The Current Wars: State unknown

As of now, I read in the New York Times that just about every Iranian is waving the old flag used before the Revolution of 1979 and demanding the return of the Shah, the US are supporting them, and the overthrow of the illegal government that has been tenuously holding onto power by ruthlessly murdering every freedom-loving Iranian will very soon be overthrown by the US military and Iran will then be returned to a peaceful and prosperous democracy under the Shah.

Of course, I also read the Ayatollah's propaganda that, while all the Royalist Iranians who fled Iran before (seeing it coming), during (as it was happening) and after the 1979 Revolution that put Ayatollah Khomeini in as Supreme Leader are very few in number compared with the overwhelming majority of Iranians who stayed in Iran after the Revolution of 1979 and found their lives better under the Ayatollahs than under the Shah, and now fully support the Ayatollahs, and they will all work together to fight any American and/or Israeli attack, and, if attacked, will destroy Israel, the US forces sent to attack Iran, the US bases, the oil fields of the countries hosting US bases, and will mine and close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 25% of the oil traded by sea travels, forcing the price of a barrel of oil up above $700 and severely damaging the global economy, but if Israel and/or the US want to try, while Iran would prefer that they refrain and leave Iran in peace, Iran are ready to do massive damage to Israel, US forces in the region, and the global economy (maybe not the PRC which have a train running between the PRC and Iran that could carry all the Iranian oil that is no longer being shipped on tankers).

Also, the PRC and Russian navies are approaching Iran for 'exercises'.

So, as I said before, last week, Scott Ritter says the US generals and admirals know they will lose in any war with Iran, and since they can veto any orders to attack that they are sure will result in massive losses, no war will take place.

But other experts believe a war between the US and Iran will happen very soon (and generally figure Iran will lose badly, while being able to inflict little if any damage on the US forces, bases, host countries, or Israel).

The original plan was to severely disrupt the Iranian economy starting on 28 December 2025, starting peaceful protests, then to send in 40,000 well-armed supporters of the Shah with lots of weapons and Starlink terminals, so they could be directed by experts at the CIA, Mossad, MI6, and possibly some other European intelligence agencies, severely disrupting the Iranian government and their ability to orchestrate any defence, so the massive attack was to take place on 14 January, 2026, a massive attack called off by Netanyahu after the evil Russians and PRC gave Iran devices that made a Starlink terminal unable to communicate with the directors of the insurgency at the CIA, Mossad, and MI6, and those devices also led Iranian defenders to all 40,000 insurgents with those Starlink terminals, and they were all arrested and are now awaiting trial, so the government was back in full control, the Iranian military were ready to repel and retaliate for any attack, and the Allies against Iran were not ready. So the attack was postponed until 1 February 2026, then postponed again, and no firm date for the next planned attack has leaked out, yet.

And, as of now, it is not at all clear when or if that attack planned for 14 January 2026 will take place. Or what will happen if and when it does.

***

And all the mainstream media in the US/UK/EU assure us that Russia are very weak, their economy destroyed by the sanctions, and the Ukrainians are getting closer and closer to total victory, but the brave Ukrainians do need a lot more money.

Meanwhile, the Russian propaganda media  say the Crimea and the Donbas are now legally part of Russia, and the US/UK/EU backed forces will not be allowed to take or keep a single square meter, and they suggest that Odessa is historically a Russian city that might very well be added to the parts already taken by the Russians.

Russia want all the ethnic Russian parts of the Ukraine, they do not want the Aryan bits, but neither do they want the Aryan bits to join NATO and let NATO put military bases and anti-missiles in their part of the Ukraine. Russia wants the Aryans completely out of power in the Ukraine, with an understanding that the Rump Ukraine cannot have a large, standing military, or an Aryan leader.

Of courses, all the Aryans in the Ukraine, plus the US/UK/EU, all want a rabidly anti-Russian Ukraine that can seize all the valuable oil, gas, and other minerals that are now in Russia but which legally (under US/UK/EU/Ukrainian law) belong to the US/UK/EU oiligarchs, and the Ukrainian Aryans are happy to conscript ethnic Slavs to do all the fighting to liberate Russia and hand control over to some Aryans who will return all the Russian oil and minerals to the rightful owners.

So not clear what's happening in the Ukraine since things are too muddy for serious fighting now, and no one is sure what will happen when the land dries up and military manoeuvres can restart.         

