sinister and inexplicable, per the OSW:

In the context of the upcoming presidential elections in early 2015, where victory is a priority for Ukraine’s ruling elite, President Viktor Yanukovych’s most important task is to stabilise the increasingly difficult economic situation. To this end, it is necessary to ensure Ukrainian goods’ continued access to the Russian market, and to guarantee external financial support. The Ukrainian government is hoping that, in exchange for the postponement of its rapprochement with the EU, it will manage to come to an agreement with Russia on the issue of a stabilising loan and renegotiating the gas contract.

The crazy cat also blamed the IMF for the collapse of the deal with the EU — and certainly everyone knows that the economic hitmen at the IMF and their ilk only bring prosperity in their wake — per the NYT:

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov of Ukraine told enraged opposition lawmakers on Friday that his government’s decision to walk away from far-reaching political and trade agreements with the European Union was based on fiscal imperatives, and ultimately prompted by the International Monetary Fund’s overly harsh terms for an aid package.
…

Protests against the government’s decision were held in several Ukrainian cities, including Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine and a hotbed of anti-Yanukovich sentiment, where more than 5,000 people joined a rally in the main square, led by Mayor Andriy Sadovy. Kiev, the capital, was pulsing with emotion that officials and commentators said they had not seen since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

On Friday evening, about 1,000 people protested in the rain in Independence Square, the revolution’s central gathering point, waving European Union flags and chanting, “Ukraine is Europe!” A bigger rally was set for Sunday. The jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, issued a statement urging people “to react to this as they would to a coup d’état” and take to the streets.

Note that it was western Ukraine that was the hotbed of protest. Good old Western Ukraine, home of legendary freedom-lovers.

Maidan Protests, Entirely Organic, Break Out

I’ll use the definitely not edited by the CIA Wikipedia entry on the Maidan Protests to tell the next part of the story:

The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government.[90] Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations,[91] and the influence of oligarchs.[92] Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.[93] The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger.[5] Euromaidan was the largest democratic mass movement in Europe since 1989[94] and led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

During the uprising, Independence Square (Maidan) in Kyiv was a huge protest camp occupied by thousands of protesters and protected by makeshift barricades. It had kitchens, first aid posts and broadcasting facilities, as well as stages for speeches, lectures, debates and performances.[95][96] It was guarded by ‘Maidan Self-Defense’ units made up of volunteers in improvised uniform and helmets, carrying shields and armed with sticks, stones and petrol bombs. Protests were also held in many other parts of Ukraine. In Kyiv, there were clashes with police on 1 December; and police assaulted the camp on 11 December. Protests increased from mid-January, in response to the government introducing draconian anti-protest laws. There were deadly clashes on Hrushevsky Street on 19–22 January. Protesters then occupied government buildings in many regions of Ukraine. The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters and 13 police.[71]

And about those protests, much like the 2004 Orange Revolution, I’d love to see the US State Department’s books on how much of the $5 billion Obama (and Bush and Clinton and later Biden) State Department official Victoria Nuland bragged about investing in Ukraine between 1991 and 2013 went to that kind of crap. I think there are some words for when one country spends immense fortunes to cause civil unrest in other countries; oh yea, it’s called subversion. Unless the US is doing it, then it’s just spreading freedom and democracy to a grateful world.

Crazy that some Ukrainians still wanted to be neutral and do business with Russia, who offered $15 billion in cash and a massive reduction in what Ukraine paid for natural gas. Evil Rooskies. Always up to something sneaky like that.

America’s investments in peace and democracy were bearing their fruits in the Maidan Protests in Kyiv, but a bipartisan pair of peace-loving US Senators went to the Ukrainian capital to help those fruits ripen even faster.

John McCain (R-Hell) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) addressed a crowd estimated at ~200,000 people saying, “We are here to support your just cause… And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”

McCain shared these noble sentiments while standing shoulder to shoulder with one of Western Ukraine’s most notorious freedom lovers:

Those Putin-puppets at FAIR were still bitching about it in 2018, when then-Washington Post columnist (and current never-Trump freedom lover and Substacker) Jennifer Rubin got to singing McCain’s praises for his sterling human rights record, under an unfortunately chosen photo:

The Washington Post (8/27/18) published an op-ed by conservative staff opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin praising the late Sen. John McCain for his supposed commitment to “human rights.”

Rubin waxed poetic on the ostensible “lost champion” of human rights, who “model[ed] for others the behavior of a free society.” She declared, quite paradoxically, “With the possible exception of the US military…no group was more indebted to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) than the human rights community.”

