They’re holed up in a bank demanding three large pizzas, a helicopter, and a personal phone call from Sydney Sweeney. . . ."— Greg Gutfeld on Iran’s negotiating position
Only a sickly dishonest entity - be that entity a person. a group, or an entire country - would defend its 'sovereign right' to do something that it would deny another sovereign entity. "Yes, we can have these weapons, but you cannot. Why? Because we say so, that's why!" Huh? Come again ...
Iran has *every* right to resist tyranny, even to the death. Oh, that Americans were just as brave and resolved to fight tyrants as those found in Washington and the banking and tech cartels. Our country would be so much better off, instead of swirling down the toilet bowl as we speak.
Fight they will, to the very end. And contrary to what we hear from the criminal regime in Washington and its propaganda machine, that fight will not go as well for the regime as they believe. Iranian Professor Marandi has stated, "Let them come, we are ready and waiting!" They are!
No - I love truth, human rights, and freedom. I despise lies, tyrants, and oppression.
It's NOT "My country right or wrong"; it's "My country when right, my opposition when wrong." The main reason why our once-great country is in the sewer, and falling further each day, is because of boot-licking tyrant-followers. Wear that label if it fits.
If you have so much disrespect for Mr. Kunstler, why the heck are you here reading his article? You are only here to harass. Sadly you are up against some very intelligent and knowledgeable people and are only making your own self look like a moronic clown. You can sling whatever arrows you want at me for my post, I'm impervious to trolls like you. Have a nice day.
I own every book Jim has written. I have read his blog (almost entirely without comment) from the beginning. The fact that he has jumped the shark and that a bunch of his apologists continue to cuck up for him is the embarrassment here. I'm not surprised you are impervious. You have TWS.
Excuuuuuuuuse me, Mr. O'Connor. Did you consult your very own uterus and ovaries when you attribute feminine energy to other posters? With all due respect, why don't you let the ladies sort this out?
Feminine energy is beautiful in women, just like masculine energy is a wonderful thing, in a man.
We women don't like feminized men, in our locker rooms or in our beds, but we like even less a man who uses femininity as an insult. I hope you take that with all the sisterly affection I intend.
"We women don't like feminized men, in our locker rooms"
Not all women. Many of your feminine sisters applaud when a transgendered woman gets woman of the year awards or appears in Sports Illustrated swimsuit mag. Let's face it, if women would up and resist this bullshit it never would have become a problem but women sat by and applauded it because it was the leftist thing to do.
Fight Club Rule 9: No calling your opponents Girly Men.
I made that up. There is no Rule 9 😝
Jorge has a point in describing his hatred of the fact that Our Country, Yours and Mine, has been used as a destroying force by evil actors, too often over recent history.
Smedley Butler, if he was alive today might have fomented a revolution to burn down the Death Star DC and emancipate our great nation to rise again as a beacon of Freedom. We have fallen and I hope Trump leads us back, many kicking and screaming, to victory and furthering peace.
If you actually like human rights, then perhaps do a bit of research that indicates that 90% of the Iranian population consider the Islamic fundamentalists as occupiers’. They have NO history regarding human rights, freedom, etc., but are exactly the thing you say you despise.
If this is true then it behooves the 90% to do something about it. It doesn't behoove the USA to step in and try to resolve their problems for them. The USA was fed up with the Brits and did something about it. The Iranians, if truly fed up with the Islamic fundamentalists, should rise up and deal with it of their own accord.
The USA has a lousy track record of taking down "rogue regimes" and replacing them in nations throughout the world. Ukraine seems to show brightly as an example of what American interventionism provides. The Ukraine had a duly elected pro-Russia government. Then in 2014 the CIA overthrows that pro-Russia government and that leads us to the predicament we are in now. Millions dead. Economy devastated. A comedian who plays the piano with his penis pilfering how many untold millions of US tax dollars.
If for these kind of results that I desperately wish the USA would focus on its lands and borders and stay out of everyone else's business.
So true and it pisses me off to the point of wanting to load a Boeing Vertol load of Blinkins and Vindmans and Haskels and Nulands"little fat war pig" and provide them all a ocean vacation, Pinochet Style out one the Atlantic. Would that be wrong?
You are one of the few around here that is not insane or an obvious troll and I thank you for that. JHK as always has the pulse of things. The Iranian mullahs and their City of London handlers need to be eliminated. This should be obvious to all thinking people.
Without a citation to prove that claim you are full of shiite. If you had read more about Iran and it's history with Western colonial powers and the USoA you would realize this is untrue then as it is today.
You mis-spelled Shiite - it should be capitalized out of respect for the suicidal death cult that believes global conflagration is necessary to bring forth the 12th Imam and convert us all to glorious Islam!
Thanks, Mike for catching the misspelling however, you also misidentified the error. I meant shite like in the British version. As for the rest of your comment you made me laugh. Islam and Judaism are two sides of the same coin minted for the death cults they are.
There's a reason why no one wants nukes in the hands of the Iranians....or any other emotionally crazed country. Even NK knows to keep itself sane sounding regarding nukes. There's a reason why the rest of the ME dislikes both Iran and Palestinians....nothing but problems....irrational emotional peoples...
Congratulations for picking up the reference. In my (approx) 10 yrs of using this handle, no one has picked up on the reference and noted it. Gold star for you!
Actually the air crew only had a chance of ditching at Weathership Tango Delta after their bomb run. That plan was the best and only way out and it did not have a high probability of success. I look at the reference as a last very small bit of hope that helps people in desperate situations do the right thing.
"There's a reason why no one wants nukes in the hands of the Iranians....or any other emotionally crazed country."
True. But why are the emotionally crazed in the first place? Is it because of religion and a belief in religious superiority? Or is it because they are sick and tired of other nations fucking around in their business, putting military bases on their borders and pointing missiles at their cities and parking aircraft carriers off their beaches?
Oh, Americans are sick of the butchery of OTHER nations but they are okay with the butchery of their own military! Got it. Thank you for clarifying that one for me.
How about this. Americans are sick and tired of their country being in a constant state of war. Or, Americans are sick and tired of the country spending its strength and means making war in shit hole nations like Iran. Or, Americans are sick and tired of the soldiers in the military coming home with missing limbs, scattered brains or dead only to have an ending like Afghanistan. Or, Americans are sick of their tax dollars funding this disgusting behavior rather than having their tax dollars fund improvements here at home.
How do I know this? Because I am a pro-America American.
Well....look right here in the US and you see the crazies....people who cannot reason through any problem but jump emotionally to the first conclusion that pops into their little non-thinking heads...Decades ago, it was stated that the average person used only 11% of their brain power....think about that....and then think about religions which allow cousins to marry....even deer know better than that...low IQ people cannot rationally think through anything....whatever problems they have surviving are because of someone else....Geez....right here in Maryland, the idiots in Annapolis have now passed a bill allowing minority groups in commissioner counties to sue if they don't like the outcome of an election....another group of crazies....There is no monopoly on crazy nor on desire for power....Never ever forget that...
Things are a mess here at home. Yet we spend all our resources making war in places like Iran and Syria. People like JohnAZ don't give a damn about this as long as the USA wins its immoral wars!
How many visits have you made to Iran? Please tell us how you have the expertise to speak for the 72 million Persians in Iran that plead with the world to be free from a death cult that has oppressed them for nearly 50 years.
How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?
You're in the deep end of the pool without a floaty, in way over your head.
Of course, I do read what I write. The average Iranian is not crazed but anyone who forces women to wear black sheets draped over them....black...in a hot country....black, which absorbs heat...is crazy...Anyone who does that and sends their ill-disciplined men to gang rape any woman who defies them....or who has public hangings of dissenters....they are a bunch of f**king hypocrites...they are crazy....their leaders....even crazier than the normal crazy leaders elsewhere....
The US DOES NOT know to keep itself sane sounding regarding nukes!
After all, they are the only county to have dropped two nuke bombs on civilians for no military purposes.
On that criterion alone, why should the US be allowed to have nuke weapons?
There's a reason why the rest of the World dislikes America........nothing but problems....irrational emotional people!
There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017.
And it is a reason that eludes that strain of U.S. academia, that first defines war as something that nations and groups other than the United States do, and then concludes that war has nearly vanished from the earth.
Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed some 20-million people, overthrown 36- governments, interfered in 86-foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50-foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30-countries
Actually I would say that they dislike the US because of the basic jealousy….why else do they want to come here?
Irrational emotional people? Bwahaha….I can see that you know nothing about other cultures….
Re the bombs which ended the Pacific Theater aspect of WWII….there are those who feel that it actually saved more lives but warnings were ignored…We will never know….None of us were adults at the time to be involved in the thinking and what is recorded for history is always debatable and interpretively fluid.
If the rest of the world hates the US so much, why do they keep coming here? Why don’t they stay in their own countries?
Freebies. The USA is bankrupt, Dancingtime. $40 trillion in the hole and counting. This kind of debt doesn't get repaid. There are only two solutions:
1. Default on the debt. Result? Lots of people who function on debt alone will now be busted wide open with no money.
2. Money printing to monetize the debt. Result? The money you have worked your entire life to earn will be worth Jack Schitt. In short, nobody will have any money.
People come here because the gubmit hands out freebies and because of the insane anchor baby policy to get a foot hold on permanent residency here and life time freebies. Take away the freebies, like Trump did, and they stop coming.
The rest of the world does not dislike America, just the countries that are being notified that America will no longer suffer their foolishness (EU committing suicide with open borders) and will no longer allow them to sponge off our military capabilities when U.S. national security is not at stake (e.g., NATO and the Russia-Ukraine border war).
Also, you're citing a 2013 poll??? 🤪
Pull the conglomerate "news" IV out of your vein and get a grip.
Did you miss the 30,000 Iranian protesters gunned down in the streets ? The local firedepartments were employed to hose down the bloody streets.....is that news to you?
I'm not at all concvinced that this happened as reported. We have access only to those stories we are told by interested parties who have a track record of faking stuff.
I don't accept at face value anything my government tells me any more. Maybe this happened. Or maybe 3,000 protesters were gunned down, or maybe it was only 3 or none. How would I know?
A good policy to have these days - suspicious of anything the government tells us. Propaganda runs rampant from all directions, supporting all motives. It's amazing to see anyone who lived through the Plandemic believe the current pack of "facts" .gov tells us after the Covid "story" - where the public was played to the max to help move along the lock-downs coming down the pike.
Only time will tell on how the "Iran PsyOp" plays out, and which party is proven to be more dangerous with enriched uranium. The pro-Trumpers are convinced that some sort of complex plan is being run to control the world's oil resources, and cut off China, Iran and Russia from "endangering" the American Empire's Destiny. Others see it more from the view of a Last Gasp of the American Empire to cling to a MAGA dream, while alienating 95% of citizens of the World.
Regardless, the unpredictable mischief of the Long Emergency is in full bloom now, and the global descent in the Standards of Living will arrive - sooner or later. The bad news for the U.S. is that we have much further to fall than most countries. It's a fragile arrangement of energy sources, supply chains, government "management", massive grift and a culture still unwilling to deal with the reality of physics and economics.
There are many wise statements about, "not my problem", I was just following orders" "evil prevails unless". Some situations deserve action and I bet, if you had a neighbor that was dicking around with fulminating mercury next door, and no one was going to help you mitigate the risk, Cankerpuss would figure a way to dispense with the madman. I don't know, 30% H2O2 and a helping hand....
Yes, they'll fight for their nation against enemies within and without. We collapsed after killing two "protestors". They are a real nation. We are no longer one.
We have Red Flag laws to disarm our local insane neighbors or wife beaters. Our nation can do the same to scum countries of similar profile, if we have the gumption.
"Our nation can do the same to scum countries of similar profile"
Who gives the USA the authority to do this? Seriously, I'd really like to know your opinion on this. Is it because we have the biggest military so therefore we have the right to do this?
What gives Iran the right to oppress 72 million Persians that want nothing to do with the suicidal Twelvers, or to threaten Israel with genocide, or to extort an energy price premium (estimated at $3 trillion since 1979) by destabilizing the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz?
You seem mighty selective in your outrage. Suggests a squeaky clean brain that has adopted a warped ideology, but I'm not a psychologist.
p.s., My partner is and she thinks you and your ilk do not argue in good faith, nor on the basis of facts - she thinks the demagoguery that many have adopted is rooted in a social contagion no different than the trans-sanity that exploded starting around 2015.
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
Boot-licking tyrant-followers like Clinton and Obama worshippers. They can loot and murder at will, and motherfuckers like you don't care. Trump tries to Reset the world in a way the WEF and Left don't like, and -- holy shit -- he's worse than Satan!!
Sure , we got some splainin to do , but I too have done the moral calculus and come to an opposite conclusion . Losing this thing would have dire consequences for the US and really 'the global order' going forward ( not that 'global order ', the globe is going to be ordered one way or the other going forward type of global order , their will be an order of some sort of the other ) .Furthermore it seems to me that if you love human rights and freedom , and despise tyrants and oppression , which I've no reason to doubt your sincerity about , then I cant see how you could defend the Islamic theocracy in Iran without doubting the seriousness of your devotion to such noble principles , being as that Islam is fundamentally at its theological level , really inimical to those kind of western and Christian principles ? Furthermore in the larger geopolitical analysis revolving around the question of who's century this is going to be , China's or ours , the moral calculus comes out the same again by my equation , its better If we , for all of our faults , deny the Chinese Communist Party top dog status on the world stage . Again , its not only better for us but also better for the rest of the world . Can we stop self immolating over our past sins for one moment and just realize that for all of our faults our success and continued survival is just by golly worth it anyway ? The demoralization is thick , maybe not as thick as it must be on the European continent but Good Gawd its all so throw in the towel nihilistic that I think I almost barf to listen to it coming from all the self righteous moral signalers on this and other sites . I choose US , sorry if you find that morally reprehensible , but I gave you some reasoned rationales why I think this . "Aloha Snack bar ,Death to The Great Satan ,and the Little Satan , usher in the Mahdi, and why cant we have a nuclear bomb Uncle Sam ? Self loath much ?Cmon man ?
It's the pinnacle of a lack of self-awareness that so many "progressive" leftists wail and shriek about keeping guns out of the hands of the alleged mentally compromised (with red flag laws where no adjudication is required, just an accusation that someone may not be sufficiently mentally stable), yet they simultaneously hold the position that a psychotic and jihadist mass murdering death cult has the right to possess weapons of mass destruction.
Whatever was in the clot shots appears to have other side effects that include diminished cognition. Those effects are clearly more pronounced among leftists, who were starting from a deficit position of brain rot even before they got jabbed.
Way to defend yourself Mr George😝👍 From a Jorge/George who understands your point of view. But I sincerely believe Irans citizens deserve a life beyond the Iron Fist of a sick religion. I hope so. I was wrong before.
I sincerely believe American citizens deserve a life beyond the Iron Fist of a sick religion. I hope so.
Humans create religion to justify doing what they logically know is wrong. When you have a religion that teaches supremacism, and hatred towards everyone not of that religion, you then have sown the seeds of war crimes and genocide. While the main motivation may be money or power, the justification and rationalization is always stupid religion.
Who was the last atheist that committed genocide in the name of a GOD?
Religion stalks across the face of human history, knee-deep in the blood of innocents, clasping its red hands in hymns of praise to an approving God.
If these God's are so perfect, why do they create so much hatred?
"Religion poisons everything!" - the great atheist Christopher Hitchens. RIP Christopher.
Matthew 7:12 " So whatever you wish that others would do to you , do also to them , for this is the law and the prophets " , Luke 6:31 " Do to others as you would have them do to you " . The Golden Rule , kinda Christianity 101 , Tis not God who possesses people with the spirit of hatred but obviously His opposite .Did you "guess His name " as Mick sang ?
Well thought out reply, Jorge, I'm with you in this regards. My country when right, and my opposition when wrong, that is what was once our right as an American, now it's becoming iffy given who runs our affairs and steals our hard earned income though taxation, theft, and corruption.
It's called making a cogent counter-argument. give it a try, I'm sure Jorge would love a joust with someone of your intellect. One doesn't need to love the Mullahs to be decent enough to know when another country has been verbally and physically abused and violated by big and little brother Satan.
Trolls and shills don’t ever really analogize or analyze anything, and they don’t care for rational counter arguments. Their job is to feed a narrative that they want the lesser intelligent to swallow.
No they don't, they just want you to know you're wrong and bad because you question their *obvious moral superiority* 🙄 I do not even engage anymore since it steals time from anything else I could be doing, even if that's just watching paint dry.
You don't even need to get any 'news and information' per se, you just have to know some cold hard facts and use your head.
For example, the State, such as America, is already an immoral construct because it is coercive and based on a monopoly on violence.
That they're ostensibly floating around Iran ATM is in this sense kind of irrelevant, except of course that it's with all their war machines and brainwashed cannon-fodder and so forth, rather than, say, a peace flotilla.
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"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." ~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
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"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~ P.J. O'Rourke
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"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear." ~ Alan Coren
Only America *is* The Great Satan in a manner of speaking, such as if you count all the global deaths it has inflicted around the world via its military and related contractors, since at least WW2.
Number one in the world. 🏆
So if America's 'death' means its sociopoliticeconomic decline/collapse, so be it, I'm behind it. Practically a wet dream actually. Certainly after its threat earlier in the year toward Canada where I live, and Greenland, etc.. Thems is fighin' words.