US Defence Dollars at Work

I graduated with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and/or Mathematics) degree, but no job offers. Science, Technology, and Maths are broad with no obvious applications. Engineering is very specific, so only one or two engineering fields are in great demand in any given year, then engineering students flock to those fields and those fields become overcrowded with job seekers and largely devoid of job openings, while new fields open up with huge demand and no graduates. So almost all of us STEM graduates were not seeing the vast array of jobs we'd been promised when we chose our majors.

But then I got an offer: the US government was offering defence companies $20,000 in cold, hard cash for every STEM graduate they hired, so they hired me.

My first day on the job, I was sent to Orientation with a Vice President. He told me, 'We don't need any T or E, only S and M, Sales and Marketing. Your quota is $250,000. If you don't bring in at least $250,000 in a year, you'll be fired. Now where are you going to go to get a contract for at least $250,000???'

I said I didn't know, did he have some numbers I could cold call? He handed me a thick book.

'You want me to start cold calling these numbers?' I asked.

'NO!' he thundered. 'These are numbers of customers who are already claimed by one of our salesmen, and we do not allow any of our salesmen to poach another of our salesmen's customers.'

(This was a long time ago, now he'd have to say 'salespersons' or 'salesmen and saleswomen', but back then, we had a few saleswomen, but very few, and you don't correct a vice-president over his gender usage.)

'Then whom do you want me to call?' I asked.

'You can call any number that is not in this book,' he answered, then added, 'I can see you're not a salesman, so I suggest you resign immediately. All the time you stay here, you'll just be wasting your time and ours. This interview is over.'

So I left his office. But I had read my contract, and if I quit, I had to repay the US government the $20,000. Or else. I wasn't sure if I could go to jail if I couldn't pay, or just hand over whatever money I got from a burger-flipping job, or what, so I did not resign, and they had me dig holes and fill them up, hoping I'd quit, but I didn't quit, I stayed for a year, then they fired me.

During that year, I met Chuck, and I asked, 'So how, exactly, so you get contracts?'

Chuck told me, 'My best friend in high school got a job as a government contracting officer, and he always gives me $100,000 a year, and that's my quota. I work just two months. I have to help my friend write the Request for Proposals, then he helps me write the proposal, then he recommends me for having the best proposal and coaches me on how to defend my proposal. Then I have to defend the proposal, and the committee has always accepted his recommendation, since he accepts their recommendations to give their contracts to their friends. That takes one month.

'Then, 10 months later, he coaches me on how to write the final report, and I have to present the final report saying we accomplished far more than we promised in the proposal, far more than what was required by the contract, and I get my $100,000 payment made out to the company. That takes the second month. My boss and his boss keep telling me, "Look, you only work two months a year and earn $30,000. If you worked 12 months, you'd earn $250,000 a year, and you and the company would be much better off." '

I looked up the company salary and bonus policy myself. Basically, the company policy was that, if you bring in $100,000, your salary and bonus come to $30,000, but if you bring in $600,000, your salary and bonus go way up, so you get $250,000. My friend continued:

'But I know I only have one friend who's a contracting officer, so if I worked my tail off for 12 months, I'd still earn just $30,000. So why would I waste my time working, when I won't accomplish any more or earn any more than I do barely coming into the office for ten months?'

We had card punch operators back then, and programmers. Officially, the US government did not want salesmen, they wanted STEM graduates doing advanced weapons research, coming up with formulae for new, advanced systems, but really, they just went to lunches and dinners with their contracting officer friends and talked and talked and got contracts, so the US government said they wanted STEM researchers, but the system only rewarded good salespersons.

For a real line of code that was part of a program that solved difficult Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical problems, the total cost of research, development, programing, and punching the card really was at least $100, and that's what the company charged the government (a $100,000 contract meant 1,000 punch cards).

In reality, the programmer's only job was to write the code that would print out all the numbered lines of code, and, at the presentation of the Final Report, the salesman projected page after page of the print outs of the punched cards, showing there were 10 cards for every $1,000 the contract was worth (million dollar contracts had to have 10,000 lines of code, none of which would compile or run, except the few lines that got the computer to print out the lines punched in the cards, and no one knew enough about programming to know anything was wrong, or if they did, they had every incentive to say, 'I can see that this is brilliant science and coding that will lead to a new, very advanced weapon system.'