There was an, er, optical problem, however: For the header image on this column, the Washington Post used a photo of McCain speaking next to the notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok.

Tyahnybok, a longtime fascist, has called for a war on the so-called “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” (BBC, 12/26/12). The far-right leader has attacked the role of “Jews-Bolsheviks” in his country’s history, and claims that there is still today a cabal of “Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine” (JTA, 3/25/09).

John McCain met with Tyahnybok and stood next to him as the senator gave a speech in Ukraine in late 2013, as Business Insider (12/16/13) reported at the time. The Washington Post indicated in the caption on its header image that McCain was “wav[ing] to protesters during a mass rally of the opposition in Kiev, Ukraine, on December 15, 2013.” But it failed to identify the man standing next to the Arizona senator—or his extremist politics, which are the antithesis of human rights.

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Open Thread

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On September 12, 2026

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Use to discuss topics not covered in recent posts.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 13, 2026

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On September 9, 2026

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 13, 2026
by Tony Wikrent

 

How the EU is using anti-Russia sanctions to criminalise journalism

Hüseyin Dogru,  September 6, 2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

The EU sanctioned me and my media outlet for covering Palestine protests in Germany.

 

War on voting

The Final Battle for America’s Democracy

Michael Luttig, September 10, 2026 [The New Republic]
[Summarized in link below, plus more.]

Letters from an American, September 12, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, September 12, 2026

On Thursday, in The New Republic, conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published a dire warning to the Republican Party…and to all Americans. In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. “The coming crisis,” the piece says, would be “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

Luttig spelled out that Trump is fighting a war against America’s democracy. While the refusal of Vice President Mike Pence to assist his power grab made it fail in January 2021, Luttig notes, today Trump and his Republican congressional allies are more determined than ever to take over the country.

Luttig focuses on the ability of House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to prevent the recognition of duly-elected Democratic representatives on January 3. Johnson has the power, Luttig says, to remove the current House clerk, Kevin McCumber, and replace him temporarily with a MAGA loyalist who will refuse to list Democrats on the roll of those elected to the 120th Congress.

In this scenario, once Democrats are eliminated, they will have to get a federal court to order the temporary clerk to list their names. If a court does so, another crisis point will arrive if the clerk simply refuses to obey the order. Then it’s possible the courts will stay out of the fight until the 120th Congress formally convenes and the Republicans vote not to seat the Democrats. That vote would be reviewable by the courts, including the Supreme Court.

But that review would take weeks, if not months, paralyzing the United States and leaving the country “helplessly vulnerable to all the world’s evil, as it would have been in January 2021 had Mike Pence not thwarted Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” And at that point, how would the current Supreme Court answer the question: “Is the United States of America a democracy, in which ‘We the People’ elect our representatives to the Congress and to the presidency, or is it not?”

As if to illustrate Luttig’s warning, House speaker Johnson told attendees at Trump’s convention in Dallas on Thursday: “We cannot and will not allow them to take the majority in the Congress. We’re not gonna do it.”

Trump’s attempt to use the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in voting has recently had a test run. Yesterday, Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket picked up a story from Jeff Berlew of the Tallahassee Democrat to report that the USPS rejected mailed ballots from Leon County, in Florida, because the words “return service requested” were only 0.236 inches from the election office’s return address. They were supposed to be a full quarter-inch apart. So, the delivery of those mail in ballots came down to a federal complaint about a spacing issue of 0.014 of an inch.

“It’s ridiculous,” Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley told Berlew. But, as Saksa notes, the rejection of ballots for such a petty flaw shows what will likely happen if the Supreme Court lifts the injunction blocking the postal service from implementing the new rules it has put in place since Trump ordered such interference in a March executive order.

On Thursday, September 10, Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump has sent threatening letters to at least thirty top election officials in the states, warning that those officials “are currently under investigation” and are subject to “ongoing litigation,” and so must not destroy any records relating to the 2024 election. As Corasaniti notes, the administration has sued 30 states for their voter lists and has lost 23 of the cases and won none. Trump has claimed to be the victim of voter fraud since the 2016 primaries but has never produced any proof of his claims.

In July, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division in the DOJ, threatened state election officials with criminal prosecution if any noncitizens cast a ballot in their state (although it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote), and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin threatened election officials with criminal prosecution if they did not put Trump’s election changes into effect….