Gotta luv all these unrecognized noobs who appear under every article, do a little pro-USrael and/or anti-Iran dance, and then disappear entirely after that. That's why I've suggested leaving this blog to self-reinforce/inbreed its particular brand of agitprop. Let it eat itself.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to War Butt for example? Warren Butterfield or somesuch name. The guy who was crotch-based. Left as soon as he came. And now we have someone, or some bot, who's 'faggot-based'.
Mind you, it helps subvert America's position-- and this blog-- whether you/they realize it or not: The most asinine and/or flaccid comments seem to be pro-Trump/anti-Iran.
So maybe that's a good thing at the end of the day, maybe at the end of an American civil war. Certainly Kunstler's been beating those war-drums in part from a divisive pseudo-left-right angle. Do you like what you read? Great! 🎯
"Why are people who have an opposing opinion automatically labelled as trolls?" ~ Cankerpuss
Because that's probably the best that they can ass-pull. Maybe they're paid by the ass-pull.
These days, often, calling someone a troll (noun) *is* a troll (verb). The concept has been bastardized. Bastardizing the term, troll, is especially important if you're inclined to troll, paid or otherwise.
"You forgot the part about 'Death to America, the Great Satan'. Now, analogize on that part, Jorge." ~ MarshaLouise
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If you briefly pull your head out of your ass and do the lightest bit of research, you may find that America, since at least World War Two, if not before, has been killing the most around the world.
It's apparenty number one in that regard, which is no real suprise.
It's also number one in the world for arms dealing, so tops in aiding and abetting murder.
Or you can keep your head up your ass, pretend you didn't just read this, and continue, along with your little groupies here, with your ass-pulls.
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If my name was Iran or someone else another target of America and someone, named America, had already killed others and was trying to kill me and/or rob, etc., from my children or neighors then, ya, I'd probably call for death to America too.
As for the Middle East squatter, Israel, I think it needs to be run out of town, their Zionist and/or war-like inhabitants to literally be relocated. Like they suggested of those in Gaza.
I might have not felt that way about Israel 2 or 3 years ago, and thought it could change and/or somehow peacefully fit in, but it doesn't look like it's going to.
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"The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation." ~ Emma Goldman
You know that over half of Israel believe in “death to Arabs” so I guess that makes them a legit target for Arab military intervention? This has got to be one of the most profoundly stupid takes anyone has come up with about Iran.
Do you mean the "Arabs" (i.e., jihadists) that sadistically mass murdered over 1,000 Israelis on October 7, 2023? The same ones and others sponsored by the IRGC that have killed or maimed tens of thousands of people worldwide since 1979? ...those Arabs?
LOL the Israelis hannibaled most of those Israelis on 10/7. And the Iranian republic did not “sponsor Arabs to kill 10s of thousands worldwide since 1979”. What boomerslop propaganda 🤦♀️
There is, genius! How did you figure that out? One of the reasons I am no longer there is that I am not interested in living among supremacist, genocidal zombies.
Iran IS tyranny, they are not fighting tyranny. One man rule, by a religious nut. That is tyranny. Trump has shifted gears, putting Iran under siege. We will see how they handle having no revenue to do their saber rattling with. First order, getting water for their folks.
Russia may be re-arming Iran via the Caspian Sea. We will not screw with Russia. They have their hands full with Ukraine anyway.
The US is going to get the various “tribes” in the Middle East to form an alliance and then get the heck out of Dodge. Same with the caliph in Europe. Orban’s loss to EU favored opponent is just another stimulus to Trump dumping Europe. That would be a good move as NATO countries under the globalist EU hate Trumpian USA. America First means exactly that, screw the globalists.
BTW, the blockade and siege of Iran is genius, someone earned their salary in the DOW.
What makes you say it's genuis and have others said as much and if so, who?
I've already read and written related stuff, here and elsewhere, such as WRT J. Brown's Land Export Model and the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Geopolitics will likely revolve in part around the former with various effects such as the latter and of course the US' apparent current 'flotilla'.
If America is running out of the easy oil, then that threatens, at least as they may see it, their national security.
Trump has chosen the siege route instead of direct conflict. Before this all happened, Iran was exporting people from Tehran because there was no water for the population. Trump was surprised that the supposed rebels in Iran did not rise up, maybe an intelligence oops? The elite machine in Iran will be starved of revenue from oil, so weakened. Will the people rise up? Trump will give them time to do so. If they do not, the next stage will be much more unpleasant for both sides.
We use little of the ME oil, about 8% I think. We are fighting for oil for East Asia and Europe. CP is probably right about the fact that we should tell the rest of the world to shove it and figure it out for themselves.
You're getting a lot of flak in the comments, so you must be over the target. After pissing away countless lives and untold billions, the US has replaced the Taliban with the Taliban, and now Khameini with Khameini, which doesn't exactly bode well. Many here are still cheerleading and saying everything is just great, going according to plan lol...Most likely they are on someone's payroll to try to manufacture consent for this war that nobody wanted and no one except for a few Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham devotees supports.
My son-in law, a reservist, left his wife, toddler and newborn nearly two months ago to fight this war in the skies over the Middle East.
I don’t hate this war because of him. I hate the war because it doesn’t offer a purpose I can aptly explain to my granddaughter in the event her father doesn’t come home.
In the first week, it was “Iran is killing their own citizens. We must react!” And “Women in Iran are subject to archaic religious social rules.” Then it grew into issues re: nuclear bombs, then oil, now a strait.
Don’t challenge me on this. I’ve had good reason to keep track. I’ve got all the tweets.
Which excuse is it? Which one would make sense to a family whose husband and father flies all night in a foreign land with his lights off?
And I look at our country—divided, struggling, with archaic infrastructure, sick people, like myself, parading like ants in and out of cancer centers, a lack of order on the roads and in the public square, Americans being hacked to death by illegal immigrants on a routine basis, the court system set on tyranny…the cost of living out of control with no end in sight. Our country is bleeding from deep wounds and there is no leadership honed in on the healing.
This father is needed at home to help his family—-which by default helps his country. There is no reason big enough, bold enough to convince any person with reason that more killing, more war, more muscle flexing, serves a more divine purpose than taking care of our own.
I see it as old men playing chess. And no matter what century we’re in, there they are, old and decaying men, perched over an ancient chess board.
I fear that in my lifetime we will not evolve past this—-that young men will continue to give their lives for institutionalized insanity.
And children will always live in countries where their best interest, their safety and happiness will have never mattered at all.
We should all go to sleep with visions of the thousands of dead children killed by our country for its “reasons.” And all the fucking fathers who never came home.
Freedom of transit through the strait without Iran threatening it with mines, ICBMs, threatening to plug it up by sinking ships, or nuclear diplomacy, which is all the above on steroids.
It was flowing just fine with no problems before this unnecessary war. So I guess we are fighting the war to return to the original status quo? That would by definition be a not very smart war to have started. And if the US doesn't even get oil from the strait, why are we there to begin with? Could it be that Orange is our true president Bibi's puppet?
How about the avoidance of a nuclear BOMB on your very limited and STUPID head. Reason enough. You want that in the hands of homicidal apocalyptic maniacs so they can use it on this family and you which you are so worried about. How dumb can you be?
US track record in trying to oust a rogue regime and replacing it with another is dismal at best. Let me rattle off a few. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Chile, Ukraine, Panama and so forth.
If we are going to change the Iranian regime then for God's sake destroy it completely and make it the 51st state. Don't bother trying to replace one government with another. The USA is shit when it comes to this. On the other hand the USA is pretty good when it takes over a place and keeps it for their own.
Thanks Dennis for your comments on this thread as well. I have a feeling Lindsey Graham is sitting at home in his nightgown, after becoming excited by the day's war news, and is sh*t posting under a few different names on this site lol...
“Councillors in Auckland voted 14-2 to investigate supporting sanctions against Israel, according to the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. The move tasks staff with reviewing companies listed by the UN Human Rights Council as linked to Israel’s occupation.
The motion, introduced by Julie Fairey, calls for assessing council contracts with such firms and reporting back on possible next steps.
'Tens of thousands of Aucklanders turned out last year to march in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the least we can do is check that we are not spending Aucklanders’ money, public money, in ways that cause harm and exacerbate war crimes', Fairey wrote."
I'm in agreement with you. I don't understand why it is okay for the USA to have nukes to defend itself with but it is not okay for other nations to have them. I know they are going to claim that Iran is a sponsor of world wide terrorism and that if they had nukes they would turn Israel and the USA as well as the rest of the world into glass. Possibly. But then again, nobody really knows for sure what Iran would do with the nukes as nobody has a palantir that grants them prophetic insights.
This much I do know. The sovereign nation of Iran has sitting on its shores and borders dozens of US military installations and warships. Now, if this were the case in the USA the USA would be pretty pissed about it. Russia is pissed because Ukraine bore the possibility of becoming part of NATO and thus putting possible antagonistic forces on Russia's border. Here we have Iran, pissed that the USA has encroached all around its borders and its shores and many people on this comment thread don't understand why Iran wants to protect itself.
Personally, I do not believe anyone will ever launch a nuke against another nation (other than the USA bombing Japan) simply because of the knowledge of "mutually assured destruction." Nukes give us the ability to bully the weak and keep the strong from attacking. There is a benefit there, truth be told.
It's almost as if the war humpers don't stop to think that perhaps Iran wants nukes, hates the USA is because the USA is always on their borders and fucking around with everything in the region. They don't hate the USA because the USA is wealthy or because of the "freedom" its inhabitants "enjoy." There is another reason and it is that reason that the war humpers will never admit or consider.
Most of the readers on this blog will agree that Washington DC is corrupt to the core and that the military/industrial complex is real and is a powerful player in the "deep state." But then they turn around and claim that all war, sponsored by the DC cesspool is morally necessary and we are the righteous aggressors. There is a baffling and strange paradox here. If the purveyors of the war are evil would not the war they are engaged within also be evil?
It's not because "I said so", it's because we said so.
It's actually quite simple, and thankfully there's one nation that is yet strong and moral enough to stand up to a crazed nation hell-bent on violating the NPT. God bless America!
Come on, Ezinmn. Do you really believe this? The USA is still a moral nation?
What does the US version of democracy bring a nation like Iran. Let's see, pornography is rampant in the USA. Drug abuse is rampant in the USA. Taxes are high in the USA and don't benefit the taxpayers. The USA is $40 trillion in debt. In the USA women are in charge and control everything. In the USA abortion is rampant. In the USA women fight to protect abortion and fight to protect murders from the death penalty. In the USA a SCOTUS justice doesn't know what a woman is. In the USA men are competing with women in athletics. In the USA the printing presses are running at maximum stealing the value of the money from the citizens. In the USA more children are born out of wedlock than in. In the USA 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The USA has the highest rate of incarcerated citizens in the world.
How can you honestly sit there and believe that this nation, run by a corrupt cesspool like Washington DC and and elite class that are all on the Epstein list, is still a moral nation?
I've read some doozies on this site but this one takes the cake today.
One of the things I love about Kunstler is his ability to point out and describe the absurdity of current life in America. I don't agree with his pro-war stance in Iran, especially given his knowledge of the Long Emergency but it is his opinion and I don't argue his right to express it. The commentariat have become increasingly hostile to opposing opinions, even when those holding those opposing opinions typically agree with them. They close their eyes to reality, plug their ears with their fingers and shout "na na na, not going to listen to this." It might be time for me to take a break from the CFN commentariat, like you have done recently. I miss reading your opposing view points to the many comments posited here.
CP - It's easy to look at the world from a naive, "I wish things were perfect" perspective. But I hate to tell you, the world can be a dangerous place, and America has once again taken up the mantle to bring down rogue nations like Iran, a nation hell-bent on thumbing it's nose at the rest of the world in defiance of an agreed-to NPT. They recently killed 40,000 civilians who protested against their government. America and Donald Trump should be commended for the actions taken in this matter, not nit-picked at for sins not uncommon among men. History will bear this out.
In America, you are given the choice to watch porn, have an abortion, file for divorce, have a child out of wedlock, and on and on. Ours is a country founded on freedom, and with freedom comes responsibility, sadly a trait sorely missing from many. 10,000,000 people traveled to our country recently to get a chance to live the American Dream, where an immigrant can, in one generation, move to the upper echelon of society. Try doing that in Iran, or even in your wildest Utopian dream.
As Winston Churchill stated, "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". Our country has produced more good for the world than all civilizations combined. I choose to dwell on and improve upon what makes us a great nation, not on our faults.
I applaud your blind obedience and support to what America has become. I don't share that blind obedience and support.
America may have been founded on freedom but she is no longer a free Country. In America today we no longer can own property. Property taxes are with us until we die regardless of whether we pay off our mortgages. My annual rent payment to the gubmint is hovering around $5,000 per year. If I refuse to pay the County they will slap a daily fine on it, if I continue to refuse to pay they will place a lien on the property. If I continue to refuse to pay they will either sell the lien to an investor who will then own the property or they will place my property on tax sale.
Yeah, I am free to watch porn, to have an abortion, to do drugs, to drive to the grocery store, to cross state lines to buy a lottery ticket but I am not free to own property free and clear of government intrusion.
Just sent Uncle Sam nearly $12,000 dollars in "income tax" on the money that I worked to earn. That money is used to pay bills, buy gasoline, purchase food and so forth. It is not income yet it is taxed heavily. I guess we should be happy. "NOW THIS IS TAXES!" Quoting the stupid Turbo Tax commercials that equate tax payments to getting a massage. Bastards! What do I get in return for my taxes? Not a goddamned thing. No free health care, I still have to pay for that. No, I think my taxes bought a nose cone on one of the missiles they lobbed at Iran. I guess, according to you, I should feel it a privilege to pay for that nose cone. Right? That's a return on my taxes that I am proud of.
"A majority of Americans don't see Trump as a catastrophe at all. They see him favorably. You should prepare yourself for more truth telling and revelations. It's going to keep coming; day after day, week after week, until only dishonest rubes will continue to spew falsehoods obvious to everyone.
The patriots are taking our country back. We will continue until the last ounce of treachery is squeezed out of the corrupt system that was. We're just getting started. This is a glorious time where decades will happen in weeks. Truly stunning and a good time to be alive."
What kind of God would bless a country providing 2,000lb bombs to a mass-murderer knowing full well he is going to drop them on hospitals and refugee camps?
How retarded do you think we are? Israel very much has nukes and you know it as well as we do. People like you are why there’s antisemitism. Congratulations on giving ammo to the antisemites 👍👍
Mr. F---- even the NRA is ok with limiting the rights of certifiable insane people or people who have committed serious felonies so your comment that ---- I can own a gun and you cannot---- does not really make any sense. The US and most of sane society does not go around saying we want to kill a whole ethnic group---the J- people. The US gov't has not ever said it wants to kill all of any ethnic group or race of people. The wonderful peace loving Palastinians (spelling?) and the wonderful peace loving mullahs (as opposed the majority of the Persians) say it plainly and often. They love to chant slogans at their many protests where they yell it in peoples faces that they want to kill Americans and every last one of the J people. Maybe we should take them serious and act before millions of us are nuked. Even tho I think the Pakistan leaders are not exactly my idea of a great gov't, they typically do not tell everyone who will listen that they want to kill all the Js or all Americans. Same with India. Did you notice that we did not go to war with the Paki's or Indians? Every Prez since Jimmy Carter has kicked the problem of the Iranian mullah gov't down the road so as not to hurt their chances of getting reelected so....... when this steaming pile of bull shiff lands on Trump's desk, he is the first Prez that rightfully says to the mullahs that we have had enough of your shiff and it is time to address it. Of course if we had O or Biden or Kamala or Jimmy Carter as Prez, they would already be sending up the white flag of surrender and.....to top it all off both O and Xiden sent them many, many, many billions of greenbacks to try to buy they off but......paying a bribe to the bully just gets you a little time and that is all. Thank you Prez Trump for finally trying to solve the problem rather than just bribing them to be good mullahs.
Many countries have that rule re guns. In any event, a gun isn't a nuke, and there are good reasons for the NPT - do you think it should be abolished? These weapons should not be all over the globe in the hands of governments of 190+ nations.
Pakistan has nukes and they are a nation run by the same Islamic religion that permeates Iran. Why are we not bombing the hell out of Pakistan and telling them to get rid of their nukes?
Is that what you are proposing now? Were you also one of the people upset when Trump did not “commit war crimes “starting last Tuesday at 8 PM? Saying he chickened out?
The USA has no need to be over there. We only receive 7% of our raw petroleum from that area. We are over there because in order to justify a $1.5 trillion defense spending budget we need a war to fight.
Iran hasn't invaded anyone for over 200 years. The USA? Every year we are invading some other sad sack country. Think of what could be done at home with $1.5 trillion dollars.
Israel gets away with all kinds of things because people like you run cover for them. Don't count it out. Will you still run cover for them if they do it?
unfair maybe, however that's how power works. Iran will come out of this severely crippled and the US even stronger, no matter how much third world leftists would like to think otherwise.
Big trouble and the war humpers turn a blind eye to it. $40 trillion and counting. How does the USA get out of this debt burden? Two ways.
1. Default on the debt. That means an economy built on debt is busted. Few people will have any money to do anything with. Business dies. Massive Depression ensues.
