Ian Welsh

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

Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 3

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On September 23, 2026

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UPDATED: 13:37 GDT I added stuff about the “51 former intelligence officials” and the MSM eating crow about the laptop being confirmed to be real.

Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine didn’t just happen. It was a passion project many years in the making.

And no one was more passionate about provoking war with Russia than Joe Biden.

Now that we’ve got the virulently anti-Russian prime minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, telling his parliament that Ukrainian casualties are currently 27,000 a month, it’s not time to let up on old Joe and the rancid ghost of Democratic administrations past.

In part 1 of this mini-series within a series (the prequel covered COVID, we’ll wrap with Gaza), I covered the post-Cold War years when Joe Biden ran point in the US Senate under the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations.

In part 2, I covered Joe’s misleadership role as Vice President up to the success of the Maidan Coup in 2014.

And this bad boy is going to finish out Biden’s term as VP, during which his portfolio included a nearly free hand in Ukraine because Obama was busy hanging out with Jay Z or some shit.

It’s too bad, because Obama seems to have been one of the few decision-makers in his administration with anything approaching a clear-eyed view of the situation.

I covered the Iran War update at Naked Capitalism today. Read it here.

Obama Said No to Arming Ukraine

In early 2016, Obama was quoted by The Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a piece entitled “The Obama Doctrine”:

Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.

“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” (Obama) said.

I asked Obama whether his position on Ukraine was realistic or fatalistic.

“It’s realistic,” he said. “But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. And at the end of the day, there’s always going to be some ambiguity.”

…
“There is no evidence in modern American foreign policy that that’s how people respond. People respond based on what their imperatives are, and if it’s really important to somebody, and it’s not that important to us, they know that, and we know that,” (Obama) said. “There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not. Now, if there is somebody in this town that would claim that we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they should speak up and be very clear about it. The idea that talking tough or engaging in some military action that is tangential to that particular area is somehow going to influence the decision making of Russia or China is contrary to all the evidence we have seen over the last 50 years.”

Obama said this having said no to a joint Brookings, Atlantic Council, and Chicago Council demand that the US arm Ukraine to the tune of $1bn a year for three years.

I realize that’s chicken feed compared to the vast sums Biden would pour into the Ukrainian black hole, but it was big money in its day. Back before RussiaGate when most Americans agreed with Obama’s 2012 remark that “the 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back” in response to Mitt Romney declaring Russia “our foreign policy challenge”

Despite presiding over the beginning of the Ukrainian Civil War from 2014 on, Obama’s term was seen as time wasted by true freedom-loving patriots like The Atlantic Council’s Adrian Karatnycky, who wrote the following for Foreign Policy in 2023:

Obama’s Russia policy, including his embrace of the doctrine of Kremlin escalation dominance, has continued to shape U.S. policy during the Trump and Biden administrations. Although Donald Trump behaved badly toward Ukraine by trying to enlist Kyiv in his efforts to weaken presidential rival Joe Biden, he greenlighted the shipment of Javelin anti-tank weapons in 2017 and 2019. Nonetheless, years of fierce debate merely over sending Javelins stifled discussion of other weapons needed by Ukraine, including air and missile defense, battle tanks, fighter jets, and long-range missiles. These could have made Ukraine more secure before 2022, and some of them are still not in Ukraine’s arsenal today.

To his credit, Biden advocated arming Ukraine with defensive weapons when he was vice president under Obama. But when he became president himself, Biden brought many of the architects of Obama’s timid approach to Russia back into the government. As a result of their influence, from the moment in the fall of 2021 when the U.S. government knew Putin was planning to invade to the start of the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the United States lost a crucial window in which to provide Ukraine significant new weapons and the training to use them. Instead of much-needed howitzers, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems (such as HIMARS), and heavy ordnance, Washington doled out modest assistance enabling not much more than partisan resistance.

But that’s enough about what Biden couldn’t do as Obama’s VP; let’s look at what he and the policies he backed did do to land Ukraine and the EU in deep doo-doo.

If It’s 2014, That Must Be Crimea Seceding

There’s no way to discuss the events of 2014 without taking a bracing dip into the Black Sea waters surrounding that most strategic of peninsulas, Crimea.

Yeah, yeah, the official Western narrative is that Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine under military pressure from Putin in a patently rigged vote.

And it does seem to be true that the Crimean parliament voted 61-3 to hold the referendum after the building was taken over by unmarked troops.

But I’ve got to point out that Maidan company commander Volodymyr Parasuk bragged after the 328-0 vote in the Rada to remove Yanukovych and install the Maidan government that “our people simply came up to the Verkhovna Rada and detained the deputies, so that they would sit and work and not run off anywhere”.

This followed Parasuk’s threats from the main stage of Maidan of an armed assault on the presidential administration and the Rada that preceded Yanukovych fleeing Kyiv the night before the vote.

