Ian Welsh

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

Author: Nat Wilson Turner Page 1 of 4

Ramadan War Could Be Decided by a Sunni Coalition

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On April 14, 2026

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For all that Iran has been mopping the floor with the U.S., Israel, and the Gulf States, things have come to a precarious point.

While Iran has been mopping the floor strategically with the U.S., Israel, and the Gulf States, a Saudi-Pakistani military alliance could enter the fray on the U.S. side and make a difference.

This from Ian’s post of the 12th made my Spidey Sense tingle:

Pakistan used (the ceasefire) to reposition military to Saudi Arabia, and Iran doesn’t want a war with Pakistan.

That said, Pakistan’s taking a real risk here, domestically, ninety percent of Pakistanis support Iran, and the country is one spark from a revolution anyway. The army, of course, will gun down any number of civilians to retain control, but even so…

Plus the US has snared another Sunni-majority country in their military web, Indonesia:

In a joint statement, the US Defense Department and Indonesia’s Defense Ministry said the agreement reflects “decades of cooperation” and a shared commitment to peace, security, and respect for sovereignty.

“Both countries recognize each other as important partners and reaffirm their commitment to cooperation based on mutual respect, sovereignty, and shared interest in regional peace and stability,” the statement said.

Per the statement, the pact rests on three core pillars: military modernization and capacity building, training and professional military education, and exercises and operational cooperation.

Earlier Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with his Indonesian counterpart Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin at the Pentagon to discuss efforts to boost the bilateral defense relationship.

Indonesia could potentially supply a LOT of ground forces for an attack on Iran, but I’m not sure their population would be into the idea.

Andrew Korybko has more on the US’ strategic aims for the Indonesia alliance:

it was reported that “US, Indonesia discuss allowing US military overflight in Indonesian airspace”, which refers to a “preliminary draft that is being discussed internally” right now, but the writing is on the wall that the US aims to leverage their MDCP to this end. The purpose appears to be obtaining the ability to blockade the Strait of Malacca to Chinese ships in the event of a crisis just like it’s now blockading the Strait of Hormuz to ships that almost all go back and forth between China and Iran.

The grand strategic goal being pursued is Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby’s “Strategy of Denial”. The gist is that the US must do its utmost to prevent Chinese hegemony in Asia, in furtherance of which it’s indirectly controlling or cutting off Chinese resource imports (Venezuela and Iran) and seeking control over global chokepoints (Hormuz, Malacca, and the Panama Canal), with everything accelerating ahead of Trump’s trip to China from 14-15 May. Trump hopes that this will coerce Xi into a lopsided trade deal.

OR

A nascent coalition of Turkey-Egypt-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan could decide that Iran is on the verge of destroying Israel and decide to jump in against Israel to claim a big part of the prize.

The post-script of Bruce O’Hara’s most recent Substack newsletter made it all come together for me:

While it must be said that Iran doesn’t have many friends across the Middle East, many nations have depended on Iran to restrain Israel’s expansionist tendencies. The nations of the Middle East do not want the war to end with Iran destroyed and Israel intact. If it becomes clear that Israel is almost out of offensive and defensive weaponry, it would serve the interests of Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan to gang up on a weakened Israel. Turkey’s Ergodan just today compared Netenyahu to Hitler. That’s Iran’s other hope: if they can deplete Israel enough to be relatively defenceless, Israel’s neighbours will suddenly find their courage.

Pakistan’s role as the mediator was no accident and reflects their remarkable geo-strategic positioning.

Three key facts about Pakistan to keep in mind:

  1. The current regime has limited popular legitimacy
    Former Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown with US backing (he attempted neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine War, his replacements sent huge arms shipments to Ukraine) in 2022 and replaced by the current regime fronted by Shehbaz Sharif. Khan, one of the most popular politicians in the country’s history was then railroaded on all kinds of charges, trumped up and otherwise, and has been in solitary confinement. Khan’s wikipedia page is an exercise in slander but the awfulness of the story still shines through. This makes it very tricky for the Shenbaz Sharif
  2. Pakistan has India relatively diplomatically isolated
    Pakistan was at war with India its fellow nuclear power as recently as May of last year and its partisans have vociferously claimed complete victory — with lots of credit being given to their Chinese-built Chengdu J-10C fighter jets. Somehow Pakistan has managed to maintain close ties with China, Turkey, AND Trump’s United States while Modi’s India finds itself on the outs with Trump, at the mercy of an angry Russia for oil supplies (costs tripled for India in March), linked to Israel’s regional pariah zionist regime, and no closer than ever to China.

Pakistan (with the strong backing of China) arm-twisted Iran into accepting a ceasefire and entering talks with the U.S. in Islamabad.