2. Monetize the debt by money printing. Money printing means more dollars competing for the same amount of resources. This means inflation. Inflation means our money is worth less. As more printing of money happens people have less money to do anything with. The result? Massive depression.
Either way we are totally boned. War humpers like JohnAZ completely ignore this.
Finally, a comment that makes sense. In other words, the USA is a bully and it uses its might to bully other nations around. Thank you for finally saying the truth rather than virtue signaling the moral superiority of the corrupted USA.
I was agreeing with your comment, Mitch. However, your follow up comment is silly at best. Bullies are bullies. Some are small fries like children. Others are big kahunas like the USA. In the end the principle is the same. The USA does what it does in other nations simply because it has the military might and there is none other that can oppose them. Bullies bully because they can get away with it. Doesn't matter if it is on a school playground or in the Persian gulf. Period.
Incorrect. A country that has used the slogan "Death to America" for almost five decades and is poised to have nuclear missiles is a threat that needs to be dealt with and so we are using our power to do that. If you are the weakling, you probably shouldn't repeatedly pronounce your desire to kill another. That the response has taken this long is the real issue. Period.
Incorrect. A country that has used the slogan "Death to Iran"* for over five decades and has thousands of nuclear missiles is a threat that needs to be dealt with.
That the Worlds response has taken this long is the real issue.
America, like Israel, is becoming a pariah on the World stage.
America needs to fuck off, mind its own business, and take care of the inevitable collapse destroying them from within. While they piss away the countries treasure on useless foreign wars.
*and has used the slogan "Death to _____" fill in the blank, for dozens of countries it does not control.
Oh Jorge…take you and your Marxist rhetoric back to your mother’s basement where you belong. I have a coupon code for a free Domino’s pizza if that helps?
We say they can’t have nuclear weapons because there is a better than even chance they will use them. How do we come to this conclusion? Their actions and words strongly indicate that they would in fact use them. See? Now, that wasn’t too hard of a position to defend, now, was it?
Okay then...I'll mark you down as supporting a mass murdering suicide death cult that recently slaughtered tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians for daring to disagree with the regime's policies and having weapons of mass destruction while it continues levying a risk premium on energy markets that has cost the world around $3 trillion in the last 50 years.
" ... a mass murdering suicide death cult that recently slaughtered tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians for daring to disagree with the regime's policies and having weapons of mass destruction ..."
.
Hmm ... you're describing Trump and Gang to a 'T'.
With one 'minor' correction: Trump & Gang didn't slaughter "tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians". No, Trump & Gang slaughtered **MILLIONS** of Americans and others around the world, with the "safe and effective" jabs. Many more deaths to come.
How many innocents suffer or die when the enemy nation's infrastructure has been blown to smithereens? Doesn't that not matter. Famine anyone? I guess that's okay?
They are legitimate military targets per defense doctrine updated and signed by both Obama and Biden. It’s nuanced but they can legitimate. If their targeting ultimately leads to Iran not getting a nuclear weapon then it is justified. Using one’s populace as human shields is definitely a war crime as outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
But I see your point. I agree that we should not be gleeful over the misery that will come to the Iranian people, though ultimately it will make the world a safer place and save millions of lives.
"I agree that we should not be gleeful over the misery that will come to the Iranian people"
One comment above mentioned that 90% of Iranian population are opposed to the Islamic regime that governs them.
"though ultimately it will make the world a safer place and save millions of lives."
Did the same thing happen after the USA intervened in Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Vietnam (millions of lives saved when the USA exited Vietnam)? Korea (still at war)? Afghanistan? Iran (1970s intervention)? Ukraine?
You are ignoring the USA's dismal track record of nation building in favor of hopeful thinking.
Completely different situation. None of those countries you mentioned were on the credible cusp of having a nuclear weapon. Once developed, first stop Tel Aviv and an instant Holocaust (5.6 million in Tel Aviv Metro). If you could have stopped Hitler in the ‘30’s , would you have? Well, here is civilization’s second chance to remove evil and prevent WWII levels of death.
I'm a realist, Beth and I am weary of constant war. I want to see my taxes, your taxes and everyone's tax dollars spent here at home improving the USA, her infrastructure, her borders, her safety, her government, her healthcare, etc. If that is being gloomy then so be it.
That was all for show & profit…..misery is never assuaged……USA is not responsible for the monsters in our midst! The only cure is world wide mind control! Will never happen! I have bad moods & evil thoughts occasionally !
Destruction of critical infrastructure results in economy destruction which in turn can result in famine and civil unrest resulting in increased death and destruction. In this case the innocents suffer, not the elites. Nobody should be okay with this. Nobody, especially not Christians.
Including the means of life, such as desalination plants? Well you are now back to the level of total war, as per the ancient Assyrians and their modern day spiritual heirs, the Zionists.
To believe that I used to be excited for Mondays and Fridays to read what you had to say. WTF happened in the last few months? Nothing you write is worth reading. It seems like you forgot the difference between the "good guys" and the "baddies". When it comes to politics, just to give you a little hint to get back on the right track, Israel started this whole shebang just like they start everything in the last 80 years. The USA is obsequious to these monsters for some incredible reason. JFK and RFK getting assassinated was the beginning of a message that even Charlie Kirk found out about on September 10th. And everything in between. As Caitlin Johnstone, certainly not one of my favorites, but is absolutely correct when she says: "... you can either have Israel or peace. You can't have both".
So who are the good guys and who are the baddies? There are no good guys. They are all bad, all liars, cheats, thieves, killers, and antichristlike. The key here is to understand who is rotten to the core and satan's prime examples (Zionists in Israel and the now former USA) or just religious and ethnic despots like Iran. It sure looks like the BRICS are closest to the good guys and Putin seems to be the only adult in the room.
The problem I think is that Mr. Kunstler is either unable or unwilling to accept that the group of which he is a member might be guilty of anything.
And thus, on this issue and others pertaining to the same group, his opinion appears so far off base to those of us who simply observe without partiality.
I said day 1 of this phoney ceasefire it was just a diversion for the US to be able to stage a ground invasion of some sort.
Iran won’t fire first, unfortunately on religious grounds, like it didn't fire at planes lined up to attack Iran ~ and the lying US will use this ceasefire against them to start the killing all over again on behalf of Israel.
The US has no reverse gear. It is shitting in its own bed. And bankrupting itself.
At best the US will retreat and Isreal will “mow the lawn” in Iran every few years like it did to the Palestinians before annihilating them in a genocide.
Dennis L. Merwood, if he follows his 'vow', will be getting rid of many more for his money, though. And maybe help turn this place into more of a masturbatory echo-chamber to boot. Bonus.
I'll be following him out the door... Come on, Dennis, let's go, stop clusterfucking around with these people... Allow them a masturbatory safe-space for chrissakes. Where else are they going to go? Moon of Alabama? That'd be amusing.
____
WRT these kinds of topics, for now, I'll likely occasionally bar-hop to Moon of Alabama-- same nick-- probably mostly lurking, with maybe the occasional post. Feel free to join me.
----
Random sample comment:
"Don’t believe the hype.
I don’t know why anyone still believes anything Trump and his regime of Rethuglians says. It’s always, bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.
The tables have turned, US is now a diminishing state in world geopolitical power. The mindless ‘blockade of the blockade’ is already done for.
The US won’t be attacking China either, but every time people keep getting sucked in with the phony ‘Lord Jesus’ Trump – God complex narcissistic hype.
Even Rand Corp told the Pentagon and Trump’s loonies to back off on China, so they hid the report."
I'm not sure "the US" is a thing in its own right any longer. We are the backing for the bankers' currency and we are their army - that seems to be about it. And it appears they are in the process of laying us off...
I suggest you save eight dollars a month and unsubscribe if you’re too buried under your WOKE gentle idea of tyrants who executed 150,000 innocent Iranians just last year. Not to mention have accrued secretly, enriched uranium to enact “Death to America”. Just go away and let others be brave.
The number of executed people in Iran changes as much as the size of the big Rainbow Trout I caught last September in the stories to my children. "It was this big! I swear!"
Yeah, it's horrible. No argument from me. My argument has always been that it isn't the USA's problem to resolve. This problem belongs to the people of Iran to resolve. Yeah, sounds harsh but that's the way I see it. The USA is broken both financially and politically. It is time to stop playing the world's police department and start fixing the problems here at home. I have no ill-will to the people of Iran, I really don't, but, I really don't care about their problems. We have too many problems right here in the big 50 that need redress and we are ignoring most of them in favor of empire building throughout the globe. It must stop NOW.
Right you are. So sick of ‘saving’ everyone both here and all over the planet. Napoleon started out with a justified mission but ended up obsessed with an emperor’s crown.
Don't kid yourself about BRICS. Putin and Xi dance on the same strings as our western leaders. It's just not quite so obvious and so utterly corrupt that the only people who will take the jobs there are utterly venal and incompetent, demented bozos which is the stage we have reached here in the west.
James is remarkably naive about the actual motives of the US empire, fka the British empire. The CIA & MI6 took out the democratically elected President of Iran so we could continue stealing the oil, and the US has continued that type of behavior around the world ever since. Sure, the Iranians shout “Death to America.” Completely understandable in the circumstances.
The USA created Saddam Hussein and Al Qauida. Then we went to war to defeat them. The US created the Iranian mullahs when its CIA ousted the Shah. Now the USA goes to war to oust them. There's a pattern here. A pattern that pads the pockets of the fat cats over at Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup-Grummond. Now you know why the USA constantly keeps finding sad sack nations like Iran to beat up on citing "terrorism." It's exhausting.
Thowest doth go on& on& on!!! …..about us dumb Americans being LIED to over& over& over! AND…..I agree….but I’d like to have faith in someone or something!!
POTUS & C&C are my choices!
I’ll be too old to give a damn soon, so let me die in peace!😩😩😩
Can you hear yourselves? They shot down two planes out of how many missions flown? BFD! I cannot believe the absolute stupidity of some of the folks here that are grasping at every straw for the Iranians. Get it, we lost two planes, they lost their Air Force. Not a single US ship has been touched, Iran has lost their navy. We have lost less than twenty folks, they killed 40000 of their own people. They arbitrarily throw rockets and missiles at civilian targets, we use precision to avoid civilians with one failure, a school next to a missile site. You are USA HATERS, PERIOD. Trump has his TDS Haters, the USA has its USA Haters.
Good an evil are just a state of mind, right, JohnAZ? As long as we believe it is good then it is good! Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or believes.
Who are we? Who is the anyone else? And no, it does not matter what anyone else thinks. Define good as a truth, who is good? You seem to define good as what anyone who opposes the USA has in mind and evil is everything the USA believes in. We will never agree on that. Honestly, your confessing that you never served for this country sorta removes your credibility.
It doesn't matter. Their missiles will carry them to victory. They only have to not lose. They will take out our ships if we try to blockade the straits of Hormuz. That's why our ships fled.
As I said before, you need better sources. 80% of Iran’s missiles are gone, either shot off or destroyed. Their ability to make new missiles has been destroyed, no new replacements. The two destroyers are clearing the strait from mines, and after that the US Navy is going to blockade Iranian ships from transporting oil. The tankers are already re-routing to the USA to get oil here. China and the Far East do not care where their oil comes from, they will not challenge the USN. The ships have not fled, they are in the straits right now.
Lugh, you are going to lose big time with your USA hatred this time.
But its true if it comes from Fox News, don't you know! JohnAZ sits in his arm chair and watches Fox News, listens to Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and that's his truth. The rest doesn't matter and we are all whack-jobs for having a deviating opinion.
Hold on there, cowboy! The point was that we claim we have "air supremacy" or "air superiority," or "control of airspace," depending on who you listen to, but they still shot down two of our planes, probably with MANPADs. That's NOT air supremacy. MANPADs are a real problem in a ground attack environment.
Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters and also used against low-flying cruise missiles. These short-range missiles can also be fired from vehicles, tripods, weapon platforms, and warships.
Much of the Western press are all basically saying, yeah the war is over, US has the airspace and has decimated Iran, US is in control. Then I listen to Judge Napolitano's show, for example, and most analysts he interviews talk of Iran being in the driver's seat, ready for a long war, and holding the critical cards (unified in a war of survival, and having the ability to inflict pain on the global economy and the petrodollar). How much of the bloviating coming out of the white house is intended to keep the stock market from melting down.
Nobody will win and the innocent Iranian people will continue to suffer. This will drag on and on and on until the USA moves on to some other sad sack nation to bully. See Afghanistan. 20 years in that shit hole and what did it get us? Not a goddamned thing. Got the Taliban billions of American military equipment funded by the US taxpayer.
Ultimately, you have to get along with your environment. Make it your 'comrade'.
Whatever or whoever can't or won't, won't be around for long. Nature will see to that. Even if USrael 'wins', Its victory will be, at best, pyrrhic, to say nothing about if it brings its 'strategies' with it, into its future for as long as it has one.
'Karma', like unintended consequences, doesn't have to appear immediately, nor be obvious. It can happen across generations.
____
"Species move from competition to cooperation because they discover the economic value of cooperating. It is cheaper, more efficient... All you have to do is look at our pentagon budget and see that a tiny fraction of it would really develop countries that we've been levelling instead... Very much more cost-effective to make friends of them than it is to keep them as enemies." ~ Elizabet Sahtouris (evolutionary biology)
There is no one source....imho....I use a variety and learn which areas are their strong points based on what makes sense to me....But I am much older and have been collecting but not connecting dots for decades. I like C&C, Klusterfuck Nation, Don Surber, Tippinsights (but not on all subjects), Promethean Action (but I disagree with Susan regarding mankind), Alexander Mercouris but only regarding Ukraine (he does not understand Trump and how he operates and is definitely not objective about Israel but actually is objectively factual about the City of London)...Mark Groubert of America's Untold Stories actually has some interesting viewpoints on selected subjects....There are other little nuggets here and there but I go by my gut as to whether what someone says makes sense or not.
The man asked about learning more about geopolitics. I'd bet $100 that you've never listened to him and another that you often ignorantly shoot your mouth off.
Oh please. Bannon is a Duginite. He’s in the crazy pile along with Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes etc. I was a devoted listener of Bannon’s for years, starting back with the “pandemic”.
Twenty years ago I also thought there was no reason to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
Nowadays I don’t leap at the most obvious answer to geopolitical conundrums. I don’t, for eg, think the easiest answer is to blame the jooooooos, or in my case think we should move them all to Long Island.
I don’t think Dugin’s multipolar world is an answer: it’s simply his wishful plot to destroy the West. And I no longer think Bannon is a patriot.
None of these so-called “crazy pile” thought leaders give a rat’s ass about what kind of world our children and grandchildren inherit.
If you want a knowledgeable reply to Trump's take on Iran, Israel and the middle east check out Col. Douglas Macgregor, a guest on the Judge's show once a week and ubiquitous on various podcasts. Macgregor should be president.
There are many decent You Tube and other sites' shows on the subject, which it is imagined you already know.
One just has to easily dig a bit, that's all, although sometimes one can even accidentally run into many more good channels in the process. Just bookmark them, even if temporarily, in their own folder(s).
For example, I occasionally run into Dimitry Lascaris' channel, an episode which I'm listening to right now.
Russia Warns Of Huge US Military Build-Up Near Iran w/ Dr. Foad Izadi
If James Howard Kunstler's going to maintain his tack of a certain kind of article, then he's going to attract the kind of readership who are attracted to it and/or the readership ecosystem created, and potentially lose other segments of it who, for various reasons, aren't.
He's effectively creating a particular readership ecosystem that differs, often fundamentally, with his initial one. Some will flourish in it, while some will not.
Kustler initially came from or with a different, at least in part, 'literary ecosystem', one more or less defined by anti-car-culture, collapse and relocalization-- that kind of thing. That's probably in large part why he's been getting flak: He's shifted the 'ecosystem'. It's perhaps a bit like what Trump appears to be doing on a macro level, such as through his and his allies' militaries.
Agreed and I don’t feel inclined to waste energy here. JHK has jumped the shark and I am less and less inclined to come here to read commentary from the armchair generals of all stripes.
Where have you been? JHK jumped the shark ages ago. It happened around the time Duncan Crary left the Kunstlercast. Taking the reins of his podcast himself, JHK redirected his energies from commenting about urbanism to falling for, and signal boosting, every right-wing-coded grievance-driven delusion narrative under the sun.
Notice I don't say he's wrong about everything. The problem is that he can't tell the difference. Kunstler's twice-weekly bouts of "social commentary" (those words should be read in the egregiously derisive voice of Kunstler's quote-marked "Joe Biden") are a free-wheeling mélange of part truth, part regurgitated propaganda, part ill-tempered Looney Tunes.
I hear you both. I haven't heard the podcast. I found his column a few years back when I read The Long Emergency, and recently started stopping by his weekly posts here. I don't disagree with a lot of the criticism of the dems (I'm an independent and feel both parties have been a disaster). But there also seems to be a reverse TDS that elevates Trump to some kind of savior of Western civ. I thought we might get some commentary about the coming oil shock and effects of the war on the global economy, as he used to focus more on that angle.
Perhaps inadvertently referenced, but I feel obligated to recommend the exceptionally excellent song by Billy Strings, 'Wargasm'. Though you might not be a fan (Billy may have as many haters as Israel), this unique composition is only vaguely 'bluegrass' (even includes a rap verse!). Spoiler alert: yes, it is an anti-war anthem, hence its lack of mainstream airplay. (Insert random joke dissing Neil Young here.)
