Full screen recommended.
A Homestead Journey, 3/22/23
"Americans Know Something Big
Is Coming and They're Getting Ready"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
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Sunday, March 22, 2026
Adventures With Danno, "Doomsday Prepping At Costco!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/22/23
"Doomsday Prepping At Costco!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "Grants for Your Business AndYour Bills - Here's the Full List"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/22/26
"Grants for Your Business AndYour Bills -
Here's the Full List"
"Millions of Americans are struggling with rising bills, expensive utilities, and the high cost of starting or running a business - but what most people don’t realize is that free grant money is still widely available right now. In this video, I break down how to find grants for your business, grants to help pay your bills, and local programs that can provide real financial assistance. From programs offering $5,000 to $50,000 for small businesses to resources that can help cover utilities, rent, internet, and even medical expenses - these opportunities are out there if you know where to look. I also walk you through exactly how to search for grants in your city and state, including overlooked programs like 211 services, local redevelopment initiatives, and private grant opportunities. Thousands of people have already signed up for my Free Grant Guide, and many are seeing real results - from paid utility bills to funding for their businesses."
Don’t miss out on money that is already set aside to help
people - take action today and get access to the guide here:
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"Something Is Wrong With American Food… And You Can Feel It Every Day"
Full screen recommended.
The Unfolded States, 3/22/26
"Something Is Wrong With American Food…
And You Can Feel It Every Day"
"Something about the food you eat every day has changed. Energy drops faster, hunger comes back sooner, and digestion feels less predictable. This video breaks down what’s actually happening inside the modern American food system, from production and processing to how food is designed and consumed. Using data from sources like the CDC, USDA, and peer-reviewed research, we look at how ultra processed food, large-scale agriculture, and supply chain optimization have reshaped what ends up on your plate. The goal is not to blame individuals, but to understand how the system itself has evolved over time. Once you see how these changes connect, many everyday symptoms start to make more sense. Not as isolated problems, but as patterns shaped by the environment you’re eating in."
Comments here:
""US-Israel-Iran War, 3/22/26""
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 3/22/26
"Trump Panics As Netanyahu Begs For Ceasefire
After Iran Damages 13 Refuelling Aircraft"
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o
Danny Haiphong, 3/22/26
"Iran HITS Israel’s Dimona Nuke Site,
Trump’s 48-Hour Power Plant Threat Collapses"
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o
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, 3/22/26
"Marandi Responds To Trump's 48-Hour Ultimatum To Iran"
"President Donald Trump posted late Saturday that the U.S. would "obliterate" Iran's power plants if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz. Professor Mohammad Marandi responded to the threat and said Iran's position remains "steadfast." The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What's Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Glenn Diesen, 3/22/26
"Seyed M. Marandi: Total War -
Attacking Nuclear Plants, Desalination & Infrastructure"
"Seyed Mohammad Marandi discusses the targeting of nuclear plants, desalination plants, critical infrastructure, and the civilian population. Trump has given Iran 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz (capitulation), otherwise the US will destroy Iran's energy facilities. Then there will be no limits on Iran's response, and the consequences will be global. The future of global stability will be decided over the next few days. Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's Nuclear Negotiation Team."
Comments here:
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Jeremiah Babe, "Alert: Things Are Getting Out of Control - A Financial Crash Is Coming Next"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/21/26
"Alert: Things Are Getting Out of Control -
A Financial Crash Is Coming Next"
Comments here:
Fred Reed, "Joan Baez: 'When Will They Ever Learn?'”
"Joan Baez: 'When Will They Ever Learn?'”
by Fred Reed
"This, written sixteen years ago, I stumbled on in the Lew Rockwell archive. While not brilliantly written, it illustrates that the more things change, they more they don’t. Oh good. I see that Senator Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The US, he says, should “sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.”
Senator Graham has the brains of a tapeworm, making him eminently qualified for the senate. Tapeworms, I note, do not have brains. It is characteristic of warlike innocents, to include the Pentagon, to believe that if you destroy navies and air forces, you win wars. This worked well in Vietnam, you will recall, and as soon as we destroy the Taliban’s navy, Afghanistan will be a cakewalk.
Now, I understand that practicality and realism are alien concepts in American politics, to be approached with trepidation, but maybe, just once, we should think before sticking our private parts into a wood-chipper. Just once. I do not propose consistent rationality, forethought, or intelligent behavior. I profoundly respect my country’s traditions. However, folk wisdom from West Virginia: Before you say, “I can whip any man in the bar!” it is well to scout the bar."
