Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

The Haters Guide To Post-Modernism

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On May 15, 2026

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To be read while listening to the Beastie Boys, Sabotage, at full tilt. Speakers, not earbuds you nit-wit.

In the beginning, circa 1989-93ish, post-modernism was out of step with mainstream academia. Derrida was a curiosity. Baudrillard was simply too dense to understand. (Confession: Baudrillard’s book, “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,” is actually damned profound and prescient once you get past the kind of syntax that would make Yoda blush.) And Foucault, poor Michel (already dead by the time I attended university) was still dismissed as a fad—although of all the post-moderns Foucault’s work has aged the best and is worthy of respect. His discourses on the body, knowledge and the aggrandizement of power over all three by public institutions presaged neoliberalism. Credit where credit is due.

Sed tamen aberro . . .

Regardless, to the overworked and underpaid graduate students the post-moderns had the frisson of transgression. And nothing attracts the mediocre like a charlatan wrapped in the mantle of authenticity.

Eventually, those grad students became instructors, adjuncts and associate professors all over the country. Chipping away at the old ways by introducing Lyotard’s “incredulity towards meta-narratives” and Roland Barthes declaration that “the author was dead” both invalidating authorial intent and empowering the reader’s (usually baseless) interpretation, Derrida’s rejection of common sense and objective interpretations (known as ‘Deconstruction’) was the perfect mortar for the worst possible innovation.

It was probably Foucault, as his education included a substantial grounding in the history of science, who connected the dots leading from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, aka the observer effect, and grafted the concept onto his own thinking on the fluid and relative nature between institutions and power.

Then, in 1975 he took LSD. The experience changed everything according to Foucault. He completely revamped his work on human sexuality and its was here that sex took on the aspect of a social construct, to be negotiated. Sex was no longer an issue of pleasure, but of truth. (And thus our sexual identity politics were born.) Foucault’s popular discourse took on a life of its own, especially after his premature death in 1984.

The post-moderns soon expropriated wholesale the ‘observer effect.’ Unfortunately they abandoned rigorous analysis at the same time and like the good mediocre minds they were, adopted a pose I call, “la pose de Sarte.”*

With a highly dubious interpretation of science in one hand and quasi-erotic mojo in another students flocked to their lectures in droves. The ladies showed up for you. The men showed up for the ladies. And everyone ate up the half-baked but dangerously sexy contrarian theories on race, gender, and the negotiation of sexual identity.

Sometime between 2002 and 2014 when I returned to academia the entire coterie of post-moderns had infected all the humanities. And the observer effect acted like leprosy rotting the academy from every which way at once.

But the classes were full. Administrators took note. Professors got grants.

“Whoa, this grift is working?” They thought.

“Nicely done, Waldo.”

Now they’re wearing Zegna shoes and hand-woven black woolen Irish turtlenecks. Undergrad coeds hop in and out of their beds like Mae West on meth.

Soon they get published in peer reviewed journals by overworked and underpaid peers who just don’t give two fucks because university administrators have proliferated while tenured jobs have declined in nominal and real terms.

Big time college sports gobble up what is left of the academic budget, so universities start hiring half-assed adjunct professors and pay them slave wages.

And still, the post-moderns strike le pose, claiming their bullshit truth is equally as true as 2+2=4, when in actuality said theory is the the square root of wildebeest horns multiplied by baboon asses, divided by the Pyramid of Giza plus the Sphinx.

Making any sense yet?

It should not. It should boggle the mind, as not one iota of the post-moderns nonsense theorizing is scientifically provable or falsifiable. It’s bunkum. A weak attempt to prove there is no such thing as objective reality to anyone but the observer.

While working on my second masters I signed up for a seminar on the history of human sexuality. This was 2015 and we deconstructed the biological focus of traditional theories of sexuality. Now there was a masterclass of freeway rubbernecking idiocy. After that nonesense, we discussed Foucault, Jameson and finally Deluze, who more than any other post-modern flagrantly conflated science and mathematics to justify nothingness and subjectivity’s role on the observer’s effect, especially on sexual identity.

