Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 11/5/26
"WW3 Timeline Countdown: 2026-2027"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, November 5, 2026
"Alert! Nuclear Teams Prepare On Iran Border! Market Bloodbath; Putin Gets Secret Message"
Canadian Prepper, 11/5/26
"Alert! Nuclear Teams Prepare On Iran Border!
Market Bloodbath; Putin Gets Secret Message"
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"Alert! Bank Collapse, Millions Unable To Access Their Money; Stock Market Apocalypse, Trillions Lost"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/5/26
"Alert! Bank Collapse, Millions Unable To Access Their Money;
Stock Market Apocalypse, Trillions Lost"
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"Peace Is Breaking Out Everywhere Except the White House"
"Peace Is Breaking Out Everywhere
Except the White House"
by Larry C. Johnson
"It took less than 24 hours after the polls closed for the Vice President of the United States to say what the President would not. “The reason we lost is the war,” JD Vance posted on X on Wednesday. Donald Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News he did not view Tuesday’s rout as “a hit on me” and congratulated the Democrats on doing “a good job.” Gracious in defeat, and serene in denial.
While Washington argues over who lost the midterms, Moscow and Tehran are doing something more interesting. They are talking, at length and at the top. And Israel may be about to change governments. Put the three stories side by side and you can see the outline of what comes next.
Vance reads the room: Vance did not just blame the war. He relayed a prescription from pollster Rich Baris, whom he called “one of the smartest people I know in politics.” To win back the Trump voters who went Democratic on Tuesday, the party must do four things:
End the war in Iran.
Focus on the cost of living and inflation.
Put “America First” again, meaning the original version, not the one that comes with aircraft carriers.
“Change our relationship with Israel.”
The first three are the 2024 campaign platform, returned to sender. The fourth is the one that will set Washington’s hair on fire. A sitting Republican Vice President just said in public that the party’s relationship with Israel is a political liability. That is not a sentence Republican vice presidents usually say out loud.
Vance also made a point that should end the usual post-election excuse making. The problem, he argued, was not that Republicans stayed home. It was that a large number of 2024 Trump voters showed up and voted for Democrats. Those people did not forget to vote. They changed their minds, and they told the party why. Fox News reports that Vance is now quietly courting exactly those voters ahead of 2028, under the banner of a “new right” that wants out of foreign wars, cheaper groceries and a closed border. Call it the Republican Party in exile, waiting for its own party to come home.
Meanwhile, in Moscow: Now look east. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin spent 85 minutes on the phone with Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Heads of state do not usually give that much telephone time to another country’s national security adviser. The official readouts were the usual diplomatic oatmeal: “regional and international developments,” with a focus on West Asia, and continued strategic cooperation under the “roadmap” agreed by the two countries’ leaders.
Then, on Thursday, Rezaei turned up in Moscow to see Putin in person. He brought a message from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, which Rezaei said the Leader wanted delivered “as soon as possible.” You do not fly your top security official to the Kremlin days after an 85-minute call to swap pleasantries.
Iranian accounts of the meeting say they discussed post-war regional security arrangements and Russia’s support for ending the conflict. According to Rezaei, Putin said he “would provide any assistance to end the war” and condemned the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The two sides also reached an agreement in principle to build gas pipelines from Russia to Iran. That would ease Iran’s domestic gas shortage and let it resell Russian gas to its neighbors. Pipelines take years. Nobody plans one for a country they expect to be at war indefinitely.
Something big is moving: Put the pieces together. In September, Rezaei went on Al Jazeera and set out Iran’s terms for ending the war, sent to Washington through Qatari mediators. Iran wants the war stopped on every front, including Lebanon. It wants its frozen funds released, the naval blockade lifted, and an end to US attacks on Iranian territory and US meddling in Iranian politics. Six weeks later, the man who wrote those terms has a long call with Putin, then flies to Moscow carrying a personal message from the Supreme Leader that cannot wait.
In my experience, that sequence means one thing. Iran is preparing for a negotiation and wants Russia in the room, or at least standing behind the chair. Moscow has every reason to oblige. Putin gets to play peacemaker in a war Washington started. He also gets to lock in a pipeline and transit corridor that will tie Iran to Russia for a generation. The timing is no accident either. Tehran has just watched American voters repudiate the war at the ballot box. It now has a counterpart in the White House who is newly aware that the war is costing him Congress.
Iran is not suing for peace on its knees. Rezaei said this week that Western responses to Tehran’s demands “had not been satisfactory.” But the diplomatic traffic tells you more than the rhetoric. When the security chief of a country at war spends this much time with the Russian president, he is not discussing the weather. He is discussing the terms of the next phase.
And now, Jerusalem: The third piece of news may matter most. Out of Israel comes word that Gadi Eisenkot may have the numbers to replace Benjamin Netanyahu. In the October 27 election, Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, short of the 61 needed to govern. The opposition bloc won 48, and the Arab-led parties won 19. Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan have agreed to recommend Eisenkot to President Herzog. Haaretz reported Thursday that Eisenkot has now secured a parliamentary majority, giving him the clearest path to form a government.