November 9, 2010: "Note that the United States cannot defeat Iran militarily, short of using nuclear weapons. It is easy to start a war. Finishing one is harder. I could punch out Mike Tyson. Things thereafter might not go as well as hoped.
Some will find the thought of American martial incapacity outrageous. Can’t beat Iran? Buncha towel monkeys? Among grrr-bowwow-woof patriots, there exists a heady delusion of American potency, that the US has “the greatest military power the world has ever seen.” Ah. And when did it last win a war? In Afghanistan, for ten years the gloriousest military ever known, the expensivist, and whoosh-bangiest, hasn’t managed to defeat a bunch of pissed-off illiterates with AKs and RPGs.
At this point Lindsey of Persia will doubtless allude to the wonders of air power, of “precision-guided weapons,” of smart bombs that presumably read Kant on the way down. Those pitiable Iranians would have no hope of stopping our mighty bombers. True.
Implicit in this Thomistic fantasy (Clancy, I mean, not Aquinas) is that Iran wouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t dare fight back without a navy, etc. Lindsey had better be very sure that Iran couldn’t block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Enough of the world’s petroleum comes from the Gulf that the price would rise drastically if the Straits were blocked. Some economies would simply stop. How many supertankers going up in flames would be tolerated before operators of tankers refused to risk it?
Iran recently began serial production of the Nasr 1, an anti-ship cruise missile. Tankers are thin-skinned and highly flammable. The Nasr 1 can be fired from the back of a truck. Trucks by their nature are mobile. They are easy to hide.
The Air Force, to include Naval Air, may be confident that it can destroy all of Iran’s missiles. The Air Force always believes that air power can do anything and everything - make coffee, win at marbles, everything. After all, don’t its airplanes say “Vrooom!” and “Swoosh!”? Don’t cockpits have lots of portentous buttons and spiffy little screens? Unfortunately the Air Force is regularly wrong.
In fact the entire military is regularly wrong about the ease and duration of its adventures. For example, it had no idea that Viet Nam would turn into an endless war ending in defeat (if that makes sense). Iraq notoriously was going to be a walk in the park. That the war on Afghanistan would last ten years with a distinct possibility of defeat…this never occurred to the soldiers. It is barely conceivable that the Five-Sided Wind Box could do what Field Marshal Graham thinks it could do. The unexpected is always a possibility. But, the stakes being what they would be in Hormuz, hoo-boy….
Another possibility is that Israel will attack Iran, as it has threatened. I would like to think that even Bibi Nut-and-Yahoo has better sense but, it the US can produce gibbering wingnuts, why not Israel? The practical effects of an Israeli attack would be indistinguishable from those of an American attack: America would have to solve the problem. Which it probably couldn’t. Israel can bomb Iran’s nuclear codpieces, but it can’t defeat Iran. And if the Strait were blocked after an Israeli attack, the entire globe would holler, “Israel did it!” which would be true.
The distance from “Israel did it” to “The Jews did it,” though logically great, is emotionally short. People think in collective terms. Remember that after some Saudis dropped the Towers, the alleged war on terror morphed almost instantly into intense hostility for Moslems. It doesn’t make sense, but what has that got to do with anything?
I know a lot of Jews, who are all over the place politically and intellectually. They have in common a complete lack of resemblance to the scheming, hand-rubbing, heh-heh-heh Jews of Neo-nazi imagination. Few sacrifice Christian children (a temptation strongest, I can attest, among Christian parents). But…people think collectively. Congress doesn’t support Israel because it likes Israel, but from political expediency. If the wind blows the other way, so will Congress. Gasoline at twelve dollars is a lot of wind in a commuting country.
Things worsen for America, yet we really don’t know where the country is going or how it will react. The last domestic catastrophe was the Great Depression, when America was a very different place. How bad can things get, economically, politically, internationally? How does a pampered population incapable of planting a garden respond to genuinely hard times? “It can’t happen here,” one hears. What can’t? I suspect that all sorts of things could happen, given sufficiently hard times.
The United States is today an edgy, unhappy country, sliding toward poverty, increasingly dictatorial, inchoately angry, hostile to blacks, the French, Mexicans, Moslems and, creepingly, the Chinese. (Jews, perhaps to their surprise, don’t make the enemies list.) Americans don’t do cosmopolitan. The federal pressure for diversity exists because otherwise no one would associate with anyone else. The Persian Gulf is one of few places that plausibly might wreck the industrial world. There would have to be someone to blame. And Israel can’t survive without American support.