I’ll also quote Canadian-Ukrainian scholar Ivan Katchanovski (remember him from last time when a 2025 Ukrainian court confirmed his version of who shot who in the Maidan) who wrote about that 328-0 Rada vote (he also claims that videos of the session show about 262 deputies present for the vote):

“Many others voted under threat of violence by the far-right group of Maidan snipers, the Maidan Self-Defense, and a mob which surrounded the parliament. The commander of the far-right-linked Maidan company of snipers admitted that his group impelled, by force, deputies from the Yanukovych Party of Regions to vote for his removal.”

Anywho, I’m not going to argue about whether or not shenanigans happened in the Crimean vote that followed, but I will point out that Crimea was the only autonomous republic in Ukraine with its own parliament, its own Council of Ministers, and its own constitution, adopted 21 October 1998 and approved by the Rada. It even had its own president until 1995, when Kyiv abolished both the presidency and the Crimean constitution.

I’ll also point out that as of 2001, the last census of Crimea taken, the population was 58.3% ethnic Russian, 24.3% Ukrainian, 12% Crimean Tatar — and 77% Russian-speaking (that’s not including the port city of Sevastopol, which was 71.6% Russian, 22.4% Ukrainian in that same census).

How do you think that overwhelming Russian-speaking majority felt about the new Maidan government’s immediate revocation of the use of Russian as an official language?

The last polling I’ve been able to find of Crimeans shows that in May 2013 — 9 months before the events of February 2014 — 53% of them wanted autonomy and 29% wanted to join Russia.

Do you think those numbers held following the violence in Maidan and the fall of Yanukovych, the President backed most strongly by Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine?

But, the main point to make about Crimea is that the Russian Black Sea Fleet was already there and had been since 1783.

No Russian leader, even drunk Yeltsin, would have voluntarily surrendered the country’s only warm-water port.

That’s like asking Team America to give up the naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Enough about that; let’s get to the fun part: Hunter Biden and Burisma, laptop included!

Hunter in Kyiv: A Four-Year Fappening

https://www.instagram.com/p/C9GKlTIyCwR/

The fun mostly happened at a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma, founded under noble circumstances when Yanukovych’s ecology minister, Mykola Zlochevsky, granted gas licenses to companies he owned.

I am not a linguist, but I suspect Ukrainian has more words for “self-dealing” than Inuit has for “snow.”

Whatever you may have to say about Zlochevsky’s ethics, he’s a nimble and flexible politician, and he promptly gave two Burisma board seats to two principles of the storied American natural gas powerhouse….Rosemont Seneca Partners.

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Preparing For Bad Times, Trumpocalypse Edition

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On September 22, 2026

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I’ve been warning that there would be serious problems from Trump’s war because of the effect on oil, fertilizer, helium, natural gas and much more.

This was obvious: world use was higher than supply, and stockpiles would eventually dry up. Trump, for whatever reason (I favor blackmail, but hey, insert your reason here), refuses to make peace. Then the Saudis decided to hit Yemen’s capital aiport and Ansar Allah said “you’ve made us angry. You won’t like us when we’re angry.”

There’s some dispute over exactly who hit the pipeline (Sauds say Iraqi militias, Iraqi militia’s say “that’s not our honor” but it doesn’t really matter. Ignore BS about repairs, they remain no more defensible after repairs than they were before repairs are needed.

I expect to see shortages (already here for diesel in America and France), price increases and in some countries, food riots. No real supply management has been done, the geniuses in charge figured “let’s keep prices lower than they otherwise would be, and for sure we shouldn’t make sure farmers have enough at prices they can afford, or any other critical industry.” Add increased fertilizer prices, and BOOM!

So, Trump and co. have blown up the world economy, and 2027 is going to suck extra rancid ass. What to do?

The obvious thing is to stock up, if you can, but that’s not enough unless you’re rich and sure that your income stream is secure.

What you need is to belong to an actual community: people who take care of each other. It could be a very tight friendship group, it could be a large extended helpful family (not a lot of those still around), but the easiest way to get such a community is to join an active church. Active churches and their members give you a support network by default if you get involved. (Don’t just go worship, volunteer for something.)

“But Ian,” you whine, I’m not religious.

Get religion!

Kidding, kidding. There are churches for non-believers too.

So find a church that suits you and start going. Make friends. Be useful and helpful. When you need help the odds of you getting it skyrocket.

If you’re alone, or part of a small family group, you’re always one bad bump away from fiasco. In normal times this is bad. In the the times which are coming, well, it could be catastrophic.

Again: things ARE going to be bad. How bad will depend on where you are, and how stupid and unwilling Trump and MBS, the the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, are to make peace.

But I’m sure everything will work out. Neither of them are evil, stupid and have a track record of failure at everything except enriching themselves and clinging to power, right?

Act on this. It doesn’t have to be my suggestions, but do what you can: Shit Mountain just liquefied and started rolling downhill to where you live.

 

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By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Yemen and Obama & Trump’s America, Too

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On September 21, 2026

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Trump is cruising for a bruising the USA has had coming since Obama’s second term.

Saturday night I was trying to relax, get over COVID, and enjoy some fights. I found myself doomscrolling instead.

And one particular info-juxtaposition stuck with me, stuck in my craw like my dry COVID cough.