Give you one guess what conclusion we arrived at: sex is a social construct.

To be fair, gender is a social construct. The Thai’s have three genders, masculine, feminine and khathoey, or ‘Lady Boy.’ Kathoey are fully integrated and accepted into mainstream Thai, Cambodian and Laotian society. But sex, sex is not a construct.

I can prove the objective reality of sex’s falsifiability as a social construct.

Question: can you have an orgasm? Answer: yes. Then you are male or female.

Answer: no. Well, I respect your commitment, snip-snip, but you are neither male nor female.

Why would the professor care about any of this? He has tenure and his agenda. Besides, he’s getting laid more than Hank Moody in Californication.

Meanwhile the students grow stupider yet simultaneously more arrogant as they adopt le pose.

A vicious cycles ensues and we now find ourselves in the present moment, slaves to time’s relentless arrow.

But as the close neared its end it was time to put up or shut up. Yes, I know how to be a good suck up of a student and get high marks!

So, I wrote my research paper on the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy and his catamite. I got an ‘A’ but the course, well, to be generous, it was a shit show of moral degeneracy and complete intellectual absurdity.

I’d have been better off in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. At least I’d have had more fun.

————————

*Sarte: French existentialist philosopher of high regard and mortal enemy of Foucault.

It Doesn’t Matter What Europe’s GDP Is

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On May 14, 2026

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Well, mostly.

Krugman shared this chart, as part of an argument that it’s ridiculous for Europe to be scared of Russia:

GDP indicates the value of the parts of the economy which are subject to money. (If you do something but don’t use money, it doesn’t get measured.) As such it theoretically measures how much you can mobilize using money. Back when most people lived off commons, before that was enclosed, and didn’t need to do much paid labor, you couldn’t mobilize much.

But that’s theoretical ability. It’s important, but what matters is what you do with it.

And the thing is that Russia does with it is build drones, advanced missiles, advanced jets and other weapon systems. And they build them in large amounts. Europe’s production of weapons is much smaller, and they’re less advanced than the Russian weapons. Russia also produces lots of oil and natural gas and has a huge refinery sector. They have a lot of rare minerals and resources in general. And they do still have both heavy and light industrial sectors.

Meanwhile Europe is hemorrhaging industrial jobs and its industrial energy costs are much higher than Russia’s.

So Europe may have more theoretical economic capacity, but it can’t translate that capacity into state capability where it matters. Russia is stronger than Europe.

It’s not that it necessarily has to be this way, but for Europe to match Russia it has to maintain and expand its industry, find cheap energy, and source natural resources that are scarce in Europe. It also needs a lower cost structure than it has in general terms.

These are not trivial problems. Europe is pushing on renewables, to be sure, but has some way to go and effectively has to buy those from China. It needs to get resources like oil and minerals from other countries and the closest and cheapest source of hydrocarbons, which it needs during the transition, is far more expensive than it otherwise would be. American oil and natural gas is FAR more expensive.

The other traditional source of resources was Africa: mostly ex-French colonial possessions. France never forgave their debts, had military bases all over and often forced them to sell resources at very low prices. But now that Africa doesn’t need European goods, they’re kicked the French out and raising prices and moving to do primary processing domestically.

So sources of cheap minerals are drying up.

All of this could be worked around, if Europe was a technological leader, but…

Now legacy industry matters. Machine tools. Steel. Chemicals. Stuff that Germany is good at. (Automobiles are dying, because yes, the future is EVs.) But Germany and Europe are losing those industries. And they aren’t producing the industries of the future. Everything they have is basically legacy industry, developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries. They aren’t creating, mostly, the industries of the 21st century.

GDP only matters if you can use the resources it suggests you have to produce what you need. When it comes to competing with Russia, Europe’s ability to do so is limited. Not non-existent, Germany has significantly increased artillery shell production, for instance, but not what it needs to be.

Without a colonial empire and without resource rich nations willing to trade Europe the resources it needs at reasonable prices, and without a tech lead, What does Europe have?

