Prepare to Pay for the Despicable Cowardice of Pete Hegseth and Our Loathsome Masters

The United States plays dirty. They regularly attack hospitals, schools, the unarmed, etc..

What is anyone proposing to do about it? Screaming “no fair” is like telling a wolf to leave the sheep alone and pick on someone who can fight back.

He won’t and you can’t make him.

Dirty, but ineffective. By attacking such civilian, non-infrastructural targets they are, from a tactical and strategic perspective, wasting ammunition or worse. The point of attacking the enemy is to make it harder for them to fight back; diffuse civilian targets are tactically worthless for that. The strategic point is the idea of breaking will to resist, or pushing the population until they overthrow their government . . . the only problem being that THIS NEVER WORKS and usually backfires. There are already strong signs of these attacks causing a previously disaffected population to rally round the government.

So while, from a humanitarian perspective, I am quite willing to scream about this . . . from a cold-blooded perspective of wanting the US empire to lose this war I’m like go ahead, fuck it up. And of course the point of screaming about it is political–to increase resistance to US policy in other countries that normally help them, to decrease support for the war in the US itself below its already unusually low levels. What the wolf itself thinks is not the issue.

” Hegseth and Trump and those commanding them are so ignorant of the concept of honor they can’t even pretend to have any. ”

But they damn sure gonna give it a good hard try.

@NWT: I’m not sure about that. The Empire and its buttbois seem to be doing just fine, europeans lining up to be America’s Next Little Bitch!

And no, britain never will act in its own interest. Besides being born slaves, the british ruling class knows that, without the United States, britain would just be some flavor-challenged backwater island with exceptionally bad food and an inbred heredity monarch, an island where they won’t shut up about long past glories.

Like france, but with a king and worse weather, less sex.

@FF The market is telling you that the sellers of silver and gold outnumber buyers. In the initial shock silver, gold, and US treasuries are all selling off because dollars are being raised to buy free barrels of oil anywhere outside the ME. As prices go higher more and more hard assets have to be sold to cover the increase in oil. Oil is non-negotiable, non-substitutable, the last thing you do is not buy oil for your industry.

A little rural investment advice:

Go long on the garden, goats (milk) and chickens (eggs).

Feral Finster

@dj:

Silver and gold both down, which baffles me.

it does not baffle me at all. my own opinion is that, in a deflating economy cash becomes scarce and king, and most asset class’s will tumble in value because most people will be forced into selling, to raise scarce cash to pay their bills.

whats more valuable in a economy the gold bugs claim that gold is a protective shield, a silver coin, or two cans of corn beef hash that will feed your family?

i have a hunch, i could be wrong, that a lot of gold and silver is being dumped right now for corn beef hash.

I don’t think the average frustrated goldhoarder is dumping gold so he can pay the rent or whatever.

Anyway, a view contrary to mine:
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-invisible-siege-how-insurance

I’m not sure I agree, and I think the author underestimates the Administration’s willingness to brute force a solution, but interesting.

Feral Finster

@NWT:
Similarly, I hear alt-media commentators say that the US treasury market is manipulated, because bond prices don’t reflect their preferred narrative. I’d need some very strong evidence that markets that large and that liquid can be manipulated that seamlessly.

agreed. traditionally there have been more buyers of treasuries than treasuries offered. sometimes buyers outnumber offers three to one.

and even before MMT, FDR ordered the treasury to issue bonds directly to itself, and the federal reserve was ordered to purchased them and retire them.

government does not even have to offer treasuries. it can fund itself. what the treasuries were for, was a safe investment that injects cash into the system.

i said were for for a reason. the cranks who came to power from 1993 till today, have done everything in their power to destroy any safe investment.

i think there might be a lot of panic going on in the gold bug world for scarce cash.

The gold bugs always want you to buy their precious gold with the same fiat money they are telling you is going to be worthless.

It’s really fascinating. They start by telling you how much gold is valued in dollars – the same dollars that are about to crash in value that they are nevertheless very eager to accept as payment for their shiny gold.

Or paper gold certificates?