I recommend this studio version as the many 'live' versions on youtube are decidedly uptempo/'bluegrassified', and less lyrically intelligible. Suggest they use this tune as background music for the next round of 'peace' talks!
Thanks for the recommendation, I'm always up for checking out some music I haven't heard. I love the word, it's very appropriate for these times, and fitting nickname for ghouls like Lindsey Graham, Levin, Netanyahu, among others.
Today's gonna be a good day. When words like "hidey-holes" and "dingdang gas station" have you laughing before your feet even hit the ground, you just know it's a good day. If not, close you eyes and remember coffee shooting out your nose from laughing before even leaving the bed! That'll do the trick! Have a great day! ❤️🤭🇺🇸
Did he write "hidey-holes" and "dingdang gas station"? Sounds kind of gay, but I forget if I read the article or not or just skimmed it so am unaware of the contexts. He seems to like 'lefty-left' too.
I prefer tea, but do periodically have coffee, too, often as a 'palate reset', ideally rather than nose-rinser, from all my teas.
I wasn't talking about you Kathy L. I was using the word "her" as a general term to identify someone of the female persuasion. It was not directed at you individually.
I believe women have certain strengths that men don't have and I believe men have certain strengths that women don't have. If that is misogyny than I guess I am guilty as charged. Sorry to disappoint you AK.
Avril Haines also had a seat at the 2019 “EVENT 201”, The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, held in New York, NY. “The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships would be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”
Less than 5 months later Covid arrived on the scene.
How’d all that “diminishing consequences” work out for the world?
Bill is a thoroughly evil man. He has lamented that Americans don't understand the devastating effects of malaria after it was eradicated, for the most part, here. He's trying to bring it back so we will be made to understand and all get to share in the bounty. It isn't fair that we don't get malaria when poor countries do.
I need a new computer and I refuse to buy Win-11. Might as well invite Klaus Schwab and George Soros into my office. And I don't have time to learn Linux. (ugh)
You can certainly get rid of your social secirity number. I would imagine you can also stop paying social security contributions - but I assume you would also have to give up any benefits you have accrued to date.
There are ways to work around the Win 11 hardware restrictions and get it for free if your machine is running W10. The ironic part is that the tools to do it are all buried in MS’s own website.
JHK, I really like your articles, but you’ve got a large group of anti-Israel TDS boobs in your comments section. The idiots who say “there’s no plan.” Could you be any dumber? From Drill Baby Drill & radically increasing US energy production…to dismantling idiotic grifter scheme Climate Change policies….. to toppling Maduro & controlling Venezuela’s oil…..to now eliminating Iran’s ability to terrorize the Middle East and Gulf states and to control oil supply to stupidly-green Europe & needy China, and now brilliantly blocking the Strait of Hormuz & outwitting the stone-age Mullahs…. Sure Bozos, there’s no plan. Good Lord. Read some Childers’ Coffee and Covid and watch Promethean Action for history and strategy. You sound like CNN & NYT people.
I am aware of the trollery that infests these comments. In the interest of free speech, I police the joint lightly, but I have kicked some trolls off. Certainly makes you wonder about the mental health of the nation.
JHK, I sincerely appreciate the forum you provide and articles you write even though at times I don't agree with your writings. You are an American treasure. I hope you don't interpret opposing view points as "trollish" comments.
Many are discussing the oil shock that is coming, that it is probably going to be worse than the 1973 oil crisis, if events continue without any change. Now the US is going for a full blockade, ratcheting the temp up a few notches on the brewing supply chain crisis. Will China have something to say about its tankers being blocked. Interesting times we are living in...
I worked at a gas station during the "oil crisis" of 1973! It was awful. Cars were constantly lined up out into the streets continuously. No self serve, and back then the gas tanks in a lot of cars were behind the rear license plate. You had to squat down and lift up the rear plate to get to the opening - not good!
This is where the Petro Dollar enters the conversation. China can get all the oil they want from the US or Venezuela. They have been getting away with paying Iran in yuan and were likely paying Maduro in yuan. Venezuela now gets Dollars for its oil. It appears there has been a strategy involved here where Trump has taken out Venezuela which also takes out Cuba. Mexico is walking on eggshells, ending "donations" of oil to Cuba fearing SIX or Delta visiting them at 3 AM. No more free oil for commies and now China is faced with having to pay Dollars for oil having previously been getting a huge discount while also paying in yuan. Trump has removed or hobbled client states of China and basically kicked them in the crotch with the new payment regime while adding renewed muscle to the Monroe Doctrine. A lot to dissect here.
Trump's maneuvers are both bold and daring; a rather brilliant attempt to recalibrate the world order, keeping the USA in the game for decades to come. China has finally been confronted in its quest to take us down. I'm bullish on America.
I'd say our greatest threat going forward are the traitors within our own country that are willing to sell us out. Trump will be unleashing on these folks over the next few weeks.
The Democrat thugs are going to clean house this November and Trump will spend the last two years of his sorry Presidency fighting back impeachment charges.
Re: Swalwell. I dislike him as much as anyone, but this #MeToo nonsense is worse, far worse, than anything he could dream up. I realized that back when Garrison Keilor got cancelled. He was an old style Democrat - a calm, sane, friendly guy you might disagree with, but could talk with. What happened to him was a disgrace. Sad to see we are still tolerating that sort of thing.
Re Swalwell....anything for the cause....they want to combine the Democrat support behind one candidate to get at least one on the ballot for the primary....when they rigged the system with open primaries, they never figured that two Republicans would get the top two spots...The Dems did it for a reason....they asked him to step aside and he refused.....So...He got pushed out....
There are many Douche Nozzles in Congress, Swalwell is among the elite of this Reprehensible Group! He may very well be on the Executive Committee for this pathetic group of garbage representatives!
Well, obviously anyone pompous who doesn't treat their staff like a doting mother should receive the death penalty, after being tortured. It's simply commonsense.
Women want the power to point at any random man and get him arrested, ruined, imprisoned, and/or put to death. Their feelz trump realz, including the Bill of Rights.
Only a sickly dishonest entity - be that entity a person. a group, or an entire country - would defend its 'sovereign right' to do something that it would deny another sovereign entity. "Yes, we can have these weapons, but you cannot. Why? Because we say so, that's why!" Huh? Come again ...
Iran has *every* right to resist tyranny, even to the death. Oh, that Americans were just as brave and resolved to fight tyrants as those found in Washington and the banking and tech cartels. Our country would be so much better off, instead of swirling down the toilet bowl as we speak.
Fight they will, to the very end. And contrary to what we hear from the criminal regime in Washington and its propaganda machine, that fight will not go as well for the regime as they believe. Iranian Professor Marandi has stated, "Let them come, we are ready and waiting!" They are!
Where is the downvote button?
This clown loves him some Iranian mullahs.
No - I love truth, human rights, and freedom. I despise lies, tyrants, and oppression.
It's NOT "My country right or wrong"; it's "My country when right, my opposition when wrong." The main reason why our once-great country is in the sewer, and falling further each day, is because of boot-licking tyrant-followers. Wear that label if it fits.
You wouldn't know the truth if someone smacked you upside the head with it.
I hear another no kings rally calling your name.
Will you go dressed as the obvious clown you are?
You Ben, like Kunstler and, funny enough, Greg Gutfeld (who was platformed today) all have the same feminine energy in your posts.
If you have so much disrespect for Mr. Kunstler, why the heck are you here reading his article? You are only here to harass. Sadly you are up against some very intelligent and knowledgeable people and are only making your own self look like a moronic clown. You can sling whatever arrows you want at me for my post, I'm impervious to trolls like you. Have a nice day.
No "disrespect", just disagreement. Stupid Narcissists can't handle disagreement. From the sound of it, you seem to be one of those.
I own every book Jim has written. I have read his blog (almost entirely without comment) from the beginning. The fact that he has jumped the shark and that a bunch of his apologists continue to cuck up for him is the embarrassment here. I'm not surprised you are impervious. You have TWS.
One reads those they may disagree with to understand their position and why. Try it. Mr. Kunstler's position is crystal clear.
The latest faux insult being foisted.
Feminine energy "polly want a cracker?"
The shoe fits you Ben. Just wear it with pride. And go make me a sandwich.
Whatever the h*ll that means…”feminine energy in posts” ?
It means he has no answer.
If these guys don't knock it off soon, my 4'10" Tae Kwon Do Asian Wife will have to settle it for them. I know personally how that will work out!🫣
I think you know what I mean.
Excuuuuuuuuse me, Mr. O'Connor. Did you consult your very own uterus and ovaries when you attribute feminine energy to other posters? With all due respect, why don't you let the ladies sort this out?
Feminine energy is beautiful in women, just like masculine energy is a wonderful thing, in a man.
We women don't like feminized men, in our locker rooms or in our beds, but we like even less a man who uses femininity as an insult. I hope you take that with all the sisterly affection I intend.
"We women don't like feminized men, in our locker rooms"
Not all women. Many of your feminine sisters applaud when a transgendered woman gets woman of the year awards or appears in Sports Illustrated swimsuit mag. Let's face it, if women would up and resist this bullshit it never would have become a problem but women sat by and applauded it because it was the leftist thing to do.
I think perhaps he means unhinged rage which seems to be norm these days, Gwennie.
Fight Club Rule 9: No calling your opponents Girly Men.
I made that up. There is no Rule 9 😝
Jorge has a point in describing his hatred of the fact that Our Country, Yours and Mine, has been used as a destroying force by evil actors, too often over recent history.
Smedley Butler, if he was alive today might have fomented a revolution to burn down the Death Star DC and emancipate our great nation to rise again as a beacon of Freedom. We have fallen and I hope Trump leads us back, many kicking and screaming, to victory and furthering peace.
Amen!
This, coming from a rainbow clad warrior whose knickname is actually a girls name. Right, Marty?
At the risk of sounding as obnoxious as you, Ben. I would say that you are an idiot. Not to mention a total asshole.
I take that as a compliment from the ridiculous screeching JDS-afflicted, TDS-afflicted America-hating cat ladies.
Fight Club Rule 4: Only two guys to a fight! Cheers!
Your ad hominems are not impressing anyone
So don't read my posts.
Problem solved.
LOL missed the point but ok. Have a nice day.
If you actually like human rights, then perhaps do a bit of research that indicates that 90% of the Iranian population consider the Islamic fundamentalists as occupiers’. They have NO history regarding human rights, freedom, etc., but are exactly the thing you say you despise.
If this is true then it behooves the 90% to do something about it. It doesn't behoove the USA to step in and try to resolve their problems for them. The USA was fed up with the Brits and did something about it. The Iranians, if truly fed up with the Islamic fundamentalists, should rise up and deal with it of their own accord.
The USA has a lousy track record of taking down "rogue regimes" and replacing them in nations throughout the world. Ukraine seems to show brightly as an example of what American interventionism provides. The Ukraine had a duly elected pro-Russia government. Then in 2014 the CIA overthrows that pro-Russia government and that leads us to the predicament we are in now. Millions dead. Economy devastated. A comedian who plays the piano with his penis pilfering how many untold millions of US tax dollars.
If for these kind of results that I desperately wish the USA would focus on its lands and borders and stay out of everyone else's business.
So true and it pisses me off to the point of wanting to load a Boeing Vertol load of Blinkins and Vindmans and Haskels and Nulands"little fat war pig" and provide them all a ocean vacation, Pinochet Style out one the Atlantic. Would that be wrong?
Be careful Lee Wilson, you are about to invoke the wrath of the King of the war humpers, JohnAZ.
I love the meme showing bombs dropping against a background of an American flag and the words "We're gonna free the shit out of you."
You're creating a false dichotomy, and then you project it onto me -- that's a double fallacy. Get your facts straight - please!
You advise that you are pro human rights, but seem to be advising that you support the Iranian regime? Or did I misinterpret what you said??
You are **seriously** misinformed!!
You advise that you are pro human right, but seem to be advising that you support the Zionist regime?
You are one of the few around here that is not insane or an obvious troll and I thank you for that. JHK as always has the pulse of things. The Iranian mullahs and their City of London handlers need to be eliminated. This should be obvious to all thinking people.
Even if that was true (and it isn't), you think they want to be occupied by the Zionist butchers? That doesn't follow at all.
Sorry to disappoint, but the Iranian people are pro Israel.
Jewish Iranians perhaps.
Maybe take a moment to listen to the video here, and open up your eyes as to what is actually going on. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/04/13/promethean-action-follows-the-money-in-the-background-of-the-iran-conflict/?lctg=99591208
Without a citation to prove that claim you are full of shiite. If you had read more about Iran and it's history with Western colonial powers and the USoA you would realize this is untrue then as it is today.
Cosmo,
You mis-spelled Shiite - it should be capitalized out of respect for the suicidal death cult that believes global conflagration is necessary to bring forth the 12th Imam and convert us all to glorious Islam!
Carry on, comrade!
Thanks, Mike for catching the misspelling however, you also misidentified the error. I meant shite like in the British version. As for the rest of your comment you made me laugh. Islam and Judaism are two sides of the same coin minted for the death cults they are.
Thank you for your reasonable comment. They be arguing for arguments sake. Lets emancipate the oppressed!
There's a reason why no one wants nukes in the hands of the Iranians....or any other emotionally crazed country. Even NK knows to keep itself sane sounding regarding nukes. There's a reason why the rest of the ME dislikes both Iran and Palestinians....nothing but problems....irrational emotional peoples...
"There's a reason why the rest of the ME dislikes both Iran and Palestinians"
-----------------------
"We will have peace when the Arabs begin to love their children more than they hate the Jews". ~Golda Meir
Major Kong had an opportunity to ditch at Weathership Tango Delta.
But instead he acted on total commitment, and rode the bomb down.
Congratulations for picking up the reference. In my (approx) 10 yrs of using this handle, no one has picked up on the reference and noted it. Gold star for you!
Actually the air crew only had a chance of ditching at Weathership Tango Delta after their bomb run. That plan was the best and only way out and it did not have a high probability of success. I look at the reference as a last very small bit of hope that helps people in desperate situations do the right thing.
"There's a reason why no one wants nukes in the hands of the Iranians....or any other emotionally crazed country."
True. But why are the emotionally crazed in the first place? Is it because of religion and a belief in religious superiority? Or is it because they are sick and tired of other nations fucking around in their business, putting military bases on their borders and pointing missiles at their cities and parking aircraft carriers off their beaches?
No, sane Americans are tired of their butchery and have been sick of it for close to 50 years. Do you forget that they bankroll the likes of ISIS?
Oh, Americans are sick of the butchery of OTHER nations but they are okay with the butchery of their own military! Got it. Thank you for clarifying that one for me.
How about this. Americans are sick and tired of their country being in a constant state of war. Or, Americans are sick and tired of the country spending its strength and means making war in shit hole nations like Iran. Or, Americans are sick and tired of the soldiers in the military coming home with missing limbs, scattered brains or dead only to have an ending like Afghanistan. Or, Americans are sick of their tax dollars funding this disgusting behavior rather than having their tax dollars fund improvements here at home.
How do I know this? Because I am a pro-America American.
The USA created the likes of Al Quaeda.
Well....look right here in the US and you see the crazies....people who cannot reason through any problem but jump emotionally to the first conclusion that pops into their little non-thinking heads...Decades ago, it was stated that the average person used only 11% of their brain power....think about that....and then think about religions which allow cousins to marry....even deer know better than that...low IQ people cannot rationally think through anything....whatever problems they have surviving are because of someone else....Geez....right here in Maryland, the idiots in Annapolis have now passed a bill allowing minority groups in commissioner counties to sue if they don't like the outcome of an election....another group of crazies....There is no monopoly on crazy nor on desire for power....Never ever forget that...
Things are a mess here at home. Yet we spend all our resources making war in places like Iran and Syria. People like JohnAZ don't give a damn about this as long as the USA wins its immoral wars!
Canker,
I'm going with "because of religion and a belief in religious superiority".
Was that a trick question?
"...emotionally crazed country"??? Do you even read what you write?
Thanks Jorge.
It's amazing ~ no matter how many people westerners kill, starve, and rob, they imagine Iran is somehow worse and more dangerous.
Go figure, eh!
That's right -- thank you for being one of the few remaining *honest* people!
There is a difference between individual human behavior and that of a government...Even the ME countries see Iran as dangerous....
Dennis,
How many visits have you made to Iran? Please tell us how you have the expertise to speak for the 72 million Persians in Iran that plead with the world to be free from a death cult that has oppressed them for nearly 50 years.
How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?
You're in the deep end of the pool without a floaty, in way over your head.
Carry on, comrade!
Of course, I do read what I write. The average Iranian is not crazed but anyone who forces women to wear black sheets draped over them....black...in a hot country....black, which absorbs heat...is crazy...Anyone who does that and sends their ill-disciplined men to gang rape any woman who defies them....or who has public hangings of dissenters....they are a bunch of f**king hypocrites...they are crazy....their leaders....even crazier than the normal crazy leaders elsewhere....
Jorge,
Good catch. The country is not emotionally crazed, just the IRGC and their murderous henchmen and secret police.
The people of Iran that suffer at their hands, the Persians, are not emotionally crazed.