First there were a series of posts from sources on X I consider credible West Asia war news and analysis accounts warning that POTUS Trump and Bibi Netanyahu were telegraphing some kind of massive attack in response to the beating Yemen has been putting on the fragile House of Saud this week.

Late Sunday I’d find out that Trump TACO’d again, but the point remains.

My first thought was, what are we gonna do, turn this:

Sights of the old city of Sanaa, Yemen

Into this?

The devastation of Gaza, 2026

Meanwhile over on Facebook, a very sweet and sincere Democratic friend was posting some tired old bullshit about Barack Obama speaking in complete sentences and all and all the replies hit the same stale note: man, those were the days.

I had to get all Biblical and shit and cite Matthew 7:16-20 “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Listen up, y’all, the ruin of Gaza and the righteous wrath of Ansar Allah are the fruits of our bipartisan firm of False Prophets Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump and if we Americans continue to let our senescent shitbag POTUS keep throwing mad ordnance around like it’s the day before The Day After, we’re all gonna get what we’re asking for good and hard.

Karma, that is.

About the Oh So Eloquent Barack Hussein Obama

If only he’d spent that eloquence on something other than glossing over the continuation of the worst surveillance and military policies of the Bush/Cheney administration, the biggest destruction of Black wealth in American history, the insurance industry protection racket Rahm Emanuel called the Affordable Care Act, a fascist coupin Ukraine, genocidal attacks on Yemen, Libya and Syria, and making damn sure not one bankster did a single day for the biggest fraud in human history up to that point.

But yeah. Those were the days. Back when the POTUS spoke in complete sentences and bullshitted us right past the massive war crimes he was committing and/or enabling like the Saudi/UAE genocidal assault on Yemen.

In March 2015, the Saudis started bombing Yemen and the Obama administration made sure they had all the Made in America weapons and technical support to do it. And what support it was. In fact, the 2015-2025 attacks on Yemen have been so lavishly funded, and so spectacularly unsuccessful at achieving their stated goals, that it really makes me go, “Oh we’re gonna strike Yemen again? With what exactly, that we haven’t already done given that we’ve dumped about $250 billion on one of the poorest countries on Earth for eleven years and all we seem to have accomplished is really pissing them off?”

Let’s Do Some Accounting

The Pentagon flew aerial refueling for Saudi and Emirati warplanes from March 2015 through November 2018, at a cost of about $300 million — and then couldn’t be bothered to collect. It turned out the Pentagon had undercharged the coalition by some $331 million. As of late 2023 Riyadh still owed $15.1 million of it and told The Intercept they were “not aware of the outstanding debt.”

Eleven and a half years later the tab just keeps getting bigger and Ansar Allah just gets stronger and more defiant.

$’s Spent attacking Yemen, March 2015 – September 2026

  • Saudi Arabia — $100–330bn — Air campaign, air defense, propping up its Yemeni clients
  • UAE — $25–90bn — Its own war plus a decade of paid militias
  • United States — $9–15bn — Refueling, intel, carriers, four bombing campaigns
  • Israel — $0.3–1.5bn — Strikes on ports and airports, plus the interceptors
  • United Kingdom — ~$0.1bn — Typhoons out of Cyprus, Navy missiles

Grand total, low to high: $135–440bn

Every president since has kept it going

Trump vetoed the War Powers resolution in April 2019 — the first time both chambers of Congress had ever passed one — to keep it going. Biden stood up at the State Department in February 2021 and said “this war has to end,” then spent his term running Operation Prosperity Guardian and Operation Poseidon Archer and parking carrier strike groups in the Red Sea at $9 million a day.

Then Trump 2.0 and his dumbass Secretary of Defense War Greasy Pete Hegseth. Operation Rough Rider, March to May 2025: more than $1 billion in under eight weeks. Roughly 2,000 bombs and missiles worth $775 million. Seven Reaper drones shot down, $200 million gone. Three F/A-18s that fell off the deck of a carrier, $210 million. Brown University’s Costs of War project found us firing $2 million missiles at drones that cost the Houthis $2,000.

And it’s still going. On September 10 the Saudis flew 64 airstrikes in a single day to no discernible effect on the battlefield in a dramatic contrast to Ansar Allah’s missile and drone strikes on Saudi cities in response which have clearly lit the Saudi’s shit up.

The only reason we can put a number on any of it is that one economist at Brown — Linda Bilmes, of the Costs of War project — sat down and counted the carrier days, the C-17 flights and the Tomahawks themselves. The Pentagon has never published a Yemen figure, and Congress has never made it. The Saudi and Emirati numbers are guesses built on daily burn rates, because those are monarchies and they don’t have to tell anybody anything.

Now They Want To Do It Some More Again

The Houthis put ballistic missiles over Riyadh, the Saudis intercepted them, and Trump spent the night at Camp David reviewing Yemen strike options before heading back to the White House early. CNN had already reported the pressure building on him to intervene, and that Riyadh itself is out of options. Embassies across the region are issuing warnings.

Strikes? What are we gonna do? Vandalize the world historic Old City of Sanaa?

We’ve spent billions bombing Yemen for the last eleven years and the Brits have spent a century trying to destroy and subjugate the place.