Gold I can track in a ledger on a screen?

Needless to say, you can’t eat gold or dollar bills or numerals on a screen any more than you can string a rod with a line of longitude.

Small plot ‘farming’ for the win.

Gotta have some property though. Seems like they’re coming for that. And taxes and surveillance now even out in the deepest reaches…

Looks like wildtending for the win.

That’s what I’d bet on if I had the dough.

Have they commodified wildtending yet?

***

The depraved bombing of the girls school. There are no words. I do not even want to really write ‘depraved’ because it doesn’t even begin to describe the utter…

There are no words.

The Zionist entity has cleared southern Lebanon and is bombing southern Beirut. Hezbollah has fired a few missiles but nothing too substantial yet.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/03/iran-war-more-on-why-us-israel-success-impossible-as-israel-and-us-operations-take-more-hits-trump-proposes-unhinged-strait-of-hormuz-escort-scheme-western-media-misinforming-public.html#comment-4386205

***

The obliteration of police stations is strategically plausible if the idea is chaos in the interest of balkanization. But it will harden IRGC-Basij state ‘central’ control.

The obliteration of hospitals is again beyond words and a violation of all international law and everything decent.

Strategically, in a world where there is no one willing to enforce these rules, it makes perfect sense to strike these sick blows against what is perceived as an eternal enemy.

Both the word and the concept behind ‘amalek’ have been invoked by both religious and seculars inside the Zionist entity.

The ‘opposition leader’ inside the Zionist entity just fully endorsed the Eretz project – Pax Judaica.

It may remind one of Rabin, who was murdered by ‘hardliners’ inside the Zionsit entity but did you ever read what Rabin himself said over the years about Arabs and Palestinians?

So if the strategy is to balkanize via as much chaos as possible such that the enemy has to divert all these resources and energies to the most basic things in the midst of being bombed and fighting back and…

It will probably strengthen ‘the regime’ in the short term but it is also destructing – weakening – Iran in many areas which is the strategy.

Flood the zone.

Interestingly, Iran’s nuclear facilities are fine and Russian and Iranian scientists are working side-by-side inside Iran as I write, though Russia has removed some of its personnel from the facility.

The IAEA made a statement today I believe that said Iran’s nuclear facility isn’t leaking radiation.

Did they get this from satellite imagery or are they still allowed in Iran?

I thought Grossi was highly suspect? Wouldn’t those under him also be?

Any bets on Russia absonding with the nuclear material if Iran doesn’t make it?

They weren’t exactly entirely on the up-and-up with Iran as regards the whole shahed drone fiasco.

Brave New World.

***

‘Strategically, in a world where there is no one willing to enforce these rules, it makes perfect sense to strike these sick blows against what is perceived as an eternal enemy.

Both the word and the concept behind ‘amalek’ have been invoked by both religious and seculars inside the Zionist entity.

The ‘opposition leader’ inside the Zionist entity just fully endorsed the Eretz project – Pax Judaica.’

What happens if we say that we oppose the Zionist entity’s slaughter and we don’t agree with funding it?:

How Israel is controlling the world – in their own words

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=oxYoB7UMum4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxYoB7UMum4

***

Some info on US bombing runs here for those interested.

There are arguments around whether the US-Zion have ‘air superiority’ or full control of the airspace or whatever.

I don’t know that full control matters if what these links say is true.

It looks to me like the US has already used B-52s, B-1’s and even B-2’s?

I am a child when it comes to this, so perhaps some military people can verify?

https://hexbear.net/comment/6969642

https://xcancel.com/EISNspotter

https://xcancel.com/sam_lair

https://xcancel.com/AUX_OSINT/status/2029207401656733862

https://xcancel.com/hey_itsmyturn/status/2029011082367431015#m

https://xcancel.com/CorreaPhtgphy

Quite a busy day here. Mercury retrograde and some comms problems, so I will do a # of short posts as 20 minutes of work just got vaporized for no reason.

