The Fatal Mirage of Kharg Island, by Caspar von Everec - The Unz Review

Full text: https://www.unz.com/article/the-fatal-mirage-of-kharg-island/#comment-7558603 

Starting this war on Iran was the biggest mistake of Trump’s political career. It will destroy his Presidency and the careers of his underlings. Vance is already thinking about not running for President in 2028, and wisely so, if I might add. Joe Kent has jumped ship, and I’d bet he won’t be the last bigwig to do so.

But an airborne operation on Kharg could turn the trickle of rats out of the sinking USS MAGA into a deluge.

Not only would it be a catastrophic defeat, but it would yield hundreds, if not thousands, of dead American soldiers and prisoners.

Unlike casualties caused by Iranian drone and missile strikes, the admin won’t be able to cover these up, and Iran will no doubt make no bones about showing the mangled corpses of hundreds of American soldiers to the world.

Considering the already high unpopularity of the war, combined with public resentment towards Zionism, Israel, and Jewish power as a whole in the wake of the Epstein affair, this event could pour Chlorine Trifluoride on an already raging bonfire.

Patriotic Purge: The Real Cost of War - Jeffries

 From Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, the only president who resisted the pressure to go to war was John F. Kennedy.

Full texr:

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/patriotic-purge-the-real-cost-of?publication_id=344941&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=y7h5a&utm_medium=email 

One would think Americans would be tired of war by now, but I suppose it’s appropriate that we should be at war, as usual, on the 250th anniversary of our independence. After all, we’ve been at war for about 90% of our existence. That’s what we do. Waste money and prematurely end the lives of those who have barely started living. Ignore the home front, and the welfare of the citizens. Harry Patch, last surviving soldier of WWI, defined it as well as anyone ever has, when he said, “War is organized murder and nothing else.”

The War Trump Cannot Win - by Alexander Dugin

 Alexander Dugin on a war of eschatologies and Iran’s strategy of resistance.

Trump could not, by definition, win a war with Iran. And he cannot. The only question is how exactly he will lose it. What he says carries almost no significance. It is simply agony—not only his personal agony, but that of the entire system.

The Israel lobby, for all its extraordinary effectiveness, will drag Trump down into the abyss along with itself. And he will drag it down with him. This is guaranteed mutual destruction.

Within the Zionist lobby, everything is extremely rational and carefully calculated—up to the moment when the final act arrives: the coming of the Messiah. That is the promissory note on which everything is built. It is issued against a future event. If that future does not arrive, everything collapses. Christian Zionism is even worse: everything in it rests on pure hallucination (the Rapture, and so on), which cannot come to pass, no matter how much one might wish it.

Thus, the sum of rational steps taken by the forces that have now taken control of Trump concludes with an irrational chord. Inevitably......

https://www.multipolarpress.com/p/the-war-trump-cannot-win?utm_campaign=post_embed 

The Rapidly-Gathering Economic Storm - Denninger

 In no particular order: AI - Housing - Energy - Energy Diversity - Data Centers - Food - Fraud - Overextended Valuations......................

Read full text: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=255140 

I've long warned of longer-term risks, specifically in places like medical -- and there's an article coming on that, along with some of the "mainstream media" finally noticing.  In fact one of the themes on this page for the last 15 years has been precisely that risk which I identified with plenty of time for most people to do something about it in an attempt to not need medical services as they age.  Of course nobody can ever be 100% sure of anything but if you need something and can't access it you're in serious trouble and might be in "dead-big" style trouble, so you'd think given 10+ years worth of warning people would generally take care of it if they can.

Nope.

I know plenty of people today who are singing "high and happy" songs about their stonk portfolios.  If you're retired or nearly-so and its a small part of your net worth, and in addition anything illiquid is not leveraged (e.g. real estate) then its probably ok -- it might upset you if you lose half or more but it won't really make life hard for you.

On the other hand if that's not true -- if you're 70 years old and 100% "all-in", having based your lifestyle on a $2m+ portfolio that has doubled in the last five or so years and you have a bunch of "must spend" items in your personal financial condition that require being able to draw $100k/year out of that, and the market takes a 50% hit, you're hosed -- in 10 years you're entirely out of money.

Oh by the way if you look at a long-term (e.g. 20 year weekly) chart of the S&P 500 even a 50% hit, down to about 3,500 from the high, does NOT violate the long-term trendline up from the 2009 lows.