You, on the other hand, are either a Twelver or emotionally crazed (not mutually exclusive).
Carry on, comrade!
They have been very restrained and on the defensive. That changed a bit when we killed their spiritual leader and the girls.
The US DOES NOT know to keep itself sane sounding regarding nukes!
After all, they are the only county to have dropped two nuke bombs on civilians for no military purposes.
On that criterion alone, why should the US be allowed to have nuke weapons?
There's a reason why the rest of the World dislikes America........nothing but problems....irrational emotional people!
There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017.
And it is a reason that eludes that strain of U.S. academia, that first defines war as something that nations and groups other than the United States do, and then concludes that war has nearly vanished from the earth.
Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed some 20-million people, overthrown 36- governments, interfered in 86-foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50-foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30-countries
Actually I would say that they dislike the US because of the basic jealousy….why else do they want to come here?
Irrational emotional people? Bwahaha….I can see that you know nothing about other cultures….
Re the bombs which ended the Pacific Theater aspect of WWII….there are those who feel that it actually saved more lives but warnings were ignored…We will never know….None of us were adults at the time to be involved in the thinking and what is recorded for history is always debatable and interpretively fluid.
If the rest of the world hates the US so much, why do they keep coming here? Why don’t they stay in their own countries?
"why else do they want to come here?"
Freebies. The USA is bankrupt, Dancingtime. $40 trillion in the hole and counting. This kind of debt doesn't get repaid. There are only two solutions:
1. Default on the debt. Result? Lots of people who function on debt alone will now be busted wide open with no money.
2. Money printing to monetize the debt. Result? The money you have worked your entire life to earn will be worth Jack Schitt. In short, nobody will have any money.
People come here because the gubmit hands out freebies and because of the insane anchor baby policy to get a foot hold on permanent residency here and life time freebies. Take away the freebies, like Trump did, and they stop coming.
Dennis,
The rest of the world does not dislike America, just the countries that are being notified that America will no longer suffer their foolishness (EU committing suicide with open borders) and will no longer allow them to sponge off our military capabilities when U.S. national security is not at stake (e.g., NATO and the Russia-Ukraine border war).
Also, you're citing a 2013 poll??? 🤪
Pull the conglomerate "news" IV out of your vein and get a grip.
Did you miss the 30,000 Iranian protesters gunned down in the streets ? The local firedepartments were employed to hose down the bloody streets.....is that news to you?
I'm not at all concvinced that this happened as reported. We have access only to those stories we are told by interested parties who have a track record of faking stuff.
I don't accept at face value anything my government tells me any more. Maybe this happened. Or maybe 3,000 protesters were gunned down, or maybe it was only 3 or none. How would I know?
A good policy to have these days - suspicious of anything the government tells us. Propaganda runs rampant from all directions, supporting all motives. It's amazing to see anyone who lived through the Plandemic believe the current pack of "facts" .gov tells us after the Covid "story" - where the public was played to the max to help move along the lock-downs coming down the pike.
Only time will tell on how the "Iran PsyOp" plays out, and which party is proven to be more dangerous with enriched uranium. The pro-Trumpers are convinced that some sort of complex plan is being run to control the world's oil resources, and cut off China, Iran and Russia from "endangering" the American Empire's Destiny. Others see it more from the view of a Last Gasp of the American Empire to cling to a MAGA dream, while alienating 95% of citizens of the World.
Regardless, the unpredictable mischief of the Long Emergency is in full bloom now, and the global descent in the Standards of Living will arrive - sooner or later. The bad news for the U.S. is that we have much further to fall than most countries. It's a fragile arrangement of energy sources, supply chains, government "management", massive grift and a culture still unwilling to deal with the reality of physics and economics.
Personally I see it as just another stage in the Rothschild grand plan - but that's just me :-)
The massive grift is being performed by your globalist masters.
Stalin murdered 20 million fellow Russians.
Mao murdered millions of Chinese citizens.
Governments killing their own people is nothing new in this world and certainly doesn't obligate the USA to lob missiles around.
There are many wise statements about, "not my problem", I was just following orders" "evil prevails unless". Some situations deserve action and I bet, if you had a neighbor that was dicking around with fulminating mercury next door, and no one was going to help you mitigate the risk, Cankerpuss would figure a way to dispense with the madman. I don't know, 30% H2O2 and a helping hand....
Yes, they'll fight for their nation against enemies within and without. We collapsed after killing two "protestors". They are a real nation. We are no longer one.
A real nation conquered by Muslims, therefore not a real nation at all.
When Israel does this it's bad.
When Iran does it, Lugh has an orgasm.
Lugh your literally fucked in the head.
Come on JHK!
When are you going to ban this asswipe, Ben?
Calling a lot of your CFN readers "literally fucked in the head"
And worse!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFRr5DtKNUU
Israel has struck Ansali, a port on the Caspian Sea. They will pay for their arrogance.
We have Red Flag laws to disarm our local insane neighbors or wife beaters. Our nation can do the same to scum countries of similar profile, if we have the gumption.
"Our nation can do the same to scum countries of similar profile"
Who gives the USA the authority to do this? Seriously, I'd really like to know your opinion on this. Is it because we have the biggest military so therefore we have the right to do this?
"MURIKA!!!!!!"
Canker,
What gives Iran the right to oppress 72 million Persians that want nothing to do with the suicidal Twelvers, or to threaten Israel with genocide, or to extort an energy price premium (estimated at $3 trillion since 1979) by destabilizing the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz?
You seem mighty selective in your outrage. Suggests a squeaky clean brain that has adopted a warped ideology, but I'm not a psychologist.
p.s., My partner is and she thinks you and your ilk do not argue in good faith, nor on the basis of facts - she thinks the demagoguery that many have adopted is rooted in a social contagion no different than the trans-sanity that exploded starting around 2015.
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
~ Gustave Le Bon
Okay, Schiff.
Great post! Thanks.
Boot-licking tyrant-followers like Clinton and Obama worshippers. They can loot and murder at will, and motherfuckers like you don't care. Trump tries to Reset the world in a way the WEF and Left don't like, and -- holy shit -- he's worse than Satan!!
It ain't ever your country pal.
Go back where you came from.
Let's compare your resume with mine. You really ought to get your facts straight before mouthing off.
Pathetic
Yet another fantastic posting from Old Gyrene. I'm sure Gwennie will enjoy this comment.
Do better.
Oh boy. The '60s are back. It's Okie from Muskogee time again. "America -- Love it or leave it!" "Are you a boy or are you a girl?" "Get a haircut!"
It ain't your country anymore. Pal.
It's a trollgasm today with you four lefties!
I'm a lefty? Smile when you say that.
USA wins big with DJT.
I truly wish "winning" were so. Give it a bit more time and let's see how "big" the USA wins with DJT.
Looks like you're 401(k) is winning. I'm assuming you're employed and have a 401(k)...a big assumption for workers of the world.
Carry on, comrade!
"As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true" -Jackson Browne
Sure , we got some splainin to do , but I too have done the moral calculus and come to an opposite conclusion . Losing this thing would have dire consequences for the US and really 'the global order' going forward ( not that 'global order ', the globe is going to be ordered one way or the other going forward type of global order , their will be an order of some sort of the other ) .Furthermore it seems to me that if you love human rights and freedom , and despise tyrants and oppression , which I've no reason to doubt your sincerity about , then I cant see how you could defend the Islamic theocracy in Iran without doubting the seriousness of your devotion to such noble principles , being as that Islam is fundamentally at its theological level , really inimical to those kind of western and Christian principles ? Furthermore in the larger geopolitical analysis revolving around the question of who's century this is going to be , China's or ours , the moral calculus comes out the same again by my equation , its better If we , for all of our faults , deny the Chinese Communist Party top dog status on the world stage . Again , its not only better for us but also better for the rest of the world . Can we stop self immolating over our past sins for one moment and just realize that for all of our faults our success and continued survival is just by golly worth it anyway ? The demoralization is thick , maybe not as thick as it must be on the European continent but Good Gawd its all so throw in the towel nihilistic that I think I almost barf to listen to it coming from all the self righteous moral signalers on this and other sites . I choose US , sorry if you find that morally reprehensible , but I gave you some reasoned rationales why I think this . "Aloha Snack bar ,Death to The Great Satan ,and the Little Satan , usher in the Mahdi, and why cant we have a nuclear bomb Uncle Sam ? Self loath much ?Cmon man ?
Craftsman,
Excellent observation!
It's the pinnacle of a lack of self-awareness that so many "progressive" leftists wail and shriek about keeping guns out of the hands of the alleged mentally compromised (with red flag laws where no adjudication is required, just an accusation that someone may not be sufficiently mentally stable), yet they simultaneously hold the position that a psychotic and jihadist mass murdering death cult has the right to possess weapons of mass destruction.
Whatever was in the clot shots appears to have other side effects that include diminished cognition. Those effects are clearly more pronounced among leftists, who were starting from a deficit position of brain rot even before they got jabbed.
"I love truth, human rights, and freedom. I despise lies, tyrants, and oppression."
And that's why Jorgito is rooting for the Mullahs. SMDH!
Way to defend yourself Mr George😝👍 From a Jorge/George who understands your point of view. But I sincerely believe Irans citizens deserve a life beyond the Iron Fist of a sick religion. I hope so. I was wrong before.
I sincerely believe American citizens deserve a life beyond the Iron Fist of a sick religion. I hope so.
Humans create religion to justify doing what they logically know is wrong. When you have a religion that teaches supremacism, and hatred towards everyone not of that religion, you then have sown the seeds of war crimes and genocide. While the main motivation may be money or power, the justification and rationalization is always stupid religion.
Who was the last atheist that committed genocide in the name of a GOD?
Religion stalks across the face of human history, knee-deep in the blood of innocents, clasping its red hands in hymns of praise to an approving God.
If these God's are so perfect, why do they create so much hatred?
"Religion poisons everything!" - the great atheist Christopher Hitchens. RIP Christopher.
Matthew 7:12 " So whatever you wish that others would do to you , do also to them , for this is the law and the prophets " , Luke 6:31 " Do to others as you would have them do to you " . The Golden Rule , kinda Christianity 101 , Tis not God who possesses people with the spirit of hatred but obviously His opposite .Did you "guess His name " as Mick sang ?
Your support for Iran indicates you wouldn't recognize the truth if it landed on your head.
I'm guessing you thought FJoe Biden was awesome...another sign of your imaginary relationship with reality.
If Biden was your idea of a president, you don't get an opinion on Trump.
Well thought out reply, Jorge, I'm with you in this regards. My country when right, and my opposition when wrong, that is what was once our right as an American, now it's becoming iffy given who runs our affairs and steals our hard earned income though taxation, theft, and corruption.
Ditto.
He thinks we are all idiots.
That's a trait of Narcissists - since they are "superior", everyone else must be "inferior".
...says Jorge the narcissist.
Don't feed the freaking trolls.
Yes- that was the first thing I looked for when I was halfway through the comment.
It's called making a cogent counter-argument. give it a try, I'm sure Jorge would love a joust with someone of your intellect. One doesn't need to love the Mullahs to be decent enough to know when another country has been verbally and physically abused and violated by big and little brother Satan.
Ben,
No Iranian mullahs ever called me "nigger" or tried to steal my bike....
Does this mean you rode a bicycle through Tehran? Perhaps an Islamic version of Monty Python's "Bicycle Trip" episode of 50 odd years ago?
John,
No, and I've never ridden one through Africa, either.
Have they ever had the chance?
Ben,
Who, Iranians or Africans?
Pick
Oakland.
You mean someone called you a nigger AND stole your bike? You might consider moving to a better neighborhood.
If you went to Tehran, you would be treated like an enemy, unless you cater to their every wish. Like a CNN reporter.
And yet they still work on long range missiles and nuclear weapons to wipe you out.
You forgot the part about “Death to America, the Great Satan”. Now, analogize on that part, Jorge.
Trolls and shills don’t ever really analogize or analyze anything, and they don’t care for rational counter arguments. Their job is to feed a narrative that they want the lesser intelligent to swallow.
No they don't, they just want you to know you're wrong and bad because you question their *obvious moral superiority* 🙄 I do not even engage anymore since it steals time from anything else I could be doing, even if that's just watching paint dry.
The problem is that they think they can have their own facts. Ask them where they get their news and information- that tells a lot.
Yes and saves a lot of time.
You don't even need to get any 'news and information' per se, you just have to know some cold hard facts and use your head.
For example, the State, such as America, is already an immoral construct because it is coercive and based on a monopoly on violence.
That they're ostensibly floating around Iran ATM is in this sense kind of irrelevant, except of course that it's with all their war machines and brainwashed cannon-fodder and so forth, rather than, say, a peace flotilla.
____
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." ~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
----
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." ~ P.J. O'Rourke
----
"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear." ~ Alan Coren
Fr. I've also noted that most of the noise comes from non subscribers but that shouldn't be a surprise
~ Allowing A Site's Agitprop To In-Breed ~
Only America *is* The Great Satan in a manner of speaking, such as if you count all the global deaths it has inflicted around the world via its military and related contractors, since at least WW2.
Number one in the world. 🏆
So if America's 'death' means its sociopoliticeconomic decline/collapse, so be it, I'm behind it. Practically a wet dream actually. Certainly after its threat earlier in the year toward Canada where I live, and Greenland, etc.. Thems is fighin' words.
Gotta luv all these unrecognized noobs who appear under every article, do a little pro-USrael and/or anti-Iran dance, and then disappear entirely after that. That's why I've suggested leaving this blog to self-reinforce/inbreed its particular brand of agitprop. Let it eat itself.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to War Butt for example? Warren Butterfield or somesuch name. The guy who was crotch-based. Left as soon as he came. And now we have someone, or some bot, who's 'faggot-based'.
Mind you, it helps subvert America's position-- and this blog-- whether you/they realize it or not: The most asinine and/or flaccid comments seem to be pro-Trump/anti-Iran.
So maybe that's a good thing at the end of the day, maybe at the end of an American civil war. Certainly Kunstler's been beating those war-drums in part from a divisive pseudo-left-right angle. Do you like what you read? Great! 🎯
Why are people who have an opposing opinion automatically labelled as trolls? Jorge is not a troll. He's a dude with an opinion. I honor that.
"Why are people who have an opposing opinion automatically labelled as trolls?" ~ Cankerpuss
Because that's probably the best that they can ass-pull. Maybe they're paid by the ass-pull.
These days, often, calling someone a troll (noun) *is* a troll (verb). The concept has been bastardized. Bastardizing the term, troll, is especially important if you're inclined to troll, paid or otherwise.
~ Death To America ~
"You forgot the part about 'Death to America, the Great Satan'. Now, analogize on that part, Jorge." ~ MarshaLouise
----
If you briefly pull your head out of your ass and do the lightest bit of research, you may find that America, since at least World War Two, if not before, has been killing the most around the world.
It's apparenty number one in that regard, which is no real suprise.
It's also number one in the world for arms dealing, so tops in aiding and abetting murder.
Or you can keep your head up your ass, pretend you didn't just read this, and continue, along with your little groupies here, with your ass-pulls.
___
If my name was Iran or someone else another target of America and someone, named America, had already killed others and was trying to kill me and/or rob, etc., from my children or neighors then, ya, I'd probably call for death to America too.
As for the Middle East squatter, Israel, I think it needs to be run out of town, their Zionist and/or war-like inhabitants to literally be relocated. Like they suggested of those in Gaza.
I might have not felt that way about Israel 2 or 3 years ago, and thought it could change and/or somehow peacefully fit in, but it doesn't look like it's going to.
____
"The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation." ~ Emma Goldman
You know that over half of Israel believe in “death to Arabs” so I guess that makes them a legit target for Arab military intervention? This has got to be one of the most profoundly stupid takes anyone has come up with about Iran.
And most ppl, except you it seems, are very familiar with those threatening words. Crawl out into the light sometime.
You didn’t answer my question. Is it ok for the Arabs to target Israelis for saying and/or thinking those words?
Sleepless:
Do you mean the "Arabs" (i.e., jihadists) that sadistically mass murdered over 1,000 Israelis on October 7, 2023? The same ones and others sponsored by the IRGC that have killed or maimed tens of thousands of people worldwide since 1979? ...those Arabs?
LOL the Israelis hannibaled most of those Israelis on 10/7. And the Iranian republic did not “sponsor Arabs to kill 10s of thousands worldwide since 1979”. What boomerslop propaganda 🤦♀️
Sorry, the judgement response of “profoundly stupid” was an intended insult. So, the discussion ends there. Go your way.
Translation - you have no counter-argument. Have a nice day boomer.
State the source of your claim about “ death to Arabs”. I don’t believe you have a source.
Lolol have you ever actually been to Israel? I’m from there
There’s also a reason why you’re not still there.
There is, genius! How did you figure that out? One of the reasons I am no longer there is that I am not interested in living among supremacist, genocidal zombies.
Iran IS tyranny, they are not fighting tyranny. One man rule, by a religious nut. That is tyranny. Trump has shifted gears, putting Iran under siege. We will see how they handle having no revenue to do their saber rattling with. First order, getting water for their folks.
~ TSHTF ~
Revenue? In the Yuan?
What's America (and allies) doing about the Caspian Sea? I understand it goes past a few places for trade, including Russia, toward the other end.
