[Today’s Iran war update may be a bit thin due to media dialing down before long holiday weekend and as usual launched before complete. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT for a final version]
Far too many are exhibiting serious cases of normalcy bias and are only slowly and in many case partially waking up to the immense changes to the global economic and political order proceeding at a breathtaking pace. Admittedly, Asia is getting an early and harsh version of what is coming). But even so, it as if people are clustered at the edge of a beach, seeing the water retreat far far far further than normal, not recognizing that this means a tsunami is about to sweep in and they need to find higher ground as quickly as possible.
In addition to the investor under-reaction to the accelerating damage to economies all over the world is the widespread detachment about the already severe and dangerous escalatory dynamic underway. Had the genocide in Gaza normalized brutality, including the effort to destroy a culture, that the press and public have become desensitized? Did they miss that the US failed to defeat Ansar-Allah, who would be stereotyped as guys in sandals with AK-47s and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers? That Israel has inflicted an enormous punishment on Palestinians but have still not beaten Hamas, despite it being contained to a tiny territory? And that Iranians, unlike Palestinians living in an open air prison camp, are a very large, technologically advanced nation with terrain that is extremely hostile to invaders? And that the prospect, absent a monster climbdown of the aggressors, of them liberalizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, is vanishingly small?
First to the kinetic war:
It’s clear that like the repeated Ukraine attempts to take out the Kerch Bridge, this attack was intended to destroy a symbol of national accomplishment and not just important infrastructure:
Israel/US have bombed the B1 Bridge in Karaj, a monumental project that connected Tehran with northern regions of the country, including the Caspian Sea. A major transportation artery. We are witnessing war crimes in real time. Again and again and again. pic.twitter.com/m1O27e9B3Z
— kev joon (@never_oppressed) April 2, 2026
The intelligence-insulting justification was that this bridge was being used to transport drone….when it has not even been completed.
This is obviously a lie since it was not even operational yet. The U.S. president also said he bombed it because it was the “biggest bridge” in the country. https://t.co/rA55Xl0e8d
— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) April 2, 2026
Given that the Caracas raid managed to generate some striking images, it seems reasonable to think this bridge was made an early target due to how photogenic its destruction was expected to be.
Let me turn the mike over to Janta Ka, who registers the appropriate, as in high, level of disgust this latest war crime warrants:
And Iran is contemplating a brutal retaliation.
🚨🚨 IRAN JUST RELEASED A TARGET LIST OF 8 BRIDGES ACROSS 4 COUNTRIES. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.
🇰🇼 Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah Bridge — TARGETED.
36 km over water. Kuwait’s northern lifeline. No alternative route.🇸🇦 King Fahd Causeway — TARGETED.
ONLY road between Saudi… pic.twitter.com/DHcnxNlFnr— 🇦🇪 Khalid Al-Mansouri خالد (@KhalidAlMans_) April 2, 2026
Larry Wilkerson warned, both on Judge Napolitano and longer form with Danny Haiphong and fellow guest Patrick Henningsen, that Iran has moved from its first-round targets, which it struck with impressive precision and fitting use of ordnance, to its second group. Wilkerson describes how that is not merely escalatory but threatens the economies of the Gulf States, and with them, the wider world:
I’ve seen the second set of targets, regional targets the Iranians are looking at. I know what they’re talking about. I know where they’re talking about hitting. I know what from the first set of targets they hit they can do. I know the devastation. I know the accuracy. And I know the exquisite selection of targets that were struck to make sure that we and the regional powers knew that Iran was making every effort to hit the United States of America and in some cases like Prince Sultan Air Base, the people who were supporting those facilities for the United States of America.
This second set has no such inhibitions and I have no question in my mind that they can hit them and hit them with the incredible accuracy they did the first set and the incredible devastation. What am I talking about?
I’m talking about Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia with 550,000 barrels per day production throughput capacity. I’m talking about the other one up the up the stream from it which produces 7% of the entire world’s now light sweet and good crude that Libya is kind of out of the picture for many purposes. We’re talking about 7% of the global supply coming out of that one place.
All it would take is a strike like they put on Bahrain, maybe another missile or two. That’s out.
I’m talking about the pipeline that the Saudis have built to kind of obviate the need for the straight of Hormuz, although it doesn’t do much of that, especially not with the Houthis having been at war with them for so long that goes over vicinity to of Jedda to the Red Sea. They’re going to take that out.
I’m talking about every target in the region that applies to what I just said. Global recession, depression, they’re going to hit them. That’s their second tier. So, if we go on into this further, Donald Trump, you are going to set the world a flame economically and you’re going to make a pariah out of the United States like Israel is now. And that’s a position from which it is going to take maybe a generation if ever to recover.
That’s what you’re setting up, Mr. President.
University of Chicago professor Robert Pape gave on his Substack a more general warning of the escalation dynamic that Trump accelerated with his address to the nation. From Trump Accelerated the Crisis: No Plan for Hormuz, No Off-Ramp — a New Phase has Begun:
Last night, Trump did not stabilize the crisis—he accelerated it….
The result is not resolution.
It is deepening instability.
1. The world now sees there is no plan to fix the problem
Not because of rhetoric—but behavior.
- No mechanism to reopen stable shipping
- No timeline for restoring normal energy flows
- No alignment between military operations and economic stability
In practical terms, this means that the actors who actually move the global economy—energy traders, insurers, shipping firms, and central banks—are repricing risk in real time and adjusting behavior accordingly….
So actors are not waiting.
They are adjusting.
2. Escalation is now clearly the US default tool
The signal from the speech is simple:
When pressure rises → increase threats and expand targets.
That tells:
- Iran to prepare for continued confrontation
- Markets to price ongoing risk
- Allies to expect instability, not resolution
Historically, this pattern is not incidental—it is inherent to coercive campaigns. Limited strikes designed to compel adversaries expand when initial effects fall short of political expectations. The target set widens—from military assets to economic infrastructure—while timelines extend without formal acknowledgment. This is how short wars become coercive campaigns.
3. The war now has no defined endpoint
….You cannot end this war if the system it disrupted remains unstable.
Right now, there is:
- a military timeline measured in weeks
- an economic disruption with no clear end
- no constraint on Israeli military action
That gap means the war is not actually contained.
It also means something more dangerous:
The United States and its allies are falling deeper into an escalation trap—where each attempt to impose control through force increases the instability it is trying to resolve.
An escalation trap is a structural condition in which each effort to impose control through force increases the instability that makes control necessary. That is now the trajectory at Hormuz.
Securing Hormuz against asymmetric threats—mines, drones, missile strikes, and harassment of commercial shipping—is not a discrete task. It requires continuous presence and near-perfect performance. Iran, by contrast, does not need to stop the flow of oil. It only needs to demonstrate that the flow cannot be guaranteed.
There is no path back to stable energy flows under the current strategy. Only different levels of instability…
This is the trajectory of the escalation trap: not a sudden collapse, but a steady movement toward a prolonged phase of global economic disruption with no clear point of reversal. It is a trap because the near-term incentives for doubling down intensify as the costs of failure mount….
And in this phase, the key variable is no longer who can strike.
It is whether the global energy system can function.
Right now, it cannot do so reliably.
And as long as that condition persists, power will continue to shift.
So it should come as no surprise that US invasion plans are still moving forward. Aljazeera in a new clip, US Army chief ousted mid‑war as Trump ramps up strikes on Iran. took note of one part of the military developments that Larry Johnson discussed in his latest post, that Trump is purging top officers who were believed to be opposed to a ground forces operation. But IMHO the continued movement of forces into the theater is yet more evidence that Trump intends to Do Something. Robert Pape similarly warned on Breaking Points was the only way to believe the US might be retreating is if it reduced its force levels in the theater.
I know some in the military — not just guys and gals from the Army — who strongly believe that General George was forced to resign because he did not support putting US troops on the ground. In addition to the movement of A-10 Warthogs and Apache helicopters that I reported in my last post, there is a build up of US ground forces in West Asia.
Consider this: Sixty three C-17 flights that have departed CONUS and headed to Israel or Jordan since March 12, according toTheIntelFrog, with an additional 11 enroute. Twelve of these C-17 flights have departed Pope Army Airfield since March 12, 2026. Given that a C-17 can carry 102 paratroopers with combat loads, then we’re talking a total of 1,224 soldiers… that is roughly the size of one 82nd Airborne battalion and four Delta Force squadrons. The odds that the US will launch an ground operation in Iran and employ Delta Force operators is high. Remains to be seen if General George will speak out against further escalation with Iran, or if he will keep his mouth shut and take a sinecure with one of the defense industry behemoths.
And more on how war priorities are being twisted to fit Trump’s preferences, which look to be unduly influence by Hollywood action movies:
NEW: The high-risk plan to seize Iran’s uranium in a commando raid that would require building a runway in Iran and dropping in excavation equipment amid incoming fire, came at Trump’s request, signaling his interest in the complex operation
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) April 1, 2026
However, fixations like that do serve to divert attention from apparent moves to protect Red Sea transit:
ATTEMPTED AIRBORNE LANDING BY UNIDENTIFIED TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT ON MAYYUN ISLAND, BAB AL-MANDEB.
YEMEN GOV FORCES ON MAX ALERT
— Russian Market (@runews) April 2, 2026
The US is still taking hits:
Watch the moment a US base in Saudi Arabia was targeted. 🚀🔥 pic.twitter.com/4N8HoM8c0L
— IRAN EVENT (@Iranevent_tv) April 2, 2026
And Gulf States, per the current BBC live blog headline:
Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water says a power and water desalination plant has been attacked by Iran, resulting in “material damage” to some components.
Technical and emergency teams began work “immediately” to “maintain operational efficiency”, it says in a statement on X.
“The safety and stability of the electricity and water system is a top priority,” the statement adds.
And an older entry:
Kuwait: Emergency services have been responding to fires at an oil refinery in Kuwait after it was hit by Iranian drones. Separately, a power and water desalination plant has been attacked.
As is Israel:
The Times of Israel reported that the settler colony is moving the goalposts for its latest Lebanon ethnic-cleansing exercise. From IDF official says disarming Hezbollah unrealistic, not a goal of Lebanon operation:
Another admission against interest:
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING: After Trump repeatedly claimed Iran’s Navy was destroyed in the opening days of the war, the U.S. State Department now says “Iranian Navy could be destroyed within weeks”
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) April 2, 2026
A senior military official said Friday that while the Israel Defense Forces aims to significantly weaken Hezbollah and remove the threat the terror group poses to residents of northern Israel, the prospect of fully disarming the group was unrealistic and not a “required goal” of the army’s ongoing ground offensive.
The remarks came as the military said it was set to present to the political leadership its plan to establish a “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which would involve demolishing Lebanese villages near the border and setting up army posts several kilometers inside the country.
“Disarming the organization is not a required goal at the end of this campaign,” the military official said, despite previous statements by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and Defense Minister Katz saying that Israel would not give up on disarming Hezbollah.
Moving towards the economic front, UN members are crafting a resolution to authorize the use of military force. However, it is set to be sufficiently watered down so as to avoid a veto as to not to amount to much.1 However, it does have the effect of rejecting the Iran (and Omani?) position that the Strait of Hormuz is not international waters but internal to Iran and Oman.
BBC’s live feed also reveals some to-ing and fro-ing:
A vote by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on a resolution on the Strait of Hormuz, which had been put forward by Bahrain, appears to have been removed from the UNSC’s daily schedule.
A schedule published on Thursday 2 April showed a vote on a Middle East resolution scheduled for 11:00 local time (15:00 GMT). That vote is no longer showing on the UN website, external under Friday 3 April.
No reason has been given for the removal of the meeting, and the UN has not announced a new date for the vote as of the time of this post. When we find out more about when it will take place, we will update you right here.