Our company did what was called 'basic research,' the underlying scientific research that would later be the basis for the development of actual weapons systems.

I saw the laser: they packed the target with explosives and a radio-controlled detonation system. As the target flew by, some distance away and fairly high up, they shot the laser at the target, someone pressed the button on the detonator, and the target exploded, 'totally destroyed by the advanced laser weapon.'

Ditto the advanced particle beam weapon system.

So the US will have a public defence budget of $1.5 trillion this next fiscal year, and weapons systems less capable than the Iranian weapons systems, let alone the Russian or Chinese weapons systems. And that $1.5 trillion is only the public part, the Classified TS/SCI/NOFORN//BBR part of the Defence Budget is almost certainly much, much larger (but we'll never know how much it is or how it is used).

And because of the huge budget overruns and deficits, gold has gone from $2,000 an ounce a few years ago to almost $6,000 an ounce this year, and this is likely to continue as the real value of the US$ keeps dropping and dropping, thanks to the US government wasting all the money needed for real research and development on fake weapons research.

Scott Ritter and Jeffrey Sachs differ on a possible Iranian War

I watched Scott Ritter, a former active member of the US military (not sure about his current status), who appeared on the Judge Napolitano podcast, and he says there will be no war on Iran: the US military commanders, the generals and admirals, know that Iran has weapons that can destroy:

1) All of the Great Armada(s) the US are sending to threaten Iran in the hope that Iran will surrender and disarm;

2) All of the US military bases within 1,000 miles of Iran;

3) All the oil producing areas in the countries hosting those US bases;

4) Most of Israel;

and Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, which, added to the destruction of oil producing facilities, will block the world from about 25% of all the traded oil that travels by ship from producer to market and raise the price of a barrel of oil to at least $700.

So there is no way they will allow any US attack on Iran.

I then watched Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, who thinks Trump is an idiot who might start the war without thinking, and who would definitely start the war if ordered to do so by his Zionist owners.

There seems to be a disconnect here, but they were on separately, and Prof Sachs, who came on second, did not respond to Ritter's assurance that a US or Israeli war on Iran is impossible, but figures one is almost certain to happen, with disastrous results, given Trump's idiocy (Sachs does not like Trump).

There were more people on Judge Napolitano, and the majority figure any US attack on Iran will result in the destruction of all US military assets within 1,000 miles of Iran and also most of Israel, but they also figure Israel imagine that the US is so strong that the US military can totally destroy Iran before Iran can hit Israel with any weapons that can penetrate the Iron Dome (before, Israel was OK for about 9 days, then the Iron Dome ran out of ammunition and Israel was vulnerable to Iranian attacks, so the US, Israel, and Iran agreed to a way to end the war with a token US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that did little damage, followed by a token Iranian attack on the US base in Qatar that did even less damage, so Israel, Iran, and the US agreed that they had reached a place where the US, Israel, and Iran could declare peace).

 Obviously, the US desperately want a repeat of the 12-Day war, with the US doing a symbolic attack on Iran followed by a symbolic Iranian retaliation, neither of which do any real damage.

But the Iranians don't want regular repeats of the 12-Day war, so they say that, if one American or Israeli bomb hits Iran, they will destroy all US and Israeli assets.

Current Best Guess: no idea, given the idiocy of Israel and the US: Israel want the US to carpet bomb Iran with a large enough fleet of bombers and missiles to totally destroy all Iranian defences, only this is probably not possible. Ritter says that the US military all know this, and say the US must never attack Iran, or all US military assets and just about all of Israel will be destroyed. Trump was a wild card when he first took office, he was ordered to send the US military into Syria, but instead he ordered all US troops out of Syria. The men in dark suits and dark glasses had a little talk with Trump, and then Trump ordered the US troops into Syria.

So Trump does what he is told, he is not really responsible for any of the idiotic and contradictory orders he keeps giving, he says whatever he is ordered to say, no matter how idiotic it is (of course, we don't know if Trump knows how idiotic these orders are or not).

But the people who really run the US of A have told Trump he'd better read the Teleprompter verbatim, or he'll be the next JFK.

And who knows what those people, who all have ID-10-T identification cards, will order Trump to do next. 

 

 

The Coming War Against Iran?????

