Is the PRC really the top economy????

If one accepts the PRC official size of the economy, in 元·and converts that to US$, the PRC economy is around $18 trillion, or a little more than about half the size of the US economy.

However, at PPP, the PRC economy is about 30% larger than the US economy.

How can that be when most of those in the PRC are farmers, farming a tiny plot with primitive implements?

Which was certainly true when Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth in the 1920s. When the rains failed, many died of starvation.

In 2001, the PRC still had a lot of farmers. The Chinese governments had always designated most citizens as 'farmers' who were supposed to farm, since the Chinese governments were afraid of famines coming because the PRC didn't have enough farmers working to provide a margin of safety in case of droughts or floods that reduced crop output, but actually, most of the work was done by electric machines that greatly reduced the manpower requirement. I saw many farmers, forced to be farmers by government policies, sitting around playing cards while the machines did most of the work that had once meant all day, every day of backbreaking labour that, in bad years, produced less food than the calories required to produce it. Not any more by 2001, 90% of farmers had electricity and electric machines to do a lot of the work (I was unable to make it up to places high in the remote mountains where the Chinese government was still unable to provide electricity.)

And those farmers, forced to sit on their farms with not much to do, managed to sneak off and work in towns, in factories and offices and universities. They had to pay a penalty for not being at their farm every day, and they resented that, but their jobs paid enough they could afford the penalty for not being on the farm.

That was 20 years ago. Now those farm have almost no farmers, machines do all the work.

The US regularly reports of the poor slaves in Xinjiang who have to pick cotton, just like American slaves before 1865. And here's a photo of those poor slaves hard at work:

 

As anyone can see, those slaves have a very hard life picking cotton: "When dem cotton balls get rotten you can't pick very much cotton in dem old, cotton fields in Xinjiang."

(Actually, the PRC does have some people who pick cotton by hand, it's a very expensive kind of cotton that is not suitable for machine harvesting, and it is not very easy to get one of the very high-paying jobs picking that expensive cotton.)

Some farms are full of greenhouses producing strawberries all winter long. Also automated.

And one can see the sad state of how the poor Chinese have to get around:

 

So life is very hard in the PRC, having to go out and look for rickshaws to get around, like the ones provided by that rickshaw outlet in the photo.

How to rank economies, Part II

I posted on a chat session that Russia now has the largest economy in Europe at PPP, and the response was that Russia is about the smallest economy in Europe, which it is if one counts the total rubles produced and converts to US$. But, since prices are much lower in Russia than in the EU, the Russian economy is the largest in Europe at PPP.

Likewise, measured in US$, the PRC economy is about half the US economy, but at PPP the PRC economy is about 30% larger than the US economy.

So the US notes that the PRC are desperate for oil and gas.

The US ordered that no one could buy any Iranian oil or gas in 1980, and no one did until 2021. Now the PRC buys just about all the Iranian oil and gas, and most of the Venezuelan oil and gas, plus about half of the Russian oil and gas.

The US figure it will be very easy to put the recent Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in as Jefa de Venezuela, and she has promised that, once she is La Jefa, all the oil in Venezuela will be returned to the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs (in exchange for a very reasonable fee paid directly to La Jefa). The PRC might be able to buy some, but the price will be much higher than they've been paying.

Iran is up for a new war to replace the Ayatollah with a Shah who will guarantee that all Iranian oil belongs to the US and UK. Again, the PRC might be able to buy some, not very much, and at a much higher price.

And the US have asked Japan to help make Taiwan an independent country (and still the legal leaders of the Republic of China, not the PRC).

And since all the US/UK/EU news report that the Ukraine are about to defeat Russia and then NATO will break Russia up into 20 small, demilitarised countries with all resources handed over to US oiligarchs as war reparations (with 1% going to the Ukrainian government), the PRC will have a hard time buying Russian oil and will have to pay an outrageous price for it.

The top US experts all agree that this is a Great Plan and it is proceeding apace, and the US hope for total victory over Russia and the PRC in the very near future.

Of course, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and the PRC have other plans, but what can they do against the might of the US that so easily defeated Vietnam and Afghanistan (better stick to Grenada, Panamá, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria).

PPP???

Measuring economies can be very easy, but many figure the easy way is wrong. All countries worth measuring do their best to count all sales and purchases, so they can tax them, So we have the total sales and the total purchases, always a little bit off since the people counting don't manage to count everything correctly, when we know that total purchases have to equal total sales. So we take some number, maybe the average, maybe just sales, maybe just purchases, maybe a weighted average, and we get the total economy in the local currency, and there are official translations from every (significant) currency to every other (significant) currency. So we put the result for every economy in US$ or € or £, (or whatever) and we have a number for every economy worth measuring that allows us to rank all the economies of the world.

***

Now consider two mythical islands. Both have crops and livestock, both build houses and boats and go fishing, but the fishing boats can't make it from one island to the4 other. Both use a rare, exotic, rather beautiful shell as currency, but one island has exactly twice as many of those shells as the other island. In New York City, the shells, no matter from which island, are worth $1, but on the island with twice as many shells, homes, boats, pounds of fruit and veggies and meat and fish cost twice as many shells. Both islands produce the exact same amount of everything, but one island has an economy worth twice as many US$ as the other island.

So, since both islands produce the exact same quantity and quality of everything, the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) economies for the two islands are exactly the same, even though the US$ value of one economy is twice as much as the other, because they both produce exactly the same total outputs.

***

Of course, in real life, we never have two economies like the two islands, both producing exactly the same quantity and quality of stuff, but one paying twice as much for it. So, in real life, the PPP economy is somewhat subjective, depending on how one counts things. Do any two real islands produce the exact same quantity of food, housing, boats, and fish? Probably not in real life. And are all prices exactly twice as many shells? Again, probably not.

So the final calculation of PPP is not so easy, and is always subject to question.

How much longer does Maduro have?

President Trump has closed Venezuelan air space. The New York Times, a big fan of Trump, says he can't actually do that. All direct flights to Venezuela, like direct flights to Russia, are prohibited, so no planes have been going from the US to Venezuela to suddenly have their flights cancelled.

Small, regional carriers have several hundred flights still scheduled to fly to or from Venezuela in December.

Not clear what Trump will do next.

The Monroe Doctrine says Venezuela, being a part of the Americas, belongs to the US, so Russia and other countries had better stay out (Russia still has diplomatic ties and treaties with Venezuela, as does the country buying all the Venezuelan oil, being the only country, other than the US, with refineries that can process the very sour Venezuelan crude).

So it is looking like whoever is really running the US of A is having Trump threaten military action against Venezuela in order to replace the evil dictator Maduro with the democratic winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

Raising such questions as, 'What friends does Maduro have that would have the temerity to violate the Monroe Doctrine???? And what horrible things will the US do to those friends if they dare to help Maduro after the US have decided to get rid of him?'

 

Note (for whatever it's worth): Logistics change. In 1800, the UK had a 2+1 Navy, meaning that, if the nations with the 2nd and 3rd strongest navies allied against the UK, the UK Navy could defeat both of them. But by 1900, the US had a Navy that, while they could not challenge the UK in the Eastern Hemisphere, were more than a match for the UK in the Western Hemisphere, so the UK and US decided the US would dominate the entire Western Hemisphere and the UK would dominate the entire Eastern Hemisphere. WWI and WWII left the UK broke and unable to have a 2+1 Navy, or even a decent medium-size Navy. They could take on the Argentina Navy, with permission from the US, but that was about the limit of the power of what had been a 2+1 Navy. And that logistics that made the US the unquestionable master of the Western Hemisphere might have changed again. I guess we'll see rather soon if Venezuela has any friends that will stick around when the shooting starts inside Venezuela, given that one of those friends desperately need Venezuela oil.

Off to the Races

As a boy, I was taught that humans are divided into 5 races. In alphabetical order, Black, Brown, Red, White, and Yellow, with Black representing Africa, Brown representing South and West Asia, Red for the Indigenous People of the Americas, White for Europe, and Yellow for East Asia. 

I have spoken to some East Asians, and they consider themselves The Yellow People. Africans consider themselves Black. I'm pretty sure that West Asians and South Asians accept that they are Brown. Europeans consider themselves White. The History Books tell us that the Europeans, having divided the world into White, Black, Brown, and Yellow, wanted a different colour for the Indigenous Americans, and asked one of them who said his tribe considered themselves Red, a view not accepted by most Indigenous Americans, but the colour Red stuck with the Europeans. Calling the Indigenous Americans 'Red' is a big point of contention, while the other four races pretty much accept the colours assigned to them.

But then the German National Socialists said that Europeans are not a single Race that could be called 'White', they are three very distinct races, Aryan, Jewish, and Slav, and many of the Europeans who consider themselves to be Aryans want a Europe that is only Aryan with no Jews and no Slavs.

There is an old story set in WWII (not clear when it really started). A young German SS officer sent to separate the Aryans from the Slavs and Jews in Poland asked, 'How can we tell Aryans from Slavs and Jews? All look the same, and all speak multiple languages.' An older SS officer said, 'Follow me and learn!'

The two SS officers went into a shop, and the older SS officer asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper said, 'There is no such thing as a left-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is a Slav. Send him to a Concentration Camp and close this shop.' And it was done.

The senior SS officer led them into a second shop and asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper said, 'Dummkopf! You can take any right-handed teapot, turn it one hundred eighty degrees, and it is a left-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is an Aryan. He gets to keep his shop and also gets the shop of the Slav.'

They went into a third shop, and the senior SS officer asked, 'Do you have any left-handed teapots?'