Now turning to Bloomberg’s landing page for a view of what traders and investors are being told is important:
Trump escalates, markets crater — Prime-time April 1 speech declared Iran “essentially decimated” then immediately promised to hit them “extremely hard over next 2-3 weeks” and “bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.” Within minutes of the speech ending: S&P 500 futures erased roughly $550B in market cap, Brent crude surged per shanaka86, American gasoline crossed $4/gallon for the first time since 2022, gold and silver sold off. Record ~$1B in leveraged crude short positions immediately facing a 5% rally per OilPrice.com.
The Bloomberg landing page story about the three ships exiting the Persian Gulf via the Oman coast (and not the new inspection route close to Iran) is less consequential than it seems. The three vessels were Omani, but were very large crude carriers. Possibly more noteworthy is that a Maltese flagged, French-owned bulk carrier was also allowed to depart, making it the first European vessel to transit. However, the ship is owned by the French shipping giant CMA CGM. It was founded by the Sadde family, which was born in Lebanon, and has remained involved in Lebanon, for instance, in providing humanitarian aid. So this looks to be a special situation.
Bloomberg had an important if also odd article yesterday, Key Real-World Oil Price Soars to Highest Level Since 2008. This isn’t the first time that Bloomberg had pointed out that crude is trading hands at higher prices than for Brent on the futures market. I am a little bothered at to the lack of curiosity as to why. I did some poking but could not get to the bottom of it. The CME loudly points out that contracts that require physical delivery (cash settlement is an option even if most often exercised) are the gold standard for futures. Brent is not that. If you read the weasel-wording, it makes clear that physical delivery can be done but is hard and so the contract seems to be effectively cash-settled, as opposed to cash settlement being the super popular option. That may be due to Brent being a blend of crudes and it being non-trivial to deliver the mix in the proper ratio.
From the Bloomberg story (as you can see, the details are less than satisfactory but you get the gist, prices are going up!):
The world’s most important price for real-world oil barrels surged above $140 on Thursday, the highest since 2008.
Dated Brent, the price of shipments bought and sold in the North Sea, reached $141.37, surpassing levels seen when Russia invaded Ukraine, according to S&P Global, which publishes the data.
The surge is a sign of the growing disconnect between futures contracts and various pockets of physical markets that are pricing increasingly scarce supplies.
Dated Brent underpins a significant number of transactions where actual cargoes are bought and sold, and a large volume of supply has been lost to the Iran war. The futures market, on the other hand, is weighted largely to financial trading in so-called paper barrels.
And more private equity cockroaches now visible on the counter:
When the US Treasury starts calling in regulators, it means something has gone wrong enough to worry Washington.
Yesterday, the Treasury convened meetings with domestic AND international insurance regulators to discuss private credit risks.
The specific concern: billions in…
— Nic (@nicrypto) April 2, 2026
Done for now. See you tomorrow!
____
1 As many have noted, Putin has been more friendly to Israel during its genocide than seems warranted merely by the presence of many Russians in Israel. John Helmer describes how a fresh poll from Lavada shows much more support in Russia for Iran than for Israel, plus a bargain-basement low view of Israel generally, but most Russians are still fence-sitting on the conflict. From his post:
Sympathy for Iran is expressed by 40% of the nationwide sample; this percentage is accelerating with time and with state television news broadcasts reporting Iran’s fightback, its successful attacks on US bases in the Gulf states, and unprecedented strikes against Israeli targets. During the June War against Iran last year, by contrast, 29% of Russians supported Iran. This shift in public opinion has occurred among those who said they were uncertain or undecided last June…
No European public, no American opinion poll, and no BRICS member state shows such a low level of support for Israel as this.
The Levada poll also reveals that, notwithstanding their growing sympathy for the Iranian side and against the Americans and Israelis, the majority of Russians wants to stay out of the conflict.
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F15 & possibly a Black Hawk down in Iran, I guess this is where the US really starts to lose the initiative…
https://t.me/Middle_East_Spectator/30138?single
You can add in an F-35 to that list and the Iranians have the wreckage to prove it-
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region/iran-shares-photos-of-f-35-wreckage-analysts-say-images-show-f-15-tail-sections-3217383?s=1
There is also a video of that jet being hit but it looks like the pilot never made it out.
This is the same plane. Apparently it could be either based upon the wreckage.
There are reports coming out that not only is that pilot alive but that the Iranians have captured him/her and that a US mission to try to rescue them had failed. Trump will probably flip out at this news and will demand that Iran release them or else.
Unconfirmed reports by Nour News (close to Iran’s SNSC) says the reason why an account affiliated with Iran’s IRGC posted the F-15 ejected seat was to lure in US forces. It says IRGC ground forces commandos have already found both the pilots, which also explains why US search&rescue operation has a difficult time finding the pilot(s).
https://t.me/FotrosResistancee/20812#
BWAHAHA! If true, that means all the TV announcements offering rewards for their capture (I saw them on Aljazeera and Janta Ka) were part of the ruse.
Unverified, but there are reports that a search and rescue operation for the pilots is underway.
Also claims that a U.S. military helicopter has been shot down:
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/180473
Two downed US pilots on the run in Iran as Tehran displays plane’s ejection seat and puts bounty on their heads – live updates 10:21 EDTY
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15703427/iran-israel-war-trump-gulf-netanyahu-tehran-oil-live-updates.html
Confirmed by NY Times
Iran War Live Updates: American Fighter Jet Downed Over Iran, U.S. Officials Say (NY Times)
I wonder if Trump leaves the pilot to their fate if captured by Iran? Hard to believe he climbs down to save one person.
iirc President Bone Spur said John McCain was not a war hero because he got captured.
Trump on McCain:
“I like people who weren’t captured”
Wouldn’t a captured pilot be a “loser” like John McCain? By Trumpian “logic” only. Why would DJT want to rescue or retrieve a loser? Would any of the Whitehousian press gang ask a question linking the two?
Remember when Trump lampooned John McCain as a “loser” because McCain was “captured”?
The absolute gall of a man who faked “bone spurs” to avoid the draft … wow … “commander in chief”.
LOL
#CommentariatUnited on this one … :)
#NoGoldfishBrainsHere
Watching Alexander Mercouris’ Thursday commentary, in which he discussed Trump’s Wednesday night speech, I was struck by what seems to me to be a serious misinterpretation / misunderstanding on Mercouris’ part. Regarding Trump’s comments about re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, Mercouris saw Trump as ‘pleading’ — his word — with NATO / Europe to undertake that task because the US couldn’t do it. Not at all. Trump was obviously just being dismissive, in his customary ‘It’s important but it’s not important’ way. There was nothing of a plea involved.
On a different note … for over three decades, any important news or announcement from Iran mentioned the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in some way or another. When was the last time (recently) that anyone mentioned Mojtaba? Has he been seen or heard since being confirmed as successor to his father — or, indeed, since the first day of the war when he was reportedly injured in the same attack where his father and other family members were killed? I know there was a published statement attributed to him at the time of his accession — but anyone could have written that. I find it very strange that no-one is even referring to him, given that he is, you know, Supreme Leader and all. Completely invisible.
Not invisible, he is using written communication rather than live or TV appearances. Probable under wise counsel for his safety. His more important letters are reproduced on the Iranian Press TV telegram channel and some of the Russian telegram channels. Could be written by others, but as Iran has not been backward in announcing ‘martyrs’ with full coverage of funerals, I think its likely he wrote them.
Of the two Alex’s its Alex rather than Alexander that seems to be interpreting latest developments in both Ukraine and West Asia more astutely at present. I detect a slight chill between them, with Alex far more critical of Putin’s positioning for instance.
You can’t geolocate a paper letter. The Iranians understand security, unlike the US.
Laurence Fishburne’s “Bowery King” (John Wick series) of messenger pigeons: no IP addresses … can’t hack em, can’t track em
LOL
Seeing as our vaunted military is fighting last century’s wars, perhaps its fitting that we go out with our boots on the ground against a Terminator-like foe on high.
A last cavalry charge, if you will.
Charge of the light Brigade Combat Team?
Two more F-35s reportedly downed
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/03/766244/Another-advanced-US-jet-downed-secret-pilot-hideouts-obliterated
I guess this is dispositive. I looked at Tasnim and Fars about 2 hours before launch time and did not see a report like this.
Tasnim’s now reporting one shot down on Friday.
https://www.tasnimnews.ir/en/news/2026/04/03/3555907/us-effort-to-recover-downed-fighter-pilot-fails
I thought I read a report that Russia recently gave Iran s-500 systems, and maybe if so Iran’s AA defense has had a step up improvement. 2 down in a day might make us/israel reluctant to fly as close as before.
If a new Russian system gets the credit there will be some interested buyers.
Yes, I reported that based on Wilkerson saying he had an unconfirmed report. And Wilkerson made it sound as if this was very new news, as in they were arriving now.
But Iran said it had an indigenous system too and that it had been in operation about a month. Recall they also targeted an F-35.
There is a tendency to view Iran as not as expert as they are. Look at their cluster hypersonics in Israel. Look at how they had to give Russia the Shaheed drone tech at the start of the SMO
Yes, thanks.
Russia has only one regiment of S-500s in service . It seems to be divided between Moscow and Kerch .I believe that it is optimised to shoot down Ballistic Missiles rather than Aircraft . So I think that it is highly unlikely that they sent any to Iran .
Perhaps they hid the “good stuff” until their adversary (Team Epstein) let their guard down?
And/or they have learned how to find these “stealth” aircraft and hit them.
I would say that whatever the USAF is doing, given the short range of the F-35, it has to fly in a predictable fashion. It cannot do anything else if running low on fuel, so this gives the AA/AD a much narrower area to focus on.
Another non-exclusive possibility is that weather conditions are now favouring interceptions. If, as many suggest, the AD uses thermal imaging, this will vary with the weather conditions.
All-in-all, even if they got just one (I would think IMHO, they actually got two), this is bad news for the USAF.
No, it is bad news for Lockheed. There would be lots of countries around the world rethinking their orders of F-35s with lot of cancellations. Considering the fact that each F-35 requires about 400 kg of refined earths – which the US does not have – then the US cannot fill those orders in any case. And which country wants to receive F-35s loaded up with weight lifting plates instead of an advanced radar unit?
Maybe there’s something to this story…
How to take down a US F-35 over Iran? Chinese engineer’s prophetic tutorial goes viral
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3348619/how-take-down-us-f-35-over-iran-chinese-engineers-prophetic-tutorial-goes-viral
The PressTV piece says “newly developed and advanced air defenses had shot down a stealth F-35 fighter jet in central Iran” and “A second US fifth-generation F-35 was struck & downed over central Iran by a new IRGC Aerospace Force air-defense system.” That seems to be one and the same plane, with “Earlier on Friday, the IRGC announced that another advanced enemy fighter jet was targeted by air defense systems south of Qeshm Island.”
Others talk of an F-15, which apparently is not a stealth aircraft, being downed.
ArmchairWarlord’s xwit says that theF15 was likely downed in Khuzestan, which is close enough yo Kuwait that CSAR operation may be feasible. If F35 was downed over central Iran (details are short, but location seems plausible–you want stealth to penetrate deep into defended airspace), there’s no way CSAR helicopters get there, I shoukc think.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-fighter-jet-f15e-downed-over-iran/
I’ve never found them to be a reliable source. I guess this is propaganda for internal purposes.
The official IRGC communiques tend to be pretty accurate – but I’ve no idea where they’re released.
I’m seeing reports of an F-35 downed over Central Iran. That makes it the second F-35, taken together with the F-15 and Black Hawk downed in Southern Iran as per Richard’s post above – it sure is a bad day for the USAF! 🫠
Those pilots should have signed up for ICE instead!
Also at Al Mayadeen –
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/irgc-downs-f-35-stealth-fighter-over-central-iran
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/wave-92–irgc-strikes-us-amphibious-boats–israeli-f-16-squa
From the 2nd article –
“The IRGC also reported that its air defense systems destroyed a second US F-35 fighter jet in central Iranian airspace, belonging to the US Air Force Lakenheath squadron in the UK. ”
Must have been one of those “defense only” F-35 attack fighters that Sir Keir has been harboring…
The entire war is purely defensive on the enemy’s part, as Iran was about to attack the Fatherland itself.
