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?

So Long Mom???

Tom Lehrer wrote the song, "So Long Mom" back in 1965, when the US and UK and Europe still had leaders who were not stark raving mad, a halcyon time we are likely to see again in the fairly near future, after the US, UK, and Europe have no leaders at all (and few, if any, people).

Germany want to send long range missiles (and German military to fire them) to the Ukraine, planning a strike on a major Russia city, e.g., Moscow or St Petersburg, that will leave Russia little choice but to respond, taking out a minor German city such as Munich or Berlin in order to trigger Article 5.

I think it is worth repeating that, on 19 January 2025, President-elect Trump said the US must stop sending weapons to the Ukraine or the US economy would be destroyed. Then, on 21 January 2025, President Trump said Russia must completely withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia would be completely destroyed. 

Obviously, between 19 January and 21 January 2025, the men who Ray McGovern says always wear dark suits and dark glasses had a little talk with Trump and explained why Kennedy wasn't able to run for a second term.

President Trump is hoping to find a way out of the Ukraine, but that does not seem like a viable option, and the Europeans have hated Russia for the last 220 years that I know of (and maybe a lot longer).

Russia was very weak early in the 20th century, losing one war to Japan, then losing WWI to Germany, then Russia's allies, the US, UK, and France invaded Russia from 1918 until 1920, but didn't get much more territory than Germany had taken in 1917.

Lenin was indebted to Germany for making him leader of the USSR, and not much happened until Stalin took over, when the USSR had the Holodomor from 1928 until 1933.

Then, after the UK PM Chamberlain signed a (faux, but very few knew that) Peace Treaty with Germany in 1938, Stalin decided he'd better sign a Peace Treaty with Germany in 1939.

PM Chamberlain planned for war with Germany after the UK radar system and the French Maginot Line were both completed, and, as soon as that happened, the UK and France asked Poland to blockade East Prussia, an act of war, so Germany attacked Poland from the West, and then Stalin attacked from the East in September 1939, and Germany and the USSR split Poland between them. Britain and France then declared war on Germany (but not on the USSR).

Then, in 1940, Germany easily defeated the British Expeditionary Force and the French Army.

And after that victory, in 1941 Germany attacked the USSR.

The US version says to look at the fierce battles for Leningrad and Stalingrad. Is there any Leningrad on the map? Is there any Stalingrad on the map? None. So the Wehrmacht obviously destroyed the Red Army, and all of Eurasia was under Hitler's control until the US arrived to save the day in 1944, easily and single-handedly defeating the Wehrmacht that had destroyed the BEF, the French Army, and the Red Army.

And now Russia are getting uppity again, with their totally illegal seizure in 2014 of Crimea, an Oblast that properly belongs to the UK(raine?) and then their totally unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine in 2022.

But Russia have already lost more than a million men while the Ukraine have lost about 45,000 according to all the US/UK/EU news media, which are totally reliable, unlike the Russian propaganda press. And the Russians are using parts from washing machines to keep their WWII (and WWI) Soviet and Czarist weapons systems working, so what can Russia do if Germany totally destroys Moscow and St Petersburg?

Sure the USSR had a bunch of nukes, but Russia have no one who can keep those nukes operational, and they know if they respond to the German missiles, it means Article 5 and all of NATO will invade Russia with the same devastating success that Napoleon and the Wehrmacht enjoyed.

At this point, Russian nukes are not really the problem, since Russia don't need them, it's those US nukes that will almost certainly be used as NATO begins losing, and the fact that, while Russia will not be the first to use nukes, they'll almost certainly be the last.

Starting in 1823... Answering Jeffrey Sachs' Question, "Why is Europe so Badly Run?????"

 Prof. Glenn Diesen asked Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to explain why Europe seem to be in such trouble, with unpopular leaders doing things the ordinary citizens in their countries don't seem to like. The answer starts in 1823 when US President Monroe said that all of the Americas belong to the US (well, actually Latin America, Canada, not so much).

For the next 75 years, the US strongly condemned colonialism while practicing neocolonialism.

An Imperial Power like 19th century Britain sent British troops to overthrow the government of a nation and take over. The resident Head of State was the British governor. All senior government officials were British. The ultimate Head of State was the British monarch. British soldiers were ready to shoot any and all rebels against British rule.

Spain had a policy that all Imperial Officers must be born in Spain. The existing officers tended to bring their wives along, and it was hard to arrange a trip back to Spain when the wife got pregnant. The Spanish officers considered themselves and their families Spanish citizens, but the children born outside Spain were not considered full citizens, just colonials with very limited rights.

So the US strongly encouraged these children of Spanish officers, with full Spanish blood, to revolt. The US fully supported them with money, weapons, and possibly with US military support. They got full power in their country, in spite of being a small minority, and, if they wanted continued US support, the US got everything of value (of course, the leadership got very well paid for their support, while the ordinary citizens got nothing).

After WWII, the US asked, 'Why only Latin America?' and set up neocolonial puppet governments in South Vietnam for 10 years, South Korea, Japan, Europe, and Africa (and for 20 years in Afghanistan), while keeping full neocolonial control over Latin America.

So when Sweden, which had been neutral for hundreds of years, were told to join NATO, the government didn't bother to ask the Swedes, who had no say in the matter, they just joined. The Finns, who had hated Russia for years also joined NATO, apparently having forgotten all of the disastrous losses every time they tried to fight Russia, figuring the US would at least enrich all the senior members of the Finnish government and protect them from the Russians. And the government in Switzerland, neutral for as long as anyone can remember, said the US had full control over all Russian assets in Swiss banks, and nothing was said, but the Swiss government must have been very well paid for their doing as they were told.

All Europe are basically a US neo-colony now, with the EU government making the decisions national leaders like Orban don't like but can't stop, and legally overruling elections that pick people who won't properly toe the US line.

So the European leaders with real control over their own countries have that control with US help, and always do whatever the US want, even if it is very bad for their country (but it's certainly very good for the leadership of the countries).

So the US neo-Empire now covers much of the globe, with a few obstreperous objections from places like the DPRK, Iran, Russia, and the PRC, but the US figure they can take them all out, preferably using the lives of proxies rather than American lives.

Holodomor???

 There is no question that there was a Holodomor, but there is a big question about, 'What was it???'

I checked Google and Wikipedia, and all the Google sources I found, including Wikipedia, were in complete agreement: it was an attempt by the Russians to commit genocide on the Ukrainians: all the food in the Ukraine was shipped to Russia and there was mass starvation in the Ukraine. Only a few survived, and they all know that Russia want to finish the job, and that is why Putin ordered a totally unprovoked attack on the Ukraine in 2022. The Ukraine and just about all of the EU and NATO agree that the Ukraine is just the start, Putin wants to restore the USSR and the Warsaw Pact with Moscow in full control, but he won't stop there, he'll then add Western Europe.