The shopkeeper whispered, 'Yes, but they are very rare, and I only have one, and it is very expensive, I have to charge you twenty times as much as for a right-handed teapot.'

The senior SS officer said, 'He is obviously a Jew. Send him to the Concentration Camp and give his shop to the Aryan.'

This story has nothing to do with the differences between Aryans, Slavs, and Jews, and everything to do with how the Nazis viewed what they considered to be Aryans, Slavs and Jews.

This was a historical feature of Europe that I thought ended in 1945. Silly me. A minority of Ukrainians consider themselves Aryans, and would like to rid the Ukraine of all Slavs. They were told that the US/UK/EU will help them get rid of the Slavs provided that they accept and protect the Jews, and the Ukrainians who consider themselves Aryans agreed.

And here we are.

According to the US/UK/EU mainstream media, the Ukraine are easily defeating the Slavs in Ukraine and the Slavs attacking from the USSR, where 'R' stands for Russian. Victory is now very close, and a great improvement in the Ukraine, and the American resources in Russia that were being stolen by the Russian Slavs will soon be returned to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs.

I Was Just Following Orders???

In Vietnam, on 16 March 1968, a Company of US Army soldiers killed between 347 and 504 civilians, almost all women, children, and elderly men (no one is sure of the exact number) at My Lai.

The US soldiers said they'd been in a fierce fight with the Viet Cong, but in November, 1969, Seymore Hersh wrote that the Company of US soldiers had killed unarmed civilians who were no threat to the soldiers. 

After most accepted the Hersh version as accurate, the US Army declared this a war crime and held a few men responsible. Twenty six were tried, but only Lieutenant Calley was found guilty, sentenced to Life in Prison, held (more or less) under House Arrest for three and a half years, then released after his sentence was commuted.

US soldiers are now taught that they must never obey illegal orders, like the one given to kill those unarmed Vietnamese civilians.

Raising the question: have US servicemen been given illegal orders to kill unarmed fishermen off the coast of Latin America?

Officially, the answer is, 'Not at all. Those are heavily armed drug dealers, carrying cargoes of illegal drugs that kill millions of Americans every year, and they must be stopped. Since we have irrefutable proof that they are heavily armed drug traffickers, orders to kill them are legal orders that must be obeyed!'

Some ask, 'Can we see the proof that they are heavily armed drug traffickers?' Obviously, a ridiculous question, all that information is Classified TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR, so it can never be revealed to anyone without a TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR Clearance and a Need to Know. And all those people say they have seen the proof and it is irrefutable, so those orders were absolutely legal and must be obeyed.

Those who have not seen that Classified Proof keep saying those men might have been just fishermen, there is no proof they were armed or carrying illegal drugs, and even if they were armed and carrying illegal drugs, the appropriate action would have been to stop the boats (an armoured military vessel could have approached the boats without risking the lives of the sailors inside the vessel), then, from inside the armoured boat, demanded to see if the men on the boats had any weapons, and, if they had weapons and refused to throw all weapons overboard, then it would have been legal to kill them all, but not to kill them all by bombing or shelling them without any inspection, but that's not how the US military, the most advanced and reliable and law-abiding military the world has ever seen, deals with heavily armed terrorists carrying drugs that kill millions of Americans every year.

And everyone should know that the American military would never tell a lie about having irrefutable proof that all those killed were all heavily armed terrorists carrying tonnes of illegal drugs that kill millions of Americans every year.

More to the point, of course, is that in 1999, Hugo Chávez stole all the American oil in Venezuela and squandered the money on the ordinary Venezuelan people (the US had been paying the government of Venezuela a lot of money to let US oil and banana companies take all the oil and bananas they wanted). Venezuelan oil is very sour, and the only refineries that could process it were in the US, plus one set up by a US firm in Venezuela. Of course, after Chávez stole the oil, the US stopped refining it or maintaining the refinery in Venezuela, which soon stopped working.

In 2002, the US overthrew the illegal Chávez regime for two whole days, until the Venezuelan military freed Chávez and restored him to power until his death in 2013, after which Maduro took over as Dictator of Venezuela and continued to claim that all that American oil belonged to the Venezuelan people.

As it happens, there are now two countries that can process Venezuelan crude, and, for reasons that escape us all, a third country, Russia, say they are allied with Venezuela, so both Russia and the nation that is buying and refining just about all the Venezuelan oil (and paying for it) are in egregious violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and both must be stopped.

The US plan to make the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize the legal Venezuelan Head of State and she got her Peace Prize for saying that every drop of oil in Venezuela belongs to the rightful owners, US oiligarchs.

So all decent people hope she becomes the Venezuelan Head of State ASAP.

Holodomor (or less)

The official Soviet version of the Holodomor is that Stalin put a strict Communist in charge of agriculture, and, while he knew Communism very well, he had no knowledge of agriculture, so Soviet agricultural production fell drastically, and many Soviets starved to death all over the USSR.

The Western Ukrainian version of the Holodomor was that the Russians stole all the Ukrainian food, and millions of Ukrainians starved to death.

Only the Western part of the Russian Empire was lost to Germany in 1917 during WWI, then Germany lost, but Britain, France, and the US all hated the USSR, so Britain and France took the lands lost by Russia during the war, plus lots of German land and a huge chunk of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and redrew the map of Europe, forming countries with multiple ethnic groups, multiple languages, all weak and divided, easily controlled by France and the UK, and unable to pose any kind of threat to France or the UK.

One old story was:

'I was born in Austria. I went to school in Poland. I got my first job in the Soviet Union. And I retired in the Ukraine.'

'Oh, you must have done a lot of travelling.'

'I never left the village where I was born.'

Of course, there was no Austria before the end of WWI, Austria was formed as a small country after WWI out of a tiny bit of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and he was more likely Hungarian than Austrian, since large parts of Western Ukraine still speak Hungarian and have Hungarian signs and the people wear Hungarian-style clothes.

So the people who most rabidly denounce the Holodomor as something perpetrated on the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine by the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia were in Poland during the Holodomor, but were annexed by Stalin during WWII, when he took back all of West Russia that had been taken in 1917 by Germany, plus bits of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and Germany, and all were part of the USSR until the USSR broke up in 1991.

The final Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine was put together by Stalin and Khrushchev, and had large chunks of what had been the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia added to ensure that the final Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine had many different ethnic groups that don't like each other, making it easier to govern.

Now that the USSR is gone, those ethnic groups aren't all that happy together, and some want to be part of Russia, while others would love to help the US break Russia up into 20 small, unarmed countries with all those Russian energy resources returned to the rightful owners, US/UK/EU oiligarchs (but mostly US oiligarchs), for which they have been promised generous payment on the successful completion of this task.

Don't Know Much about History

 On Sunday, the New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Trump is another Chamberlain.

Churchill was a prolific historian, he wrote very well, and made himself the hero of WWI and WWII, and maybe a few more wars I forgot about. Of course, his histories are not altogether accurate.

In 1917, the Czar of the Russian Empire resigned and Russia capitulated to Germany, agreeing that Western Russia would become part of Germany.

With Russia gone, things were looking very bad for the UK and France, but the US banks had figured, from 1914 to 1917, that the UK and France were, by far, the strongest nations on earth and sure to win, so they loaned them a lot of money to use in WWI, and it looked like the banks would have to write off all those loans to the UK and France, making many major US banks insolvent, which was something the US could not allow, so they entered the war against Germany and were enough to let the Allies win WWI, and then in 1919, Germany had to agree to the Treaty of Versailles: they must totally disarm, give up the Russian lands ceded by Russia (but not back to Russia, to the UK and France to do with whatever they wanted), and to hand over every bit of German gold as war reparations, so Germany was very weak and impecunious, and no threat to the UK or France. And the US banks got repaid with a lot of interest.

But in 1933, Germany elected a new Chancellor who said Germany must rearm. Churchill said he thundered against such an atrocity: Churchill wrote that he said that if the UK, with all the resources of the British Empire, had demanded that an unarmed Germany must select a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany would have had no choice but to agree, and and if anyone had listened, WWII could have been avoided without the loss of a single drop of blood.

Only I checked the morgue, and I couldn't find a single speech by Churchill demanding that Germany pick a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles in 1933.

Everyone was scared to death of the USSR, and wanted a rearmed Germany able to put up a feeble effort against the inevitable Soviet invasion of Western Europe, an effort that would get the UK and France enough time to mobilise and stop the Soviet threat.

Then, in 1938, Chamberlain went to France and asked what they should do about Germany. Hitler had re-armed Germany, and released news reels to be shown during movies showing a Great German military, taking hours to march past the cameras filming for the news reels. France said, 'Wait until 1939 when we have our defensive Maginot Line ready, and then the UK and France will be able to easily defeat the Germans with very limited losses.' So Chamberlain signed a faux peace deal with Germany and promised, 'Peace in Our Time!' Fake, of course, so Germany would not attack before the UK and France were ready. Chamberlain agreed (as did France) that Germany could take back bits of Germany taken away after WWI in 1938.

Churchill wrote, and Friedman agrees, that Germany was still very weak in '38, so victory would have been possible with minimal UK-French losses (or the UK alone could have easily defeated Germany). Patently false, but Friedman calls Trump worse than Chamberlain, Russia have lost millions in the Ukraine and are on the edge of total defeat, after which Russia can be broken up into 20 small, unarmed countries, and all Russian assets can be confiscated as war reparations to American oiligarchs.

But Trump's agreeing to give a Russia, that is now almost totally defeated by the Ukrainians, a Russian victory forced upon the Ukrainians by the US, will mean a much stronger Russia in a year or two, so anyone who wants to visit the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben will have to speak Russian to ask the way.

