Jeffrey Sachs describes how the EU is hoping to create a new European “NATO” which they think should include Ukraine. Two problems: NATO is an evil in this world, a bypass of the UN, and a vehicle of aggression, refocused after Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard” plan as a convenient instrument for the expansion of U.S. power into Eurasia; and trying, yet again, to bring Ukraine into NATO or a NATO-like organization, is a red-line for Russia. Jack Matlock, the final U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, said that expanding NATO to the east could poison relations with Russia. But then, with their outright hate of Russia, relations are of no concern.

Glenn Diesen scored an interview with Professor Sergey Karaganov, an Honorary Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense who has been an advisor of Russia’s political elites for decades. Prof. Karaganov wrote speeches for Brezhnev and advised Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. Prof. Karaganov argues we are already in a new World War and argues that Russia can only win by pursuing massive escalation, which includes the use of nuclear weapons. Here, Prof. Karaganov is recommending strikes against Europe for their many aggressions against Russia, even to the point of nuclear weapons. By aggressions, he means the missiles and drones produced in EU countries and sent to Ukraine to attack sites in Russia. Thus he recommends hitting back at these EU countries in retaliation. My reply to this:

“Memo to Prof. Karaganov - let’s try genuine diplomacy first. Diplomacy being trust allied with caution. Instead of hitting EU with bombs, to wake them up, let’s try bringing real EU diplomats to Moscow and start talking. Not Ursula Wonderland and Kaja Callous - invite their real diplomatic core, since those fools will soon be out of power anyway. And impress upon them how much better the world COULD be if EU and Russia noticed that they are on the SAME CONTINENT and should work together for the betterment of the world. Invite them to join BRICS, whose ideal is sovereignty, cooperation and human betterment. Learn this - you CANNOT hit Europe even with conventional weapons without triggering a nuclear response, since they are not simply interested in defeating Russia, they HATE Russia and want it destroyed. They are just WAITING for an excuse to finish off Russia.”

Furthermore, it appears that Pres. Putin’s restraint from retaliatory actions functions to avoid alienating the European population. If Russia did preform a well-deserved retaliatory attack on Ukraine’s “rear area” - the weapons-production areas in the EU, the EU Elites and their captive media would instantly declare - “Look - Russia bad! Another ‘unprovoked Russian attack’!” and set off full-scale war on Russia. By being so uninformed, they can’t see that Russia is already prepared, has supersonic missiles (Oreshnik) and the Sarmat has passed testing and will be going into deployment later this year. Europe can stand down or be vapourized.

The Karaganov discussion continued on Scott Ritter’s Ritter’s Rant 089: The Karaganov Fallacy. “Sergei Karaganov says Europe must be put in its place for preparing a war of aggression against Russia. I agree. But use Oreshnik, not nuclear weapons.” - Scott Ritter.

My reply:

“Let’s try neither and instead try better diplomacy - invite the EU elites to Moscow (fortunately, the head-of-lettuce Starmer, the most egregious war-monger of them, will soon be gone) and read them the riot act. They are no longer doing “phobia” of Russia, they are doing outright HATE, thinking that Russia has no right to exist, and therefore no security concerns. Russia is having to fight ALL of NATO by proxy in Ukraine, led by the MI6-trained Zelenskyy, and all this must stop. ALL the countries along Russia’s borders MUST BE actually neutral, unaligned, and out of NATO. Karaganov is correct in stating that Russia is not interested in even one inch of Europe. Europe MUST end hostilities on Russia and learn to cooperate for the betterment of all. In that regard, they should all join BRICS. If Russia makes any military action at all on the truly stupid EU Elites, they will instantly resort to nukes. Let’s not go there! Presently, the fools of The West, in their all-out attack on all of Asia, have all of Asia surrounded, from the Arctic, all along Russia’s borders, to the “Stans”, Iran, and China. ALL this hegemony must stop! Neutrality is the first step toward peace.”

See also Russia has announced the possibility of a preemptive strike on Europe following the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attack on Ryazan - Deputy Kolesnik: Russia may target drone production sites in Europe, by Evgeny Fomenko (Editor of the Russia Section) - Thanks to Don Hank for this link.

Two articles in The Globe and Mail, May 12th, illustrate Canada’s total stupidity in world affairs: “Canada is first outside Europe to back Ukraine compensation commission” by Steven Chase, Globe and Mail, May 12, 2026, p. A1, and “As conflict in Ukraine transforms drone warfare, NATO plays catch-up with Latvian exercises” by Mark MacKinnon, Globe and Mail, May 12, 2026, p. A1

My reply to these, which that newspaper certainly would not print:

“With this “Ukraine compensation commission,” it appears that Canada is fully endorsing the new European security architecture operating alongside NATO, in Europe’s drive toward full-on war against Russia. The globalist West is still reading Zbigniew Brzeziński’s “Grand Bargain” in which Eurasia is at the center of the world and Ukraine is the geographic pivot of Eurasia - who controls Ukraine controls Eurasia.

As per Angela Merkel’s memoirs, on the first day of the 2008 NATO summit, with the commitment to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, she knew that such incremental advances against Russia’s borders could lead to war. She resisted a specific timetable but eventually gave in to U.S. pressure. This was entirely America hegemony pushed on Europe. They kept the pressure on expanding NATO leading up to the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine to overturn the elected government and install an MI6-trained President and training Ukraine troops for their proxy war against Russia. All of Europe and especially the UK not only refuses Russia’s right to have security along their borders, but truly believes Russia has no right to exist.”

“And here is Canada, hoping to slip out from under U.S. dominance, going about deliberately harassing the world’s three normative powers: Russia, China and Iran, with military actions along Russia’s border in Latvia and running patrol vessels between Taiwan and China and designating Iran as terrorists. When Russia finally wins their war against NATO, it will be the West, including Canada, paying reparations to Russia. Canada’s best role in this world would be to promote actual neutrality here at home and help spread that concept around the world. That is the path to peace.”

Prof. Warwick Powell has provided an update on the war in Ukraine, indicating that the tipping point (exhaustion of NATO/Ukraine efforts), comes mid-2026: The attritional war in Ukraine: a brief update - Updated Attritional Analysis: As of May 15, 2026. My comment:

“Thank you for this excellent analysis! I do hope the EU Elites read this and understand it, thus reducing their senseless urge for all-out war against Russia. They have trained their populations to believe that Ukraine can win while Russia is failing. Their recent Euro-90 Billion “loan” to Ukraine will likely backfire when THEY end up paying reparations to Russia. They could come to their senses and understand that cooperation with Russia instead of outright hate, would be the best outcome for all.”

Actual neutrality is the first step toward peace, and until we have no more wars we can’t really resolve any of the actually important issues such as global warming and wasteful economic throughput. But what is neutrality about?

I’m including here some text from an interview by Prof. Pascal Lottaz of René Roca and Hans Bieri, in Switzerland, titled: ”EU Shocked: Swiss Population Fights Back | René Roca & Hans Bieri | Neutrality Studies by Pascal Lottaz. This interview is entirely in German, Prof. Lottaz is excellent in these other languages, but the generated voice translation and CC is in English, often with the usual spelling mistakes.

“While all of Europe is sitting in the antechamber of war—except Ukraine, which is already in the slaughterhouse—a small Alpine nation is putting up resistance. The Swiss population is demanding a referendum on neutrality from its EU- and NATO-subservient government.

In the best tradition of direct democracy, the Swiss have managed, against the will of their elites in government and parliament, to force a referendum that will decide the future of their neutrality. Nothing less than the core of Swiss identity is at stake.

Should the country become genuinely neutral again—including the abolition of sanctions regimes—or should the Alpine republic continue on its NATO course and, like Sweden and Finland, ultimately find its place on the Eastern Front in the most violent military alliance of all time?”

The government system in Switzerland is more open to direct public input so people do have voice in these referenda. One reason for this is that democracy can actually work in countries with smaller populations and better-educated people who actively engage in public affairs.

There are two votes being considered, and the topics are related. One is a referendum about banning sales of military equipment to nations at war and the other is about Switzerland going back to actual neutrality via a constitutional amendment, as it is in Austria.

In this interview, the topic is mainly the neutrality amendment, and it is getting push-back from strange quarters. Some on the Left imagine that neutrality is a right-wing ploy - to do what, I can’t imagine. Neutrality should actually be a core progressive value. Another group considers people pushing for neutrality to be Putin accomplices. But real neutrality doesn’t take sides, it stands apart from these conflicts. This can allow better understanding of conflicts because the proponents of neutrality are looking deeper into the issues, a process of understanding - thus an actual neutral party could be a mediator. They set out four goals for a system of neutrality:

1) The nation maintains neutrality while remaining permanently armed, for its own national defence.

2) The nation does not join alliances.

3) The nation does not impose or cooperate in sanctions.

4) The nation participates in no wars except from UN resolutions.

It remains militarily and economically neutral.

Prof. Lottaz has convened all his information systems into one consolidating web page - neutralitystudies.com with email <info@neutralitystudies.com>

“The NSI is an international research institute for the study of neutrality as a concept in international relations, sociology, international law, diplomacy, political science, security, and history.

The NSI is an international academic research project dedicated to:

* The study of neutrality and nonalignment in international affairs.

* The research of current affairs for an adequate depiction of contemporary international relations.

* The study of peace making and peace retention.

We examine neutrality not just as a foreign policy stance but as a concept with deep roots in international law, diplomatic history, political theory, and security studies.

The institute organizes conferences, workshops, and publications to advance scholarly understanding of neutrality. We also produce accessible video interviews, lectures, and written analysis for broader public audiences, available on YouTube and Substack.

Our work takes seriously the view that neutral and nonaligned states offer an important alternative to great-power rivalry — and that the scholarly study of neutrality has significant policy relevance in an era of renewed geopolitical competition.”

The website for the Swiss Neutrality amendment is SwissNeutralityNow.ch - “Neutrality for Peace and Balance”

Copyright © 2026 Sonia Sachs, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this because you have expressed interest.

My mailing address is:

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The war on Iran will likely end in American retreat

The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at acceptable financial, military, and political costs.

Jeffrey D. Sachs & Sybil Fares | May 9, 2026 | AlJazeera

The war against Iran that the United States and Israel launched on February 28, 2026, will likely end in an American retreat. The United States cannot continue the war without producing disastrous consequences. A renewed escalation would likely lead to the destruction of the region’s oil, gas, and desalination infrastructure, causing a prolonged global catastrophe. Iran can credibly impose costs that the United States cannot bear and that the world should not suffer.

The US – Israel war plan was a decapitation strike, sold to President Donald Trump by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of the Mossad. The premise was that an aggressive joint US–Israeli bombing campaign would so degrade the Iranian regime’s command structure, nuclear programme, and IRGC senior leadership that the regime would fracture. The United States and Israel would then impose a pliable government in Tehran.

Trump seems to have been convinced that Iran would follow the same course as had occurred in Venezuela. The US operation in Venezuela in January 2026 removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in what appears to have been a coordinated operation between the CIA and elements inside the Venezuelan state. The US won a more pliant regime, while most of the Venezuelan power structure remained in place. Trump seems to have believed naively that the same outcome would occur in Iran.

The Iran operation, however, failed to produce a pliant regime in Tehran. Iran is not Venezuela, historically, technologically, culturally, geographically, militarily, demographically, or geopolitically. Whatever happened in Caracas had little relation to what would take place in Tehran.

The Iranian government did not fracture. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), far from being decapitated, emerged with a tightened internal command and an expanded role in the national-security architecture. The supreme leader’s office held; the religious establishment closed ranks behind it; and the population rallied against external attack.

Two months on, Trump and Netanyahu have no Iranian successor government under their control, no Iranian surrender to close the war, and no military pathway whatsoever to victory. The only path, and the one the US seems to be taking, is a retreat, with Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz and with none of the other issues between the US and Iran settled.

Several reasons explain America’s disastrous miscalculations and Iran’s successes.

First, American leaders fundamentally misjudged Iran. Iran is a great civilisation with 5,000 years of history, deep culture, national resilience, and pride. The Iranian government was not going to succumb to US bullying and bombing, especially reflecting on the fact that Iranians remember how the US destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a police state that lasted 27 years.

Second, American leaders dramatically underestimated Iran’s technological sophistication. Iran has world-class engineering and mathematics. It has built an indigenous defence industrial base, with advanced ballistic missiles, a homegrown drone industry, and indigenous orbital launch capability. Iran’s record of technological development, built up despite 40 years of escalating sanctions, is a stunning national achievement.

Third, military technology has shifted in a way that favours Iran. Iran’s ballistic missiles cost a small fraction of the US interceptors deployed against them. Iranian drones cost $20,000; US air-defence interceptor missiles cost $4m. Iran’s antiship missiles, with costs in the low six figures, threaten US destroyers that cost $2-3bn. Iran’s anti-access and area-denial network around the Gulf, layered air defence, drone and missile saturation capacity, and sea-denial capability in the strait have made the operational cost of imposing American will on Iran far higher than the United States can sustain, especially taking into account the retaliatory destruction that Iran can impose on the neighbouring countries.

Fourth, the US policy process has become irrational. The Iran war was decided by a small circle of presidential loyalists at Mar-a-Lago, with no formal interagency process and a National Security Council that had been hollowed out across the preceding year. Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned on March 17 with a public letter describing “an echo chamber” used to deceive the president. The war was the output of a decision-making system in which the deliberative apparatus had been turned off.

This was neither a war of necessity, nor a war of choice. It was a war of whim. The underlying premise was hegemony. The United States was attempting to preserve a global dominance that it no longer possesses, and Israel was trying to establish a regional dominance that it will never have.

The likely endgame, given all this, is that the war will likely end with a return to something close to the status quo ante, except for three new facts on the ground. First, Iran will have operational control over the Strait of Hormuz. Second, Iran’s deterrent posture will be significantly raised. Third, the US long-term military presence in the Gulf will be significantly reduced. The other issues that supposedly prompted the US to attack Iran — Iran’s nuclear programme, regional proxies, the missile arsenal — will most likely be left where they were at the start of the war.

Even as the US retreats, Iran will not press its advantage against its neighbours. Three reasons explain why. First, Iran has a long-term strategic interest in cooperation with its Gulf neighbours, not an ongoing war. Second, Iran will have no interest in restarting a war it has just successfully ended. Third, Iran will be restrained, if any restraint is needed, by its great-power patrons, Russia and China, who both desire a stable and prosperous region. The Iranian leadership understands this clearly, and will stop the fighting.