Maybe I’m crazy. But if I were an Israeli, I’d find a nice café on Diesengoff and enjoy a double cappuccino, watch the girls, and keep my bombs in my pocket. Let somebody else take the fall."
"God Is A Comedian"
"God Is A Comedian"
by NO1
"It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humor. It is less well-established, but increasingly obvious, that the humor is of the kind best enjoyed from a great distance, like, let’s say the moon. Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news, and nothing but the news. Told straight, in a universe that has clearly stopped taking its medication.
The United States is sending 5,000 Marines into the Persian Gulf to seize Kharg Island, a speck of land 15 miles off the Iranian coast that handles 90% of Iran’s oil exports. This is, on paper, a reasonable military objective in the same way that sticking your hand into a beehive is a reasonable way to acquire honey. It is technically correct. The bees would disagree.
To reach Kharg Island, the Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and USS Boxer must first sail through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has mined. The strait is also, as of this week, a toll road. The IRGC verifies vessels on VHF radio and charges up to $2 million per transit, payable in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. At least eight ships have paid. Iran’s parliament is legislating the arrangement formally, because even revolutionary theocracies require a compliance department.
A White House source told Axios they need “about a month to weaken the Iranians more” before attempting this. One month. Of a war Trump described as ‘winding down’ on Friday - three weeks in, which by his count is basically four days… Both statements were made, as far as anyone can tell, by people who occupy the same government and occasionally share a building.
A former Navy SEAL called the plan “insane”. A retired Vice Admiral called it “a massacre-in-making scenario”. A retired Rear Admiral pointed out that even if they seize the island, Iran simply turns off the pipeline at the other end. Frankly, I think they're being extremely polite. This is a clusterf*ck of historic proportions and everyone who's ever held a rank knows it.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, meanwhile, the most expensive warship in human history, is retreating to Crete. The official reason is a “laundry fire”. 266 consecutive days at sea, 28 days short of the Vietnam-era deployment record, and the crown jewel of the US Navy is fleeing the theatre, not because of being damaged in combat, not because missiles are flying around it… But because someone's skivvies got too hot.
France, in a display of allied solidarity, deployed the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the region. Its precise location was then revealed to the entire internet by a sailor who went jogging on deck with Strava running. Iran’s calling B7.
There exists in diplomacy a concept known as “sanctions”, which works on the same principle as telling a child they can’t have dessert while you’re eating cake in front of them. The United States has been sanctioning Iran for years. It has also been bombing Iran for three weeks. These are, in the normal course of events, complementary activities. One is economic warfare. The other is the regular kind.
This week, the US Treasury lifted all oil sanctions on Iran. For 30 days. 140 million barrels of Iranian crude, sitting on ships at sea, may now be sold freely on the global market. Including to the United States itself. In yuan. The United States is purchasing, with Chinese currency, oil from the country it is currently bombing?! The same oil that funds the missiles that just shot down an F-35 for the first time. The same missiles that are redecorating allied oil infrastructure.
Treasury Secretary Bessent called this “narrowly tailored”. Narrow like in white, and tailored as in card, apparently. In the same OFAC filing, Russian oil sanctions were lifted as well. And Belarus potash too, because apparently the universe was running low on irony and needed to top up.
The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do. The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective, so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.
Two F-35 stealth fighters have been hit by Iranian air defenses. The first was confirmed by CENTCOM, which used the phrase “emergency landing” in the way that a funeral director might describe death as “a permanent change of address”. The pilot had shrapnel wounds. The aircraft, they said, “will not return to service”, which is the sort of thing you say about a car that hit a bridge abutment at speed, not about a plane that landed.
A Chinook helicopter was subsequently tracked conducting an extensive search pattern over eastern Saudi Arabia. This is what you do when something has come apart in the sky and you need to find the bits. It is not what you do after a landing, emergency or otherwise.
The entire F-35 doctrine, the single most expensive weapons program in human history, rests on the assumption that the aircraft is invisible to radar. Someone forgot to tell the Iranians the planes were invisible.
