Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax this week.
Author: Ian Welsh Page 2 of 411
As a Canadian, the issue of people removing snow from the sidewalk is a big deal. Some years ago, I lived near a house where they never removed the snow. It piled up until it was almost four feet high, and some partial thaws meant that underneath all that snow was ice. Every time I had to walk in that direction I cursed the owners (there was an SUV that came and went, so I knew it wasn’t uninhabited). One time, I did slip, and I was furious, even though the pain of the fall was minor.
Thing is, I don’t enjoy being furious or upset. Oh, a little anger is sometimes nice enough, but overall it’s an unpleasant feeling unless you’ve been having even worse emotions like fear, despair, powerlessness, or self-pity.
This is what Buddha called the second arrow. If you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re in pain. If you’re upset that you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re adding additional suffering.
Let’s run through three scenarios. Imagine each of them briefly, as if they happened to you:
1) You turn a corner and trip over a fallen branch, falling. You’re a little hurt (abraded hands), but basically okay. How upset are you?
2) You slip on some ice someone was supposed to clean up and fall. You’re a little hurt, but basically okay. How upset are you?
3) You’re walking down the street, and someone sticks out their leg and trips you, then laughs at you. You fall, but catch yourself. While a little hurt, you’re basically okay. How upset are you?
If you’re a normal person either #2 (negligence) or #3 (active malevolence) upsets you more. Probably, it’s the asshole who tripped you. (You might also get upset at the branch and kick it, swear at it, or enjoy breaking it, but hopefully not.)
The point here is that being upset makes your suffering worse. It also doesn’t deal with whatever caused the problem. Picking up the branch you tripped over, getting the city to fine the person not shoveling their snow, and either calling the cops or in times and places where it’s allowed, beating the hell out of the guy who tripped you might make sure there are no repeats.
You can do any of those things without being upset, through cold, clear calculation. If you don’t remove the branch, you or someone else could trip over it again. If you don’t convince the homeowner to shovel the snow, same thing. If you don’t make the tripper decide tripping people is a bad idea, he’ll do it again.
Much of why we get upset is that we have expectations about how other people should behave or even how the world should be. (How dare that branch trip you up!) Then, we think that if someone hurts us, we should get upset.
But, again, being upset doesn’t hurt the other person (though a display of anger might make a difference if you can make them scared of you) and doesn’t get them to change their behaviour. Indeed, in the case of the tripper, they want you to be upset. Your anger is part of their reward, just like how online trolls are trying to make you angry.
Being upset does hurt you, though. It makes your suffering worse.
But if you believe you should be upset, you will be.
So the first step is to ask yourself: What benefit there is to being upset? Do this all the time when something makes you upset, just ask yourself, “Does this help? Do I like feeling this?” Maybe you do (usually in the case of anger), but most of the time, the honest answer is gong to be no.
Over time, if you keep doing this, you’ll be upset less and less. You’ll change the reflex.
We add suffering to almost everything. If you get a bad headache and are upset because it “isn’t fair,” that adds suffering to the headache. If you get upset at yourself for doing something stupid, that adds suffering. I used to be like that; I stopped when I realized that, after decades of being harsh with myself, my behaviour hadn’t changed. In other words, being upset when I made a mistake wasn’t reducing the number of mistakes, it was just making me unhappy. (When I did stop being too self-critical, mistakes decreased somewhat, ironically.)
Buddha’s Second Arrow is the low-lying fruit, the easiest way to reduce your suffering — suffering which doesn’t help you deal with whatever issues you face. When you’re cool and calm, you’re more likely to fix whatever the problem is — if it can be fixed — faster and more competently than you are upset.
Pull out the second arrow.
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So, Democratic Socialist (ie. has politics a 70s liberal would have agreed with, but is less racist) Zohran Mamdani has won the nomination as the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor.
I’ll point out here that there have been a few such attempts. Stoller writes about Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman, in which Lamont won the primary, then Lieberman won the election. It’s similar to what will be tried here: The oligarchical part of the Democratic party will align behind another candidate, possibly even the Republican one. Those who don’t will try to co-opt Mamdani, and turn him into a centrist left-winger.