Nothing in Israeli coalition politics is done until it is done. Eisenkot’s majority depends at least on the outside support of the Arab parties, and Liberman wants nothing to do with them. Netanyahu, who has never met a defeat he would accept, is already crying fraud and phoning Eisenkot’s members. Whoever Herzog taps gets 28 days to form a government, plus a possible 14-day extension.
But consider what an Eisenkot government would mean for the war. Netanyahu has spent this year pushing for regime change in Tehran and lobbying Washington for more strikes. Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, campaigned on economic pressure, limited military action and “more diplomacy alongside any military steps.” He told the Wall Street Journal he would back military action only against “direct and immediate threats to Israel.” He also wants Israel to lean less on the United States for its security planning.
That is the piece that ties this column together. The loudest voice urging Trump to renew the attacks on Iran has been Netanyahu’s. Take him out of the prime minister’s office, and the pressure on the White House to “finish the job” drops sharply. It happens just as Vance is telling Republicans to change their relationship with Israel. Washington may find Israel changing the relationship first.
Two roads out: Here is the irony. Vance’s first demand, end the war in Iran, may be fulfilled by Vladimir Putin and Mohsen Rezaei before the Republican Party gets around to it. If a settlement emerges with Moscow as its midwife, Trump can claim the peace, and Vance can claim he called it. Everybody wins, except perhaps the people in Washington who are still drafting target lists.
The alternative is the one the war party keeps whispering about: another round of strikes to “finish the job.” That would tell the voters who just fired the Republican Congress that nobody was listening. It would also tell Tehran and Moscow that the only negotiations Washington takes seriously are conducted with bombs.
Trump now has a choice he did not have on Monday. He can read the election returns and the diplomatic tea leaves and take the off-ramp. Or he can keep insisting the midterms were not a hit on him. The voters have already given their answer. Vance has written it down in four points. Putin and Rezaei appear to be drafting the treaty. And Israel may soon have a prime minister who is not lobbying to tear it up."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.
Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html
Full screen recommended.
"One More Sunrise, One More Road"
"Sometimes the best journeys don't begin with a destination - they begin with a feeling. "There's More To See" is a warm cinematic folk-pop ballad about slowing down, embracing the beauty of everyday moments, and discovering that every road still has something new to offer. With heartfelt baritone vocals, gentle acoustic guitar, cinematic strings, and a peaceful atmosphere, this song is perfect for road trips, motorcycle rides, relaxing mornings, scenic drives, or simply taking a deep breath after a long day. If you enjoy relaxing folk music, cinematic storytelling songs, Americana, country-inspired ballads, and music that celebrates life's quiet beauty, we hope this song becomes part of your journey.
Native American Elder, "Here’s the Native Way to Find Your Spirit Animal"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"Here’s the Native Way to Find Your Spirit Animal"
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Blues Masterpiece, "I Ain’t Changed, I Just See People Clearer Now"
Full screen recommended.
Blues Masterpiece,
"I Ain’t Changed, I Just See People Clearer Now"
“I Ain’t Changed, I Just See People Clearer Now” is a sharp, reflective blues about growth without losing yourself. The singer hasn’t become colder or different - just wiser. Time has peeled back the layers, revealing who people really are, without illusion or excuse. Driven by steady blues guitar and the knowing cry of the harmonica the song carries a calm, confident groove. The voice doesn’t sound bitter - just aware, grounded, and done pretending not to notice what’s right in front of them. Not changed… just awakened."
"The Most Precious Gift I Have..."
"Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself. "
- Walter Anderson
Free Download: Nevil Shute, "On the Beach"
"On the Beach"
by Wikipedia
"'On the Beach' is a post-apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war the previous year. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
The phrase "on the beach" is a Royal Navy term that means "retired from the Service." The title also refers to T. S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men", which includes the lines:
"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river."
Printings of the novel, including the first 1957 edition by William Morrow and Company, New York, contain extracts from Eliot's poem on the title page, under Shute's name, including the above quotation and the concluding lines:
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
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Freely download, "On The Beach", by Nevil Shute, here:
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Full screen recommended.
"On The Beach" complete movie.
"Although there'd been "doomsday dramas" before it, Stanley Kramer's "On the Beach" was considered the first "important" entry in this genre when originally released in 1959. Based on the novel by Nevil Shute, the film is set in the future (1964) when virtually all life on earth has been exterminated by the radioactive residue of a nuclear holocaust. Only Australia has been spared, but it's only a matter of time before everyone Down Under also succumbs to radiation poisoning. With only a short time left on earth, the Australian population reacts in different ways: some go on a nonstop binge of revelry, while others eagerly consume the suicide pills being issued by the government. When the possibility arises that rains have washed the atmosphere clean in the Northern hemisphere, a submarine commander (Gregory Peck) and his men head to San Diego, where faint radio signals have been emanating. The movie's all-star cast includes: Peck as the stalwart sub captain, Ava Gardner as his emotionally disturbed lover, Fred Astaire as a guilt-wracked nuclear scientist, and Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson as the "just starting out in life" married couple."