Regime Change in Iran?

Israel and the US want to overthrow the Ayatollah and return the Shah to power. The US did this in '53 after Mossadegh announced, in '51, that he was nationalising all the oil in Iran. The US made the Shah the supreme ruler of Iran and helped him build a pro-Shah force that would keep him as supreme ruler. But then, in '73, the Shah nationalised the Iranian oil, and the US found an Ayatollah who only wanted to force all Iranian women to wear Islamic dress, and who didn't care about Iranian oil.

The Ayatollah the US helped to replace the Shah had all the Americans in the US Embassy in Iran captured and held hostage until '81 after Reagan was elected to replace Carter. But, while the Ayatollah released the US hostages after Carter was removed from office, the Ayatollah never returned the US oil. That Ayatollah died, but his replacement did not return the American oil to the US.

Israel tried to get rid of the Ayatollah, but failed, and need US bombers to destroy Israel, but the US do not seem interested.

It is said the Trump agreed to bomb Iran after Israel threatened to use nukes, so the US bombed the nuclear sites in Iran and Trump said all Iranian nuclear facilities were totally destroyed.

Most experts figure the Iranian nuclear facilities are still there in Iran, the Trump strike did limited damage.

Strictly speaking, no one has made a nuke from scratch without 60 tonnes of uranium. It is said that the US helped Israel get 100 tonnes of uranium, more than enough to build 60 to 200 nukes. No one knows for certain how much uranium Israel has, or how many bombs. Probably enough to totally destroy Iran and leave a radioactive waste where Iran used to be.

The US wanted to get back the Iranian oil so they could sell it, but maybe the US would settle for the complete destruction of all Venezuelan and Iranian oil production, and two new pro-American governments who will give the US complete control over Venezuelan and Iranian energy assets.

And maybe that will work and cut the PRC off from most of the oil they require.

Cursing in China: Beautiful Dog!!!

There is a US comic strip called "Mallard Fillmore" (the name of the duck star of the strip, a name derived from the name of the US president Millard Fillmore), which takes a right-wing, pro-Republican view of politics, and gets about 500 comments every day, fighting between Democrat readers who detest the strip and Republican readers who love the strip. The two groups fight every day, and say as much as they can, given the editorial restriction on the language allowed in comments. (All comments must be written, so the shouting matches are just using lots of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.)

Which brings me to the PRC, where I can't read the comic strips, all of which are in Chinese, nor can I understand the fierce fights that take place on their mobile phones, with the two sides of a debate I cannot understand screaming at each other.

The 'discussions' frequently degenerate into profanity, and one of the worst curses one can level at an opponent is 'Beautiful dog,' in Chinese 美狗。

I have no idea why this is the case, since I don't understand a word of Chinese, but being around Chinese people, I have to listen to the fierce fights over subjects I do not understand.

Overthrowing China

The US have their sights on Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.

Fifty years ago, most Chinese were farmers, much as described in The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. They had a tiny farm, and had to do everything manually: no tractors, no oxen, primitive tools, they worked hard all day, every day during the growing season. They had to plow, plant, fertilise, water, and harvest by hand, and when the weather was bad, they didn't have enough to eat and some of their children starved to death.

Twenty years ago, electric machines did a lot of the work, there wasn't that much work for the farmers, just one going around to check on the machines and report any malfunctions so a replacement machine could be sent out. The farmers spent most of their time playing cards, and a lot left the farm and went to work in a city factory or office or university.

The farmers who left to work in the city had to pay someone to take their place on the farm since their ID card said, 'Farmer', and the shortages and starvation that had been a feature of Chinese life were indelibly written into the minds of the government workers who figured China needed everyone whose labour card said, 'Farmer' to be farming.

Just 20 years ago, most Chinese residential buildings were single story, with small, one room apartments for the ordinary Chinese, called the Lao Bai Xing (老百姓）, 10% of homes were without electricity, just about all without running water. In northern China, winters were cold, and so was the housing. Maybe they scrimped on food to buy a little coal to burn in the middle of their one-room apartment for heat.

Today, all housing in China has electricity and running water and cheap heat in winter: the coal is burned many kilometers from any city, used to heat water that is sent to the city in insulated pipes, and runs radiators, without any coal smoke in town (and filters on the plants that produce the hot water, so no big cloud of black smoke).

But to maintain their new lifestyle, China need energy, oil, gas, and they still use a lot of coal. More than twice as many cars as any other country. So they need lots of oil and gas, and, after the West refused to buy from Russia, Russia started selling a lot of their energy to China.

And China keeps rising and rising, but all this would stop if China could not buy any energy resources.

So Venezuela is first on the list. Under the Monroe Doctrine, everything in North, Central, and South America belongs to the US, so the US has every right to all Venezuelan oil, which China are buying.

The US imposed a Naval Blockade on Iran in 1980, and would not let anyone buy Iranian oil or gas, and made it difficult for anyone to buy anything else from Iran, or sell anything to Iran.

But, while Iran's economy fell by more than half under the US blockade, Iran grew enough food to feed themselves and made basic medicines, so no problem with common ailments (some people with rare diseases died, but not that many since they were rare diseases for which Iran had no treatment because of the blockade).

But then, in 2021, a fleet of oil tankers came to Iran. The US Navy ships blockading Iran saw that the oil tankers were protected by a larger fleet of Naval ships than the US had, so any engagement would just mean all the US ships at the bottom of the Persian Gulf (always the Arabian Gulf on the West Side, and always the Persian Gulf on the East Side of the Gulf), so the US Navy ships withdrew, and the oil tankers bought and filled up with every drop of Iranian oil that Iran had available to sell. And those tankers and Naval ships keep coming and coming to Iran to buy up all the Iranian oil. So a much stronger reaction is needed, and Israel say they will nuke Iran, making all the oil too radioactive to use, so that will cut off the second of the main sources of Chinese energy.

Then, if we can use the Ukraine to destroy Russia, and return all that Russian oil to the rightful US owners, that will greatly reduce China's energy resources, and should cause a collapse of the Chinese economy, and the US will remain the unquestioned Global Hegemon.

Israel got the US into the Iran war by threatening to use nukes, but Iran is still there, and next time, Israel might destroy Iran with nukes, after which Iranian oil will be too radioactive to use, and China will have lost two of their biggest energy suppliers, and should be on the way to total collapse.

Geography????

The Ancient Greeks said Asia AKA the Orient started at the Hellespont. They also said that all of Asia plus all of Africa were much smaller than Europe. This is because they knew a lot of European cities, but only a few African and Asian cities, and extrapolated from this rather limited information (India was small, just Westernmost India, and China did not exist).

Actually, they calculated the size of Africa by noting that, as one goes further south, it gets hotter, so, as one travels south in Africa, it soon becomes too hot for humans to survive, and then too hot for matter to exist, and that is where the Equator is located (they figured the Earth must be a hemisphere). 

Not clear how they knew where Asia ended, but Alexander spread his Ragtime to Persia and then further east to Westernmost India, and then he died, and the Persians and Indians gave up on Greek music. The Greeks knew that people had gone East from Persia where they saw giant anthills, which one can see in places like White Sands National Park in the US, or in the Arabian and Taklamakan deserts. I've seen those anthills, but the ants were all inside when I was there, which is good, since, according to the ancient Greeks, they're the size of dogs and very fierce and attack and kill the humans who disturb them. In any case, the Greeks knew that a very few of those who managed to go to those anthills came back with lots of gold that they somehow managed to get from the anthills without disturbing the ants (but most of those who went into those deserts never came back alive).

Of course, some would say that the travellers were not altogether honest about their travels, which meant bringing Western goods all the way to India, maybe all the way to the Chinese Empire over the old Emperor's Silk Belt and Road Initiative, selling them those Western goods, using the proceeds to buy silk and maybe some tea, selling the silk and tea for gold, and finally coming back to where they started with lots of gold, but I trust those travellers and I've seen those giant anthills, so I figure they somehow managed to evade the ants and got the gold that way.

In  any case, the Ancient Greeks were the World Hegemon a long time ago. More recently, it was the British, who set 0º Longitude at Greenwich, the obvious Centre of the World when Britain was the World Hegemon. The British figured all of Europe was the West, as did the Ancient Greeks, so the Orient AKA Asia started at the Hellespont, and the westernmost bit of Asia was the Near East.

Then the US became World Hegemon, and figured the UK and Europe were Nearest East, West Asia was Middle East, and, when I was a boy, East Asia was called the Orient in the US. As I recall from geography class, India was just India back then (the Brits broke up India before I was born, but we used old textbooks), but now, of course, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh et al. are South Asia.

So names and geography have changed over the years.

Not clear if the US will ever allow another Hegemon to replace them, since they have nukes, and some, maybe a lot of them, figure having no world at all would be much better than having a world with some nation other than the US as World Hegemon.

One thing I heard about was that, around 1937, Germany had videos to be shown during the News Feature that used to be a standard part of watching a movie, videos that appeared to show a huge German military, and the UK and France said it was just a camera trick, the tiny German Army was just marching in circles with the camera only showing the soldiers and tanks and artillery as they marched past and past and past, so it looked like a huge military when it was only a very few men and tanks and artillery pieces, nothing that could challenge the UK and France, or even just the UK or France.

And one thing I've seen on TV was the Chinese military parade on 3 September 2025, which looked like a huge military, but all the Western experts assure me it was just the Chinese marching their tiny military in circles past the camera: the PRC have absolutely nothing that could possibly challenge the US military.

Victory in the Ukraine

All the mainstream media in the US/UK/EU say that Russia are losing badly in the Ukraine.