It’s not gonna work and it’s just gonna make the outcome more disgraceful.

What are we going to do to Yemen that we haven’t done already in an eleven year, ~$250B orgy of genocidal destruction waged on a country that never presented a threat to the US or UK and only threatens their neighbors now because they’re tired of being attacked by them?

The only card we haven’t played is sending the 101st Airborne in to get slaughtered in house-to-house fighting in the Old City of Sanaa.

Call it “Fleet of Black Hawks Down.”

And that’s before the oil math. Iran has Hormuz effectively closed, which left the Saudis pushing some 5 million barrels a day across the East–West pipeline to Yanbu instead — until drones out of Iraq hit its pumping stations on September 10 and 11 and Riyadh shut the line. Brent went over $110. What’s left is Project Freedom, the Navy walking tankers down a southern route past Iranian waters.

Brett Erickson, September 19:

“The reality is clear: Too much is going wrong at once. The United States doesn’t have any good options to change the outcome of this war.

The only solution is to cut a deal with Iran and bring an end to this disastrous failure from the Trump Administration.”

Or we could fire off nukes and really go out like world historic chumps whose name will never be mentioned without the survivors’ grandchildren’s grandchildren spitting before they say the hated word “Americans.”

And then there are our European allies lackeys, who are getting wrecked as a consequence of the Saudi decision to bomb the Sanaa airport following the Ayatollah’s funeral and break the truce that had held since 2022:

One in nine French filling stations is out of petrol or diesel, diesel is past €2.39 a litre at a record, and Macron has called an emergency meeting with the presidential candidates. In Grand Est it’s 16% of stations. European diesel cleared $200 a barrel on the benchmark. French officials say the shortage is logistical, not a crude shortfall.

The EU and its governments of US lackeys deserve this, but the European people don’t. Wake up and throw off your Ursulavonderchains.

This is the part that matters

Obama’s Hopey McChangey BS led directly to Trump.

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

By the big JC’s own definition, Barry Obama meets the definition of a false prophet.

“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”

Matthew 7:16–20

The reason this matters — provided that civilization survives the weekend and coming months — is that if Americans don’t abandon this blue vs. red BS and wake up to the fact that both parties are hopelessly corrupt and in thrall to the most sinister forces of militarism and graft imaginable, we are going to get six years of clown show after big Dem wins in 2026 and then another, scarier fascist queued up and ready to go in 2032.

God help us if “we” “nominate” Klonopin Kamala again in 2028, because we might get an “anti-war” Tucker Carlson right away instead. And POTUS Tucker, I fear, would be as good as his word. He’d pull us out of Europe and West Asia and then get down to business rounding up immigrants and minorities here at home and rampaging across Latin America.

Brett Erickson, September 19:

“All of the alerts issued by the Middle East embassies in recent hours could VERY well be in relation to potential U.S. strikes on YEMEN, not Iran.

The wars between Saudi/Yemen and U.S./Iran could be merging into one…”

Let us pray for deliverance. This shit is insane and scary. The mad, dying empire might kill the planet in its death throes.

America, all the murder we’ve been exporting for 80 years is coming home to roost.

It’s on us for not stopping this shit sooner. Karma’s a bitch.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 20, 2026

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On September 20, 2026

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 20, 2026
by Tony Wikrent

 

Scored on the CIA’s Instability Model, the United States Is in the Highest-Risk Category for Civil War, Coup, or Collapse

Christopher Armitage, Sep 13, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

 

Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here

[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, September 16, 2026]

… Veteran energy advisers say that with no resolution to the Iran war in sight, the situation risks spinning out of control. Diesel prices have soared to a record $6.23 a gallon and gasoline prices, which slipped below $4 a gallon this summer, have rebounded to $4.32. Some energy analysts say they have been fielding investor questions about when consumers pinched by the high prices will start pulling back on new purchases.
The Trump administration has repeatedly promised Americans that prices at the pump would decline and that energy flows out of the Middle East would keep increasing.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a Houston G-20 event on Monday that “the prices in the prior administration were this high anyway” and that Americans would have paid those prices permanently because former President Joe Biden was “pursuing a policy of energy subtraction and shutting down refineries.”
“If you want to write about the prices, make sure you include the word ‘temporary’ because this is a temporary disruption,” Burgum told reporters….
Energy executives and White House officials say they have had a continuing dialogue about the energy situation since the conflict broke out, and CEOs including Wirth talk to Energy Secretary Chris Wright frequently.
But Wirth said Friday that he hadn’t talked to President Trump since Aug. 3, when the president said in a Truth Social Post that the CEO hadn’t credited his administration for the oil industry’s good fortunes. Trump called on Chevron and oil companies to bring “consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!” ….
Trump has said Ukraine must halt strikes on Russia that endanger global supplies of diesel.
In March, the CEOs of the three largest U.S. oil companies, ExxonMobil XOM 2.57%increase; up pointing triangle, Chevron and ConocoPhillips COP 3.33%increase; up pointing triangle, warned Trump officials, including Burgum and Wright, that a prolonged closure of the Strait could lead to a shortfall in refined products such as diesel, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Some executives have been privately critical of Trump’s handling of the conflict….