Then there’s Diego Garcia. The B-2 bomber staging base in the Indian Ocean, roughly 4,000 kilometres from Iran. Iran sent two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. One failed mid-flight. An SM-3 intercepted the other. The outcome is beside the point. Iran had publicly claimed a maximum missile range of 2,000 kilometres. They were lying by a factor of two, which, in the context of ballistic missile capabilities, constitutes what experts call “a very bad surprise”. Rome, Paris, and London are now within the theoretical strike envelope. The British gave permission for Diego Garcia to be used for strikes against Iran and discovered that the Iranian response could, if Tehran felt creative, arrive at Heathrow.
Trump asked NATO to send ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. Every. single. ally. refused. Trump called them “cowards” and said NATO has a “very bad future”. He then announced that the United States doesn’t actually need the Strait of Hormuz. He then said countries that do need it should police it themselves. He then told China to police it. He then sent 5,000 Marines toward it.
This sequence of statements was delivered, as far as the public record shows, by the same person, using the same mouth, within roughly 24 hours. The allies are cowards for not helping with the thing he doesn’t need, which is why he’s sending Marines to die for it, unless the countries that do need it do it themselves, which they won’t, because they’re cowards. Trump told reporters the strait could be opened with a “simple military maneuver” that is “relatively safe” but requires “a lot of help”. Help. From the cowards. Who he doesn’t need. For the strait. That he also doesn’t need.
On the other end of all this, sits Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi, who is not answering texts from US envoy Steve Witkoff. And why would he? The last Iranian official who engaged in negotiations was Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council. Israel killed him. The supreme leader before that was killed on day one. Defence Secretary Hegseth is openly calling senior IRGC positions “temp jobs”. You are assassinating everyone with the authority to negotiate and then complaining, with what appears to be genuine bewilderment, that nobody will negotiate. This is the diplomatic equivalent of burning down every restaurant in town and then leaving a bad Yelp review about the lack of dining options.
And because one chokepoint apparently wasn’t enough, the Houthis have formally entered the war. Yahya Saree made the announcement with the kind of understated menace that works better when you’ve spent the last two years proving you can, in fact, hit things with missiles from Yemen. “This battle is the battle of the entire Ummah,” he said like someone who’s been warming the bench for two years and got called.
The Red Sea, the other way around, is now also contested. The global shipping industry, already staring at 3,200 vessels trapped in the Gulf with 20,000 seafarers aboard, now has two chokepoints to worry about instead of one.
The Gulf states, who are nominally America’s allies in this production, are having what might be described as a Moment. Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, the country’s largest, has been struck by Iranian drones. Again. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister told a gathering of 12 Arab and Islamic nations that Saudi “patience is not unlimited”, which in Saudi diplomatic language is roughly equivalent to throwing a chair. Qatar’s Prime Minister stated on camera that “everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is”. He didn’t name Israel. The sentence didn’t need the word.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure. Two of 14 LNG trains damaged, one of two gas-to-liquids facilities hit, 12.8 million tonnes per year offline, 17% of Qatar’s export capacity gone, $20 billion in annual revenue evaporated, repair timeline of three to five years. And because the universe’s sense of humour remains fully operational: Exxon holds 34% of Train S4 and 30% of Train S6. An American oil major took a direct missile hit from a war America started. The insurer’s phone must be making fascinating noises.
Israel’s Haifa refinery, the Bazan complex, 197,000 barrels per day, 40% of national refining capacity, was hit by Iranian ballistic missiles. The IDF said it was “shrapnel from an intercepted projectile”. This is becoming a pattern: Israel issues a statement, footage appears, reality picks the winner.
The entire post-1973 petrodollar deal was simple: Gulf sells oil in dollars, America provides the security umbrella. The umbrella is on fire. The refineries are on fire. And according to an Omani journalist on BBC Arabic, Trump has sent an invoice: $5 trillion to continue the war, $2.5 trillion to stop it. The petrodollar was already the payment. This is double-billing for a service that is visibly, combustibly, failing.
Rheinmetall’s CEO went on CNBC and said the thing that nobody in his position is supposed to say. “If the war lasts another month, we will have nearly no missiles available. All European, American, and also Middle East country warehouses are empty, or nearly empty.” This wasn’t a leak. Not an anonymous source. Not a think tank estimate. This was the CEO of Europe’s largest defense manufacturer, on camera, stating plainly that the cupboard is bare. It is the military equivalent of the pilot coming on the intercom to say he doesn’t know how to land.
The IEA released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves. The largest coordinated release in history. It will be remembered as such for 3.8 days. The fire extinguisher lasted less than a week and the fire hasn’t even noticed.