IRGC telegram suggests one of the crashed pilots may be alive. Rewards are being posted for capture:
https://t.me/sepahpasdaran/20848
Machine translation:
☑️ Announcement from the Governor of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari about the American pilot
🔹Based on the order of the Honorable Governor, the villagers and all segments of the cities of Lordegan, Flard, Khanmirza, Ardel, Borujen and Farrokhshahr are requested to do their utmost to search for these individuals in their districts and to identify and report any information about the agents of the hostile regimes of America and Israel.
🔹The Governor has made a special promise to support and provide valuable rewards to any team that succeeds in identifying and arresting these individuals.
Join the IRGC channel 👇
☑️ @SepahPasdaran
Plenty of detail on the search for the pilots, as well as photos and video of US helicopters and planes over Iran on the Middle East Spectator Telegram (which is happily back in business)
https://t.me/s/Middle_East_Spectator
If only those pilots had signed up for ICE instead!
I couldn’t help but notice the similarity in Apollo 8 circling the moon in the tumultuous year of 1968, to Artemis II doing the same thing in this not short on histrionics year-only a quarter of the way in.
Meanwhile on this orb, different wars & different quagmires play out.
yesterday atlantafox said current events are pretty much an EXACT remix of Whitey On the Moon …
police shooting brown people in the streets
B-52s dropping bombs on asian people
lack of basic healthcare for millions
hey let’s go to the moon
turns out one of the astronauts in space listens to the song every Monday ! Victor Glover astronaut
also, to go with your previous comment “A last cavalry charge, if you will.”, here is a photo i made after orange poopemoji gave his “speech”
Theirs but to do and die
You think that they will read a section from the Bible like happened in ’68?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8_Genesis_reading
I have not been following the Artemis saga, but I discovered this concerning report yesterday.
https://idlewords.com/2026/03/artemis_ii_is_not_safe_to_fly.htm
That’s what someone said to me over coffee this morning, and he’s old enough to remember it clearly.
I was thinking of that too, but as someone wrote to NASA at the time that Apollo 8 “saved” 1968, I don’t think that Artemus II will save 2026.
Fifty-seven years after the lunar landing in 1969, NASA has decided to re-invent the wheel. Well, not the WHOLE wheel. Since this is merely a “lunar transit” let’s call it, to be generous, three-quarters of that wheel. Assuming that, it seems to me NASA is going backwards in hopes of going forward.
As much as I like NASA and applaud its efforts, I fear it has lost much institutional memory since that historic moment more than half-a century ago. Alas, mirroring its country.
Done a wee bit late. If you arrived before the time of this comment, please refresh this page and re-skim.
Yves, living in Thailand as you do, it’s natural to be aware of the effects of a tsunami, but I still found the comparison eerie. Just yesterday, on the phone with a friend, I likened the state we are living in to a tsunami and recounted a description I had heard of the great Oahu tsunami of 1946.. I must have been about 14 and was then living with my parents on the windward shore.. One evening we were invited to dinner by friends who lived in a house on the beach. Their son had experienced that tsunami, just a few years before, and described it vividly. About 3/4 of a mile out from the Lanikai beach are two small islands rising up from the reef. Erling (the son) said he had been out in the yard, and first became aware that something was happening due to a sudden, eerie silence, and then a strange hissing sound, as the whole sea between the beach and the reef slid out to the islands on the reefline and reared up into a monstrous wave that came speeding back toward him. He survived because there were outrigger canoes in the yard and he was able to cling on to one and ride it through.
Checking back, I find that the date of that 1946 tsunami was the first of April.
Wishing some form of an outrigger and the strength to hold on to it to everyone…
A clarification: we pretty much don’t get tsunamis here. This area is geologically fairly stable and the Gulf of Thailand is comparatively shallow
It’s a Japan thing and I worked with and for the Japanese. They understandably flip out any time there is a meaningful quake particularly offshore. IIRC the very big Kobe earthquake did not generate a tsunami.
I have seen a lot of Fukushima tsunami videos. This one is recent and looks to be good:
2004. Over 5,000 dead, close to 4,000 missing. Phuket.
On a relative basis to the length of Thailand’s coast, tsunamis are considered to be rare. From World in Data:
https://www.worlddata.info/asia/thailand/tsunamis.php#google_vignette
That tsunami hit the west coast of Phuket. Far more live on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand.
Not saying it was not terrible but they are indeed not common here.
The Gulf Coast is basically totally safe. The Andaman coast is, as you say, rarely at risk although 2004 was very bad in Phuket and Ko Lanta.
I know a bunch of people who were in Lanta for the tsunami or it’s immediate aftermath and it was pretty grim.
Relatively though, not a patch on how it hit Aceh province in Sumatra.
I’ve lived on both Thai coasts and in Aceh and was only ever worried in one of them. I really hate earthquakes.
Tsunamis are waves with both crests and troughs, so the receding water is the lucky part of the tsunami. This only happens when the trough part of the wave leads. The wave going the other direction will have the crest lead. This mirrors the fault motion- the headwall moves up (crest leads) and the footwall moves down (trough leads). For those who get the crest part of a tsunami first there isn’t visible warning.
[Affixes RG stamp]
So… I’ve been writing about waste and climate change for some time now and one of the things I found out which intrigued me was how melting ice and massive changes in water use/waste have changed the spin of the Earth
(https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-funded-studies-explain-how-climate-is-changing-earths-rotation/)
Add to this the recent rapid change in the movement of the North pole because of “the melting of glaciers and reduction of groundwater” (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-north-pole-drift-direction-earth-axis).
So, with no evidence at all, I claim we can expect (major?) changes in seismicity, tsunamis, volcanic acitivity and earthquakes as tectonic plate movement responds to changes in planetary geophysics…
1946 tsunami news to me with family on Oahu at the time (Honolulu) and a few yrs. later in Kaneohe on the N coast —-
SOS, documentation below (from UH publication “The Effects of the Tsunami of April 1, 1946, in the Hawaiian Islands”), but I think we’ve strayed rather far from Yves’ and my original point. Speaking figuratively rather than literally, that was to convey a sense of dread at watching the initial stages of a rolling catastrophe that as yet has not quite arrived on this shore. Waiting for the inevitable.
The date — April 1 — also caught my attention, but that may just be my quirkiness.
Oops, forgot to include this:
“Abstract
The tsunami which struck the shores of
the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of
April 1, 1946, was the most destructive, and
one of the most violent, in the history of the Islands. More than 150 persons were killed principally by drowning, and at least 161 others were injured. Property damage
reached about $25,000,000.
The wave attack on Hawaiian shores was
far from uniform. The height and violence
of the waves at adjacent points varied greatly,
and not always in the manner which would
have been expected from superficial inspection
and a study of the existing literature on
tsunamis. Therefore, a detailed study of the
effects of the tsunami has been made, in an
effort to understand the observed variations….”
Heard it in a video today but cannot find it now that another THAAD system has been hit by the Iranians. You have to wonder if this was one of the ones brought out from South Korea if true.
Does it even matter at this point? The system is not an effective deterrent.
We will see if the MIC learns anything from it’s failure in this war. Granted, the people who understand conflict knew this was the ultimate outcome so maybe for once, failure will not be rewarded.
Perhaps Mr Market minions have transitioned into “I better pump this market for all it’s worth and get mine while the getting”s good because I might not get another chance for years.,”
Every member of the Joint chiefs of staff has gone along with this.
Every one of them has knowing obeyed blatantly illegal orders, they have violated their oath to “Defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic”
They have betrayed the trust of the American People.
Why?
They like being “VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE”, and so do their wives.
Their asses and their wives asses are kissed all day long, every day and for that they sold their souls to Donald Trump.
A madman who literally reeks of corruption, whose putrid odor is remarked upon by those who have to associate with him in order to get what they want, money and power.
They will not be forgotten if there is anyone to write a history of these days and those who write those histories will be astounded at how cheap it was to buy the souls of those who boast of their Courage and demand the respect of all those they encounter.
The worst Senate in history, the worst Cabinet in History, and cowardly Joint Chiefs.
All this destruction on the whims of a senile nutcase, and no one will shut him down.
Hey, don’t forget the House! They deserve plenty of the blame too.
There are plenty of not yet senile nutcases egging on the Donald. One Congressperson I’m familiar with and who is ostensibly a decent person has been very quiet throughout all of this. Then the other day I looked up donations received from the Israeli lobby which clarified the silence for me. Operation AIPAC Fury is far from a one man show. The entire USrael establishment is behind it.
Next time I see this Congressperson I think I will play them this little ditty so they can see how someone other than the donor class is feeling about the current state of affairs – Price of Eggs by Carsie Blanton and The Burning Hell
This is what unfree societies are like. Even high ranking people with supposedly huge influence end up being essentially cowards, as they have to obey or lose their jobs. Ultimately that’s the nature
of a job – do what you’re told, or lose your job. Our way of life just produces endless injustice, cowardice and superficiality as we’re not free people and most have forgotten what freedom is even like, including how to have a society without any submissive obedience at all. We evolved to live in free societies, where justice and integrity are normal, and we’ve got to remember that way of life so we can rebuild it – and, among many other benefits, we’ll stop being led by cowards and traitors, and feeling helpless
to do anything except talk about it.
Oh my gosh, known expert Sean Hannity giving his 2¢ worth on the war, on Jantas video~
I’m quite struck by the similarity in looks of Abbas Araghchi and Anan 7, in this 1967 episode…
Star Trek – We Don’t Make War With Computers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_XPgrdX7gk
Frankly I am struck by how much that Iranian officer that reads out announcements from the Iranian government resembles Commander William Riker from Star Trek TNG.
Why the question marks???
Also, the man just continues to openly celebrate war crimes and naked aggression.
@realDonaldTrump
36m
With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A “GUSHER” FOR THE WORLD??? President DONALD J. TRUMP
Perhaps he might not let the rest of the world have any of the spoils, since they wouldn’t help him when he asked???
Imo the world-wide depression will be widely shared.
the current media landscape reminds me of Adam Curtis’s documentary: “Hypernormalisation””
We live in a strange time. Extraordinary events keep happening that undermine the stability of our world.
…..Yet those in control seem unable to deal with them, and no-one has any vision of a different or a better kind of future…..” (Sadly Curtis succumbed to TDS and Putin-DS and (IMO) lost his objectivity and verve over the years))
trailer (2min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz6u7xRznjY%3Fhl%3Den
4 min version of film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pumKGW-9Ba8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz6u7xRznjY%3Fhl%3Den
film (2.75 hr):
given what Trump is now doing to the world, strange to dismiss TDS as anything but prescience.
Pundits and their TDS created vitrolic hatred of the Trump’s voters. and instead of offering solutions to flyover America, they belittled people’s reasonable anger about being left behind, migration, global full spectrum dominance that hollowed out their communities.
And Trump channeled that popular resentment into two terms! TDS saved Bibi.
Hatred of trump voters had nothing to do with the ‘saving’ of Bibi, which, you might be noticing, is still ongoing. Let’s not talk about AIPAC. Those you have likely been accusing of having TDS have been sounding alarms about this guy for years. They’ve clearly been proven right. To blame them for the success of trump and bibi is beyond strange. You’re saying that pundits could have offered ‘solutions to to flyover America’ that would have – what – elected Biden/Harris again and that would have changed this trajectory? Disneyland thinking.
I disagree. Trump is the pitchman. Get rid of him, and you still have an entire bought and paid for Congress itching to do whatever AIPAC orders them to.
This is what people who speak of TDS are talking about – don’t be distracted by the charlatan at the podium and remember who really calls the shots. That hasn’t been the president for generations now.