 

War on voting

The court and the church confront Trump on voting

Michael Sean Winters, September 18, 2026 [National Catholic Reporter]

… Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said at a press briefing that participating in elections is a key part of faithful citizenship. He, and the other panelists, noted that free and fair elections are essential to democracy, and worried that some naturalized U.S. citizens might be intimidated from voting if the Trump administration dispatches ICE agents to polling places.

“Every eligible voter should feel safe to vote, and every vote should get counted, regardless of who or what people vote for,” said Joseph Tomás McKellar, executive director of Catholics in Communion, at the event. “The question this morning isn’t about the church turning more liberal or conservative. That’s the wrong frame. It’s about how the church is returning to its roots, who these Catholics are, and why being Catholic in America increasingly means building brick by brick a civilization of love.”

The magisterium has never endorsed democracy as an end in itself, only as a means to other desirable ends. As Pope Leo XIV wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, citing St. John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus:

Saint John Paul II reiterated Pius XII‘s message that the Church values democracy insofar as it guarantees the effective participation of citizens, enables them to elect and peacefully replace their leaders and prevents power from being monopolized by small elite groups motivated by particular or ideological interests.

The three principal justifications for democracy the three popes cited — participation, the peaceful replacement of leaders, and the prevention of power being monopolized by a small elite group — all were undermined by Trump’s efforts to interfere with the election, and interference that also happens to be unconstitutional….

 

How the US House could overturn the midterm election results

[States Newsroom, via Naked Capitalism 09-16-2026]

 

NAACP Sues to Stop Trump From Sending Armed Agents to ‘Intimidate’ Minority Voters at Polls

Brett Wilkins, September 19, 2026 [CommonDreams]

A coalition of civil rights and labor groups led by the NAACP sued the Trump administration Friday in a bid to prevent armed federal agents from being deployed at or near polling places during November’s midterm elections, warning that the threatened presence of such officers could intimidate voters of color and repress turnout.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by the NAACP, National Urban League, Mi Familia en Accion, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, SEIU, American Federation of Teachers, International Union of Painters, and United Food and Commercial Workers International.

 

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Open Thread

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On September 19, 2026

8 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Information Overlord: AI Doomers Up to No Good, House of Saud or House of Cards?

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On September 18, 2026

11 Comments

Nat Wilson Turner = Information Overlord = Flames Up = Phones Out = No Sense of Urgency

From me this week

From me at the Let It Roll Podcast

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw

Me Elsewhere

AI Bubble

Iran War

  • Steve Jermy: End of U.S. Military Primacy – New Strategic Thinking Required — YouTube
  • Republican launches impeachment effort against Pete Hegseth over Iran war — USA Today. “Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle/She’ll come back as fire to burn all the liars/Leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
  • Experts Declare Fuel Crisis Imminent as Global Wars Choke Out Supply — Simplicius. “This type of short-sighted, bumbling diplomacy is like haphazardly putting out random fires one at a time, all while inadvertently starting new ones. Trump thinks the US can act recklessly hostile against the entire world, unscrupulously supplying weapons to Ukraine to destroy major sectors of Russian infrastructure, ruthlessly attacking Iran, etc., and then wonders why the blowback is starting to poison the domestic economy.”
  • The Collapse of American Hegemony and Global Nuclear Risks — The Unz Review. “Raised in a family of Iranian exiles, Trita Parsi came from a background that was less than friendly towards the Islamic Republic. A few years ago, he became co-founder and vice president of the very respectable Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. That organization advocates realism and restraint in foreign policy, with its major donors being leading American foundations, including Open Society, Koch, Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. “And as Parsi explained in a recent interview, “The United States and Israel threw everything they had at Iran and they failed. As a result, the Iranians are far more confident in their capabilities than they were before.” Meanwhile, regional trust in America had completely collapsed, with the GCC countries recognizing that America could not protect them against Iranian retaliation.”
  • The End of the American Middle East — Foreign Affairs. “The American Middle East is finished. The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 has been one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region. And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security partnership.”
  • Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail — Foreign Affairs. “Trump’s War Has Brought American Strategy to a Dead End”
  • Alastair Crooke: West Asia Is Incubating a New Era of Revolutions — “A Decisive and Historic Stage” — YouTube

Ukraine

  • Ukraine: “It’s not a tragedy it’s a crime” — YouTube. “I’ve lived in Ukraine for 5 years. I’ve had a lot of Ukrainian friends, even if I’ve probably lost all of them because we see things very differently now. But still, I actually take Ukraine very seriously. I know the language. And it’s it’s not a tragedy. It’s a crime how ordinary Ukrainians are being sacrificed by their puppet regime and by Western governments who have a sick dream of inflicting a geopolitical setback on Russia. It’s a sick dream under any circumstances. What makes it even more insane is it’s totally futile. In the end, hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million Ukrainians will be dead and they on top of it will lose the war. And this is what von der Leyen wants to go on for even longer. Unbelievable. And in this case, Lavrov made some extraordinary statement about the legitimacy of the Ukrainian statehood itself.”
  • Ukraine Will Be a Cancer on Europe and Russia. Iran a Quagmire for the USA | Amb. Chas Freeman — YouTube. Ambassador Freeman is one of the few wise men left.