Mamdani is more radical than Sanders; he isn’t a Zionist, for example. But he’s basically suggesting policies than no Democrat during the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s would have found extraordinary.
What Stoller calls system-defining elections, I call sub-ideological revolutions. FDR changed the form of capitalism practiced in the US, so did Carter and Reagan. Mamdani, for all the screams from rich operatives like Larry Summers and various oligarchs, isn’t a radical — any more than FDR was. He doesn’t want to switch to economic Communism (i.e., worker ownership of the means of production or Soviet-style central control), say, or a single-party state. He wants real changes in how capitalism is practiced, and some changes to who has power in Democracy.
Sanders’ runs in 2016 and 2020 were an attempt at a sub-ideological revolution, or, system-defining elections. This is why Obama intervened and lined everyone up behind Biden, a nearly unprecedented step.
Likewise, Corbyn represented such an attempt, except Corybn got further, winning the Labour leadership. It’s not an accident that (and we have receipts, so don’t argue) Labour operatives actually sabotaged him in two elections to ensure a Conservative win. They wanted the old ideology/system to keep running more than they wanted their party to win. And once Corbyn was removed, his successor, Starmer, purged the party of the democratic socialist left. Once in power, Starmer doubled down on austerity and politics no different in substance, but actually more punitive, than those followed by the Conservative party.
The Reform Party in the UK is now coming on hard.
Be clear that sub-ideological transitions/system changes can be bad. Neoliberalism was a bad change. In the UK, if Reform sets the new system/ideological norm, it will be awful.
This is one reason why I said that Corbyn was the UK’s last chance: If the left failed, the right would then get its shot, and what the right wants to do is beyond awful.
It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: Doubling down on military Keynesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt, neoliberal system), while cutting social welfare will simply lead to the new-right getting into power. Their policies will make most people worse off, not better.
As for Mamdani, he’s a good sign. The fact that men, as well as the youngs, went for him is also excellent, because it shows that men and youngsters aren’t really “right-wing” in any way that matters. Yet. What they want is change. If they are offered good change, they’ll take it. However, they’re so desperate that if all that’s on the menu is shitty change, or the status quo, they’ll take shitty change.
This was obviously going to happen. I wrote years ago that we wouldn’t see real change until the mid-2020s, at the earliest, because it required generational change as well.
Mamdani tells us that what sort of change will finally win in the US is not yet decided. It doesn’t have to be MAGA stupidity and meanness.
So if you want something better in the US, if you want a chance at a New New Deal, get behind Mamdani and people like him — hard.
There still remains a question of whether Mamdani can deliver, even if he is elected. Will he be be co-opted? Will he run into opposition from enemies so powerful he either can’t overcome them? Or will he use them as a rallying call? Is he competent enough to create and run a new system like the one he’s suggesting?
This is a chance because, if Mamdani wins and then improves New Yorker’s lives, he’ll be copied. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve the chance of this happening and then working, I suggest you do so.
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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole
Rarely spoken of is the effects of the Middle Eastern wars on Ukraine. For a long time, Ukraine got everything it wanted, but since Oct 7th, it has been #2, or worse, on America’s priority list. Mossad has a great deal of influence in America, just short of control, almost certainly due to a sickening collection of videos and pictures, and Israel has received the first cut off everything it needed: most especially of interceptor missiles.
Even so, the reason that Israel and the US called for a ceasefire and Iran did not (though it accepted one) is that Israel was less than a week from running out of air defense missiles, and as best I can tell, the US could only have supplied about another 7-10 days worth.
What this means for Ukraine is simple enough, they’re being absolutely hammered by Russian missiles and bombs. They don’t have enough air defense, they don’t have enough missiles for the air defense, and there is no reasonable prospect of re-stocking. The West’s larder is empty.
The tempo of Russia advances continues to increase. It’s still slow, but it’s at least eight times as fast as it was a year ago, and as Ukraine runs out of men, weapons and ammunition (Western shortages go far beyond air defense), plus as morale continues to plummet in Ukrainian armed forces, the prospect of “big arrow” warfare grows closer.