Of course, if one checks with other search engines, there's the Russian version.

First, start with the old story: '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.'

'You must have done a lot of travelling.'

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

The first problem is that, before there was a Poland, there was no Austria, there was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that covered a lot of southeastern Europe. Then a Serb shot the Archduke of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and Britain, France, and Russia went to war against Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire in WWI.

After the war, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was broken up into a bunch of small countries, usually with a mixture of people who hated each other so the countries would never be able to agree to go against the UK and France, but would have to do as they were told. Russia lost a big chunk of West Russia to Germany during the war, then, after the UK, France, and the US won the war, that big chunk of West Russia plus a bit more was mostly made part of Poland, and the Ukrainians who hate Russia the most and make the accusations of genocide against the Russians were not in the Ukraine when the Holodomor happened, they were annexed by Stalin and put into the Ukraine during WWII, both those who had been part of the Russian Empire before the war, and many who had been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before the war.

The Russian version is that, in 1928, Stalin wanted all agriculture done in the Communist way, which was supposed to greatly increase agricultural production and make food distribution more fair. In fact, the good Communists put in charge of directing all agriculture knew absolutely nothing about agriculture, and agricultural production fell throughout the USSR resulting in the Holodomor, with many starving all over the USSR, not just the Ukraine, and with some of the other Soviet Socialist Republics having a greater per capita death rate than the Ukraine. The Holodomor ended in 1933 with the end of Stalin's First Five Year Plan.

And the Ukraine grew much larger during and after WWII when Stalin added all that the Russian Empire lost after WWI, plus parts of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before WWI, and parts of what had been Russia, not Ukraine. Khrushchev also added parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia to the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine.

From what I've read, almost every available source in English supports the Ukrainian version of the Holodomor, but the historical facts cannot.

Has history been too kind to Churchill????

 I read that Churchill wrote that, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." I'm not completely sure that he said that quote, but it was true when I was a boy and I got schoolchild versions of Churchill's history.

We know that a Serb shot the Austrian-Hungarian Arch-Duke in 1914, and that led to war between France, the UK, and Russia against Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.

We know that Russia lost in 1917 and had to hand over a big chunk of Western Russia to Germany.

We know that the Central Powers, i.e., Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottomans lost in 1918, and then the US, France, and the UK invaded Russia to take a bit more of Western Russia and make it part of the French-UK controlled part of Europe, becoming part of Poland and a few other East European nations, along with the eastern parts of Germany. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire was completely dismantled into many countries (often, like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, combinations of ethnic groups that didn't like each other, so they could not form a united country, but would be subject to UK-French rule).

We know in 1919, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles that Germany would be forever completely unarmed, with no military (and would pay all German gold to the Allies as war reparations, making the mark worthless and destroying the German economy).

We know in 1933 that France and the UK were terrified of the USSR and allowed Germany to elect Hitler Chancellor on a promise to reject the Treaty of Versailles and re-arm Germany, so Germany would be able to slow the attack of Stalin and give France and the UK time to prepare to fight the USSR. We know that Churchill wrote that he thundered against letting Germany elect Hitler, and said the UK must demand that Germany reject Hitler as Chancellor and pick someone who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles, but we cannot find any Churchill speeches against Hitler in '33 in the newspaper morgues (easily searchable with the Internet). Everyone seems to have agreed that Germany must rearm to slow the advance of the USSR in '33 (and, of course, from 2004 on to slow the advance of Russia).

We know, in 1938, that British PM Chamberlain signed a Peace Treaty with Germany, and promised, 'Peace in Our Time.' We also know PM Chamberlain was lying, he was only buying time. France said they would not join Britain in any war against Germany before they finished the Maginot Line, and Britain knew about bombers, and wanted to complete the radar system that would protect the UK from the Luftwaffe. Churchill condemned this peace deal, and said that a UK victory against Germany would still have been easy in 1938 (but most disagree and are glad that PM Chamberlain delayed for a year).

We know that, in 1939, seeing that the UK and France had signed peace deals with Germany, the USSR signed a peace deal with Germany that said Poland, formed from land taken from Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany after WWI, would be returned to Russia and Germany.

We know that Western history says that France, the UK, and the US fought against Germany and the USSR in WWII, which was started by the German-USSR alliance.

We know that, in 1939, the UK and France told Poland to blockade East Prussia from Germany, an act of war that caused German to declare war on Poland, and then the USSR also declared war on Poland, after which Germany and the USSR took back all of Poland that had been taken from Germany and the USSR after WWI. This caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany, expecting the Wehrmacht to be destroyed by the Maginot Line.

We know that, in 1940, the Germans used paratroopers to overwhelm Belgium, then quickly defeated the Anglo-French alliance in France, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) made it back to the UK somehow (different versions: some say fishing boats, some say UK troop carriers, some say both were needed to rescue the BEF).

We know that, in 1941, Germany attacked their 'ally' the USSR. The US say the Germans won. The Germans attacked Leningrad and Stalingrad, and, if one looks at a map, there is no Leningrad, there is no Stalingrad, so obviously the Germans won in their war against the USSR, but the US single-handedly defeated the Wehrmacht. Of course, Russia have a different version, but if Russia won, where are Leningrad and Stalingrad???

And in 1945, Germany surrendered. The actual surrender was late, because the Americans allowed the Russians to be there, and it was May 9 in Russia before the Americans let the Germans sign the surrender document, but it was May 8 in the US, UK, and France (and Germany). The US does not celebrate the end of WWII on May 8, but, before, on May 31, and now on the last Monday in May, the US celebrates Memorial Day, in memory of all the soldiers who died in all American wars.

The Russians note that they lost 27 million in WWII, and want some credit for the victory, which the US will never give. 

The US know that all the oil and gas on the planet belong to the US, and are proud of liberating all the Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian oil. Saudi used their Hajj money to buy all the Saudi oil from the US owners, making them the legal owners under US law, about the only legal owners of oil (other than the US) on the planet.

The US oil in Iran must be liberated soon, along with all the US oil in Russia. Cutting the PRC off from all oil should put a dent in their economy, and, we all hope, will ensure total US hegemony over the entire solar system (the US have no intention of stopping with nothing but all of this planet).

Will it be Fire or Ice?????

 Robert Frost wrote a poem called "Fire and Ice", and the version I found on-line had a copyright of 1923, after WWI was "The War to End All Wars" (but wasn't).

The poem is short enough:

Fire and Ice

By Robert Frost

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

Now, of course, we've had Russia against NATO since the end of the USSR (but Russia didn't know it until 2022, they figured, now that Communism was gone, they could be part of NATO, silly Russians).