Of course, all the people who read and watch and gullibly accept Russian propaganda believe that Russia are winning in the Ukraine.

Judge Napolitano has had guests who say Russia are winning, and many guests who say Russia are losing, the Russian military are losing huge numbers of men, all kept Top Secret by the Soviets, of course, and then the Soviets lie that they are winning in the Ukraine, but the Russian economy was destroyed by US/UK/EU sanctions,, The whole Russian economy is based on selling oil to Europe and using the money to buy everything Russia need from Europe, and now that Europe are not buying any Russian oil or selling hamburgers and clothes and shoes and dishwashers and everything else Russians need, Russians have nothing, they are using washing machine parts to run their tanks that have all been destroyed by the advanced NATO weapons given to the Ukraine, even though more than half those weapons were sold by the Ukraine and they pocketed the money, the Ukrainian military are still easily defeating the Russians with the weapons they didn't sell but used to totally destroy the Russian military armed with WWII and Czarist weapons.

Victoria promised that the Ukraine would join NATO and the US would put in anti-missiles that could totally stop any Soviet retaliation for a massive NATO nuclear strike on the USSR or Russia or whatever it is they call themselves these days, so they could choose between surrender or total nuclear destruction with no possibility of a counter-strike, so no reason for NATO not to totally destroy the USSR if they refuse to surrender.

The Ukraine having gleefully welcomed those NATO nukes, the USSR launched a totally unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. In a few days, they made it to Kyiv, but were then forced back to the Russian border, and the Ukrainian Army have taken a huge chunk of the USSR, the Kursk region, and are easily defeating the Russian military.

The Russian propaganda lie that Russia are winning, that most of the Ukrainian military have been defeated, but that's not what one sees or reads in the US/UK/EU media, which are totally reliable, and have never told a lie.

So we expect Russian surrender very soon, with all Russian natural resources returned to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs. 

What could possibly go wrong?????

Russia and the PRC 'Support' the US/Zionist Plan for Ghaza

Trump's 20 point plan for the Ghaza went to the UN Security Council (UNSC). Most Islamic States sitting as temporary members of the UNSC voted in favour of the US plan, while Russia and the PRC abstained, so the Plan passed as a UN Resolution.

As of now, no one has any idea what this really means. The Islamic States won't do anything to support the plan that they voted for, and presumably won't do anything against it.

The UN-passed Plan has Trump as the Head of the Ghaza commission, a commission which doesn't seem to have any Palestinian members, but it does have Blair of the UK as a senior member.

Trump's 20 point plan says all of Hamas must disarm and surrender to the Zionists. Hamas must show where every last one of their secret tunnels are so all can be totally and irreversibly destroyed.

Not clear where what is now the UN Plan for Ghaza is going.

But I guess we'll find out.

Ghaza

 Ghaza have been a problem since the land was handed over to the Philistines in 2005, and that problem became bigger when Hamas won the election of Palestinian officials in 2007. Israel funded Hamas to weaken the Palestinian authority, but, after Hamas won the 2007 election, Israel said the Palestinian Authority would remain the only legitimate government of the Palestinians (who don't really have any land, since all of Ghaza and the West Bank belong to the Zionists).

For electing Hamas, Israel imposed sanctions on Ghaza, but those sanctions were relatively mild (only a few annual cases of starvation, death by Israeli shelling, and death from lack of medicine).

But then Hamas staged a totally unprovoked attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel have proof that Hamas raped and murdered many women and beheaded many babies. Of course, many question that 'proof' since many of  the Israeli civilians killed on 7 October were killed by weapons not available to Hamas.

I watched two presentations by Max Blumenthal. In the first, he said very few had seen the rape videotapes, and the few allowed to see the tapes had no knowledge of videotapes. Max said he'd watched the tape and all the rapes took place before 2023, and in places such as Kurdistan that were outside of Israel. He gave a presentation a few months later saying so few people claim to have seen the tape that the tape does not exist, since if it did exist, Israel would broadcast it to the entire world.

I wish Mr Blumenthal had a logically consistent reason not to believe that the rapes and murders were real, but he has not presented it yet.

Still, Mr Blumenthal raises serious questions about the veracity of the Israeli version of what happened on 7 October 2023.

In any case, the US are now planning to open a large US military base in Ghaza, and the US will help Israel enforce Trump's 20 point peace plan: totally disarming all of Hamas and dismantling all the Hamas tunnels.

And if this means removing all the Palestinians from Ghaza, one way or another, then the US military will help with this task, and maybe extend to the West Bank.

It's the least the US can do to maintain World Peace by giving Israel everything they want.

Venezuela

 All the world's oil belongs to US oiligarchs. They did the exploration, the drilling, paid a few pennies to the locals who did most of the work, so all the oil is theirs.

Except for Saudi Oil. The Saudi king agreed that all the Saudi oil belonged to the American company Aramco, which was on the US Stock Exchange. Saudi used their Hajj money to buy every share, so all that Saudi oil legally belongs to the Saudis.

But the UK did all the work to find Iranian oil, so it all belongs to a branch of BP, and the US own half that branch, so half of all Iranian oil (less now, of course) belongs to the UK and the rest (much more than half) belongs to the US.

With Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, all those energy resources belong to the US, and the US are moving to return all the Venezuelan oil to the rightful owners, American oiligarchs. In addition, Venezuela is one of the major causes of the US drug crisis, since they send most of the illegal drugs to the US from their long Pacific Ocean coastline, so the US have been bombing lots of small Venezuelan boats filled with narcotics bound for California. The fact that those boats have no access to the fuel they'd have needed is no excuse, the US military were totally justified in bombing them, and the (Classified TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR) intelligence proves this beyond the shadow of a doubt!

As of now, the US need some Venezuelan crude since it is very sour crude, and there are some critical petroleum products that can only be made from very sour crude. And all that Venezualan oil legally belongs to the US of A, and Trump is a Great President for leading the charge for the US to reclaim that oil and put a Nobel Peace Laureate in as President of Venezuela.

Israel and the US want all that Iranian oil, but Israel is getting impatient and wants to use nukes, which would be more than justified, but maybe not such a good idea since all the Iranian oil would be unmarketable until it is no longer radioactive.

Israel and the US are also talking about nuking the Ghaza, but that would leave the land radioactive and unsuitable for building a lavish and very exclusive resort there.

But I'm sure the US will do the right thing and remove Iran and Russia as threats, and if we have to nuke them and all their oil, the US oil will be worth 10 times as much, so that's probably worth it.

The Leading Neocolonial Power since 1823

The Monroe Doctrine

 In 1823, President Monroe proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine: all of the Americas were for the US. The US was far too weak to keep all the Europeans out, but they did their best. Trump, of course, says the US wants Canada and Greenland to be under US control, and, if the permanent US government let him, the US could probably force Canada and Greenland to become US somethings or other (not clear exactly what Trump has in mind, or if the permanent government will go along, or what).

For 75 years after the Monroe Doctrine, the US strongly condemned colonialism and fought it in the Americas, with some success: Spain and Portugal, who had been given all of the Americas by the Pope,  lost most of their mainland colonies during the 19th century.

European Colonialism

The British and the European Imperialist nations sent their military to destroy the government of a state, then they replaced the government with a government where all senior government officials had to be British- or European-born. The junior government officials who did most of the hard work were often natives of the colony, but their bosses were British- or European-born, and the resident head of state was a British- or European-born governor or viceroy, while the ultimate Head of State was the British or European Head of State.

US Neo-colonialism

The US used (and use) a combination of money and military force to not-quite-as-surreptitiously-as-they-proclaimed, install citizens of their neo-colonies as the government of the state in what is always supposed to be the 'choice' of the citizens of the neo-colony. The government and other leaders of the country were all citizens of the state, but they knew they would remain well-paid leaders only so long as did whatever the US ordered them to do.

This was fairly easy when Monroe proclaimed that the US would end European colonialism in the Americas.

When Spain and Portugal had colonies in the Americas, the senior government officials had trouble sending their wives back to Spain or Portugal, so their children were not European-born, and so could not hold the most senior offices, and strongly resented the fact. The US found it very easy to support revolutions throughout Latin America, providing the American-born pure-European-blood Latin Americans with lots of money and weapons with which they managed to evict Portugal from Brazil and Spain from most of the rest of Latin America, and then those pure-blood-Europeans, who were American born, replaced the Spanish- and Portuguese-born rulers, with a lot of help from the US in the form of money and weapons and maybe US military help.

The US military ensured that the new governments of 'independent' Latin American countries knew that their lofty, well-paid positions depended on keeping the Americans happy, so the US got all the bananas and sugar and other valuable minerals, the indigenous Americans, Africans, and mixed-bloods did all the work of growing the coffee, bananas, and mining the minerals and loading it all on boats to be shipped to the US for almost no pay, so the Americans who owned the banana and sugar and mineral corporations and the leadership of the countries were all happy. 

The pure-European blood who became the neocolonial leaders of the country were very well paid and lived in beautiful villas with lots of cheap servants, while the pureblood indigenous Americans and Africans and mixed-blood citizens were stuck in abject poverty, living in houses they put together from the jungle leaves with no electricity or running water (well, no indoor running water, they had the streams in their country they could use for bathing and drinking water).

After WWII, the two Great Powers were the US and the USSR, and they divided the world, with the USSR neo-colonising the Warsaw Pact and the US neo-colonising the other NATO nations.

But then, in 1949, the PRC threw out the neocolonial powers and became truly independent (and impecunious). The US wanted to return the entire PRC to a neo-colony of the US, but only got Taiwan, and even there, the US had to accept 'strategic ambiguity': the US must say that Taiwan is just another province of the PRC while acting like Taiwan is a US neo-colony, with an ambassador (who cannot use the name ambassador) and an Embassy in D.C. (that must never be called an Embassy).

