At Naked Capitalism Yves Smith has held for a while that only ‘the markets’ can prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from further attacks on Iran.

‘The markets’ here are for one the bond market where any slump would mean lower treasuries, higher interest rates and problems for the U.S. to finance its debt. It is here where inflation hits Trump the most. Any interest increase is a political burden for Trump who has argued for the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate.

But ‘the markets’ are also the stock market where Trump is privately engaged. A recent filing to the US Office of Government Ethics revealed that more than 3,600(!) transactions were made between January and the end of March on Trump’s personal account, which is (allegedly) handled by his sons through a brokerage:

Trump is heavily invested in those companies which deliver the hardware for the Artificial Intelligence bubble:

Trump is personally hyping stocks he had bought:

Continue reading Moon of Alabama …

At what point do the American people decide on a French Revolution, take the pitchforks and torches, and seize and destroy the oligarchs? Seems both Left and Right could find common ground in that effort.

As we left the event, Tank got word that Jamie committed suicide today. Fuck me, that hurts. The kid — yes, I consider 43 year old guys as my kids — is gone in part because of the stupid fucking wars we’ve been fighting for 25 goddamn years. This tears a hole in the souls of those who loved him that is not easily healed.

His death, so needless, inspires me to do more to stop needless wars that result in the deaths of men, women and children in countries like Iran, Syria, Vietnam and Iraq. My prayers are with his wife and children.

The post-9/11 generation of veterans carries a disproportionate share of this burden. The suicide rate among veterans aged 18–34 has more than doubled since the wars began, and suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans. Strikingly, among veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who were never deployed have a suicide rate 48% higher than those who were — suggesting the crisis is rooted not simply in combat trauma but in something deeper about the experience of military service, transition to civilian life, and the sense of purpose that evaporates when service ends. This is compounded by a profound sense of moral injury: 73% of veterans polled said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan negatively affected the way they view America’s legacy in the War on Terror — a wound of meaning, not just of memory.

Research shows that post-9/11 veterans with traumatic brain injury — affecting roughly one in five of all who served — experienced suicide rates peaking at 100 deaths per 100,000, five times the general US adult rate. For a country that has spent more than two decades asking its military to bear the entire weight of its foreign policy while the civilian population remained largely untouched by sacrifice, the veteran suicide epidemic is both a public health catastrophe and a profound moral reckoning.

Continue reading Sonar21 …

Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish secretary of state — ‘Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.’

That’s observably how most US politicians feel. Use ’em and throw ’em away. Suicide, PTSD, homelessness. Oh, but we’ll gladly fund the pensions for Israeli Defense Force soldiers. There’s a reason for the endless wars in the Middle East and the resulting trauma to and abandonment of our warriors. It wears a tiny hat …

h/t WRSA for graphic.

(Spoiler Alert: The French, Of Course!)

A French intellectual, who goes by Brivael Le Pogam on X, has written a tightly focused and brief explanation of it worthy of Eric Hoffer, putting his finger on the thinking of French philospher-historian Michel Foucault, French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and French philospher-literary critic Gilles Deleuze, the first of whom claimed there was  no such thing as truth, just power relationships, the second of whom claimed truth was malleable, and the third of whom made the really weird claim that seeds were greater than fully developed trees because becoming was more important than being, poor romantic devil.

I want to offer my apologies, on behalf of the French, for giving birth to French Theory (which in turn gave birth to the worst of all ideological monstrosities: wokism).

Foucault taught that truth does not exist, that there are only power relations disguised as knowledge. That science, reason, justice, the medical institution, the school, the prison, sexuality—everything is merely a staging of domination.

Derrida taught that texts have no stable meaning, that every signifier slips away, that every reading is a betrayal, that the author is dead and the reader reigns supreme.

Deleuze taught that we should prefer the rhizome to the tree, the nomad to the sedentary, desire to the law, becoming to being, difference to identity.

Taken individually, these are debatable theses. Combined, exported, and popularized, they form a system. And that system is a poison.

For here’s what happened.

These texts, unreadable in France, crossed the Atlantic. The departments of Yale, Berkeley, and Columbia absorbed them in the 1980s. They found there a soil that did not exist among us: American Puritanism, its racial guilt, its obsession with identity. French Theory married this substratum, and the child of that union is called wokism.

It’s sh** for one simple reason, and it must be stated calmly.

A civilization stands on three pillars: the belief that there exists a truth accessible to reason, the belief that there exists a good distinct from evil, the belief that there exists a heritage to be transmitted.

Continue reading …

Caveat: This post is not intended as an attack on anyone’s religion. It is simply an historical reality and alternative viewpoint for those to whom it may resonate.