As I’ve said before I expect that period will arrive next year. The fighting age male population is decimated, those willing to fight are or will be mostly dead, and Russia will win the war decisively, taking whatever they want to. The only danger of this not happening is Putin accepting a peace offer before that: like Khameini, he is very cautious, doesn’t like war and wants it over. If Zelensky ever gets his head on straight, or is replaced, he’s likely to accept a peace deal much short of what can be accomplished by arms and an unconditional surrender.
This will be a HUGE loss for the West. The first war they have decisively lost on the battlefield in generations. There will be no concealing it, and the inability to ramp up production of weapon systems and munitions will leave the collective West so weak that no one will be able to believe they could win a conventional war against China, or even Russia.
It will, psychologically, be the end of Western hegemony. For almost 400 years the West has been dominant, and since Industrial Revolution, overwhelmingly dominant.
That era is almost over. The economic aftershocks will be huge: the end of American dollar hegemony is likely within five years, ten at the most and the entire world except, perhaps, Canada, the US and Europe, will re-orient to China. The US will even lose South Korea and Japan as reliable allies, indeed, it arguably already has (more on that another time.)
This is a literal epochal period. The “nothing ever happens” fools are missing that this is the end of a literal era: the era of European supremacy (the US is just a European settler state and Britain’s successor.)
The new era will be multipolar only if China wants it to be. They are approaching “America after WWII” levels of industrial and technological power. However, for at time, they will probably allow a multipolar world, as they are smart enough not to want to be a superpower or “world cop.”
Normally this would cycle to a superpower period, but environmental issues are likely to short-circuit normal macro-geopolitical cycles. Everyone will wind up in survival mode, and the question will be who manages this best. Whoever does will lead the next cycle, which will occur long after most or all of us are dead.
So, as best you can, you may as well be interested. You are living in truly interesting times, which come around only every half millenia or so.
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So, Iran has accepted the ceasefire offer. Iran was winning, as best I can tell. The Iron Dome could not stop their more advanced missiles and was days from running out of interceptor missiles (maybe two weeks if the US sent its entire stockpile). The US attack on Iran’s nuclear facility was a dud, the enriched uranium has been moved, etc…
I said that Iran had finally gotten over its caution, and that I feared it would revert, and so it has. It’s clear that the sooner Khameini dies and is replaced, the safer Iran will be — especially because that will be the end of the non-nuclear fatwa. (It should be noted that 60 percent-enriched is enough to create a dirty bomb which would render Israel uninhabitable, and Iran should inform Israel that it has created a number of them, ready for missile deployment.)
Iran could have kept going and insisted that Israel withdraw from Gaza and Lebanon (to be confirmed by Russian and Chinese satellites). Once again, Iran has abandoned its proxies as disposable proxies, not allies.
That said, this is an Iranian victory, just a very limited one. Israel and the US were the ones who begged for a ceasefire, not Iran.
Meanwhile, we have further confirmation that Gaza casualties are likely at least 377K.
A year ago, I estimated Gazan casualties at 500K. A new estimate has come out based on fairly conservative metrics, which puts them at a million.
A million estimated deaths in 500 days. Half a million children.
The Zionist-NATO war on Palestine is shaping up to be among the most vicious genocides in the history of genocide. pic.twitter.com/UPnHceQDYz
— Paweł Wargan (@pawelwargan) June 24, 2025
I find this estimate plausible, unfortunately — especially given the ongoing starvation campaign. (Regular reports now come in that the few aid stations permitted by Israel are being used to draw civilians in, then murder them.)
I reiterate that the only moral nation in the world appears to be Ansar-Allah’s Yemen. In a few years, everyone is going to be scrambling to pretend they were against this genocide or “didn’t know,” but we have the receipts.
There is no statute of limitations for genocide.
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If you’re getting a bit tired of Iran all the time, so am I. We’ll see if we can slip in an article on something else.
In the meantime, Trump hit Iran’s nuclear enrichment site. As best as I can tell, the attack was ineffective and did essentially no damage. Even if it had, Iran’s highly enriched, 60 percent stockpile had already been moved. I’ve seen Israel claims they know where it was moved, but there’s a good chance they’re lying. If the Iranians are smart, they’ve split it up, and made sure that only a few people know where each package is, and further that no one knows where all the packages are, which doubles as, “If you hit it, you lose your spy.”