But Russia (the world's largest holder of nukes, if they all still work, but with top NATO military analysts saying we have nothing to worry about, they're all inoperative and Russia have no one who knows how to fix them) against NATO has been overtaken by Pakistan against India (both holders of only a few nukes, but a few actually used by two nuclear powers against each other would bring us to a place the world has never been before).

And the US and Israel seem determined to destroy Iran, and no one has a clue about how such a war will turn out (but the US and Israel both figure it will be an easy victory with no bad effects for the US or Israel, just the total destruction of Iran by an overwhelmingly more powerful pair, returning all Iranian oil to the rightful owners of that oil before Iranians stole it--three times--from the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs and maybe the Israeli government for helping).

Others figure Iran has enough unstoppable missiles to totally destroy Israel, the West Asian US military bases, the West Asian oil fields, and block the Strait of Hormuz for many years, making oil prohibitively expensive for the US/UK/EU.

And the US/UK/EU have decided they must destroy Russia to keep Europe safe, which is why the UK and France let Germany rearm in 1933, since they were sure the USSR would try to take all of Europe, and that Hitler fellow was a lot more reasonable than that Stalin fellow and Hitler's futile fight against the USSR would give the UK and France time to prepare for the real battle against the USSR, and they figured that Germany's total destruction by the USSR would buy them the time they needed.

 

Today, Russia try very hard to downplay the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 (for which the US hanged Ribbentrop) that freed Germany to overwhelm Poland, France, and the UK. And the USSR figured the pact meant they didn't need to worry about Germany, which was true until 1941 when Germany got serious about their plan to eradicate all the Slavs in the European part of the USSR (i.e., just about everyone in the European part of the USSR).

The disagreements between Pakistan and India are about 80 years old, but the last big one in the '70s was before they had nukes. So what's going to happen now? No one has a clue.

The disagreement between the US and Iran started about 70 years ago when Mosaddegh nationalised Iranian oil, then cooled down for about 20 years when the Shah agreed that all Iranian oil belonged to the US, then heated up when the Shah nationalised Iranian oil (again) so the US got rid of him and replaced him with an Iranian cleric living in France who was only supposed to care about making Iranian women wear Islamic dress and would be happy to let the US have all their oil back, only he had most of the staff in the US Embassy in Iran taken hostage and kept all the oil. So the US put a total blockade on Iran from about 1980 until 2021 when a fleet of oil tankers protected by a fleet of heavy naval ships broke the US blockade without having to fire a shot (the naval fleet was so strong the US blockading fleet fled). Iran doesn't have any nukes and probably can't get any (but is portrayed by the US as just days away from a massive nuclear arsenal they'll use to destroy the world if the US don't stop them).

Iran say to the world that they don't want any help, but we don't know what they say to the two countries that want to help them if the US and Israel attack.

So the world is in a place they've never been before, with the war between the two nuclear-armed powers Pakistan and India getting hotter and hotter, the war between the nuclear armed US/UK/EU and Russia getting hotter and hotter, and the war between the US/Israel (who both have nukes) and Iran (who don't have nukes, but who might have weapons that can destroy everything they want to destroy) getting hotter and hotter.

So which disaster will come first? And will it be Fire or Ice? 

 

(I have no idea.)

Can Iran Save the World?????

Both Presidents Trump and Biden showed us all that the US president is not the person running the US government, but is supposed to be an actor who reads the TelePrompter with elan and whatever else makes the message on that TelePrompter irresistibly appealing to a majority of the American voters and acceptable to all the US neo-colonies (of which the most important are now the UK and EU).

Trump was given the order to attack Syria on the TelePrompter, but ordered all US troops out of Syria. Twice. And not one troop left: they went in, stole the oil that was supporting the Assad government, which fell six years later, and then the US establishment gave Biden all the credit when he probably didn't even know that Syria had fallen and was now a US/Israeli neo-colony.

Biden managed to read the TelePrompter, with a lot of unrevealed practice sessions in advance, but then couldn't find his way off the stage, and obviously didn't know where he was or what he had just read.

Trump took full credit for killing General Suleimani, but most of the credit goes to Mohammed bin Salman who invited the General to a peace conference in Baghdad, then told the US military when and where the general would be an easy target.

Of course, that's changed, a lot, since the PRC told Saudi and Iran they'd better be friends. Or else.

For years, the US was the biggest buyer of oil, so Saudi did whatever the US wanted. Iran stole America's oil sitting in Iran, twice, so the US set up a naval blockade that prevented Iran from selling oil for 40 years and caused the Iranian economy to shrink by 50%. That was then.

Today, fracking means the US are a net exporter of petroleum products, not the world's biggest importer. Meanwhile, the oil-poor PRC has twice as many cars as the US, most of them needing petrol (a few run on electricity generated by coal, of which the PRC has plenty), so the PRC have become, by far, the biggest buyer of petrol. So when the PRC told Saudi and Iran they had to be BFF, both said, "是的，先生。您说什么都行，先生."

So the people really running the US are determined to see that the US remains not just global Hegemon, but unquestioned, absolute global Hegemon with no nation that can possibly challenge that hegemony. Which means subjugating Iran, the DPRK, Russia, and the PRC. 

The USSR had the most nukes in the world, and Russia got all of them. Do they still work? No one knows for sure. The DPRK has done public tests, so yes, they definitely have nukes that work, but maybe they can't get any of them anywhere near the US, so no real threat after we nuke them? The PRC? Best plan is to take out Iran and then Russia and then cut the PRC off from all energy resources so their economy will collapse. Will that go well? The US Naval blockade on Iran could not stand up to the PRC Navy, but the US did not put all it had into cutting off the PRC, and, anyway, Russia are supplying the PRC with lots of oil, so  just cutting Iran off won't be enough.

So the people running the US want to start with the easiest target, always the best strategy, and that target is Iran since Iran has no nukes.

Raising the Big Question: Is Iran really an easy target???

I was reading a bunch of neocons posting on a discussion group, and they figure, "No problem. Biden was weak, but Trump can and will easily destroy Iran."

I figure the US military all figure the same; Iran will be a very easy target for the US, no effective defences, so the US can easily manage the total destruction of all Iranian nuclear development, offensive and defensive weapons, with nothing left of Tehran, Qom, or the Ayatollahs, with the US the total hegemon over whatever is left of Iran and the unquestioned owner of all Iranian oil. And, as a bonus, Israel will be safe from Iran.

But I've read people who say they know Iran, and, if attacked, Iran can destroy Israel, all the US military bases in West Asia, and all the oilfields in West Asia. Plus, closure of the Straits of Hormuz for many years, in which case Americans will be paying $100s of dollars for a liter of petrol, the UK and EU will be paying a lot more, the Western economies will be destroyed, and the rest of the world will be safe. The US won't be in a position to attack or nuke anyone.

And this felicitous outcome will be all up to Iran, who seem to be all alone.

And seem to like it that way, with no other nation protecting them from the US and Israel.