Netanyahu has ordered the US to destroy Iran, so Trump sent an Armada a couple of weeks ago, and now says he's sending another Armada, and Iran had better be very worried, they must meet all US/Israeli demands or be totally destroyed.

Those demands are: 1) no nuclear weapons!

This is a reasonable demand, since the current Ayatollah says that Islam prohibits nuclear weapons, so Iran will never build one. Of course, Pakistan have nuclear weapons, but most Pakistanis are from a different sect of Islam than the Iranian Ayatollah and don't see having nuclear weapons as haram, but rather as a requirement since India have nuclear weapons they could use against a Pakistan that did not also have nuclear weapons.

2) no ballistic missiles! 

Iranian ballistic missiles, according to Israel, were all except one stopped by Israel's Iron Dome, and that one killed 24 Israelis, which is genocide under International Law, which defines genocide as 

Killing all or part of a recognised religious-ethnic group 

so killing 24 Israelis is genocide under the official definition, while Israel killing all the Palestinians or all the Arabs would not be genocide under international law, but self-defence against terrorists.

So all Iranian ballistic missiles must be banned to prevent another genocide by the evil Iranians.

3) no support for any anti-Israeli group!

Clearly, we must keep all the Zionists safe, since doing anything else is facilitating genocide, and the Iranians keep supporting the genocidal groups Hamas (which include all Palestinians), Hezbollah, and Ansarallah. 

So far, Iran has agreed to 1) and rejected 2) and 3), so such a rejection of a simple, essential Israeli Zionist demand means Iran must be destroyed.

Sadly, the only way that appears available to totally destroy Iran without risking major damage to Israel is to carpet nuke Iran. Israel has the nukes, but all those nukes have been officially TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR, so Israel kind of, sort of, agrees that they have them while saying all such talk is strictly prohibited, and we must abide by whatever the Israeli Zionists demand, so we must never talk about Israeli nukes, but they have enough to totally destroy Iran, leaving Iran unable to ever threaten Israel again. Of course, that leaves Iranian oil too radioactive to use, so what will be left of Iran will have no obvious economic benefit to anyone, and all that oil that legally belongs to BP will be lost for the next 1,000 years or so.

A great solution does not seem available, but the total destruction of Iran by Zionist nukes seems like a good start to keeping Israel safe from attack by goyim, so I guess that's our only option. 

***

One knows that we can rely on the always accurate US/UK/EU media, who get all their information from the CIA/MI6/Mossad and EU intelligence agencies who assure us that an attack on Iran poses no threat to the US military since Iran are very weak militarily, and their military were massively damaged in the 12-Day War where the US obliterated all their offensive capabilities, so there is no danger they could sink any US ships, shoot down any US planes, destroy any US military bases, or succeed in getting even a single drone past Israel's IranIron Dome.

In fact, Iran are even weaker than Venezuela, and the US military, by far the strongest military in the world, if not the galaxy, were easily able to disable all the Venezuelan defenders with a new weapon that left them all paralysed and lying on the floor, unable to shoot at the Americans as they made the legal arrest of the narco-terrorist Maduro.

That same weapon will leave all the Iranian defenders helpless as the US arrests or kills all the Ayatollahs, arrests or kills all the Iranian defenders, and puts the Shah back in as total ruler (with a force trained and armed by the US to support and protect him and enforce all his edicts, plus Mossad will have a massive force in Iran to make sure the new Shah never suffers the same fate as the old Shah unless he fails to do what Israel orders him to do).

Then Iran will, as it did in 1953, return all the Iranian oil to the rightful owner, BP, eliminate all defensive systems, in fact the entire current Iranian military, who were guilty of firing missiles at Israel, and any other Iranians who violate US or Zionist law will be gaoled for Life without Parole, and Iran will return to being a great friend of Israel, a strong supporter of Zionism, and a source of labour for BP to extract and take all the Iranian oil, all of which legally belongs to BP under US/UK law.

All should be for the best, in this, the best of all possible worlds. 

(And we all hope that nothing goes wrong with this excellent resolution of the Iranian problem.) 

***

I must note that not all accept the obvious fact that the US military, the Greatest in the World, were easily able to arrest Maduro without the loss of a single US soldier, thanks to a new weapon. They say it was a very old weapon, the Almighty US$ that paid off the defenders (except the Cubans, who were most of Maduro's defenders who were not paid off by the US, and who were all killed).