United Airlines is planning for $175 per barrel through the end of 2027. Whatever “winding down” means, United’s CFO doesn’t believe in it. Corporate planning has looked at the situation, done its own maths, and concluded that this is a two-year problem being described as a two-week one.
Gold had its worst week since 1983. Down over 10%. But Chinese banks are allocating 600 kilograms of gold bars per bank per day, and every single allocation sells out in under 60 seconds. Every trading day. On weekends it’s 100 kilograms. Also gone in a minute. The demand isn’t 600 kilograms. The demand is whatever number would empty the vault. The banks are rationing and the rations evaporate on contact with the Chinese public like water on a hot skillet.
Someone bought 11,000 COMEX gold options at $15,000-$20,000 strikes for December 2026. Paper gold crashes. Physical gold gets hoarded. The two markets are now occupying separate realities, waving at each other across an increasingly unbridgeable divide.
Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran.
By 3:43 PM he told CBS he doesn’t want a ceasefire. By 5:13 PM - 13 minutes after futures markets closed for the weekend, in a coincidence that should be studied in every securities fraud textbook - he posted on Truth Social that the US is “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts”. The S&P reversed more than 1% in seconds. QQQ had already surged 1.1% in the 80 minutes before the announcement, with call options flowing in at a pace that suggests someone, somewhere, had an itinerary.
It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humor. It is an equally well-established fact that the best response to the universe's sense of humor is a stiff drink, a comfortable chair, and the quiet confidence that eventually, even the universe runs out of material. Hopefully."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just above the image center, houses several of these massive stars and has itself changed its appearance.
The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Eta Carinae is the brightest star near the image center, just left of the Keyhole Nebula. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.”
Free Download: Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual…
There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden…
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment…
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
- Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
○
"Man's Search for Meaning"
by Viktor Frankl
"Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of a young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life."
Freely download "Man's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:
"Decide..."
“We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”
- “Richard”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
"Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?"
"Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?"
by John Wilder
"When I look at the war in Ukraine and other world events, I see evidence of Sir Halford John Mackinder. It would have been cool if he was the frontman for a 1910s version of Judas Priest, but no. Mackinder was a guy who thought long and hard about mountains, deserts, oceans, steppes, and wars. You could tell Mackinder was going to be good at geography, what with that latitude. The result of all this pondering was what he called the Heartland Theory, which was the founding moment for geopolitics.
What’s geopolitics? It’s the idea that one of the biggest influencers in human history (besides being human) was the geography we inhabit. Mackinder’s first version wasn’t very helpful, since he just ended up with “Indonesia” and the rest of the world, which he called “Outdonesia”.
Mackinder focused mainly on the Eurasian continent. Flat land with no obstacles meant, in Mackinder’s mind, that the land would be eventually ruled by a single power. Jungles and swamps could be a barrier, but eventually he thought that technology would solve that. Mountains? Mountains were obstacles that stopped invasions, and allowed cultures to develop independently. Even better than a mountain? An island.
There’s even a theory (not Mackinder’s) that the independent focus on freedom flourished in England because the local farmers weren’t (after the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Mormons, and Vikings were done pillaging) subject to invasion and were able to develop a culture based on a government with limited powers, along with rights invested in every man.
Mackinder went further, though. He saw the combination of Eurasia and Africa as something he called the World Island. If the World Island came under the domination of a single power, he thought, it would eventually rule the rest of the world – it would have overwhelming resources and population, and it would have the ability to outproduce (both economically and militarily) everything else. “Pivot Area” is what Mackinder first called the Heartland.
Mackinder, being English, had seen the Great Game in the 1900s, which in many cases was a fight to keep Russia landlocked. The rest of Europe feared a Russia that had access to the sea. Conversely, Russia itself was the Heartland of the Mackinder’s World Island. Russia was separated and protected on most of its borders by mountains and deserts. On the north, Russia was protected by the Arctic Ocean, which is generally more inaccessible than most of Joe Biden’s recent memories.
Russia is still essentially landlocked. The Soviet Navy had some nice submarines, but outside of that, the Russians have never been a naval power, and the times Russia attempted to make a navy have been so tragically inept that well, let me give an example: The sea Battle of Tsushima between the Japanese and Russians in 1905 was a Japanese victory. The Japanese lost 117 dead, 583 wounded, and lost 3 torpedo boats. The Russians? They lost 5,045 dead, 803 injured, 6,016 captured, 6 battleships sunk, 2 battleships captured. The Russians sank 450 ton of the Japanese Navy. The Japanese sunk 126,792 tons of the Russian fleet. Yup. This was more lopsided than a fight between a poodle and a porkchop.