Iran’s parliament has passed a motion asking to close the Straits of Hormuz; it’s waiting for Khameini’s approval. Some ships appear to be already turning away. Parliament is also planning to vote to end Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Agency, which is exactly the right thing to do, as they’re both politicized and almost certainly spy for the Israelis and Americans. At least make your enemies work to get data on your secure nuclear sites and scientists.
Given the US couldn’t even stop the Houthi blockade, there is zero chance they can re-open the Straits of Hormuz with military force. It will stay closed as long as Iran wants it to. Among other things, very few civilian shipping companies are going to take the chance. One missile or mine is all it takes.
It should go without saying that Trump’s strike is a direct violation of international law, which requires the approval of the U.N. Security Council to declare war. Honored more often in the breach, etc. This is yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that anyone should pay even the least attention to international law, as the countries that created it sure don’t.
Meanwhile, the missiles keep raining down on Israel. While firm data is hard to get, I’m almost certain the “Iron” Dome” is not stopping most of them. Indeed, the WSJ reports that Israel is interested in peace.
Iran shouldn’t give it to them without conditions. They have the upper hand. At the least, they should demand a withdrawal from Lebanon, an end to the bombing there, and an end to the food and supplies blockade in Gaza, with immediate retaliation when they break the deal, which they always do.
A lot of my predictions about the Middle East have been wrong since October 7th. There are two reasons: I didn’t realize how cripplingly cautious the “Resistance” was (other than Hamas and Ansar-Allah), and I underestimated Mossad’s and American’s intelligence penetration of both — especially of Hezbollah. Fortunately, Israel has been at pains to teach everyone a lesson, and a lot of the overly-cautious Hezbollah and Iranian leaders are now dead.
There were a number of reasons for the intelligence penetration. One was that India’s intelligence was working with Mossad and had (has?) a huge network of spies in both the Indian tech diaspora and guest workers. The second is that Iran, in particular, has used Western tech — especially Western phones. (Admittedly, everyone runs Android or IOS, so it’s hard to avoid.)
Israel’s signals intelligence division (SIGINT), called Unit 8200 had been monitoring these targets for over a decade, compiling detailed itineraries — homes, workplaces, travel routes, and even bedroom locations. The precision of Operation Namiya (June, 2024) relied on a triple-layered surveillance ecosystem: Apple devices and unencrypted iPhones provided real-time GPS tracking.
General Soleimani’s 2020 assassination had already proven this vulnerability, yet Iranian officials continued using them. They also used Google/Microsoft Services: Gmail accounts, Cloud backups, and Android devices leaked metadata, revealing behavioral patterns and social graphs.
Regarding telecom backdoors: Iran’s telecom infrastructure, built on Ericsson (which exited in 2012 under sanctions) and Nokia hardware, remained vulnerable. Huawei and ZTE briefly replaced Western vendors between 2012 and 2016, but by 2018, Iran resumed purchases from European suppliers -— a fatal regression.
It’s clear that any country which doesn’t want similar issues has to rely on entirely non-Western tech from a trusted supplier — and even then, as revealed by the Hezbollah pager attack (which is really what defeated Hezbollah, along with knowledge of their missile stockpile locations), you have to secure the entire supply chain, including delivery, then check like a paranoid, because you have enemies.
It’s best to own your entire own tech stack, and a LOT of countries are going to be working feverishly towards this. Using Western tech this way is a great way to destroy markets for Western tech.
It should go without saying that every Western country is fatally compromised. The US knows everything they do. Even as a Canadian, I would want to get to a domestic stack, and Europeans are fools if they don’t, unless they intend to remain American satrapies for the rest of time.
Iran has finally thrown off its caution. I pray they don’t revert. They’re winning this war, and they shouldn’t let up until Israel is publicly humiliated and forced to actually stop their constant provocations and genocide.