Attended a Peace demonstration in Santa Fe yesterday, in a central spot in the historic part of town. Very small group of us, 35-40 Max. More than half the cars and trucks passing by honked in our support, which was at least encouraging.

Vis Hegseth, he is a monster, makes no pretense otherwise, Nazi tattoos and the whole thing, “Deus Lo Volt”, Crusader motto, “God Wills It”, taking the Levant for the wonderful Christians– oops, Christian Zionists, so Jesus will return and throw the Jews in the lake of fire. So insane.

These fools are juggling flaming matches in a room filled 2 inches on the floor with gasoline. The savagery is the point, they aren’t “human.” I saw the Christoforou piece, first thing I watched over a.m. coffee. Hegseth famously juggled chainsaws (not making this up) when he was still at Fox, nearly maimed some other entertainers nearby.

Speaking of our hideous “representatives” (ain’t no “Republic” anymore, Ben Franklin warned us, Drop Site News did some great reporting the day before the toothless congress-grifters had a pretend vote on respecting the Constitution and War Powers Act and authorizing Donald’s failed World War. Their reporter asked multiple “reps”, most didn’t know it was coming up and didn’t seem to care. “I trust the President” = “He belongs to my class.” Unsurprisingly, there was no reining in the God-King. The sick, brain-damaged racist Fetterman, who recently Tweeted that in the choice between Muslims and dogs, he’d go with dogs, switched and sided with the R’s. Rand Paul showed some integrity and sided with the D’s. The sideshow ended, no accountability. I was introduced to a Rep I’d never heard of, Tony Gonzalez, who said he had no idea a vote was coming up and no real interest. He might’ve been the one who said “I’ll trust the president.” In any case, I bring him up due to a death he just caused, of one of his staffers, one day after I became aware of his existence. See ahead.

Scratch a Liberal and you’ll get a Fascist as we all know. Just as the Weimar Era Libs let the Mustache Man in the door, and the Dimmiecraps threw Bernie under the bus twice, so Donald would get a 2nd term, the good Libs at LG&M wrote about Tony G’s adultery leading to a staffer’s suicide, here– https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/03/i-had-an-affair-with-my-staffer-who-then-killed-herself-but-god-told-me-were-cool

Frankly the Dimmies know how to finesse this supervisor adultery far better than the R’s. So her husband, who was also on the staff found out Tony was doing the beast with 2 backs with his wife, confronted Tony. Then the other staffers slut-shamed and ostracized her, so she poured gasoline over and incinerated herself. Gavin Newsom’s top staffer learned that handsome Gav was giving it to his wife, confronted him. Their marriage broke up and they both stopped working for his campaign (whether they quit or were fired, I dunno.) He stated with regret that he was having some “substance abuse” problems at the time, alcohol only, so it’s ok, amright, quickly went into the memory hole.

This dude had (probably soon will not) lotsa power, which is the real reason he could pressure a subordinate into sex. And he is equally careless with American lives, can’t be bothered to question WW III, just go along to get along. Constituent Lives Don’t Matter!!
Now as to the LG&M cheering for genocide of “those” people, see my next post.

@Mary,

All the people and groups you referrence think they are smarter than the various flavors of Christian Zionist who support them. The various flavors of Christian Zionist think they are smarter than the various groups and persons you referrence.

I think the Christian Zionists of various flavors are smarter than the pro-Israel groups, are letting the pro-Israel groups think that the pro-Israel groups are playing the Christian Zionists, are playing a longer game than the pro-Israel groups are smart enough to understand, and are playing to bring about the End of the World including most of all Israel, whereas the current groups for Israel are just playing to make Israel geographically bigger than it currently is.

There were ZioLiberal groups inside and outside of Israel for a Lesser Israel and a Lesser Palestine, but they missed their chance right after the Rabin assassination to treat the Rabin assassination as a “Fort Sumter event” and open up their end of the Civil War which the Greater Israel ZioRevisionists and Kahanists were already waging.
They missed the one chance they had to exterminate all the leaders and cadres andmembers of the various Greater Israel groups and to exterminate about a million or so of the most committed Greater Israel voters in order to weaken that demographic enough to get it under control.

