Ian Welsh

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

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

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On March 29, 2026

19 Comments

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

Kevin MacDonald, March 22, 2026 [theoccidentalobserver.net]

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

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 03-25-2025]

Incredible quotes in the deleted Telegraph article about the Lebanese Christians supporting Hezbollah. I wonder why they didn’t want their audience to read this:
“We are at war with the Epstein people. The people eating, frying, and raping kids… the worst part is they are the ones that rule the world.”

 

 

It’s Getting Close to Clear How the War Will Turn Out — Data is available now — there aren’t many paths

Thomas Neuburger, Mar 26, 2026 [God’s Spies]

1. Israelis may well be close to a breaking point

Listen to Lawrence Wilkerson in the following video. The first six minutes is enough, though the rest is fascinating. Wilkerson says, from information he gets privately and from pirated Israeli videos he has seen, that 1) Israel is “flat being devastated” (his emphasis), “literally being ripped apart,” and 2) their casualties could be five to ten times more than what they’ve announced.

2. Israel’s air defense could be close to collapse

Former Pentagon war planner and MIT professor Ted Postol reinforces the point above. In addition, he thinks, now that Israeli air defense radar has been put out of action, Iranian drones, highly accurate, are now unstoppable, as are its armada of super-speed, high-damage missiles like the Fattah and Khorramshahr series.

Because of this, “Iran is now beginning to bring the full weight of its strike capabilities to bear on Israel and the military installations in the Persian Gulf” (9:33 in the video below). He anticipates increased desperation on the part of the Israeli government….

[TW: Most observers who aren’t right wing nutters have said, regarding bombing Iran, that air campaigns have never won a war or even led to a loss of morale by those being bombed. Actually bombing stiffens resistance. I think the same will apply to Israel. In fact, because they faced extermination in the Holocaust, Israelis will probably never lose resolve. That also makes it unlikely they will be willing to accept anything less than defeat and destruction of Iran.]

 

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Open Thread

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On March 28, 2026

8 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. I know you all want to keep talking about gay Klingons, but restrain yourselves!

Getting Real About The Second Iranian War

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On March 27, 2026

34 Comments

I saw an article today by the American Conservatives, who tend to be more sensible than most conservatives. It posits that peace can’t be made with Iran till Trump gets tough with Israel, because it’s Israel who keeps escalating.

This is true, but it avoids the pedo-elephant in the room.

It is almost certain that Israel has blackmail on Trump. Videos and pictures of him raping kids or young teenagers. (I print this because I know there is zero chance Trump can risk discovery at a trial.)

Trump is completely compromised. He’s on a leash.

Is this 100%? Of course not. But well over 90%. Trump was Epstein’s best friend for years, and Epstein’s properties were all saturated with video cameras. Epstein clearly worked for Israel.

Trump needs to be impeached or removed with the 25th Amendment, but the problem is that a proportion of Congress are certainly compromised as well, another proportion are bought and paid for, and another proportion are scared of Zionist money being used against them.

So the war seems likely to go on until Israel wants it to stop, and what Trump wants is irrelevant. As for ordinary Americans, their interests are not represented: no one in power gives a damn what they think. The correct action is revolution, but Americans talk big about the 2nd amendment, they don’t use it to resist tyranny.

Iran has some simple needs to be willing to declare peace, the most important of which is “this is the last war”, the second of which is “no more assassinations and no more attacks” and the third of which is “since we can’t trust you to keep any agreement we have to make you incapable of attacking us again or too terrified to do it.”

Manjier has a lot of contacts in the Resistance, here’s the list he published:

Notice that it includes stopping the war/genocide on Libya/Hezbollah and Gaza. There’s no way the Israelis will agree to that unless they have no choice.

I don’t see any way this war ends before Israel is a smoking ruin, and the Gulf States are so terrified of Iran they declare they’ll never allow US bases in their countries again.