Trump will no doubt try to depict the coming retreat as some great military and strategic victory. No such claims will be true. The truth is that Iran is far more sophisticated than the United States understood; the decision to go to war was irrational; and the underlying technology of war has shifted against the US. The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at an acceptable financial, military, and political cost. What America can regain, however, is some measure of rationality. It’s time for the US to end its regime-change operations and return to international law and diplomacy.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/5/9/the-war-on-iran-will-likely-end-in-american-retreat

Copyright © 2026 Sonia Sachs, All rights reserved.
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My mailing address is:

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At the end of April, I cross-posted two articles by Ryan Perkins, explaining that this war on Iran is really about China. Some Substack writers are dismissing Bessent’s “Operation Economic Fury” as irrelevant, but they are extremely wrong. What is going on is both a military and economic attempt to capture of all of Asia. Here are the links to these cross-posts, then below that, some important further commentary on these by Hans Jonsson of Sweden.

“The Petroyuan Trap: The U.S. Plan to Break China’s Economic Sovereignty” The blockade is a feint. Washington is secretly weaponizing the architecture of a multipolar world. | RYAN PERKINS | APR 25, 2026

“Petroyuan Trap Update: Fortifying the Dollar Perimeter” Swap Lines, the Petrodollar Zone, and the Consolidation of the Financial Trap | RYAN PERKINS | APR 28, 2026

From Hans Jonsson - his posts start with a long section of videos, you may skip down to where the text starts:

RESTORATION OF PERCEPTION - “Operation Economic Fury: The Man Who Breaks Currencies Is Now Running Yours” The war on Iran is the decoy. The real target is China’s financial spine. And the man pulling the trigger has done this before — twice. HANS JONSSON | MAY 03, 2026

“The Dollar Perimeter: How a Currency War Gets a Fence” Part II of the Operation Economic Fury Series | HANS JONSSON | MAY 03, 2026

“The Ponzi Dollar: When the World’s Piggy Bank Asks for Its Money Back” By Hans Jonsson — The Quantum Skald & The Silicon Ubuntu Restoration of Perception | May 4, 2026 | HANS JONSSON | MAY 03, 2026

Do read these! Note that information at this level is usually behind a very expensive paywall. Please hit the Like button and leave a comment!

In other matters, Seymour Hersh is misunderstanding Russia again, with “What Putin’s Stalemate Means for Iran” - Russia’s war in Ukraine has become mired in corruption and its leader now has had no role to play in the Middle East - Seymour Hersh, May 5, 2026 -“Putin is stuck in an at best stalemated and perhaps losing war in Ukraine and a fall from grace.”

-> Were it not for Putin’s leadership and patience, there are Russian Generals who would already be bombing Europe for their supply of arms to Ukraine for attacking Russia. Perhaps Mr. Hersh should pass a new Oreshnik under his nose as one sniffs a fine cigar. The only thing to understand in this Ukraine situation is that herein, Russia is fighting back the entirety of NATO in the West’s drive to weaken and break up Russia, they think Russia has no right to exist. It’s a full-court press, with all-out attacks on the main core of Asia, all the way around, from the Arctic, through the Baltics, through Ukraine, through the Middle East and ramping up activity against China.

Einar Tangen has written a new post “The Moral Transformation of War” - Lessons from the Nanjing Massacre, May 5, 2026.

He is writing about the lasting psychological damage to society from war.

“Its deeper, more consequential damage lies in what it does to human beings: how it corrodes moral boundaries, deforms societies, and transforms ordinary people into instruments of brutality. War does not simply destroy lives; it reshapes the very idea of what it means to be human.”

-> But we must consider whether or not “free will” exists, so my comment was:

“Dr. Thomas W. Dodman, a professor at Columbia University, says “We think of wars beginning and ending. But we should think that war is the default template, and there are beginnings and ends to peace. Wars live on because of their lingering effects. Often the reasons for the next conflict were not fully resolved in the last one.”

Keep that in mind - there are beginnings and ends to peace. The original error was in trying to build civilization with a population that had never rejected the evils of theft and murder. Therefore the instruction to not steal or kill is not embedded in the human OS, so an app for that must be installed in every new generation. But theft and murder are merely the external feature of aggression - internally it is a matter of “othering” - an exceptionalism, a position of “I am better than you.” To consider that milieu, the question of free will is involved. Regardless of upbringing or training, if free will actually exists, it is up to each person to make the choice for a better life for all. Unfortunately, that leaves morality residing in the realm of active reasoning, instead of being a default emotional position. Thus we have Exceptionalism and othering still on a grand scale on this small blue planet, the opposite direction from peace. Instead of that, we should be engaging in diplomacy in every instance, meaning the employment of trust mediated with caution, in every relationship. “Come now, let us reason together...” Isaiah 1:18.”

Einar Tangen: China perspective on Iran war & death of US hegemony on Lena Petrova’s program. China is wishing for mediation of all conflicts, a global peace. A global governance initiative, with countries come together and do what is necessary for the rest of the world, to take care of it. All disputes end up in negotiation, so why not go there first?

Along this same line was the cross-post of May 7th, outlining the difference between blackmailed U.S. officials and how China operates in this world: The Architecture of Blackmail - The False Cloak of Security, by Ismaele.

With this weekend coming up, with the continuous military buildup over the past weeks, expect the new waves of bombing to restart. The zionists will not give up on using their pawns - the U.S., to take down Iran. Nuclear attacks are not off the table.

Here is an important article about currency manipulation and extreme conflict of interest. Do subscribe to Shanaka Anslem Perera for more updates. If I post a copy of an article, then I can get any comments. Many thanks to Kym W. for finding this!

THE STABLECOIN BEHIND THE CEASEFIRE

Shanaka Anslem Perera @shanaka86

The man who negotiated the Iran war ceasefire last week is the father of the man who co-owns the stablecoin Pakistan legalized yesterday.

Let that sentence load.

On April 11, Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, landed in Islamabad alongside JD Vance and Jared Kushner for direct talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf. Twenty-one hours. The first direct US-Iran contact since 1979. Pakistan mediated. The talks collapsed on April 12. Trump declared the naval blockade on April 13.

On April 14, the State Bank of Pakistan issued BPRD Circular Letter No. 10 of 2026, rescinding the 2018 crypto ban. Pakistan’s 259 million people now have a regulated on-ramp into digital assets. On April 15, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared from the podium that crypto is the tool of the future. On April 17, today, Macron and Starmer are holding a Hormuz security summit at the Élysée without the United States in the room.

Read the timeline a second time.

Because three months earlier, on January 14, 2026, Zachary Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff, landed in Islamabad in a private jet. Waiting on the tarmac were Prime Minister Sharif, Finance Minister Aurangzeb, Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, ISI Director Lieutenant General Asim Malik, and PVARA Chairman Bilal bin Saqib. The welcome had the texture of a state visit. Zachary Witkoff is the CEO of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency platform co-founded by Donald Trump in September 2024. A Trump entity holds 60 percent of the company. Trump family ventures take 75 percent of coin sales revenue. The Financial Times estimated the firm generated one billion dollars in pre-tax profits in its first operational year. World Liberty issues the USD1 stablecoin. Pakistan signed the memorandum to integrate it into the national payment architecture that day.

The mediator of the war is the host of the negotiations is the legalizer of the stablecoin is the counterparty of the Trump family is the nation whose Finance Minister sat across from the Special Envoy whose son issues the coin.

That is the kill shot.

Iran has tolled Hormuz in crypto since mid-March. IRGC-linked addresses moved three billion dollars in 2025 per Chainalysis. The sanctioned regime invented the first maritime crypto toll booth in modern history. The war designed to end it produced a ceasefire brokered by the country that simultaneously legalized the sanctions-proof rail of the war’s architects. Both sides of the blockade now run on the same family of instruments. The chokepoint is no longer geographic. It is custodial.

Brent closed April 16 at 94.89 dollars. Platts physical Dated Brent cleared at 131.97 dollars. Gold held 4,828 dollars. DXY at a six-week low. Offshore yuan at a three-year high. The dollar is losing the war it started, and the stablecoin pegged to the dollar is winning the peace nobody has signed.

Falsifiable prediction. Within ninety days, USD1 transaction volume routed through PVARA-licensed Pakistani VASPs will exceed two billion dollars, and at least one settlement layer for post-ceasefire Hormuz commerce will clear in Witkoff-linked infrastructure. Kill condition. If Pakistan reverses Circular 10, or if Treasury sanctions World Liberty rails before July 17, the thesis is dead.

The petrodollar did not die in a war. It was refinanced in a stablecoin, brokered by the envoy whose son writes the code, in the capital of the country that held the ceasefire. [end]

Shanaka Anslem Perera

The Protocol Sovereignty Trap

By Shanaka Anslem Perera | April 16, 2026…

Read more

a month ago · 47 likes · 4 comments · Shanaka Anslem Perera

”The war in Ukraine, which began with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion in February 2022, has gone on longer than the Soviet war against Nazi Germany. With its huge army and population, Russia seemed in the early years to be on the verge of winning only to have Putin, behaving like the irrational czars of the past, reject peace plans that gave him control of some of the territory his troops had taken inside eastern Ukraine. And now, I have been told, a war that Russia seemed to be winning has turned in the last year into an economic and military nightmare for Putin and the Russian army led by General Valery Gerasimov, the battle-tested commander who is one of three men in Russia with access to the nation’s nuclear codes.”

“The war is now a war of drones, in the view of one military expert who has toured the front under cover, with Ukraine holding a distinct edge. Bedraggled Russian soldiers at the front find themselves under deadly drone attack the moment they crawl out of their bunkers. “Ukraine has a vast drone surveillance network that is picking off Russians as soon as they appear,” the expert told me. He added that he was repelled by the horrid living conditions for all the soldiers on both sides of the front lines… [paywall]”

Yet Russia has gained control of about 1700 sq. km in the past year?

If you still hold the view that the war in Ukraine is “unprovoked” and is about Ukrainian independence, do read Jeffery Sachs’ article on Russophobia over the past 200 years.

And there is similar content to Sy Hersh’s article on House of El: Russia COLLAPSES Despite Iran Oil Windfall - Ukraine Destroys 40% Export Capacity, $2.3B LOST - House of El:

”Russia should be cashing in on the biggest oil shock in years. Instead, its economy is contracting, its refineries are burning, and the war machine is starting to run into the limits of its own design.

Why Russia’s first economic contraction since 2022 matters far beyond one bad GDP print.

How soaring oil prices failed to rescue Moscow because the infrastructure needed to profit from them keeps getting hit.

Why Ukrainian drone strikes on export terminals, refineries, and pipelines are undermining Russia at the exact moment it needs energy revenue most.

What rising deficits, weak oil tax income, and banking crisis warnings reveal about the fragility beneath Russia’s war economy.

How labor shortages, high interest rates, and inflation are squeezing companies, workers, and the wider financial system at the same time.

Why the Iran war, which should have handed Moscow a windfall, instead exposed the structural vulnerabilities Ukraine has learned to exploit.

What viewers will learn about the deeper contradiction at the heart of Russia’s economy: a state built around war that is now being weakened by the costs of sustaining it.

This is not just a story about oil prices or one tense Kremlin meeting. It is about what happens when a war economy depends on export revenues it can no longer reliably produce—and why even a geopolitical shock in Russia’s favor is no longer enough to save it.”

Just exactly how does a country that is self-sufficient in every resource need export income to sustain a war effort? So it has foreign income to by weapons from whom? Yes it coordinates with Iran and North Korea for their expertise in manufacture, otherwise they make everything they need onshore.

I am hoping to assemble better information about the “SMO” in Ukraine, and how a Russian invasion could have been avoided. I am very interested in understanding which particular events amounted to cumulative pressure toward invasion, ranked in order of importance, and what exactly prevented them from being ameliorated.

As well, which particular events were “red line” events causing a direct trigger to invade, and what was needed from the West to ameliorate each of these pressures. Much of this is covered in Sachs’ article, cited above, but more detail from the Russian perspective would be welcome.

Russia deserves a security zone and an end to the outright hate continuously expressed toward it. The term “Russophobia” is inadequate - a “fear” of Russia. That term may refer to the “narrative” that government and their captive media present to the public, but internally, the supposed leaders express nothing but hate for Russia and hope for its failure, breakup and capture, in the Empire’s commitment to control the entire world.

And Russia is just supposed to sit there and take all these intrusions to their territory?

All the EU countries (including Canada) are arming up for their final Great War against Russia, as a feeble method of boosting their failing economies. Yes, there is division in Russia as to the next steps, with certain Generals inclined to bomb European centres and possibly with nuclear weapons. Fortunately President Putin retains control and great patience. But eventually, Europe will have to face some costs for their continuous war on Russia. Yes, Russia is truly having a struggle in Ukraine, since they are actually facing all the forces, supply and funding of NATO in NATO’s proxy war against Russia, unfortunately consuming Ukraine’s farmland and population with little regard.

This war is again a part of the Empire of the West trying to control the entire world, with their latest war front being all of Asia. Russia is surrounded by hostile bases right up against their borders, from the Arctic to China including CIA activity in the “Stans”; Iran is surrounded by U.S. bases and so is China, with the first and second layer of islands defences strategy. A major goal of Western (U.S.) domination is to be able to tell which countries can buy or sell oil, as expressed by various weaponizations of the world-reserve currency via sanctions, and seizure of nations (Venezuela, Iran) or their tankers (Iran, Russia, Venezuela) or blocking supply, such as the blockade of Cuba, the U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports, and trying to block shipments of heavy crude to China from both Venezuela and Iran. Next up appears to be cooperation from Indonesia to block shipments to China through the Malacca Strait.

In a related matter, how does the reduction in volume in world oil supply caused by European-built Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries compare to the reduction of supply from the Persian Gulf?

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy (DG ENER) is concerned about the constricted energy supply due to the war on Iran by the outlaw regimes of isra3l and USA. Yet the EU serves as the rear-area for the war in Ukraine. A “rear-area” is the area away from the front where manufacture and distribution centers are located. Russia can and does bomb any such location within Ukraine, so that manufacture has moved into the other European countries, even into UK where they make drones to deliver to the front in Ukraine. And make no mistake, this front (Ukraine) is also the UK’s front in THEIR war against Russia. And the EU-made drones are now flying into Russia over Estonia (or from inside Estonia?) to attack Russian refineries and export facilities, crippling a significant portion of world energy supply. So if Europe goes dark or freezes this winter, they can look in the mirror, I’m not listening to their tears.

And along this same line, we have Europe’s largest land mass, Canada, also being antagonistic to the world’s three major powers - Russia, China and Iran, by calling Iran and their other participants in the “Axis of Resistance” terrorists for trying to defend the majority of the world from the genuine terror of the American and zionist Empire; for staging war games in the Baltic States right against Russia’s borders; and for participating in maritime “patrols” along China’s coast in their pathetic defence of a “democratic” Taiwan.