So Iran may be, single-handedly, the end of US global Hegemony.

Or an easy target, totally destroyed by the US (maybe with a little help from Israel), with no damage to Israel, US military bases, West Asian oil fields, or the Straits of Hormuz, and all Iranian oil going to the rightful owners, the US oiligarchs. 

Of course, since that's what the US military experts all agree is certain to be true, that makes it somewhat likely to be false.

In any case, it looks like we'll find out very soon now.

Must we bring back that old Tom Lehrer song???

Tom Lehrer wrote what he called A Song For WWIII, a song we seem to need now.

On 19 January 2025, president-elect Trump said that the US had to get out of the Ukraine. On 21 January 2025, President Trump said that Russia had to get out of the Ukraine or Russia would be destroyed.

Obviously, most people who get to be president start as teenagers, doing whatever their party asks, learning all the Rules of the Road, and a very few get to be candidates, and one of the two major party candidates goes on to win the election (with a very, very few exceptions like Sanders).

Trump just used his own money to run for and win the presidential election in 2016, and then had no idea that his job was to read the TelePrompter, no ad-libbing allowed. When the TelePrompter said, in 2018, "I order the US military into Syria to bring freedom and democracy," Trump said, "I order all US troops out of Syria."

So they explained things to him and gave him a second chance, and again, he ordered all US troops out of Syria. And some thought the US troops would actually leave Syria, showing how little they understand about how the US works.

Finally, they told Trump this was not going to cost the US taxpayers 1¢, the troops were really going into Syria to steal all the oil and would make a good profit, so Trump gave the order and it was carried out: the troops went in, stole the oil, and a bankrupt President Assad of Syria fled the country in 2024, handing Syria over to former members of al-Qaeda and ISIS who promised to work closely with the US and Israel, and gladly proclaimed they were giving Israel all the water in Syria south of Damascus. A total success for the US military!

They had wanted Trump to order the troops in to bring freedom and democracy, but at least he gave the order sending them in to steal the oil and bankrupt Assad, which was always the real purpose of the mission. And the people who really run the US could live without the 'freedom and democracy' lie.

And now Trump plans to fight Russia over the minerals in the Ukraine, a much weaker, easier adversary than Assad, so Trump should have a quick and easy victory. Of course, he also wants a quick and easy victory over Iran. Not clear, yet, which one will be first, maybe both at the same time.

Reading all the US/UK/EU media, the US military are much stronger than the next ten militaries put together, so, just as the US easily defeated Vietnam…

Well, let's think about Iraq and Libya and Syria where the US got all the oil that Saddam and Gaddafi and Assad were stealing from the US, since it is the US who are the rightful owners of just about all the oil on the planet, and after defeating Russia and Iran, the US will demand that all Russian and Iranian energy resources go to US oiligarchs as war reparations.

Another success was the US getting rid of Mohammad Mosaddegh after he stole (by nationalising) Iranian oil, and then got rid of the Shah after he stole the oil by nationalising it (again), but then the Ayatollahs kept the oil, so the US ordered that no one could buy any Iranian oil and put up a naval blockade that stopped all Iranian oil sales until 2021 when a fleet of oil tankers, accompanied by a strong naval fleet, came and bought all the Iranian oil, so the weak President Biden ordered the US blockade on Iran lifted, since the US could no longer enforce it.

President Trump plans to do something about Iran and Russia, but it's not clear just what, yet. Or in what order.

The Soviet Union once had the world's largest nuclear arsenal,  but Russia are not the Soviet Union, and all those nukes are almost certainly in disrepair and useless, and in any case, Putin wouldn't dare use nukes against the US, since US anti-missile missiles and lasers would stop all those Russian nukes then the US would totally destroy Russia, no doubt about it, at least in the minds of the US military who are the world's top experts in all things military.

So it's time to start practicing that old Tom Lehrer song, since we'll be needing it, probably pretty pronto.

Richard D Wolff Responds: "Winners & 'Likely' Losers: China vs USA Trade War"??? (Dated April 30, 2025)

It is worth watching Professor Wolff's YouTube video that he calls the 'Likely' Trade War between China and the US. He gets a lot right, but not all.

For one, it's not a 'Likely' trade war, the trade war is already happening, with the US attacking and the PRC defending.

As Professor Wolff correctly says, the PRC have all the advantages in the Trade War, and as he worries, also correctly, Trade Wars often turn into actual military wars.

Professor Wolff was going along very well in his video: First, the Chinese Communist Party exercises overall control of everything in the PRC and is making very intelligent decisions (obviously 110% TRVE: the decisions of those running the PRC have been as close to perfect as possible).

And then he notes that the US have not managed to make such intelligent decisions, also obviously true, but his explanation is somewhat lacking: he says that in the US, since production is in the hands of private companies, each with different chief executives who cannot coordinate under anti-trust law, such intelligent control is impossible in the US.

However, Professor Wolff misses that, over the Chief Executives of US corporations are the Governing Boards of those corporations, and a small group of people sit on the boards governing all the major corporations, and those people move easily and frequently between senior government jobs and senior private jobs, often holding both simultaneously, US laws notwithstanding.

In the 19th century, the US built the world's largest rail network, linking just about all of the US. By 19th century standards (slow though they were), it was a high-speed rail network.

In Europe, the British had a rail system, the French had a rail system, the Germans had a rail system, etc., etc., and one could buy a ticket on the Orient Express and make one's way from Liverpool to the near Orient, using British and European rail networks (and a boat to cross the English Channel), but only by coordinating different national railroads. (And one can read novels and watch movies about the Orient Express, even if one couldn't travel on it.)

But now, the PRC have a large network of high-speed rail (part of a rail network that is much larger than the US rail network ever was) adding to the overall success of the PRC economy while the US have no high-speed rail network (and many problems in the existing US rail network). Wolff says this is only because the Chinese Communist Party have overall control of the PRC economy and so can make decisions that are very unprofitable while the US do not have such a network because there is no US Party having such overall control, so a totally unprofitable network cannot be built.

That's where Wolff's economics break down: if that high-speed rail network is really so unprofitable, it must be hurting the PRC economy, but the PRC economy is booming. The US economic system would be greatly helped by such a system, but it can't be built because it would be very unprofitable. This makes no economic sense. What it means is that the US economy has serious flaws that make it impossible to complete a project the completion of which would add greatly to the US economy (the project has been started several times, but little progress was made because the US economic flaws, not to mention US leadership flaws, have made all such starts so incredibly expensive that none have even come close to completion).

The real conclusion is that a very small group of people who have all the intelligence (and connections) to rise to the top of the US power system have made a lot of decisions which have been very profitable for the decision makers but not very good for the overall US economy or for ordinary Americans, while the small group of people who managed to rise to the top of the PRC power system have made a lot of very intelligent decisions that benefitted everyone in the PRC.