Pakistan also shipped fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Which is a good time to think about the implications of the Pakistani-Saudi Mutual Defense Pact. DropSite News has some leaked documents:

On Saturday, as Pakistan was in the middle of mediating hard-won ceasefire talks between the U.S. and Iran, Saudi Arabia made a sudden revelation that appeared to undermine Pakistan’s status as a neutral host. In a statement posted on X, the Saudi Ministry of Defense announced “the arrival of a military force from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at King Abdulaziz Air Base in the Eastern Sector,” adding that the force would include a contingent of military aircraft and would improve “operational readiness between the armed forces of the two countries.”

Those deployments are the result of a defense pact signed last year between Riyadh and Islamabad that has now been activated amid an ongoing regional war and numerous Iranian attacks against military and energy targets in Saudi Arabia.
…
The risk that Pakistan may itself be pushed into the war is also important context for the zeal of Pakistan’s leaders to bring an end to the fighting. Pakistan enjoys good ties with both Iran and the U.S., and relies heavily on financial support from Saudi Arabia. Following news that the United Arab Emirates had recalled a loan from Pakistan last week, Saudi Arabia and Qatar stepped up with $5 billion aimed at propping up Islamabad’s foreign reserves as it deals with fallout from the economic crisis caused by the war.

Pakistan has more than problems, it is in a predicament.

Note the bit about the UAE and Pakistan being on the outs.

That pairs well with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) being at odds with the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ).

The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been very close ever since MBZ backed the palace coup that put the young MBS on the throne in the place of Muhammad bin Nayef, a CIA darling.

Together the two launched a war on Yemen in 2015 (with US backing). That war caused over half a million Yemeni civilian deaths but proved a costly humiliation for the Saudis and UAE.

After the UAE signed the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020 near the end of Trump’s first term, it seemed that MBZ would lead his Saudi protege into signing on. That changed after October 7, 2023.

The genocide in Gaza made it politically untenable for any Muslim leader to get closer to Israel.

In the mean time, MBS and MBZ’s relationship has degenerated into open proxy warfare in Yemen. The Saudi backed forces whomped ass on the UAE’s pawns in a scrap the UAE side started with some flagrant territory grabbing.

The 12 Day War last June pushed the Saudis to re-calibrate away from the UAE, Israel and the U.S.

MBS signed a Chinese-brokered peace deal with the Iranians. The Iranians have so far left the Saudis with their pipeline to the Red Sea, a route Iran could cut off at anytime by bombing the pumping stations or encouraging their Houthi allies in Yemen to blockade the Bab-el-Mandeb to Saudi oil.

Iran could also take out the Saudi power and water desalination plants and render Riyadh uninhabitable.

That’s where the Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense pact, and Pakistani’s nuclear arsenal come into play.

IF the Sauds push the US to leave their territory then they should have no further conflict with Iran, regardless of however many Pakistani troops are on their territory. If they continue to support US and Israeli attacks on Iran, very different situation.

And so does the four way “discussion group” with Turkey and Egypt that MBS has assembled to join Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as regional power brokers.

While neither Egypt nor Turkey is a nuclear power, both are significant military powers in the region.

Both are also deeply entanged militarily with the U.S. Turkey because of its NATO membership. Egypt because of the billions of dollars of military funding the U.S. gives it as a reward for cooperating with Israel. Also the U.S. backed the coup which put President Sisi in power and overturned the post-Arab Spring elections.

But nonetheless, the four countries met in May and discussed a mutual security pact, per Middle East Eye:

Turkey has, since last year, been seeking a security pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, a Pakistani minister said in a statement that such a deal had been in the pipeline for nearly a year.

Turkish sources familiar with the issue previously told Middle East Eye that Ankara was also trying to bring Egypt into the arrangement. The sources said the agreement would not mirror the guarantees and commitments of Nato, but would instead serve as a security platform to enable greater cooperation in the defence industry and broader defence matters.
…
While Ankara has repeatedly described Israel as the primary instigator of the war with Iran, a joint statement by the participating countries in Riyadh on Thursday strongly criticised Tehran for its attacks on the Gulf.

The statement mentioned Israel only briefly, referring to its “expansionist” policy in Lebanon.

Erdogan has spent the last thirty months loudly accusing Israel of genocide and quietly supplying them with oil via a pipeline from Azerbaijan.

But since the Iran War, he has upped his anti-Israeli rhetoric, even threatening military action this weekend.

The Jerusalem Post’s coverage could be dismissed as scare-aganda, cheap theater to reassure their readership that Turkey presents a real and ever present threat and might need to be attacked at some point:

Responding to reporters later in the day, Erdogan escalated his rhetoric even further, suggesting that Ankara could choose to engage with Israel militarily.

“We must be strong to prevent Israel from doing this to Palestine,” Erdogan said. “Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we will do the same to them,” he stated. “There is nothing to prevent us from doing it. We just need to be strong so that we can take these steps.”