That, and the TDS crowd focused on manufactured BS (Russia, Russia, Russia!), and ignored the important evils (Israel, Israel, Israel!, senility, narcissism, open corruption) because that would make ‘their team’ look just as bad (if not worse…)
The media quite deliberately played the heel in order to get the marks to love Trump. And it worked like a charm.
no. Those who suffer from TDS have a aversion to looking in the mirror.
There is no reason to assume kamala “most lethal military in the world” Harris would not have followed a similarly flawed operation in tandem with the zionist colony. Remember that had she even as much as hand waved at gaza she would have won but no. Also wasn’t there a massive amount of censorship/expulsions/firings of non zionist colony aligned in this land of free speech under the authoritarian biden admin? Did they ameliorate the Patriot Act? Sure there are minor but generally cosmetic differences between the parties, but they’re both supremacist globalists dancing for their wall st corporate masters.
Bruce Springsteen:
“The America I love, the America I’ve written about for 50 years that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration.”
“Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division and peace over war.”
———————————————————————————————–
= Demagogic Manichean rhetoric.
Trump took time out of his war to write an epic rant against Bruce Springsteen. He really does have a thin skin.
No, Kamala would not have installed loyalist puppets in charge of military operations. She might be simple but is not a megalomaniac. She would not have populated her administration with fox regulars. She probably would have entered into real negotiations. Remember Obama made a workable agreement with Iran and unlike Trump she did not campaign against it. TDS is short for if you elect this guy we are sooo screwed so hold your nose and vote for the next worst choice or move to Mars.
It’s true. If only there had been even more Rachel Maddows to save us.
/s
She probably would have entered into real negotiations.
No she would not have.
Yes. Something that’s been on my mind all week is the correspondences between various actors in different sectors of our supposedly free society. What explains the apparent alignment of so many independent private news media firms and actors in FIRE with the radically obvious utter nonsense coming from the government?
Comparing with the Hypernormalisation thesis, to the extent I understand it, the main difference is that USians believe they have a democracy, a free press and an FIRE sector that can intimidate anyone, according to James Carville. Whereas in Hypernormalisation it was all centralized Soviet or Putin power structures.
So how do we account for the alignment?
Back in 2002 (probably) we used to get the Boston Globe delivered and I remember picking it up on the front steps one day and my heart sank as I could see clearly from the main p1 headline that today is the day the Boston Globe falls in line with W/C’s war on Iraq. Prior to that the Globe had plenty of skeptical opinions and editorials. I explained it to myself that the shift in position simply showed cowardice. If there’s going to be a war in retaliation for 9/11 then they fear the consequences of being opposed to it.
But now? None of that applies. There’s no reason for many (most?) actors to fear being opposed to this war. On the contrary. All liberals, centrists and Democrats and many Republicans loath and despise Trump and his numpty cabinet. No PR prep for the war was done. No remotely coherent reasons for or goals have been given. The dire economic and social consequences are obvious. All of which offers opportunity for free market actors. So why is more of the media not talking like Yves Smith? Why don’t commodity futures reflect reality?
I guess this is the same as Yves’ question about watching the tide far too far out and not drawing the obvious conclusion.
Perhaps I don’t understand the Hypernormalisation thesis. Perhaps it isn’t coherent. But I did enjoy the film.
Curtis desparately needed a good “intellectual editor” to sharpen his theses. His cult following overlooks that Curtis can be too self-indulgent with his audio-visual work and the expense of his core cerebral argument….like an academic version of filmmaker David Lynch
Yeah, the Globe. They do still have a functional sports page.
Stephen Kinzer regularly comments on international affairs for the Globe. A few weeks ago he wrote a piece on the ‘peace talks’ between the US and the RF. He was clearly beating around the bush and spending hundreds of words to say nothing. I’m thinking, “This guy is not that big a dope.” So, I e-mailed him, and reminded him that Putin made a speech on June 14, 2024 that set out Russian demands for a Ukrainian peace.
These demands have been made many times by the Russians and have not changed. Why didn’t he mention them in his piece? He responded with two words…the editors.
This week they have a front page piece on “the scruffy guy (Graham Platner) from Maine”. Pay for Naked Capitalism…steal The Globe.
Israel seems to be stretched rather thin. It’s involved in a serious war in Lebanon, the occupation of Gaza, bombing Syria and supporting the Druze population while defending the Golan Heights, and fighting a war with Iran.
Meanwhile, there is no reason to celebrate as nothing is working according to any sort of in-and-out timetable.
Then the question becomes how long does the US stick with its ally as the war drags on and the world economy screams uncle.
Netanyahu must be aware that Trump disgraced the Fed Chair, humiliated the Supreme Court, and threatened allies, thus, it won’t take much for a person like Trump to toss Netanyahu under the bus. At that point the chance of nukes making an appearance seems more likely.
40+ years ago Israel went through a crippling bout of hyperinflation…
Why not a replay, war is usually a good starter course in getting there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Israel_Economic_Stabilization_Plan
The ‘Wings of the Eagle’ scenario requires US control of Britain, but not Israel. Cui bono vectors toward Accelerationists; nukes over Israel fits Dominionist fantasies, while shutting down current petroleum extraction preserves the resources for Techbro city-states (‘Existing autocratic polities like Dubai serve as rough prototypes’).
In all Acclerationist cases, Israel serves as a wrecking ball to destroy the status quo. Preserving the current State of Israel is unnecessary.
One word, my opinion, why a living Trump will not toss Netanyahoo (or whoever is running Israel) under the bus. Epstein.
Given Epstein’s links to Israeli intelligence and Ehud Barak in particular and the fact the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert was undeniably an Israeli intelligence asset, that Epstein had power of attorney over Les Wexner’s finances (Les being a Zionist), etc., etc., it seems very likely to me that Israeli intelligence has lots of stuff on Trump and others that Bibi uses to threaten them into taking actions that are clearly not in the best interest of the US or humanity. I agree with you ISL.
it won’t take much for a person like Trump to toss Netanyahu under the bus
If Mossad has kompromat on Trump, that won’t happen. But even if they don’t, the US Congress is bipartisan joined at the hip AIPAC so I would expect if Trump tries to throw Netanyahu under the bus, Congress will throw Trump under the bus. That might even trigger the 25th Amendment option.
Not just kompromat.
Mossad does a shit ton of our wetwork.
Why do you think Israel gets off so much on assassinations? It’s because they get to show off skills they normally have to hide.
That corresponds with a hypothesis of Max Blumenthal that the family Trump lives in paranoid fear of “them”. Iirc he offered some evidence for that on Judge Nap a few weeks back.
Both Wilkerson on Dialogue Works and Larry Johnson have implied/suggested that the Charlie Kirk assassination was likely linked to Mossad or the Zionist Billionaire cohort in this country. Mossad’s interest in getting rid of JFK for trying to stop Israel from acquiring the bomb makes it the third party (after the CIA and the Mob) with motive for that hit.
1. Kirk’s security company was Israeli
2. Videos of the shooting show men immediately pulling video cards from cameras on stage
3. No standby ambulance at event, which is bog standard for big gatherings
So pretty sus….
Don’t know if it is true or not but I read that where Charlie Kirk was murdered, aka the crime scene, has now been covered over with a layer of concrete which would destroy any residual evidence.
Thank you for all of these reports. I believe this idea of “normalizing” the horrible is at the root of the entire situation or, to put it another way, “the banality of evil” is back–big time. The world did nothing to stop Gaza and looked the other way and now Israel and the US are in reality making war on the entire planet and the desensitized portion of said planet refuses to believe its lying eyes.
Tuchman called this the “march of folly” and the source of the great 20th century disasters that were a rebuke to the smug belief that war is simply “politics by other means.” But war does allow absurd figures like Trump or for that matter the Nazis themselves to say “look at me.” Normality has a hard time reasserting when sociopaths like Trump of Biden or Netanyahu–that last desperate to stay out of prison–come into power.
Israel do seem to be writing cheques that they can’t cash in Lebanon.
On the ground they’re getting destroyed by Hezbollah and have made no progress, and they seem to have lost surveillance superiority.
Obviously they can still bomb stuff, but Hezbollah is inflicting a lot more damage on Israel internally than they’ve done before. And that’s inflicting a real cost on Israeli society.
“On the ground they’re getting destroyed by Hezbollah and have made no progress”
On the contrary:
1) Israeli forces are pushing deeper into Lebanese territory. It is a tough slough (an example here), but they are progressing. People on Twitter who closely follow developments there report that Hezbollah is slowly giving ground.
2) Hezbollah is sustaining heavy losses. As an example, Israeli recently killed Hezbollah’s commander of the Southern Front, i.e. the person in charge of leading the fight against the Israeli offensive, and continues to carry out decapitation strikes inside Beirut. All of this is in addition to battlefield losses in the South.
3) It is Lebanon that is being destroyed: Israeli troops systematically raze villages, blow up bridges, level infrastructure, and destroy Hezbollah’s hideouts. The intent is similar to what was done in Gaza: make life impossible South of the Litani.
Much is said about Israel being attrited, but one should remember that the knife cuts both ways: Hezbollah is being attrited too. The question is which of the parties will reach the point where its losses are such that victory becomes impossible.
I’m not sure what to think about the fighting in Lebanon: too much apparent lying and hopium on both sides. I will accept that both sides are taking heavy losses militarily, but I also don’t think military losses on both sides will define the conflict either.
The real question, to me, seems to be the coalition politics on the Lebanese side: if yhe Shia are isolated, then Hizb’ullah’s prospects are not good. But if other factions with presence in the south, especially the Christians are brought in, things become interesting. The Israelis know this, I think–they are claiming, per some reports, to target specifically and only the Shia for expulsion. I think there was a report linked here where they demanded that Christians and Druze not give shelter to the Shia if they want to stay or something? Now, the Lebanese did fight a bitter sectarian civil war after all, so no tellibg whether the factions will or won’t turn on each other, but they also know enough that Israelis aren’t trustworthy, from their own past experiences. I’d suspect that they won’t turn on the Shoa or Hizb’ullah so easily, even if they may not openly join the fight yet, and the longer it goes, the greater the chance that Israelis overplay their hand. The optics of IDF burning churches and massacring Christians won’t play well, I should expect.
About the market lagging on pricing-in the obvious future effects of the war: the pricing-in that is going on may be masked by grossly exaggerated plays to accelerate and milk volatility. The dynamics of the situation and the technological state of the market make such plays look uniquely too good to pass up.
1) Trump’s predictable ping-ponging back and forth.
2) The ability of artificial intelligence to pay attention to all the “training” data being spewed by Trump, his administration, and the military, to recognize and track patterns and “tells,” and to anticipate what each next move will be with a high degree of success.
2b) The willingness of some market players with a successful streak going to do the above intuitively.
3) The ability to execute enormous exit trades on a hair-trigger, in a fraction of a second.
Are you saying that the pros have joined the “Buy The Dip” crowd now?
Yes, the most likely reason for the instant market melts when Trump utters his nonsense is algorithmic trading, which, apparently, doesn’t put a serial liar discount on the President as human traders would (and with momentum trading algorithms subsequently pushing rally). But, but, what happened after Trump’s speech was a melt down, followed by a delayed, and long recovery, one which made no sense whatsoever. One has to wonder whether Israel or other pro-war factions — entities that know that the market is the only check on Trump’s impulses — intervened to ensure we didn’t go into the long weekend market closure on an extreme down note. I’m not a conspiracist, but boy, was yesterday’s market action strange.
Speaking “milk volatility”, the price of my favorite brand of lactose free milk jumped ten percent in one week
: (
Hmmm…maybe that accounts for me being charged $12.39 for a medium 12oz. coffee with milk and a mediocre cranberry scone in my favorite coffee shop the other day…brutal by any standards. And you gotta’ flip the guy a buck.
‘UN members are crafting a resolution to authorize the use of military force.’