Oh well . . . too late now.

So speaking of Colonial Minds, Colonial Mindsets, “Mary” recently outed him/herself to me as an ultra-Anti Zionist (which obviously I have no problem with whatsoever), posting here and on MoA in a variety of false identities: “Dan Kelly” claimed, “Miss Jennings” hinted at but later denied, a Provocateur with a cast of characters just stirring up shit, was the impression I ended up with.

Now here was a gem that was thrown at me: “If Patrick has trouble understanding the rather obvious problem with a spiritual leader interfering in politics to the point it puts everyone inside the entity and many of its allies in danger, which is the same point Ian just made in this piece…” Calling out Patrick Henningsen as “stupid”, which I have certainly never witnessed. (I do not watch everything PH does, however.) Now I am fine with the 2nd half of that sentence, I posted as much agreeing with Ian and also some others adding nuance, cc, etcetera.

I personally was raised American, so I have a hard wall between religion and politics, esp. any sectarian group telling people how to vote, a violation in my mind of the Enlightenment concept of individual conscience and agency. I shared on here that when I was getting out of vapid Duluth, MN, I quit the Unitarian Church which I’d made many personal friends and friends in the social justice movement through. Why? 2 days before the Election they did a sham “service” called “The Power of Voting.” The Title alone is an insult to my intelligence, but deeply violates the 8 central tenets of Unitarian practice, including the separation of Church and State. And the service was intended to electioneer for Kamala Harris!! Gag! I wrote the 6 board members a burning denunciation of their hypocritical calls to be stupider, more complacent, and suck the thumb of false “hope” by “voting” for the non-Choice offered.

However, that said, my culture is not Iran’s nor is it India’s. They do not have (that I know of) nor need concepts like “Separation of Church and State.” Well, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt in some circumstances, but it’s not my place to say, of course. So why do I bring up India– the Mahatma Gandhi (Great Soul) was central to India’s Independence, not theories of Dialectical Materialism, Racial Equality or any number of other ideas I might subscribe to. Religion can inform our actions, in some cases it can even direct them. Or it can not. We are “free to choose”, an old discarded Lib sentiment. Native Americans have used spirituality to try to revive their genocided cultures, they have every right to do so, obviously.

I’ll drive in my own lane, thank you very much; I don’t need Universal Principles offered to me by someone who hides behind false identities.

(Oh, and topics for tomorrow– Carolyn Levitt abandoning 1,000s of ‘Muricans trapped in the Greater Mideast, and Mike Huckabee telling them to “Shelter in Place,” when even the creaking shithole UK got their own people out; and the fall of Kristi Noem, not for Minnesota Massacres or Puppy-Killing or taunting Cecot Prisoners with her “hot” (sic) body, but for major financial grifting off the Federal Teat.)

Mark Level

Scratch a Liberal and you’ll get a Fascist as we all know. Just as the Weimar Era Libs let the Mustache Man in the door

Not true at all. The people who invited Hitler to be Chancellor were unabashed rightists/conservatives, not remotely “liberal” in any sense. It was not only true in Germany, but every other country where fascists took power. The allies of fascism were traditional conservatives. The bitterest enemies of fascists were the Social Democrats (SPD) and to a lesser extent the Communists (KPD).

And that, dear readers is another reason why the Orange Mussolini-to-real Mussolini analogy has validity. All governments that could be called “fascist” not only were all helped by their fellow rightists, who all thought that they could control their fascists allies (some sorta did, some didn’t), but their base of support was stuck in the 30-percentile range. The fascists were never really popular (Hitler had more than 40 attempts on his life, mostly by Germans). All were essentially incompetents who led their countries into stagnation at best and ruin at worst.

Oh and they were all supported by a sizeable fraction of corporate elites. The economy of fascism was pretty much crony capitalism; they were never “socialist” in any sense; this is evidenced by the fact that one of the reasons why Germany loses WWII is that their weapons manufacturers are gouging their own governments on weaponry (sound familiar?). A lot of the “overengineering” that went into German weapons design which made the designs more failure-prone was simply to add profit.