Since they now have Victor Orbán out of the way, who was blocking this pathetic Ukrainian funding initiative, the EU has approved borrowing Euro-90M to give to Ukraine as a loan, believe it or not! Canada makes these loans to Ukraine as well, funded from national debt. These fundings of the war against Russia via Ukraine are provided as loans because the nitwits imagine that Russia is going to LOSE, and the EU will be paid back via Russia’s reparations payments to Ukraine. Have they priced in their more-likely LOSSES for when Ukraine/NATO is finally defeated and the West (NATO) and the principles UK and USA are required to pay reparations to Russia?

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson has some interesting comments on the topic of world powers: ‘China’s Xi Jinping is moving to SUBSTITUTE the dollar with the renminbi and become the number one FINANCIAL POWER in the world‘

China, India, Russia, and all the other countries are moving toward BRICS more rapidly than I would have thought, precisely because of the mistakes the US is making and their fear of those mistakes, as well as their comfort with China and the other members.

So much of the meaningful commerce of the world is being generated there. Renewables. EVs. Batteries. Everything essential to survive this period of enormous climate crisis is generated there, for profit, massive profit in some cases, compared to what we’re doing in this country.

BRICS just has to hold on to what it’s got. Watch what Xi Jinping has said in his latest edict, following right on from Deng Xiaoping and all the series of manifestos of Chinese communism:

“After triumphing in every field of state power, the one I lack is financial power. I am now going to substitute the renminbi for the dollar in world trade. That makes me the number one financial power in the world.” And furthermore it gets rid of SWIFT, it gets rid of sanctions, it gets rid of all the nasty things the empire does to other nations.

We have almost 2 billion people under sanctions. If we decided tomorrow to lift them, it would take 10 years because OFAC would have so much trouble sorting through all the intricacies involved. Xi Jinping is going to get rid of that power, the power of the United States to sanction other people.

— Former Chief of Staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, on the latest episode of New Order.

This article replaces all previous references, such as people quoting from “The End of History and the Last Man” - Francis Fukuyama, 1992, an extension of the “Fin de siècle” concept of the late 19th Century Europe.

As well, there are issues with cross-posts. Any comments you may wish to write go to the original article, I don’t see them. If you look for my comment on that original article, you could write a reply to that and then I get notified of your comment.

None of my articles have anything to do with AI at all, and this Spodocene article is also actual, genuine thought and writing.

If you appreciate original content, please consider subscribing to my articles if you haven’t already, and unless you truly hate the article, please click “Like” and leave a comment, even just one punctuation mark. Just as on YouTube, each “Subscribe,” “Like” and comment adds to improving recognition by Substack algorithm when other people search for this topic. As well, clicking on the title opens the article in your browser which Substack records as an “opened.”

Too many writers have embraced AI in their writing and people use it in comments! AI is only a rehash of the past, it is not critical thinking. This Spodocene article is excellent in describing this dying “Western” culture. I have forwarded it to Prof. Warwick Powell with a note that this doesn’t really apply to China. China (and Russia) are actually building a future for themselves. Unlike Canada, which has jumped with both feet into the Spodocene trap.

To help with understanding this topic, check out the writer’s first article on the Spodocene, “The Spodocene: inhabiting the ruins of progress”

Note that this predatory system will spend billions on nonsense projects such as Moon colonization, in order to further bankrupt society, steal your time and steal your future. This all should be particularly alarming to young people.

The Iranian delegation came fully prepared with extensive documentation and fully empowered to negotiate on behalf of Iran.

In contrast, the American delegation, if you can use that word in this context, consisting of JD Vance and the real estate developers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, came with nothing except hubris. No documentation, no powers to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. Government. What government?

There were no people with actual diplomatic experience in attendance, no officials of any rank from the State Department. The U.S. pretend-President and the Secretary of State were at a cage fight, apparently unconcerned about what was taking place.

Any time they faced a yes/no answer, Vance would, for eleven times, call Trump, and in one instance, call America’s real president, Netanyahu.

Such matters fully illustrate that Iran is a normative power, capable and ready to make agreements and treaties, while the U.S. remains a rogue state, incapable of agreement or treaty.

And the Iranian delegation, on their trip back home, were deeply concerned for their own safety, with the criminal zionist entity still in power and capable of some nefarious act. Even with Pakistani air force escort, they landed just inside the Iranian border and travelled 1000 Km by road and train back to Tehran.

The U.S. lost its “war” on Iran by beginning it, by having no notion of reasonable goals or their consequences and no idea of on what terms they would surrender or on what terms Iran would surrender. You don’t start wars without having run all the possible “war games.” “Only fools rush in” - Elvis.

As well, they try to perform this war with the most expensive military that money can buy, glorified versions of WW-II war machines, facing a real nation that has been preparing for this exact battle for decades.

And yet, even while seeing the failures of this type of military gear on various fronts, in both Iran and Ukraine, brainless countries like Canada and Europe continue to buy in to U.S. equipment that functions poorly and is too expensive to lose in actual combat, such as the F-35 project.

And they base their foreign policy on the same failed theme of identifying the next “threat” and arming up for that war.

Dr. Thomas W. Dodman, a professor at Columbia University, says:

“We think of wars beginning and ending. But we should think that war is the default template, and there are beginnings and ends to peace. Wars live on because of their lingering effects. Often the reasons for the next conflict were not fully resolved in the last one.”

But can any “reasons” for wars be justified on this small blue globe?

Iran should reject any further “negotiations: with the rogue Outlaw Empire and stick to its 10-point plan:

1 Non-aggression: A fundamental US commitment to cease attacks on Iran and its allies.

2 Strait of Hormuz Control: Continued Iranian control and management of the strategic waterway.

3 Nuclear Enrichment: Acceptance of Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

4 Sanction Removal: Lifting all primary and secondary sanctions.

5 Unfreezing Assets: Release of frozen Iranian assets.

6 Withdrawal of US Forces: Removal of US combat forces from the region.

7 War Reparations: Payment of compensation to Iran for damage.

8 Ending UN/IAEA Action: Termination of all UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions targeting Iran.

9 Regional Ceasefire: An immediate halt to all conflicts, including those in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq.

10 Binding Agreement: Ensuring all terms are backed by a UN Security Council resolution.

Memo to Donny: You started this and LOST. Get over it!

But you need to look deeper than this, not at the ocean floor, something bigger. Part of this Iran play is to partially satisfy Netanyahu’s kompromat on Trump, using his military to flatten Iran. The other part involves China - as with Venezuela, this is about strangling China’s supply of heavy crude. Although China’s oil and gas imports provide only 7% of their total energy consumption, supply is valuable to keep reserves topped up. Heavy crude is essential for making diesel and asphalt.

But herein lies an opportunity for China to take on the same role as The West in Ukraine, and use the Iran war as a proxy war against the U.S. just as the West is doing against Russia in Ukraine. Off-land battles do not necessarily set off nuclear exchanges. Chinese war ships could show up and escort tankers to China or other nations friendly to them. And the U.S. Navy would do what? But as of early April 14th, a Chinese tanker has passed through the strait.

How can the U.S. military keep dreaming about “weakening” China when they are obviously losing in yet another of their wars of aggression? But they are blocked from ending their hegemony by unipolar ideology, by outright militarism, by the economic needs of maintaining petrodollar hegemony to onshore the world’s savings to pay for their extravagant consumption as well as by blatantly religious fanaticism.

But there’s more to it. In CHINARB’s post “Beijing Cares About Oil. Beijing Doesn’t Care Whose Oil” their system of analysis very well describes “System A” (The West) and “System B” (China):

“System A’s entire power mechanism is built on “using financial and military tools to regulate who can trade with whom.”

System A’s power does not come from what it produces. It comes from its ability to decide who can trade. SWIFT is this ability. Dollar settlement is this ability. Secondary sanctions are this ability. The Fifth Fleet guaranteeing freedom of navigation is this ability. The moment you accept “let me do business,” System A’s entire power mechanism is abolished.”

Iran has promised drastic responses to further U.S. aggressive measures, and they have fulfilled every such promise. There could be further attacks on Gulf States energy infrastructure and possible closing of the Bab El-Mandeb, restricting traffic in the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

Regardless, there is no relief in supply chains unless the Trump regime actually backs down and goes home. Before February 28, was the Strait of Hormuz open? Why did it close? Perhaps Trump knows. So it’s up to him to properly end this. That means abandoning isra3l.

The “ceasefire” talks in Pakistan failed due to U.S. intransigence - possibly to allow more time for the military ships coming over from LA to reach the area in advance of ground operations. They could not establish trust with the Iranian delegation. True diplomacy is based on a balance of trust and caution - for the U.S., they operate out of mistrust and fear, the continuous imagining of “threats,” which leads to war, not peace.

The attacks of isra3l on Lebanon during the ceasefire talks were not an aberration, but to begin a split in the solidarity of the Axis of Resistance. Hezbollah (Hizbullah) was targeted while Iran was not responding as they should have according to their “Unity-of-the Front” alliance. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s person opposing the ceasefire was at the negotiations in Islamabad! The israeli attacks on Beirut and southern Lebanon, 100 bombs in 10 minutes from 65 planes, were in part retribution for successful operations by Hezbollah, but also part of their regular “mowing the lawn,” again bombing a mosque that had been rebuilt in 2011 following an isra3li bombing in 2006 and killing a beloved Imam. The downtown apartment buildings bombed may have once housed some Hezbollah figures.

As well, blocking transit of Hormuz blocks China’s access to their over US$800B assets in Gulf nations.

Meanwhile, energy supply constraints will be increasing. In around 8-10 days the last tankers to have left the Gulf before this unnecessary war began will have reached their destination ports and then - nothing. Even if a tanker leaves tomorrow, it’s 4-6 weeks to reach the intended refinery.

“The ultimate implication is unmistakable: in a world of recurrent basic-commodity stress, structural preparedness - measured by the flexibility of nested supply chains, the exergy efficiency of available techniques, and the alignment of exchange and use values - determines not only short-term resilience but long-term competitive position.” - Prof. Warwick Powell, April 13.

The reality of these restrictions to energy supply have not been fully absorbed by affected parties. How is the EU going to refill their natural gas storage facilities before next winter? The Gulf States LNG production is not just shut in, several production trains have severe damage and may need total replacement. These are usually built in China and some of these little kingdoms may have to do some serious begging to get new equipment.

The utter foolishness of opposing Iran’s control of the Strait is beyond reason. When you kick the hornet’s nest, the hornets decide when they are done with you! Instead of this new activity by Starmer and Macron and 30 other foolish nations to find a way to “help open” the Strait, they could instead be reasonable like Spain and possibly next, Italy, and initiate diplomatic relations again with Iran, which is now a new, and normative power in the world. Or just keep on being stupid and get blocked from transit.

Pakistan’s role as go-between in this war may come into question - yes, they want the war ended, but during the negotiations sent planes and personnel to Saudi Arabia to offer support in case of more Iranian attacks on Saudi territory. But again, this is Iran punishing neighbours for complicity on providing staging ground for U.S. attacks on Iran. Pakistan could be called into the war on the basis of their security agreement with the Saudis. Or, both could smarten up and condemn U.S. aggression, but perhaps that’s too logical.

So what is this Kompromat that lets Netanyahu walk his dog (tRump)? The “Epstein files” are weapons of mass distraction to keep your eyes off the prize. Netanyahu and David Barnea, head of MOSSAD, work in tandem. At the March 11th meeting in D.C. where Bibi gave his pet tRump the war instructions, American President Netanyahu was sitting at the head of the table, tRump and his stooges along the sides including White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles, who worked on Netanyahu’s 2020 election campaign. Is she a White House wire for MOSSAD? And behind Netanyahu by video link, overlooking all, was Head of MOSSAD. Netanyahu and Barnea hold the real Kompromat. This is my opinion only, not independently verified - they know the number of and names of the girls killed. Not just molested, murdered. This type of Kompromat must be managed carefully, since if it gets out with documentation, then the spell is broken, tRump is out of office, Natanyahu loses his “useful idiot” - the stupidest president in history in charge of the biggest military complex in history.

A while back I wrote that Netanyahu had been killed, but that appears to be more fake news from Times of India. But it is hard to be sure whether this Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead - why have there been several AI generated speeches? The only tell will be which of his avatars appears in D.C. to be applauded and/or give tRump more directions again.

References:

Beijing Cares About Oil. Beijing Doesn’t Care Whose Oil | CHINARB | APR 14, 2026

Trump in FULL PANIC MODE in Islamabad, Iran BROKE U.S. Empire | Patrick Henningsen on Danny Haiphong program

Oil Shock Propagation in Nested Supply Chains - A Thermoeconomic Perspective on Demand Destruction and Structural Reconfiguration | DR WARWICK POWELL | APR 13, 2026

HANG ON: US Just Cut Off China’s MidEast Oil Supply – This WILL Backfire Massively | Sean Foo | APR 13, 2026

IRAN THREATENS TO CLOSE BAB EL-MANDEB AS U.S. ATTEMPTS STRAIT OF HORMUZ BLOCKADE | Ehsan Safarnejad

Chinese Tanker Crosses Strait of Hormuz as U.S. Blockade Threats Fail | Prof. Mostafa Khoshcheshm | RACHEL BLEVINS | APR 14, 2026

Trump’s Blockade Will Fail / Israel Destroys Lebanese Mosque | Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris | APR 13, 2026

“THE URANIUM QUESTION - A mission to take the remaining partially enriched uranium from Iran’s nuclear sites could put an end to the war” | SEYMOUR HERSH | APR 07, 2026

“US and Israeli military teams have tracked locations and have been studying the question of how to fight their way into the tunnels and retrieve the enriched materials. The next step, so the thinking goes, would be to transport the canisters by helicopter to a covert US base in Azerbaijan.”

Well, the Outlaw Empire tried this stunt, with large loss of life and military assets. While thinking nobody was watching, they landed in an ambush. This massive loss may have triggered tRump’s outrageous “Truth” Social post calling Iranians “f-g bastards” and threatening civilizational erasure, an absolute war crime.

Whether or not Iran has nuclear enrichment is reminiscent of the “WMD” accusations against Iraq leading up to the 2003 war on Iraq. This is merely a cover story. One of the two layers of this story is, like Venezuela, the disruption of heavy crude supply to China. If the Outlaw Empire could have done a “Maduro” on Iran, over the February 28 weekend, then war criminal tRump could have proceeded with his month-end visit to China, and played the oil card to get relief from China’s shut-in of rare earths and silver. But with the failures of this war, the China visit has been put off.

The other layer of the story is of course, stinking war-criminal Bibi, pulling rank on his puppet president and ordering him to attack Iran. It was Bibi’s and Hogsbreath’s urging, that this was an easy in-and-out attack possibility, is what convinced the war-criminal pedo-pres to act.