And no one has a clue how to change the way the US works, so the US uses wars to destroy and pillage, taking Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian oil, and doing all they can to get the Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil into the hands of US oiligarchs (the Venezuelan and Iranian and Russian projects do not seem to be going nearly as well as the Iraqi and Libyan and Syrian projects went, while the Russian project seems certain to go horribly wrong--sorry, as Hamlet said, ' “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.” ').

Trump: Peace Candidate, but ...

I heard 'President' Trump say, twice, 'I order all US troops out of Syria.'

Of course, the DNC and RNC each put up one candidate, each, every four years, and the Electoral College picks one of them to be the actor who plays the part of US president. But, when 'President Trump' failed to read his line on the Teleprompter, i.e., 'I order the US military into Syria to bring peace and democracy,' and instead ordered all US troops out of Syria, not one troop left. So orders the actor gives that are not on the Teleprompter do not get followed. The orders given by the person who authored the speech on the Teleprompter are the orders that are actually followed.

And, on 19 January 2025, I heard 'President-elect' Trump say, 'The US must withdraw from the Ukraine or the US economy will be destroyed,' and on 21 January 2025, I heard 'President' Trump say, 'Russia must withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia will be destroyed.' Quite the difference. But at least Trump learned to read the Teleprompter without (or at least with less) ad-libbing between 2021 and 2025.

The real president is a well-kept secret, at least from me, and if anyone knows, they refuse to tell me who it is. Obama has been suggested as the real president from 2009 to 2025, but I, at least, can't know for certain, and I don't know who does.

 ******

I tried to listen to two Tucker Carlson shows: one show, 'FORTRESS AMERICA' with George Friedman, was about how the US rules the world, and will continue to rule the world for the foreseeable future: Russia tried to conquer the Ukraine, and, after three years, have only a tiny sliver, have lost most of their military, and will soon have to sell off all Russian assets to US oiligarchs to pay for the war. The PRC is in slightly better shape than Russia, but are totally hemmed in by US Naval assets and those assets make it impossible for the PRC to project any power at all, they could not possibly even attack Taiwan, let alone annex that American asset. And most of the rest of the world already acknowledges and gratefully accepts absolute US hegemony. Or at least the UK and EU accept it and try to look grateful.

The second show was "Embedded with Russian Troops"  where Tucker interviewed Patrick Lancaster who has been an embedded reporter with the Russians fighting the Ukrainians, and he notes that their job is to protect ethnic Russians in the Ukraine and in Russia from the Ukrainian forces who are determined to cleanse the Ukraine (and as much of Russia as possible) of ethnic Russians. Some say this is a Slav v. Slav fight, but the Western Ukrainians consider themselves Aryans, not Slavs, and are in general agreement with the book, My Struggle written in the 1920s by a future Chancellor of Germany. that all Slavs must be exterminated or at least enslaved by Aryans. Mr Lancaster is sympathetic to the ethnic Russian position in this war, and, as he notes, his pro-Russian viewpoint is soundly rejected by all the mainstream US/UK/EU media who agree that the book, My Struggle, while wrong in its anti-Semitism, was absolutely right about the Slavs.

As the US/UK/EU all said after Germany lost WWII, Hitler's killing 6 million Jews was the absolute worst crime in all history. Some ask, 'But what about Hitler also killing 27 million Slavs?' and the US/UK/EU answer is 'That just shows there's a little good in the worst of men.'

This raises the question: Where is the war in the Ukraine going?

As George Friedman says, that's obvious: Russia will lose the war and all their assets and end up an impuissant, impoverished country or, more likely, 20 small impuissant, impoverished countries.

But I fear Mr Lancaster might very well be correct that Russia will manage to survive, economy intact, and with all the ethnic Russians under Russian protection, with whatever is necessary to keep them safe from the good Aryans in the Western Ukraine, US, UK, and EU.

Where with Iran? (War?)

 I just watched "Life, Liberty, and Levin" on Fox News. Mr. Levin started with 9/11, how just 19 terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon, and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania. Then he showed the old films taken of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and noted that those 19 terrorists could have done a lot more damage with nukes, and Iran are preparing nukes and are very close to giving them to terrorists, but Levin is sure Trump can stop them unless the Left manage to stop Trump's prophylaxis.

The US started by saying all the nuclear bombs were based on U₂₃₅ (U235 if subscripts don't display). My physics professor in high school said he worked on the project: they formed uranium fluoride gas and centrifuged it, so the lighter U₂₃₅(U235) rose to the top and the heavier U₂₃₈(U238) sank to the bottom, but it took many, many cycles to get pure enough U₂₃₅(U235) to make a bomb.

I read a Disney comic where Prof. Ludvig von Drake explained that U₂₃₅(U235) was the most powerful explosive in the world.

Later, the US admitted that one of the three nukes they set off in 1945 was plutonium. Then some said it was two plutonium bombs, and I read one author who wrote that all three bombs were plutonium. The US executed two Jews for giving the USSR the secret of the U₂₃₅(U235) nuclear bomb, with all the details that had pretty much become common knowledge. J. Edgar Hoover rounded up leftists, charged them with treason for giving the USSR the secret of the nuclear bomb, had them sentenced to death, then offered to commute their sentence if they'd name more spies. The Rosenbergs were the first (and last) accused 'spies' who refused to name anyone else, so both were executed in 1953 (there is still a debate about the FBI's 'evidence' of their guilt).

But Levin figures Iran are just weeks away from having a bunch of nukes and giving them to terrorists. 

Fortunately, we have two versions of recent history.

First, the US killed an Iranian general, Suleimani. Iran said when and which US military base they'd attack, and attacked right on schedule, but the US had removed all planes and troops, so no materiel or troops lost. Net: Iran failed to do the slightest damage to the US base, so are they quite incapable of damaging a US base with the sophisticated defences protecting each and every US base, or did they prove they could do a lot of damage if they attacked without first warning the US?

Then Israel killed just about everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, so Iran named their targets in Israel and sent a bunch of drones and missiles, but none got past the massive defensive shield put up by Israel, the US, Jordan, France, the UK, and maybe a few more. That's the Western version.

Or maybe four missiles did get past all the defences and hit empty military targets, doing little damage. That's the Iranian version, and they say that they didn't have to announce when and where they were going to hit, so they could have done major damage, and will do if Israel do another attack on an Iranian Embassy.

Israel want a joint US/Israel attack on Iran. Actually, the last Israeli attack on Iran was when President Assad was still president of Syria, and Syria had antiaircraft weapons, so the US provided hundreds of US planes forming a protective floor and ceiling between which the Israeli planes flew in safety (President Assad ordered the antiaircraft to make sure no US plane was threatened). Assad is gone now, and so are all Syrian defences against Israel, so Israeli planes can fly to and bomb Iran whenever they feel like it, and President Jolani of Syria says he fully supports the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) and would not do anything to threaten it, even if he had any antiaircraft weapons, which he doesn't since the IOF have destroyed them all.