Saudi Oil Crisis

Gaza

Israel

Palestine

  • The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Pro-Palestine Israeli — Alon Mizrahi. “We are not the victims here, the story is not about us, and we by no means can replace Palestinian voices. Still, the truth is what it is, and you pay a price for being an anti-Zionist Israeli/Jew”

US Politics

Elections 2026

Economy

  • The Structural Incentives Of Western Capitalism Make Competing With China Impossible — Ian Welsh. “The reason VW and other German firms made so much money in China for so long is that they had, brace for it, better cars. More technologically advanced. Better handling. “But…they didn’t try and keep that lead. They let the Chinese beat them by refusing to properly re-invest their profits. “This is a constant problem in the West: our elites don’t want to compete on price. They don’t want to compete on quality. They want “moats” — they want monopoly profits just for existing.”

Ari Emanuel

Sports Business

Music

Alt Media

Predictive markets

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Doom, As Predicted

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On September 17, 2026

28 Comments

Sigh:

Regular readers will know I have been predicting this for some time. And understand that this is before the effects of Yemen basically shutting off Saudi oil and natural gas entirely because of shipping times.

Diesel is what farmers use. It’s what truckers use. It’s what most mining equipment uses. Much construction equipment. It’s probably more important for the operation of domestic economies than gasoline. Add to this fertilizer shortages, because much of the precursors come from the Middle East, and we’re in a world of hurt. Next up, bunker fuel, the stuff used to run freighters and tankers and without which international trade crashes to a halt, since shipping the is backbone of international trade.

Meanwhile the international bond market is freaking out:

Ouch.

Also ouch.

Are you sick of all the winning yet?

The Feds also increased the Federal reserve rate yet again, and indicated there may be another raise before the end of year.

Perhaps you’ve wondered why high interest rates are used to cool inflation? It’s because borrowing costs are a cost for businesses and individuals: when they go up, people have less money, and thus spend less. This leads to what economists like to call “demand destruction.”

Demand destruction means less economic activity, and enough of it causes recessions and shitty economies, and that’s in addition to the fact that expensive or insufficient fuel will also lead to a shitty economy.

And by shitty economy I mean that I expect to see actual food riots in multiple countries next year. This crisis is one of choice, and on top of that since there was no proper rationing which made sure that diesel and fertilizer and so on got to those parts of the economy which needed it most (yes, that means farmers in particular, but not just them) we’re going to be in a world of hurt.

Everyone with diesel refining who hasn’t already will put exports controls on at the least. That means if your country doesn’t produce enough, it’s not going to be able to buy enough otherwise. Yet another case of “no, you can’t buy anything that matters when it really matters.” Food exports will likely be restricted as well. Can your country feed itself? A lot can’t: for example Britain.

In personal terms I re-iterate. If you can afford to, start and stocking up on staples, medicine, fuel and so on. If you don’t need them, great, you’ll use them up in time anyway, but odds are you will need them and at the least, even if your locale doesn’t have physical shortages, be assured prices WILL rise.

This isn’t a theoretical matter any more, or a case of “later” as it was when I gave these warnings months ago. It’s happening now and it’s going to get worse. The only route out (and even then there’ll be problems, because rebuilding takes time) is for America to admit it lost the war and go to peace on Iranian terms and for Saudi Arabia to do the same with Yemen. All this nonsense about repairing the Saudi pipeline is almost meaningless because Yemen can hit it again and again and has no reason not to until the Sauds end their blockade.

This is a three alarm fire in the economy. The basis of the economy is on fire, and the fire is out of control and spreading. Act accordingly.

 

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Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 2

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On September 16, 2026

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With the toxic and stupid Trump 2.0 regime collapsing in the polls and the useless Democratic establishment licking their chops at the prospect of another electoral gimme in 2026, it’s more important than ever to rub shitlibs’ faces in the abysmal and inexcusable record of the murderous Biden administration.

If we keep voting blue no matter who, we’re gonna keep getting what we got.

In the interest of the public good, therefore, I make my humble offering, attempting to chronicle the three mass death events the senile husk of Joe Biden nominally presided over in his four years in the White House.

I covered COVID first. That was a debacle that many Democrats exclusively blame on Donald Trump and many GOPers and Independents have concluded was a hoax or some shit, but the reality is (as brilliantly documented by Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism in real time) that Biden’s deliberately negligent policies resulted in the death and disabling of over one million Americans.

Next I covered Biden’s role in provoking the Ukraine War from 1992-2008 as a powerful US Senator who never met a war that didn’t give him a stiffy.

Now we’re going to get to the grit, because Vice-President Biden had Ukraine as part of his portfolio under POTUS Obama from 2009-2016 and we all know what he did as President, even if some dumbasses still insist he bears no responsibility for the disaster he spent decades making.

No, Ukraine Is Not ‘Winning’

First I want to establish some facts about the current state of consensus reality by citing some very pro-Ukraine, pro-war authorities who are throwing in the towel.