But I think most know that Venezuelans speak Spanish, not English, and so could not understand the Americans demanding that they surrender, so the US had to use their advanced new anti-personnel weapon to totally disable all of Maduro's defenders and then arrest Maduro.

And now the US can and will do the same to Iran, and then probably  Russia, and finally the PRC.

Russia will be broken up into many small, demilitarised states, and the PRC will be returned to their proper state, a nation of farmers without any electricity or petrol, doing all the farming manually. (The US will take over all the PRC rare earth facilities and move them somewhere else under better US control, maybe Mexico or Canada, or maybe Greenland.

Neither state can possibly stand up to the US military, with new weapons that can disable all defenders and allow the US to destroy all military capabilities.

The US military and all the US/UK/EU mainstream media assure us this version is the TRVE one, so we must all believe it, not the Iranian/PRC/Russian propaganda channels that abound on social media that say the Iranians (with advanced Russian and PRC weapons) are more than a match for the US military (but not the Israeli military with their arsenal of nukes).

And we must ignore the fact that Trump keeps talking about the Great Armada, when the last Great Armada didn't do all that well against the English. 

Intersting times???

Right now, the US/UK/EU mainstream media assure us that Iran and Russia are very weak, on the verge of collapse, and both could easily be tipped into Democracy (with all their oil returned to the rightful owners, Western oiligarchs) if only the West would step up to the plate and hit the two easy pitches out of the park. Maybe the US are needed, maybe the UK and EU could do the job alone, at least in the Ukraine, while Iran will be a very easy task for the US to return the Shah just as they did in 1953, after the evil Mossadegh stole British oil in 1951, while the UK found that they were no longer able to accomplish the return of their own oil, after suffering massive losses in two World Wars (even if they were on the winning side both tines), so they got the US to step in and recover their oil, in exchange for a 50% share. And the US should be able to repeat the victory of 1953 much more easily than back then, since the 2026 US military is far more advanced than the US military of 1953.

So the UK and EU are preparing to overwhelm the evil Russians without (much) American help in just a few years, and everyone expects the US to recover all the stolen Iranian oil with the same ease that they recovered all the stolen Venezuelan oil: The US military is the most advanced in the world, and has a new weapon that disabled all the opposing forces in Venezuela, where all the defenders were paralysed by this new weapon, and were unable to shoot at the American military or defend Maduro from being lawfully arrested for his many crimes without a single US soldier being killed or seriously injured.

Of course, getting rid of Iran as a terrorist, Islamist state will protect Israel, which is the most important task for the rest of the world to perform after letting the Nazis kill Jews without doing anything during WWII, and the only possible solution is to follow the Bible: Jews must have everything from the northern-most tip of the Euphrates to the southern-most tip of the Nile (the Biblical word 'wadi' has had it's old, incorrect, non-Zionist meaning changed from meaning an arroyo near the southern border of historical Palestine to meaning the entire River Nile).

Right now, Bibi is demanding that the US take out Iran without allowing Iran to threaten Israel, but neither Bibi nor the top US military planners have figured out how to do this: Iran have a huge arsenal of missiles that will destroy just about all of Tel Aviv and most other major Israeli cities and military installations, and those missiles will be launched before the US can destroy them. They will probably sink a lot of US ships and kill a lot of US soldiers and sailors and airmen, but those are expendable, while nothing in Israel can be allowed to be damaged, let alone destroyed. So even Bibi can't see how the US could possibly achieve his demand, which is to utterly destroy Iran without risking the slightest damage to anything inside Israel (except for Palestinian areas that need to be demolished and cleansed of Palestinians).

Russia is an even bigger puzzle than Iran, since Russia once had the world's largest nuclear arsenal. We know MI6, maybe with help from the CIA and Mossad, took out a lot of the Russian nuclear arsenal, but we're not sure how much (MI6 probably know, but that information is classified TS/SCI/NOFORN/BBR). So how much damage could Russia do before the UK and EU could totally destroy Russia, returning all the stolen Russian oil, gas, uranium, and gold to the rightful owners, UK and EU oligarchs? Russia have been unable to do much damage to the Ukraine, taking only a tiny sliver of the Ukraine in 4 years, and couldn't possible manage nearly as much damage to the UK and EU, protected by the UK/EU military, probably the 2nd strongest military in the world, only surpassed by the US military, and easily able to defend the UK/EU from a weak nation like Russia, and probably able to stop any Russian nuclear attack over Russia where it could do no damage to the UK or EU (but we still have to worry that a Russian nuclear attack detonated over Russia would squander a lot of that oil, gas, gold, and uranium, taking massive amounts of wealth from the rightful Western owners). 