"You Are Not Alone..."
by Chris MacIntosh
"Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone." - Kurt Vonnegut
"To all my friends out there who know what’s really going on…To all my conspiracy theorist friends…Yes, sometimes it’s a curse and not always a blessing to be awake. Awakening is the most liberating, alienating, excruciating, empowering, lonely, confusing, freeing, frightening, expansive journey. If you find yourself struggling as you try to process all this insanity, you are not alone. No one talks about the darkness that accompanies awakening, or the GRIEF.
Not only grieving the life and illusions you once had but the realization that almost everything you thought you once knew, is a LIE. The beliefs you’ve held, people you’ve trusted, principles you were taught - ALL LIES. Shattering illusions is RARELY an enjoyable experience. There is a considerable amount of discomfort that comes with growth and the grieving process doesn’t stop there.
With these newfound realizations, you then find yourself grieving all over again. Grieving the loss of many relationships with people who just don’t “get it”. Feeling alone; being ridiculed and shamed, not only by the masses but for many of you, your very own family and friends too. Feeling like you no longer have much in common with the people you are surrounded by.
Struggling with carrying on bullsh*t, shallow conversations that lack substance with those who are still fast asleep. Even feeling disconnected from your entire support system because they can’t see what you see. Some even grieve the loss of their ignorance- because “ignorance is bliss” and reality is harsh. Awakening can be a lonely road and you will often find yourself journeying alone.
There is no way to sugarcoat it - awakening to the realities of this world is brutal. It will have you running through the entire gamut of human emotions. You have to master the art of diving down the darkest of rabbit holes only to come out and still function in daily life, and that’s a skill people don’t talk about enough. Some of you are struggling with feeling disconnected from family and friends, it’s as though they exist in another world.
Please know you are not alone, and not only are you not alone, you have an entire tribe standing with you. We may be separated by miles, but we are DEEPLY connected; in purpose and in spirit."
o
"When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you." - Maria Popova
"Keep Going..."
“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”
"What The World Needs Now"
"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization and filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. "
- Robert F. Kennedy, on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Full screen recommended.
"What The World Needs Now"
by Tom Clay
"Detroit DJ brought this out early in 1973 and it was seen as
a celebration of the message behind that spread
by John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy."
"3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever"
"3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever"
by Maria Popova
"Loneliness is the fundamental condition of life - we are born by another, but born alone; die around others (if we are lucky and loved), but die alone; we spend our lives islanded in our one and only human experience - in these particular bodies and minds and circumstances drawn from the cosmic lottery - amid the immense ocean of time and chance teeming with all possible experience. Everything of beauty and substance that we make - every poem, every painting, every friendship - is an outstretched hand reaching out from one loneliness to another, reaching into the mute mouth of forever for the vowels of a common language to howl our requiem for the evanescent now.
But despite being so fundamental, or perhaps precisely because of it, loneliness is fractal - the closer you look at the granularity of life, the more you see it branching into myriad lonelinesses, which, like the kinds of sadness, all have different emotional hues.
The loneliness of feeling invisible or misunderstood, bottomless and bone-chilling as the Scottish fog.
The loneliness of seeing what others look away from, remote and shoreless as a lighthouse.
The loneliness of public humiliation, a red-hot iron rod.
The loneliness of your most private failure, inky and arid like the desert at night.
The loneliness of success, shiny and sharp as obsidian.
The loneliness of love, lightless as the inside of a skull.
In his 2008 psychology classic "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" (public library), Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson groups all the possible lonelinesses into the three core kinds that pulsate beneath our daily lives and govern our search for love: the past-oriented loneliness of missing what once was and never again will be, the future-oriented loneliness of longing for what could be but has not come to pass, and what he calls “the profound loneliness of being close to God.” This I take to mean the existential disorientation of feeling your transience press against the edge of the eternal, your smallness press against the immensity that dwells at the intersection of time, chance, and love; God is just what some call their dream of a crosswalk when they face that intersection.
The first two lonelinesses are rooted in time, which is itself fractal - there are many kinds of time we live with. The third kind of loneliness deals not with the temporal but with the eternal; it exists outside of time - like music, like wonder, like love. It is an existential loneliness, a creative loneliness, made not from the atoms of now that compose the other two lonelinesses but from the atoms of forever.
Because we, creatures made of time, cannot comprehend forever, it is easy to call it God - that catchall for everything immense and incomprehensible we face in ourselves. But this is an illusion - forever too is fractal, with myriad visitations of it in our daily lives. In a testament to James Baldwin’s timeless insistence that “the poets… are finally the only people who know the truth about us,” it is not the psychologists or the philosophers but the poets who part the veil of illusion to reveal the truth:
"Some Kinds Of Forever Visit You"
by Brenda Hillman
"The unknowns are up early;
they browse through the bronze
porch bells. Crows
call & late
apples blaze
toward western emptiness.
In your illness,
the edges hesitate;
like the revolt
of workers, they
will take a while…
Here comes the fond
mild winter; other
realms are noisy
& unanimous. You tap
the screen & dream
while waiting; four
kinds of forever
visit you today:
something, nothing,
everything & art,
greater than you are
& of your making -"
Ghost Train Orchestra, "All Is Loneliness"
"It's Just Life..."
“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan
"Snyder Reports, 11/5/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/5/26
Is Your Home Network Safe?