That must have been fun and games. Bahrain brought tho motion forward, probably on behalf of the GCC countries. As such, the western power were hardly in a position to refuse them as they will still be needing oil from those countries going forward. But you can bet that behind the scenes, those same countries were probably begging the Russians and the Chinese to veto that vote. If it passes in a robust form, then Trump will demand that those countries join his war against Iran because it is now in a passed UN resolution. That would be the last thing that they will want. Trump has crapped his bed and now he can sleep in it and nobody wants to join him and Israel.
Or….last minute language tweaks and the authorization for force turns out to be against the US and Israel….
Along those lines, I’m still trying to figure out what “peacekeepers” do when one side or t’other goes back into the fight. I mean, aren’t there “peacekeepers” in Southern Lebanon? What are they doing to “keep the peace?” Shouldn’t they at least be allowed to shoot back at whoever’s shooting AT them? If not, why do they even bother having guns?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167222
I realize that Sy Hersh is a legend of journalism but he’s been way off the mark on most everything since he started his substack. This one seems phoned in.
I can’t for the life of me remember what it was but I think on substack he was a leading indicator on some American cooling on the Ukraine situation – which is consistent with what some more expert than I have suggested, that his reporting at this point is fed by intel agencies and as such might not be accurate to shared reality, but is accurate to certain powers-that-be thinking.
Also, was the nordstream reporting pre-substack? In any case it’s not some antique accomplishment.
I suppose it’s a question of how long journalistic tenure lasts.
He started strong when he first launched with nordstream, and his recycled old stories can be interesting…
But yeah, his sources deteriorated and now he writes weird, out of touch stuff.
I stopped subscribing probably a year ago.
Speaking of Prof. Pape, in googling him I happen to find Elli Lieberman’s blog on the Times of Israel site, he is a lecturer at the Center for Jewish Studies at University of Maryland. He offers a counterpoint to Pape’s escalation ladder and it makes me wonder if this is an insight into Israeli leadership’s thinking, even though the author doesn’t seem to be connected to Israeli government in any way.
So Lieberman’s theory is that the war is a consequence of failure of credibility and deterrence. According to him, weak US and Israeli action over the years failed to deter Iran over nuclear program and regional influence, and thus compromised US and Israeli credibility over these issues. So at this point they are forced to wage the war to a point where that deterrence is re-established and US and Israeli credibility is restored.
All this leads to the conclusion that, rather than de-escalating, US and Israel must go up the escalation ladder until Iran suffers enough damage that it surrenders, re-establishing credible US and Israeli deterrence in the region, leading to lasting peace. The series of blogs is an entertaining read, especially as the war progresses. I’ll leave everyone with the closing statement from the last blog post from a few days ago:
“Reframing deterrence as a problem of credibility resolution highlights the importance of aligning coercive instruments with the adversary’s strategic logic. Effective deterrence requires not only the capacity to impose costs, but the ability to communicate willingness to threaten what the adversary values most. When coercion targets the adversary’s strategy while credibly signaling willingness to escalate further if necessary, it can shift expectations and restore deterrence. The primary challenge in contemporary conflicts is therefore not avoiding escalation, but avoiding stabilization at a costly equilibrium of attrition sustained by mutual expectations of limited war.”
Seems to me like Iran is following this exact script, it’s just that Israel and US are not getting the message.
Which shows the biggest problem with deterrence and credibility theories of power: you are trying to steer what the other guy thinks, but unless you have Jedi powers, that seems to be pretty hard thing to do. Especially if you are trying to do it on the cheap, like the western neoliberals are fond to do, i.e. shoot couple of missiles in splashy show of “shock & awe” and hope the primitive enemy concludes they are some unbeatable gods.
Prof Lieberman is missing the point that Israel is a fake settler colony less than 80 years old, whereas Iran’s root go back to pre-history. The idea that an upstart criminal gang (Israel) and a failed experiment (USA) are going to remake the Middle East in their image is preposterous. America will break a lot of stuff, a lot of people will die and they will go home like the usually do. Iran will certainly still be standing. Israel? Maybe not. 🤔
Seems like Iran is following Lieberman’s advice. Unfortunately, Trump & Israelis are nuts and won’t be deterred.
I have trouble taking someone seriously who gets basic facts totally wrong.
The idea that Iran was developing a nuclear program (as in weapons) was a Netanyahu-promoted fabrication. The beef with Iran had nothing to do with nukes but with Iran’s existence. Israel could not be the regional alpha unless Iran was cut way way down.
Even if Iran had secretly coveted a nuclear weapon, the JCOPA inspections regime made that impossible.
Yes, his “facts” reflect the position of the Israeli government, not the real facts. This is why I thought it was plausible that his views represented the “mainstream” shared by the Israeli establishment.
So far the war has been progressing largely along the escalation ladder described by Pape, trapping US and Israelis into a losing war. If Lieberman’s view reflects that of Israeli government, Israelis think that they can bomb their way out of the escalation trap and are dragging the US along for the ride, exactly what Pape is warning against. So it’s likely that this war will escalate further and further because Israel/US and Iran are both aware of the escalation trap, but Israeli side thinks it can dig its way up.
Oh, OK, I see your point.
Or, more accurately, Israel thinks US can dig the way up, at which point Israel will step on the US to get it self out of the hole, regardless of what happens to US.
Any such Israeli planning seems to omit the Russians which would render those plans almost irrelevant for the point when matters turn really dangerous.
“Credibility ” is the language of bullying and domination. And it has been at the heart of Israeli foreign policy since its inception. Iran has been bullied ever since the Islamic Revolution, when the US’ puppet (the Shah) was forced to flee to the US and the oil companies had to cede oil production to Iran.
Pape is describing an escalatory ladder that occurs when the bullied stand up and gain some leverage over a bully whose omnipotence gets challenged. So far the bullies have no good answer for the bullied’s control of 20% of the bully’s economic lifeblood. Iran has long had latent credibility. For now at least, it has proven credibility.
“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” – Benjamin Disraeli. The US and Isreal fear nothing more than being exposed as Humpty Dumpty. Their reckless bullying has made the fight existential to their reign as bullies.
But it’s becoming a fine line between hoping for justice and cheering for destruction because people feel powerless to hold their own officials and power brokers accountable.
“people feel powerless to hold their own officials and power brokers accountable.” Are you talking about Iranians or about Americans and Israelis?
Credibility was cited as the chief reason the US had to continue the war in Vietnam; credibility had to be maintained to stop communism, and more people had to die.
No wonder that Pape began his studies of war as an attempt to understand how US leaders became trapped during the Vietnam War. Pape’s work is a form of payback for Vietnam.
That Iran rejected Russian overtures for closer military cooperation so often until now is enough additional evidence that nukes were not their preferred way of guaranteeing national security.
This entire culture of turning “machismo” into some normative policy-making wisdom by the West is really annoying: “With those savages, “Russia, and the “Arabs””, you simply have to show force and be a strong man.”
(Even if argueing on basis of “data”, a dissenter as Joe Kent is from the same mindset…)
All of a sudden our progressiveness is about as progressive as a Medieval drunkard when it claims to defend its values.
p.s. Far-fetched, but the sci-fi movie “Mickey 17” (2025) which might have some flaws, does offer a simple, albeit wise view, of how our Western culture is always claiming to see enemies where in fact there are none to create a rally-around-the-flag moment and for that purpose is willing to exterminate another species.
Japanese-owned LNG tanker crosses the Strait of Hormuz
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japanese-owned-lng-tanker-crosses-strait-hormuz-2026-04-03/
US F-15E pilot likely captured by Iranian forces
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region/us-f-15e-pilot-likely-captured-by-iranian-forces-local-media-3217422
Iran offers bounty to capture shot down F-15 Pilot
https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/world/iran-bounty-us-pilot-ejection-claim-f15e-downed-qeshm-island-centcom-denial-q0lqt0kj
US Choppers Searching For Downed Jet Crew Iran Claims It Hit? Video Sparks Buzz
https://www.news18.com/world/us-choppers-searching-for-downed-jet-crew-iran-claims-it-hit-video-sparks-buzz-ws-bl-10013307.html
U.S. fighter jet shot down in Iran, search underway for crew
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/iran-us-fighter-shot-down
The IRGC announced on Friday that the second F-35 fighter jet was destroyed in the skies of central Iran by the new advanced defense system of the IRGC Aerospace Force. It said the doomed fighter jet belongs to the Lakenheath squadron.
https://www.tasnimnews.ir/en/news/2026/04/03/3555907/us-effort-to-recover-downed-fighter-pilot-fails
‘Russian Market
@runews
ATTEMPTED AIRBORNE LANDING BY UNIDENTIFIED TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT ON MAYYUN ISLAND, BAB AL-MANDEB.
YEMEN GOV FORCES ON MAX ALERT’
Looked up this island and that is when it clicked. A coupla years ago the UAE built an airstrip on this island which Yemen was very unhappy about. That place would be a natural target if the UAE stated to load that island up with military gear so Yemen would be watching this island like a hawk-
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/25/yemen-mysterious-airbase-gets-built-on-mayun-island
SEC takes a break from looking at dirty internet pictures to do their job -> signal that something is happening.
Considering how little interest the SEC has shown in the insider trading going on, I agree, must be something big.
Anything to do with this?
“A leading Wall Street shadow bank has been hit with a surge in withdrawal requests of more than $5bn (£3.8bn) from spooked investors amid warnings of a 2008-style financial meltdown.
Blue Owl Capital said on Thursday it would block some redemptions from two major funds after it was swamped by demands from its financial backers to withdraw their cash. …
After Blue Owl revealed the scale of the redemptions, major shadow banks saw their share prices plunge on Wall Street.
Shares in Apollo Global, Blackstone and Ares Management were down 4.8pc, 4.2pc and 3.4pc, respectively, wiping nearly $10bn off the value of the sector.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/04/02/shadow-bank-4bn-redemption/
or https://archive.ph/SQIXw
Private companies operating in the shadows, taking money from ‘highly qualified investors’ who can afford to lose money. Sounds like a private, personal problem. Maybe we could send thoughts and prayers; on second thought no, we could not care less.
No, the overwhelming majority of PE investors are institutional investors, with public pension funds the biggest. In our first big post, we called it ‘a government sponsored enterprise.” Other big PE investors are endowments, sovereign wealth funds, life insurers, private pension funds.
From the reporting, it sounds like life insurance companies were investing heavily in this stuff, particularly with investable funds from annuity contracts. If so, not “highly qualified investors” try widows and orphans.
https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/working-papers/2025/2025-09
The WSWS (World Socialist WebSite) is no friend to oligarchs and bankers, but has been warning for some time of the systemic risk posed by the growth in private credit.
“Storm clouds are gathering around global financial markets as the US war on Iran enters its fifth week and oil prices continue to rise along with a range of oil- and gas-dependent commodities such as fertilisers.
Even before the war began, there were growing concerns about the stability of the financial system. This focused on the financing of the massive investments in AI data centres and the role of private credit in financing software firms which could find their business models severely impacted or even wiped out by the development of AI-based tools.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/31/pwll-m31.html
It is truly weird to hear that the World Socialist WebSite aligned with the Financial Times.
A friend is in the final US meetings for the close of his next PE fund (Euroope HQ, mezzanine debt, industrial and tech companies). He’s reporting that LP confidence in the US is seriously shaken, with respect to SaaS and AI and the disruption ripping through industries and the over-concentration of private credit in the AI platforms.
I suspect the issue is that software franchises that had income streams that seemed secure to infinity are suddenly shown to be fat and lazy and prey to AI-enhanced competition. I am a huge AI sceptic (it doesn’t exist!) but there are middle office applications, especially in financial services, that are ripe for disruption with clever natural language processing and document recognition software and an army of highly specialised “agents” sourcing and comparing data.
Anyway, he’s planning to rip up his investment model, in terms of making modest equity investments to prove a scaling hypothesis and then boosting the target with M&A debt to buy and build. He’s going to jump straight to buy and build while the AI tsunami rolls over the SaaS incumbents (for whom “you were the future, once” is the epitaph).
Perhaps the family monarchies need cash and are trying to get assets out from under the US thumb?