The Turkish foreign minister got into it today:

Turkey feels increasingly encircled by growing cooperation between Israel, Greece and Cyprus, Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, said on Monday, warning that, after Iran, Tel Aviv could turn its attention to Ankara.

Fidan’s remarks come in the aftermath of the collapse of Iran–US peace talks and amid rising tensions with Israel over regional stability. Ankara has so far remained outside the conflict in Iran but has been accused of maintaining close ties with the Iranian regime as well as its regional proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.

“After Iran, Israel cannot exist without an enemy; as you know, it has to develop a certain rhetoric,” Fidan told Anadolu Agency. The Turkish foreign minister added that both the Israeli government and some opposition figures were seeking to “designate Türkiye as a new enemy.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz responded by calling Erdoğan a “paper tiger”, saying that he had not reacted to reported missile launches from Iran towards Turkish territory.

“A member of the Muslim Brotherhood who slaughtered the Kurds is accusing Israel – which is defending itself against its Hamas allies – of genocide,” he added.

Turkey’s been on a collision course with Israel since their mutual U.S. backed project to destabilize Syria succeeded all too well and put the famous Al-Jolani, ex-Al Queda and ISIS, in charge.

That added to the relentless political pressure from a Turkish population outraged by the genocide in Gaza and less and less inclined to be placated by Erdogan’s empty rhetoric.

Israel’s dominance of Greece and Cyprus gets Turkey’s hackles up and combined with the Trump regime’s attempt to entice Kurdish forces to attack Iran, Erdogan might be forced to make a real break with the U.S. and go after Israel.

Iran has choices to make but holding to a dead ceasefire while enemies and potential enemies make moves isn’t a good one.

The Twin Pillars of the Interregnum of Unreality Are Under Stress

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On April 8, 2026

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Guest Post by Nat Wilson Turner

Last Fall, I posited that the US and greater West are in the grips of an Interregnum of Unreality that began when Barack Obama successfully papered over the Great Financial Crisis while addressing none of the causes and leaving the very same banksters whose antics caused the crisis in place.

The Interregnum of Unreality is the legacy of Barack Obama who achieved near-total information dominance via traditional and social media and used that power to promulgate a message that everything was fine, nothing ever happens, the neo-liberal order will never end because it rests on two indestructible pillars:

  1. The perception of American prosperity
  2. The perception of global American military dominance

Thanks to Trump’s impericidal decision to attack Iran in February, kicking off a war he can’t TACO out of, the reputation of American invincibility has taken a beating.

The estimable Aurelian writes in his latest missive of the global political implications of the ass-whipping the American military has taken in the Ramadan War:

That hit is going to be all the larger because of the massive, orchestrated PR campaign that has been going on for more than a generation, presenting the US as the Empire and the Hegemon, its military the unstoppable colossus trampling small countries underfoot. But the test of a hegemon is not how loudly you shout, but whether you can in fact do what you claim. In spite of defeats in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and the ignominious scuttle from the Red Sea, both boosters and critics of the US have been prepared to believe the US had that much power until the last month or so. But now we have price discovery, and it turns out that the US has large and quite capable forces, but it’s not the unstoppable giant ogre that it claimed to be, and never was. The whole “hegemon” thesis, people are beginning to realise, was smoke and mirrors all along: it’s just that now it’s obvious. It’s not just how it is now, it’s how it always was: a traditional result of wars, after all, is to reveal the truth about militaries. No doubt even as I write, pundits are busy composing apologias along the lines of “well, of course by hegemony we just meant Quite a Powerful Nation with a Large Military, actually.” But overselling and underperforming will have their usual political consequences.

He also brings in the second pillar of our interregnum of unreality, the markets:

There’s an interesting comparison to be made with the “Artificial Intelligence” racket, which was similarly hyped, and also expected to somehow guarantee world-dominating status for the US. But in quiet corners away from the hysteria, people who know what they are talking about have been pointing out for several years now that “AI” is a scam, that as an industry it will never be profitable, and that the money, and even more the power and the infrastructure needed, will never be available. And just in the last few weeks, the media are discovering that that’s how it is, and indeed that’s how it always was, if you had bothered to do a few sums. We can add the interesting rider, however, that in a world where generating power is going to have to be rationed, and silicon chips may be scarce, the “AI” scam may come to a swifter and more brutal end than even its worst critics supposed. Exactly what that will do to the US economy I’m not qualified to say, but I imagine it won’t be pretty.

And the damage will not just be financial. Most of the big names of international business, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, the Altmans and the rest of that lot, treated with fawning reverence by the media and governments of the world, and who have persuaded us that what they think is actually important, will turn out to have empires built on not very much. How badly the poisonous mixture of world depression, financial crisis, and shortage of power and chips will hit them I don’t think anybody knows, but if they survive, their image, and that of the US as a technological leader, will have suffered as badly as the image of its military.