This raises the question: if Israel attacks Iran, how much support will they get from the US, and can Iran retaliate in any way, or are Israel totally protected by their air defence system called Iron Dome???

Levin and Fox are sure an Iranian atomic attack is imminent, but if Israel and the US act now, they can destroy all the nuclear resources in Iran and keep Israel safe, but if they keep pithering, Israel and the US will soon be hit by hundreds of nukes, and there will be no way to stop them.

Iran say that, if the US and Israel attack Iran, they have plenty of non-nuclear missiles that will do major damage to Israel and all the West Asian US military bases, plus much of the world's oil supply will be under attack and the price of oil will be prohibitively high, stopping much of western industrial activity.

President Trump wants a new and Greatly Improved JCPOA. The trouble with the old one was that Obama and Hillary did the work and got the credit, so President Trump withdrew in spite of a UN Security Council resolution (turns out, the UN membership pledge to be bound by UN regulations aside, the US are not bound by UN Security Council resolutions the way other members of the UN are bound). But President Trump intends to take 110% of the credit for the new and greatly improved JCPOA (that probably will not be allowed a single J, C, P, O, or A in the acronym).

And no matter what the new and improved JCPOA treaty says, the US might decide to assist Israel in their attack on Iran. We'll just have to wait and see.

The JCPOA

For anyone who might have forgotten, the JCPOA was The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which started as a US agreement with Iran and was passed as a UN Security Council Resolution, so it should have been binding on all member states of the UN.

However, it was a plan concocted by Obama and Hillary, so Trump declared that he was taking the US out of the agreement after he won the 2016 election.

And now some say his negotiations with Iran are just a return to JCPOA

Before President Trump ordered all US troops out of Syria, and none left, and before we saw that President Biden wasn't sure where he was or who he was, many of us thought the person called President of the US was the executive running the US government. Now all we know is that we don't know.

Whoever was really running the US government under Clinton imposed a blockade on Iraq, and at least half a million died from lack of food and medicines. Clinton's Secretary of State, Albright, said the deaths were well worth it for what they achieved. Clinton promised Iraq an end to sanctions if they had UN inspectors verify that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). And, as soon as those inspectors verified that Iraq had no WMD, Bush, Jr and associates like Powell said they had irrefutable proof that Iraq had WMD and were planting some in the US, planning to kill millions of Americans, so the US War on Iraq started, killing many more Iraqis and executing all the senior members of the Iraqi government.

Then whoever was running the government under Bush, Jr imposed sanctions on Libya, and, when those UN inspectors verified no WMD, whoever was really running the government had Obama and Hillary order that Gaddafi be killed, the Libyan government dismantled, and all the US oil that Libya had been stealing went back to the US (but the US shared 10% with the UK and 10% with France for helping recover that stolen US oil). Many think Obama really was the one running the US government when he was president, and that he continues to run things, that it was Obama who chose Biden to wander about and fall down for four years. But we cannot know for certain. All we know for certain is that Obama signed the JCPOA and had the US delegate to the UN vote to make it a Security Council Resolution.

But the JCPOA appeared to be an Obama-Hillary plan, where, as soon as those UN inspectors said that Iran had no WMD, Hillary would be the one to announce that she'd found those WMD and then she'd  order the attack that would have liberated all the US oil located in Iran, stolen first by Mosaddegh, then returned to the US by the Shah, then stolen by that same Shah, so the US had him replaced by Khomeini who not only failed to return the oil, he also allowed his supporters to take the staff of the US Embassy in Tehran hostage and would not release the oil or the hostages (but then Reagan paid him enough to get all the hostages released, but not the oil).

In the latter days of the Obama presidency, when it looked like Hillary would succeed him, it looked like Obama and Hillary had worked out a way to get all that oil back from Iran, but Trump was having nothing to do with an Obama-Hillary plan, so he pulled out.

So now what? There isn't time for years of sanctions that kill off millions of Iranians. Oops, the US has had the harshest sanctions on Iran since 1980, but Iran can still grow enough food and make enough medicine to prevent mass deaths. The sanctions did shrink the Iranian economy to less than half what it was in '79 before the blockade, but they still had enough food and medicine to prevent mass deaths like we saw in Iraq.

But then, in 2021, a huge fleet of oil tankers showed up in Iran. From 1980 until 2020, every year or so we read about an oil tanker that tried to sneak out of Iran full of oil, and all were stopped by the US Navy patrol that stopped all Iranian oil traffic. Only the 2021 fleet was accompanied by a huge naval fleet, much more powerful than the tiny fleet enforcing the US blockade, so the US Navy could do nothing but pull away and watch as the oil tankers all filled up and left Iran (and left behind payment in full, so the Iranian economy has more than doubled from what it was in 2020).

And now Trump wants to reclaim all that Iranian oil, and hopes to do it with threats of military action on Iran rather than actual military action on Iran. Trump is bombing the Yemen, and claims Iran are providing AnsarAllah in the Yemen with all the ordinance they have used to stop all Red Sea traffic.

AnsarAllah have also been shelling (without any noticeable effect) the US Aircraft Carrier that is launching all the planes bombing the Yemen and many of the drones targeting the Yemen.

Iran have launched several attacks on Israel, and Israel have launched several attacks on Iran. But reports of results are contradictory: one version is that all the Iranian bombs were shot down by Israel and Israel's allies, doing absolutely no damage to Israel, while Israeli bombs have done major damage to legitimate Iranian war targets; the other version is pretty much the opposite: most of the Iranian rockets and drones fired at Israel were decoys, all the real ones got through and did severe damage, while the Israeli attacks on Iranian military targets accomplished nothing (but one attack did kill many of the mourners at a memorial service for General Suleimani).

So we have no idea what Trump will do about Iran (if it is Trump making the decisions, or what the persons actually in charge will do).

But we're pretty sure Trump won't let anyone call anything he does a JCPOA. New acronym, anyone? One Trump can live with?

1933

 Looking at Europe today, one should be reminded of 1933. Churchill wrote a huge volume, The Gathering Storm, and also had a short, schoolboy version that I read as a schoolboy. The short version started in 1933 when Germany elected a new Chancellor. The Chancellor-elect promised to abrogate the Treaty of Versailles as soon as he took office, the treaty which Germany had been forced to sign after losing WWI, a treaty where Germany promised never again to have any military.

In Churchill's version of history, Churchill thundered in Parliament against the UK allowing the Chancellor-elect to take office: he said that the UK must demand regime change, he insisted that the next German Chancellor must agree to uphold the Treaty of Versailles, and he claimed (after 1945) that WWII would have been averted without the loss of a single life if only the Parliament had listened to him.