 

Voting Rights Groups Are Preparing to Confront ICE at the Polls

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 09-07-2026]

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Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine, Part 1

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On September 9, 2026

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This is the first of two parts of the second part of a longer three part series. Part one covered COVID.

POTUS Joe Biden wasn’t just a senile fool who insisted on running for re-election when obviously senile, costing the Democrats the 2024 Presidential election and giving us Trump 2.0, he was also the nominal architect of three mass-death events that rank with this awful Century’s worst.

So yea, I’m back to hammering nails in the dying ghoul’s coffin so people don’t forget what he was and what he (or the administration with his name on it) did.

Last time I pounded home the Biden administration’s horrific, criminally negligent responsibility for ~1M deaths of American citizens and residents.

This time I’m going to be pounding home the extent to which Biden & co. knowingly provoked Russia into invading Ukraine in February 2022, put the kibosh on a peace deal Russia and Ukraine had allegedly worked out on in April 2022, and squandered massive fortunes pouring money and weapons into the yawning black maw that is Kyiv under Zelensky, and in so doing signed the death warrant of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, mostly the former.

And because the trap that Russian President Vladimir Putin fell into was loaded not only with billions worth of military preparations and massive economic sanctions, but also with the biggest and most brutally effective propaganda campaign of my lifetime (and I lived through the post-9/11 Karl Rove Great War on Terror nightmare as a full-grown ass adult), trying to speak up for a modicum of reason and objectivity got anyone even mildly opposed to the dominant narrative labeled a “Putin puppet” and cast out of polite liberal American society.

That wasn’t new in 2022, of course. By that point we’d enjoyed six years’ worth of RussiaGate panic and the neo-McCarthyism from the establishment shitlibs in charge of the Democratic Party and their “vote blue no matter who” idiot supporters.

Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 presidential campaign kicked off RussiaGate the day after she lost the election to Trump as a great way to distract from how shitty her campaign was and the fact that the Democratic party put its thumb on the scale in her favor against Bernie Sanders, went full-on commie hunter like the ’64 Goldwater girl she once was against Tulsi Gabbard in 2019. Clinton said on Campaign HQ with David Plouffe (that’s former Obama 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe) that the Russians have “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate” and calls her “the favorite of the Russians.”

Gabbard filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit but then dropped it to “defeating Donald Trump in 2020 (ie the future worthless Trump Director of National Intelligence dropped the suit so she could focus on helping Biden beat her future boss. Oh the places you’ll go, indeed.).”

So I should have been hardened to that kind of crap by 2022, but despite Mueller coming up completely empty (“the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”) and RussiaGate adding up to a giant distraction that helped Trump get away with tons of bribe-taking and other real crimes (emoluments clause anyone?) because the Dems only seemed to care about his antics if it interfered with their Ukraine plans or could somehow be linked to Russia and Putin.

I mean if they tried to impeach Trump for taking bribes from foreign countries, that might hit Dem legislative playas like Nancy Pelosi and Bob Menendez right in the wallets.

Finding out later that that bullshit was a psyop from the get-go fills me with rage and I’d love to go all Borger, Texas on any of the fuckers involved should I ever get the chance.

Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story — you know the bombshell pre-election NY Post article that no one could post on Facebook (Zuckerberg later apologized) or share on Twitter (even via DM) which revealed a great deal of lucrative scumbaggery on the part of Hunter Biden, some of it maybe even involving “the old man”, some of which took place in Ukraine where Hunter enjoyed a $50,000/month gig at a natural gas company despite knowing fuck all about natural gas or Ukraine?

Remember how fifty-one former intelligence officials — including James Clapper, Michael Hayden and Leon Panetta — signed a one-paragraph statement saying the laptop story (later confirmed to be true) has “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” They concede in the letter itself that they have no evidence.

Politico ran it as “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.”

In 2023, former acting CIA director Michael Morell told the House Judiciary Committee he organized the letter after a call from Antony Blinken, then a Biden campaign adviser, and that a purpose was to give Biden a “talking point” for the debate. FWIW Blinken denies it was his idea. Since I don’t believe a word that double-genociding mofo says, rest assured I’m just including it for the record.

Blinken, of course, became Biden’s Secretary of State and ran Ukraine policy for four years because of course Sleepy Joe was too senile to run a fucking lemonade stand by 2022.

Did anyone happen to catch the study covered by FAIR showing that American corporate media were seven times more likely to quote think tanks with military-industrial funding than those without? Good times were had gaslighting everyone’s liberal family and friends.

