Trying not to start the public floggings
From this guy, talking about the Iranian Ass-Kicking Exercise and BritPM Starmer’s reaction thereto:
“Progressive realism has met reality: when the chips are down, nobody cares about international law; nobody cares about tolerance and diversity; nobody cares about human rights; nobody cares about doing the right thing. They care about winning.”
Yup. It works at both the macro- and micro levels, btw. (see: Righteous Shootings)
Here are a few A.I. videos that I think are worthy of consideration, so if you care for the thesis — and you might, because it’s all very much focused on the economic scenario in various countries and not so much on politics (although the two are pretty much entangled, as you will see).
The first has to do with Canada; the second with France; the third with the EU and the fourth with the U.K.
Finally, if you want to see yet another (but shorter and more superficial) article which (because it’s CNN) looks at the actions rather than the motivations behind the actions, there’s New Zealand. And if you want to really chuckle, note that the fleeing New Zealanders are mostly heading for Australia — as the video calls it, “the new Argentina” (and to be clear, they’re referring to Peronist Argentina, not the Argentina of Milei).
Now the chilling bit. If you distill all the events in the above, it will become clear that even with MAGA, with DOGE, and with all the Trumpism reorgs, the U.S. is heading down the same path. The manifestations thereof are well known: the citizens of ur-European soviets (New York, California and Illinois, etc.) fleeing their failed states for states that aren’t being run into the ground by their respective state governments.
And the spoiler: all the above — all of it — can be ascribed to Marxism and the mindset it creates.
Here’s a very perceptive look at the current fun and games in Iran, and the U.S. strategy behind them:
This isn’t one war, but two.
There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.
But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.
America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.
Read the whole thing, I beg you, because it shows that far from being a silly cowboy playing with a loaded gun, Trump’s grasp of global strategy is so far removed from that of his political opponents (and even of most of his nominal political allies in the West) that it defies belief.
We often joke about Trump playing four-dimensional chess while his opponents are stuck to a chessboard. The above article shows exactly how that 4-D chess game actually works.
I am very impressed that this appeared in the normally-silly Daily Mail. As far as I can tell, not one American news publication has come close to this succinct analysis, instead busying themselves with the minutiae of the campaign.
First up, there’s this excellent thought from Bill Lehman (and read all of it because it’s excellent):
Take down their military structure. All of it. Take out their Quds Force, the entire IRGC in as far as we can find it, and leave their government, their military and their military logistics a pile of burning rubble. I would be a fan of flying a few hundred supply runs over Iran, C-17s and C-5s, full of crates of rifles, and ammunition, and dropping them, for the People of Iran to use, to finish the job. Then we need to LEAVE.
And here’s a manifestation of the above:
Thousands of Kurdish fighters have launched a ground invasion in Iran, according to a US official. The Kurdish militias, based across the border in Iraq, began the offensive in northwestern Iran on Wednesday. The Kurdish groups are widely seen as the most well-organized faction of the fragmented Iranian opposition and are believed to have thousands of battle-hardened fighters.
President Donald Trump on Sunday night spoke with the heads of Kurdish militant groups in Iraq to discuss the situation in Iran. The CIA was exploring plans to arm the Kurdish forces with the aim of sparking a popular uprising, CNN reported Tuesday.
Yeah, I’m all over this idea, as long as we remember that sometime not so long ago we armed a group called the Taliban to rebel against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan, and that didn’t work out so well. And I’m also a little apprehensive that these guys are coming over the border from Iraq — FFS, that whole area is a snake pit, isn’t it?
And just to remind everyone: the PKK (main Kurdish political party) is soft-core Muslim but hardcore Marxist. If that combination isn’t a toxic brew, I can’t think of a better one. None of which bodes well for the future.
Me, I’d prefer to drop those rifles and machine guns into towns and villages all over Iran, after first notifying the local resistance leaders — we know who they are, right, CIA? — where and when the guns are going to arrive so that they aren’t just taken by the IRGC fanatics when the crates hit the ground. Using history as a pointer, this would be akin to randomly air-dropping guns into Nazi-occupied Europe, only to have the SS intercept the shipments and use them for their own purposes, i.e. killing resistance fighters (and a few Jews, just for fun).
It’s all a little complicated and so on, but in this case, anything is better than dropping American boots on the ground to handle the thing. Once again, a history lesson: Afghanistan and a little further back, Vietnam.
Guns and ammo are cheap; American lives are expensive, and worth more than the game. Especially in this Middle Eastern shit pit.
So Iranian protestors are burning down mosques? Why? Well, here’s the reason:
These mosques are not places of worship, they serve as operation bases for the regime’s militias in residential neighborhoods. Mosques house armories for the Basij militias. They function as headquarters for repression and temporary detention centers for protesters.
Sounds like an excellent reason to set fire to the things and destroy them, then. Then there’s this:
In Iran, for decades, mosques served as recruitment and indoctrination centers for the regime. The regime uses them to radicalize vulnerable people and transform them into hate filled killing machines against their own society.
If that sounds familiar, then it should, because we have similar institutions right here in the U.S.
Now I’m not going to suggest doing the same to American Ivy League universities, even though they’re doing pretty much the same thing (and not just with radical Islam, but with radical Marxism as well). But the above link does help us focus our thinking, does it not?
And for the faint-hearted, I’m suggesting that we shut the damn things down and not burn them to the ground. (College campuses could be used for so many good things, e.g. art galleries, shopping malls and shooting ranges; it’d be a waste just to level them.)
Also in last Tuesday’s Republican ballots were a series of “propositions” — basically, a way for the Texas Republican Party to gauge the feelings of their supporters for ideas that should be considered for inclusion as planks in their party platform in future elections. They make for interesting reading (with my vote + reasons):
Proposition 1:
Texas property taxes should be assessed at the purchase price and phased out entirely over the next six years through spending reductions. — Yes (government should get only one bite at the cherry, not an annual one; if they need more money, let them beg for it at election time, or sell bonds)
Proposition 2:
Texas should require any local government budget that raises property taxes to be approved by voters at a November general election. — Yes (one of my buddies recently moved to a “growing” area, and was presented with a 40% increase in his property tax for next year; municipalities should never think they have an open checkbook)
Proposition 3:
Texas should prohibit denial of healthcare or any medical service based solely on the patient’s vaccination status. — Yes (screw those Covid-type excrescences)
Proposition 4:
Texas should require its public schools to teach that life begins at fertilization. — Yes (although I have some reservations about this, I can see why it’s been suggested)
Proposition 5:
Texas should ban gender, sexuality, and reproductive clinics and services in K-12 schools. — Yes (if the kids feel they need any of those, they can do it with their parents, outside school)
Proposition 6:
Texas should enact term limits on all elected officials. — Yes (although I sometimes like it when we get a good ‘un, I don’t like any politician to get too comfortable in a sinecure)
Proposition 7:
Texas should ban the large-scale export or sale of our groundwater and surface water to any single private or public entity. — Yes (we don’t have a lot of water in the Lone Star State, and we need to guard it jealously)
Proposition 8:
The Texas Legislature should reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by ending public services for illegal aliens. — Yes (especially education, which has stuck in my craw for decades)
Proposition 9:
The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature should stop awarding leadership positions, including committee and subcommittee chairmanships and vice chairmanships, to Democrats. — Yes (because Democrats are not to be trusted with any levers of power)
Proposition 10:
Texas should prohibit Sharia Law. — Yes (to address any First Amendment qualms on this issue, see what’s happened in Britishland)
I’ll be interested to see how this all plays out.