All this sound like any country you know?

Mark Level—

LGM is a strange blog. The foundational belief is that one absolutely must support the Democratic Party as the only path towards progressive goals. Scott L in particular seems to care more about the terrible crime of leftists bashing Democrats than about whether any of the criticisms might be true. The phrase “ genocide Joe” sets his teeth on edge. The odd thing is that they can sometimes be very critical of some Democrats for the same reasons that drive them nuts when others state them.

But in fairness I think most oppose this war and the majority are almost as critical of Israel as people here.

But the guy you are quoting , Robert F is maybe the furthest right on the front page.

This is him a few months ago —

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/and-now-everything-is-worse

From the UnderReportedNews subreddit comes this interview with the Iranian Foreign Minister . . .
” Reporter asks Iranian Foreign Minister: “Are you afraid of a US invasion in your country?” He answers: “No, we are waiting for them.” ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnderReportedNews/comments/1rlqlu5/reporter_asks_iranian_foreign_minister_are_you/

People are offering various reasons as to why the TrumpAdmin do this. There could be several reasons leading up to it at once. ” For Israel” . ” To take America’s mind off the Epstein Files”. ” To cause Armageddon so Christ will return Right Goddamn Now”. “To cancel the elections”.
And possibly others.

I would like to suggest yet another and I think this one is especially near and dear to Stephen Miller’s heart. If the TrumpAdmin can get this war to turn out so badly for America and keep going for what looks like will be years, perhaps enough people will be brought into the streets protesting as during Vietnam that Miller can get Trump to declare them Guilty of giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy in a Time of War . .. in other words, Treason under the narrowly drawn Constitutional definition. Miller would like to hold mass trials and mass executions of protesters against a war, but first you need protesters against a war. And for that you need to have a war.

Farley is correct, no? Everything is worse.

The game theory analytics are hard to narrate, not least because at the core is a game of extortion by violence. Can’t we all just get along? Apparently not.

If we can’t get along together on terms of imaginable horror, extermination is an option, I guess. Oh, joy.

How do we get to cooperation for mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence? Tolerance and agreeing to disagree? Not so easy when domination promises a route to extract dividends and altruistic punishment and passive-aggression sabotage are also costly to everyone.

Everyone has a story they seem to believe in. Personally, I puzzle over the meaning of “beliefs” as treasured possessions. ymmv. Stories as weapons and tools, though, I kind of understand. Arguments as hypnosis, too.

My personal fallbacks are enlightened self-interest and principled integrity embodied in institutions: formal deliberation over the rules of the game and their enforcement, liberal education to nurture disinterested philosophy and trustworthy expertise. That kind of stuff. Pragmatic idealism, if you like. Crooked timber of humanity and all that.

I am writing this comment to remind myself in my present despair that I have available a map and moral compass, not just a weathervane.

Hey, StewartM — just a footnote, really, but the centrists and liberals in Germany really did a great deal to create the misery and despair that made Mustache Man the only available, plausible solution. Mark Level has a good argument to back up his assertion. The historic legibility of the mistakes made in the 1920s and early 1930s has faded now, but was well-read in creating post-WWII ordo-liberalism.

The larger, broader context of WWI as a revolutionary event straining the human capacity to design and build in the aftermath of collapse and demolition is something we might need to pay more attention to, given the increasing probability of a collapse of our own.

Thank you to both Mary and Donald for intelligent comments, though I’ve had my past differences with both of them. Mary is correct, among Jewish Institutions, there is almost Universal and unqualified support for expanding and completing the genocide. There was a Temple in the Northeast that was selling illegally stolen land in the West Bank, people peacefully protested an illegal act outside and they screamed that these were “anti-Semites” and should be arrested, beaten, etc. What they are doing is creating “anti-Semitism” and hatred directed at Jews who are not supportive of the Genocide worldwide. Oh, but they will be forced to go to Israel, right? Well, not right now, not when its under fire and residents are fleeing. Donald’s point is correct, the “Libs” at LGM imagine they are all “woke” and “Left” but they are war whores, Chicken Hawks, and colonialist racists on a level equal to the likes of Mike Pompeo, or (more relevantly) Hillary and Bill Clinton. They have their little hobby-horses, they know that the Dimmie Political Class betrays them and resent it, sometimes do enraged posts about how useless the DPC/DNC are. It’s like having a pickpocket for a friend and being annoyed when he steals from you. . . Now to correct Stewart M’s correction–