Earlier this week I posted at Naked Capitalism about the deep ties between OpenAI, Oracle and the UAE and that there are indications they are deepening those ties even as the foundations of their partnership are being lit on fire.

The weak links in the AI boom and the Middle East — OpenAI, Oracle, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — are strengthening their ties even as the Ramadan War exposes their increasing vulnerabilities.

Spoiler alert: Despite OpenAI’s jarring strategic shifts last week, the UAE is still pouring money down that hole.

Is reality finally intruding on our generation-long delirium?

When Trump failed to calm the markets last week with his ridiculous address to the nation, it seemed that a little reality was peeking through the veils.

But when Iran joined Trump yesterday in claiming that the basic terms of a ceasefire and ensuing negotiations had been reached, the markets roared their approval, with American equities markets posting huge gains.

This despite the ceasefire never taking place and the Strait of Hormuz only being open for a few hours.

As I attempted to document in a post earlier today at Naked Capitalism, “cognitive dissonance and conflicting agendas among key players” has allowed the western media to engage in an orgy of chatter about this ceasefire that never was even as Israel, Iran, and reportedly the UAE all launched strikes at civilians and industrial infrastructure.

One hopes that Trump realizes he went too far in his genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization and will at least refrain from implicitly threatening to nuke Iran going forward.

However it’s almost certain he will attempt more attacks on Iran involving US ground forces and equally certain that those attempts will end as disastrously as his first.

We’re seeing a full-on anti-Trump mutiny from leading MAGA media figures and even 70 of the senescent US House Democrats are calling for Trump to be removed from office because Trump’s rhetoric freaked the American mainstream the fuck out.

Democratic 2028 aspirants Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Murphy both capitalized on the Trump-triggered panic and ensuing TACO to raise their profiles. Most of rest of the Dem 2028 aspirants have been caught flat footed, trapped by their zionist obligations and inability to recognize the political moment.

The freakouts and cognitive dissonance will continue until they can’t.

And as Aurelian pointed out, the consequences of the Interregnum Ending will be serioius:

For the US, as I’ve indicated, the shock is likely to be existential: Americans have been so misled for so long by their governments and media about their economic and military strength that the sudden discovery of its limits will be brutal and de-stabilising. Above all, a political culture of entitlement, which is used to issuing demands and threats to try to get what it wants, will suddenly have to cope with the US becoming the demandeur, as it is over the current “ceasefire,” obliged to make compromises and sacrifices to get what it needs to keep the country going, and seeing others expand into the strategic space it has vacated. Whether the current political system will survive the shock, and whether it will be capable of actually making the concessions necessary for survival, are very open questions.

Meanwhile the majority of Americans are getting their faces vigorously rubbed in the litter box of reality every time they pump gas and soon the inflationary impact of Trump’s war will resonate throughout the economy.

The longer it takes for the official narrative to adjust to new circumstances, the longer the Interregnum of Unreality continues, the worse the impact will be and the bigger the looming revolutionary moment will seem to be and the more forceful the ensuing crackdown will need to be to snuff it.

The Illusion of a Revolutionary Moment

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On April 3, 2026

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As the blowback resulting from Trump’s foolhardy attack on Iran begin to directly impact Americans, it’s natural to hope for substantive, positive political change in the U.S. of A.

Polls show Trump hemorrhaging support from all quarters, even among his base.

Polls show the Democratic leadership is deeply unpopular, even with a majority of Democratic voters.

In Maine, polls show sitting Governor Janet Mills is getting crushed by Graham Platner heading into the June 9th primary vote which will determine the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

Platner has already survived a brutal oppo dump that dropped just as Mills (backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) entered the race last fall, including getting caught with a nazi tattoo on his chest.

Platner’s rhetoric is getting remarkably leftist, even using the old Coal Miner’s Union song “Which Side Are You On” in a campaign ad.

And the average price of gasoline in the US has only just hit $4/gallon.

Just wait until it’s $6/gallon nationally and $10/gallon in California.

And wait until more than 45% of the American public figures out that Trump’s War on Iran is not only “not going well”, but that the empire has already suffered a crushing, permanent blow.

This is all happening in a context of economic collapse that was well underway before Trump’s February 28th attack.

In review, we’ve got:

  1. Looming US military defeat
  2. Looming economic crash
  3. Trump and the MAGA movement bleeding out
  4. A rotten, unpopular Dem leadership class hated by all sides

Seems like a recipe for political turmoil, maybe even serious political change, right?

Right.

Yes. This part is obvious.

The not-so-obvious part is this: who will fill the looming political vacuum?

The answer is simple, if not obvious: the political void will be filled by those who are most prepared to seize the moment, and possibly just seize power.

The MAGA forces that brought Trump to power are the most to blame for his disastrous reign.