The New Cybersecurity Threat You Need to Know"
"Hackers just heated blood bank fridges to 230°F and spoiled millions of dollars of food across Europe and experts warn U.S. homes could be next. In this video we break down the region-wide supermarket fridge hack in France, the same attack hitting military commissaries in the U.S., and what it means for your smart thermostat, refrigerator, doorbell camera, smart lock, garage door, car and solar panels. You'll learn the warning signs your device is hacked and 5 simple steps to protect your home right now, from strong passwords and two-factor authentication to putting smart devices on a separate Wi-Fi network. Have you ever felt like you've been hacked? Tell me what happened in the comments below."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "The Midterm Won't Fix This"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/5/26
"The Midterm Won't Fix This"
"America's economy is facing another major test. From the midterm elections and rising affordability concerns to massive corporate layoffs, Amazon, Microsoft, data center projects, and the future of American business, the changes happening right now could affect millions of households. Is the economy getting ready for another major shakeup? Plus, why protecting your personal finances and preparing for economic uncertainty matters more than ever."
Comments here:
"Tucker Says Trump Will Nuke Iran"
"Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickaxe Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer. Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
We have to assume that both Trump and Netanyahu understand that another round of attacks on Iran using the same conventional weapons as last time will produce the same result. And since neither the US nor Israel have developed any new weapons systems that might produce a different outcome, we have to ask: What do they have in mind? After all, there is no rational reason to resume hostilities with Iran unless the US-Israel are planning to introduce some new element into the mix that would help them achieve their strategic objectives. But what might that be? There’s only one answer to that question: Nuclear weapons. They plan to use nukes.
On this point, I agree with Tucker. But where I disagree is on the matter of Pickaxe Mountain. I don’t think Tucker has thought-through how the attack on Pickaxe is going to be used by Netanyahu to draw Trump into a bigger and more catastrophic conflict.
So, yes, the US will nuke Pickaxe Mountain ostensibly to destroy parts of an undisclosed (and purely fictional) nuclear weapons program. But because all 13 US intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, is not building a nuclear bomb, and was never found to be in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)– then we must assume that there is some other purpose for nuking Pickaxe. After all, why would they risk international isolation to nuke a facility the intel agencies have already said poses no national security threat to the US or Israel? They wouldn’t. Therefore, we should assume that nuking Pickax serves a different purpose altogether. But what would that be?
Once the bomb is dropped, Iran will swing into action launching attacks on all the targets across the region it has already specified including critical energy infrastructure, desalination plants, IT and data centers, communications and transportation hubs, and nuclear reactors in Israel (Dimona). Iranian officials have warned that they will have “no red lines” in their retaliation. And this, I think, is what Netanyahu is counting on; he’s counting on a large enough response from Iran to claim that Israel faces an “existential threat” that must be countered with nuclear weapons. In other words, the nuking of Pickaxe Mt is not ‘an end in itself’, but a calibrated provocation designed to justify the annihilation of Iran. The fact is, it will require multiple nuclear bombs to obliterate a country the size of Iran, so Trump must be persuaded to deliver the first blow (thus, breaking the 80-year-long taboo) while Israel follows with numerous other strategic (nuclear) strikes. This is how Netanyahu intends to achieve his lifelong ambition of destroying Iran while making Israel the de facto regional hegemon.
Did you know that Elbridge Colby – Trump’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy – who was the primary architect of Trump’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, is also an ardent supporter of “limited nuclear war”? That’s right, Trump’s “Nuclear Doctrine” is entrusted to an ideologue who thinks there should be “credible, rational, limited options” (for the use of nuclear weapons) so the president is not forced into a binary choice between inaction and massive strategic retaliation in a regional conflict.” That’s an impressive airbrushing of Colby’s position, but what it really means is that (under Colby) the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons has been lowered making a nuclear attack on Iran much more likely. Here’s a post by military analyst Will Schryver:
"(Note: Online rumors suggest that at least one of the Generals that was recently fired had clashed with Colby over the use of nuclear weapons. And while the claims are unverified, it seems plausible that Hegseth may be “weeding out” the high-ranking military personnel who refuse to go along with Trump’s “insane” Iran strategy.)
According to ChatGPT, Colby’s thinking is linked to several ideas: Limited nuclear war is conceivable. Colby has challenged the older assumption that any nuclear use would inevitably escalate immediately to massive strategic exchange. Deterrence requires credible options. If an adversary believes the United States would never respond to a limited nuclear attack because Washington fears escalation, deterrence could fail. The U.S. needs more flexible nuclear options, particularly to deal with Russia and China’s expanding nuclear capabilities and what he sees as potential regional conflicts. ChatGPT
Colby thinks that his approach is more nuanced and doesn’t necessarily indicate that the US is more willing to use nuclear weapons. But obviously, if one regards special categories of nukes as “tactical”, then the threshold has been lowered to the point where serious discussions are taking place about their use of nukes on the battlefield. With this in mind, I asked ChatGPT: “Whether a one-time nuclear strike on Pickaxe Mountain with a low yield nuke fit Colbys definition of a limited nuclear war”:
"If by “Pickaxe Mountain” you mean a hypothetical nuclear strike against a hardened military/nuclear-related target, then yes, conceptually it could fit the category of a “limited nuclear use” scenario that Colby has discussed…. The important distinction is limited nuclear use… if you’re asking whether “one low-yield nuclear strike on a single target, followed by no further nuclear attacks” is the type of scenario people mean by limited nuclear war, the answer is yes." - (ChatGPT)
Bottom line: Yes, a nuclear attack on Iran would fit with Colby’s “limited nuclear use” doctrine. I see this as a confirmation that Trump’s nuclear Braintrust (Colby) would support a nuclear attack on Iran.