Yes, the Social Democrats and the Communists were the only big parties that had ordinary peoples’ good conceptually in their programs. But all the “centrists” were fine with putting in the far-right. Just as in USA, we have a Far Right Party and a Center Right Party, which bows before the FRP and hippie punches anyone even the slightest “Left” in the Center Right Party, being left is verboten. See all the betrayals of Sanders, see handing the Dimmie Party leadership over to the puppet Tom Perez and thousands of other betrayals of the Dem constituency, which is why in 2016 the Dem constituency simply didn’t turn out to vote, knew it was pointless, same in 2024.

Need further proof? After the Donald trounced Kamala with solid majorities, the Dimmies collaborated, in Congress nearly every single lunatic Trump put forward got Dimmie approval: Kristi Noem, goddamn Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, a bunch of other trash. The only one they blocked was Matt Gaetz, someone who’d had a “Come to Jesus” moment for the CHUD classes and switched to genuine populism, as Marjorie Taylor Green also abandoned her rightwing social slop and became legitimately pro-populism and anti-war. Now I will grant there are a few “outliers” in both parties who deserve respect: MTG forced out for integrity with death threats; Thomas Massie who is a strict constitutionalist and perhaps (?) the only member of both branches to refuse a Zionist handler; on the Democrat side, Chris van Hollen went to El Salvador to work to free Abrego Garcia, something that pissed off Hakeem Jeffries and the other war whores.

Obviously I’m not saying that these people can break the general criminal insiderism and sell-outs of both parties, controlled, openly bribed by, the corporate state and oligarchs. But if the Right-Wing Consensus is ever going to break (a few weeks ago, I thought not in my lifetime, but the moronic attack on Iran and resultant blowback has accelerated Imperial Decline bigly– Donald Trump bigly!)

At the demonstration on Wednesday I said to a comrade, “Why are only half the onlookers honking? Do these people realize that in a few days their gas costs will be up 200%, soon after 300%?” An obvious point.

I want to express my appreciation to Nat Wilson Turner and Sean Paul Kelly for forming a nice troika (ooh!! a Russian word, that’ll piss one commenter off) with Ian, I follow this blog and post here because Ian’s decades-old forecast gets nearer every day. Nice to have a sliver of actual anticipation (can’t use the word “Hope”, Obama using it as a Marketing Slogan killed it entirely).

Duran doing a nice “Iran war energy shock” episode now, guests are Cyrus Jansen and Alex at “reporterfly”. Clear consensus that Regional War Trump triggered will collapse the economies of the sold-out Petro-States, Bahai, the Saudis, etc. are having the rug pulled out from under them, just as the Zionist Entity is. Oh, finally I get the true story of what happened with Delcey Rodriguez in Venezuela. Bloomberg lied, Venezuela did not sell oil to Israel, however they are selling some to US Empire as intermediary, and US is reselling to— China!! (Okay, likely Israel too.) Once again, you can’t make this shit up. The stupidity and venality are all short-term and epic, recently someone called me Stalin. Well, whomever said “the capitalists will sell you the rope with which to hang them” will be vindicated soon.

Not just the Empire breaking, the Globalist system is, the Petro-economy is. Major leaks in the Dam of Domination.