So April 8th there is this imaginary ceasefire, which, if Iran’s 10-Points hold up, is absolute surrender of the pedo-pres. But stinking Bibi wants to continue with his “Greater isra3l” project, and until that settler colony is eliminated, how can there be peace in West Asia?

Regarding this truly insane rant from the war-criminal pedo-pres on erasing Iran’s civilization, which apparently implies a nuclear attack, it was met with total horror in all the rest of the world, except the spineless nations of the white North, none of whom uttered a peep. This is just what America does! Thus, the most meaningful group who could sponsor war crimes tribunals, the white North (Europe, Canada) will just sit on their hands. Iran has been fighting on behalf of the entire global majority - all of Asia and the Global South. It was this “coalition of the stinking” 40 countries in a recent virtual meeting, that was calling for an end to the “closure” of the Strait of Hormuz, along the lines of the Bahrain resolution at the UN Security Council that Russia and Chine properly vetoed. It is these very countries that together could have the power to tell the pedo-pres to STFU and go home. THEY are the ones that always chicken out.

Back to the Hersh notion of ending the war. Taking Iran’s nuclear materials could “end the war”? Yes, that would have the effect of taking that bogus cover-issue off the table, satisfying some of the U.S. war-hawks. But the real issue here is that Iran + China, in causing oil shipments through Hormuz to be paid for in Chinese yuan, have broken the back of U.S. dollar hegemony on the world, and broken America’s total control over who in the world is allowed to have an oil supply. Iran, standing half-way between the war-criminal settler-colony and China, has suffered greatly in these waves of criminal bombing, yet resolutely stands its ground in the first steps to break the evil Empire.

Pakistan was simply the message carrier, not an intermediator. China asked Iran to go to the table, telling them we have your back. Iran reported that they still have about 15K missiles and 40K drones. War criminal tRump has LOST the air war and LOST the ground invasion (at Isfahan) yet could still use nuclear weapons.

Iran has not yet used any of the heavy ballistic missiles from North Korea, which could actually reach USA. N. Korea is enjoying observing actual battlefield experience in Iran for their air defence systems, against the world’s #1 Enemy, which have changed the course of this war.

Stinking war criminal Bibi pretended he had no knowledge of the “ceasefire” talks, and launched a major attack on Lebanon, biggest strike yet, in downtown Beirut, 100 bombs in 10 minutes, in downtown shopping areas. As well, they sprayed Lebanese fields and pastures with 50x strength Round-Up to poison their fields for years, another form of genocide.

Due to threats from the zionist evil, Pakistan is providing military escort for the Iranian delegation to the talks in Pakistan, see the report on Mahmood OD, flying along with six fighter planes. The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, says time is short, and if there is “drama” at the meeting in Pakistan, or if the U.S. is rejecting their 10-Point plan, then no negotiations. The 10-point plan itself is not negotiable. If it is accepted, THEN negotiations may begin.

These are truly troubling times, with no easy corrective course, especially with the complicit white North being fence turtles.

For updates on what is going on in Iran, try to catch an interview with Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, such as on Rachel Blevin’s program or visit his web site at https://mmarandi.com/ or at the Tehran University https://profile.ut.ac.ir/en/~mmarandi

See also: The Trap Trump Cannot Easily Escape - Why avoiding escalation now may still produce a historic strategic defeat—and what to watch next | Prof. Robert Pape | APR 09, 2026.

An article at The Bulletin: Trump’s ‘a whole civilization will die’ threat against Iran exploits long-standing ambiguity over what Washington considers legal in war. By Ali Alkis, Ludovica Castelli | Analysis | April 7, 2026

A two-week ceasefire has partially halted the Israel-US war on Iran. The war accomplished precisely nothing that a competent diplomat could not have achieved in an afternoon. The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and it is open again now, but with more Iranian control.

Meanwhile, the chaos continues. Israel is intent on blowing up the ceasefire, as this was Israel’s war from the start. Israel dazzled Trump with the prospect of a one-day decapitation strike that would put Trump in charge of Iran’s oil. Israel, in turn, was out for bigger prey: to bring down the Iranian regime and thereby become the regional hegemon of Western Asia.

The foundation of the ceasefire is Iran’s 10-point plan, which Trump (perhaps unwittingly) called a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” The plan makes sense, but it is a major climbdown for the US, and probably a redline for Israel. Among other points, the plan calls for an end to the wars raging in the Middle East, almost all of which have Israel at their root cause. The plan would also resolve the nuclear issue, essentially by going back to the JCPOA that Trump ripped up in 2018.

The Iran War, and the other wars raging across the Middle East, trace back to one core Israeli idea, that Israel will permanently and steadfastly oppose a sovereign Palestinian state and will topple any government in the Middle East that supports armed struggle for national sovereignty. It is crucial to note that the UN General Assembly has passed multiple resolutions, such as Resolution 37/43 (1982), affirming that political self-determination is so vital, that armed struggle in the quest for self-determination is legitimate. The UN was born, in part, out of the determination to end the centuries of European imperial domination over Africa and Asia. Of course, there would be no cause for armed struggle if Israel would accept a political solution, notably the two-state solution that has overwhelming support throughout the world.

Netanyahu’s core goal may be summarized as Greater Israel. This means no Palestinian sovereignty, and no clear boundaries for Israel even beyond the boundary of historical Palestine under British rule after WWI. Zionist extremists like Netanyahu’s political allies, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich favor Israeli control over parts of Lebanon and Syria, as well as permanent control over all of what was British Palestine. America’s Christian Zionists, exemplified by the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and a strong voter base of Trump, speak of God’s promise to Israel of the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates. Crazy stuff, but these are real beliefs, nonetheless, and they are conveyed in the White House.

Israel’s strategy is therefore regime change in every country that resists Greater Israel, a plan already foreshadowed in the famous political document “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” written by US Zionist neocons as a platform for Netanyahu’s new government in 1996. We’ve had constant wars in the Middle East since then to implement the Clean Break vision. This has included the war in Libya to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi, the wars in Lebanon, the war to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the war to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and now the war to topple the Iranian regime.

This is not to say that the US lacks its own grandiose ideas. Israel wants regional hegemony, this is not a secret. Netanyahu confirmed these ambitions in his recent remarks about Israel becoming “a regional power, and in certain fields a global power.” On the other hand, American officials dream of global hegemony. And Trump dreams of money. He craves the Iranian oil and repeatedly said so.

In any event, it’s clear that this war was Netanyahu’s creation. He and the Mossad chief came to Washington to sell Trump a bill of goods. It’s not hard. Trump was suckered, while everybody else had their doubts about Netanyahu’s claims of an easy one-day decapitation strike—essentially a replay of the US operation in Venezuela.

It’s pathetic to “listen in” on the White House discussion, as revealed by the New York Times. Netanyahu, a con man, presented rosy scenarios of regime change that US intelligence contradicted, yet Trump foolishly accepted. Trump and Netanyahu were cheered on by Christian Zionists (Hegseth), Jewish Zionists and real-estate developers (Kushner and Witkoff), a faith healer (Franklin Graham), and high-level sycophants (Rubio and Ratcliffe).

Until Tuesday evening, it looked like Trump might lead the world blindly to World War III. The vulgarity and brutality of his public rhetoric was unmatched in US presidential history. Now we know that he was desperately seeking an off-ramp and using Pakistan for that purpose. While Trump was telling the world that Iran was begging for a ceasefire, it was Trump himself who was begging for a ceasefire. The Pakistani leader delivered it.

The ceasefire is good, and the 10-point plan is good, even if perhaps Trump didn’t know what was in it when he said that it was a good basis for negotiation. Israel will, in any event, work overtime to break it, and has already started to do so, with carpet bombing of Beirut that is killing hundreds of civilians, and with other strikes. A permanent US-Iran agreement is the last thing that Netanyahu wants. That would end his dream of Greater Israel.

Yet there is a way to peace and that is for the US to face reality. Israel is the real “terror state,” waging perpetual war throughout the Middle East for a wholly indefensible reason—to have unchecked freedom to terrorize and rule over the Palestinian people and to expand its borders as Israel’s zealots see fit. To make lasting peace in the Middle East, the US must end its blank check to Israel’s perpetual wars and join with the rest of the world to force Israel to live within its internationally recognized borders of June 4, 1967. Iran’s 10-point plan can be the basis of a comprehensive regional peace—if the US accepts the reality of a state of Palestine. In that case, Iran would likely agree to stop funding non-state belligerents, and Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the entire region could live in mutual security and peace. That outcome should be the basis of a negotiated agreement of the US and Iran in the next two weeks.

The American people have made their views clear. A 2025 Pew survey finds most Jewish Americans lack confidence in Netanyahu and back the two-state solution. Most Americans now view Israel unfavorably, the highest unfavourability in history. Sympathy for Israel has hit a 25-year low. Now the political class must catch up with the public.

The peace is within reach, if the US grasps it. Iran’s proposal is serious and the ceasefire is a fragile opening for a comprehensive settlement. The question is whether the US will, once again, allow Israel to destroy the peace, or rather this time stand up for America’s interests and the world’s interests in a lasting peace.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-war-on-peace

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Jeffrey D. Sachs | April 6, 2026 | Common Dreams

When deranged leaders invoke divine catastrophe as a political instrument, it is not only their enemies who are consumed. Unless they are stopped, we will all be victims of these two psychopaths.

Here is Donald Trump’s Easter message to the world:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Donald Trump and his partner in war crimes, Benjamin Netanyahu, are jointly waging a war of murderous aggression against Iran, a nation of 90 million people. They are in the grip of three cascading pathologies. The first is personality: both are malignant narcissists. The second is the arrogance of power: men who possess the power to command nuclear annihilation and feel, in consequence, no restraint. The third, and most dangerous of all, is religious delusion: two men who believe, and are told daily by those around them, that they are messiahs doing God’s work. Each pathology exacerbates the others, so that together they put the world in unprecedented danger.

The result is a glorification of violence not seen since the Nazi leaders. The question is whether the world’s few grownups—responsible national leaders who remain committed to international law and are willing to say so—can restrain them. It will not be easy, but they must try.

Let us start with the underlying psychological disorder. Malignant narcissism is a clinical term, not an insult. The social psychologist Erich Fromm coined the phrase in 1964 to describe Adolf Hitler, as a merger of pathological grandiosity, psychopathy, paranoia, and antisocial personality into a single character structure. The malignant narcissist is not merely vain. He is structurally incapable of genuine empathy, constitutionally immune to guilt, and driven by paranoid conviction that enemies surround him and must be destroyed. Already back in 2017, psychologist John Garnter and many other professionals were warning of Trump’s malignant narcissism.

Several respected psychologists and psychiatrists have evaluated Trump for psychopathy using the standardized Hare Scale and have come up with scores well above the diagnostic cutoff. See, for example, here. Psychopathy is best characterized as a lack of conscience or compassion for other human beings.

Both Trump and Netanyahu fit this profile with precision. Trump’s psychopathy was on full display when US forces destroyed a civilian bridge in Tehran, of no military significance, with at least eight civilians killed and 95 or more injured. Trump did not grieve. He gloated and promised more destruction. Netanyahu’s Passover address similarly contained not one word for the dead. No pause. No shadow of doubt. Only the triumphant catalog of enemies he has destroyed.

Paranoia drives the threat that Trump and Netanyahu have manufactured. Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in writing that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated” and that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” The IAEA stated flatly there was no evidence of a bomb. Trump’s own counterterrorism official resigned in protest, writing that “we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” The paranoid does not need a real threat. He will make one up if he must, to match his feelings of exaggerated fear.

The Machiavellianism operates without shame. Trump told the world that diplomacy was always his “first preference,” while boasting in the same breath about ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran: “I was so honored to do it. I was so proud to do it.” He destroyed the diplomatic framework with his own hands, then blamed Iran for the wreckage. He then admitted, casually, that the war has no self-defense rationale: “We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.” Under the UN Charter, self-defense is the only legal basis for force. Trump has confessed that no such basis exists.

There is a particular deformation that power inflicts on certain personalities, and it is especially acute when the power in question is unbounded or seems to be so. With the command of nuclear arsenals, Trump and Netanyahu do not experience the world as others do. The availability of nuclear weapons, for these malignant narcissists, is not a burden of responsibility but an extension of their grandiose selves: I can do anything. I can level anything. Watch me. There will be no self-restraints by Netanyahu and Trump on this delusional grandiosity.

Trump has completely internalized this sense of impunity. On April 1, he stood before the cameras and promised to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” The phrase “where they belong” is the verdict of a man who feels divinely licensed to judge the worth of 90 million people and dehumanizes them without hesitation. He has repeatedly threatened to destroy Iran’s civilian electrical infrastructure—a war crime under the laws of armed conflict, announced openly as a negotiating position, to a global audience that mostly changed the channel.

Netanyahu commands a state with an estimated 200 nuclear warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and operates under no international inspection regime. He has watched Trump wield American military power with unchecked aggression and concurs that there are no consequences. The second madness feeds the third: when power faces no limit, the only remaining internal check is conscience. And the psychopath has no conscience.

The lack of conscience is the most dangerous pathology of the three, because it is the one that removes the last possible internal brake. The strategist who wages an unjust war may eventually calculate that the costs exceed the gains and stop. The malignant narcissist who wages war for ego may eventually exhaust the ego’s demands and stop. The psychopath escalates because there are no limits.

And, if you can believe, it gets even worse. Both Trump and Netanyahu are would-be messiahs. They are self-proclaimed agents of God. For them, stopping the war on Iran would mean God was wrong. And the self-proclaimed messiah cannot be wrong, either, because the messiah and God have become, in the grandiose psyche, effectively the same.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have claimed this messianic identity explicitly. Trump has called himself “the chosen one.” Regarding the assassination attempt on Trump in 2024, he declared, “I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I ⁠was saved by God to make America great again.” Netanyahu, in his address on the eve of Passover, did not merely invoke God. He appropriated God’s role in the Exodus narrative—enumerating ten “accomplishments” of what he calls the “War of Redemption” and naming each one a plague. The killing of Ayatollah Khamenei he named the “Plague of the Firstborn.” He then warned the world:

In the Book of Exodus, that ending is the drowning of Pharaoh’s entire army. Netanyahu was threatening the annihilation of Iran, on television, in the language of holy scripture.

Surrounding each of these men is a court of flatterers and fanatics whose function is to sustain the delusion and prevent reality from entering their consciousness.