I’m going to save a few thousand words by using images of the relevant headlines.

Up first, from The Spectator (UK) one of the most blood-thirsty, Russia-hating publications in the English speaking world:

From the “liberal” Wall Street Journal:

From former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s made killing Russians his passion project for years now, in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post (who had to give it multiple headlines so as not to upset sensitive pro-war liberal readers):

HT Simplicius

With that out of the way, let’s get into the time machine, loser, and go back with me to a time when a young Black President that so many Americans had invested with their “Hope and Change” fantasies needed to have an old racist white guy next to him at all times to make idiots and assholes feel comfortable patting themselves on the back for voting for a Black president.

And note, the point isn’t to excuse Putin for his actions. I’m not Russian, Putin’s not my responsibility. I do have the sense to treat Russia with respect, because I’m a student of history and I don’t know of a single instance where fucking with Russia ever ended up in anything but disaster whether for the Swedish Empire, Napoleon’s France, or Hitler’s Germany.

I’m an American and I’m concerned with the conduct of the elected officials who are supposed to be representing me.

Get In, Loser, We’re Going to Kyiv

Biden wasted no time in building upon the disastrous actions of the Bush/Cheney regime at the 2008 Bucharest summit which called for Georgia and Ukraine to be invited to join NATO. By July 2009, on his first trip to Ukraine as Vice-President Biden was already in Kyiv (we spelled it Kiev back then) lecturing Ukraine’s leadership and then flying off to Tbilisi telling them that NATO membership would be cost free (this is after they’d already had their heads cracked in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War that followed immediately on the heels of the Bucharest summit. Anyone remember John McCain saying “We’re all Georgians now”, as he tried to campaign for President on his desire to drag America into a war in a place few had heard of?).

Here’s some of what Biden said on that first visit to Kyiv in 2009, per the Christian Science Monitor which gave Biden that kind of tough guy headline (“Biden’s tough love for Ukraine”) that got him all riled up and gropy with the females on his staff:

Vice President Joe Biden had some surprisingly pointed comments for Ukrainians yesterday.

Speaking in front of 400 Ukrainians in a speech that was billed as an address to the nation’s citizens, Biden chastised Ukrainian officials for, among other things, their immaturity in dealing with inter-party conflicts. Evoking poet Taras Shevchenko, a national icon, Biden said Shevchenko would likely “be wondering why the government is not exhibiting the same political maturity as the people.”

Reforms have stalled and political bickering has become widespread after Ukraine‘s 2004 Orange Revolution. Coupled with neighboring Georgia‘s Rose Revolution a year earlier, the Orange Revolution was a source of hope for Western countries that democracy could take hold in states of the former Soviet Union.

Frustrated by the stalemate and lack of progress, Ukrainians have showed signs of throwing their support to opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich, a move that would more closely align the country with Russia and, according to some, could tip the country back toward authoritarian rule.

Biden’s remarks seem to indicate that Ukrainians aren’t the only ones who are frustrated. The vice president was expected to address Washington’s concerns only behind closed doors, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the weight of his public remarks were unexpected.

“Centuries from now, what will Ukrainians say of this time?” he said. “What will they say of their leaders? Will they say they returned to the past, or will they say the beginning of the 21st century launched a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But lest the news out of Ukraine been seen as all harsh, Biden was also overheard praising the country’s women. “It’s certain you have so many beautiful women,” Biden is reported to have told President Viktor Yushchenko at an unscheduled visit to a Kiev pub.

What a charmer. Note that bit about the “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia. At the time I thought all that shit was organic and awesome. I also thought Gene Sharp was the greatest man since Gandhi.

I’d love to get a poll of Ukrainians today on whether they think following the US and NATO down the garden path to war with Russia was “the beginning of…a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But let’s keep moving.

How’d That Russian Fleet Get In Crimea? Oh Yea, Legally

Turns out the Ukrainians did, in fact, democratically elect the pro-Russian President Yanukovych. Biden’s visits to the country cease for the full duration of Yanukovych’s term.

Yanukovych signed something called the Kharkiv Pact, which extended the Russian Navy’s lease on Sevastopol for 25 years to 2042 in return for a major discount on natural gas. The Accord easily survived an opposition attempt to renounce it in 2013 in the Rada.

The Yanukovych administration also oversaw the passage of a law that forbade Ukraine from entering into military alliances with anyone. Neutrality is always the first step to fascism, war, and disaster, as all Swiss people know.

2013: Ukraine Caught Between the EU and Russia in Trade Tug of War

Shit hit the fan in November 2013 when Yanukovych backed out of the EU Association Agreement, suggesting instead the “creation of a tripartite commission of Ukraine, the EU and Russia, which would work to remove barriers in mutual economic cooperation and trade liberalisation.”

Yanukovych’s reasons couldn’t have been more sinister and inexplicable, per the OSW:

In the context of the upcoming presidential elections in early 2015, where victory is a priority for Ukraine’s ruling elite, President Viktor Yanukovych’s most important task is to stabilise the increasingly difficult economic situation. To this end, it is necessary to ensure Ukrainian goods’ continued access to the Russian market, and to guarantee external financial support. The Ukrainian government is hoping that, in exchange for the postponement of its rapprochement with the EU, it will manage to come to an agreement with Russia on the issue of a stabilising loan and renegotiating the gas contract.