Of course, Russia say they are just as capable of destroying the rest of the world as the USSR were, but no one believes the Russian propaganda channels, and even Russia had to admit that MI6 damaged their nuclear deterrent, but they lie that not much damage was done and most of their nuclear deterrent is still intact and capable of completely destroying the US/UK/EU. Obviously, no one should believe the Russian propaganda, and the US/UK/EU mainstream media assure us that Russia can't do anything to stop the UK and EU if they decide to destroy Russia, break Russia up into a bunch of small, demilitarised states, and claim all Russian oil, gas, and mineral assets as war reparations (with a fair share given to the US, of course).

The only question is, 'What could possibly go wrong????', and, if one would just listen to the always reliable US/UK/EU mainstream media, the only answer is, 'Absolutely nothing!' so the US/UK/EU should get busy and overthrow Iran and Russia and get on with things. 

Stop worrying that Russia could destroy the US/UK/EU the way the USSR could have, the USSR is long gone and Russia is just a weak, third-world country. And there is even less worry about Iran, the US military now have new, advanced weapons that will make it as easy to arrest and/or kill all the Ayatollahs and install the Shah as ruler of Iran as it was to arrest Maduro.

Getting interesting

 CNN, always reliable, since they get their news from the CIA, the best intelligence agency in the world, so their news is the best in the world, interviewed Trump, and he said the US will stop all oil sales by Russia. Every Russian oil tanker will be stopped and seized by the US Navy, no exceptions, and if a Russian Navy ship or submarine tries to stop the US Navy, the US Navy will sink that ship or submarine, so Russia are in big trouble, and will soon have to pull completely out of the Ukraine, demilitarise and hand over all Russian oil, gas, uranium, and gold as war reparations. Which is good since the US ended the New Start Treaty yesterday, so there would have been no limits on what nuclear weapons Russia could have produced had they not been unconditionally defeated by the US, as they will be very soon.

Trump also said the Greatest Armada ever will soon help the vast majority of the Iranian people get their freedom from the horrible dictatorship of the Ayatollahs (and also return all that Iranian oil to the rightful owners, BP).

I figure this is all good to know. CNN assures us that Russia are very weak, they have lost millions of men, and have done very little damage to the Ukrainian military, the million or so Ukrainians murdered by the Russians have all been defenceless civilians.

And we know the CIA (and Mossad and MI6) would never give CNN any inaccurate information, so this must all be TRVE.

Of course, the Russian (and Iranian) propaganda channels lie that Russia have hypersonic missiles that can easily get past any Golden Dome that Trump might put up, and, since Trump ended the New Start Treaty by not renewing it (as Putin asked him to do), they will start developing more nuclear devices, but CNN assure us that Russia are so broke they cannot even maintain their existing nuclear arsenal, much of which was destroyed by "Operation Spider Web," done entirely by Ukrainian forces (with only a tiny bit of help from the CIA/Mossad/MI6) on 1 June 2025, so Russia have little or no nuclear arsenal left, and no money with which to rebuild one.

Likewise, the Iranian (and Russian) propaganda channels say that Iran has a massive fleet of drones and missiles that, if a single bomb is dropped on Iran, will be unleashed against Israel and all US military assets within 1,000 km (maybe 1,500 km) from Iran, totally destroying Tel Aviv and the ships in the Great Armada, and the Strait of Hormuz will be closed, raising the cost of a barrel of oil to above $700, but CNN assures us the attack on Iran will go just as successfully as the attack on Venezuela, which showed the incredible strength of the US military, with devices that disabled all the Venezuelan defenders so it was easy for the American military to arrest Maduro and kill 100 Cuban and Venezuelan defenders without losing a single American, and the US will use that device to disable all Iranian defences so the US military can take out all the Ayatollahs and install the Shah as supreme ruler, with all that stolen oil in Iran returned to BP.