Trump’s Court: Hegseth, Huckabee, and the Christian Nationalists

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, has turned the Pentagon into a theater of holy war. He sports a Jerusalem Cross tattoo on his chest and the words “Deus Vult,” “God Wills It,” the battle cry of the medieval Crusades, on his arm. He hosts monthly Christian worship services in the Pentagon’s auditorium. He has asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.” At one of these services, he prayed aloud for US troops to inflict:

At a press briefing on the Iran war, Hegseth said the United States “negotiates with bombs.” He described Iran’s leaders as “religious fanatics” seeking nuclear capability for “some religious Armageddon,” while presiding over monthly prayer services at the Pentagon and declaring that “the providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops.” He appears to have no awareness of the mirror he is holding up. A defense secretary who prays for “overwhelming violence” in the name of Jesus, while calling his enemies religious fanatics, has defined the word “projection.”

Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel, provides the theological architecture. A Baptist minister and avid Christian Zionist, Huckabee believes the Israel-Iran conflict is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy—a necessary step toward the Rapture and the second coming of Christ. He sent Trump a message—which Trump then posted on social media—comparing the moment to Truman in 1945 and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, urging Trump to listen to “HIS voice,” meaning God.

In an interview, Huckabee was asked about the biblical land grant stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates—encompassing Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq—and whether Israel had a divine right to it all. His answer was direct: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Smotrich, for his part, posted on social media: “I ♥ Huckabee.” Christian Zionist pastor John Hagee, whose organization Christians United for Israel has been a major driver of US evangelical support for Israel’s wars, looked at the Iran war and said simply: “Prophetically, we’re right on cue.” Franklin Graham, at a White House Easter prayer service, fed Trump’s messianic delusions: “Today the Iranians, the wicked regime of this government, wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire. But you have raised up President Trump. You’ve raised him up for such a time as this. And Father, we pray that you’ll give him victory.”

Netanyahu’s Court: Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the Messianic Settlers

On the Israeli side, the inner court is composed of two figures whose radicalism is so extreme that they were considered political pariahs until Netanyahu used their votes to stay in power. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister, is an admirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was designated a terrorist organization. Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister, draws his ideology from Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who taught that Israel’s 1967 military victory was divinely mandated and that the settlement of Palestinian territory is the will of God. Together, they hold 20 seats in Netanyahu’s 67-seat coalition. They do not merely advise the prime minister, they share in his messianic beliefs and vision.

Ben-Gvir has used his control of the Israeli police to enable settler paramilitaries operating against Palestinians in the West Bank. He has consistently blocked ceasefire negotiations and has openly claimed credit for delaying them. He pushed for Jewish ritual rights on the Temple Mount in defiance of a status quo maintained for decades, a move Israeli security officials warned would lead directly to bloodshed. In August 2023 he declared: “My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria, is more important than the right to movement for Arabs.” The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Spain have all sanctioned him for inciting violence, yet the United States, under Marco Rubio, defended Ben-Gvir and criticized those sanctions.

Smotrich is the more methodical of the two: less theatrical and more dangerous. He has systematically transferred civilian governance of the West Bank from the Israeli military to his own ministry, channeling hundreds of millions of shekels to settler infrastructure while Palestinian Authority budgets are deliberately strangled. He has directed his office to formulate “an operational plan for applying sovereignty” over the West Bank. During the Iran war, he called for Israel to annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, declaring that the war “needs to end with a different reality entirely.” Smotrich’s ideology draws on Kook’s teaching that the settlement enterprise is not political but sacred—a divine obligation that must be completed regardless of international law, Palestinian rights, or the opinion of the world. The 1967 borders, in this theology, are not a temporary military reality. They are God’s unfinished business.

Neither Ben-Gvir nor Smotrich was anything more than a fringe extremist before Netanyahu legitimized them by bringing them into government and his inner court. He gave them power over Israeli society, and they gave him the religious-nationalist firepower to call his wars a divine mission.

Into this landscape of holy war, one voice has spoken with world-saving grace and clarity. Pope Leo XIV has consistently called for an end to the violence. During a Holy Thursday Mass in Rome, he addressed the arrogance of power:

On Palm Sunday, the pope was again direct, saying that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” Hegseth followed up by holding another worship service at the Pentagon, where he again prayed for “overwhelming violence” in Christ’s name.

Professor John Mearsheimer has stated precisely that the crimes now being committed by Trump and Netanyahu are the same crimes for which the Nazi leadership was hanged at Nuremberg: aggressive war, annexation of foreign territory, deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, and collective punishment. This is not rhetorical excess. These are legal categories. The Nuremberg Tribunal called the crime of aggression the “supreme international crime”—the one that “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”—because it is the crime that makes all the other crimes possible. These men have confessed to it, publicly, in speeches carried by international broadcasters.

The institutional mechanisms that exist to prevent exactly this kind of catastrophe, including the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, the non-proliferation regime, and the laws of armed conflict, are being actively subverted by the United States.

And yet the world’s grownups must try to stop the madness. The multilateral effort in Islamabad, including the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, working alongside the China-Pakistan five-point peace initiative, is an important start. It should be joined by the full weight of the BRICS nations, the UN General Assembly, and every state that wishes to live in a world governed by rules rather than by the delusions of two malignant narcissists.

When deranged leaders invoke divine catastrophe as a political instrument, it is not only their enemies who are consumed. We will all be the victims of Netanyahu’s plagues and Trump’s bombing of Iran to the stone ages, unless other leaders place limits on these two madmen.


https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/netanyahu-trump-psychopaths-war-criminals?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=05f9359cac-Top+News+%7C+Thu.+1%2F8%2F26_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c56d0ea580-601318790

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This idea of the new power of Iran is fleshed out in Robert Pape’s interview on Breaking Points: “Iran ‘NEW WORLD POWER’, NATO DEAD” on April 1st. NATO is dead, it is a military structure in which the U.S. General is at the top and gives the orders. Nobody is going to follow U.S. orders now. We have created a new world order, the three powers will be Russia, China and Iran and USA is fading away.

Recently, George Galloway referred to the U.S. regime’s situation in their war on Iran, using a George “W” word: The completely “mis-underestimated” the capabilities and resolve of Iran.

As well, they ignore Iran’s warnings of what they will do in retaliation for the next proposed U.S. aggression, presuming those warnings to be flummery just like the crap that spews from tRump’s orifice. But witness that Iran has successfully carried out every retaliatory action. Next, they have stated that they will take out the Saudi’s refinery capacity if further U.S. attacks are carried out.

See: “Israel is “TOAST” - Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - Katie Halper Apr 3, 2026”

Col. Wilkerson:

“Iran’s second-tier strikes could cause global depression - oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Ras Tenura 500,000 bpd, the bigger one, Saudi Aramco Semref, 7M bpd.”

And Yemen could close the Bab-el-Mandeb entrance to the Red Sea, controlling all that traffic.

China has enacted a very clever move in working with Iran to convert Gulf oil sales into Chinese yuan, collapsing the U.S. petrodollar which has funded their extravagant consumerism and military power for decades. Ships may pass through the Strait of Hormuz - it is closed only to the enemy and their enablers.

Unfortunately, 40 foreign ministers of the “Coalition of the Stinking” just had a virtual meeting discussing how to open the Strait of Hormuz. Duh, it IS open, but not to the aggressor enemy! So if you’re not on the wrong side of history, no problemo. But the white north keep making the wrong choices - Canada and EU, where they should be standing up to yet another American aggression, instead of sitting back and thinking “that’s just what America does” when in reality, they should be gearing up for initiating a Nuremberg Tribunal and end this hegemony once and for all.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, on Glenn Diesen’s podcast:

“On the one side, on the side of Israel, the, I would say the level of violence, dehumanization of Israel’s foes, the biblical language, which in this case of the Bible, the Old Testament story of the Israelite capture of their promised land is so ruthless, so violent, so genocidal, that the rhetoric and mindset coming from Israel suggests no limits, that seems to be not just tactical. That seems to be actually ideological. The hatred for the other in Israel seems to be unbounded. And a difference of the U.S. and Israel is that in the United States, the public opposes the war quite overwhelmingly.”

“Well, a common friend of ours, John Mersheimer, he keeps making the point that no one has told him any story of how this could end in a positive way, that is in a U.S. victory. And it’s a good point. I just find it difficult to see what the best possible outcome is.”

“Of course, Donald Trump can and should pack up and go home, but it’s very unlikely to happen. And the backdrop of all of this is the continued American assertion of hegemony. That’s not only Trump.”

“That is the dominant American foreign policy idea that America must be and is the most powerful country in the world in every region and must constantly prove that or demonstrate that if there are any doubts. So a war in Iran is not about Iranian issues. A war in Iran is about demonstrating America’s full and unconstrained power.”

“And it must be proved to the whole world that it is full and unconstrained. That’s the backdrop that goes beyond the question of Trump. But on top of that, problem, which is the assertion of hegemony, which is a claim that the U.S. believes in and makes, but cannot fulfill because the U.S. doesn’t have the predominant power to do that other than in utter destruction. There is the personality of Donald Trump. And personalities make a difference in wars. Wartime leaders make a difference. And the more we understand the situation in the US, the more the personality factor plays in.”

“Everything is a test for them of their own world, as well as, more broadly, a test of the American political class mindset of hegemony, which, despite all the evidence to... The contrary of the fact base of hegemony is still believed in Washington. So we have a very big structural and individual problem of getting any kind of de-escalation or any kind of resolution. I have one and only one thought about this, frankly. It’s not a very persuasive one, perhaps, but it is the one that I’ve been holding, which is that Donald Trump listens to the extent that he listens at all. He listens to those he regards as his peers, and he does regard President Putin, President Xi, Prime Minister Modi as peers that he wants to be part of and live up to. These are leaders of superpowers. He inevitably, almost without exception, expresses respect for them, for the power that they hold, for their lead of superpower nations. They need to tell him to stop. I think it’s extremely important. They need to tell him, Donald, this is not going anywhere. This is not going anywhere good. This is not helping you. It’s not putting the United States in a better position. It is not helping any country in the world. It’s dangerous. It needs to stop.”

”But we also need the United States to get beyond the mindset that it displays now, which is either you’re for us or you’re against us.”

“That’s the American mindset borrowed from the Athenians in the Peloponnesian Wars when they told the Melians, if you’re not with us, we kill you. Unfortunately, that is part of the American playbook as well. But countries... cannot succumb to that without giving up their own sovereignty and their own future.”

And now in a multipolar world, they don’t have to succumb to it. So this is my basic advice in general, which is don’t let the American empire divide your own neighborhood. I say it in Japan and Korea, China is not your enemy, it’s your neighbor.

I say it in the Gulf region, Iran and the GCC should be the first ones talking with each other. Not only do they share the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, but they share a lot of other things as well. They share culture, history, transit points, ecological risks in a very dry part of the world beset by major water crises. I say this carefully; in every, and I say it to the Europeans, Russia is not your inveterate enemy. This Russophobia is a historical fiction. It’s a complete misreading of history, but it’s also a complete misjudgment about European security, which can only be achieved collectively with Russia, not in opposition to Russia. And so this is the same everywhere. Empires divide and conquer. The United States has used division as a way to extend hegemony. It’s always saying the one on the other side is the enemy. It’s always trying to extend to the other side.”

“The US position ideologically in the Middle East is we already run the Gulf. Now all we have to do is bring Iran back into the fold, which we happened to succeed in doing in 1953, but then lost in the 1979 revolution. We need to bring them back into the American empire.”

“So every region faces a divide that the U.S. stokes. The U.S. tells ASEAN, oh, China’s your enemy. It tells Japan and Korea, China’s your enemy. It’s stoking these divisions. And, of course, it has stoked the division with Russia because the whole point of the end of the Cold War, and there I was present personally watching at the highest levels, was that peace had come to a common European home, but the US wouldn’t have it. It needed to expand NATO. It needed to keep an alliance against a country that no longer existed, for a threat that absolutely didn’t exist, but it needed for American hegemonic purposes to expand NATO and not just to expand it, but right up to Russia’s borders and to put in anti-ballistic missile systems and all the rest and to abandon treaties that had been signed with the Soviet Union in which Russia was the continuation state. So that was the mindset.”

“Europe fell into it so dutifully. Privately uneasy, publicly without a murmur. And by the way, as crazy as this mindset is, let me just add two points. Europe has its own hegemonic mindset that remains even 80 years after the end of the European empires.”

“So Europe ran the world in a rather vicious way for a long time in Asia and in Africa. That mindset’s not gone. So that’s why the subservience to the U.S. imperial mindset is not so hard because it’s also seen to an important extent as keeping the West dominant. And so the Europeans... Yes, they’re subordinated to the United States, but in a way, it continues to be a projection of the Western dominance in the world. And they view the United States as, therefore, in a way helping their empires that no longer exist to continue their international control. So that’s really part of what’s happening right now.”

“Europe goes along because the idea of controlling the Middle East, that’s a totally European idea. That’s not just an American idea. That has deep roots. The worst of this is the British. The British absolutely still maintain the trappings and mindset of empire that has gone for almost 80 years, but it’s still there.”

“And so we hear the trappings, most remarkable rhetoric coming from Britain vis-a-vis Russia or other showdowns where Britain has no power to deliver on any of this, but to make a lot of rhetorical and political mischief. What’s interesting is even in the Iran war, there’s been a little bit of hesitation by the British.”

“This shows how completely outrageous this war is because the British almost never hesitate to support an imperial venture and have always said America is basically our successor empire. But in this one, it’s so outrageous that the British have tried a little bit. Don’t bring us in. This is almost unprecedented. The British jump into every American war, but not this one, because it’s so completely outrageous what’s happening right now.”

“I think that’s an inherent contradiction of the hegemonic peace, though. If you want to be a hegemon, you’re very dependent on the alliance system because you divide regions into dependent allies versus the balanced or contained adversaries. And I don’t think often the European leaders appreciate this, that once you are in a conflict with your opponent, be it Russia, then this is what makes them so dependent on the US. This is why they have to sign all these horrible trade deals. This is why they end up in this situation. The same with the Gulf States. I mean, their conflict with Iran is the reason why they’ve become hostage to the US.”

“And I think it was acceptable when the US was more of a comfortable hegemon. But now that it’s declining, and it’s, as Mark Rutte said, NATO is also not just for protection, it’s for power projection. If this is for power projection for the US, and so they’re being used to go after rising powers, and then the US is [not] in the position to defend them anymore, then it looks like a disaster. It’s just shocking to me that there’s not more efforts to readjust to current realities.”

How to get this war stopped:

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Is Netanyahu Getting Desperate?

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom - Streamed live on Apr 2, 2026

“Israel is “TOAST” - Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - Katie Halper Apr 3, 2026”

Col. Wilkerson:

“To stop Israel, you drop the 82nd Ready Brigade not on Iran, but on Dimona in Israel, then tell them they are not using this for war. And oh, by the way you know the categories of munitions that you are two day’s supply, four day’s supply, eight day’s supply. I’ve seen the chart, you know those munitions that you are very very short on and that are critical to your survival. I’ll stop them all tomorrow morning. Every one of them. Now let’s talk.”