Can Iran enforce this? I think so. The US and Israel seem to be running out of interceptors a lot faster than Iran’s running out of missiles and drones. China’s in their corner, quietly supplying them with all the “non military” equipment they need. And Iran’s pain tolerance is extremely high: the decision makers know that if they don’t win decisively again Israel will just assassinate them later and probably kill their families at the same. The new Ayatollah lost his father, wife and kids.

Here’s one analysis of the munitions numbers:

 

The problem, as has been stated many times, is that no “deal” is possible. America will not keep them. Israel will not keep them. So they must be defeated for Iran and its leaders to be safe. The victory must be crushing. If I were in Iran, I would be making the exact same calculation.

We’ll end this with another Iranian propaganda video, sort of a palate cleanser.

Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Risk and Reward As Perceived in American Strategic Culture

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On March 26, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

How does the way an individual perceives time affect the way they approach risk? And can the way individuals perceive time and risk be applied on a macro scale?

Let’s take a look.

Sociologist Phillip Zimbardo developed a five way typology of how individuals perceive time. People who inhabit certain zones have certain characteristics unique to their typology. Diane Maye, commenting on attitudes toward risk by the US military at The Strategy Bridge writes, “future-oriented people tend to be more successful at achieving their goals, whereas people who frequently reminisce about the past can be overly nostalgic or fearful.” Makes sense, no?

What about those who live in the present? How do they perceive time and more importantly how do they approach risk? This type inhabits what Zimbardo calls the present hedonistic mode, and as Maye elaborates, “[are] more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior.” Maye adds that “the present hedonistic person “lives in and for the moment” and demonstrates a “lack of regard for future consequences.”

I can’t think of anything that describes the outlook of most Americans with more accuracy than this. America is a nation riddled with a present-mind perspective. Our media diet is now totally skewed towards immediate gratification with absolutely zero thought for the future. No one reads long-form essays any longer, much less books. Tik-Tok, X and even the nightly national news is geared towards quippy repartee, not well-informed consideration. Balance and objectivity in reporting just takes too long, especially when you can strike a pose, Right or Left. Such a thing is much easier and much more rewarding to ones endorphin producing centers. Intellectualism is so passé.

Indeed, one of the greatest losses of the last several years was NPRs shift from a medium whose central bias was intellectual, to one that skews left is overtly political. All part and parcel of the slippery slope towards an all pervasive AI-driven society concerned only about its own immediate gratification.

This typology can just as easily be applied to our national approach to such existential matters as voting, domestic economics, and foreign risk, mainly in the context of our conduct of war, best summed up as “bomb first, analyze the loss later.”

The consideration of risk and reward became uncoupled from each other during the Reagan Administration, when the debt markets were restructured drastically by a crucial innovation: MBSs, mortgage-backed securities and junk bonds–supposedly to democratize finance–and the equity markets were deregulated and then a Bull’s ass was set aflame by Greenspan’s long era of easy money. The spread between them only grew worse under Clinton, doubly so under Baby Bush, Obama and aren’t even spoken in the same sentence under our new Maximum Leader, Trump.

Americans, however, are soon going to learn that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. The consequences of which will be grim.

Starfleet Academy’s Gay Klingon Could’ve Been Epic

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On March 25, 2026

14 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Forewarned: this is culture war stuff. So, if you trigger easily: don’t read this. Then again, you’ll be missing out on some excellent counterintuitive culture war rabble-rousing.

I guess I ought to declare right here and now before I get trounced for being an out of touch GenXer neobigot. So, say it with me, loud and clear: I’m for every human on this planet being treated with the innate dignity they possess and deserve and that they not be denied the rights their ancestors fought so hard for. Rights are not entitlements, they are earned. And much of humanity has, in the past, earned them and passed them down. They should not be denied to anyone.

Now that my virtue signaling is out of the way I can move on to some cultural war criticism.