Very little.

And this is why Europe’s in for a long fall. There’s no easy route out and no one is even talking about doing what’s right. The center still thinks that the problem is that workers have pension and time off, the rising right are complete idiots who think the US is a good model and the left is not, in most cases, in contention. Germany’s AfD will not make Germany better off, it will continue destroying Germany. The same is true of UK’s Reform part and France’s right wing.

GDP is a stupid stat. It conceals more than it reveals. It doesn’t tell you much about the structure of a country. India, which in GDP terms is a great power just lost a minor war to Pakistan. High GDP can actually be bad, since it includes waste, billionaire income that does nothing for the country, and all the money earned in harmful industries like finance and private equity.

Europe’s high GDP isn’t meaningless, precisely, but it isn’t what matters. If it was, Ukraine would have won the war already and the EU wouldn’t constantly be on its knees groveling to America.

What matters is what an economy CAN do. And Europe’s economy can’t create what Europe needs.

 

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The Oreshnik

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On May 13, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

I’ve spoken to a handful of nuclear weapons and arms control analysts/experts and all pretty much agree that the Oreshnik, while a terrifying weapon, is actually a very positive development in regards to making nuclear weapons obsolete. Here’s why: prior to the successful deployment of the Oreshnik, there were only two weapon systems capable of bunker busting crucial enemy C3 nodes: thermobaric weapons, like the US MOAB fuel-air explosive bombs and the Russian Tosochka-2 and Tos-3 Drakon missiles. These weapons are useful for eliminating hardened C3 bunkers/nodes just behind the front lines but aren’t capable of striking hardened intermediate range targets. The only weapon capable of eliminating hardened C3 bunkers deep behind the lines are intermediate range city-busting nukes. Think a nuke that can take out Cheyenne Mt. or its Russian equivalent, or perhaps the NATO C3 bunker in Brussels.

Enter the Oreshnik.

The Oreshnik rarely carries an explosive load. It derives its destructive power from kinetics; physics; sir Isaac Newton’s laws at work. The Oreshnik moves so fast when it releases its MIRVed warheads that it is enveloped in plasma from friction with the air molecules.

Its warheads separate and move at such a stupendous speed that when they fall out of the sky it resembles a lighting strike. When they strike their target the speed and force is so immense they penetrate up to 150 meters. They leave no impact crater, but the reactive metal they are made of—a Russian state secret to be sure—for all intents and purposes becomes lava, shattering the bedrock, steel, liquifying concrete and discharges a shockwave that eviscerates everything within 300 meters or more.

After this cataclysmic ruination a molten material bubbles up through the point of entry, like a volcano bleeding liquids that were once solid. Such a scene was attested by onlookers in the Ukraine after a 2025 Oreshnik strike on a covert-NATO-Ukraine C3 bunker near Lviv.

It is the Oreshnik’s ability to accurately strike an intermediate range target—accurate to within 5 meters, +/- a small margin of error Mea culpa. The missile is accurate to within 100 meters. I regret the error.—that obviates the needs for city-busting nukes.

Why destroy an entire city to wreck a single C3 bunker when you can preserve the lives and assets of an entire city whilst destroying the C3 bunker with ease?

That’s not to say the Oreshnik is ushering in some new golden age of nuclear arms reduction.

That’s absurd.

But, it does eliminate a great deal of past risk.

And that’s not a bad thing, if you ask me.

Is It Better To Be Raped Or Be A Rapist?

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On May 12, 2026

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There are a lot of people who believe that in this world you either fuck other people, or get fucked. The world is full of predators, and if you aren’t victimizing someone, you’ll get victimized.

After all, if you hurt someone, that means you’re stronger than them, and mean, and others will be scared of you.

Pretty much how the US, indeed all Empires, operate.

Kill or be killed, this isn’t. If someone attacks you, or someone else, and you kill someone in self defense, well, that’s not the same thing.

Rape’s a good case, because there’s never justification for rape. It’s taking pleasure from someone else’s degradation, and it makes you, well, evil.