The USSR tried to help the PRC, but then International boundaries, all drawn by the Europeans, got in the way, with the USSR saying the boundaries were drawn too far north and the PRC saying those boundaries were drawn too far south. So relations between the PRC and the USSR became very strained.

Then the PRC ping-pong team invited the US ping-pong team to the PRC, and from there, the Nixon government agreed to recognise the PRC and started moving American factories from the US, where labour was expensive, to the PRC where labour was almost free (by American standards).

So the US built lots of factories in the PRC and the Americans who built those factories made huge profits. But the PRC saw and learned and started building PRC factories over the next 50 years. The PRC now has the most cars. One sees GM cars and Ford cars built in the PRC, but also BYD cars and other brands with names in Chinese characters, copied from the US/German/French/Japanese/Korean factories.

And the US are desperate to make Russia and the PRC into US neo-colonies, as both obviously should be, but the US have no idea how to do this.

Trump met with Putin, then Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

First, on 19 January 2025, president-elect Trump said the US must get out of the Ukraine or the US economy would be destroyed. On 21 January 2025, President Trump said Russia must get out of the Ukraine or Russia would be destroyed (by the US? Trump didn't say).

Best guess: the men in dark suits and dark glasses had a little chat with Trump on 20 January, either president-elect Trump or President Trump, and said if he said or did the wrong thing, he'd be the next JFK.

We don't know any details about what Presidents Trump and Putin said to each other, but we do know that President Trump treated 'Snow White' Zelensky and the seven dwarf European leaders like their opinions were irrelevant.

The US are also sending a lot more weapons to the Ukraine and saying they will make Europe pay for all those weapons.

Meanwhile, US/UK/EU newspapers say the Russians are losing badly. The Russian economy, after Europe stopped buying Russian energy and providing Russians with European goodies for their economy, isn't in the top 10, maybe not even the top 50. 

The Western media all say that the war has been going very badly for the Russians. The Ukraine have the most advanced NATO weapons, while Russia are using WWII Soviet weapons that no longer worked, so they've been patched together using parts from Russian washing machines, so not only are the Russian weapons mostly useless, the Russians can't even wash their clothes. The Russian military have lost more than a million killed in action, while the Ukrainian military have lost about 50,000. Of course, the Russians have killed more than a million Ukrainians, but almost all were civilians. The Russians are now close to total defeat after which NATO plan to break Russia up into somewhere between 5 and 20 small, unarmed countries, all required to repay huge war reparations so all Russian energy and uranium and other resources will all go to NATO (mostly US) oiligarchs.

A number of people, all paid by the Russians with worthless rubles, have said the Russians are winning and the Russian economy, at PPP is 4th largest in the world. I checked, and PPP is a problem, other ratings put the Russian economy at PPP at #6. 

I heard someone say that Trump definitely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize after the Chinese and Indians are being forced to make peace by Trump's economic policies. Europe will not buy any Russian energy, but they will buy Indian energy, even if India get most of their energy resources from Russia. The US is trying to impose severe economic penalties on China and India, but penalising China is difficult since China produces things the US desperately needs, so the US have to trade with China on China's terms. India is not as strong economically, but China don't want to be alone fighting the US, so now they're supporting India. Peace between India and China after 75 years of war? Yes, Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize!

Some US maps of the war in Ukraine show that Russia was close to Kyiv in the first weeks of the 2022 war, but then were forced further and further back east, and are basically losing.

Actually, in 2014, when NATO and the Ukraine were going to block the Russian Navy from all sea access, Russia took the Crimea and demanded that the Donbas be an autonomous part of the Ukraine. France and Germany gave Russia the Minsk Accords, guaranteeing, they told the Russians, that the Russian language, religion, and ethnic Slavs would be safe in the Donbas, and told everyone else that, while the Russians weren't looking, the Donbas would be an Aryan region with no Russian language or churches or Slavs.

When Russian military reached the Crimea, the Ukrainian military defending Crimea said, 'Welcome, brothers,' and the Russians were made to feel at home (after all, the Crimea had been part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia until 1954, and had not been too happy to be moved to the Soviet Socialist Republic os Ukraine). The the move back to Russia was welcomed by the Crimeans, and there was no fighting.  Of course, most of the officers of the Ukrainian military were Slavs in 2014.

While Russia weren't looking, i.e., from 2014 until 2021, the Ukrainian military got rid of the Slavic officers and replaced them with good Aryan officers. So, when Putin wrote Biden and NATO in 2021 saying that Russia could never allow the Ukraine to join NATO, he got the response that the Ukraine was definitely going to be part of NATO with a large nuclear arsenal and military bases and troops, and Russia had better do whatever NATO told them to do. So Putin ordered a totally unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine that managed to advance until they were near Kyiv, but then the Aryan-led Ukrainian military hit the Russians hard with NATO weapons, and the Russian military withdrew to areas near Russia. The Russian military had another big setback in late summer 2022, and the West wrote off the unprovoked Russian invasion as a complete failure that would soon result in a Russian surrender on NATO terms, a surrender NATO are still expecting will come very soon now, and the US/UK/EU newspapers assure us that Russia were very close to surrendering until Trump allowed Putin to land on US soil, where he should have been arrested as a war criminal, then the US president and the Russian dictator talked for a couple of hours and Trump let the war criminal leave the US, in clear violation of NATO law (just ask any of the top leaders in NATO, other than Trump).

And then he treated Snow White Zelensky and the seven European dwarfs like they didn't really matter, for all of which Trump has been condemned by all the neoliberal and neoconservative leaders in the US/UK/EU governments and media who know that it is essential that Russia be totally destroyed and broken up into a bunch of small, unarmed countries that must do whatever NATO tell them to do.

After all, they all know, and the media they control keep reiterating, that Russia is not the USSR, MI6 and the CIA, probably with help from Mossad have destroyed most if not all of the Russian nuclear arsenal, if it was even still operational, so this war should be quick and clean and leave NATO in total and complete charge of the entire world with no fuss and no muss, After all, in the US/UK/EU history books, the Aryans easily destroyed the Slavs in WWII, and the Slavs have only gotten weaker while the Aryans have gotten much stronger.

Also, we know that the Nazis killed more than six million Jews, which was the worst crime ever committed in the history of the world, while the swastika-waving Aryans in the Ukraine have a Jewish president, so they can't possibly be Nazis. (The Nazis also killed Slavs, but that just proves that there's a little good in the worst of men.)

The US Democrats would love to impeach and convict Trump and get a good president who would lead NATO to totally destroy Russia. The US Democrats don't have the votes now, but they're hoping to get those votes in the 2026 election so they can get rid of Trump in 2027, preferably in January.

For now, Trump will try to do enough of what those who really run the US and whose predecessors got rid of JFK demand, while trying to avoid doing too much of what they really want and starting WWIII.

The Problem of Anti-Semitism

 I was taught in Sunday School that all Jews are deicides, so good Christians must avoid them, but G_d gave them the 'Mark of Cain' so it is prohibited to kill them. 

Hitler wanted to deport all the European Jews to Palestine. As the Rev. Dr. Alexander Keith, a Scots Presbyterian, said in 1843, "Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land." He has been misquoted as saying "Palestine is a land without any people for a people without any land," but that's wrong. He went to Palestine, saw a mixture of Palestinians and European Christians who went to live in the Holy Land and he figured that all Arabs are nomads, they live in tents, not houses, their camels and goats follow the grass, the Arabs follow the goats and camels, and they can go anywhere outside Palestine while the Jews are all sent to live in Palestine (the Christians living in the Holy Land could stay there, of course, at least the Protestant Christians).

Of course, in 1843 Palestine was still part of Ottoman Syria, so sending British Jews to live there could only be done with Ottoman permission until after WWI, when the Ottomans lost and the Ottoman Empire was mostly divided between the British and the French, with the British getting all of Palestine. The British had several declarations that Palestine would be only for Jews, maybe only for British Jews, but the final Balfour Declaration was that the Jews and Palestinians would share Palestine, forming a British colony with a mixture of colonials who did not get along and could not put up a unified front against British Imperial Rule.

The US had a law restricting Jewish immigration starting in 1921 (they took in a few Nobel Laureates and others with similar accomplishments, but not many), and the British said Palestine was only for British Jews. When Hitler said he wanted to deport all the European Jews to Palestine, the British said that the Royal Navy would prevent any Jews being deported from Europe, especially deported to British Palestine.

People who survived German Concentration Camps in the '30s said they were not death camps, just minimum security prisons. Some have used this to say the Nazi Concentration Camps didn't kill any Jews.

But in 1940, the war meant Germany had a shortage of food and limited the food sent to the concentration camps to feed the Jewish prisoners, so the Jewish prisoners started starving and, as their immune systems weakened, they began to develop contagious diseases and these diseases spread to the Concentration Camp staff and the townspeople. So the Nazis came up with the Final Solution: all the Jews unable to work must be mass executed and the bodies burned to stop the spread of disease. The Germans tried to hide the Holocaust, but they lost the war so the world found out about the Holocaust and the Allies hanged thousands of Germans for war crimes.

The US had concentration camps for Japanese, but the US won the war and the Japanese lost, so the American Concentration Camps were not war crimes. I met a former Japanese prisoner from one of the US Concentration Camps who said that the US only gave the camp enough food to feed the prisoners for three months and said it must last a year, and prisoners must never be allowed out of their cells, but the guards at his camp disobeyed orders, bought farm implements, seeds, and eggs with their own money, and let the prisoners farm the Concentration Camp, and they finished the food provided in three months then lived on what they grew and hatched. But that was just one US Concentration Camps, and I don't know what happened at the others, but even if the US had killed every Japanese prisoner, since the US won the war, that would not have been a war crime.