First, why must a gay man be portrayed as simpering and overly sensitive? Why does this portrayal as queens persist in pretty much all visual media? And FFS, folks, don’t get all sensitive, I’m going somewhere awesome with this.

Why not portray a gay man very much in touch with his masculinity? Need a few historical examples of powerful, masculine gay men that changed the world?

Easy-peasy. First, Alexander the Great and his lover Hephastion. If you disagree, because Iskander has to be a man’s man, well, fuck off. It’s historically inaccurate to believe otherwise. Seriously, the Greeks buggered each other left and right and all were married. Then there is the Prussian King, Frederick the Great, who out maneuvered the armies of Maria “Always Weeping, always Annexing” Theresa of Austria at almost every turn? Both men were as gay as Freddy Mercury, and both were indomitable warriors and strategic geniuses par excellence.

So, when Starfleet Academy wrote in a gay Klingon, I confess, my interest was piqued. The Kurtzman era franchise had a chance to change in a new powerfully positive way. But, the show-runners took the easier, softer way.

For real, they just turned down the wrong alleyway.

See, fiction has rules. You create species or characters and portray them a certain ways; they have to obey their own rules of internal logic. That way the reader or viewer knows what to expect. When a character or species acts contrary to canon, the reader and the viewer are not only confused but lose interest. So, what happened with the gay Klingon?

Let’s discuss Klingons in general first, okay?

Klingons, in case you don’t know, are fierce warriors, poets, singers and deeply, deeply romantic. Klingons are the antithesis of brooding self-actualized pansies, looking for closure or healing. They love killing almost as much as they love dying. “It is a good day to die,” is their constant refrain. And bloodwine? They make the Russians look like pikers when it comes to imbibing alcohol. So, would it not make sense that a gay Klingon ought to have been written in character? To write a gay Klingon any other way than as an awesome bad-ass killing, drinking and fucking machine is to fundamentally misunderstand Klingons and their crucial role in the Star Trek canon.

Let’s take Worf, from TNG and Deep Space 9, as an example. If Worf wanted to fuck another male Klingon, Worf’s idea of foreplay would have been sparring with bat’leths, followed by bending his paramour over a barrel of blood wine, blowing his load, screaming a blood-curdling Klingon scream and then a blood-wine toast, ending with a little spooning and a love poem.

You know I am right.

A gay Klingon could have been immortal. A gay Klingon had the potential to be Star Trek’s equivalent of a honey badger: he don’t give a fuck. A gay Klingon Dahar master? Dip me in a vat of melted cellophane!

Kurtzman and crew had the chance to create an immortal, utterly amazing Klingon in the mold of Alexander the Great or Frederick of Prussia. Instead they opted to tick off the wokester checklist with an absolutely pathetic, weepy, whingy, sniveling crybaby of a Klingon

What a waste.

The Kurtzman iteration of Star Trek has been nothing but failure after failure to understand what Star Trek was. It was never, ever true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision.

The franchise needs a fifteen year rest.

I’ll be ready for a do over in my late sixties. Get it fucking right next time.

What Phase Three of the Credit Cycle Looks Like: the Ponzi Scheme Visualized

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On March 25, 2026

2 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Courtest my alma mater Morgan Stanley, we have this graphic that perfectly depicts what the AI-Ponzi scheme looks like and just how incestuous it truly is:

Is any other comment necessary?

Pro Iran War Propaganda Videos

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On March 25, 2026

24 Comments

Of all the wars I’ve covered in my writing career, this one has been the hardest in the sense that figuring out what’s true and what isn’t is difficult. The baseline assumption is that nothing the US says about the war can be trusted. Most of what Iran says in concrete terms about what they fired and hit can be trusted. AI images and video have proliferated, so the old “show me picture” routine doesn’t work unless y0u’re a good image analyst and willing to spend hours. Trump, of course, lies about everything. Iranian official media exists, but it’s often censored by the West so reading their official statements is often difficult.