As for TACO Trump, he wants the war over, and his attack was a PR stunt so he could declare victory and flex US muscles, worthlessly. I don’t think he has the guts for a real war, which is a good thing. (I could, of course, be wrong. The problem with Trump is that even he doesn’t know what he’s actually going to do most of the time. It is also amusing to watch Vance doing everything he can to distance himself from the attack, in preparation for running in 2028.)
Update: Iran says it has bombed Iraq, Qatar, Bahrein, and Kuwait US military bases.
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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts (no Iran/Israel war).
#SorokaThe hospital is located between two major Israeli military sites: the IDF’s main intelligence headquarters and a central command facility, both of which are situated in the Gav-Yam Technology Park. These installations reportedly serve as critical hubs for Israel’s cyber operations, digital command systems, and military intelligence infrastructure (including IDF C4I and C4ISR systems). While the hospital sustained shockwave damage from nearby blasts, it was not directly hit, Iranian reports emphasize.
Sororka is the primary hospital for military casualties, I understand, but it wasn’t targeted. It got hit in the blast.
Now, of course, for Israel to be complaining about a hospital attack is ludicrous. Wikipedia has a list of Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals. There are dozens.
My post on the initial attack on Iran noted how serious Mossad penetration was. What’s interesting about Iran’s missile attacks is that they seem to be prioritizing intelligence sites even more than strict military ones. They know their weakness and are working on it.
Iran has mainly been going after Israeli intelligence in the last couple of days: Mossad and 8200 bases throughout the country, from north through center to south. This seems to be their main focus now. I have no way to assess hits and damages, but these are large, extremely expensive, highly prized targets. They know where everything is – and if you remember the Hezbollah drone videos from a year ago, you can guess how accurate their information is.
Iran also has high-resolution satellites in space – this is Israel’s first war against an enemy with such capabilities. Israel has not reported a single IDF casualty since this war began, but tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians work in those places and in the other big bases that have been attacked.
Meanwhile, estimates are that Israel has less than two weeks left of interceptor missiles. If the US sends everything it can spare, well, that’s maybe two more weeks.
This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority-targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.
And Iran has only begun to use its better missiles.
12 interceptors vs 1 Fattah-1 pic.twitter.com/rUezFPTBGm
— Dr.Snekotron (@snekotron) June 18, 2025
I don’t know how the math is working. Israel is sending its cops after Israelis posting video or pictures of attacks. Iran has shut down most outgoing internet. This makes sense for both sides, no reason to let enemies know how successful their attacks are.
Iran has also told its citizens to get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, as both are easily hacked. Going forward, I’d suggest that all countries need their own OS and their own social networks, hosted in their own countries, at a minimum. China has this. Android and IOS are extremely vulnerable, no matter what apps you’re using. As I’ve been writing for years, carrying a cell phone is carrying a bug, tracking device, and surveillance camera with you at all times. (The best OS for privacy right now appears to be Graphene, which only runs on the most recent Google Pixel phones, I believe.)
As you’ve probably heard, the US is moving three aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East. It’s not clear if the US will join the war. In fact I doubt anyone knows if it will. Even Trump couldn’t tell you, because he changes his mind so often.
Absent the US getting involved, I put the odds in Iran’s favor, but it’s not a strong bet. It’s simply too hard to tell the actual situation. Some claim Israel has complete air dominance over Iran, others say that’s not true, and I don’t know. Likewise, lots of claims are made about how many launchers have been destroyed, but there’s no reason to believe either side on this. Attack volumes from Iran are way down, but is that because of strategy or capability? If it’s capability, they’re sunk. If its strategy, maybe not. It’s quite conceivable they’re holding back a lot as they degrade AD and force the Israelis to run through their AD missiles.
Do bear in mind that Iran has the simplest advantage: It’s much larger than Israel, has a much larger population, and it is an industrial state which has the ability to build its own weapons. China is not going to intervene militarily, but I’m sure they’ll sell Iran as much cheap materials it needs to build more missiles and drones. China has the cheapest and most extensive supply network for both.
The elephant in the room, of course, is that if Israel decides it is losing, it does have nukes, and if any country in the world other than US is psychotic enough to use nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.
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