Speaking of ends, America appears to be being squeezed, like a bad shit, out of the Middle East.
But it's clinging on. I don't envy Iran's and allies' task.
____
M*A*S*H - Know Your Enema
https://youtu.be/wcatHkwC8Y0?si=Y7Rk_EZxul228SVk
^ Frank = Ben?
Russia may be re-arming Iran via the Caspian Sea. We will not screw with Russia. They have their hands full with Ukraine anyway.
The US is going to get the various “tribes” in the Middle East to form an alliance and then get the heck out of Dodge. Same with the caliph in Europe. Orban’s loss to EU favored opponent is just another stimulus to Trump dumping Europe. That would be a good move as NATO countries under the globalist EU hate Trumpian USA. America First means exactly that, screw the globalists.
BTW, the blockade and siege of Iran is genius, someone earned their salary in the DOW.
What makes you say it's genuis and have others said as much and if so, who?
I've already read and written related stuff, here and elsewhere, such as WRT J. Brown's Land Export Model and the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Geopolitics will likely revolve in part around the former with various effects such as the latter and of course the US' apparent current 'flotilla'.
If America is running out of the easy oil, then that threatens, at least as they may see it, their national security.
Trump has chosen the siege route instead of direct conflict. Before this all happened, Iran was exporting people from Tehran because there was no water for the population. Trump was surprised that the supposed rebels in Iran did not rise up, maybe an intelligence oops? The elite machine in Iran will be starved of revenue from oil, so weakened. Will the people rise up? Trump will give them time to do so. If they do not, the next stage will be much more unpleasant for both sides.
I've edited my comment above, which I think you caught anyway.
We use little of the ME oil, about 8% I think. We are fighting for oil for East Asia and Europe. CP is probably right about the fact that we should tell the rest of the world to shove it and figure it out for themselves.
"First order, getting water for their folks."
John,
Same as Arizona.
You better believe it. Read my later bit on water in Arizona. My take? These people are nuts here too.
You're getting a lot of flak in the comments, so you must be over the target. After pissing away countless lives and untold billions, the US has replaced the Taliban with the Taliban, and now Khameini with Khameini, which doesn't exactly bode well. Many here are still cheerleading and saying everything is just great, going according to plan lol...Most likely they are on someone's payroll to try to manufacture consent for this war that nobody wanted and no one except for a few Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham devotees supports.
Spot on, NF! Sadly, we're speaking to the wrong crowd.
My son-in law, a reservist, left his wife, toddler and newborn nearly two months ago to fight this war in the skies over the Middle East.
I don’t hate this war because of him. I hate the war because it doesn’t offer a purpose I can aptly explain to my granddaughter in the event her father doesn’t come home.
In the first week, it was “Iran is killing their own citizens. We must react!” And “Women in Iran are subject to archaic religious social rules.” Then it grew into issues re: nuclear bombs, then oil, now a strait.
Don’t challenge me on this. I’ve had good reason to keep track. I’ve got all the tweets.
Which excuse is it? Which one would make sense to a family whose husband and father flies all night in a foreign land with his lights off?
And I look at our country—divided, struggling, with archaic infrastructure, sick people, like myself, parading like ants in and out of cancer centers, a lack of order on the roads and in the public square, Americans being hacked to death by illegal immigrants on a routine basis, the court system set on tyranny…the cost of living out of control with no end in sight. Our country is bleeding from deep wounds and there is no leadership honed in on the healing.
This father is needed at home to help his family—-which by default helps his country. There is no reason big enough, bold enough to convince any person with reason that more killing, more war, more muscle flexing, serves a more divine purpose than taking care of our own.
I see it as old men playing chess. And no matter what century we’re in, there they are, old and decaying men, perched over an ancient chess board.
I fear that in my lifetime we will not evolve past this—-that young men will continue to give their lives for institutionalized insanity.
And children will always live in countries where their best interest, their safety and happiness will have never mattered at all.
We should all go to sleep with visions of the thousands of dead children killed by our country for its “reasons.” And all the fucking fathers who never came home.
It's all the above reasons.
Oil
Resources
Freedom of transit through the strait without Iran threatening it with mines, ICBMs, threatening to plug it up by sinking ships, or nuclear diplomacy, which is all the above on steroids.
It was flowing just fine with no problems before this unnecessary war. So I guess we are fighting the war to return to the original status quo? That would by definition be a not very smart war to have started. And if the US doesn't even get oil from the strait, why are we there to begin with? Could it be that Orange is our true president Bibi's puppet?
Iran has threatened this vital shipping lane for decades.
Wrong on all the opinions.
Keep grasping at straws for that wrong opinion.
Just another clueless post by this asswipe!
Prove me wrong...oh wait you can't.
How about the avoidance of a nuclear BOMB on your very limited and STUPID head. Reason enough. You want that in the hands of homicidal apocalyptic maniacs so they can use it on this family and you which you are so worried about. How dumb can you be?
What an abhorrent reply. It says a lot more about you than it does me.
Have a great day!
Perspective: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-iranian-inkblot-part-2?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios
Our sincere thanks for your family’s sacrifice!
US track record in trying to oust a rogue regime and replacing it with another is dismal at best. Let me rattle off a few. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Chile, Ukraine, Panama and so forth.
If we are going to change the Iranian regime then for God's sake destroy it completely and make it the 51st state. Don't bother trying to replace one government with another. The USA is shit when it comes to this. On the other hand the USA is pretty good when it takes over a place and keeps it for their own.
Time to subscribe? You write a lot but don't pay a lot. Hmmmm
I don't understand. Please explain.
Scott appears to be trying to sell you, through brow-beating, a subscription to a well-written 'National Inquirer'.
...Which might explain some tabloid-level comments on here.
Perhaps Scott was the result of an alien impregnation, so it's natural, so not to worry.
I respect your bitterness….but
What do you mean?
Best comment in this thread, Nomad. Never truer words spoken! Thank you.
Thanks Dennis for your comments on this thread as well. I have a feeling Lindsey Graham is sitting at home in his nightgown, after becoming excited by the day's war news, and is sh*t posting under a few different names on this site lol...
I doubt he even knows this site exists or does much reading.
“Councillors in Auckland voted 14-2 to investigate supporting sanctions against Israel, according to the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. The move tasks staff with reviewing companies listed by the UN Human Rights Council as linked to Israel’s occupation.
The motion, introduced by Julie Fairey, calls for assessing council contracts with such firms and reporting back on possible next steps.
'Tens of thousands of Aucklanders turned out last year to march in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the least we can do is check that we are not spending Aucklanders’ money, public money, in ways that cause harm and exacerbate war crimes', Fairey wrote."
~ https://t.me/QudsNen/219125
Not all countries/governments are the same.
Add cultures and people.
Oh, Jorge, what part of apocalyptic jihad do you not understand?
While everyone was screaming about Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism took control of Israel and the much of the United States.
Oh, Gwennie, what part of jihad do you understand?
Not much it seems!
I'm in agreement with you. I don't understand why it is okay for the USA to have nukes to defend itself with but it is not okay for other nations to have them. I know they are going to claim that Iran is a sponsor of world wide terrorism and that if they had nukes they would turn Israel and the USA as well as the rest of the world into glass. Possibly. But then again, nobody really knows for sure what Iran would do with the nukes as nobody has a palantir that grants them prophetic insights.
This much I do know. The sovereign nation of Iran has sitting on its shores and borders dozens of US military installations and warships. Now, if this were the case in the USA the USA would be pretty pissed about it. Russia is pissed because Ukraine bore the possibility of becoming part of NATO and thus putting possible antagonistic forces on Russia's border. Here we have Iran, pissed that the USA has encroached all around its borders and its shores and many people on this comment thread don't understand why Iran wants to protect itself.
Personally, I do not believe anyone will ever launch a nuke against another nation (other than the USA bombing Japan) simply because of the knowledge of "mutually assured destruction." Nukes give us the ability to bully the weak and keep the strong from attacking. There is a benefit there, truth be told.
It's almost as if the war humpers don't stop to think that perhaps Iran wants nukes, hates the USA is because the USA is always on their borders and fucking around with everything in the region. They don't hate the USA because the USA is wealthy or because of the "freedom" its inhabitants "enjoy." There is another reason and it is that reason that the war humpers will never admit or consider.
Most of the readers on this blog will agree that Washington DC is corrupt to the core and that the military/industrial complex is real and is a powerful player in the "deep state." But then they turn around and claim that all war, sponsored by the DC cesspool is morally necessary and we are the righteous aggressors. There is a baffling and strange paradox here. If the purveyors of the war are evil would not the war they are engaged within also be evil?
Slop from a bot.
For some reason, that Keane guy that Fox News keeps having on reminds me of a lizard.
The NPT (1968) is all about preventing any additional countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. This is not a new thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons
Okay, how about I tell you: "I can own a gun, but you cannot. Why? Because I say so!!"
Would you be okay with that?
It's not because "I said so", it's because we said so.
It's actually quite simple, and thankfully there's one nation that is yet strong and moral enough to stand up to a crazed nation hell-bent on violating the NPT. God bless America!
"strong and moral enough"
Come on, Ezinmn. Do you really believe this? The USA is still a moral nation?
What does the US version of democracy bring a nation like Iran. Let's see, pornography is rampant in the USA. Drug abuse is rampant in the USA. Taxes are high in the USA and don't benefit the taxpayers. The USA is $40 trillion in debt. In the USA women are in charge and control everything. In the USA abortion is rampant. In the USA women fight to protect abortion and fight to protect murders from the death penalty. In the USA a SCOTUS justice doesn't know what a woman is. In the USA men are competing with women in athletics. In the USA the printing presses are running at maximum stealing the value of the money from the citizens. In the USA more children are born out of wedlock than in. In the USA 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The USA has the highest rate of incarcerated citizens in the world.
How can you honestly sit there and believe that this nation, run by a corrupt cesspool like Washington DC and and elite class that are all on the Epstein list, is still a moral nation?
I've read some doozies on this site but this one takes the cake today.
Yup, CP. These comments today are just mind blowers!
One of the things I love about Kunstler is his ability to point out and describe the absurdity of current life in America. I don't agree with his pro-war stance in Iran, especially given his knowledge of the Long Emergency but it is his opinion and I don't argue his right to express it. The commentariat have become increasingly hostile to opposing opinions, even when those holding those opposing opinions typically agree with them. They close their eyes to reality, plug their ears with their fingers and shout "na na na, not going to listen to this." It might be time for me to take a break from the CFN commentariat, like you have done recently. I miss reading your opposing view points to the many comments posited here.
CP - It's easy to look at the world from a naive, "I wish things were perfect" perspective. But I hate to tell you, the world can be a dangerous place, and America has once again taken up the mantle to bring down rogue nations like Iran, a nation hell-bent on thumbing it's nose at the rest of the world in defiance of an agreed-to NPT. They recently killed 40,000 civilians who protested against their government. America and Donald Trump should be commended for the actions taken in this matter, not nit-picked at for sins not uncommon among men. History will bear this out.
In America, you are given the choice to watch porn, have an abortion, file for divorce, have a child out of wedlock, and on and on. Ours is a country founded on freedom, and with freedom comes responsibility, sadly a trait sorely missing from many. 10,000,000 people traveled to our country recently to get a chance to live the American Dream, where an immigrant can, in one generation, move to the upper echelon of society. Try doing that in Iran, or even in your wildest Utopian dream.
As Winston Churchill stated, "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". Our country has produced more good for the world than all civilizations combined. I choose to dwell on and improve upon what makes us a great nation, not on our faults.
I applaud your blind obedience and support to what America has become. I don't share that blind obedience and support.
America may have been founded on freedom but she is no longer a free Country. In America today we no longer can own property. Property taxes are with us until we die regardless of whether we pay off our mortgages. My annual rent payment to the gubmint is hovering around $5,000 per year. If I refuse to pay the County they will slap a daily fine on it, if I continue to refuse to pay they will place a lien on the property. If I continue to refuse to pay they will either sell the lien to an investor who will then own the property or they will place my property on tax sale.
Yeah, I am free to watch porn, to have an abortion, to do drugs, to drive to the grocery store, to cross state lines to buy a lottery ticket but I am not free to own property free and clear of government intrusion.
Just sent Uncle Sam nearly $12,000 dollars in "income tax" on the money that I worked to earn. That money is used to pay bills, buy gasoline, purchase food and so forth. It is not income yet it is taxed heavily. I guess we should be happy. "NOW THIS IS TAXES!" Quoting the stupid Turbo Tax commercials that equate tax payments to getting a massage. Bastards! What do I get in return for my taxes? Not a goddamned thing. No free health care, I still have to pay for that. No, I think my taxes bought a nose cone on one of the missiles they lobbed at Iran. I guess, according to you, I should feel it a privilege to pay for that nose cone. Right? That's a return on my taxes that I am proud of.
~ ezinmn's Abortion ~
"A majority of Americans don't see Trump as a catastrophe at all. They see him favorably. You should prepare yourself for more truth telling and revelations. It's going to keep coming; day after day, week after week, until only dishonest rubes will continue to spew falsehoods obvious to everyone.
The patriots are taking our country back. We will continue until the last ounce of treachery is squeezed out of the corrupt system that was. We're just getting started. This is a glorious time where decades will happen in weeks. Truly stunning and a good time to be alive."
~ ezinmn, Feb 17, 2025, https://substack.com/@ezinmn/note/c-94243003
____
^ That didn't age well. Or something. ^
____
https://youtu.be/YkzikVC9ZlU?si=DAtPKdSlLEY9hx_J
May God bless America!"
Why?
What kind of God would bless a country providing 2,000lb bombs to a mass-murderer knowing full well he is going to drop them on hospitals and refugee camps?
Why are you here again?
This is what you call an intelligent conversation, blatant lies?
You're going to pop an artery, and soon, if you keep it up.
Sure, that's what God does, only he blames it on his imaginary frenemy and ex-angel, Satan.
Israel isn't supposed to have them. They must be disarmed and opened to Iranian, Chinese and Russian observers.
Bullshit, Lugh.
Death to America (politically-systemic-speaking).
It could and probably will happen, given enough time. Civilizations are like that. The cracks are there.
Prove they have a nuke or a dozen.
You can't because they have never tested them nor admitted having them, unlike South Africa.
How retarded do you think we are? Israel very much has nukes and you know it as well as we do. People like you are why there’s antisemitism. Congratulations on giving ammo to the antisemites 👍👍
Mr. F---- even the NRA is ok with limiting the rights of certifiable insane people or people who have committed serious felonies so your comment that ---- I can own a gun and you cannot---- does not really make any sense. The US and most of sane society does not go around saying we want to kill a whole ethnic group---the J- people. The US gov't has not ever said it wants to kill all of any ethnic group or race of people. The wonderful peace loving Palastinians (spelling?) and the wonderful peace loving mullahs (as opposed the majority of the Persians) say it plainly and often. They love to chant slogans at their many protests where they yell it in peoples faces that they want to kill Americans and every last one of the J people. Maybe we should take them serious and act before millions of us are nuked. Even tho I think the Pakistan leaders are not exactly my idea of a great gov't, they typically do not tell everyone who will listen that they want to kill all the Js or all Americans. Same with India. Did you notice that we did not go to war with the Paki's or Indians? Every Prez since Jimmy Carter has kicked the problem of the Iranian mullah gov't down the road so as not to hurt their chances of getting reelected so....... when this steaming pile of bull shiff lands on Trump's desk, he is the first Prez that rightfully says to the mullahs that we have had enough of your shiff and it is time to address it. Of course if we had O or Biden or Kamala or Jimmy Carter as Prez, they would already be sending up the white flag of surrender and.....to top it all off both O and Xiden sent them many, many, many billions of greenbacks to try to buy they off but......paying a bribe to the bully just gets you a little time and that is all. Thank you Prez Trump for finally trying to solve the problem rather than just bribing them to be good mullahs.
Israel has committed genocide and can't be trusted with them either.
Empty phrase. . . knee-jerk accusation.
Creamy, buttery, cosmopolitan.
Wrong.
Many countries have that rule re guns. In any event, a gun isn't a nuke, and there are good reasons for the NPT - do you think it should be abolished? These weapons should not be all over the globe in the hands of governments of 190+ nations.
Pakistan has nukes and they are a nation run by the same Islamic religion that permeates Iran. Why are we not bombing the hell out of Pakistan and telling them to get rid of their nukes?
Is that what you are proposing now? Were you also one of the people upset when Trump did not “commit war crimes “starting last Tuesday at 8 PM? Saying he chickened out?
The USA has no need to be over there. We only receive 7% of our raw petroleum from that area. We are over there because in order to justify a $1.5 trillion defense spending budget we need a war to fight.
Iran hasn't invaded anyone for over 200 years. The USA? Every year we are invading some other sad sack country. Think of what could be done at home with $1.5 trillion dollars.
Get it?
Too late! Islam has them now and if Israel acts up it's going to get nuked. Pakistan has said as much as have Russia and China.
And sadly Israel very much deserves it as this point
Bullshit, Lugh. MAD is there to guarantee no nuke war.
Israel gets away with all kinds of things because people like you run cover for them. Don't count it out. Will you still run cover for them if they do it?
Battle of the board bots in full swing.
Trump wins again.
Losers whine and whiners lose.
unfair maybe, however that's how power works. Iran will come out of this severely crippled and the US even stronger, no matter how much third world leftists would like to think otherwise.