Mackinder noted that the Heartland (Russia) was built on land power. The Rimlands (or, on the map “Inner Crescent”) were built on sea power. In the end, almost all of the twentieth century was built on keeping Russia away from the ocean, and fighting over Eastern Europe. Why? In Mackinder’s mind, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland (Russia); Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” In one sense, it’s true.
Mackinder finally in 1943 came up with another idea, his first idea being lonely. I think he could see the way World War II was going to end, so he came up with the idea that if the United States were to team up with Western Europe, they could still command the Rimlands and contain the Soviet Union to the Heartland.
There are several reasons that the United States has responded with such an amazing amount of aid to Ukraine. The idea is to bleed Putin as deeply and completely as they can. Why? If they’re following Mackinder, this keeps Russia vulnerable. It keeps Eastern Europe from being under Russia’s control – if you count the number of “Battles of Kiev” or “Battles of Kharkov” you can see that it’s statistically more likely to rain artillery in Kiev than rain water.
This might be the major driver for Russia, too. A Russian-aligned (or at least neutral) Ukraine nicely plugs the Russian southern flank. And this is nearly the last year that Russia can make this attempt – the younger generation isn’t very big, and the older generation that built and can run all of the cool Soviet tech? They’re dying off. Soon all their engineers with relevant weapons manufacturing experience will be...dead. If Russia is going to attempt to secure the south, this is their only shot. Depending on how vulnerable the Russians think they are, the harder they’ll fight. NATO nations tossing in weapons isn’t helping the famous Russian paranoia.
I think that the United States, in getting cozy with China in the 1970s, was following along with Mackinder’s theory – I believe Mackinder himself said that a Chinese-Russian alliance could effectively control the Heartland and split the Rimland, given China’s access to the oceans. And that’s what China is doing now, with the Belt and Road Initiative. Remember Mackinder’s World Island? Here’s a map of the countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative:
Spoiler alert: It’s the world island."
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Full screen recommended.
"Halford Mackinder, Heartland Theory and Geographical Pivot 1"
by Geopoliticus
"In this presentation we discuss the theory for Geographic Causation in Universal History proposed by Sir Halford Mackinder in his paper - "The Geographic Pivot of History" delivered as a lecture in 1904. The theoretical propositions in the paper regarding how natural geography controls the flow of history of civilizations - with nature acting as a stage for man to act upon - was the most relevant contribution of Halford Mackinder towards developing a philosophic synthesis between geography, history and statesmanship, leading to the development of modern geopolitics.
In this part we see how he proposes the beginning of a new era in the international system from the 1900s, predicts (in a way) the break out of the First World War, and builds a unified model based on Geo-history for understanding the emergence and evolution of European civilization."
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Full screen recommended.
"Halford Mackinder, Heartland Theory and Geographical Pivot 2"
by Geopoliticus
"In this presentation we view Mackinder’s historical analysts by looking at the interactions between different Geographic zones, seeing how the Mongols used land power to unify the core of the World Island and how Europeans circumvented nomadic heartland power by investing in sea power. The core idea of Halford Mackinder’s Thesis was that in the beginning of the 20th century, geographers needed to develop a philosophical synthesis of geographical conditions and historical trajectories of nations over long ranges of time.
He attempted to do this for the history of Eurasia, which he called, the World Island. According to his theoretical model, there was a link between geographical conditions and the nature of geopolitical order, for one, but for further depth in understanding historical trajectories we need to do a wider scale analysis of interactions between different geographically influenced political orders by building a model of Heartland-Rimland interactions across history."
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Freely download "The Geographical Pivot of History",
by HJ Mackinder, April 1904, here:
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Why is this important? Consider history, from which we learn nothing...
"The earliest evidence of prehistoric warfare is a Mesolithic cemetery in Jebel Sahaba, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace." An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings.'"
The lower figure is more plausible, but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total. Primitive warfare is estimated to have accounted for 15.1% of deaths and claimed 400 million victims. Added to the aforementioned figure of 1,240 million between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, this would mean a total of 1,640,000,000 people killed by war (including deaths from famine and disease caused by war) throughout the history and pre-history of mankind. For comparison, an estimated 1,680,000,000 people died from infectious diseases in the 20th century."
