The Leading Neocolonial Power since 1823

The Monroe Doctrine

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

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

European Colonialism

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

US Neo-colonialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Problem of Anti-Semitism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Israeli-American-Iranian War in the News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And absolutely no idea where this is going. 

WWIII anyone???

Cuban Missila Crisis???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great Power Pollitics: Indivisibility of Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

President Trump and the JCPOA Revisisted?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it's a little more complicated than that.

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

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

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

WWIII anyone?

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.” ').