I don't believe that the US comes out of this stronger. I think we're in big trouble and this is part of the unraveling.
Big trouble and the war humpers turn a blind eye to it. $40 trillion and counting. How does the USA get out of this debt burden? Two ways.
1. Default on the debt. That means an economy built on debt is busted. Few people will have any money to do anything with. Business dies. Massive Depression ensues.
2. Monetize the debt by money printing. Money printing means more dollars competing for the same amount of resources. This means inflation. Inflation means our money is worth less. As more printing of money happens people have less money to do anything with. The result? Massive depression.
Either way we are totally boned. War humpers like JohnAZ completely ignore this.
Finally, a comment that makes sense. In other words, the USA is a bully and it uses its might to bully other nations around. Thank you for finally saying the truth rather than virtue signaling the moral superiority of the corrupted USA.
bullies are kids in school. Nations have policies that reflect their interests. Time to be an adult.
I was agreeing with your comment, Mitch. However, your follow up comment is silly at best. Bullies are bullies. Some are small fries like children. Others are big kahunas like the USA. In the end the principle is the same. The USA does what it does in other nations simply because it has the military might and there is none other that can oppose them. Bullies bully because they can get away with it. Doesn't matter if it is on a school playground or in the Persian gulf. Period.
Incorrect. A country that has used the slogan "Death to America" for almost five decades and is poised to have nuclear missiles is a threat that needs to be dealt with and so we are using our power to do that. If you are the weakling, you probably shouldn't repeatedly pronounce your desire to kill another. That the response has taken this long is the real issue. Period.
Incorrect. A country that has used the slogan "Death to Iran"* for over five decades and has thousands of nuclear missiles is a threat that needs to be dealt with.
That the Worlds response has taken this long is the real issue.
America, like Israel, is becoming a pariah on the World stage.
America needs to fuck off, mind its own business, and take care of the inevitable collapse destroying them from within. While they piss away the countries treasure on useless foreign wars.
*and has used the slogan "Death to _____" fill in the blank, for dozens of countries it does not control.
IRAN's EMERGING as a DOMINANT POWER /Alastair Crooke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XviEhjGBg-A&t=339s
Alistair Crooke is a brilliant analyst with his unique knowledge.
Over 250 years of lying, cheating, and stealing it looks like the U.S. will be taken down economically, and by their own greed, so fitting!
Does it hurt to be that stupid? Do you need to study, or is it natural?
WHO are you talking to?....
Jorge, Lugh and the newest asshat on the block Martin O'Conner.
Pretty sure ol Martin is a reroll from having been banned.
Says the biggest asshat on the block!
Got under your thin skin, but bad Dennis.
Without even trying.
Poor old guy.
Oh Jorge…take you and your Marxist rhetoric back to your mother’s basement where you belong. I have a coupon code for a free Domino’s pizza if that helps?
Deport this one, too.
We say they can’t have nuclear weapons because there is a better than even chance they will use them. How do we come to this conclusion? Their actions and words strongly indicate that they would in fact use them. See? Now, that wasn’t too hard of a position to defend, now, was it?
Self-reinforcing circular justification, a can't-lose tactic of the intellectually dishonest.
You speak nonsense
Okay then...I'll mark you down as supporting a mass murdering suicide death cult that recently slaughtered tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians for daring to disagree with the regime's policies and having weapons of mass destruction while it continues levying a risk premium on energy markets that has cost the world around $3 trillion in the last 50 years.
How long have you been an American Marxist?
" ... a mass murdering suicide death cult that recently slaughtered tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians for daring to disagree with the regime's policies and having weapons of mass destruction ..."
.
Hmm ... you're describing Trump and Gang to a 'T'.
With one 'minor' correction: Trump & Gang didn't slaughter "tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians". No, Trump & Gang slaughtered **MILLIONS** of Americans and others around the world, with the "safe and effective" jabs. Many more deaths to come.
Here’s some more balanced perspective: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-iranian-inkblot-part-2?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios
"Then there are the bridges, the power plants. FAFO mofos."
You're awfully bloodthirsty to see your government commit war crimes. What is wrong with you?
Taking out the enemies infrastructure has never been a war crime, and it's not now.
How many innocents suffer or die when the enemy nation's infrastructure has been blown to smithereens? Doesn't that not matter. Famine anyone? I guess that's okay?
If the military uses them, they are lawful targets per US law.
Remember, the US does not participate in the ridiculous ICC clown court.
Ben,
Facts are wasted on Stage 4 TDS patients.
Yet another informative post posited by Old Gyrene.
They are legitimate military targets per defense doctrine updated and signed by both Obama and Biden. It’s nuanced but they can legitimate. If their targeting ultimately leads to Iran not getting a nuclear weapon then it is justified. Using one’s populace as human shields is definitely a war crime as outlined in the Geneva Conventions.
But I see your point. I agree that we should not be gleeful over the misery that will come to the Iranian people, though ultimately it will make the world a safer place and save millions of lives.
"I agree that we should not be gleeful over the misery that will come to the Iranian people"
One comment above mentioned that 90% of Iranian population are opposed to the Islamic regime that governs them.
"though ultimately it will make the world a safer place and save millions of lives."
Did the same thing happen after the USA intervened in Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Vietnam (millions of lives saved when the USA exited Vietnam)? Korea (still at war)? Afghanistan? Iran (1970s intervention)? Ukraine?
You are ignoring the USA's dismal track record of nation building in favor of hopeful thinking.
Completely different situation. None of those countries you mentioned were on the credible cusp of having a nuclear weapon. Once developed, first stop Tel Aviv and an instant Holocaust (5.6 million in Tel Aviv Metro). If you could have stopped Hitler in the ‘30’s , would you have? Well, here is civilization’s second chance to remove evil and prevent WWII levels of death.
I hope you are right and that this results in a better world, however, I do not think it will end as you desire.
Be careful with CP, he is probably a troll
CP is not a troll, he's just gloomier than most.
I'm a realist, Beth and I am weary of constant war. I want to see my taxes, your taxes and everyone's tax dollars spent here at home improving the USA, her infrastructure, her borders, her safety, her government, her healthcare, etc. If that is being gloomy then so be it.
That was all for show & profit…..misery is never assuaged……USA is not responsible for the monsters in our midst! The only cure is world wide mind control! Will never happen! I have bad moods & evil thoughts occasionally !
What can be done?
Infrastructure is fair game in war.
Damn straight! Wars are for keeps, not to follow some bullshit rules of decency. Hoo-Rah.
Destruction of critical infrastructure results in economy destruction which in turn can result in famine and civil unrest resulting in increased death and destruction. In this case the innocents suffer, not the elites. Nobody should be okay with this. Nobody, especially not Christians.
Tell that to most of the other presidents before this one. , who did plenty of that. History goes back a little further than 2024. 🤣
Afraid I can't do that. Most of them are dead or senile at this point and I have no access to their ears. :)
Including the means of life, such as desalination plants? Well you are now back to the level of total war, as per the ancient Assyrians and their modern day spiritual heirs, the Zionists.
And William Tecumseh Sherman, Freemason.
Yes, a Yankee butcher no better than Bibi. You got up on the right side of the bed this morning.
Oh, and 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🕎🕎🕎🕎
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-iranian-inkblot-part-2?r=8yuuy&utm_medium=ios
Too Many such cases lately 😔
To believe that I used to be excited for Mondays and Fridays to read what you had to say. WTF happened in the last few months? Nothing you write is worth reading. It seems like you forgot the difference between the "good guys" and the "baddies". When it comes to politics, just to give you a little hint to get back on the right track, Israel started this whole shebang just like they start everything in the last 80 years. The USA is obsequious to these monsters for some incredible reason. JFK and RFK getting assassinated was the beginning of a message that even Charlie Kirk found out about on September 10th. And everything in between. As Caitlin Johnstone, certainly not one of my favorites, but is absolutely correct when she says: "... you can either have Israel or peace. You can't have both".
So who are the good guys and who are the baddies? There are no good guys. They are all bad, all liars, cheats, thieves, killers, and antichristlike. The key here is to understand who is rotten to the core and satan's prime examples (Zionists in Israel and the now former USA) or just religious and ethnic despots like Iran. It sure looks like the BRICS are closest to the good guys and Putin seems to be the only adult in the room.
The problem I think is that Mr. Kunstler is either unable or unwilling to accept that the group of which he is a member might be guilty of anything.
And thus, on this issue and others pertaining to the same group, his opinion appears so far off base to those of us who simply observe without partiality.
Thanks Horace... right on,
I promised myself...and lied to myself that I would never watch this blog again.
But surely this has to be the last time I visit the site.
Stricken with too many xenophobes, religious crazies and warmongers!
My parting post:
Professor Marandi: The US Walked Away in Islamabad
https://sonar21.com/latest/
I said day 1 of this phoney ceasefire it was just a diversion for the US to be able to stage a ground invasion of some sort.
Iran won’t fire first, unfortunately on religious grounds, like it didn't fire at planes lined up to attack Iran ~ and the lying US will use this ceasefire against them to start the killing all over again on behalf of Israel.
The US has no reverse gear. It is shitting in its own bed. And bankrupting itself.
At best the US will retreat and Isreal will “mow the lawn” in Iran every few years like it did to the Palestinians before annihilating them in a genocide.
~ Postscript ~
"Good riddance." ~ Ben
----
Dennis L. Merwood, if he follows his 'vow', will be getting rid of many more for his money, though. And maybe help turn this place into more of a masturbatory echo-chamber to boot. Bonus.
I'll be following him out the door... Come on, Dennis, let's go, stop clusterfucking around with these people... Allow them a masturbatory safe-space for chrissakes. Where else are they going to go? Moon of Alabama? That'd be amusing.
____
WRT these kinds of topics, for now, I'll likely occasionally bar-hop to Moon of Alabama-- same nick-- probably mostly lurking, with maybe the occasional post. Feel free to join me.
----
Random sample comment:
"Don’t believe the hype.
I don’t know why anyone still believes anything Trump and his regime of Rethuglians says. It’s always, bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.
The tables have turned, US is now a diminishing state in world geopolitical power. The mindless ‘blockade of the blockade’ is already done for.
The US won’t be attacking China either, but every time people keep getting sucked in with the phony ‘Lord Jesus’ Trump – God complex narcissistic hype.
Even Rand Corp told the Pentagon and Trump’s loonies to back off on China, so they hid the report."
~ GeorgeWendell, https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/04/war-on-iran-the-stalemate-of-blockading-blockades.html/comment-page-3#comment-1340704
____
Postscript
(Japanese 'shoegaze rock' with Yamaha's Vocaloid, 'Hatsune Miku')
https://youtu.be/Fj3KUrxiiOw?si=KWoszNnWtK0vDMMI
Good riddance.
https://www.kunstler.com/p/as-the-worms-turn/comment/243295781
You have a private chat message, incidentally, with popcorn.
I'm not sure "the US" is a thing in its own right any longer. We are the backing for the bankers' currency and we are their army - that seems to be about it. And it appears they are in the process of laying us off...
Well said. Mr Kuntsler must find the truth negative.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-194084182
https://substack.com/home/post/p-193815917
I suggest you save eight dollars a month and unsubscribe if you’re too buried under your WOKE gentle idea of tyrants who executed 150,000 innocent Iranians just last year. Not to mention have accrued secretly, enriched uranium to enact “Death to America”. Just go away and let others be brave.
Now we are up to 150k?
It started at 4k and has gone straight up.
LOL at this one, Ben. Well said.
The number of executed people in Iran changes as much as the size of the big Rainbow Trout I caught last September in the stories to my children. "It was this big! I swear!"
I rounded it off to the last 3-7 years. Anyone at all who objects is slaughtered. Apologies for my offense.
Yeah, it's horrible. No argument from me. My argument has always been that it isn't the USA's problem to resolve. This problem belongs to the people of Iran to resolve. Yeah, sounds harsh but that's the way I see it. The USA is broken both financially and politically. It is time to stop playing the world's police department and start fixing the problems here at home. I have no ill-will to the people of Iran, I really don't, but, I really don't care about their problems. We have too many problems right here in the big 50 that need redress and we are ignoring most of them in favor of empire building throughout the globe. It must stop NOW.
Right you are. So sick of ‘saving’ everyone both here and all over the planet. Napoleon started out with a justified mission but ended up obsessed with an emperor’s crown.
Don't kid yourself about BRICS. Putin and Xi dance on the same strings as our western leaders. It's just not quite so obvious and so utterly corrupt that the only people who will take the jobs there are utterly venal and incompetent, demented bozos which is the stage we have reached here in the west.
James is remarkably naive about the actual motives of the US empire, fka the British empire. The CIA & MI6 took out the democratically elected President of Iran so we could continue stealing the oil, and the US has continued that type of behavior around the world ever since. Sure, the Iranians shout “Death to America.” Completely understandable in the circumstances.
The USA created Saddam Hussein and Al Qauida. Then we went to war to defeat them. The US created the Iranian mullahs when its CIA ousted the Shah. Now the USA goes to war to oust them. There's a pattern here. A pattern that pads the pockets of the fat cats over at Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup-Grummond. Now you know why the USA constantly keeps finding sad sack nations like Iran to beat up on citing "terrorism." It's exhausting.
You’re a great debater! I just don’t agree with your exaggerations
Thowest doth go on& on& on!!! …..about us dumb Americans being LIED to over& over& over! AND…..I agree….but I’d like to have faith in someone or something!!
POTUS & C&C are my choices!
I’ll be too old to give a damn soon, so let me die in peace!😩😩😩
This is an odd and strange post, AK. I really don't understand what you are saying. Were you drunk or stoned when you wrote it?
Thanks,
CP
Sorry for the confusion….in a nutshell, I don’t want anyone to disparage JHK…..I think he’s a peach!
No….I rarely drink & do not “smoke”,
I kinda love you as well!😉
Please explain. To what exaggerations are you referring?
Well said, Rick.
The CIA has been running nation building ops on domestic soil since they killed Kennedy.
Don't you mean nation destroying ops?
"No control of your air-space" - but they just shot down a jet. They're not totally out of commission. So - let's put them out of commission!
They actually shot down two. The A-10 wasn't right away - he had to eject later when he apparently realized he couldn't safely land.
Can you hear yourselves? They shot down two planes out of how many missions flown? BFD! I cannot believe the absolute stupidity of some of the folks here that are grasping at every straw for the Iranians. Get it, we lost two planes, they lost their Air Force. Not a single US ship has been touched, Iran has lost their navy. We have lost less than twenty folks, they killed 40000 of their own people. They arbitrarily throw rockets and missiles at civilian targets, we use precision to avoid civilians with one failure, a school next to a missile site. You are USA HATERS, PERIOD. Trump has his TDS Haters, the USA has its USA Haters.
You are the biggest USA HATER here JohnAZ, PERIOD.
YOu are the Problem!
You won't be happy until the US goes into Stage 5 collapse.
I weep for my American kids and grandkids.
You are an idiot. Period. Your history shows how much. Nuff said.
No, DM is not an idiot. He has some extreme views on some things but DM is clearly a thinker of his own persuasion. I admire that.
You, however, are full of hate and threatened deeply by any opinion that deviates from and challenges your own.
MURIKA!! My country right or wrong!
So easy, CP. just define what is right or wrong as a Truth. Not an opinion.
Good an evil are just a state of mind, right, JohnAZ? As long as we believe it is good then it is good! Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or believes.
Who are we? Who is the anyone else? And no, it does not matter what anyone else thinks. Define good as a truth, who is good? You seem to define good as what anyone who opposes the USA has in mind and evil is everything the USA believes in. We will never agree on that. Honestly, your confessing that you never served for this country sorta removes your credibility.
It doesn't matter. Their missiles will carry them to victory. They only have to not lose. They will take out our ships if we try to blockade the straits of Hormuz. That's why our ships fled.
You really believe those numbers? Naif.
As I said before, you need better sources. 80% of Iran’s missiles are gone, either shot off or destroyed. Their ability to make new missiles has been destroyed, no new replacements. The two destroyers are clearing the strait from mines, and after that the US Navy is going to blockade Iranian ships from transporting oil. The tankers are already re-routing to the USA to get oil here. China and the Far East do not care where their oil comes from, they will not challenge the USN. The ships have not fled, they are in the straits right now.
Lugh, you are going to lose big time with your USA hatred this time.
"80% of Iran’s missiles are gone, either shot off or destroyed. Their ability to make new missiles has been destroyed, no new replacements."
Total bullshit!
Turn off Faux News and CNN, my friend.
But its true if it comes from Fox News, don't you know! JohnAZ sits in his arm chair and watches Fox News, listens to Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and that's his truth. The rest doesn't matter and we are all whack-jobs for having a deviating opinion.
Hold on there, cowboy! The point was that we claim we have "air supremacy" or "air superiority," or "control of airspace," depending on who you listen to, but they still shot down two of our planes, probably with MANPADs. That's NOT air supremacy. MANPADs are a real problem in a ground attack environment.
so to you control of the airspace means zero planes can be shot down? that's just not a realistic understanding of war.
Considering planes can be shot down by small arms fire.
MANPAD? Sounds like something Tim Walz would promote.
https://www.army-technology.com/features/man-portable-air-defence-systems/
Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters and also used against low-flying cruise missiles. These short-range missiles can also be fired from vehicles, tripods, weapon platforms, and warships.