Ivy League professor Dave Collum says that FDR was responsible for the Holocaust of the Jews, because, if the US had sided with Germany against the Soviet Union, there never would have been a Holocaust. This is very likely to be true: Hitler did not want to kill the Jews, he just wanted them out of Europe, so if the US had allied with Germany, all the Jews who died in the Holocaust might have been saved. Or if the US decided to let Germany kill all the Jews, it would not have been a Holocaust, just a casualty of war.

But the official history of WWII is the pretty much the Holocaust and the US rescue of the Western European Jews, sending those who survived the Holocaust to Palestine. The Soviets mostly get written out of the history, since they didn't really contribute anything: the US single-handedly defeated the Axis, at least in the US history of WWII, which remains the official Western history, even if there might be a few minor discrepancies between the official Western history and what actually happened.

But we did have the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism is now a heinous crime, and it's been defined to include any criticism of Israel.

So anyone in the US/UK/EU who criticises Israel is guilty of a serious crime: Students can be expelled, immigrants with legal visas or even passports can be deported for committing a serious crime, citizens can be arrested and lose their jobs.

So, under the US/UK/EU definition, the Palestinians killed by Israel were trying to complete what Germany started and are guilty of genocide if they killed any Jews or attempted genocide if they didn't, so Israel acted strictly in self-defense. And anyone questioning this obvious fact is guilty of the serious crime of Anti-Semitism and will be severely punished. (And this includes Anti-Semitic Jews in the US/UK/EU who question anything that Israel does.)

WWIII anyone, or did Trump bring us 'Peace in Our Time'???

I read the Child's Version of Churchill's History as a boy, back in the '60s.

Churchill said, correctly, that it would have been very easy for the UK to have prevented WWII, bloodlessly, in '33: Germany had been completely disarmed in 1919, and the UK could have ordered that Germany could not rearm, and must pick a new Chancellor, one who would promise not to re-arm. Churchill said that he thundered against letting Germany re-arm in '33, but I can't find a single example of one of those speeches anywhere in the morgue. So it appears that Churchill, like the rest of the British leadership, was terrified of the USSR and wanted a lightly armed Germany to pose a slight resistance that would slow the Soviet attack down enough for the UK and France to get ready to defend against it.

In any case, the UK did nothing in '33, Germany elected Ad0lph and re-armed, and the UK and France became afraid of Germany in 1938, so both started working on their defences: for France, the Maginot Line, and for the UK, the radar shield, and both wanted time to prepare. 

So, in 1938, Chamberlain signed a (faux) Peace Treaty with Germany promising 'Peace in Our Time', Peace that did not last, and for which Churchill condemned Chamberlain, a condemnation that persists to this day. But the British radar shield saved the UK from the Luftwaffe attacks in '40 (the Maginot Line didn't do much for France, since the Wehrmacht figured out how to get around it).

But most of the British Expeditionary Force made their way back to the UK from Dunkirk, and Germany figured that an amphibious attack would be a disaster, so Germany used bombers, many of which were shot down thanks to the radar shield, and the UK managed to hold on until the US joined the war.

The Soviets got lots of materiel and Spam from the US to help them in their war effort, a contribution the US and USSR preferred not to remember: helping/being helped by the enemy.

But the Soviets fought at Leningrad and Stalingrad, and one can no longer see Leningrad or Stalingrad on any up-to-date map, so obviously, the Wehrmacht won, and had all of Eurasia until 1944 when the US marched in and single-handedly destroyed the Wehrmacht. At least that's the official US version, and that's the version that was in all the history books I had to read in High School. Along with the Churchill's lie that the UK could have easily defeated Germany in 1938 and Chamberlain giving Germany an extra year to prepare was the reason the UK lost in France in 1940. (Most likely, if the UK went to war in 1938, the BEF would have been defeated and captured in Czechoslovakia, not managed to get back to the UK to defend against an amphibious invasion, and with no radar shield, the Luftwaffe would have devastated the UK with bombing runs and not enough carrots for the RAF--Churchill always said the RAF knew when and where the Luftwaffe were coming because he fed them lots of carrots; Churchill's histories never mention the radar shield that Chamberlain completed shortly before the war began.)

So now we're back trying to figure out to stop the Soviet advance. The Russians may have changed their name from 'Soviets', but the Russians remain Russians, no matter what they call themselves, and all of Europe West of Russia are terrified that a Soviet attack is imminent, and that it can be easily stopped if they just act now, and act strongly.

WWII was the last war fought with only one nuclear power who bombed two civilian cities with no military significance, because they couldn't risk their nuclear bombs on any city with military significance that would be defended and might shoot the Enola Gay down. And the US hoped to teach the USSR a lesson: don't mess with anything west of the USSR. Only what actually happened was that everyone knew the basics of the atom bomb, that it required about 60 tonnes of uranium (mostly yellowcake, plus a little metallic uranium), and this was outrageously expensive and might not work.

After the Soviets saw that it did work, they immediately got 60 tonnes of uranium together, let it sit for 3 years producing plutonium, and in 1949, the USSR was the world's 2nd nuclear power.

J. Edgar Hoover was tasked with finding the spies that explained what uranium was to the ignorant Soviets who couldn't possible have figured this out by themselves, and arrested someone who was promised a prison sentence if he named one or more confederates, and the death penalty if he didn't. This went on until two Jews, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, refused to name anyone else, so both were executed in 1953.

France also figured out how to make a nuke, and the US helped the UK, so there were four nuclear powers.

Then the PRC, India, Pakistan, and the DPRK all developed public nukes, and one state probably has 'secret' nukes that everyone knows that they have.

Someone, probably MI6, with additional intelligence from the CIA and help from Mossad, managed to destroy a large part of the Russian nuclear force, so it looks like Russia is not the nuclear power that the USSR was, and can easily be defeated by a massive attack before they can launch any of their (probably no longer operational) nukes. So most of Europe west of Russia are all for a strategic stab at Russia to completely destroy Russia, break them up into somewhere between 5 and 20 small, unarmed countries, with all their resources handed over as war reparations, mostly to US oiligarchs (but with a little going to the UK, France, and other members of NATO).

What could possibly go wrong with such a brilliant plan????

The Israeli-American-Iranian War in the News

 I watched as John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen discussed the war between Iran and the US allied with Israel. They said that the Friday 13 June, 2025 attack by Israel early in the morning was a failure, and the Iranian response is destroying Israel.

This is pretty much the opposite of what I read in the news, where President Trump ordered Iran to show up at a meeting on Sunday, 15 June or they would face very serious consequences. They did not show up, so those deadly consequences happened. Two days before the meeting. When Israel attacked and destroyed all the Iranian anti-aircraft facilities and almost all of their missiles, killed all their top generals and nuclear scientists, and destroyed the computer that runs all their defence systems, leaving Iran completely vulnerable to further Israeli attacks.

When Iran managed to fire a very few drones at Israel, all were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome, so Iran can do absolutely no damage to Israel, and the Israeli attacks continue daily, and will continue until Iran surrender, or all of Iran are completely destroyed.

And President Trump has promised that the US will be joining Israel in about two weeks to take out all Iranian nuclear research facilities with US planes, completely invisible to Iranian air defences, using 'bunker-buster' bombs. If Iran tries to retaliate against the US, the US response will ensure the total destruction of Iran, and will kill all the Ayatollahs, since US intelligence know exactly where they all are and US bombs can easily kill them all. And US defence protection mean no American soldier's life can be threatened by Iran with their primitive weapons (most of which have already been destroyed by Israel).

Of course, John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen say everything in the establishment media, both the pro-Trump and the anti-Trump media which follow the same story about Israel's total success in their attacks on Iran and their impregnable defences against any Iranian retaliation are lies: most of the Iranian air defenses are still operational, so Israeli planes cannot fly over Iran, they can only fire rockets at Iran from outside the country, and those rockets do limited damage. Mossad spies set up systems identical to the ones they helped set up in Russia to destroy Russia's nuclear attack force, trucks with retractable roofs full of drones, and they had full knowledge of where all the generals and nuclear scientists lived (since this was public knowledge), so it was very easy, when Iran was not expecting an attack before Monday, 16 June 2025, to kill all those generals and scientists, but Iran replaced all the generals, got their defence computer working again, arrested many of the Mossad spies, and had the Ayatollahs hidden where Israeli jets and Mossad spies couldn't find them (the Ayatollahs' homes were all bombed, but the Ayatollahs were out for the night).

And they say Israel lie about stopping all the Iranian missiles, those missiles have done massive damage that Israel did not expect and cannot easily repair, and the missile attacks have been every day starting late Friday the 13th.

Iran say that every Israeli attack on Iran will be followed by an Iranian attack on Israel, and those attacks will do more and more damage to Israel, but will stop as soon as Israel stops attacking Iran.

But Israel have no intention of stopping before Iran are destroyed, unless they run out of ammunition, and the US plan to a) start helping the Israelis; and b) supply them with plenty of ammunition to keep shooting at Iran, and the US and Israel both say Iran have very few missiles left, so their illegal attacks on Israel will end very soon (under US/UK/EU/Israeli law, it is perfectly legal to bomb Iran, and totally illegal for anyone to bomb Israel) .