(He’s speaking very emphatically here)- “Shut this down. Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, all of it. Shut it down and take yourself out of office.”

On reparations:

Judge Napolitano: “President Donald J. Trump - so he’s boasting about the destruction of an exclusively civilian infrastructure. Looks like a bridge over a valley of homes and waterway.” [This is the B-1 bridge in Karaj, highest bridge in Middle East, still in construction]

Col. Wilkerson: “And Araghchi said very clearly - ceasefire, cessation of hostile attitude and reparations. [Emphatically]: Donald, you’re going to rebuild that bridge. The only way you’re going to get out of this mess in a sane, sound fashion is you’re going to provide reparations.”

“And I’m sure that bridge, knowing how much it meant to the Iranians and the engineering feat and putting it together, it was all for civilian traffic. You’re going to rebuild that bridge and all.”

John Mearsheimer on hanging

“We didn’t even make any attempt to argue that the Iranians had done something militarily to precipitate our attack on Iran. There’s no provocation here.

We just decided we were going to go out and we were going to whack the Iranians both last June and again this time.

Furthermore, both the Israelis and the Americans are running around the world assassinating leaders. This was not something that the United States engaged in in large part or certainly in an overt way in the past. And here we are and furthermore, there’s the genocide, right? The Israelis, here’s an apartheid state executing a genocide in Gaza and we’re complicit in that genocide.

If there were Nuremberg Trials, right, where the Israelis and the Americans were brought before the curt, President Trump and President (sic) Netanyahu and many of their advisors would be hanged, right? This is a genocide. What did we do in 1945 with those Germans who executed a genocide in Europe and who were not only accused of executing a genocide, but those Germans were accused of launching a war of aggression, bears remarkable resemblance to what we and the Israelis have now done twice against Iran.”

For great journalism in the world of crises, subscribe to Dimitri Lascaris

Here is his report on the school bombing at Minab, Iran:

Western Media Ignore Victims of Trump Regime’s Minab Massacre | Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris

On March 28, while travelling in Iran near the Strait of Hormuz, Dimitri Lascaris visited with family members of the 168 students and teachers massacred by U.S. forces at the outset of Trump’s latest war of aggression on Iran.

These victims of the Trump regime’s barbarism angrily rejected any suggestion that they or the Minab school were connected in any way to the Iranian military.

They also confirmed that they have been completely ignored by the Western media, the United Nations and U.S. military investigators.

Dimitri’s interviews of the family members took place at the cemetery where many of those killed have been laid to rest. He also visited the home of a family that lost five of its members in the atrocity.

Western media have never bothered to visit - this was a boys and girls school, girls on first floor, boys on second floor, each having a separate playground on either end of the school.

Some backgrounder on the Ramadan War on Iran, from Ben Norton’s interview with Michael Hudson (my comment starts after this):

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you mentioned that it’s for the last few years or decades; it has actually gone back half a century.

Already in the mid-1970s, when I was working for the Hudson Institute, on contracts with the Treasury, and the White House, and the Defense Department, I sat in on meetings, and they were discussing all along how ultimately the United States was going to have to take control of all of the Middle Eastern oil, and that entailed conquering Iran.

And in the mid-1970s, at one military meeting, for instance, Herman Kahn was explaining how probably Balochistan was the main opportunity to begin carving up Iran into subject ethnic constituencies. And Balochistan, in between Pakistan and Iran, was probably the best place to start a separatist movement. There were military plans.

My field, in the mid-1970s, was oil and the balance of payments. I had that position at Chase Manhattan Bank for many years. I actually was the only — I was so low on the totem pole, being a technician and in my mid-20s, that I was the only person who was allowed to see all of the operating details and statistics of the US oil companies, the major companies, so that I could make a calculation as to the role that oil played in the balance of payments, supporting the dollar.

This was right after the United States was forced off gold, in 1971, because of the Vietnam War.

So, the United States all along has realized that what you’re seeing today was going to be the endgame of consolidating, they hoped, American control over the Middle Eastern oil; and they wanted their because the central point, the strongest lever that American foreign policy has had for the last century, is control of the world’s oil trade.

Because it’s so immensely profitable for the American oil companies themselves — it has given the oil companies major control over US policy — and also the US economy’s potential control over other countries, by the ability to turn off the supply of oil to other countries, thereby stopping their electricity production, stopping their chemical production, their fertilizer production with natural gas.

The oil industry includes the gas industry, because they’re so closely interconnected. All of this has been thought out. And every year, the military has been upgrading the long-term plans for — well, if we really, have to use force to entail our control over the Near East, the Middle East; if, for any reason, the OPEC oil countries want to become independent of the United States, and begin investing their oil profits outside of the United States, instead of sending all of their oil earnings to the United States, to invest in Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, US bank deposits, and stock holdings; well, if any of them should want to exert their own sovereignty and go their own way, we’re going to have to take over; and no matter what, we’re going to have to take over Iran, because that is the most powerful, final locking point of US control.

And, as we have discussed before, in 2003, General Wesley Clark came right out and said, well, we’re going to conquer seven countries in five years, culminating with Iran.

So all of this has been completely open. This is not simply Donald Trump’s war. It’s a war which he decided at this time, because America has steadily been losing its position of economic strength, military strength, and arms supply, and missiles, and aircraft, and bombs, as a result of the war, first in Ukraine, and then supplying Israel.

So there will never be a less bad time to go to war than at the present. And of course, it is a bad time, but it’s not as bad as it’s going to be. And the military, the neocons behind the military and behind the Central Intelligence Agency, are not going to give up.

They say, “Well, what do we have to lose? If we don’t conquer the Middle Eastern oil now, then we’re going to be losing what has become the major lever of American foreign policy”.

Donald Trump believed that he could conquer Iran, within two to four weeks. He actually believe that.

And his hope was that, by that time he went on his scheduled trip to China, he could confront China, saying, “Well, we’ve just caused a regime change in Iran. We’ve appointed an Iranian client oligarch, client dictator to take over and become sort of Iran’s version of Boris Yeltsin, administering Iranian oil in the interests of the United States”.

“So, we now have the power to impose sanctions on you, China. We can cut off your oil. But, you know, we don’t want to do that. If you begin to export the raw materials, the gallium, the tungsten, and all the other things that we need for our military that you’ve put an export control on, then we will give you the oil”.

Trump had hoped to be able to present China with that victory. Well, obviously that’s gone. The military miscalculated, because they could not think of an alternative that would threaten this grand plan.

Remember all of the American military attacks, for the last 50 years, ever since Vietnam — all of the wars that the US had, from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela.

It has always been the United States and its allies, the coalition of the willing, against single countries. This is the first war that America has fought since World War Two where other countries that it’s fighting against are allied with each other.

It’s not just fighting against Iran now. It’s fighting against Iran, supported by Russia and China, because they all realize that this is a fight to the end, to decide: Is the United States going to be able to reassert its control over the world economy using monopolies? The oil monopoly, the information technology monopoly that it’s trying to do, the computer chip monopoly, the technology monopoly, also its ability to supply food to other countries, its exports and control of grain.

This is the last chance that it has. And there’s a feeling of desperation that has led the US planners to bet at all.

And that I think that it’s not going to work. All of the generals have told them that it’s not going to work. The generals who have been pessimistic have pretty much been forced out of the military, and the State Department, because, “If you’re pessimistic, well, why aren’t you on board? You know, why aren’t you on the team? Or are you Putin’s puppet? You know, you’ve just gotta have faith”.

America believed that it could not lose any war because its policy of bombing other countries was always going to work.

The American philosophy is, number one, you bomb civilians; you break all the rules of international law which are against that. You bomb civilians to demoralize them.

And if you concentrate, as Trump did along with Israel, a few weeks ago, you bomb the schools; you bomb the hospitals. That’s American policy in foreign countries.

It’s most visible in the case of Israeli policy, in Gaza, and now the West Bank as well. And it is the same policy that the United States has followed in Iran.

Well, the idea was that this would demoralize the population, and the Iranian population would want to get rid of the ayatollahs and say, “We don’t want to be bombed anymore; we want to save the children; let’s make a deal and appoint a leader favorable to the United States so that it will stop bombing us”.

Well, this was nonsense from the beginning, but it was the guiding spirit of American foreign policy: bomb a country, and that will lead to a regime change, and a collapse.

That was what America expected in Russia.

But Iran essentially has the same spirit that Patrick Henry had in America’s revolution against Britain in 1776. He said, “Give me liberty or give me death!”. And that’s exactly what Iran is saying.

For them, this is existential, because they know what the US plans are, since the United States has been so open about what its plans are.

Yes, they want a regime change; they want to break up Iran into parts; they want to take control of Iranian oil and use the oil export revenues to support the US dollar, and to support basically the US economy, and to give American foreign policy the option of turning off the oil to other countries, to say, “We can close down your industry, your chemical industry, all your industries that need electric power, oil, gas; we can do all that, if you take an independent policy, following your own sovereignty. And we in the United States reject the United Nations principle that every nation has its own sovereignty”.

This is the basic principle of Western civilization for the last half century, the basic principle of the United Nations Charter. All of that is being rejected by the United States.

And what it has done is galvanize other countries to recognize that, well, yes, this really is the final conflict.

This is a conflict, in Iran, to determine what will the shape of the international economy be? Is it going to restore American control of the oil trade, and give it the chokepoint over the international economy that it’s looking for? Or are we going to be independent of the United States?

That’s what this this war is all about.

§

My comments:

But desire for control of oil goes back farther than the 1970s. Both World Wars were about oil - about who controls their own energy supplies and the increasingly valuable ability to choke other nation’s supply.

Following his meeting with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta in February 1945, FDR went directly to the Great Bitter Lake in Suez to meet with Saudi King ibn Saud and gave him a plane and a wheelchair. America was worried that Britain could gain control over Saudi oil, so tried to gain influence with the Saudis. FDR sent two more planes in the following months, which led to the establishment of the Kingdom’s national Airlines, Saudia Airlines.

§

Iran is now in an existential struggle for its own survival. Iran wants the war, which it did not initiate, to end, but it doesn’t want it to restart again later on. It wants all the U.S. Empire’s bases out of the Near East (Middle East). Iran is fighting this fight, essentially all alone, on behalf of all peoples still free from the hegemony and vassalage of the U.S. and zionist-settler’s Empire. Many countries are now vassals of the zionists: USA, Australia, Canada, UK, EU, India, Japan, and others who choose not to resist.

Iran has been preparing for this war for almost 40 years, knowing what happened to it in the “Iran-Iraq” war, in which the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein to attack Iran (as per long-term U.S. designs), frequently using chemical warfare produced in Germany. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was martyred by zionist/U.S. bombing, fought in the trenches during that war, so was well aware of the tactics of the U.S./zionist Axis of Evil. A feature of the U.S. wars in this area - the Iran-Iraq war, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2003) and the war on Afghanistan was enabling the U.S. to surround Iran with its military bases.

The “Weapons of Mass Destruction” excuse for that war on Iran was for public manipulation, the real reasons were that the U.S. cannot tolerate Gulf oil being sold in other currencies - Iraq was trying to sell it (I think) in Euros. As well, the zionits wanted Iraq broken so they stop hitting poor little Is___l with Scud missiles.

My notion as to why the U.S. attacked Iran at the present time has several aspects. One link relates to Venezuela - attacking both Iran and Venezuela is essential to control the oil supply to China, to weaken China in preparation for the eventual war on China, if you can imagine these jokers trying that! Another relates to that stinking little Bibi - he has wanted Iran as part of his “Greater Is___l” dream, for the past 40 years. As well, in the pedo-pres, he sees the opportunity to manipulate the stupidest U.S. president ever elected. In stinking Bibi’s last visit to the White House, I’m sure he told the pedo-pres that unless he attacks Iran immediately, Bibi will use his nukes. This is a new turn on the imagined “deterrence” aspect of nuclear weapons, using a threat of use as leverage to cause another party to go to war. Leave it to Bibi to come up with a new form of evil. The U.S. goal in Iran is to weaken it as a regional power, as it has been doing since the ‘70s, to break it up and control its resources, both for use, profit and for forcing other nations into vassalage. However, consider that the zionist’s wish for Greater Is___l is actually a cover for the same goal as the U.S., for control and manipulation of Near East oil, in Iran plus the Gulf States, in respect to their desire to eventually replace USA as the lead Evil Empire on the planet. In that regard, tricking the U.S. into this war may speed up their goal of a zionist world empire, which is already capturing many nations as vassals, as mentioned.

And the U.S. economy, already in a technical recession, will go into deep depression for a generation or more. Their non-productive economy, converted into an “entitlements” economy, will face deep poverty. And when the pickups can’t refuel, and you know how many guns they have, chaos will ensue.

The above points raised by Michael Hudson illustrate how the “petrodollar” pours the savings of the world into U.S. finances, which gives the U.S. the imaginary of having the world’s “greatest economy.” But with this flow of funds severely compromised, first by attacks on infrastructure followed by closing the Strait of Hormuz to enemy passage, the U.S. is facing extreme fiscal pressure. If that weren’t bad enough, the fat little Gulf monarchies are reinvesting their funds to the east, to places like China and Indonesia, avoiding the U.S. As well, in this past week, Japan has been forced to sell bonds to buy fuel, diminishing its support of the U.S. economy, and Japan has been the world’s largest U.S. creditor.

10-year bond rates are rising, due to rising risks. Market DEPTH is down 40%, U.S. Treasury yields underlie every part of world financial markets.

US$2T in past week wiped out of U.S. equities. Damage seems to be everywhere. 5th straight week of losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 5,000 points from its peak.

* Broad selloff: S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slide into sustained decline

* Oil shock returns: Energy prices surge as supply disruption persists through the Strait of Hormuz

* Volatility spike: The VIX jumps above 30 — signaling systemic fear, not routine correction

* Tech unwind: Mega-cap leaders like Microsoft and NVIDIA flip from market drivers to liabilities

* Policy trap: The Federal Reserve loses room to cut rates as inflation pressures rise

* Capital hesitation: Rising yields suggest weakening demand for US Treasuries even during equity stress.

By now controlling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is re-emerging as a dominate world power, see Alastair Crooke, on Daniel Davis / Deep Dive, March 29. Ships may pass if they are friendly nations and pay the toll, and pass through the proper sea channels and show that their cargo is paid for in Chinese yuan. Again, this BREAKS the grip of the U.S. on the exorbitant privilege of the world-reserve currency. The world’s savings stop flowing into the USA’s military-industrial complex.