I lost friends, relationships with work colleagues and online friendly acquaintances, and my family, and marital relations were deeply strained by this most epic fucking gaslighting campaign (which was presaged by the Atlantic Council’s John Deni in his Dec, 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine” oh yea, Deni is also a research prof at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute).

And who could forget Ivan Krastev’s Feb. 3, 2022 New York Times op-ed which warned, “Europe Thinks Putin Is Planning Something Even Worse Than War” — and the horror Putin planned?

Why nothing less than a negotiated European security architecture that acknowledges Russian interests. Krastev passionately argued that “an invasion “could, in a perverse way, save the current European order.” And God knows, perversity is what the current European order (and its ruling Epstein class) is all about.

The WSJ and NYT truly know their audiences and the goldfish memories they have because both papers beat the war drums while Putin was begging for negotiations (the Russians even drafted a full signature ready document) and then spent the next three years calling the invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked” and insisting that the rest of the Western MSM media do the same.

But before I can get to hammering on the coffin I’m preparing for Genocide Joe Biden’s reputation and historical standing, I have to cover some historical background.

That ought to chase off all the fucking Americans reading this. Goddamn, it’s crazy-making to be a student of history in the USA in the short-attention-span 2020s. Well, so be it.

This is going to be quick and link heavy because I’m writing a blog post for a topic that merits multiple books.

NATO Stopped Being a Defensive Alliance in the 1990s Under Bill Clinton

Despite assurances to then Soviet Premier Gorbachev from President GHW “Poppy” Bush’s Sec of State James Baker that NATO will not move “one inch eastward” when Gorby allowed German re-unification, NATO moved east even more relentlessly than the Wehrmacht did in 1939-1942.

Just look at this fucking map.

Map of NATO enlargement in Europe since 1949, with member states shaded by the year they joined
NATO enlargement in Europe since 1949. Map by Patrickneil and Spesh531, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

And Bill Clinton (who was busy with other things and barely cared about foreign policy) and his administration (some of whom very much cared about foreign policy and will recur in administration after administration to the present day) were warned by fifty foreign policy veterans (including Robert McNamara, former CIA director Stansfield Turner, Paul Nitze, Jack Matlock, Richard Pipes, and Senators Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Sam Nunn) that NATO’s eastern expansion was “a policy error of historic proportions.”

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Open Thread

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On September 7, 2026

9 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 06, 2026

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On September 6, 2026

19 Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 06, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

Don’t look away any longer – Solidarity with Hüseyin Doğru

[defenddemocracy.press, Aug 30, 2026 ]

 

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

 

A Twenty-Year-Old is Dead Because the United States Government Put a Monitor on His Leg – Pierre Damas Bel, Wright State University, class of 2029

Mike Brock, Sep 03, 2026 [Notes from the Circus]

Pierre Damas Bel was twenty years old. He wanted to be a doctor. He was in JROTC. He graduated high school in May and started at Wright State University in Ohio a few weeks ago. On August 31, he called his father on a video call at 8:03 in the evening and said, “I’m not feeling okay mentally because of the bullying.” His father told him to come home so they could talk. Around eleven that night, police came to his father’s door and said Pierre had parked his car on the shoulder of an interstate in Springfield, Ohio, walked into oncoming traffic, and been hit by a tractor-trailer. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was wearing an ankle monitor. ICE had put it on his leg after summoning him to a mandatory in-person check-in. He had come to the United States as a child under Temporary Protected Status. His parents fled Haiti in 2024 because armed gangs were burning their neighborhood down. The family had a pending asylum case. In late July, the Trump administration terminated Haiti’s TPS designation, putting roughly 350,000 Haitians on notice that the United States government intended to deport them to a country whose capital the United States itself will not fly passenger aircraft into because it is too dangerous. The offer ICE made to the Haitians of Ohio was this: wear a monitor or accept $2,600 and a flight to Port-au-Prince. Pierre wore the monitor.

It was too heavy to play soccer in. It restricted him to a seventy-five-mile radius. It was visible under his clothes. When his JROTC unit distributed uniforms, Pierre did not receive one, and his father believes the omission was because of the device on his leg. Classmates saw it and taunted him. On Instagram in late July, before he died, Pierre wrote: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

His father said Pierre felt like he was treated like an animal.

The Republican Party did this. Not “the system.” Not “policy.” Not “immigration debates.” The Republican Party, as a coordinated political organization, made a set of decisions that produced exactly this outcome at exactly this scale on exactly this timeline. They ran a Vice-Presidential candidate who stood on a debate stage and said Haitians in Springfield were eating pets. He said it knowing it was false. He said it because he wanted an atmosphere. He got the atmosphere. A twenty-year-old walked through that atmosphere with a monitor on his leg for the last few weeks of his life, in that same town, and now he is dead on the shoulder of an interstate….