I’d argue the same is true of torture. (No, torture doesn’t work for extracting information.)

And then there’s murder. Not self defense, but say joining a military and going and killing a bunch of innocent people. Or, on your own behalf or the behalf of some church or belief or company, killing people. The purest example is certain types of draft: “you kill for us or we kill you.” Perhaps its less than that “kill for us or we throw you in prison” or “kill for us or we impoverish you.”

There are less pure versions. You work for a company which pollutes or poisons or makes products designed for murder. You know (or should know) that people will die because of the pollution. Working for cigarette companies, perhaps. Manufacturers who leach cancerous poisons into the air, water and land. Defense contractors for aggressive countries.

Or perhaps you’re just an abuser. A prison guard, say, in a nation where abuse and what amounts to torture of prisoners is routine.

A propagandist, who provides justification for war and war crimes.

We all make compromises, I think. We all do things to survive we’d rather not do.

But where’s the line?

What is there that you won’t do?

Is it murder? Is it mass murder for your nation? (Don’t pretend that America has had a war of self-defense in generations.) Is it producing harmful products because you need a job? Is it lying about evil to justify it? Is it looking the other way?

I think we all need to decide. Personally if a gun was on me and they said “you rape that person, or you get raped” I hope I’d choose to be raped. I’d rather be a victim than victimizer, at least when it comes to such an abominable act.

Would I join a draft to go kill Iranians and help kill Palestinians? No.

I admire Israelis who go to prison rather than join the IDF.

Muhammad Ali, refusing the draft for Vietnam:

My conscious won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father… Shoot them for what? …How can I shoot them, the little poor black people, poor little babies and children and women … Just take me to jail.

 

 

What’s your line? What would you refuse to do even if it meant you’d become a victim?

 

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The Star of David Is Getting the Swastika Treatment

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On May 11, 2026

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The Swastika is an ancient symbol. It’s been used for thousand of years. It wasn’t evil, quite the opposite.

Then the Nazis adopted it and if you wear a swastika or have a swastika tattoo, people judge you. Badly.

The Star of David is an ancient symbol of Judaism. Then Israel used it for its flag and engaged in a historically vicious genocide, engaging in rape and torture, all live-streamed.

And so..


As everyone with sense has noted the rise in anti-semitism, such as it is (much measured anti-semitism is fake, since outfits like ADL count people saying “from the river to the sea” or “free Palestine” as anti-semitic) is caused by Israel saying it’s the only Jewish nation and that any criticism of its genocide are anti-semitic.

Well, if Israel = Jewish = Genocide, which is the logic of these statements, then people are going to be anti-semitic.

This isn’t helped by the fact the majority of synagogues raise money for Israel, and many sell stolen Palestinian land and recruit soldiers for the IDF.

There’s also the rising presumption that if someone is Israeli, they’re a war criminal who has probably killed women and children. The majority of casualties in Gaza are women and children, after all, and Israel has a draft. Unless an Israeli wasn’t drafted because of religious exceptions, or went to prison, they’ve been in the IDF and given how Israel makes war they’ve either killed kids, or helped other military members kill kids.

Then there was the time that prison guards were caught on tape raping a prisoner, and the only person charged with a crime was the person who released the video. The guards have become celebrities, going on TV, and there were huge demonstration in their support.

The majority of Israelis appear to be, forgive the word, evil. They approve of rape. They approve of genocide. Most of them have helped kill civilians. (Civilian murder was common long before the straight up genocide, and targeting of children is well documented. Israeli snipers in particular love shooting kids.)

So the Star of David is now a symbol of genocide, like the Swastika. Israeli citizenship means the presumption of actual participation in the murder of civilians, and even if somehow one avoided that, the majority of the population supports the genocide, as well as rape of prisoners.

I’ve never seen a country destroy its reputation so quickly. America, widely hated, took generations to land itself in the garbage heap of world opinion. Israelis have managed it in a few years, and because of their conflation of Israel with Judaism have managed to also smear Jews as a group. I feel for those Jews, and they do exist, who have opposed Israel and Zionism. But as with Germans who opposed Hitler and genocide, they’re going to smeared with everyone else.