Feral Finster

@spud:
Those people you mentioned are a tiny fraction of the bullion markets.

but it looks like they are enough to have flooded the markets. you can only imagine how much family silver has been dumped on top of that. just like last time.

bruce wilder, you have a thorough and granular knowledge of the idiots at LG&M, farley has been among the worst, most strident no doubt, and yes their central interest is “Snark”, being smarter than the other Shit-Libs like say the Daily Kos. Not a high bar, obviously. And thanks as well for insight on the Libs empowering Fascists. Here’s the thing about the political classes that persists from the 1920s and ’30s, a good century worth: Look at AOC, she started out saying the job of the “progressives” (sic) was to disrupt power and not bend the knee before it. She was completely broken by “Mama Bear” Pelosi within some months; when she initially supported her constituents’ interests in NOT funding the Izzy “Iron Dome”, she was taken aside into a room and broken! Cried, came back and voted FOR it. The very old Bill Hicks joke about the first thing the President is shown on assuming office is the film of JFK’s head being blown apart, not from the Zapruder film, but from the grassy knoll. My bigger point, Once you are in the Political Elite you are “blooded” (as they say in gangs post-initiation). You MUST comply with the consensus even in the rare cases where they individually know better.

Yes, Scott Lemieux is an arrogant gas-bag; more accurately a Shit-Bag that couldn’t float off the ground. He was always, always right, though his archives of course don’t show that. He’s like a smaller scale Tom Friedman, but not with a billionaire wife, and not with (formerly) universal dumb MSM praise and manure-spreading in the media. Your Lucy and the Football analogy fits. Like the Dimmies, he only wants to posture; Dimmies win election and Obama “forgets” to enshrine Roe v. Wade, no $15 minimum wage under the Bidet, little or no college debt relief, no Green New Deal. Losers, but they can gesture their aspirations without ever fulfilling a single one.

Simplicius the Thinker did an excellent overview of where things are, including a clip DC references of Aragchi blindsiding the dipshit spokes model, see here: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/iran-blinds-us-with-unprecedented

He as many others thinks US/Zio “defense” ordnance will be exhausted in 1-2 weeks at most, then they are sitting ducks for the bigger missiles that Iran still has underground.

Yesterday, Due Dissidence did one of their 3 times weekly (4 times the week of the Surprise attack) 3 hour plus marathons on developing matters. Sadly they did not individually clip the segments I wanted to share: Huckabee saying you can’t evacuate to Americans in the region, Carolyn Leavitt says there is a phone # you can call and register there. Somebody did, it’s an auto-message, We can’t do anything to help you now, leave your information and we might get back to you in a week or so!! Suckers.

Also a segment on the Guest Workers (indentured servants, near slaves) in the Zionist Entity. Only Israelis and visiting Jews are allowed into the bomb shelters, oh and their dogs too!! No goyim, they are below dogs (well, Israeli-owned dogs), and are forced to shelter in the subways (are there many? in the big cities maybe?) or bus stations, etc. Thais were the biggest group and there was one other, hold subhuman status and their lives are not worth defending, no surprise actually. Actual Asians don’t rank, only fake W. Asians from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Latvia etc. are human.

RE: antisemitism

I had a roommate in college, who went on to become a Conservative rabbi. Fun Fact: graduating Oak Park high school in suburban Detroit, he was Salutatorian to Valedictorian, Jeffrey Sachs.

He was driven, high-achieving, all-A student.

Some anecdata: he would pester this semi-lapsed Catholic for the intellectual justification for a New Covenant. (Hint: it is in Acts, if you care; I certainly did not.) I learned a lot of unflattering things about Judaism from these dorm room discussions. Pilpul is no match for Jesuitical casuistry and scholarship. Modern rabbinical judaism is Pharisaic if you care. Hillel the Elder, Pharisee extraordinaire and rough contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, is routinely credited with a formulation of the Golden Rule, so ethically a competitor with the Christ. But, Hillel’s most important intellectual achievement was the Prozbul, securing usury from jubilee. Shylock was a Jew in good standing it seems.

My best line: I feigned spontaneous curiosity about ritual prohibitions on mixing fabrics, fingering his woolen blanket and linen sheet: “You’re sleeping in Sin!” I exclaimed in my best imitation of a Southern Evangelical Preacher.