The crazy cat also blamed the IMF for the collapse of the deal with the EU — and certainly everyone knows that the economic hitmen at the IMF and their ilk only bring prosperity in their wake — per the NYT:

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov of Ukraine told enraged opposition lawmakers on Friday that his government’s decision to walk away from far-reaching political and trade agreements with the European Union was based on fiscal imperatives, and ultimately prompted by the International Monetary Fund’s overly harsh terms for an aid package.
…

Protests against the government’s decision were held in several Ukrainian cities, including Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine and a hotbed of anti-Yanukovich sentiment, where more than 5,000 people joined a rally in the main square, led by Mayor Andriy Sadovy. Kiev, the capital, was pulsing with emotion that officials and commentators said they had not seen since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

On Friday evening, about 1,000 people protested in the rain in Independence Square, the revolution’s central gathering point, waving European Union flags and chanting, “Ukraine is Europe!” A bigger rally was set for Sunday. The jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, issued a statement urging people “to react to this as they would to a coup d’état” and take to the streets.

Note that it was western Ukraine that was the hotbed of protest. Good old Western Ukraine, home of legendary freedom-lovers.

Maidan Protests, Entirely Organic, Break Out

I’ll use the definitely not edited by the CIA Wikipedia entry on the Maidan Protests to tell the next part of the story:

The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government.[90] Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations,[91] and the influence of oligarchs.[92] Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.[93] The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger.[5] Euromaidan was the largest democratic mass movement in Europe since 1989[94] and led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

During the uprising, Independence Square (Maidan) in Kyiv was a huge protest camp occupied by thousands of protesters and protected by makeshift barricades. It had kitchens, first aid posts and broadcasting facilities, as well as stages for speeches, lectures, debates and performances.[95][96] It was guarded by ‘Maidan Self-Defense’ units made up of volunteers in improvised uniform and helmets, carrying shields and armed with sticks, stones and petrol bombs. Protests were also held in many other parts of Ukraine. In Kyiv, there were clashes with police on 1 December; and police assaulted the camp on 11 December. Protests increased from mid-January, in response to the government introducing draconian anti-protest laws. There were deadly clashes on Hrushevsky Street on 19–22 January. Protesters then occupied government buildings in many regions of Ukraine. The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters and 13 police.[71]

And about those protests, much like the 2004 Orange Revolution, I’d love to see the US State Department’s books on how much of the $5 billion Obama (and Bush and Clinton and later Biden) State Department official Victoria Nuland bragged about investing in Ukraine between 1991 and 2013 went to that kind of crap. I think there are some words for when one country spends immense fortunes to cause civil unrest in other countries; oh yea, it’s called subversion. Unless the US is doing it, then it’s just spreading freedom and democracy to a grateful world.

Crazy that some Ukrainians still wanted to be neutral and do business with Russia, who offered $15 billion in cash and a massive reduction in what Ukraine paid for natural gas. Evil Rooskies. Always up to something sneaky like that.

America’s investments in peace and democracy were bearing their fruits in the Maidan Protests in Kyiv, but a bipartisan pair of peace-loving US Senators went to the Ukrainian capital to help those fruits ripen even faster.

John McCain (R-Hell) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) addressed a crowd estimated at ~200,000 people saying, “We are here to support your just cause… And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”

McCain shared these noble sentiments while standing shoulder to shoulder with one of Western Ukraine’s most notorious freedom lovers:

Those Putin-puppets at FAIR were still bitching about it in 2018, when then-Washington Post columnist (and current never-Trump freedom lover and Substacker) Jennifer Rubin got to singing McCain’s praises for his sterling human rights record, under an unfortunately chosen photo:

The Washington Post (8/27/18) published an op-ed by conservative staff opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin praising the late Sen. John McCain for his supposed commitment to “human rights.”

Rubin waxed poetic on the ostensible “lost champion” of human rights, who “model[ed] for others the behavior of a free society.” She declared, quite paradoxically, “With the possible exception of the US military…no group was more indebted to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) than the human rights community.”

There was an, er, optical problem, however: For the header image on this column, the Washington Post used a photo of McCain speaking next to the notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok.

Tyahnybok, a longtime fascist, has called for a war on the so-called “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” (BBC, 12/26/12). The far-right leader has attacked the role of “Jews-Bolsheviks” in his country’s history, and claims that there is still today a cabal of “Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine” (JTA, 3/25/09).

John McCain met with Tyahnybok and stood next to him as the senator gave a speech in Ukraine in late 2013, as Business Insider (12/16/13) reported at the time. The Washington Post indicated in the caption on its header image that McCain was “wav[ing] to protesters during a mass rally of the opposition in Kiev, Ukraine, on December 15, 2013.” But it failed to identify the man standing next to the Arizona senator—or his extremist politics, which are the antithesis of human rights.

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