Colby’s critics argue that his approach “blurs the conventional-nuclear firebreak, making limited nuclear war more thinkable, and increasing escalation dangers rather than strengthening deterrence.” Daryl G. Kimball , Executive Director, Arms Control Association, has vehemently opposed the shift in nuclear doctrine characterizing it as a move towards an “embrace of nuclear warfighting”, while Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth warned that “tactical nukes are a gateway drug to Armageddon”. Other critics have dismissed Colby’s ideas about managed escalation (limited nuclear use) as “wishful thinking.” But, regardless of the criticism, Colby remains located at the center of power where his views will have a profound impact on Trump’s decision to take the war to the next level.
It’s worth noting that U.S. policy does not forbid a nuclear ‘first use’ policy (NFU) The US reserves the option of using nuclear weapons first in extreme circumstances. But Colby defines “extreme circumstances” not merely as defense from an existential threat but defense of the vital interests of the United States and its allies which could mean virtually anything. For example, Iran’s control over the Persian Gulf could be construed as threatening Washington’s imperial interests in the region. Would that be sufficient reason for launching a nuclear attack on Iran? By Colby’s logic, Yes, it would be!
The United States has also never adopted a policy of “never” launching a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear state. So, we should not expect that Iran will be spared because it cannot defend itself against a preemptive nuclear strike. US policymakers say the US must retain “flexibility” in being able to choose whether destroying another country is in America’s broader geopolitical interests or not. (Naturally, morality never enters the equation.) As for Netanyahu, we don’t think he’d have any qualms about nuking Iran. Anyone who can conduct a three-year-long genocide without a shred of remorse, is capable of anything.
A Comment About Iran: For the last 47 years, the United States has treated Iran with hostility, condescension and contempt. At no point have US officials or politicians treated Iranians with the respect and dignity they deserve. At no point have they extended a hand in friendship or tried to find common ground on issues of mutual concern. Instead, they have relentlessly demonized Iran while arrogantly dictating how they are expected to behave. America’s political establishment has never sought a collaborative or cooperative relationship with Iran, opting instead to issue blunt directives backed by unilateral sanctions aimed at intensifying the suffering of ordinary Iranian civilians. The Iranian government has endured these indignities largely without protest and without lashing out militarily as the US would do if it were abused in the same way.
But all of that changed on June 13, 2025, when Israel (assisted by the US) launched its first attack on Iranian nuclear facilities followed by the unprovoked 40-day war that began on February 28, 2026. This direct aggression against the Islamic Republic provided the justification Iran needed to demonstrate its technological superiority vis a vis hypersonic missiles, cutting-edge drones, updated air defense systems and state-of-the-art satellite surveillance systems. In just 40 days, Iran was able to destroy most of America’s military and naval bases across the Gulf while demolishing the most heavily protected airbases and Intelligence sites in Israel. US warships have been forced to remain nearly 1,000 kilometers beyond the Iranian mainland, while Iran has asserted an iron grip on all commercial vessels transiting the world’s most important waterway, the Persian Gulf.
In short, the war has changed the conditions that sustained Iran’s long-term isolation, and it has put them on-course for regional dominance. Trump’s misguided war has effectively opened the floodgates allowing Iran to pummel its adversaries while establishing the foundation for a new regional security architecture. What we don’t know at this point, is whether the introduction of nuclear weapons will roll back Iran’s strategic gains or finally liberate them from foreign domination. We just don’t know."
"The War on the Middle Class (By Both Parties)"
"The War on the Middle Class (By Both Parties)"
by John Leake
"Without a large middle class consisting of married couples who possess republican virtues, the US Republic will not survive. Several friends and readers have asked me why, in my estimation, the Republicans received such a drubbing during the midterm elections.
The answer, it seems to me, is that President Trump was widely perceived to have betrayed his “America First” campaign promises. Instead of maintaining his focus on policies that would serve patriotic American citizens who work for a living, he took a series of actions that seemed to be at the behest of his billionaire buddies and campaign contributors.
The perception that he is a man given to rude disloyalty was dramatically heightened by his treatment of Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene when they vigorously pursued the full release of the Epstein Files.
I’d been a steadfast Trump supporter for a decade, and to me, his preference for keeping the Epstein Files secret was the most spectacular example in history of a politician showing his true colors. The only approximate precedent I can find was the discovery in 1792 that the fiery French Revolutionary, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau, had served as a paid court informant between 1789 and his death in 1791.
The trouble with the Epstein Class that President Trump wished to protect is that it is thoroughly repugnant to the increasingly narrow stratum of American citizens who may be classified as “middle class,” and who possess what the ancient Romans called “republican virtues.”