In the past I said it would happen, now it has. I personally will not do business or be friends with any Israeli who didn’t refuse the draft, and I won’t be friends with anyone, Jewish or not who is a Zionist. Any politician, journalist or business leader who supported the genocide is dead to me, and what little influence or power I have, for as long as I live, will be used to see them prosecuted for their crimes.

As for Israel, it’s going to have to be de-Zionized. I don’t know how we get there, but the first step is ending US and European support, and the first step to that will be replacing current Zionist leaders and throwing them in prison. All pro-Zionist lobbies will have to be broken up, and their funders and operatives tried for their crimes.

Israel’s not a strong country. It appears strong because of vast support from America and from rich Zionists who have bought political support in America and Europe. If that support ends, Israel is doomed, and that’s the only way they’ll stop committing war crimes, raping and torturing.

Perhaps in a few centuries the Star of David will lose its association with genocide. Till then, if you wear it or display it, people will and should assume that you’re either a war criminal, or support war criminals.

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 10, 2026

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On May 10, 2026

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 10, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

Mother’s Day

Heather Cox Richardson, May 10, 2026 [Letters from an American, May 9, 2026]

If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society….

 

War

Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases

[Financial Times, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]

Leaked documents show IRGC secretly acquired system and used it to guide strikes during war in March. Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite to target US military bases across the Middle East. The China-Iran axis just became a lot more concrete — and a lot more dangerous.

 

Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show

Evan Hill, Jarrett Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp and Dan Lamothe, May 6, 2026 [Washington Post]

Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported….

Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces….
Shaun King, May 07, 2026
Satellite images show extensive damage to at least 15 U.S. military sites, with over 225 essential pieces of equipment destroyed — and the American people were never told the full scale of it….

What The Washington Post has now documented is something altogether different: a state adversary damaging U.S. military infrastructure across an entire region. Bahrain. Kuwait. Qatar. Saudi Arabia. Jordan. The United Arab Emirates. Multiple bases. Multiple categories of targets. Multiple forms of military infrastructure.

That is the point.

Iran did not merely “respond.” Iran demonstrated that the U.S. military footprint across the Middle East is not some invisible, invincible architecture of empire.

It is a map of fixed targets.

 

Demand destruction vs fuel-superseding infrastructure

Cory Doctorow, 04 May 2026) [Pluralistic]

… In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:

https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/

As Solnit writes, Trump’s stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin’s quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.

Trump’s demand destruction accelerates Putin’s demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world’s energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.

Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he’s kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He’ll even let them take all of Venezuela’s oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they’d need to get that oil.

Truly, Trump’s a machine for creating stranded assets at scale.

In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:

https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/

As Solnit writes, Trump’s stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin’s quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.

Trump’s demand destruction accelerates Putin’s demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world’s energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.

Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he’s kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He’ll even let them take all of Venezuela’s oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they’d need to get that oil.

Truly, Trump’s a machine for creating stranded assets at scale….

 

 

Ukraine’s rapid rise as an anti-drone powerhouse

[New Atlas, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]

Necessity makes the best R&D lab. Kyiv’s counter-drone industry now exports back to NATO. In only four years after the Russian invasion, Ukraine went from being a country knocked back on its heels and scrambling for military aid to emerging as a leading provider of battlefield-tested counter-drone expertise and exporter of anti-drone weapons systems. How did this happen? Let’s find out.

 

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025

 

Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists” 

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 05-07-2025]

The White House declared war on the American people today, labeling its political opponents as terrorists, including “Left-wing extremists.” The new label also claims that there are “deepening alliances” between “the far-left and Islamists” — or pro-Palestinian protesters.

The language is contained in the White House’s newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy. It is the first National Strategy to be unveiled since 2021, when the Biden administration issued its document. The Strategy identifies the “left-wing,” “anti-Fascists,” “Anarchists” and “radically pro-transgender” ideologies as threats equivalent to jihadi groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or narco-traffickers.