Its much worse if you're in the Nasdaq; there the long-term trendline is down around 8400 which is a 65% loss from where it stands today.

And again this does not undercut that trendline and bear markets typically do undercut it, and not by a little.  In fact it is not unusual for a bear market to undercut that long-term trendline by roughly another 50%.

Of course I do not know this will happen again but there has never been a "permanent bull market" that doesn't have this happen from time to time.  Never.  And some of those bear markets have gone on for a decade or longer before recovering and during that entire time you may not invade any of the principal or you have permanently lost the compounding that would otherwise occur.

Is Iran the triggering event?  I have no idea.  

It might be -- and you might also note that MSTR, which a bit more than a year ago traded $543, closed as I am writing this at $138.

That's a 75% loss -- so far.

As the Wheels Come Off the Iran Conflict, It Compels the Decision: ‘Where Do We Stand?’ - (At what point will genuine Americans ask this fundamental question? - CL)

 Weinstein pointed out in his conversation with Tucker Carlson that for some time (since 1961 or 1963), the U.S. system has seemed to be badly broken: It no longer had American interests at heart. In fact, American governance, he argued, visibly had become antithetical to Americans’ real interests – across many spheres, from finance to health. And the state had transformed into an “anti-Constitutional” structure since the events of November 1963 – the exact opposite to what the U.S. was intended to be.

Weinstein attributed this situation to ‘a something’ that is undeclared; something that cannot visibly be observed. It suggested a ‘hidden power structure’ whose control and interests are opaque: “What drives it? Who exactly holds the power in this system. We do not know”, he argued. What were the unseen interests that drove the U.S. to this succession of foreign wars in the Middle East?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/03/no_author/as-the-wheels-come-off-the-iran-conflict-it-compels-the-decision-where-do-we-stand/ 

The Food Supply Chain Is Breaking. Again - (Unfortunately, if or when we SEE the results.....it'll be too late! - CL)

 Spring has sprung, which means seeds that were planted in late winter are starting to germinate. They’re hungry and will only grow to their full nutritional potential if they’re well fed. But that, apparently, isn’t happening, as fertilizer supplies are interrupted by yet another pointless Middle East war.

The result? Global food shortages that might dwarf the COVID-era Costco-hoarding mess of recent memory. Here’s an overview:

https://rubino.substack.com/p/the-food-supply-chain-is-breaking?publication_id=1166121&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=y7h5a&utm_medium=email 

This is Why We Should Have Gardens…and Gold, Goats, and Guns

Even after the pandemic, many (most?) people in the developed world continue to view “food supply chain disruption” as a tin-foil-hat concern. They’re apparently wrong. Again.

And note that higher food prices are just the first-order effect of a fertilizer shortage. The second and third-order impacts are geopolitical and possibly military.

So let this latest “peak complexity” signal encourage you to keep prepping. Anticipate shortages, higher prices, even more chaotic politics, and take some of the steps we’ve been discussing here.

Solving the Scientific Demarcation Problem I - by Vox Day

 Three foundational problems in the philosophy of science have resisted solution for decades or centuries: the demarcation problem (what distinguishes science from pseudoscience), the underdetermination problem (how to choose between empirically equivalent theories), and the halting-problem analogue for theory confirmation (whether any general procedure can determine if a theory will be confirmed or refuted). This paper demonstrates that the Triveritas, the triadic epistemological criterion requiring the simultaneous satisfaction of logical validity (L), mathematical coherence (M), and empirical anchoring (E), solves all three problems simultaneously using a single architectural mechanism: structurally warranted termination. Scientific theories are modeled as recursive structures whose confirmation chains terminate at base cases dictated by the mathematical structure of the theory itself. The demarcation problem is solved because pseudoscience fails to reach structurally warranted base cases. The underdetermination problem dissolves because competing theories evaluated on three independent dimensions are almost never equivalent on all three. The halting-problem analogue is resolved by the distinction between general undecidability and specific provable termination. No new machinery is introduced. The solutions follow from the existing Triveritas framework applied to the epistemology of science.

Full text:

https://veriphysics.substack.com/p/solving-the-scientific-demarcation?publication_id=8187560&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=y7h5a&utm_medium=email