Figuring out the parameters for the bailout of the PE/Private Credit/Insurance scams. Rehypothecation is a bitch.
Leading Iranian human rights lawyer detained in Tehran, daughter says
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/leading-iranian-human-rights-lawyer-detained-tehran-daughter-says-rcna266524
Iran condemns US-Israeli ‘moral collapse’ after attacks on civilian sites
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/iran-condemns-us-israeli-moral-collapse-after-attacks-on-civilian-sites
One lightly wounded after Iranian missile barrage targets northern Israel
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-891985
India set to commision its 3rd indigenously developed nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Aridhaman today
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/defence/india-set-to-get-3rd-nuclear-powered-ballistic-missile-submarine-ins-aridhaman-rajnath-drops-hint/amp_articleshow/129994282.cms
World Bank ‘extremely concerned’ by fallout of Iran war
https://www.euractiv.com/news/world-bank-extremely-concerned-by-fallout-of-iran-war/
Trump touts Iran talks with hardline leader Mohammad Ghalibaf, but says ‘we know where he lives’
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-touts-iran-talks-hardline-leader-mohammad-ghalibaf/story?id=131582258
UK’s Reeves ‘angry’ over Trump’s decision to attack Iran
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-rachel-reeves-angry-over-donald-trump-iran-war/
Hey Yves, I’m pretty sure that video of base being struck is AI. Might want to double check that.
Aside from that, thanks for post!
>that video of base being struck is AI
I agree
The “people” just standing around do seem a bit out of place, yes.
Very Likely.
Thank you, Yves, for these excellent missives. I do wish I had some idea of what to do with the information.
On a UN force authorization – the donkey already left the barn! All available military forces willing to participate against Iran are already engaged, and other potential participants, such as Azerbaijan, Korea, or Italy, etc., are not participating because they are deterred (and not willing to go on a political branch for the same Trump who is always ordering them to kiss his ass). A UN resolution will not change the power dynamic a whit.
That said, the UN’s relevance in the face of genocide has cemented its position in the minds of most as a useless tool of US soft power that will become archaic as geopolitical power shifts east.
On the cradle, Andrei Matyanov (at 56:40) explains that Israel has been warned that Iran is under the Russian nuclear umbrella, and that is why the Sampson option has not been used, despite the near existential pasting of Israeli economic capacity to support its population levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vibdDq8WNgg
Specifically, this protection exists under the legal framework of the “strategic military partnership with Iran”
Side note – there is no visa between Iran and Russia!
Yes and no. He said that Israel and the US have been warned not to use nuclear weapons. But Iran declined to sign a strategic military partnership treaty with Russia although offered. Only North Korea has done so.
I listened to it twice, as I also heard what you said, but Andrei also clearly said Israel has been warned directly by Russia not to use a nuke, and this warning is well known (I presume in Russia).
It certainly appears that damage to Israel to date has passed the Samson’s option trigger level – without refineries and ports, which take years to replace – modern life is infeasible for five or so million people.
That is great news !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I actually wanna add more exclamation points but unlike Orangeretard I still have some self-control left =)
I imagine the Russians have communicated this fact to the Israeli leadership and the US leadership? If Iran gets nuked, we nuke Israel. Hopefully the psychopath neocons in DC and Israel get the message.
Thinking on this, if you were to describe without giving up the game the various atrocities America has committed throughout the course of its 200 years, you’d think that’s a country run by evil people across generations. Who could it be? Oops, it’s America. Granted by no means standing alone in the world, but it’s a pretty brutal history of ethnical cleansing, genocide, slavery, brutality, and cruelty. And we’re the supposed indispensable Christian Nation, as told by some. That’s some religion there, you got.
Many outside the Western propaganda bubble have long understood this.
Tangential: Wilkerson has mentioned a couple of times recently a recent paper he’s read calculating deaths (iirc since 2000) from US sanctions to be upwards of 38 million people.
Oops, and I completely forgot about the economic violence as well. I was just thinking about direct killing.
I’ve been trying to find that study, which Wilkerson said is from Brown University, iirc. No luck yet, but I believe it was in Links last year. Can’t find that either.
But Wilkerson might have some of the details wrong. This Al Jazeera article from Sept ‘25 talks about the human costs of sanctions generally and highlights a study published in the Lancet that estimates 38 million deaths since 1970 from Western sanctions.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/9/3/us-and-eu-sanctions-have-killed-38-million-people-since-1970
The Lancet study linked in the article:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext
Lead author is from a professor at the University of Colorado.
That Lancet study looks likely.
Maybe Wilkerson meant that but got confused with this Brown research giving a figure of 38 million displaced people?
(It also gives figures in many millions for deaths from post 9/11 wars and malnutrition on affected countries)
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human/civilians-killed-displaced
The late William Blum is another good read regarding this issue.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/americas-deadliest-export-9781350374577/
Regardless of exact numbers, we are talking millions of innocent people killed. Including from economic blockades, so-called sanctions, covert operations, proxy wars, regime change, overt wars of aggression… and the number of innocents slaughtered rises daily.
“The War on Terror has cost over $8 trillion since 2001, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. This 23-year campaign has killed 4.7+ million people, displaced 38+ million, and spread US military operations to 85+ countries worldwide.” https://www.warcosts.org/cost-of-war-on-terror
Many outside the Western propaganda bubble have long understood this.
That’s very much my experience, whereas when I lived in the UK many people thought me deranged for not assuming the West was fundamentally In The Right whatever ‘minor misjudgments’ it made.
There was a site that I visited many years ago which provided a number for individual worldwide catastrophic events–epidemics, wars, exceptional weather disasters–each expressed in total fatalities. The number was a median or average from a range of various sources, mostly historians, I believe.
Unfortunately, I have too much going on today to research if the site still exists, but it might be useful for those looking for a reference of numerical horrors.
To be fair, it would be difficult to find any nation – and even a lot of sub-national groups – that doesn’t have a lot of blood on their hands. I suspect it’s endemic to the human nature to be mean-as-[familyblog] to The Other.
Maybe, but wasting a few tens of millions is a little different than killing a few thousand
Russia Calls Trump’s NATO Exit Threat “Showmanship”
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-calls-trumps-nato-exit-threat-showmanship-17580
Pope Leo urges Israel’s Herzog to end Iran war in phone call, Vatican says
https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-leo-urges-israels-herzog-end-iran-war-phone-call-vatican-says-2026-04-03/
Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Flips With Working-Class White Voters
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-working-class-white-voters-11775578
It’s tradition, isn’t it? The Pope prays for peace every Easter. I suppose it says something that he chose to call Herzog over Trump or Pezeshkian.
There may need to be an entire section for “Blame Games During the Fog of War”. Here’s one presentation of events that should get tongues wagging or heads exploding or just add to one’s WTF list:
https://houseofsaud.com/iran-kuwait-irgc-denial-infrastructure-strikes/
“…Hours after the desalination strike, IRGC Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari delivered a formal denial through Tasnim News Agency that attributed the attack to Israel: “The brutal aggression of the Zionist regime against Kuwait’s desalination plant under the pretext of accusing Iran, which occurred in recent hours, is a sign of the depravity,” Zolfaghari stated, before pivoting to a demand that “countries in West Asia must be vigilant against the provocations of the American-Zionists aimed at destabilising and destroying the region.” The statement provided zero pieces of evidence for the Israel attribution, as the Times of Israel noted in its coverage.
The denial follows a pattern that TRT World has documented across Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia, Oman, maritime targets, and now Kuwait — a repeating template of immediate denial coupled with Israel attribution that Tehran deploys regardless of the evidence environment…”
Try to make heads or tails of that?
Meanwhile, some other tidbits from the House of Saud perspective for people to digest or tear apart (whatever suits one’s fancy). I guess I got fascinated with this site because while the Saudis are acknowledged as a major player in events, they may deserve more scrutiny. Yes, I know, there is often “spin” involved:
https://houseofsaud.com/mbs-netanyahu-trump-iran-war-saudi-strategy/
(If things aren’t convoluted enough for you)
https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-oil-budget-double-compression-2026/
https://houseofsaud.com/kharazi-strike-iran-diplomat/
(an interesting viewpoint on the strike that hit the diplomat, Kharzi -“The detail that elevates this strike from a high-profile assassination attempt to a potential inflection point in the war’s diplomatic trajectory comes from researcher Nicole Grajewski, who cited two Iranian officials saying that Kharazi had been “overseeing engagement with Pakistan for a possible meeting between Iranian officials and Vice President JD Vance.” No major Western outlet has published analysis connecting the strike to this back-channel function…)
BREAKING: After Trump repeatedly claimed Iran’s Navy was destroyed in the opening days of the war, the U.S. State Department now says “Iranian Navy could be destroyed within weeks”
Basically, you’re looking at “Schrödinger’s Navy.” You’re going to have to try and open the Strait of Hormuz if you want to see if it’s alive or not…
Calling all geeks:
AI Just Hacked One Of The World’s Most Secure Operating Systems
An autonomous agent found, analyzed and exploited a FreeBSD kernel vulnerability in four hours. The implications for software security are profound.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amirhusain/2026/04/01/ai-just-hacked-one-of-the-worlds-most-secure-operating-systems/
Out of the three free BSD-like systems it’s OpenBSD that has the greater security focus.
I’d think that at this stage, given the number of people working on FreeBSD (which I liked and used for many years), it would be hard to realistically support claims of it as One Of The World’s Most Secure Operating Systems.
It also means that AI can be used for finding vulnerabilities and patching them before they’re exploited. A new level of arms race, though.
Confirmation bias reporting. The correct way to check if advanced autocomplete is better then humans is to give the same parameters to humans, then see how much time it costs to find something and how much time it costs to verify all the reports generated.
The amount of time that open source projects have had to dedicate to sift through AI generated reports is so bad that several have just stopped accepting bug reports due to it taking so much time to sift through the slop handed to them claiming there is a bug where there is none. It is even worse for projects that have bug bounties due to people handing in the advanced autocomplete generated bug reports do not accept that they don’t get the money (the computer told them there is a bug thus there has to be one). In at least one case a maintainer was threatened with doxxing for “reneging” on their promise to pay people if they find bugs.
While the article makes it sound impressive that an exploit was developed quickly, it’s really not that impressive.
The article’s hype machine is overheating here:
Both the article and the FreeBSD security advisory issued last week indicate that a stack buffer overflow was found and exploited. From Wikipedia’s page on Stack buffer overflows (emphasis mine):
If the article stated that Claude created an original, never before seen malicious payload, that would be impressive. “Oldest and more reliable methods” means there’s a lot of published exploit code already out there for Claude to slurp up and iterate through until it finds one that works.
So this looks like it found a buffer overflow (which should be applauded) and then applied someone else’s already-published exploit code to knock over the box.
Barak Ravid: “A US official tells me…” Any sentence starting like that should be flagged as Lies Incoming. Just like when an Israeli official tells the public, basically, anything.
Of course, some lies are by omission. How many American soldiers and AF pilots have been killed fighting for Israel so far? The press seems to be very conspicuously not reporting on that front.
attention should be brought to what’s going on in the Pentagon: the dismissal of generals not on board with the fourth reich: head of the chaplain service gone, head of army chief of staff, assorted other generals.
one back in NY, tongue in cheek i guess, said: rule of thumb: if army higher-ups are dismissed, it’s an indication of internal blowback against a ground invasion.
if navy higher-ups are dismissed, it’s an indication of blowback against any hormuz operation.
if air force officials are dismissed, then you know hegseth has convinced trump to drop nuclear bombs.
On today’s edition of Dialogue Works, Col Wilkerson said the reason the head of the chaplain service was fired was because Hegseth has been removing sections of the service devoted to certain denominations and faiths. Too much pushback resulted in the axe.
I guess only evangelical Christians are bloodthirsty enough for the modern warrior forces of America?