During the Roman Republic, these virtues were understood to be rooted in the mos maiorum (the ancestral custom or way of the elders) which emphasized a sense of duty to one’s family and the Republic, and having the moral discipline to choose duty over personal ambitions and pleasures. The core republican virtues were as follows:
ͦ Virtus (Manliness and Courage): Realized through active, brave service and leadership in defense of the res publica (the public affair or state), particularly on the battlefield.
ͦ Pietas (Duty and Devotion): A deep-seated respect and sense of duty toward the gods, the fatherland (patria), and family/ancestors.
ͦ Fides (Trustworthiness and Honesty): Keeping one’s word, reliability, and fidelity in public and private contracts and political relationships.
ͦ Gravitas and Constantia (Dignity and Steadfastness): A serious, weighty sense of responsibility paired with unyielding persistence, mental endurance (patientia), and calm resolve in times of crisis.
ͦ Frugalitas and Temperantia (Frugality and Self-Restraint): Rejection of personal luxury, excess, and corruption, favoring a simple, austere lifestyle anchored in the ideal of the independent citizen-farmer (exemplified by figures like Cincinnatus or Cato the Younger).
ͦ Libertas (Freedom as Non-Domination): Freedom understood not as doing whatever one pleases, but as living in a free community protected from arbitrary power, tyranny, or monarchy.
ͦ Industria and Prudentia (Hard Work and Practical Wisdom): Diligence in public business and the foresight required to navigate political and military challenges.
Institutional and Civic Principles: Beyond personal character traits, Roman republican thought emphasized systemic values:
ͦ Selfless Service to the Common Good: Prioritizing the survival and flourishing of the state over personal wealth or factional loyalty.
ͦ Equality Before the Law: A shared civic framework binding citizens - at least ideally within the citizen body - under common rules and institutions.
ͦ Anti-Corruption and Oversight: A strong suspicion of concentrated or perpetual power, supported by mixed constitutions, checks and balances, and elected magistracies.
The American Founding Fathers were keenly aware of these virtues and regarded them as essential for the survival of the U.S. Constitutional Republic they framed. Such are the virtues of the people in our society who do the following:
ͦ Diligently learn a trade or acquire a serious education, including an education in civics.
ͦ Work consistently hard to excel in one’s trade or profession.
ͦ Avoid dependency on the state.
ͦ Get married and stay married.
ͦ Invest in a home and real property.
ͦ Raise children to have the same virtues.
ͦ Remain loyal to one’s family, community, and country.
ͦ Oppose corruption and tyranny whenever and wherever it appears, even in its nascent form.
Contemplate these virtues while considering the following data:
ͦ Only 40% of the U.S. population (about 133 million people) are employed full-time
ͦ Only 20–25% of the U.S. population consists of people living in married-couple, middle-income households with at least one employed spouse.
ͦ 23.0% of American households with minor children are headed by a single (unmarried or divorced) mother.
ͦ 8.8% of American households with minor children are headed by a single (unmarried or divorced) father.
ͦ 27% of the working age American adults of working-age adults (ages 18 to 64) receive benefits from at least one safety net program (such as Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, or TANF.
ͦ27% of the American population is retired and most received Social Security and other federal assistance.
Obviously, the above state of affairs does not bode well for the future of the Republic. The great vice of the Democratic Party is that it fosters dependency on the state in order to expand its political constituency. Dependent, dumb, and dysfunctional people are the easiest to manipulate and control. The Republican Party pays lip service to the importance of policies that encourage and support middle class virtues, but what do Republicans (apart from a few notable exceptions like Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, and Thomas Massie) actually do to support the middle class?
Neither Democrats nor Republicans do much if anything to reduce the following:
ͦ Expansion of the state, its power, and its regulation of every aspect of life.
ͦ Expansion of debt.
ͦ Foreign wars and the undue influence of the military industrial complex.
ͦ Debasement of the currency, thereby favoring speculators over hard-working savers.
ͦ The undue influence of lobbyists and the special interests they serve.
ͦ The dilapidation of infrastructure and the ugliness of American public places.
ͦThe widespread coarsening of manners and morals.
In the autumn of 2024, Donald Trump’s extraordinary political skills, energy, and ability to weather every storm his opponents threw at him resulted in what was arguably the greatest presidential victory in American history. With Republicans gaining control of both chambers of Congress, he came into possession of an extraordinary mandate. By signaling his loyalty to his Epstein Class donors, and making the catastrophic mistake to wage war on Iran, he squandered his mandate and his America First legacy in less than two years.
Many readers will doubtless protest that, for all his faults, Trump and the Republicans are still preferable to the awful people who are now being shuffled into both chambers of Congress and who will now be given their own turn to abuse us in all manner of perverse ways.
I agree with this assessment, which makes me all the more despondent that Trump blew it in such a conspicuous way. Such is tragic consequence of betrayal. Most people are capable of forgiving a lot and taking the bad with the good, but their capacity for forgiveness reaches its limit when it comes to conspicuous acts of betrayal.