When he returned from a sabbatical year in Israel, taken as part of his training to become a Rabbi (Jewish Theological Seminary of America adjacent to Columbia University in NYC), he shared with me his absolute disgust with how rude Israeli society was. He was infuriated by how aggressively Israelis would be in something as trivial as dispossessing him of a seat on a public bus.

All of this is by way of saying that Jews are conscious of being shadowed by universalist Christian ethics. There is a tension and implicit rivalry there. This is the obverse of Marx’s “The Jewish Question”. This is most acute, if largely unarticulated, in the case of the Gaza Genocide. The Christian ethic — turn the other cheek — is anathema to many Israelis as a response to October 7. “We have a right!”

A Christian in ethics, I think the Israelis should negotiate. Hamas has every right to self-defense and to resist perpetual Occupation as the Jews of the Israeli state.

I am not a believer in a Christian divine person(s) [trinitarianism after all], but I accept the universal Christian ethic, the equality before law of all persons. That is the ethic enshrined in the UN charter and the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It is an ethic some Jews have embraced and others reject, as Jews, That rejection makes “antisemitism” as those bastards would define it, an ethical obligation of the rest of us. (I would press the Ayatollahs of Shia for the same universalist ethic of respect for persons.)

We made reference to the World Wars earlier in this thread. After WWI, the allies blamed and punished the Germans but left them to recover from their folly on their own initiative. How did that work out? To be clear, I think Germany was primarily responsible for the First World War — the historical record, imho, leaves few doubts on that score. I hold in contempt those who want to hold everyone and no one responsible. Where I fault the WWI allies is the unwillingness to assume responsibility for reconstructing Germany. They were forced into financial half-measures with regard to reparations that simply exacerbated the situation ultimately. (And, yes, I think Germany could have and should have paid substantial reparations.)

I feel that Palestine is a similar problem. Israel does not want to take practical or moral responsibility for standing up a viable Palestinian State, but the founding of Israel created the problem and assigned the responsibility. Shirking it creating “the largest open-air prison” in the world and many other continuing injustices and horrors. In my judgment, it is too late now. Israel as a “Jewish State” must be destroyed, its earth figuratively salted. The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.

If this isn’t one of the better concise illustrations of post-competence politics, I don’t know what is. From a Globe and Mail account of a post-presser with the White House Press Secretary:

“What the President means is that when he, as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America, and the goals of Operation Epic Fury [have] been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not,” Leavitt said.

I’d say that’s not going to age well, but it doesn’t fit neatly into a tweet so she’ll probably end up getting away with it.

“So the whole thing was was premeditated. The the US knew exactly what this ship was doing in India. They knew it was not a combat ship. **They knew it had no ammunition.** They knew it was taking part in a ceremony invited by the Indian government and they went to the Indian Ocean.”

No, the US didn’t know that, because, SFAIK, it isn’t a requirement for ships to remove their munitions prior to a port call.

This is from CNN: “Though its presence at the exercise may have been benign, the Dena was one of the newest and most powerful ships in Iran’s fleet, capable of carrying surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles and torpedoes, according to the website shipshub.com.”

From where it was sunk to Diego Garcia is about forty hours cruising at 20 knots; 10 hours if it wanted to position itself west of Sri Lanka under the flight path to Iran, lurking among ship traffic, hoping to bag a B-52.

“And the cherry on top of the sundae of evil, the U.S. did not render aid in violation of every law of war and conduct”

That is incorrect.

From AI, in response to the prompt “what obligation does a submarine have to rescue the crew of a ship it has torpedoed”

“Under international law, specifically the Geneva Conventions, a submarine has a duty to take all possible measures to search for and rescue survivors after an attack. However, this obligation is not absolute; a submarine is not required to jeopardize its own safety, crew, or mission by surfacing in dangerous areas, and **practical limitations often make direct, on-board rescue impossible. **”

Forgot to mention: Perhaps because of Hegseth’s chest beating, two Iranian navy ships have surrendered to Sri Lanka.

let steve keen explain why average people speculate on gold, who really can’t afford it and they are affected by price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfkXw9hps8E

Top Economist: This “Must” Happens Before AI Bubble Burst