In the ancient way of the pagans, there was no submission to the divine. No kneeling out of guilt. No supplication from a broken person. The ancients knew no sin in the sense of an eternal stain. Rather, they knew balance.

For nature itself teaches no condemnation—it teaches cause and effect, change and responsibility.

Our ancestors knew: Man is not born guilty. He comes into this world free, carried by the breath of the earth and the fire of the stars.

Only later powers made free people guilty. They planted fear in hearts, labeled natural man sinful, and declared his instincts, his desires, his wildness, and his free spirit to be something that had to be broken. For whoever convinces a person that he is inherently impure can control him more easily.

Thus, guilt became a chain, and penance a tool of control. People were taught to lower their gaze, to make themselves small, to kneel, to obey, and to seek salvation only through external authority.

But our pagan ancestors took a different path. They stood upright. With firm feet on the soil of their ancestors. With heads held high beneath the stars. For they did not see themselves as separate from the forces of the world. They were part of the great tapestry of earth, sky, fire, and spirit.

When they called upon the Gods, it was not as servants—but as children of creation, raising their voices to the wind. Their arms were stretched toward the heavens, like the rune Algiz—the symbol of protection, of the connection between humankind and cosmic order.

Thus, humankind stood between the worlds: feet deep in Midgard’s earth, hands open to the cosmos, spirit like a flame in the night forest. This was not a prayer in the sense of later religions. It was a call. A remembering. A conscious merging with the ancient forces.

One spoke to the ancestors in the smoke of the fire. To the Gods in the thunder of the mountains. To the spirits in the rustling of the forests. Not with downcast eyes—but with open eyes. For the free person does not kneel before creation. They recognize themselves as part of it.

And perhaps therein lies the fear of those systems that sought power over souls: A person who recognizes themselves as holy is difficult to control. A person who carries the voice of the ancestors within needs no mediator between themselves and the divine. A person who is in harmony with earth and sky cannot be broken by guilt.

And when the wind rustled through the treetops, when the runes glowed in the fire and the moon hung over the ancient stones,
then the ancients knew: The Gods demand no submission. No self-abasement. No fear. They demand truthfulness. Courage. Honor. Personal responsibility.

And the remembrance of who we truly are.

From Huter der Irminsul

Opinions are easy. We all have them. Too many of us, however, rarely test those opinions and remain reluctant to even consider opinions that conflict with our own.

I’ve come to identify what I believe are the reasons for this reluctance and, often, absolute refusal to accept that our opinion could be wrong.

#1 Pride. We can’t accept that we could be wrong. We’d have to admit it, and that’s just too much for most people. Admitting error requires humility that most folks just don’t possess.

#2 Requirement to change. Most often admitting one is in error requires one to do something about it. Not just admit error, but actually take concrete action to correct/change course. Most folks don’t want to expend the effort.

#3 Sloth. Most people are not willing to commit to the time and effort required to study in order to form correct conclusions. We’re born into a country or family with a particular religion or political leaning and the easy thing is to just adopt it and carry on. Unfortunately, that’s similar to being a sheep or a lemming. Sheep get sheared and slaughtered and lemmings go off a cliff. No thought required.

#4 Lack of curiosity/skepticism. We’ve all (OK, most) realized by now that ‘conspiracy theories’ tend to be conspiracy facts. Those among us that are skeptical of authority or curious about a particular topic tend to recognize these ‘facts’ before the vast majority. This is because we inquire, examine evidence and data, think outside the box, employ critical thinking skills, and connect the dots. Reason and logic play a key role.

One’s opinion is not necessarily truth or reality. Failure to admit this simply demonstrates ignorance, not stupidity, ignorance. Even one possessing a high IQ can be ignorant. It just means one doesn’t ‘know.’

Few of us, today, take the time to go to some quiet place and examine our opinions. That requires thinking and thinking requires effort.

The point of legitimacy came in 2020 when the Presidential election was stolen. Both parties have been complicit in the overthrow of the Republic and the suppression of the people.

Does accepting the loss of legitimacy make a difference when living under tyranny?

UAE Ministry of Defence:

3 drones entered from the western border (Saudi Arabia side) today. Air defenses neutralized 2, but one struck an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah nuclear power plant in Al Dhafra.

No injuries. No radiation release. All reactors still operating normally.Investigation ongoing.

Notable: Iran is northeast across the Gulf — not west.

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It appears that the decision to invade Iran has been made by Trump. All he needs is the correct false flag and Israel’s permission.

From Grok:

Official U.S. Treasury TIC data confirms China’s mainland holdings fell to approximately $693 billion by February 2026, down from over $1.3 trillion at the 2013 peak and reflecting a multi-year decline of hundreds of billions.