But the U.S. cannot learn from their coming defeat. “Washington” is incapable of “learning a lesson.” If they don’t suffer strategic defeat and unconditional surrender, they will just carry on in their pathetic attempts at world domination. This cycle can only be broken when it is totally broken. The American Empire was built on dominance - isra3l is merely a well-developed tool, which has evolved enough fascist ideals to provide influence and intel to the U.S. As Rumsfeld said (re Pentagon), I don’t run this place, MOSSAD does. These two dogs have co-evolved, one doesn’t wag the other’s tail; the lashing of both their tails is sending the world into depression.

BTW, I was just viewing the beautiful light-blue-green waters of the Persian Gulf, in the Strait of Hormuz, you can see that here:

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs press service published a joint statement from 22 countries expressing their readiness to contribute to ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Here’s the full list of countries involved in this latest foreign policy charade, in the order they appear in the statement: UAE, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Denmark, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bahrain, Lithuania, and Australia.

This supposed “coalition of the willing” is the world’s present Hall of Shame for supporting the outright illegal and outright colonialist attack on Iran, performing the ages-old colonial procedure of attacking an Indigenous nation, killing their leadership, trying to eliminate their religion and steal their wealth and resources, and trashing their entire culture.

These are 22 vassal states and they should realize that entities which are complicit or even acquiescent in wars crimes can be charged, and a war of aggression is the supreme war crime. Canada, for example, is a vassal state, in order of compliance power: a vassal of USA, a vassal of (the zionist settler colony) and a vassal of Europe. Many of these Baltic states, and also Canada, have recently celebrated their former Nazi heroes. And of course, Ukraine is in that Nazi category with their ongoing Banderite government.

I was hoping that many of these countries would be co-indictors of the main aggressive-war criminals, USA and that zionist settler colony in a war crimes trial in the near future.

As well, many of these 22 are in that “coalition of the willing” which must always have a foreign “threat” to divert their population’s focus from their own faulty governance, therefore they perpetuate Russophobia as a pathway to forever-war. This, of course, is easier than finding pathways to actual peace.

We all had a sense that “The System” would collapse soon, but never connected the dots that indicate it would be by deliberate actions of total morons. And yet here we are, again witnessing the corrupt functioning of the male brain - or is it as well: paretic neurosyphilis: exhibiting dementia and delusions of grandeur - believing they have extreme wealth or power. Remind you of anyone? Those talking heads, a human form, but contorted into that supposed power edifice by testosterone, yet again seem to easily push civilization into needless wars. I had what I though was a great post, which took a lot of work to create, in August 2023, Men Are the Problem, which outlined these male brain issues quite well, but has had only 35 views and two Likes!

As well, control of everything that happens on a macro scale has shifted up the economic ladder, actually very high up the economic ladder, even to certain morons suffering from delusions of wealth. And this is no accident, it is deliberate social restructuring:

“On the largest scale--the entire socio-political-economic system--the buffers against risk have been transferred from the lower classes to the upper class, corporations and insiders, all of whom hold privileges enforced by the government.” (from Charles Hugh Smith: “Risk and Privilege”).

And along that same theme,

“The system relentlessly selects for these predatory actors who are most willing to ruthlessly maximise the Wealth Siphon (α → 1). The sociopaths are successful because they are flawlessly executing the thermodynamic programming of the ‘Strong Enlightenment’ architecture.” (from Steven Newbury: “The Humanist Firewall: Why Good Intentions are Thermodynamically Fatal”)

Yet here we stand, at the edge of what Steven Newbury calls the Resource Entropy Singularity wherein supply of high-entropic (usable) energy falls below the level to maintain a functioning, complex society:

This is where the political economy emerges from the biophysics. When a civilisation hits the RES, it cannot generate real wealth (surplus energy) fast enough to service its existing debts.

It faces a choice:

1 - De-complexify (Collapse/Simplification): Accept a lower standard of living.

2 - Cannibalise: Use financial/political power to strip-mine the future or the periphery to feed the core.

We chose option 2.

Thus the exit from the fossil energy trap is purported to be “renewables” but they are either not scalable in the present time frame or consume too much of declining fossil energy availability to be constructed. We missed that bus, and that reasoning is the counter to Prof. Warwick Powell’s article which I cross-posted a few days ago, “We need more than price controls - A hasty, provisional thermoeconomic response to the unfolding hydrocarbons crisis” Here’s a few paragraphs:

The bottleneck is not merely market structure; it is the dependence of market structure on a fossil metabolism. If that is the case, then policies that merely dampen price spikes while preserving fossil dependence risk becoming conservative in the most literal sense: they conserve the old order at the very moment when renewal is required.

One gets a politics of permanent triage, which mask systemic gangrene. Each crisis is met with a new patch: release reserves, subsidise bills, cap margins, negotiate temporary relief, then wait for markets to “settle.” The result is not transition but managed stagnation, with the public effectively paying to defer a reckoning.

That is why the present moment should be read as one of accelerated renewal rather than merely disciplined restraint. We should not treat the crisis mainly as a problem of inflation governance, when it is equally and more fundamentally a problem of civilisational energy transition. To stabilise prices without transforming energy systems is to confuse the symptom for the disease. One can suppress the immediate distributive violence of the shock and still leave intact the hydrocarbon dependency that makes the next shock all but inevitable.

We are living through the exhaustion of a hydrocarbon-centred regime and the opening of a struggle over what comes next. In that setting, the priority should not be to subsidise fossil normality, even in softened form. It should be to use every available lever to hasten electrification, reduce hydrocarbon exposure and build a more resilient energetic order.

This is countered by Newbury’s article, The Catabolic Correction: Redefining Carrying Capacity (K) at the Entropic Event Horizon, stating:

Most importantly, adaptation requires a massive upfront investment of surplus exergy. To build the infrastructure for a post-fossil world (localised water systems, millions of hand-tools, resilient micro-grids), you need immense amounts of energy. But the crisis is defined precisely by the sudden absence of this energy.

Over the edge of this entropic cliff lies a quandary which is like a quarry from which you mine imponderables.

Bear in mind that the Great Depression was on average about a 9% drop in world GDP, and we are looking at essentially permanent shut-in of over 20% of essential maintenance energy for running the present civilization.

Brace for impact.

As well, such international law must include the Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg reports and implementation of consequences for violators. Nations can no longer opt out of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. Military cooperation treaties (such as NATO) must be voided and all discussion and diplomacy resolves to the United Nations.

Obviously, the UN needs some renovations. The Security Council must consist of members, appointed by the General Assembly, from a list of countries which over the past five years, have shown good governance and not violated any part of the UN Charter. No “permanent” members. No UNSC member can vote on a matter they are involved in - of course if they are involved in such a situation involving violating the Charter, they have already lost their seat.

Meanwhile, the two rogue nations, isra3l and the American regime, should be sanctioned by all other nations and their governments unrecognized. That is, if the rest of the world still have spines and are not already permanent vassals of these rogue states. Malaysia has already torn up their “agreement” with the swine, other nations should do the same and stand united against the rising fascism.

Now, with the absolutely stupid bombing of the South Pars gas facilities in southern Iran by the Axis of Evil (U.S.+isra3l), Iran has declared all-out war and will knock out all Gulf refineries. This is now total collapse of world energy systems. There is three weeks-supply of helium for making electronic chips. U.S. does not have enough heavy crude for making diesel. The “strategic petroleum reserves” lack in heavy molecules, and WHERE IS the methane to power the refineries? A large part of (nitrogen) fertilizer supply has been cut off. How many recipes do you have to make dinner from cooked money? Cities have had it, all over U.S. and Europe.

The good news is that stinking Bibi was wounded in an attack on his convoy but they couldn’t save him. The bad news is that he can’t be tried for war crimes. But along with re-implementation of proper international law, the hegemonic swine and his enablers can be tried for war crimes then twist in the wind.

Do read the cross-post article https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/cp/191504948 from GeoPolitiQ on the U.S. debt crisis and how it will force all complicit western nations into captivity. There is no way the U.S. can refinance US$3T every quarter this year (including by March 31) without either total default or absolute capture of all remaining liquidity. But here’s the catch - there IS NO liquidity, and the “Hormuz Toll” is that oil passing through (to non-hegemonic countries) is traded in yuan. Therefore, the development of the RMB trading system is the only escape from this monetary lock down.

Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares have a new article:

Ending the Trump-Netanyahu War in the Middle East

If not stopped soon, this war could easily turn into a global conflagration, effectively into World War III

Jeffrey D. Sachs & Sybil Fares | March 16, 2026 | Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-end-the-iran-war

They propose a five-step process.

First, “Israel and the US would stop their aggression and withdraw their forces. In turn, Iran would cease its retaliatory strikes. This would not be a mere ceasefire. Rather, it would be the first step of an overall peace agreement and collective security arrangement.”

This is a mostly good statement, but the “overall peace agreement and collective security arrangement” is problematic. It is impossible to make “agreements” with USA or isra3l; all the pressure of war lies on their side - when they stand down and end their hegemony, there is peace and security. Furthermore, the state of isra3l must cease to exist, and it has almost been erased by now.

Their second point is: Return to the JCPOA “under which Iran must strictly comply with IAEA monitoring and agreed limits on its nuclear program, while economic sanctions on Iran would be lifted.”

The JCPOA was a supposed agreement with USA, which, as you have seen, can be dismissed on the whim of the next ideologue entering office in the administrative churn of “democracy.” And why would nuclear control and inspections apply only to Iran? The occupied territory of Palestine, with that cancer called isra3l, must have its nuclear arsenal eliminated, and if it is allowed to exist, have its military capability eliminated.

Their third point is “the Strait of Hormuz would be quickly reopened, with safe passage jointly guaranteed by Iran and the GCC. The GCC countries would assert sovereignty over the military bases in their countries to ensure that the bases would not be used as launchpads for renewed offensive strikes against Iran.”

The U.S. must be removed from all bases surrounding Iran, not just in the Persian Gulf. The bases between Iran and isra3l were never intended to protect the fat little Gulf monarchies, but rather were intended for the defence of isra3l.

Their fourth point is The Two-State Solution.

The supposed “Two-State Solution” is bullshit, a remnant of an imaginary policy developed decades ago with absolutely no understanding of Palestinian’s attachment to THEIR homeland. There absolutely must be just one state - Palestine. It would be up to the Palestinians, of the own volition and under no other coercion, to decide if they wish to LEASE any portion of their land to any zionist settlers, who would be on good behaviour if they hope to extend their lease by renewal. These settlers would be required to disarm, their security would be guaranteed by their Lessor, and they would be prohibited from arms and surveillance systems development and manufacture, especially since they have no captive population (Palestinians) to demonstrate these systems on.

Their fifth point is “An End to Armed Belligerency - In conjunction with the two-state solution, all armed belligerency in the region would end forthwith, including the disarmament of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed non-state actors. In the case of Palestine, the disarmament of Hamas would underpin the authority of the Palestinian state. In the case of Lebanon, the disarmament of Hezbollah would restore Lebanon’s full sovereignty, with the Lebanese Armed Forces as the sole military authority in the country.”

People talk of “HAMAS” being disarmed. HAMAS is a democratically elected government in Gaza. Gaza (or all of Palestine) has a right to defend itself and with the belligerence if the zionist settler colony and its goal of total genocide of Palestinians, the right to resist unlawful occupation. HAMAS is an acronym. The word itself means “zeal” or “bravery” and the letters stand for “حركة المقاومة الإسلامية or, harakat almuqawamat al’iislamia.”

With the One State of Palestine along with the abolition of the PA (Palestinian Authority) which is under control of the zionist settler colony, there would obviously be no more internal battles within Palestine nor with their Lessee. In Lebanon, which is a Western aid-state, totally existing on foreign aid, the existing “Lebanese Armed Forces” have come under the influence of the zionist settler colony and are not interested in defending Lebanon. Lebanon has a right to defend itself; Hezb-Ollah (Party of God - Allah) would rightly take its place as the actual defence forces of Lebanon. There is no reason to expect there to be any violence between Lebanon and an actual state of Palestine.

In overall world affairs, there has been much discussion of the passing of the last “Arms Control Treaty” but this problem can be corrected along with the ending of the Ramadan War - since at every step of the arms race, with the U.S. being the instigator, the U.S. could begin unilaterally to dismantle their nuclear arms program, creating the opportunity for the rest of the world to follow suit.

This illegal attack on Iran fully demonstrates that the U.S. should come under international sanctions until it totally abandons its presumed role as “World Policeman,” and ends it system of surrounding other nations (including China) with military bases, and attempting to control the world via its Military Commands system, and also returns to international climate-change mitigation efforts.

The authors go on to state that “Who, then, could champion a peace plan that the US and Israel will resist with every means at their disposal, until the weight of global opposition and economic catastrophe leaves them no choice but to accept it?”

They claim that the group which could do this is BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and now including UAE, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. But lets’ get up-to-date here, please. India just kicked BRICS to the curb, by severely sucking-up to the zionist settler colony (isra3l) on February 26, two days before the Ramadan War started. Modi forsake a century-old relationship with Iran by his visit and hugging of Netanyahu just two days before the Ramadan War, and sacrificing the Iranian ship (just leaving India from an invited visit) to the U.S. to be attacked, then not helping to rescue the crew.

Sachs and Fares also talk about bringing these issues to the UN Security Council, but before that is a meaningful forum, any UNSC member involved in a “conflict” would be required to abstain from voting, and that is not counted as an abstention, but as an ineligibility. Furthermore, as I have recommended before, UNSC members must be chosen solely by the UN General Assembly, from a list of nations which HAVE NOT in the past five years, violated any part of the UN Charter. There would no longer be “Permanent Members.” “isra3l” should be voted out of the General Assembly, since it is totally belligerent in its present form, and under a lease-agreement with Palestine, is no longer a nation.

Furthermore, while the Ramadan War and transit restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz may cause economic calamity and increase a threat of nuclear attacks by certain unhinged hegemons, the greater threat of WW-III lies in Europe, with the increasing use of NATO-designed and built missiles aimed into Russia from Ukraine, as if Russia’s security concerns have no validity and NATO can continue with its war on Russia until Russia is defeated and broken up for exploitation. All these WW-I type block-politic allegiances such as NATO and now the G-7 must be dismantled, and all international discussion, dispute resolution and diplomacy returned to a newly-functional United Nations. The UN Headquarters must be relocated to an actually neutral nation.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow nations.

Third: Any nation’s right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

Yet each of these are violated over and over, even though the above words are 73 years old. They are from President Eisenhower’s Address: “The Chance for Peace“ delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953. This address was given just after Josef Stalin’s death, so while being careful to not trod on his own precepts, the address does contain a measure of Russophobia, since that doctrine is so baked-in to American life and policy.

Instead of bringing in an era of Peace following WW-II, the Eisenhower administration was gradually sidelined in the development of the deep state. Having a “deep state” is not an adjunct to democracy, but a necessity, to have a portion of the state which can impose absolute power instead of a “democratic” approach, which amounts to “designing a horse by committee.”