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"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human
race proved to be nothing more than the story of an
ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump."
- David Ormsby-Gore
The Poet: Joy Harjo, "Remember "
"Remember "
"Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the stars stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the suns birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember. "
- Joy Harjo
"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "
"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "
by Marc Chernoff
"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.
2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.
3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.
4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.
5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.
6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.
7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.
8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.
9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. " You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.
10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.
11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.
12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need. " Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.
13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.
14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.
15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.
16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it.
And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin. "
"Do You Believe..."
“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
- Voltaire
"You're Not Ready For What's Coming"
Full screen recommended.
Money Simplified, 3/21/26
"You're Not Ready For What's Coming"
"You're watching the price at the pump climb and telling yourself it's temporary. Meanwhile, five waves of price increases are already rolling toward your groceries, your flights, your mortgage rate, and your retirement account - and most of them haven't even hit yet. This isn't just an oil shock. It's the moment where everything you've been barely holding together gets more expensive all at once, and the people who adjusted early will be the ones still standing when it's over."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Money Simplified, 3/21/26
"Your Money Is Disappearing
And You Don't Even Know It"
"You've been watching the Fed, watching inflation, watching politicians fight over the deficit, and wondering why nothing actually gets better. That's because the real threat to your money isn't coming from Washington. It's coming from Tokyo. For 30 years, Japan has been quietly propping up your mortgage rate, your retirement account, and the entire American financial system, and now they're pulling back. The cheap money era is ending, and the people who should be warning you are too busy chasing clicks on AI stocks and earnings calls. By the time most people figure out what happened, they'll have already lost years of buying power they're never getting back."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Money Simplified, 3/21/26
"How The US - Iran War Will
Brutally Drain Your Savings Account"
"Geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran don't just affect oil prices - they silently erode your purchasing power through a chain reaction most people never see coming. When conflict disrupts Middle Eastern oil supply or even just creates the expectation of disruption, the resulting price spikes cascade through every expense category within weeks, from groceries to rent to utilities. This behavioral economics breakdown reveals how your savings account balance can stay exactly the same while losing 12-15% of its real value during geopolitical shocks, and why defensive pessimism - building larger emergency fund buffers than conventional wisdom suggests - is the only rational response to an economic system where distant wars drain local bank accounts faster than most financial advice acknowledges."
Comments here:
"Harry Dent: 'Crash Worse Than 1929'"
Full screen recommended.
LifeWorthLiving, 3/18/26
"Harry Dent: 'Crash Worse Than 1929'"
"Harry Dent, Founder of HS Dent, warns a historic market crash worse than 1929 is coming as the 17-year stimulus-fueled bubble bursts, with stocks falling 90% and Treasury bonds the only safe investment."
Comments here:
"Americans Warned: These Foods Could Disappear First"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 3/21/26
"Americans Warned:
These Foods Could Disappear First"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
The Unfolded States, 3/21/26
"The Food Crisis in America
Is Starting To Get Out Of Control"
"Food prices in the United States are rising again, but this time it feels different. Even as inflation slows on paper, grocery bills are still hitting harder than expected. From everyday items to fast food, the cost of eating has quietly reset to a new normal that many people are still trying to understand. In this video, we break down what is really driving grocery prices in the USA, why food inflation in 2026 still feels out of control, and how hidden factors like pricing systems, supply chains, and market structure are shaping what you pay every week. This is not just about inflation. It is about how the system behind food pricing is changing. If you have noticed your grocery bill going up or your shopping habits changing, you are not alone. This breakdown connects the data with what people are actually experiencing right now."
Comments here:
"The Strait of Hormuz – A Very Strange Tug-of-War"
"The Strait of Hormuz –
A Very Strange Tug-of-War"
by Kit Knightly
"Since the US/Israel began their war – sorry, their “targeted, limited, combat operation” – hard facts have been hard to come by. In a more than usually cloudy combat narrative, we’ve been told that Iran is winning AND losing, depending who you ask. It’s a regime change war, but also it isn’t. Various Iranian officials have been killed, and some came back. Netanyahu was briefly dead, too. There was talk of a tactical nuke.
Nowhere is this fog of war thicker than in the Strait of Hormuz, about which it is seemingly impossible to get a *ahem* strait answer. The coverage is so fast-paced and contradictory it conjures up images of an elaborate game of “yes, and…” being played by members of an improv group who have totally different goals for the story, and secretly hate each other.