Of course, the propaganda channels say the main weapon the US used in Venezuela was the powerful US$ that bought off most of the defenders, and this is not likely to work at all on Russian Navy ships or on Iran.

The Reserve Currency?

Years ago, I read the book Paper Money by Adam Smith (the author, a professional Wall Street gossip columnist, didn't want to use his real name, or the people who spilled Wall Street beans would stop talking to him, so he took the pen name Adam Smith).

Smith tried to explain that, at Bretton-Woods in 1944, the US dollar was declared the world's Key Currency. 

The correct definitions are that a 'reserve currency' is one of the currencies used in international trade, and so must be kept in reserve by international banks.

Before WWII, most of the world were colonies of the European imperial powers. International trade between British colonies and Britain were in £ sterling, so the £ was a reserve currency, and so were the ₣ and a few more currencies of the major European imperial powers. After WWI, the US$ became a reserve currency, and, a few years after WWII, when Japan had rebuilt and re-industrialised, the ¥ became a reserve currency. Today, the ₣ is no longer a currency, so it is off the list, which now consists of the "U.S. dollar, Euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, Pounds sterling, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and Swiss francs," according to the International Monetary Fund. (The renminbi is a very recent addition to the list, since 20 years ago, the PRC had a tiny economy and was not much of a monetary power.) Some of these currencies can be used in SWIFT exchanges (I know the US$, the £, the €, an the renminbi can all be used, and I think there are a few others.)

So yes, the US$ is a reserve currency, but it is one of at least eight reserve currencies.

After WWII, the French ₣ had collapsed, and the British £ was weak. The £ had always been worth at least $5, but had dropped to $4.75 and the UK were panicking over that tiny drop (the first of many). The US had banned ownership of gold by US citizens and permanent residents during the Great Depression, but, to ensure that the US$ could be used in international transactions, any foreigner living outside the US could buy one ounce of gold for $35. The British and French had borrowed huge amounts of those US dollars during the war to buy matériel, and owed the US, plus Germany owed war reparations, so most of the world's gold ended up in Fort Knox, where it stayed, so having a US$ was a good as gold, and your gold backing your dollars was safe in Fort Knox.

So, in 1944, with no one having any trust in any other currency, at Bretton-Woods, the US$ was declared the 'Key Currency,' the main currency for all international trade (this is not mentioned in Wikipedia, but it was emphasised by Adam Smith in Paper Money). All nations other than the US were ordered to price their currency in US dollars, which was worth 1/35 ounce of gold, making all currencies priced in gold, then believed to be the only real measure of the value of a currency.

The US spent lots and lots of US$, first on rebuilding Europe, then on buying oil. During WWII, the US was the main producer of oil in the world, so the Allies had plenty of petrol for their planes and ships and tanks, while the Axis was very short of oil, and had a hard time keeping their planes and ships and tanks running. But after WWII, most Americans were able to buy cars, and the US demand for oil soon exceeded the domestic supply in the US, so the US$s flowed out, and other countries began to get nervous and used their US$s to buy the gold in Fort Knox, until the gold was running out, so, on 15 August 1971, President Nixon announced that the US would no longer redeem a US$ for gold, a US$ was just a US$. The value of the US$ in terms of gold fell slowly at first, but then faster and faster, then settled a bit, and then fell rather slowly until about a year ago, when the US$ began to fall quite rapidly against gold.

Judge Napolitano starts each of his podcasts saying, 'Buy gold!', but there's a problem: a lot of the gold for sale ain't what it's cracked up to be. They'll say 'It's 24 carat,' when it's really 12 carat, so you paid twice as much as you should have paid. To be safe, one must pay to have the gold assayed, and then, when one wants to sell, the buyer will insist you pay to have an assay prove your gold is what you say it is (as the small guy/gal in the transaction, you have to pay all the expenses of the transaction, the big guy/gal don't pay). And after you buy the gold, you have to think of Silas Marner, who earned lots of gold weaving and had it all stolen. So where will you put it? In the bank? The government can seize it anytime they want. At home? A thief could steal it. There is no good place to keep that gold where you can't be robbed or cheated (not to mention taxed).

So the US$ ain't a good place to put your money, gold has lots of problems, and the Chinese 元 looks like the safest place to keep your money, but the Chinese don't make it easy for foreign barbarians to buy their  元.