 Iran say, and John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen agree, that Iran have thousands of missiles left, and are producing many more to replace the ones they are firing at Israel, so those attacks on Israel will not only continue, but will get more and more deadly and damaging, and if the US join the war, will do far more damage to US forces than to Israel, since US forces have far less protection than Israel, should the US get into the war.

Net: I have no idea what to believe. But it is almost certain that far more damage has been done to Israel than  they admit, since all photographs and videos (and eyewitness statements) of Iranian damage are illegal in Israel and the Western establishment media.

What in the *&%! is Happening in the Middle East???

As just about everyone knows, June 10-12 the US and Israel told Iran they'd better show up for a very important meeting on Sunday, 15 June, or there would be serious consequences. The meeting was very, very important and Iran had better not miss it.

So, since it was Eid, Iran were celebrating Thursday and were in bed asleep at 3:00 am Friday when Israel struck a massive blow with US weapons. The US had been working hard with Israel to trick the Iranians into relaxing and not being on full alert.

After those few days of lies, the lies from Iran and Israel and the US have been pretty much non-stop. No one has a clue what is really happening.

We have lots of pictures, plus stories from reporters that aren't there, of tens of thousands of US weapons striking Iran, with fires, buildings partly destroyed where Iranian generals and university professors of physics lived and were killed along with their families and neighbours. We know that Mossad have a huge network of spies in Iran who told them where the generals and professors lived and called in to say they saw the generals go into their apartments to sleep, and announced that they killed, and Iran admitted, that many of their top generals and professors have been martyred in the Israeli strikes. We know those spies planted many drones in Iran in trucks with retractable roofs just like the ones used to destroy most of the Russian nuclear strike force, in an effort to remove all Russian nuclear fangs.

Israel and the US said the Iranian defences had been totally destroyed by that first strike, and this seems to have been true. Mossad had destroyed the electronic systems that controlled all Iranian defence and offence capabilities, so they expected the bombings to continue with no defensive threats to the Israeli Air Force that would be attacking Iran or any Iranian missiles able to fly at Israel, certainly not enough to penetrate the Iron Dome. We know Trump told the Iranians they had better surrender unconditionally or many, many Iranians would be killed. We know Israel said their strike on Friday, 13 June to surprise and destroy Iranian military capacity to defend themselves or attack Israel was a complete success: all the Iranian offensive missiles were destroyed along with the entire Iranian antiaircraft system.

Only a team of electronic experts from Russia raced to repair the damage and got those Iranian electronic systems working after about 10 hours, when they were expected to be out of service for the duration of the war, and (according to Russia) probably would have been out of service for weeks or months.

So, late Friday, Iran fired the first missiles at Israel.

How much damage was really done to Iran that first night, and all the following days and nights? We know lots of top Iranian officials and many civilians have been killed, Israel claims and Iran decries that much, but the total destruction of Iranian antiaircraft? Israel say not one plane has been shot down, while Iran say they've shot down three (but no pictures or any other evidence). And the near total destruction of all Iranian missiles? Obviously, not all, but do they have dozens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands left? No idea.

And the Iranian missiles fired at Israel? Genocide, of course, since at least thee Israelis have been killed, and the definition of genocide is killing all or part of any recognised ethnic-religious group, so killing three Israelis definitely fits the official, legal definition of genocide. Were more killed? Not sure. Was any damage done to Israelis offence or defence facilities? No idea. How many missiles actually got past the Iron Dome, Israel admits about three, while Iran claim many more.

So all we know now is that this war is likely to continue. Will the people really running the US send the US military to help Israel destroy Iran? No idea. Will Russia and/or the PRC take a bigger role, and will we know about it if they surreptitiously help Iran? No idea.

And absolutely no idea where this is going. 

WWIII anyone???

Cuban Missila Crisis???

 In 1962, I had to sleep on the floor. There was talk that the US was very close to having a massive fleet of nuclear bombs dropping all over the US. Obviously, the targets would include US military sites and all major cities, and we lived in a small town and had lots of relatives who lived in major cities, so they all came to our little town, too small and insignificant to be a target, and far from any possible target. They stayed at my father's house and my uncle's house and two of them got my bed and others got the spare beds and the couch and I had to sleep on the floor. For years, many Americans thought we'd been very close to complete nuclear destruction.

In fact, the Cuban Missile Crisis started in 1961 when the US put nuclear missiles in Turkey. The Soviets vehemently objected, and the US leadership basically said, 'So what can you do about it? Those missiles are staying in Turkey.'

So the evil Soviets, completely unprovoked, threatened to put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the US were ready to nuke the Soviet Union to teach them that putting nuclear missiles in Cuba was a clear and flagrant violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

So President Kennedy made a fatal phone call to Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Kennedy said, 'I have to run for re-election and you don't, so if you'll say, "The USSR is taking all our missiles out of Cuba and will never put any missiles in Cuba," we'll take all our missiles out of Turkey, and you don't have to give us anything but your pretence that the US got everything and the USSR got nothing.' So Secretary Khrushchev agreed, since he thought he had nothing to lose. The US secretly removed all the missiles, with USSR inspectors verifying that there were no US missiles left in Turkey, and the US intelligence services were furious, as were the Soviet intelligence services.

The US intelligence services got rid of Kennedy in 1963, and the USSR intelligence services got rid of Khrushchev in 1964, as anyone who knew the intelligence services knew they would.

But there was never a crisis, there was never a real threat of nuclear war in 1962 because the US and USSR both had decent leaders who were able to defang the situation with no real threat (but they allowed ordinary people to think there had been a threat from which they had saved the world).

Khrushchev had to keep his victory secret, so USSR intelligence forces decided they had to get rid of him, and the US security forces could never forgive Kennedy for coming up with a serious loss that only looked like a great victory. 

(Of course, while the US had to remove all those missiles from Turkey, they moved them all to Türkiye, but they are no longer aimed at the USSR, now they're aimed at Russia.)

Great Power Pollitics: Indivisibility of Security

A Great Power can defend themselves. The Great Powers are never equal, but a nation defending themselves against an attack have a large logistical advantage, and to be a Great Power, one must, with this logistical advantage, be able to defeat any attack by another Great Power, so the weakest of the Great Powers must be able to defeat an attack by the strongest Great Power or they are not a Great Power.

Every Great Power are entitled to Indivisibility of Security, meaning no Great Power can increase their security at the expense of another Great Power. Such an increase in security at the expense of another Great Power would be an attack on the other Great Power, and a Great Power, by definition, can successfully resist such an attack.

Europe has been at war for most of the history we have of Europe, since they were never able to agree on who were and who were not a Great Power. Russia, in particular, have been very strong and very weak, and for the last two hundred years (that we know of) the Western Great Powers have wanted to defeat Russia and take some or all of the Russian resources, and have had differing degrees of success.

Napoleon attacked Russia with a military of 500,000. He returned to France in 1812 with a military of just 10,000 (and no longer being a Great Power, France were defeated, twice, by the UK after that visit to Moscow).

In the first part of the 20th Century, Japan, Germany, the US, UK, and France all managed to seize some Russian resources and Russia could do nothing and ended up dissolved and reformed as the Soviet Union.

Germany decided, in 1914, that they were strong enough to defeat the alliance of the UK, France, and Russia, and might have succeeded, but the US banks were sure that the UK and France were the only Great Powers in Europe, and loaned them lots of money to defeat Germany. Then, when it looked like the UK and France were sure to lose, the US joined them in their war against Germany to save the US banks, and Germany, while able to exhaust the UK and France, were themselves exhausted and unable to stand up to the US, UK, and French alliance.

In 1919, Germany were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, agreeing to hand all their gold over to the victors as war reparations and to completely disarm and agree never again to have a military.

But, not long after that, the UK and France decided that the Soviet Union were a serious threat and they needed an alliance with a moderately armed Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, so they allowed Germany to begin rearming in 1933.

Then, in 1938, five long years after the the UK and France decided that Germany needed to rearm, decided that Germany were getting too strong and must be defeated, but both were not ready, so the UK negotiated a peace treaty with Germany to give the UK and France time to prepare for war with Germany.

France and the UK wanted war in 1939, so they asked Poland to blockade East Prussia from the rest of Germany, an Act of War, and Germany responded by declaring war on Poland, which the UK, French, Polish Alliance meant justified the UK and France declaring war on Germany. Sadly, France and the UK were defeated in 1940, and Chamberlain, after his death, was blamed for not attacking Germany in 1938, since the UK desperately needed a scapegoat and Chamberlain, having died, could not defend himself.

After WWII, which the US claim to have won single-handedly, defeating Germany with their invasion of Europe in 1944 and Japan with two nukes in 1945, the USSR managed to keep all of Eastern Europe in the Warsaw Pact. The US and the rest of Western Europe hoped to defeat the USSR, but needed to beware of the USSR military with their nukes, obviously (to the US and Western Europe) stolen from the US.

In any case, the world noticed two Great Powers, the US and the USSR (the PRC proved they could defend themselves, the DPRK, and Vietnam from being overrun by the US, so they were probably a Great Power, but for most people, the US and USSR stuck out as Great Powers).

And then the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world had only one Great Power, everyone knew the US could (and did) destroy any nation they felt like destroying: Serbia so that NATO could establish a base against Russia in Kosovo, Afghanistan to destroy a weak nation as punishment for the September 2001 terrorist attack on the US (the attackers were renationalised as Afghans from 2001 until 2003, when they became not just Afghans but also Iraqis, Iranians, North Koreans, Syrians, Libyans, and Cubans, even though none of the attackers actually came from any of those nations, but the US was Global Hegemon, so if they renationalised the attackers, the re-nationalising stood). All the nations the US decided to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attack were attacked, some just with sanctions, some by sanctions and military attacks by the US and NATO.