The Christian Zionists who latched onto MAGA (and took it over) have made their play and it is ending disastrously in West Asia. They could only have emerged as a force in a completely degenerate United States built on delusion and propaganda.

Their day is done.

So, who else?

The Techbros, as the biggest winners to emerge in the neo-liberal era, intend to conquer and dominate the coming era.

They’ve had the most cash and are used to running rings around incumbent powers.

They’ve planned feverishly for the coming opportunity and have massive resources to back their play.

Except they’ve sunk it all on a bet on Large Language Models aka AI which is seemingly on the verge of imploding disastrously (at least from a financial and economic perspective).

Should we join Whitney Webb and Taylor Lorenz in warning against the Techbros?

How scared should we be of the idiot who wasted $83 billion on “the Metaverse”?

Thought much about being “de-banked“? Might want to consider it before “hitting the streets” or just doing journalism.

Americans think it can’t happen here? Well just avoid Ohio and you’ll be fine….for now.

Prepare to Pay for the Despicable Cowardice of Pete Hegseth and Our Loathsome Masters

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On March 5, 2026

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We’ve maybe reached FAFO time for the sleeping American public. Our idiotic asshole officials and oligarchs and genocidal child-predator overlords have done did it this time.

The U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke about the sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean. Here’s what he said:

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: Last night we sunk their prize ship, the Solamani.

Looks like POTUS got him twice.

Their Navy not a factor.

Pick your adjective. It is no more.

In fact, yesterday in the Indian Ocean, and we’ll play it on the screen there, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.

The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II like in that war back when we were still the War Department. We are fighting to win.

Alex Christoforou calls him out:

Alex Christoforou: He talked about death and destruction. He was talking like a maniac. Pete Hegseth. A very unfortunate press conference from the Secretary of War, a top official of the United States of America.

A very, very unfortunate press conference.

Just tell the American people what’s going on with the war in a professional manner.

There’s no need to to talk about death, destruction, hitting them while they’re down.
…
He took a victory lap for sinking a an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean.

And this Iranian ship was not a combat ship. It was not in combat. It had no ammunition because it was invited to India along with 200 crew members to take part in a ceremony.

It was a guest of the the Indian government, a non-combat ship which was sunk by a US submarine.

So the whole thing was was premeditated. The the US knew exactly what this ship was doing in India. They knew it was not a combat ship. They knew it had no ammunition. They knew it was taking part in a ceremony invited by the Indian government and they went to the Indian Ocean.

The submarine made its way to the Indian Ocean and decided to sink this ship. And my understanding is that all 200 crew members died.

That’s my understanding of it. I’m not sure if there were any survivors.
…
We’re starting to get statements from from India, from various people in India who are who are very, very angry at this incident pointing out that that this is embarrassing, a humiliation, completely wrong for for India to invite Iran to this ceremony and then for the United States to know that this ship is there and then to sink this ship.

And the worst part is that Pete Hegseth was actually proud of this. What are you proud of? What are you freaking proud of? He thought this was some sort of of act of strength.

He was talking about this is about how this is the first time uh a submarine has sank a ship since World War II or something like that.

What are you talking about, psycho? It was there to attend a ceremony (thousands of) freaking miles away without any any weapons on on board.

I couldn’t believe what I was watching. The Secretary of War taking a victory lap for for sinking an unarmed, no ammo ship that was participating in a peaceful event invited by by India.

Hegseth and Trump and those commanding them are so ignorant of the concept of honor they can’t even pretend to have any.

Ryan Grim elaborated:

And the cherry on top of the sundae of evil, the U.S. did not render aid in violation of every law of war and conduct:

Tuomas Malinen, a Finnish investment analyst put it succinctly:

This one requires that I excerpt the full quote:

Tuomas Malinen: So, let me get this straight, @SecWar
.
You just sank an Iranian frigate, which was returning from an international naval exercise in India, near Sri Lanka. In other words, you attacked an unsuspecting “enemy ship” in international waters, thousands of nautical miles from the combat zone in the Middle East.

You know, who conducted such cowardly attacks on unsuspecting naval targets before you? Nazi Germany.

And his follow up:

Most of you do not get this, so let me explain, with one sentence.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed by Iranians and the U.S. navy dares only attack an unaware Iranian ship 3000 miles from this chokepoint of the global economy.

Modern U.S. navy is a bloody fucking joke.

Even gung ho pro US merchant marine and shipping expert John Konrad is baffled as to why Hegseth would do something so stupid and chickenshit.

I’m a bit too panicked to be blogging much more at the moment. Time to stock up on canned foods, etc because these idiots have triggered the biggest oil supply shock in recorded history.

And starvation is just the appetizer:

These idiots might be suicidal and/or stupid enough to trigger a nuclear war which will immediately escalate out of control just like the rest of this insane and reckless operation.