 

Inside Trump’s Nightmare for Haitians in Springfield: ‘We’re Following Our Orders’ – The most urgent moral test in all of Trump’s America today is happening in a small Ohio city – and we as a country are failing it miserably.

Asawin Suebsaeng, Sep 03, 2026 [Zeteo]

However bad you think things must be in Springfield, Ohio, today, the reality on the ground is worse.

Even if you are looking on, as a distant observer, in disgust at recent headlines (including about the suicide of 20-year-old student Pierre Damas Bel), it is difficult to grasp the scale of what is happening in and around this small Midwest city, and to its Haitian population, their friends, and neighbors.

For years, Donald Trump and his party have waged a protracted campaign of racist lies, fear, and demagoguery on Springfield. This summer, that campaign culminated in the Trump administration’s ICE clampdown in the city, following President Trump’s destruction of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that once shielded the Haitian community. The crackdown – blessed by the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority that this president cemented – is unlike anything else occurring now in Trump and JD Vance’s America.

The president and his allies are orchestrating horror and degradation all over the country. But in Springfield, the heightened level of fear is so widespread, and the state-imposed terror against a vulnerable minority so constant, that it is impossible to see this as anything but the Trump administration’s proof of concept for the president’s militarized vision of what America should be – a place where everyday people are afraid to go outside, in a republic of “law and order” that the federal government meticulously and arbitrarily constructs. It is the latest front in Trump and his party’s mission to codify MAGA’s brand of American racism and sadistic cruelty into law.

 

 

 

Pentagon secretly employs conservative influencers to promote Hegseth, attack critics

[Drop Site Daily, 08-30-2026]

The Pentagon has quietly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings into government roles, including retired colonels Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, without disclosing their assignments, according to The Washington Post.

Maness, Schlichter, and Anderson have published columns and social media posts defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and attacking military critics without disclosing their Pentagon ties.

Maness and Schlichter, who have over 135,000 and nearly 620,000 X followers, respectively, hold active “.civ” government email addresses assigned to the office of Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata, though a Pentagon spokesman declined to say whether any are paid or detail their roles.

WSJ: Pentagon to take stake in Venezuelan oil venture: The Pentagon will reportedly receive a 35% stake in “North American Blue Energy Partners,” run by Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan businessman close to Rodríguez who authorities have investigated after allegations of money laundering.

The stake will come through “penny warrants,” allowing Washington to acquire shares for a token price with little upfront spending. The U.S. could also buy 20% of the company’s future oil output at cost.

 

What Might Happen to Trump’s Ill-Gotten Gains

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 08-30-2026]

 

ICE arrests in San Francisco Bay Area area up nearly 70%, data shows

[ABC 7 Eyewitness News, via Naked Capitalism 08-30-2026]

 

A single signature by Trump can remove you from the internet

[Il Fatto Quotidiano, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2026]

Yesterday the Trump administration hit Autistici/Inventati, a European technology collective whose main activity is providing digital infrastructure, with a banking blockade with PayPal and Banca Etica closing its accounts.

 

Trump’s DOJ Blocked Serious ICE Shooting Charge Over Federal Prosecutor’s “Strongest Possible” Objections

[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 09-04-2026]

 

War on voting

I Doubt You’re Surprised – There’s a whistleblower addressing the USPS plan to implement Trump’s EO on mail ballots

Joyce Vance, Sep 01, 2026 [Civil Discourse]

 

War

U.S. military commanders call Iran war “unsustainable”

Drop Site Daily, September 1, 2026

Four senior U.S. commanders formally warned War Secretary Pete Hegseth that the prolonged Iran operation is unsustainable and is already weakening the military’s ability to confront threats elsewhere, including threats to the U.S. homeland, according to the Washington Post.

The objections appeared in a classified August 14 assessment covering the worldwide availability of U.S. forces and weapons.

Those involved in the warning include the Navy’s top admiral, Daryl Caudle, and the commanders of the European, Southern, and Indo-Pacific commands.

Caudle reportedly warned Hegseth that the Navy cannot maintain its current support for the war indefinitely, with barely one-quarter of the destroyer fleet reportedly ready to deploy.

The Pentagon attacked the publication of the classified information but did not deny that the commanders filed formal objections.

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