Contemplating Trump’s betrayed but still loyal supporters reminds me of Gustave Flaubert’s famous novel, "Madame Bovary." The titular character, Emma Bovary, grows bored with her kind and devoted but dull husband, Charles Bovary, a country doctor. Longing for a more glamorous and romantic life, she has a series of affairs with men of greater means who subsequently abandon her, leaving her to her creditors. Despite it all, Charles Bovary still loves Emma and is devastated by her suicide. Shortly thereafter he dies of a broken heart, leaving their daughter to live in poverty.
Flaubert, who came from a prosperous middle class family, claimed to despise the middle class for being unimaginative and materialistic bores, and he strongly identified with his character Emma. Though I agree that she is a far more vivid, engaging, and attractive character than her plodding husband, her story strikes me as a cautionary tale of what happens when middle class values are abandoned in the pursuit of glamor, wealth, and pleasure."
"How America Came to Live Under a Martial Law of Defaults (The Great Normalization)"
"How America Came to Live Under a Martial Law
of Defaults (The Great Normalization)"
by Madge Waggy
Excerpt: "Congress has never defined martial law. The Constitution omits the phrase, the statute books carry no section under that heading, and two centuries of litigation have produced descriptions of what the condition is not while leaving what it is almost entirely unsettled. What the case law does supply is a test, and the test has been geographic and temporal from the beginning: martial law belongs to the theatre of actual war, it operates while the courts are shut and their process obstructed, and it lifts once the shooting stops and the judges return. Andrew Jackson imposed it on New Orleans in December 1814 with the British eleven miles downriver, jailed a federal district judge who dared issue a writ against him, and raised it again in March. Abraham Lincoln let a military commission try civilians in Indiana in 1864, and Ex parte Milligan struck the arrangement down two years later on the ground that where civil courts stand open and functioning their authority cannot be displaced. Hawaii lived under it from Pearl Harbor until October 1944, longer than the war in Europe lasted, and Duncan v. Kahanamoku dismantled the regime in 1946 for having outlived its reason.
Set the present beside those precedents and something odd appears. Courts are open in every county, no governor has touched the writ, and no proclamation has been posted on a courthouse door. Yet passage through ordinary space gets logged at a granularity that once demanded a pass and a provost detachment, doorways screen their entrants, aircraft nobody locally commissioned fly overhead, and a federal agency draws at will on a private camera index it neither owns nor funds. The forms of civil government remain perfectly intact; the substance of the frisk is already in place.
Nothing announced any of it, which is why it passes unremarked. Martial law historically arrives with a noise, a curfew bell, an order printed in a newspaper, troops in a square. What arrived here came as procurement, and procurement holds no ceremony and names no terminus. A curfew expires when the order says so, whereas a subscription renews itself on page nine until somebody remembers to cancel, and by then the feed has become part of how a department works.
What the Framers Left Undefined: The vacancy at the center of the doctrine is not an oversight so much as a consequence of scale. A country that had fought a war over standing armies distrusted the soldier in civil life and left the exact boundary to be argued in the moment, trusting that any suspension would be local, brief, and loud enough to provoke objection. Milligan gave the objection its vocabulary by insisting on open courts as the dividing line, and for a century and a half that line did the work: a president who wanted troops in a city had to bear the political cost of sending them, which disciplined the decision before it was made.
Technology crossed the line rather than breaching it. A plate reader belongs to a police department and needs no statutory authority to exist, a drone flies under an aviation waiver as an aircraft and not as a deployment, a guard in a supermarket vest is a contractor and not a troop. None of it implicates the separation of soldier from civilian, and all of it performs work that once required men with rifles standing in a road. The constitutional firewall stands exactly where it was built while the functions it was built to fence off have migrated into instruments the builders never imagined.
An 1878 Wall, and What Fits Through It: Reconstruction taught Congress what occupying troops looked like, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 pulled the Army back out of domestic enforcement, leaving one narrow statutory door in the Insurrection Act of 1807 through which a president may call out forces to suppress disorder. That door has been used rarely and always controversially, and its existence kept the question alive in a way the modern administrative state finds inconvenient.
Section 12406 of Title 10 offers a president three alternative findings for federalizing a state’s National Guard, the loosest of which requires a set of “special conditions” and no governor’s consent whatsoever. For decades the clause sat in the code as a drafting curiosity. In June 2025 it became the basis for sending several thousand California Guardsmen and a Marine detachment into Los Angeles over the objection of a sitting governor, the first such federalization since Lyndon Johnson sent troops into Alabama in 1965. A district judge found the call-up unlawful, a Ninth Circuit panel stayed her, and the Supreme Court stayed the panel in December while leaving the troops in place for the appeal. Within weeks the template had been reproduced in the District of Columbia under a crime emergency, with Guardsmen armed at Union Station and agents from half a dozen federal bureaus walking beats, then in Memphis, Portland, and Chicago, each iteration drawing its own injunction, its own stay, and its own circuit split.