This is unconfirmed but seems entirely likely

For those looking for hopeful signs, Trump is losing the support of his base, like legendary Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Matt “The Immortal” Brown:

And at least one former high ranking NATO official says “there is no special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. The former does what it wants and it’s time for Britain to act in our own interest.”

I Miss the Lies of the 1990s but I Don’t Want to Go Back

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On February 17, 2026

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Watching this Richard J. Murphy podcast with John Christensen I was struck by an anecdote that Christensen shared about corruption on the Isle of Jersey in the late 1990s (note that I didn’t have time to confirm spelling of the proper names mentioned or fact check, so I’m redacting those):

John Christensen:I for quite a long time I had been very disillusioned with the government in Jersey. It’s become clear to me that by and large the the regulatory pro processes the laws in play and regulations in place were window dressing exercises and there was very very weak enforcement or compliance.

So the whole thing as far as I was concerned was a charade.

Late one January evening (and this is 1996) the phone went at my home and it was a Wall Street Journal investigating investigating journalist calling an and he started questioning me about a currency trader who was operating in Jersey and a subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS.

The subsidiary was called [redacted] and and and a major churn client churning exercise which had cost a bunch of American investors tens of millions of (dollars).

And what he said was that the government of Jersey was thwarting any attempt at investigating this and allowing these investors who had lost tens of millions to have access to justice.

I said, “I know nothing about this whatsoever.”

He clearly thought I was bullshitting. He said, “But it’s your department that issued the license to the currency trader to trade in Jersey. (The trader) was not a Jerseyman, and it’s your department that gave him the housing or or supported his application for a housing license to rent property in Jersey.

And I said, “Well, to be honest, mate, I know everything that goes on in my department. I’ve never heard of this.”

He clearly thought I was a liar. And I did a deal. I said I will go in first thing tomorrow morning and check the files and if what you’ve said is correct then I will help you. I will cooperate.

Now I was in this extraordinary situation because I was a very senior civil servant. In fact I headed the government economic service. Part of my job was to work with international media.

I went in, checked everything he said, stood up and I realized that in order to circumvent me and my department, my boss, [redacted], the chief adviser…had gone round my back um and issued a license which should never have been issued and had given support for a housing consent which by policy should not have been supported.

And he’d done that because it turns out that at that at the time when this felony started, the most important politician in Jersey happened to be a member of the board of [redacted].

So here’s corruption in a very British form.
…
Another part of the corruption lay with the media in Jersey. BBC Radio Jersey never asked the the correct questions. The Jersey Evening Post never asked the correct questions; which were how the hell did this guy get a license to operate in Jersey and how the hell did he get a housing permit?

Because both were against government policy. And the reason they did that was because the Jersey Eden Post at that time belonged to a very senior politician which itself is corrupt.

This is all very British. This is the way things operate in Britain.

Journalists go to great lengths to not ask the right questions because they are themselves corrupted. …It was a staterun organ in effect at that period and it probably still is to some extent.

This anecdote raised conflicting points in my mind.

On the one hand, I admire the seriousness, technical expertise, and ethics of Murphy and Christensen. They represent the best of their generation and have multiple qualities I don’t see from younger reformers.

I also am nostalgic for an era in which a whistleblower like Christensen could actually make an impact by talking to the press. People were tried and convicted, etc.

That kind of thing is much missed in the Trump/Starmer era.

On the other hand, my lived experience of the 1990s contrasts so strongly with how the period is damned to be remembered historically that it inspires awe at the power of the dominant narrative in the West in that era.

The 1990s was the age of Sir Jimmy Saville after all.

In America we had Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, who may not have been knighted but had a comparable status as secular sages, beloved and admired.

Of course, we didn’t know then what we know now about Saville being a prolific sex predator, or Cosby being a serial rapist or in Allen’s case, people were trying to tell us, but many people were convinced his marriage to his ex-wife’s daughter was a love match.

We certainly didn’t know Woody was having dinner with Noam Chomsky….and a man we hadn’t heard of yet named Jeffrey Epstein.

It was comforting to watch the official propaganda of Ken Burns’ Civil War series on PBS and be reassured about the noble nature of both sides in that war and then follow it up with Eyes on the Prize which taught us that things had been bad in the racist past but the miraculous 1960s had solved everything.

Perhaps I was just young and naive, but in the 1990s it somehow seemed plausible to accept the mythologies of the capitalist west.

Things like the Iran-Contra Scandal or Watergate showed that there was corruption, but it was limited and could be dealt with.

After all, wasn’t that bright young Rudy Guliani bringing down the Mafia itself?

Hadn’t the evil empire of the USSR fallen without a war?

Hadn’t an American president united the whole world against Saddam Hussein’s aggression and fought and won a war to liberate Kuwait?