Hence the Hormuz Handcuff.
Hence the possibility of USrael desperation. Recall that they picked a fight with Iran last June and had to bail. Cuz, 'success'.
You seem to think supremacy means invincibility. (It doesn't.)
Much of the Western press are all basically saying, yeah the war is over, US has the airspace and has decimated Iran, US is in control. Then I listen to Judge Napolitano's show, for example, and most analysts he interviews talk of Iran being in the driver's seat, ready for a long war, and holding the critical cards (unified in a war of survival, and having the ability to inflict pain on the global economy and the petrodollar). How much of the bloviating coming out of the white house is intended to keep the stock market from melting down.
The analysts that Napolitano interviews were totally wrong about Ukraine. There is no reason to assume that suddenly they are right about Iran.
Russia will win and Iran will win. You will lose.
Nobody will win and the innocent Iranian people will continue to suffer. This will drag on and on and on until the USA moves on to some other sad sack nation to bully. See Afghanistan. 20 years in that shit hole and what did it get us? Not a goddamned thing. Got the Taliban billions of American military equipment funded by the US taxpayer.
Subthread:
https://www.kunstler.com/p/as-the-worms-turn/comment/242846272
Specific comment:
https://www.kunstler.com/p/as-the-worms-turn/comment/244522609
Here we are again, you showing us your ass faux American.
Are you an Iranian posting from your bunker there Vlad?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-194084182
You wish, Comrade
Ultimately, you have to get along with your environment. Make it your 'comrade'.
Whatever or whoever can't or won't, won't be around for long. Nature will see to that. Even if USrael 'wins', Its victory will be, at best, pyrrhic, to say nothing about if it brings its 'strategies' with it, into its future for as long as it has one.
'Karma', like unintended consequences, doesn't have to appear immediately, nor be obvious. It can happen across generations.
____
"Species move from competition to cooperation because they discover the economic value of cooperating. It is cheaper, more efficient... All you have to do is look at our pentagon budget and see that a tiny fraction of it would really develop countries that we've been levelling instead... Very much more cost-effective to make friends of them than it is to keep them as enemies." ~ Elizabet Sahtouris (evolutionary biology)
You still listen to that show? Really?
It shows.
One among many I listen to for geopolitical analysis. What do you recommend instead?
Sean Hannity! Mark Levin! (Note strong sarcasm).
There is no one source....imho....I use a variety and learn which areas are their strong points based on what makes sense to me....But I am much older and have been collecting but not connecting dots for decades. I like C&C, Klusterfuck Nation, Don Surber, Tippinsights (but not on all subjects), Promethean Action (but I disagree with Susan regarding mankind), Alexander Mercouris but only regarding Ukraine (he does not understand Trump and how he operates and is definitely not objective about Israel but actually is objectively factual about the City of London)...Mark Groubert of America's Untold Stories actually has some interesting viewpoints on selected subjects....There are other little nuggets here and there but I go by my gut as to whether what someone says makes sense or not.
Try Steve Bannon's War Room on Real Americas Voice (M-F 10-12 EST) (Sat 10-12 EST) (Sun 10-12 EST).
Steve Bannon?? Seriously??
LOL.
The man asked about learning more about geopolitics. I'd bet $100 that you've never listened to him and another that you often ignorantly shoot your mouth off.
I'm unsure I could count all the sources of my info. Bannon? That's it?
"...you often ignorantly shoot your mouth off." ~ ezinmn (to GonzoDon)
Reading some of the junk you post, it is imagined you've been accused of this yourself, which is why your quote smacks of projection.
Oh please. Bannon is a Duginite. He’s in the crazy pile along with Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes etc. I was a devoted listener of Bannon’s for years, starting back with the “pandemic”.
Twenty years ago I also thought there was no reason to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
Nowadays I don’t leap at the most obvious answer to geopolitical conundrums. I don’t, for eg, think the easiest answer is to blame the jooooooos, or in my case think we should move them all to Long Island.
I don’t think Dugin’s multipolar world is an answer: it’s simply his wishful plot to destroy the West. And I no longer think Bannon is a patriot.
None of these so-called “crazy pile” thought leaders give a rat’s ass about what kind of world our children and grandchildren inherit.
The friend of Epstein. The Zionist. The convert to Judaism.
Captain Kangaroo.
I thought he was going to recommend watching Dr. Strangelove.
Promethean Action
They are good other than their over-simplified blaming of City of London financiers for all the world’s woes.
If you want a knowledgeable reply to Trump's take on Iran, Israel and the middle east check out Col. Douglas Macgregor, a guest on the Judge's show once a week and ubiquitous on various podcasts. Macgregor should be president.
There are many decent You Tube and other sites' shows on the subject, which it is imagined you already know.
One just has to easily dig a bit, that's all, although sometimes one can even accidentally run into many more good channels in the process. Just bookmark them, even if temporarily, in their own folder(s).
For example, I occasionally run into Dimitry Lascaris' channel, an episode which I'm listening to right now.
Russia Warns Of Huge US Military Build-Up Near Iran w/ Dr. Foad Izadi
Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
https://youtu.be/Zi5noWUQUvs?si=KykvLXsSyPkMhMr7
____
If James Howard Kunstler's going to maintain his tack of a certain kind of article, then he's going to attract the kind of readership who are attracted to it and/or the readership ecosystem created, and potentially lose other segments of it who, for various reasons, aren't.
He's effectively creating a particular readership ecosystem that differs, often fundamentally, with his initial one. Some will flourish in it, while some will not.
Kustler initially came from or with a different, at least in part, 'literary ecosystem', one more or less defined by anti-car-culture, collapse and relocalization-- that kind of thing. That's probably in large part why he's been getting flak: He's shifted the 'ecosystem'. It's perhaps a bit like what Trump appears to be doing on a macro level, such as through his and his allies' militaries.
Do have a read.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-194084182
Seems like the comment section has been taken over by Mark Levin and Lindsey "wargasm" Graham sock puppet accounts.
Agreed and I don’t feel inclined to waste energy here. JHK has jumped the shark and I am less and less inclined to come here to read commentary from the armchair generals of all stripes.
Where have you been? JHK jumped the shark ages ago. It happened around the time Duncan Crary left the Kunstlercast. Taking the reins of his podcast himself, JHK redirected his energies from commenting about urbanism to falling for, and signal boosting, every right-wing-coded grievance-driven delusion narrative under the sun.
Notice I don't say he's wrong about everything. The problem is that he can't tell the difference. Kunstler's twice-weekly bouts of "social commentary" (those words should be read in the egregiously derisive voice of Kunstler's quote-marked "Joe Biden") are a free-wheeling mélange of part truth, part regurgitated propaganda, part ill-tempered Looney Tunes.
I hear you both. I haven't heard the podcast. I found his column a few years back when I read The Long Emergency, and recently started stopping by his weekly posts here. I don't disagree with a lot of the criticism of the dems (I'm an independent and feel both parties have been a disaster). But there also seems to be a reverse TDS that elevates Trump to some kind of savior of Western civ. I thought we might get some commentary about the coming oil shock and effects of the war on the global economy, as he used to focus more on that angle.
One could say that James Howard Kunstler is in bed with Lindsey 'wargasm' Graham. I trust his lingerie's fashionable.
Perhaps inadvertently referenced, but I feel obligated to recommend the exceptionally excellent song by Billy Strings, 'Wargasm'. Though you might not be a fan (Billy may have as many haters as Israel), this unique composition is only vaguely 'bluegrass' (even includes a rap verse!). Spoiler alert: yes, it is an anti-war anthem, hence its lack of mainstream airplay. (Insert random joke dissing Neil Young here.)
Available on youtube with a creative video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaN35ziTW2I&list=RDjaN35ziTW2I&start_radio=1
I recommend this studio version as the many 'live' versions on youtube are decidedly uptempo/'bluegrassified', and less lyrically intelligible. Suggest they use this tune as background music for the next round of 'peace' talks!
Thanks for the recommendation, I'm always up for checking out some music I haven't heard. I love the word, it's very appropriate for these times, and fitting nickname for ghouls like Lindsey Graham, Levin, Netanyahu, among others.
Today's gonna be a good day. When words like "hidey-holes" and "dingdang gas station" have you laughing before your feet even hit the ground, you just know it's a good day. If not, close you eyes and remember coffee shooting out your nose from laughing before even leaving the bed! That'll do the trick! Have a great day! ❤️🤭🇺🇸
Women like to laugh, but they don't like to think very much.
Is finding word choice funny a sign of not thinking? You might want to take a look in the mirror, bud!
Did he write "hidey-holes" and "dingdang gas station"? Sounds kind of gay, but I forget if I read the article or not or just skimmed it so am unaware of the contexts. He seems to like 'lefty-left' too.
I prefer tea, but do periodically have coffee, too, often as a 'palate reset', ideally rather than nose-rinser, from all my teas.
He did, in fact, say that and it made me laugh at the context he put it in!
F…..off
🖕
As long as her husband is bringing home the paycheck, she doesn't have to think very much.
I don't remember giving out my marital status or asking for comments. The fact that you see no humor in things explains everything!
I wasn't talking about you Kathy L. I was using the word "her" as a general term to identify someone of the female persuasion. It was not directed at you individually.
Thank you! I misunderstood. I apologize.
CP is a misogynist! Big time😵💫😵💫
I believe women have certain strengths that men don't have and I believe men have certain strengths that women don't have. If that is misogyny than I guess I am guilty as charged. Sorry to disappoint you AK.
Avril Haines also had a seat at the 2019 “EVENT 201”, The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, held in New York, NY. “The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships would be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”
Less than 5 months later Covid arrived on the scene.
How’d all that “diminishing consequences” work out for the world?
Bill is a thoroughly evil man. He has lamented that Americans don't understand the devastating effects of malaria after it was eradicated, for the most part, here. He's trying to bring it back so we will be made to understand and all get to share in the bounty. It isn't fair that we don't get malaria when poor countries do.
I need a new computer and I refuse to buy Win-11. Might as well invite Klaus Schwab and George Soros into my office. And I don't have time to learn Linux. (ugh)
I wish I was born Amish. I'd like to put all digital technology in a burn pile.
You can become Amish - they allow that. You have to learn Pennsylvania Dutch but otherwise welcome converts.
Can I get rid of my SS# and stop paying taxes?
You can certainly get rid of your social secirity number. I would imagine you can also stop paying social security contributions - but I assume you would also have to give up any benefits you have accrued to date.
There are ways to work around the Win 11 hardware restrictions and get it for free if your machine is running W10. The ironic part is that the tools to do it are all buried in MS’s own website.
Linux Mint is very Windows-like.
Easy learning curve.
Good to know. I bought a used computer from local school district with Linux Mint loaded but haven't had time to to figure it out.
Did not know that about Avril Haines. Good find. It fits the picture...usual suspects.
JHK, I really like your articles, but you’ve got a large group of anti-Israel TDS boobs in your comments section. The idiots who say “there’s no plan.” Could you be any dumber? From Drill Baby Drill & radically increasing US energy production…to dismantling idiotic grifter scheme Climate Change policies….. to toppling Maduro & controlling Venezuela’s oil…..to now eliminating Iran’s ability to terrorize the Middle East and Gulf states and to control oil supply to stupidly-green Europe & needy China, and now brilliantly blocking the Strait of Hormuz & outwitting the stone-age Mullahs…. Sure Bozos, there’s no plan. Good Lord. Read some Childers’ Coffee and Covid and watch Promethean Action for history and strategy. You sound like CNN & NYT people.
I am aware of the trollery that infests these comments. In the interest of free speech, I police the joint lightly, but I have kicked some trolls off. Certainly makes you wonder about the mental health of the nation.
Perspective matters. If viewed through an anal sphincter the whole world stinks.
You can lead a horse to water…..
JHK, I sincerely appreciate the forum you provide and articles you write even though at times I don't agree with your writings. You are an American treasure. I hope you don't interpret opposing view points as "trollish" comments.
I read JHK's comment section with the same interest I do HuffPo, Foreign Affairs, Politico, et al because... YJCMTSU.
I'm an idiot. I have no idea what "YJCMTSU" means. Could you enlighten this idiot?
Not sure where my reply went... I'll try again.
You Just Can't Make This Sh%$ Up. I coined the acronym while leading the IQAF Advisors (aka CAFTT) a few years ago.
Amount of time since Iran invaded another country: 200 years.
Amount of time since Israel invaded another country: 2 hours.
#Zionism
Doesn't matter. Iran will make nukes and "might" lob them at the USA or Israel. Therefore we are justified to bomb them back to the stone age.
America First understands that. MAGA does not and applauds the imperialists.
"FAFO mofos."
I lost track of the home runs in this article.
The lefties are so easy to roll over when they freak out and start screeching their worn out drivel.
It's a fine day in the morning in these part.
Yet more pointless drivel submitted by Old Gyrene.
Old Gyrene seems to believe in the false left-right dichotomy too.
Many are discussing the oil shock that is coming, that it is probably going to be worse than the 1973 oil crisis, if events continue without any change. Now the US is going for a full blockade, ratcheting the temp up a few notches on the brewing supply chain crisis. Will China have something to say about its tankers being blocked. Interesting times we are living in...
There was no oil crisis in 1973. That was a contrived event....
I remember odd / even gas lines then
Control. A precursor to Covid gulag…
Yes, Opec was at the heart of it.
Yes...they turned the spigot off....
I worked at a gas station during the "oil crisis" of 1973! It was awful. Cars were constantly lined up out into the streets continuously. No self serve, and back then the gas tanks in a lot of cars were behind the rear license plate. You had to squat down and lift up the rear plate to get to the opening - not good!
That, and having gasoline on your hands all day!
Yes, that was entirely due to the imposition of wage and price controls. It disappeared quickly when the controls were canceled.
Maybe but as I recall the Saudis were unhappy with the price of oil…so they reduced the supply to drive up the price per bbl.
And the Earth is flat.
Why do people like you waste everyone's time with inane comments. Make your point on what and why you disagree.
It's a joke. Where's your sense of yuma?
This is where the Petro Dollar enters the conversation. China can get all the oil they want from the US or Venezuela. They have been getting away with paying Iran in yuan and were likely paying Maduro in yuan. Venezuela now gets Dollars for its oil. It appears there has been a strategy involved here where Trump has taken out Venezuela which also takes out Cuba. Mexico is walking on eggshells, ending "donations" of oil to Cuba fearing SIX or Delta visiting them at 3 AM. No more free oil for commies and now China is faced with having to pay Dollars for oil having previously been getting a huge discount while also paying in yuan. Trump has removed or hobbled client states of China and basically kicked them in the crotch with the new payment regime while adding renewed muscle to the Monroe Doctrine. A lot to dissect here.
Trump's maneuvers are both bold and daring; a rather brilliant attempt to recalibrate the world order, keeping the USA in the game for decades to come. China has finally been confronted in its quest to take us down. I'm bullish on America.
I'd say our greatest threat going forward are the traitors within our own country that are willing to sell us out. Trump will be unleashing on these folks over the next few weeks.
$4.48 for a gallon of gas today......and climbing. A month ago it was $2.38. So much for Trump's thriving American economy.
HAHA... come on out to the west coast... over $5 for regular, diesel almost $7!
Yeah, I don't know how you folks on the coast live day to day with the prices and taxes you pay. My sympathies.
The Democrat thugs are going to clean house this November and Trump will spend the last two years of his sorry Presidency fighting back impeachment charges.
No, China is already sending tankers to the US. Globalistic oil is a whorehouse.
Re: Swalwell. I dislike him as much as anyone, but this #MeToo nonsense is worse, far worse, than anything he could dream up. I realized that back when Garrison Keilor got cancelled. He was an old style Democrat - a calm, sane, friendly guy you might disagree with, but could talk with. What happened to him was a disgrace. Sad to see we are still tolerating that sort of thing.
Notice the MeToo movement disappeared when it started destroying more Dems than Repubs.
Re Swalwell....anything for the cause....they want to combine the Democrat support behind one candidate to get at least one on the ballot for the primary....when they rigged the system with open primaries, they never figured that two Republicans would get the top two spots...The Dems did it for a reason....they asked him to step aside and he refused.....So...He got pushed out....
There are many Douche Nozzles in Congress, Swalwell is among the elite of this Reprehensible Group! He may very well be on the Executive Committee for this pathetic group of garbage representatives!
Garrison Keillor was a hugely
pompous, rude elitist who treated staff and women badly. I photographed the arrogant bastard. No one to look up to for anything.
How did you land that gig? And how did that ugly mofo not crack your lens? Or did he?
I was specifically told not to talk to him and he completely ignored me and the writer. His aloofness was palpable.
Well, obviously anyone pompous who doesn't treat their staff like a doting mother should receive the death penalty, after being tortured. It's simply commonsense.
Keillor was a straight up asshole. Too bad you were so easily fooled
Women want the power to point at any random man and get him arrested, ruined, imprisoned, and/or put to death. Their feelz trump realz, including the Bill of Rights.
You missed the obvious. Too many D's on the jungle primary ballot may lead to two R's in the general for Governor. He was sacrificed.
Swallowell is no Garrison Keilor. He has quite a rap sheet.
& Charlie Rose
A lying hypocrite is a lying hypocrite.
Have you grown bored with seriousness and decided to dabble in satire?