What the litigation demonstrated matters less than what it exposed. The federal government had been rehearsing. The Army’s field manual on defense support to civil authorities runs to hundreds of pages governing how soldiers mesh with police, fire, and emergency management, and Northern Command has existed since 2002 for precisely that purpose. Continuity-of-government planning, the machinery for keeping a government running after a catastrophe, has been refined continuously since the Eisenhower years under code names the public glimpses once and forgets. Readiness Exercise 1984, remembered as Rex 84, rehearsed a notional round-up of foreign nationals alongside a notional suspension of the Constitution, and its declassified paper trail has fed four decades of argument about a standing plan nobody has been permitted to read. The plans are real and also dull, which is why the argument outlives them."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
Bill Bonner, "Veto, Veto, Veto"
"Veto, Veto, Veto"
by Bill Bonner
“Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”
- Remark supposedly made by Professor William T Kelley
Ardmore, Ireland - "The elections are over. The ballots counted. The king is dead. At least, many people seem to hope so. And here’s the Wall Street Journal with a post-mortem: Rarely in American politics has a president traded away so much political support so quickly.
The losses that Republicans suffered on Tuesday marked one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history. President Trump had re-entered the White House with advantages he lacked in his first term: A victory in the popular vote, a cadre of aides eager to expand his authority and cultural currency that had NFL players doing the “Trump dance” in the end zone.
Only two years later, his political standing has collapsed… A war of choice with Iran and tariffs imposed on U.S. trading partners betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements and tame inflation."
As for the man himself, he blames the media for Republicans’ grim night. MSN: "President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News as he tried to blame the news network for the GOP’s devastating midterm losses. The Republican said the conservative news channel “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.” Fox News, meanwhile, blames Trump: "Conservatives stunned by ‘catastrophic’ midterm blue tsunami, blame Trump’s Iran war, high gas prices."
The real trouble was that Trump set out to be a ‘strong man’ leader...a Caesar...a Duce...a hero to the masses. But he just wasn’t any better at despotism than he was at running a casino or a university. His enterprises almost all failed. Now, his ‘strong man’ presidency has gone belly up too.
‘L’etat, c’est moi’ he might have said if he had had more of an historical perspective. He might have taken Juan Peron as his model, if he had ever read a history book...or maybe even Julius Caesar. There, the similarities were striking. Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon; hadn’t Trump crossed the East River?
All along, Trump’s brainpower was vastly exaggerated...especially by himself. It was thought to be so outstanding that neither education, creed, nor ideology was needed; the truth just came to him, without study or reflection, like manna to the Israelites. He could play his ‘three dimensional chess,’ relying on his own unfailing instincts and stable genius gifts.
He sang from neither the Liberal songbook, nor the Conservatives’ old time favorites. Instead, he made ‘deals.’ He was a disrupter. But he did so like a drunk who turns left when GPS says to turn right. But then, Trump had no idea where he was going.
It might have turned out much differently. Had he actually stayed awake when he was at the Wharton School, for example, he would have known what every sophomore knows - that tariffs were likely to cause domestic price increases.
And had he bothered to acquaint himself with Athens’ disastrous misadventure in Sicily...or Guy de Lusignan’s parched crusaders on the Horns of Hattin...or even the freezing Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow...he might have learned that ‘lethality’ is a word for recruiting sergeants, not for military strategists. Real leaders put their thinking caps on under their battle helmets.
And if he hadn’t purged his competent military advisors, replacing them with numbskulls like Pete Hegseth, they would have told him that a war with Iran was likely to be more trouble than it was worth.
And now it is he, his family and his cronies who face the ‘incoming.’ They’re getting their stories straight already, rehearsing like schoolboys waiting outside the principal’s office. They’ll soon need to tell them to hostile inquisitors. MSN: "Top Democrat tells Trump and Republicans to lawyer up after US midterm defeats." And poor Mr. Trump will hand out pardons like Halloween candy.
What a shame. After so many exceptional highlights to his long career, here is another one. Mr. Trump is now the lamest duck to ever waddle across the White House lawn. We’ve never seen anything like it. Repudiated high and low, far and wide...in the most dramatic mid-term turnaround in US history...what can he do now?
The good news is that he says he’ll do what he should have been doing all along. El Cronista: 'Veto, veto, veto: Donald Trump says he’ll kill every bill a Democratic Congress sends him after Tuesday - and there’s almost no way to overrule him The veto is the perfect tool for him. It requires no real skill or preparation. Just say ‘no.’ And if he says no to enough spending measures...who knows...he may redeem himself.
But Trump’s trouble all along was that he could never figure out a reasonable course of action, and stick with it. That was true even of the strong man role; bobbing, weaving, whirlwind-ing and non-sequitur-ing...he just couldn’t buckle down to the task at hand. In his business career, same thing. He jumped from one sinking ship to another, shrewdly leaving creditors and investors without even life preservers.
Where Trump was successful was on TV - where his lines and his character were written out for him. But in the White House...at 2 am on Truth Social...he was on his own. He had to write his own lines and develop his own character. And a surprisingly large part of the population didn’t like the script. He said things he shouldn’t have said. He made deals he shouldn’t have made. He made enemies where he should have made friends. He made war where he should have made peace.
And now, his race run...his hour upon the stage strutted and fretted away...he will growl, like an old dog at the mailman...snarling at the press, and then limping away, occasionally forgetting who he is talking to...sometimes falling asleep in cabinet meetings...and generally acting like the disgraced codger he is."
o