Even better hadn’t the Color Revolution in Serbia shown that Gene Sharp had distilled the non-violent revolutionary techniques of Gandhi and MLK into a formidable instrument for freedom?

From the vantage point of 2026, post-Enron, post-9/11, post-2008, post-Maidan, post-Trump/Brexit, post-COVID, it’s just as impossible to look back fondly at Gene Sharp and company as it is to enjoy the comedy of Bill Cosby with your kids.

Yes, it is upsetting and alarming to watch David Ellison’s CBS blatantly censoring a late night show or US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring a new era of colonialism, but perhaps it’s good that the lies of this era are so flagrant.

Trump’s Religious Liberties Commission Implodes Over Zionism

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On February 13, 2026

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POTUS Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission is tearing itself apart in a fight about zionism.

The leading dissident, Carrie Prejean Boller, the 2009 Miss California USA is a right-wing Catholic who picked a fight with zionists at a meeting of the Commission.

Here’s how NBC describes the dust-up:

A member of the federal Religious Liberty Commission has been ousted after a hearing this week that featured tense exchanges on the definition of antisemitism. The ousted member, Carrie Prejean Boller, had defended prominent commentator Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Prejean Boller, a model turned conservative activist, denied that Owens had ever said anything antisemitic, quoted a Bible verse that attributed the death of Jesus to Jews and pushed back on the idea that some people mask antisemitism in their criticism of Israel.

“No member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, chair of the commission, in a statement Wednesday. “This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”

Boller fired back on X.com that Patrick could not fire her, only Trump could.

Patrick’s tweet got over 4.4 million views and Boller’s reply 2.3 million views. This is the mainstream of 21st Century American political discourse.

Boller spoke to Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic:

“It is not a biblical mandate that I have to worship Israel,” Carrie Prejean Boller told me today. The former Miss California USA turned social-media influencer was dismissed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission yesterday after drawing charges of anti-Semitism. But, she wanted to make clear, she regrets nothing—and has no intention of disappearing without a fight.

On Tuesday, the Religious Liberty Commission held its fifth hearing, in Washington, D.C., to discuss anti-Jewish prejudice. Meetings of blue-ribbon panels are typically sleepy, stage-managed affairs designed to serve the purposes of whatever administration put them together. But Boller had other ideas. She repeatedly interrogated the participants about their opinions on anti-Zionism, which she distinguished from anti-Semitism, and complained that other panelists had called Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, the wildly popular podcasters, anti-Semitic.

Video of Boller’s interjections went viral, sparking furious recriminations on the right. “I’m with her,” declared former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Boller took to social media in her own defense and began resharing others’ support for her conduct, including Owens’s claim that the two women were being assailed for refusing to “support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers.” Boller’s performance raised her profile—her previously marginal X account increased its following 20-fold. “Be a good Goyim and give me a follow,” she posted Tuesday afternoon, inaccurately using the plural form of the colloquial Hebrew word for “non-Jew.” Yesterday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the chair of the Religious Liberty Commission, announced that Boller had been removed, saying in a statement that “no member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.”

Trump influencer Laura Loomer chimed in (600K views) to claim that the White House ordered Boller’s removal from the Commission:

For those not following this administration closely, here’s some background on Loomer and her role in Trump 2.0 (“chief loyalty enforcer”) from PBS last summer:

Laura Loomer has successfully lobbied to remove aides from several key government roles, including the National Security Council. Despite her close alliance with the president, she’s drawn some foes within the Republican Party, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Laura Loomer: “I’m not working for President Trump. I’m not getting paid by President Trump. I’m not in the Trump White House. I wasn’t even on the Trump campaign. And yet I feel like every single day it’s a full-time job just to make sure the president is protected and that he’s receiving the information that he needs to receive.”

The open war over zionism on the right side of the political spectrum is a dramatic contrast to the more subdued conflict between Democratic party voters (who overwhelmingly oppose Israel) and their elected officials (who overwhelmingly support Israel).

2028: Red and Blue Vs. Tech?

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On December 10, 2025

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By Nat Wilson Turner

Sounds good to me.

Not my idea though. I must give credit where credit is due.

Balaji meant it as a warning to his fellow tech bosses, but I’m taking it more as a great suggestion.

Those of you not familiar with Balaji Srinivasan should reference this Gil Duran piece from the New Republic from 2024.

Relevant bits:

…you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”

“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless.

The Financial Times had more on the “network state” or as they call them “for-profit cities.”

John P. Ruehl at Naked Capitalism has covered a specific “network state” in Honduras called Próspera that has been underdevelopment for some years and may have played a role in Trump’s decision to interfere in the recent Honduran elections after pardoning their drug-dealing ex-president.

I’d include an excerpt or two from the above, but I want to stay on topic as this is just by way of background on Balaji.

The main point is he can tell that the techbros (and the rest of the oligarchy) are close to wearing out their welcome with the American people.