Along with development of the deep state (see Dulles brothers) was the entity which Eisenhower warned against in his Farewell Address, January 17, 1961.

(selected sections):

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

--/--

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

--/--

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

--/--

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

You may take a weeping break here.

March 11 on Nima’s Dialogue Works program, he had an interview with Prof. Jiang Xueqin: The Shocking Theory Behind the Iran Conflict. First of all, Nima has been warned by Pepe Escobar to stop calling this a “conflict” - it is an illegal war of aggression. In the block-quote below, I have some paraphrasing and condensation of some main points.

We assume nation-states are the main organizing units of the world. And that these leaders actually matter.

America is in the war to lose, not to win. Other parties are in control behind the curtain. The purpose is ongoing war, to feed the MIC as well as drain the wealth of USA then collapse it because of the massive debt, and the people, if they can manage to live, will scrape by in abject poverty so will be easier to control.

And more wars are desired to wind down the global population, to make it easier to manage, and to destroy the world economy. That was according to Julian Assange.

Prof. Jiang claims that U.S. will send in ground forces, Iran will be shattered, U.S. will be out of the Middle East, and Greater “israel” appears. He claims the three world powers will be a united Germany + Russia, facing Japan and “israel,” with [stinking] “israel” as the global Empire (replacing America), which controls a massive number of immigrants, with implanted chips and on drugs, supervised by Palantir. And America is left to control the western hemisphere.

A war of south-east Asia will be fought between Japan, S. Korea, N. Korea and Vietnam.

America is not a democracy, the mid-terms (if they have them) don’t matter, the parasite still feeds on this host and forever-wars go on. They want you to focus on the wars and not see what’s behind the curtain making the real decisions.

At this point Prof. Jiang recalls the Allegory of the Cave, by Plato. A painting of this cave is below. Three prisoners are chained down since birth so they can only see the cave wall. Behind them is a short wall, behind which people walk holding up shapes which cast shadows on the wall that the prisoners see, illuminated by a fire behind them.

From Philosphyser.com: “In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth.” Prof. Jiang is saying that all we are seeing is shadows, not the real events that change the world.

None of the events you see in his world are what really matters - what matters is our understanding of the world. It doesn’t matter who wins between U.S. and Iran - what matters is if “israel” becomes an Empire or not. What matters is our understanding, our desire and courage to seek the truth, no matter how painful it is.

At this point in my web-site version of this article, you would see the image of Plato’s cave, but this is Substack and they would blow the image up all over the page announcements, so in this issue, you will have to click this link to see what the cave might look like.

There are a lot of issues with Prof. Jiang’s ideas. He can’t understand how a nation of 9 million (“israel”) can control the U.S. Duh, it’s called Kompromat. The Epstein-style Kompromat which, by the way, is not restricted to some local sadistic pedophiles, this type of Kompromat is standard operating procedure for virtually every nation’s intelligence service. In this instance, the Kompromat was embarked on at perhaps the largest scale ever, to establish absolute control over the ENTIRE business, government and military establishment. So now, it was not just Epstein’s use of this Kompromat to extort millions from his victims, it was the coming “israel” Empire building its control over nations and, on top of that, the little men behind the curtain increasing their power of control over the entire world through the manipulation of debt finance.

Prof. Jiang’s thought of German-Russian cooperation is a possibility, since Germany is the driving economic engine of Europe, and they might be able to cleanse Europe of their Russophobia in the name of peace, and disable the pathetic EU Commission and parliament, removing Ursula Wonderland and Kajah Callous.

He seems to give no thought to the rising power of China, and somehow sees Japan as a great power again, meanwhile their economy is in deep trouble. And all “great powers” depend on reliable energy supplies.

He is correct in noting that we need to find out who is behind the curtain, that is what is real, those little men behind the curtain control the world, or at least the part they’ve captured. That is where Iran fits in, and perhaps Russia as well, and perhaps China, although they are starting to be corrupted by debt financing.

That is why this Ramadan War is also a spiritual war. Not “spiritual” as in one religion against another, but rather regarding the integrity of the human soul, and whether humans survive AI, rogue Empires and the surveillance state.

So far, Iran remains a bastion of basic humanity as they have an individual, separate and unique civilization, not (yet) corrupted by the little men behind the curtain. If Iran could be defeated, humanity loses its last hope of survival.

Prof. Jiang is saying that those little men behind the curtain want forever wars to fund the arms industries, reduce the population levels and suck the wealth out of the (formerly?) rich nations. This is inequality on steroids, sweeping any remaining wealth to those top few. And unless you would like living under the tank tracks of an “israel” Empire, you need to do everything possible to eliminate that settler colony from the face of the Earth. You know what Gaza looks like, and they’re doing the same to Lebanon. They just sweep human life out of their way, without a care. Like what I said in the previous post, you are on the side of the Gaza-world, or on the side of the “israel”-world.

Is this “israel” Empire only a possibility of the future? No, it is here now, as one after another country is captured. That settler colony is trying to capture the entire Middle East by force and genocide. It has already captured Europe and the UK. It has already (for years now) captured USA and Canada. It has captured Australia. All these vassal states conform their internal regulations to tamp down any criticism of “israel.” Two days before the beginning of this Ramadan War, India’s PM Modi made a state visit to see his new boss in “israel,” on February 26. Apparently, Modi is throwing BRICS under the bus. Then the day Modi returned home, Canada’s PM Carney showed up for a state visit from February 27 to March 2nd, tying Canada and India together in bilateral agreements, including supplying India with billions in uranium! Might “israel” call upon the nuclear state of India to help take out the missile storage areas in eastern Iran? - it’s not a long missile trajectory. Canada is on the wrong side of history yet again.

And a bit of the curtain has been pulled back - Epstein was also chummy with the Rothschilds, and probably passed on his vast reservoir of Kompromat to them. They are a big part of who’s behind the curtain. That name is an old spelling meaning “Red Shield” (Roth-schilds) which is their emblem.

How is “The Art of the Deal” working out now for the Pedo-President? I hope he is having deep regrets for backing up the zionist settler-colony in this absolutely unnecessary war. But there definitely IS AN OFF-RAMP - tRump smartens up, leaves Iran alone, pays reparations, and turns his ire against the zionist settler colony, doing a REGIME CHANGE there, removing THEIR nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons capability, limiting their armed forces numbers and forcing them to stay within their borders or get bombed again. Don’t hold your breath.

Humanity now stands at the precipice, or at least a fork in the road. In either case, such as taking the wrong road or stepping off the cliff, there is no return. If we keep allowing the development of the “israel” Empire and control by the little men behind the curtain, there is no future, it is closed, humanity goes into permanent bondage and control. This theme shows up again in today’s post by Ismaele at GeoPolitiQ - here’s two paragraphs:

The Spodocene – an era of structural saturation and normalisation of ruin – marks the historical limit of directionality. In this context, the instance of leadership can no longer promise progress or plan for an open future. Its function shifts towards the administration of deterioration: normalising ruin, fragmenting responsibilities and lowering collective expectations.

This administration of deterioration is not a deviation from the system, but the specific way in which it manages to prolong its existence beyond its structural limits. It does not lead towards a horizon: it manages the habitability of a degraded present.

Today’s music selection: Jonathan Scott: A. Vivaldi, “Summer” from The Four Seasons, Op.8 (arr.: J. Scott), at The III International Vahagn Stamboltsyan Organ Festival, Komitas Chamber Music Hall, Yerevan, Armenia, 2025. Johnathan is arguably the world’s best organist. Note the amazing pedal-work, and he isn’t watching his feet. This is a “tracker” organ, so pressing the keys takes some effort because of all the mechanical linkage to operate the air valves.

This entire war scenario has no excuse - it is entirely illegal and is the war crime of aggression, a war without PRIOR congressional consent, a war funded illegally by sending arms, aid and funds to a nation with nuclear arms not under the non-proliferation treaty and IAEA inspection, and bombing of nuclear facilities (another war crime) and torpedoing unarmed ships in international waters. And the Nuremberg trials made it perfectly clear that the INDIVIDUALS are personally responsible and should hang. Pay attention, armed-forces personnel!

The war started with the Outlaw Empire bombing children at school - Horror upon horror, day by day, insanity without end. All those lives wasted, with no more remorse than “mowing the lawn” (a depraved zionist expression). Evil has now been fully exposed in this world, yet some FOOLS still allow themselves to support it, to support the Pedophile-in-Chief and the sadist murderous zionist settler colony. “Only fools rush in” (Elvis Presley).

Scott Ritter’s article “Regime change - the Double-Edged Sword” had a great line:

“Ali Khamenei’s death is the spiritual fuel that will empower the Iranian people and their government to persevere in the face of perfidy and adversity. Iran won the war the moment it began.”

This theme is repeated in a George Galloway interview of Lt Col Tony Aguilar on MOATS:

INTERVIEW: The US lost the war from the first rounds fired. “Closed captioning” and follow-along transcripts are available on YT videos.

To make matters worse, we are coming up to the nuclear option, as the war efforts by the zionists and Outlaw Empire begin failing, and their pride cannot tolerate failure. The Outlaw Empire has test-fired a new ballistic missile from California to the Marshall Islands. This will be the missile to hit the Iranian enrichment sites with a nuclear weapon (Yes, another war crime). The diabolical “Little Satan” of the zionist settler colony, being now faced with total annihilation, will resort to the “Samson Option” in a matter of days. With a bit of luck, Iran may yet finish off the Tel Nof military base before those bombs can be launched, although they may already be dispersed to various pre-launch sites.

This is The End, by The Doors-

“This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes, again.”

The Doors - The End (Live At the Isle Of Wight 1970)

The two remaining “adults in the room,” China and Russia have made official statements condemning this war.

Russia Responds to Gulf States Appeal for Pressure on Iran | RU-EN | Freelensia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responds to an appeal from Gulf Arab ambassadors urging Russia to pressure Iran over escalating tensions in the Middle East. Speaking at an embassy roundtable on the Ukrainian crisis and international information security, Lavrov questions the one-sided blame placed on Iran and asks why the actions of the United States and Israel are not equally condemned.

Lavrov calls for a unified international position to stop the escalation and urges all parties to advocate for an immediate cessation of hostilities that are causing civilian casualties and damage to critical infrastructure across the region. He also warns that attempts to push a UN resolution condemning only Iran could further divide the international community.

The Russian foreign minister stresses that ending the broader conflict requires addressing the actions of all parties involved and supporting diplomatic solutions instead of selective accusations.

This exchange highlights Russia’s position on the growing Middle East crisis and its call for a comprehensive ceasefire and balanced international approach. - Moscow, March 5, 2026

BTW, I have sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking them to immediately announce that Iran is covered by their “nuclear umbrella” meaning any nuclear attack on Iran is an attack on Russia.

Regarding China, Xi Jinping’s Close Aide Warns US Before Trump Summit China has called for an immediate ceasefire in the escalating Iran war, warning that the “flames of war” risk spreading across the Middle East. Speaking in Beijing, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the conflict should never have happened and urged all sides to return to negotiations instead of military confrontation. Beijing portrayed itself as a stabilizing global force while tensions rise between Iran, the United States and Israel. The call comes just weeks before a highly anticipated summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. China also stressed respect for regional sovereignty while signaling willingness to engage Washington despite deep geopolitical rivalries.

China Bolsters Naval Presence in Strait of Hormuz Amid US Pressure on Iran and Venezuela - The US is attempting to exert pressure on China through its allies, such as Venezuela and Iran, which places Iranian oil and energy supplies to China at serious risk.

An announcement by “The Elders” also condemns this violence: A message from Graça Machel, Co-founder and Deputy Chair of The Elders , Founder of the Graça Machel Trust - “International law cannot be “à la carte”

All these actions by the aggressors are war crimes, see for instance Page 43 of the Nuremberg transcripts:

A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate, or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime.

One of the most authoritative sources of International Law on this subject is the Convention for the Definition of Aggression signed at London on July 3, 1933 by Roumania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Turkey, the Soviet Union, Persia and Afghanistan. The subject has also been considered by international committees and by commentators whose views are entitled to the greatest respect. It had been little discussed prior to the First World War but has received much attention as International Law has evolved its outlawry of aggressive war. In the light of these materials of International Law, and so far as relevant to the evidence in this case, I suggest that an “aggressor” is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions:

(1) Declaration of war upon another State:

(2) Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State:

(3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another State:

and (4) The provision of support to armed bands formed in the territory of another State, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded State, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.

PAGE 44

And I further suggest that it is the general view that no political, military, economic or other considerations shall serve as an excuse, or justification for such aggressive actions; but of course the exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a State which has been subjected to aggression, shall not of course constitute a war of aggression.

Page 45-

Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is not a legal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.

Page 51-

Experience has shown that wars are no longer local. All modern wars become world wars eventually. And none of the big nations at least can stay out. If we cannot stay out of wars, our only hope is to prevent wars.

And further, they state that those abetting or acquiescing to wars of aggression are complicit - World Centrist Elites, including those from Greater Europe (thus including Canada), are you listening? Take a hard stand against this war or you are also complicit.

So “when this is all over” you can get back to “Normal,” right? No, sorry, important stuff has been broken, including many Iranian and Gulf refinery facilities. Yes, the price of oil will spike, but then crash due to a naphtha plug, blocking further processing, with impossible economic consequences. Diesel production collapses and Europe freezes in the dark. See The Naphtha Heart Attack: Why $120 WTI is a Ghost Signal Preceding a Negative-Price Inversion - STEVEN J. NEWBURY - MAR 09, 2026

These “democracies” are failures - they are GINO (government in name-only). An outsider (in another nation, not outer Space) can see that they are merely transactional and not agreement-capable, due to frequent ideological capture of the levers of power. The entire government machinery must be rebuilt from ground up.

Additional notes- You likely have seen this phase of Iranian actions labelled “True Promise IV” but what were I, II and III? True Promise I was April 13, 2004 when about 350 projectiles were launched at the zionist settler colony, aimed at Nevatim and Tel Nof military bases. For your targeting coordinates, Nevatim is 15 Km east of Beersa and 12 Km north of Deona. The U.S., UK, France and Jordan helped take down 94% of those missiles and drones. True Promise II was October 1, 2024, with about 200 projectiles in two waves, causing at least 33 craters at Nevatim and three missiles struck Tel Nof, the storage site for zionist nukes. Operation True Promise III was the so-called “12-day war” in June, 2025. In EACH of these three operations, the Iranians were not just shooting stuff over there, each was tracked and provided learning opportunities so that each successive attack became more accurate. These True Promise details from Iran Launches Strike on Strategic Israeli Base | Prof. Jiang Xueqin.