Only I checked the morgue, something much more difficult in the '50s, and found no Churchill speeches saying that the UK military must insist on regime change in Germany in 1933. Basically, the Great Powers, France and the UK, wanted a re-armed Germany to give them a little time when the Evil Union in the East began their inevitable invasion.

In Churchill's version, he kept giving speeches, all ignored, that the UK must stop Germany before they became invincible, something that could have been accomplished with no bloodshed in '33, very limited bloodshed in '35, some bloodshed but certain victory in '38 when the cowardly PM Chamberlain surrendered to Germany and called it 'Peace in Our Time,' and finally, an ignominious defeat of the UK by Germany when PM Chamberlain finally agreed to go to war in '39. Almost all wrong. War in '38 would have been, as Waugh said, 'war in a panic, for the wrong reasons or no reason at all, with the wrong allies.'

In '38, France wanted to complete the Maginot Line and the UK wanted to complete the radar shield, so France would never have joined the UK in war in '38, and, had Chamberlain not bought the year to complete the radar shield, Germany would probably have won the Battle of Britain. (Of course, Churchill relied on the fact that the radar shield was Top Secret, so he never mentioned it in his histories, he said the RAF won the Battle of Britain by eating lots of carrots that enabled them to see the Luftwaffe coming, even at night, in plenty of time to scramble and shoot most of the Luftwaffe down.)

Then, after the UK and France let Germany re-arm, in 1939 Germany and the USSR made the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop (for which the Allies hanged von Ribbentrop after the war).

But no problem, the UK and French armies were safe behind the Maginot Line. Oops.

The UK and France agreed to let Germany rearm as a bulwark against the USSR, but then (briefly) Germany and the USSR were allies and took all of Poland, bringing Germany into war with the UK and France (but the USSR were not mentioned in the UK-French Declaration of War for invading Poland, only Germany).

And now all of Europe are again sure, as they were in '33, that the SovietsRussia are ready to invade and conquer all of Europe, so all of Europe must join together against the SovietsRussia. And no persons who say they will vote against war with the SovietsRussia can be allowed to be elected to high office in any EU country, and, should it appear that some people who are not ready to go to war with the SovietsRussia are running for election in the EU, the European Courts must remove those people from any elections before they can be elected, or, if elected, remove them from office. All of Europe know they must defeat the SovietsRussia and they can't let anyone or anything stand in their way.

What about President Trump???

 Every American president (and a lot of other presidents) must be a Zionist, since the countries' political system prevents non-Zionists from getting elected (and AIPAC has a track record that's close to 100% at getting only Zionists elected to US legislatures). So we knew President Trump, like Presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, Jr, Clinton, Bush, Sr, etc., etc., was a Zionist (although some hoped having Arab grandchildren might lessen his Zionism).

But Presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, Jr., Clinton, Bush, Sr., and Reagan all wanted to destroy the Evil Empire that was the USSR under President Reagan and Russia starting during Bush, Sr's term in office.

Since Russia still has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, defeating Russia looked like a good way to get to WWIII, but the people running the US government figure Russia ain't no USSR and probably have let all their nuclear bombs lose their capacity to go off in a thermonuclear explosion, so it would just be the conventional charge detonating unevenly and spreading a bit of radioactive material that has spent a lot of its radiation half-lives. So nothing to worry about.

But some still worry that a cornered, desperate Russia might still be able to start WWIII, and hoped President Trump would turn down the heat.

And, on 19 January 2025, President-elect Trump said the US had to pull out of the Ukraine since the war was destroying the US economy. I'd settle for that. I'd prefer the genocidecomplete and total elimination of the terrorist Arabs attacking the Israelis might be toned back a bit, but that's not going to happen. It is against the law, a serious offence, in the US/UK/EU to criticise anything Israel does to defend themselves from the women and childrenterrorists who are trying to finish the genocide of the Jews that started during WWII. (And, since it's illegal to say anything else, I won't.)

But at least President-elect Trump was pulling us back from WWIII.

Then, on 21 January 2025, President Trump said that Russia must totally withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia would be destroyed. And that remains the official US position, as it has been since the end of WWII, that the USSR/Russia must back down or they will be totally destroyed, since the US has far more advanced nuclear weapons and impregnable defences against a nuclear attack (at least impregnable defences for all the top multi-billion dollar Americans, plus the top civil servants and politicians, and who else really matters?).

Whoever was really running the government under 'President' Biden refused to talk to the Russians. But President Trump has ordered meetings of US and Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia, and has had two long phone calls with Putin. So that's something we haven't seen for awhile.

The US/UK/EU media, with a few exceptions like Fox News and the New York Post, say that Trump is a terrible President for not completing the total destruction of Russia to which the Great Presidents who preceded him had gotten within easy striking distance. The New York Times explained how  the US generals told the Ukrainians how to kill Russians, and, when the Ukrainian military listened, they managed to kill almost a million Russian soldiers, leaving the Russian military with nothing but young boys and old men. But the Ukrainians far too often failed to listen to their American advisors, so there are still far too many Russian teenagers and geriatrics who would all have been eradicated if only the Ukrainians had listened.

Fox and the New York Post agree that the Great US military has almost destroyed the Russian military, but say this was done very inefficiently, squandering far more money than necessary and leaving the US economy in a very precarious position from which only President Trump can salvage a rescue, and without losing the Ukraine.

Biden, Fox and the New York Post say, was a very weak president, but we finally have a strong president.

In 1980, the US ordered a blockade of Iranian oil (and has since ordered a blockade of Venezuelan oil). But in 2021, Biden lifted the blockade of Iranian oil and let the PRC buy all of it, to which, in 2022, was added a lot of Russian oil after Europe stopped buying it. The PRC economy desperately needs oil (the PRC has the largest number of cars and drivers in the world), and a strong president like Trump will be able to lead the US military to stop the PRC from buying any oil, putting them back as a third-world country, and bringing a lot of jobs back to the US.

And, as I read yesterday (and I'm sorry I forgot to save the person who wrote it), when the US orders that no one can sell any oil to the PRC, all the PRC will be able to say, like the huge MMA guy who sees someone making a pest of himself in a bar, is, "请拿着我的啤酒."

What does the fall of Syria mean for Russia and Iran?

On 6 December, my Arab friends told me that Hayat Tarir al-Shams, a group consisting of just about all Syrians with no outside connections was about to take all of Syria. asked my Arab friends, 'How can you call people from Xinjiang Syrians?' They replied, 'There are maybe a dozen people from Xinjiang, and a total of about a hundred from other countries, but almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams was born in Syria, and they represent all Syrians, Sunnis, Alawite, Shi'a, Druze, and Christian.' 

Russia said that Aleppo had fallen to a combination of jihadists and Turkish army forces with many of the members from Xinjiang and the nearby countries, but they would never be able to go past Aleppo.