When/if the AI bubble pops and when/if it takes down the larger stock market and possibly the entire U.S. economy, their welcome will be thoroughly worn out.

The secondary point is that Balaji and his ilk don’t care about The United States of America, they’re already planning their post-nation state moves.

His rhetorical tactics remind me of those AI boosters who choose to contribute to Nvidia’s stock price by “warning” that “imminent AGI” is a threat to destroy humanity.

Larry Summers Being Awful Has Little to Do With Jeffrey Epstein

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On November 21, 2025

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After three decades of creating ruin and disaster across the globe, Larry Summers is finally being pushed from the lofty heights of power and prestige.

The proximate cause of his downfall are recently released emails between Summers and suicided arms dealer/sex trafficker/intelligence asset/money launderer Jeffrey Epstein.

The emails show the married, middle-aged Summers going to Epstein for advice on how best to manipulate a woman he claimed to be mentoring into a sexual relationship.

Summers comes off like a complete putz in the exchange:

Summers: We talked on the phone. Then “I can’t talk later”. Dint think I can talk tomorrow”. I said what are you up to. She said “I’m busy”. I said awfully coy u are. And then I said. Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming” She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it. Tone was not of good feeling. I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.

Epstein: shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.

While it’s nice to finally see Summers pushed off the world stage (we hope!), Matt Stoller, Rudy Havenstein and others are pointing out that Summers’ loathsome exchange with Epstein is the least of his sins.

Surely it’s more important that Summers was “wrong on the big important stuff for most of his career” as Stoller put it than that he was a creep who looked to a monster for advice on attempted adultery.

Politico sums up Summers’ prodigious rise in politics, for which he abandoned his Harvard tenure:

Summers would never achieve the type of intellectual breakthroughs that his uncles had. Perhaps he was too attracted to — too distracted by — the more muscular life of political power and influence that he first experienced in 1981, when he went to Washington to work with Feldstein, Ronald Reagan’s chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The year after winning the Clark medal, Summers headed to the capital again to work at the World Bank, then joined Lloyd Bentsen’s Treasury Department in the new Clinton administration.
…
(Summers) would become Robert Rubin’s deputy when Rubin took over from Bentsen in 1995. Their work together on the international debt crises of the 1990s made Summers famous; in February 1999, TIME magazine put him, Rubin and Fed chair Alan Greenspan on its cover, with the headline “The Committee to Save the World.” A few months later, Summers succeeded Rubin as Treasury Secretary, serving until the end of the Clinton presidency.

Havenstein recommends (among other excellent pieces) this 2010 Charles Ferguson take down of Summers from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some highlights:

…rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy.
…
As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.

Summers didn’t just lay the groundwork for the economic crash of the 2000s, he actively mocked those who warned it was coming:

When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world’s leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people’s money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a “full-blown financial crisis” and a “catastrophic meltdown.”

When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a “Luddite,” dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector.

But the punchline came when Summers was put in charge of the Obama administration’s response to the very crash his policies created:

after the 2008 financial crisis and its consequent recession, Summers was placed in charge of coordinating U.S. economic policy, deftly marginalizing others who challenged him. Under the stewardship of Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke, the Obama administration adopted policies as favorable toward the financial sector as those of the Clinton and Bush administrations—quite a feat. Never once has Summers publicly apologized or admitted any responsibility for causing the crisis.

Incredibly, before the release of his Epstein correspondence Summers had been playing a leading role in formulating the Center for American Progress’s Project 2029, intended to guide the policy for a potential Democratic administration to follow Trump 2.0.

The highest-profile think tank on the center-left, the Center for American Progress (CAP), has assigned several high-profile policy types to lead an effort that documents show was internally described as “Project 2029.”

According to two people with knowledge of the arrangement and a member of CAP, one of the leads on the economic policy plank for this project is Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary Larry Summers…

They also said that Summers was the final sign-off on a CAP housing policy paper set to be released next week.

Could it be any clearer that the Democratic party and all its policy apparatchiks are enemies of the people and must be completely purged from the party for it to have any chance on delivering positive results for the American people?

No matter how vast the conspiracies of Jeffrey Epstein, no matter how deeply tied he was to American and Israeli intelligence (and Drop Site News has proven Epstein was both), Larry Summers ruined vastly more lives, caused more death and suffering, and did more harm in his public roles as an economics advisor to two Democratic U.S. Presidents.

It’s also important to note that he started his political career working for the Republican Reagan administration and seamlessly transitioned to the Democratic Clinton and Obama administrations to complete the neoliberal economic transformation begun under Reagan.

Now that the U.S. economy is completely hollowed out and its days as a global hegemon are rapidly coming to a close, Summers is finally being pushed from his high seats at Harvard, Open AI, and the Center for American Progress.

Too bad it came at least 20 years too late.

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