@8:50
https://www.youtube.com/live/xRb-V32-MWA?si=0xlQqrOiO-SSxS2K
The F-15 fighter jet just “crashed”. It was flying in the air and crashed. You betcha
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-fighter-jet-crashes-in-iran-search-launched-for-2-crew-members/ar-AA205aef?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=69cfe3b156004049bec9ffab9d8cdce4&ei=70
NYT says it was shot down:
Iran War Live Updates: One American Rescued From Fighter Jet Downed Over Iran, Officials Say
The fate of a second airman shot down in a F-15E warplane was unknown. It was the first time during the five-week war that a U.S. warplane had been brought down over Iran.
U.S. rescue helicopter reportedly hit by projectile
https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/u-s-fighter-jet-reportedly-downed-over-iran-as-rescue-helicopter-hit-by-projectile/
ZOMG, they do a double tap! But on military personnel, not civilian rescuers.
The history of combat search and rescue, as far as I know, is pretty peculiar. The practice (of armed rescuers for downed pilots) basically began in 1940. During hte Battle of Britain, especially during the early “Channel Battles” when the fight was mostly over the water (of the English Channel), the only air force that actually had thought to orgnaize a proper rescue service for pilots shot down over water was Germany, who had put together a number of flying boats and floatplanes for this purpose. That the Germans were pulling their pilots out of their own channel, and worse, taking the downed British pilots POW (which is what they became upon the rescue) enraged Churchill who ordered that these rescue floatplanes/flying boats to be attacked. Once the attacks began, Germans protested a bit, but they accepted that the situation has changed and began arming the rescue planes with machine guns and had them escorted by fighters.
By the time Vietnam War came about, ambushing the CSAR teams became the norm, afaik. There was a fairly well known movie about it, but I can’t seem to find the title….
The one that comes to mind is the Bridges of Toko-Ri (Korean War), with Micky Rooney (!) as the helicopter pilot.
That film had a certain anti-war feel (from memory – been years since I saw it), remarkable for that time.
Nima (on Col Davis) is reporting that Iranian jets were scrambled to target rescue helicopters. I thought Iran didn’t have an air force (per the orange-haired one)! It’s almost as if Iran kept its air force deep underground, awaiting when the US runs out of stand-off munitions (and soon it will be running lean on missiles for its jets). Another failure of the imagination and underestimation of Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLMnkkxiDdQ
The idea of Iranian F 14s shooting doen US aircraft seems to be a very weird bizarro world version of Top Gun.
Without disrespecting either Prof Marandi or Alkhorshid, I’m not so sure if either should be trusted for matters of factual news. Neither has official standing and thus lack access to “inside information.” Nima is in a worse shape since he’s half way across the world in Brazil. At least Prof Marandi used to advise government and has some contacts, but that also means that he is likely being used, knowingly of not, to disseminate “information” strategically by his government. Finally, both arehoghly emotional, for understandable reasons, but that means they are inclined to be highly biased innwhat they opt to believe.
After reading today’s War news it became clear to me that Yves is right, the World economy has been consigned to the burn pit.
Then I read about the destruction of the Pasteur Institute, HOLY SHIT!.
I walked outside and worked on my breathing before coming back and reading that again.
Many of the scientists who worked there are now dead or wounded, this was a facility that handled and researched the most deadly diseases known to man, Ebola, Black Plague, weaponized smallpox and more.
And containment may have been breached, these diseases may be on the loose.
The prudent thing to do would be to have the military evacuate everyone withing a two mile radius while wearing full HazMat gear and quarantine them for two weeks where they are not a danger to the world.
Then hit the rubble with a tactical nuke.
I then watched Trump’s Easter talk to his supporters, which was overtly deranged, it was nuts.
And his audience lapped it up, smiling, nodding and applauding, the women beautifully coiffed and made up, the men looking smug as Trump spewed nonsense and threats.
The Jackpot has arrived.
The CDC has paused diagnostic testing on a variety of common and exotic diseases. Are there a lot of seconded military personnel working at the CDC? And have they just gone on holiday and taken their work with them…?
Thank you for the heartburn and new fears.
Why would this be on a rational actors target list?
This would be on the target list of fundamentalists that believe we live in the end times and it’s their job to bring it about.
Some potential definitions for Trump Unit
> Statistical Deviation, one TU equals one SD.
> A variable used to calculate risk, one TU equals the difference between the stated amount of time for a task to be completed and the actual time to completion.
> A public, full flip-flop on a binary issue, e.g., publicly switching from “yes” to “no” and then again from “no” to “yes” is one TU.
> A token or counter created when a number is drawn out of thin air or calculated in bad faith in order to promote a stance or action,e.g., 45,000 murdered Iranian protesters becomes 45,000 TU Iranian protesters.
Please have at it.
White House Seeks $1.5 Trillion for Defense in New Budget Request
The request, which arrived as part of President Trump’s new budget, would amount to a roughly 40 percent increase from what the United States spent on the Pentagon this fiscal year. The administration coupled the proposal with a call for $73 billion in cuts spread across many domestic agencies, including the elimination of key federal health, housing and education programs, some of which serve minority groups and the poor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/us/politics/white-house-defense-budget.html
As I said several months ago, the final form of the present US government will be a kleptocracy and its final act will be looting. See: Banana republics all over the world, past and present.
The Larger Context Behind America’s Rising Aircraft Losses
…
A confirmed F-15E shoot-down inside Iran would indicate that attrition is no longer limited to accidental losses or peripheral engagements but is now extending into the most heavily defended sectors of the battlespace.
It would also raise questions regarding whether U.S. commanders have been forced to use F-15Es more aggressively because the available number of stealth aircraft remains insufficient for the scale of the campaign.
Such a development would imply a larger logistics burden because Strike Eagles require tanker support, electronic warfare aircraft, suppression missions and extensive maintenance infrastructure to sustain high operational tempo.
That broader force posture would further expose regional bases in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to retaliatory missile and drone attacks intended to disrupt the coalition’s strike cycle.
https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-second-f35-shot-down-claim-actually-f15e-strike-eagle-raf-lakenheath-markazi-province/
The style of writing carries the whiff of AI to me, but the content seems sound.
Also, an F16CJ (EW version) was sending a 7700 emergency alert in this time frame.
Inshallah, that falls from the sky and then we get confirmation of another F-35 being shot down.
Let the back of the American empire be finally broken!
Some reports of air tankers being pulled out of the boneyards in the US for refurbishment, flown to the base with landing gear down all the way…….Will Schryver account
Those Warthogs are all old airframes, sturdy but all the same age gets to us all.
Part of the reason WTI went above Brent is the Brent went to the June contract but still if you need barrels immediately you have to pay well over the futures contracts.
I briefly saw an E2 Hawkeye working the strait yesterday, lol
Pape has interesting points but his substack is repetitive AI slop prompted to follow the lines of his theory. Note the em dash use, check out the pattern of the first 3 lines of the quote here:
Last night, Trump did not stabilize the crisis—he accelerated it….
The result is not resolution.
It is deepening instability.
The old “it’s not X, it’s Y” pattern twice in those lines. Then one heading later:
Not because of rhetoric—but behavior.
and a little further down:
So actors are not waiting.
They are adjusting.
Notice also how low the information density is. The rhythm and patter are super AI sloppy, it becomes really obvious if you slog through enough of his posts. Marketing. His interviews are much better.
Please stop. You guys who see AI everywhere are like McCarthyites who see Commies under every bed.
I use the em dash, FFS. It proves NOTHING.
1. Pape talks like that. He’s a professor and his outline is written like notes for a class presentation. He said on Breaking Points that he’d only gotten 3 hours of sleep because he had had a class that day and he was apparently using the war in his class.
2 AI by contrast is MUCH more formal and tends to be in paras, not skeletal.
You’ll tear the em dash out of my cold, dead hands, I say.
Might as well claim: “Oh, this had commas and full stops. LLMs use commas and full stops, therefore this must have been written by an LLM.”
Good discussion with various current angles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiivZUxIAtc
The problem with an ‘escalation trap’ is where it leads to when couped with Trump’s coillapsing narcissim and Hegseth’s messianic crusade. The Department of Wa’s new strategic doctrine is akin to Wermacht SS’s -WW II- “military necessity’ (anything goes). This allows for the deliberate terror targeting of, say, schoolchildren (herd them into the barn and incinerate them) in order to facilitate the attainment of an objective, say, regime change. In Trump’s version of game theory, his habit is to play a zero sum game and to double down when in a jam. To wit, what happens after a failed ground operation? Given Trump’s lack of empathy, inability of analytical thought, , and indifference to outcomes, does anyone believe that he wouldn’t OK the use of tactical nuclear weapons to bomb Iran back to the stone age? Imitating Stalin, generals are purged who might oppose Trump’s strategic doctrine. The handwriting is on the wall and it doesn’t bode well.
Hooboy.
There are videos of rural Iranians shooting at the search and rescue aircraft with small arms, with who knows how many people rushing to try and find the crew, but a former USMC pilot talking to CNN thinks Iranians might be hiding the pilot because they hate the regime.
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/180538#
That is Amy McGrath who feels like a perennial also-ran for Team Blue to light piles of money on fire to lose by 50 points.
The Kentucky Dem Primary for Senate is between her and Booker, who Rand Paul crushed in ’22. (Though they didn’t burn the giant heaps of cash for Booker, he was left to his own resources)
While I always like when the Russians troll the US regime, the Iranians make the Russians look like amateurs.
The LEGO trolling videos are fun. I used to scroll past them on X but watched the Hegseth one today.
Now that they understand that, in fact, few Americans have read de Tocqueville, they have found a language with which to communicate: Lego AI rap.
Iran is winning the asymmetric viral meme war as well … LOL
Iran Abruptly Shuts Down Peace Talks Due to Trump’s Demands
https://newrepublic.com/post/208611/iran-shuts-down-peace-talks-donald-trump
GOP rep on Hegseth firing Army chief of staff: ‘I will look into it immediately’
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5814904-rich-mccmormick-pete-hegseth-army-chief-of-staff-firing/
Hegseth’s War on America’s Military
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/hegseths-war-on-americas-military/686676/
Military archbishop says “it’s hard” to see Iran war “as something that would be sponsored by the Lord”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/archbishop-timothy-broglio-military-catholic-chaplains-iran-war/
Hegseth’s Top Aide Spilled Jaw-Dropping Claim About Drunken Bender
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hegseths-top-aide-spilled-jaw-dropping-claim-about-drunken-bender/
Hegseth Says U.S. Troops Are Fighting for Jesus. The Pope Disagrees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/world/middleeast/pope-iran-war.html
Pentagon Good Friday Service Excluding Catholics Sparks Religious Bias Concerns Amid Broader Criticism Over Leadership Purge
https://www.latintimes.com/pentagon-good-friday-service-excluding-catholics-sparks-religious-bias-concerns-amid-broader-596355
Florida Republican Running For Governor Tells Black Man He Should Be “Lynched” In Heated Exchange
https://www.ibtimes.com/florida-republican-running-governor-tells-black-man-he-should-lynched-heated-exchange-3800827
Iran Mocks Trump as He Remains Mute on Missing Pilot in Fighter Jet
https://newrepublic.com/post/208606/iran-mocks-donald-trump-missing-fighter-jet-pilot
Russian oil terminals under attack unable to accept shipments for second week, sources say
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-oil-terminals-under-attack-unable-accept-shipments-second-week-sources-2026-04-03/
Iran Is Quickly Repairing Missile Bunkers, U.S. Intelligence Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/us/politics/iran-missiles-launchers.html
Trump asks for $152 million to rebuild Alcatraz and reopen it as a prison
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/trump-asks-152-million-rebuild-alcatraz-reopen-22187580.php
US experts say American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-experts-say-american-strikes-iran-may-amount-war-crimes-2026-04-02/
Trump proposes to begin privatizing US airport security operations
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-proposes-begin-privatizing-us-airport-security-operations-2026-04-03/
“I Don’t Worry About Markets”: Trump Talks to Vanity Fair The Day After His Iran Address
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-iran-war-white-house-address-interview
Trump Struck Iran. Now Farmers Are Paying the Price.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000010798680/trump-iran-farmers-iowa-fertilizer.html
Footage of Iranian police leaving their squad car and firing upon passing Blackhawk helicopters.