The Strategy is the brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, an eccentric figure I have reported on, who last year hinted at terrorism charges being levied for political opponents of the administration. The document makes clear he got his wish. Gorka called the Strategy “my life’s work,” ….

“Counterterrorism” Now Officially Means Targeting Trans People

Sophie Hurwitz, May 8, 2026 [Mother Jones]

On Wednesday, the White House released a new “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” the first such directive since a 2021 Biden-era memo emphasizing the need to combat white supremacist violence, which has now been scrubbed from the White House website.

Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.

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Open Thread

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On May 9, 2026

23 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

The Law Of Elite Consequences Continues To Demolish America

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On May 8, 2026

23 Comments

There’s a lovely quote in the WSJ that encapsulates everything wrong with America in the last 50 odd years:

Many of the investors, bankers and corporate chieftains who took over the Waldorf and Beverly Hilton this week have become desensitised to President Donald Trump’s whims. The stock market hitting new records, even if investors are attempting to pull tens of billions of dollars from some private funds, has helped those spirits.

Financiers largely brushed off concerns that have dominated conversations on Wall Street in recent months, including the ongoing war with Iran, which has driven up petrol prices across the US and is now dividing policymakers at the Federal Reserve over whether they can eventually cut interest rates.

“Does anyone really care if the Strait of Hormuz is open?” one high-powered banker posited.

Counterpoint:

Back in 2009 I wrote a post called Essential Insanity, trying to diagnose what was causing American problems. It had three main points: here’s the last one:

The second type is worse, in a sense. When Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren’t experiencing the same things as the majority of the society–when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing.

For 30 years, ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that.

But, for the people in charge, the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven’t been this good since the 1890’s and the 1920’s. Everyone they know–their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends–is doing well. Wall Street paid even larger bonuses for 2007, the year they ran the ship into the shore, than they did in 2006 when their bonuses equalled the raises of 80 million Americans. Multiple CEOs walked away from companies they had bankrupted with golden parachutes in excess of 50 million. And if you can find a senator who isn’t a millionaire, (except maybe Bernie Sanders) you let me know.

Life has been great. The fact that America is physically unhealthy, falling behind technologically, hemorrhaging good jobs, and that ordinary Americans are in debt up to their eyebrows, haven’t seen a raise in 30 years, and live in mortal fear of getting ill–because even if they have insurance, it doesn’t cover the necessary care–means nothing to the decision-making part of America because it hasn’t experienced it. America’s elites are doing fine, thanks. All they can taste or remember is the caviar and champagne they swill to celebrate how wonderful they are and how much they deserve all the money federal policy has given them.

This is the second insanity of the US: The decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they’re wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn’t theirs, and that what they’ve stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis.

During the Covid pandemic, Western elites got richer. A lot richer. The worse everyone else does, the better they do.

This is the fundamental disconnect in the West: the people who are making the decisions do well no matter how much ordinary people are hurt; no matter how much they weaken their own countries. In fact, it’s worse than that: the worse their countries and citizens are doing, the better they do.

Every disaster is used to allow more looting. Are there oil shortages? Raise prices even more than costs? Food? Same thing. Are some companies going bankrupt? Buying opportunity! Are citizens desperate? Great, they’ll work for less.

Life is good for our elites and the more they destroy our countries, the better life is for them.

Of course they don’t care that Trump is driving America and the West into the dirt? Why should they? They don’t think it effects them. Of course, in time, it will, but they don’t see that or they don’t care: after all India’s richest people live great lives, who cares if India is a corrupt shithole?

So sorry about high gas prices, high food prices, high health care costs and no future for you or your children. None of that matters. Trump’s getting rich being President and so are American elites and in the eternal honest words of George W. Bush “who cares what you think?”

You don’t matter. It’s been 60 years since anyone in power in America cared about America or Americans. Europe’s leaders are about the same.

Suck it up buttercup. Life’s getting worse and no one with the power to change that cares, because they’re doing more than just fine—they’re the richest rich in the history of the world, and life is good.

 

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