This annoyed a lot of nations, but the US was obviously Global Hegemon, the only Great Power. The US could destroy any other nation, and no other nation could destroy the US, or effectively resist a US attack. So everyone accepted whatever the US did.

The handful of nuclear states knew that they could try using nukes against the US, but would probably do only limited damage while being utterly destroyed. And the US could inflict unbearable damage without nukes by stopping all international trade plus non-nuclear military attacks.

But times keeps a changin': now there are two or three nations that think they might be Great Powers.

Russia seemed to think they could defeat the US Proxy attack, but all the US/UK/EU news media assure us that the US/UK/EU proxy attack on Russia has just about destroyed Russia, which was no longer a Great Power, but has lost to a US/UK/EU armed Ukraine that have killed more than a million Russian troops, totally destroyed the Russian economy, left Putin in a precarious position, probably soon to be pushed out of the presidency. Russia thought they could take all of the Ukraine in three weeks, but have only a tiny sliver (which is still far too much) of the Ukraine after three years. So Russia have already been defeated, and it's just a question before that defeat turns to total destruction and reorganisation of Russia into a bunch of neutral, demilitarised states, all with governments bought and paid for by the US that all do whatever the US order them to do.

Of course, there are other news media that say the Russian military were never interested in quickly overrunning all of the Ukraine, but wanted to minimise Russian losses while maximising Ukrainian losses, especially of NATO weaponry, the goal being to demilitarise the Ukraine, and the Ukrainian losses have been vastly greater than the Russian losses, while the Russian economy has expanded in spite of all the US/UK/EU sanctions, including in weapons production, so the Ukraine are rapidly running out of NATO weapons and troops while the Russian military are very well supplied with a massive inventory of weaponry.

Of course, both the US/UK/EU news media and the other news media say they are the only news media telling the truth, the other news media with the opposite story are pure propaganda.

So, if one believes the US/UK/EU news media, Russia were never a Great Power and are now very close to total defeat, but if one believes the other news media, Russia are now very close to victory, meaning a Ukraine that will never dare try to join NATO and will obey Russian requirements about freedom for ethnic Russian that remain in whatever is left of the Ukraine after part reverts to Russia.

And then there are the PRC, no longer the nation with the largest population, but now the nation with the largest number of petrol-powered vehicles and the largest number of electric vehicles. And those are just filling the streets with people and goods moving about, that's not counting the military vehicles, of which they have the largest number on land, sea, and air.

PRC security is strange. The US agreed in 1972 that they would accept that Taiwan are just another PRC Province, but implemented what is called Strategic Ambiguity: the US say that Taiwan are just another PRC Province while acting as if Taiwan are an independent country. Taiwan have a person in the US with all the duties and responsibilities of an Ambassador residing in a building that serves all the functions of an Embassy, but the person has a title that is not Ambassador and the building has a name that is not Embassy.

And the PRC have accepted this since 1972. But will the PRC continue to accept this, and where does the PRC and US security stop with regard to Taiwan? No one has a clue.

Finally, there are Iran, with the US and Israel demanding total and unconditional surrender or total destruction, but no one knows if Iran are a Great Power or not, Can the US and Israel attack Iran without unacceptable losses? No one knows. The more cautious officials in the US strongly suggest that the US do not want to find out. The less cautious officials say the US must proceed to destroy Iran ASAP, which is not only without the slightest risk to the US or Israel, since Iran cannot respond by doing any real damage to the US or Israel, but that will also return all Iranian oil to the rightful owners: the US, and cut the PRC off from all that Iranian oil, so what are the US waiting for?

***

I have left out India, which have the economy that is now producing the 3rd largest amount of goods in the world, but because of low prices (for Indian citizens), is only producing the 4th largest amount measured by how much it is bought and sold for. And India make their military less obvious than Russia or the PRC. But they are likely to be a Great Power that mostly keep their heads down (except for war with Pakistan, one of the basic Indian-Pakistani traditions since independence being war with each other).

So India are a Great Power, but one that somehow manage to keep their security concerns (and their military) out of sight and out of mind.

(While fighting fairly obvious wars with Pakistan, India kept fighting a very obscure war with the PRC along the Line of Actual Control, lost somewhere up in the mountains, but India and the PRC proclaimed peace at a meeting in Kazan, Russia in October, 2024.)

President Trump and the JCPOA Revisisted?

 The US signed the UN Charter in 1945, agreeing to abide by all the Security Council resolutions (since the US had a veto power, and how could something be so obviously good for the US one day that they would allow the resolution and then somehow become bad for the US later???).

Then President Obama got Iran to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that, if Iran allowed UN inspectors to verify that Iran had absolutely no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) the US would end all sanctions on Iran, sanctions applied in 1980 that reduced the Iranian economy by half.

We had seen this before: President Clinton put sanctions on Iraq that blocked just about anything and everything from being sold to or bought from Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from lack of food and medicine, with the promise that all sanctions would be lifted as soon as Iraq had UN inspectors verify no WMD, and as soon as those UN inspectors verified no Iraqi WMD, President Bush, Jr. ordered the destruction of Iraq, with hundreds of thousands more civilians killed and all the Iraqi government executed. And, of course, Iraqi oil was returned to the rightful owner, the US, with a little of the oil given to the UK for helping.

Then President Bush, Jr. put sanctions on Libya with the promise to lift the sanctions as soon as Libya had UN inspectors verify no WMD, and as soon as those inspectors verified no WMD, President Obama and Secretary Hillary sent the US, UK, and French military to kill Gaddafi and get all the US oil that Gaddafi had been stealing returned to the US, then President Obama generously gave a little to the UK and France for helping get rid of Gaddafi.

Then President Obama offered to lift all the sanctions on Iran as soon as UN inspectors verified no WMD, and this promise was named the JCPOA and was passed by the UN Security Council, so the US was legally treaty-bound by the JCPOA no matter who was elected president. The basic idea was that, once UN inspectors verified that Iran had no WMD, President Hillary would completely destroy Iran, with all Iranian oil going back to the rightful owner, the US.

Only St Hillary lost the election, Trump won, and President Trump said the US are not bound by silly things like UN Security Council Resolutions.

Before Trump, the US always followed UN Security Council Resolutions, since the US had a veto, so the US never allowed any Security Council Resolution to pass if it were not in the interest of the US. Only Trump figured a Security Council Resolution that was in the interest of President Hillary was not in the interest of President Trump, so, in 2018, President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, UN Security Council Resolution notwithstanding.

Sanctions on Iran continued, but Iran can feed themselves and make most essential medicines, so the US sanctions didn't kill very many Iranians, only a few with rare but treatable diseases where Iran could not buy or produce the necessary medical items.

And then, in 2021, when President Biden was in office, the sanctions on Iran ended. Not through any fault of President Biden (who had no idea what was having his name autopenned on it), but the small group of US Navy Corvettes enforcing the sanctions found a huge fleet of oil tankers accompanied by a sizeable fleet of Naval Frigates, and the US Corvettes had no choice but to allow the fleet of oil tankers to pass unmolested or the Corvettes would have been toast, and the Commander of the small US fleet that had been enforcing the Iran sanctions made the only prudent decision. So the oil tankers filled up with all the oil Iran had available, after unloading whatever they were using to pay for the oil. Most international transactions take place using SWIFT, which the US blocked for Iran, but the buyers figured a non-SWIFT way to pay for the oil, and this continues to this day. So the US sanctions on Iran aren't up to much any more.

Israel wants Iran destroyed, but no one has a clue what would happen if Israel or the US or Israel and the US attack Iran.

Israel have attacked Iran several times, and Iran have retaliated. Israel say their attacks did major damage, while the Iranian attempt at retaliation was completely destroyed by Israel, the US, UK, France, Jordan, and others before any of it could hit Israel.

Iran say the Israeli attacks did little damage while the Iranian retaliation did major damage.

Neither Iran nor Israel have allowed unbiased inspectors to verify how much damage was done, but we do know that an Israeli strike killed 89 attendees at the 2024 memorial service for General Suleimani, who had been killed by the US in January, 2020.

So Israel have been able to kill Iranians with little difficulty and no effective retaliation, but Iran is said to have weapons they haven't used because they do not want a large war, but if Israel or the US engage in a strike that does major damage to Iran, then Iran claim to have weapons that can do major damage to Israel and the US military bases in the Gulf countries and maybe the oil producing facilities in the Gulf countries, and Iran claim they can close the Strait of Hormuz.

Is the Iranian threat real, or just an empty threat? No one knows at this point, not even Iran. Maybe the US and Israel and Friends can completely stop the Iranian attack, and maybe they can't and the attack will do major damage to the US and Israel.

So the real question is, Do Israel and/or the US really want to find out?

But it's a little more complicated than that.

The Fleet of oil tankers that have been filling up with all the oil that Iran can sell is only a small part of the Fleet of oil tankers that also buy a lot of Saudi oil, enough Iranian and Saudi oil that the owner of that Fleet could order Iran and Saudi, enemies for at least 40 years, to become BFF overnight, and they both said, 'Yes, Sir.' Saudi even sent a major diplomat to an Iranian event, and there isn't the slightest sign of that 40 year conflict.

That country will be very annoyed if the US reduce their supply of oil. They have, by far, the most cars of any nation in the world and need more oil than any other nation. And they have the world's largest Naval Fleet. And they will also be very annoyed, along with the Iranians, at any attack on Iran,

The US also want to stop all Russian oil sales, so Russia might figure it's in their interest to stop the US from blocking Iranian oil sales.

WWIII anyone?