Within hours of the initial bombing raids of “Epic Fury”, Western news sources were reporting that Iran had closed the strait of Hormuz. Then Iran said they hadn’t, but they were threatening to. Then Western insurers stepped in, forcing a closure in effect by refusing to cover ships passing through the strait. Then Donald Trump said the US military would insure the ships, and offered them military escorts as well. Then we were told that Iran couldn’t close the Strait, even if they wanted to, because their navy had been totally destroyed. Then the press reported that Iran had mined the Strait with “about a dozen mines”, despite Iranian officials denying this entirely. More strangely, even US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, refuted the presence of mines, telling a Press Briefing, “We have no evidence of that.”
Which raises an interesting question: If both the governments involved in this war say there aren’t any mines, who is saying there ARE mines? And why? Who is overruling both the Pentagon and the Iranian Foreign Ministry? And why are the vast majority of the press accepting their word?
Unfortunately, if there ARE mines, the US Navy is in no position to do anything about them, since they decommissioned their four minesweeper ships in September, and then sailed them out of the area in January. Given that Iran mining the Strait is a very obvious potential outcome of any conflict, one the US has likely wargamed dozens of times in the last fifty years, this is “incompetence” so incredible it’s virtually self-sabotage.
Some politicians recently suggested they could use mine-sweeping drones to keep the trade line open, but the press shut that down immediately, reporting that “Mine-Sweeping Drones Don’t Eliminate The Risks For Clearing Hormuz” So the press and politicians are engaged in a debate about the best way to remove mines that are not confirmed to be there, and that both sides officially state do not exist.
Meanwhile, Iran is offering safe passage through the Strait to ships from China, or ships trading in Yuan, or just anyone who asks nicely. Which seems to suggest they are telling the truth about the absence of mines.
Which again raises the question of why the press seem so keen for those mines to be there. All of these contradictions generate a list of pressing questions:Is the Strait of Hormuz open or closed? If closed, who closed it and how? Why can’t the US Navy keep the Strait open? Does Iran have any Naval ships left? Or have they been sunk? Are there mines deployed? How many?If there are mines deployed, could Iran offer safe passage as it is allegedly doing?…All of which have either no answers at all, or multiple contradictory answers.
It seems clear that large sections of the establishment want the Strait of Hormuz closed, or at least to make everyone believe it’s closed. The broader strokes of “why” are obvious: Drive up prices, cultivate shortages and panics. Chaos. Even better, expensive chaos. The best kind. But it also seems like Donald Trump and those close to him don’t want the Strait closed and are trying to insist it is open and can be kept open. Hence, we can only suppose, the back-and-forth claims – “it’s closed!” “No, it’s open” “Definitely closed actually – and mined!” “Nope, open, open, open, open” “Closed, closed, closed closed – mines everywhere…”
Two drivers fighting over a steering wheel, while the car manically veers and swerves back and forth. This struggle over the direction of the story appears to be ongoing; just yesterday, Trump was pleading with NATO allies to help keep the Strait open. It doesn’t look like they’re going to help.
The press is even planning ahead by positioning for the economic impact of the Hormuz closure to persist past the end of the war. The Financial Times headlines…"Why Hormuz will haunt us long after this war ends," And goes on to say…"It is not in Trump’s power to reopen this vital sea passage by declaring victory and walking away. Instead his war with Iran - and the particular issue of the Strait of Hormuz - will define the rest of his presidency and may haunt his successors.
That is because the strait’s closure creates both an immediate crisis and a long-term strategic quandary. The current problem is that the longer it is closed, the greater the threat of a global recession. The future dilemma is that Iran now knows that control of the Strait of Hormuz gives it a stranglehold over the world economy. Even if it relaxes its grip in the short term, it can tighten it again in future."
Do you see? In a move straight out of "Wag the Dog," they have insured the narrative against anyone, be it Pezeshkian/Trump/Hegseth/Netanyahu/ or anyone suddenly claiming the war is over and ruining the plan. They’re telling us even if that happens, even if the sides were to come to terms and end hostilities, we’ll still be “haunted” by Hormuz and “feel the effects of the closure” long after any fighting is finished.
That makes it very clear, doesn’t it? It is vitally important to the greater narrative that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. Possibly indefinitely The question is what comes next."
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