All that said, I think it’s time for something different: a collection of propaganda videos that are Pro-Iranian. Because of all the above, it’s unclear to me if these are official, but they’re interesting nonetheless.

The first appears to be official, was published by Russian “news” outfit RT, and makes the ethical case:


Iranian underwater drones:


This one made me laugh:

And the Korroamshahr-4 missile:

More serious posts next, though the third video is actually a pretty accurate summary of Iranian war efforts so far.

Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Shockwaves From The Second Iranian American War

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On March 24, 2026

30 Comments

Some of the issues from the Iranian war are obvious: everyone’s talking about oil and natural gas, for example. Many have mentioned fertilizer. But I think it’s worth going into in a bit more depth.

First is that in addition to gasoline, oil is used to make bunker fuel (98% of freighters and tankers), jet fuel, and diesel (heavy machinery, large trucks.) The prices for all three are rising faster than gasoline prices and there will be a worldwide shortage. Production of semiconductors, phones and so on will shut down some time after that, depending on how the small reserves available are shared out. Taiwan is particularly vulnerable and production can be expected shut down in a couple weeks.

The chart below is from six days ago:

Don’t take the above chart too seriously, I’ve heard different numbers from different sources, and the type of oil in reserve matters a LOT.

This will, of course, hit the AI Bros hard. They have significant stockpiles of some of what they need, but not everything. Worried about that data center coming to where you live? If you’re lucky, Iran has just saved you from an AI driven spike in your energy prices, but not an oil shortage spike!

Airlines are already reducing flights. Expect prices for travel to spike significantly. If you don’t already have tickets for a trip get them now. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if many already booked flights are cancelled without recourse, citing forece majeur. Diesel and bunker oil shortages will mean supply line disruptions, and primary processing disruptions. Fertilizer shortages are already changing planting decisions, farmers in Australia are planning on planting much less wheat, for example.

Oil goes into a lot of things. Here are a couple of graphics showing some of them:

And,

To oversimplify, pretty much everything has some oil in it. For example I’m stocking up on NSAIDs and Tylenol 2s (legal in Canada.) I saw one person saying they went out and bought about a year’s supply of pretty much everything which can be stored. One side benefit may be that insane levels of plastic packaging might, at least, be reduced.

China’s bunkering up. No refined oil products are being allowed for export. Fortunately for China, they, unlike apparently almost every other nation in the world, are not run by retards, so they have massive petroleum reserves and they bought about 50% of the world’s grain production for the last four years and stored much of it. But this goes far beyond petrochem: they produce, for example, almost all of the world’s tungsten, and no more exports of that.

Stockpiles in the the West are essentially at zero, right now, and yes, most advanced weapons cannot be made without Tungsten.

There’s been a crash in silver prices recently. You may have read about it. But here’s the thing, there’s an actual physical shortage of it because it’s used in essentially all electronics, including semiconductors and even more importantly, solar panels. Everyone’s going to want solar panels now.

China, not being fools, are no longer allowing export of silver because they know it’s the physical shortage that matters, not the paper price on paper exchanges where delivery isn’t expected to happen.

I spent years railing that just-in-time logistics was sheer fucking insanity and should be outlawed. In addition every country who isn’t a net producer should have at least year’s stockpile of fuel and even net producers should have three years of food stored (because things like droughts and fertilizer shortages happen.) Medication and key medical goods should also be stockpiled. A lot of people are going to suffer and die when key drugs hit shortage and many cancer drugs, for example, are produced in India and on top of the factories not being able to operate without energy, many drugs use petrochemical derivatives directly.

This war should never have happened. Even if it ended now there would be serious shortages for about four to five months, and it would be three to four years before full production could be resumed, if it can be. (Shutting down oil and gas well production often damages the underlying fields.)

Oh, and which major nations will suffer the least? Russia and China. It is to laugh.

I know this is the second article on this subject in a few days, but the impacts of the war are important for you to understand.

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