And then Hayat Tarir al-Shams took Damascus, while Israel took just about everything south of Damascus and the Turkish flag now flies above Aleppo, while the Daesh flag flies over Damascus.

Members of al-Qaeda and ISIS joined to form al-Nusrah, then renamed themselves Hayat Tarir al-Shams. Some Western reporters in Syria say that a rather large number are not Arabs, but are Sunni Muslims from Xinjiang and countries near Xinjiang, and the group contains no one who is not Sunni. But do you believe them, or actual Arabs (not Syrian Arabs) who say almost everyone in Hayat Tarir al-Shams is a born Syrian, and they represent all of Syria? They certainly heard it in Arabic, and I assume it was Syrian Arabic (or the accent of an Arab country near Syria), but a Sunni Syrian might have been surrounded by Uygurs while saying, 'There's no one here but us Syrians, and many of us are Alawites and Christians and all the other religious sects in Syria.'

CNN are running videos of people describing their horrible experiences in Syrian prisons, videos that are in Arabic (of course) with English subtitles for the CNN intended audience, but Arabs have taped and Instagrammed and Facebooked the videos, and they don't need the subtitles. The prisoners, kept for months without any food or water or sunlight and subjected to vicious beating, came out of their cells after the CNN crew broke open the door which had been left locked, and they looked well dressed, neatly barbered and shaved, and tanned. But one must believe what they say, and most of the Arabs I know say they are obviously telling the TRVTH, the whole TRVTH, and nothing but the TRVTH. (Some of the people who have been covering the Middle East for years, such as Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, say Hayat Tarir al-Shams are killing people, but are trying to do so privately, and no one is broadcasting any videos of the killings. I only found videos on Telegram that claim to be graphic evidence of Tayat Harir al-Shams atrocities, but it's not clear if one can verify that evidence, but it's on Telegram .

And Hayat Tarir al-Shams aren't killing anyone, they have always been peaceful, according to my Arab friends, who heard their horror stories of life under the Assad regime, and don't believe any of the Telegram videos.

Thousands of Syrians fled to Lebanon, but Lebanon handed them over to Hayat Tarir al-Shams for execution, so that didn't work.

***

But what about Russia? Former president Bashar al-Assad's father brought the Soviets into Syria, and they had a large presence, and fought with Syria to prevent regime change. But now Russia had greatly reduced the Russian presence in Syria from the Soviet presence, and had no idea Hayat Tarir al-Shams would be taking over part of Syria. For now, the northeastern third of Syria, the part with all the oil, is held by the US and Kurds. Erdogan wants all that to be a Kurd- and American-free part of the New Ottoman Empire (Erdogan won't call it that, but Russia do). What used to be southern Syria is now part of Israel, and Jolani, head of Hayat Tarir al-Shams says that Syria will strongly support Israel and do whatever Israel ask. He also says he wants Russia to remain, and Erdogan is welcome to Aleppo.

But Russia are now very weak in Syria, the troops on those Russian bases are not well protected, and could be subject to jihadi attacks, so it's looking like Russia will have to tell Jolani, 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

And that will mean that Russian influence in the Middle East will end, to the very great delight of the US. The Soviets were a world power, but Russia are just a regional power. Still, the Wehrmacht didn't have much luck fighting the Soviets in the Soviet Union, and it's not clear that NATO would be all that successful if they tried to fight Russia inside Russia or the countries adjacent to Russia.

***

Before, Syria had Russian anti-aircraft weapons, and Russian help training Syrian soldiers to use them, so Israel could never fly over Syrian territory. Now, Syria has absolutely no anti-aircraft, so Israel are free to fly over Israel whenever it suits them. Before, Israel wanted to bomb Iran, but the only route to Iran is over Syria, so US planes formed a vast sheet so Israeli planes could fly above the sheet, and Syria knew not to shoot down a US plane. Now, no need for US protection, Israel can bomb Iran whenever they wish. So far, Israel has just been bombing Syria to make absolutely certain that Syria won't be able to put together any antiaircraft protection of any kind. And Hayat Tarir al-Shams have absolutely no problem with this. I'm guessing regular bombing runs on Iraq and Iran will start soon.

Russia have been sending antiaircraft batteries to Iran, so Israel will not be able to bomb Iran, they'll have to use rockets, but rockets were enough to kill everyone in the Iranian Embassy in Syria, and they should be able to do whatever damage Israel wants to do to Iran. Israel wants US help carpet bombing Iran, but US equipment hasn't been doing all that well against Russian antiaircraft in the Ukraine, and Russia do not want Iran to fall to a US/Israeli military intervention and regime change. I fear we shall soon see how well US piloted US jets do against Russian antiaircraft batteries.

***

The PRC has been strictly non-interventionist. If the PRC gets a contract to build a port or airport or railway or whatever, and the US military force regime change to a government that only uses Western contractors (the country gets ripped off, but the senior government officials are very well paid).

Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins: they go to a country like Indonesia, the IMF and/or World Bank offer a loan at 10%, and the 'expert' promises a return of 20%, so the returns from the project will make the loan payments with a lot left over.

The IMF and World Bank insist that the country use their contractors who take the money and leave, so no project generating any return, and the loan must be repaid or the country will be blockaded. The country have to sell subsistence cropland to Western buyers who use it for cash crops, leaving many without any food, and all the countries mineral resources must be sold to Western buyers who take the minerals and dump waste in the rivers, leaving the people no safe drinking water. But the heads of state are very well rewarded as most of the population see their lives becoming much worse.

If the West engineer regime change to someone who will take those Western loans that are incredibly profitable to the West instead of the PRC loans that would have resulted in good profits for both the natives of the country and the PRC, the PRC never interferes.

But the PRC desperately needs Iranian oil, enough to send a Naval Fleet that could overcome the US Naval Blockade of Iran, so the PRC could buy as much oil as Iran could produce.

But if the US forces regime change in Iran to a government that gladly accepts US sanctions on selling oil to the PRC, will the PRC still do nothing? At what point, if any, do the PRC decide that non-interventionism is no longer a viable policy?

***

The US plan is to destroy Iran and Russia and cut the PRC completely off from their oil, then pressure the Gulf States to sanction the PRC and not give them any oil. The fact that, in the '40s, the US produced 75% of the world's oil, so the allies had plenty of oil for their airplanes and tanks, while the Axis did not, was one thing that helped the Allies win the war. Probably not nearly as much as the Wehrmacht trying to attack the Soviet Union, but still, having all the oil helped the Allied efforts, and the US is hoping that cutting off all oil and gas will greatly weaken the PRC and make regime change fairly facile.

Or maybe the US will convince the PRC that non-interventionism isn't really such a good policy.

***

I fear we will learn a great deal in 2025 that we'd rather not know.