It’s not the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog.
Probably much more effective than trying to snipe drones out of the sky with AK’s like in Ukraine.
EDIT: Middle East Spectator is delivering the goods on Telegram. Insane content.
Just saw that clip of police shooting at passing Blackhawks and it seems that they were able to hit one of them and wound people on board. This was according to CBS.
It could be that Pam Bondi was fired at the same time that General George was forced to resign, so that the latter wasn’t covered much in the media.
Messing with the forces might upset the MAGA crowd, but not if they are all looking the other way.
US confirms a Warthog was shot down over Hormuz:
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-admits–iran-army-shoots-down-another-american-combat-jet
A warthog? Those things are supposed to be flying tanks, able to at least limp home down an engine and most of a wing AFAIK
I wonder if pilots are getting sloppy or the AA is getting roled out for real (or something else entirely)?
Trump and the Myth of American Oil Independence
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/04/03/trump-hormuz-oil-iran-war-00857212
There’s a Clear Pattern to Who Trump Throws Under the Bus
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/trump-pam-bondi-fired-kristi-noem-pete-hegseth.html
Trump says US can open Strait of Hormuz with ‘a little more time’
https://www.euronews.com/2026/04/03/trump-says-us-can-open-hormuz-with-a-little-more-time-and-asks-congress-for-15tr-for-defen
Italy’s Meloni visits Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE amid Gulf tensions, energy worries
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italys-meloni-flies-gulf-region-energy-security-push-2026-04-03/
Katz to Hezbollah chief Qassem: You won’t live to see Israel’s full response to Passover attacks
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-891949
Trump ‘Openly Flaunting His War Crimes’ as US Bombs Iran’s Civilian Infrastructure
https://www.commondreams.org/news/iran-trump-war-crimes
re: Iron Dome and disinfo
This is an example why I am so desparate over the decent antiwar/antigenocide movement when it comes to their blatant incompetence in military matters.
This is +972 Magazine, after all.
And considering how deep +972 often tries to dig with serious issues which have put them into the crosshairs of the IDF and the government, how can they fall for the PR of those very same institutions who they regard as their main subjects of investigations?
How can +972 ignore the military facts of this war right now?
So, this is a serious deficiency…which would demand real explanation…
The Iron Dome is intercepting our chances of a normal future
Israel’s missile defense systems have radically reduced the cost of going to war — and a society that does not fear war is doomed to live with it forever.
March 25 2026
https://www.972mag.com/iron-dome-intercepting-normal-future/
First paragraph:
Over the past few decades, Israeli engineering has produced something close to the ultimate technological marvel: a multi-layered missile defense system that can turn incoming projectiles into a fireworks display in the night sky. But beneath this protective canopy, an inconspicuous yet consequential transformation has taken hold that is more perilous than the missiles themselves: The Iron Dome has eliminated Israelis’ fear of war.
3 middle paragraphs:
Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel presented the public with data measuring Israeli fatalities against the number of missiles that had penetrated the country’s air defenses. The conclusion — one death for every three missiles that hit populated areas — was marshalled as evidence that “homefront casualties were not nearly as catastrophic as had been previously feared.
This development took shape gradually. From the Arrow missile defense system that first became operational in 2000, to the Iron Dome in 2011, and later David’s Sling in 2017, each innovation expanded Israelis’ sense of protection, and with it, diminished the salience of vulnerability. Because when the roof is hermetically sealed, there is no need to seek a political path forward or envision a future beyond conflict.
Today, we are entering the era of laser systems. The Iron Beam, which was recently integrated into the Israeli Air Force, can intercept missiles accurately, rapidly, and “at a negligible marginal cost,” the Defense Ministry boasted at the end of last year.
Final Paragraph:
The vision of “super-Sparta” distills this condition of existential anxiety into a single, sterile engineering solution, in which securing the present with increasing precision allows an indefinite deferral of resolution in the future. With a success rate of 97 percent, the Iron Dome is intercepting any chance we may have of a normal future.
97 percent is taken from, er, TIMES OF ISRAEL, 4 years ago:
Iron Dome at 97% success rate after 580 rockets fired from Gaza since Friday
Missile defense system has intercepted 200 projectiles, while 120 fell inside Gaza; interception rate has gradually improved since first use in IDF operation in 2012
Aug. 7th 2022
https://www.timesofisrael.com/580-rockets-fired-from-gaza-since-friday-iron-dome-at-97-success-rate/
Can someone explain this behaviour?
And +972 isn´t the only example.
Missiles may or may not be raining down upon one’s head, but if the complex global mechanisms which deliver food, water, medicines, etc. are disrupted, being safe from missiles raining down on one’s head will in short order be of little consequence. This would be especially true for a resource poor, major food importers such as Israel.
OTOH, Zionist impunity when it comes to mass slaughter does cause me concern that they might go for the nuclear option. Would they or wouldn’t they? I really don’t know.
Fwiw the Russians have warned them.
Also, as we see in other theatres such as fossiles and EU – the Russians have long patience but not infinite. And when that is used up they move. And that hurts. And Israel they can hurt in ways that it cripples the country. I aslo wonder how much loss of qualified people Israel can tolerate. Everyone you talk to confirms they are fleeing the place.
Macron Criticizes Trump and Calls on Allies to Unite Against US
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-03/macron-criticizes-trump-and-calls-on-allies-to-unite-against-us
Trump Is Silencing Government Warning Signals of an Economic Crash
https://newrepublic.com/article/208579/trump-cfpb-warning-signals-economy-recession
Trump admin proposing ‘catastrophic’ cuts to the National Park Service
https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/trump-national-park-cuts-22187856.php
Trump re-ups push to eliminate low-income heating assistance program LIHEAP
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5815067-trump-budget-liheap-energy-prices/
Austria’s Ex-Foreign Minister Flees to Russia by Kremlin Military Jet With Her Ponies
https://united24media.com/latest-news/austrias-ex-foreign-minister-flees-to-russia-by-kremlin-military-jet-with-her-ponies-17563
Trump says with more time, US can ‘take the oil’ in Iran
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/3/trump-says-with-more-time-us-can-take-the-oil-in-iran
Trump won’t say what US will do if missing pilot in Iran is harmed: ‘We hope that’s not going to happen’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/iran-plane-shot-down-trump-pilot-b2951664.html
UK gathers more than 30 countries to plot ways of reopening the Strait of Hormuz
https://apnews.com/article/hormuz-strait-shipping-summit-uk-iran-ca2c6af551df98c81a39f2137e417856
US intelligence warns Iran unlikely to ease Hormuz Strait chokehold soon
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-intelligence-warns-iran-unlikely-ease-hormuz-strait-chokehold-soon-sources-2026-04-03/
US intelligence warns Iran unlikely to ease Hormuz Strait chokehold soon
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-intelligence-warns-iran-unlikely-ease-hormuz-strait-chokehold-soon-sources-2026-04-03/
French and South Korean leaders say they’ll work together on the Strait of Hormuz
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-france-lee-macron-trump-iran-3b0c39d11cdc7e23b98dc0f8dbe0f491
Trump admin proposing ‘catastrophic’ cuts to the National Park Service
https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/trump-national-park-cuts-22187856.php
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trump 45 & Trump 47 are Jekyll & Hyde
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522518472/trump-donates-salary-to-national-parks-even-as-he-tries-to-cut-interior-departme
US proposed 48-hour ceasefire with Tehran on April 2, reports Iranian media
Page will not open.
It opens ok for me.
Full text:
ISTANBUL
The US proposed a 48-hour ceasefire with Iran on April 2 through a third country, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported Friday, citing an informed source.
“The US, on April 2, proposed a 48-hour ceasefire through one of the friendly countries,” the source told Fars.
The proposal came after “escalating tensions and challenges faced by US forces in the region,” the source added.
According to the news agency, Iran did not respond in writing but instead replied “on the ground” by continuing heavy attacks.
The source also said that “US diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting have intensified, particularly after a reported strike on a US military depot on Bubiyan Island in Kuwait.”
The US and Israel on Feb. 28 launched an air offensive on Iran, killing over 1,340 people so far, including then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, along with Jordan, Iraq, and Gulf countries hosting US military assets, causing casualties and damage to infrastructure while disrupting global markets and aviation
That’s odd. The page just opened up for me just now. The Russians are not being fooled by the offers of a ceasefire in the Ukraine and it looks like the same is true of the Iranians as well. After five weeks of operations, the US & Israeli air forces must be exhausted and equipment stretched to the limit. I’m guessing that this is why they wanted a two day break.
Iranian attacks force shutdown of Emirates Global Aluminium’s Al Taweelah site in Abu Dhabi
State of Play:
After weeks of claimed “American air supremacy over Iran” with zero pictures, we suddenly have a rush of photos and videos on a day that an F15 and Warthog are downed and 2 Blackhawks are forced to retreat under rifle fire with wounded crew.
—
Trump is further flailing, recently posting the simple
“KEEP THE OIL, ANYONE?”
It’s plaintive/desperate and disconnected from reality.
In interviews he sounds alternately flat, delusional and pouty.
—
Purported allies are getting harder in their unwillingness to cooperate. The President resorts to mocking, bullying and bad imitations of the leaders of these countries.
—-
The Army CoS just got sacked. The Secretary of Defense is a moron. All American attempts to achieve anything backfire.
—
A build-up for some kind of ground operation continues despite all available options being roundly described as suicidal, and Iran repeatedly saying “yes please, we’d like that”.
—
The US requested a 48 ceasefire on Wednesday and it was flatly refused by the Iranians, fully exposing the upside-down world lies of the President.
—-
The Global South and everywhere East of Hormuz continues to get shafted and are rapidly negotiating directly with each other and Iran; basically creating a system without the US. American credibility is shredded.
—-
No-one takes Trump seriously anymore. Outside of the loyalist press, the odd neocon or Zionist opinion piece, all the media coverage is bad.
—
Trump has destroyed the MAGA coalition. He’ll continue to do that as gas prices and inflation rise in his war for Israel.
—-
Europe continues to hold meetings and criticise Iran. Nobody outside Europe cares or listens.
—-
The Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control in a way and they begin to formalise their control of it. Nobody has any way to open it up.
—
The pro US Gulf states are variously falling apart and having their economies destroyed.
—-
Summary: it’s going really well 🤡🥸💩
Iranian Strike on U.S. Embassy Caused More Damage Than Disclosed (WSJ, archived)
The attack happened March 3, when an Iranian drone evaded the air defenses guarding Riyadh’s gated Diplomatic Quarter and slammed into the American compound. A minute later, a second drone flew into the hole made by the first one and also exploded, the officials said.
The nighttime strikes penetrated a secure part of the embassy where several hundred people would have been working in the day and heavily damaged three floors, current and former officials said. The Central Intelligence Agency station was among the areas hit, people familiar with the matter have said.
While the Saudi Defense Ministry then said the attack had resulted in a limited fire and minor damage, current and former officials said it was worse, sparking a blaze that raged for half a day. Parts of the embassy were damaged and not recoverable, one person briefed on the matter said.
More in the article
IRGC has denied that they attacked the embassy and blamed Israel.
Interesting: Iran strongly denies having had anything to do with that attack on the U.S. embassy in Riyadh.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/04/766294/IRGC-Iranian-Armed-forces-had-nothing-do-with-US-embassy-attack
This is an example why I am so desparate over the decent antiwar/antigenocide movement when it comes to their blatant incompetence in military matters.
This is +972 Magazine, after all.
And considering how deep +972 often tries to dig with serious issues which have put them into the crosshairs of the IDF and the government, how can they fall for the PR of those very same institutions who they regard as their main subjects of investigations?
Let’s see, if were running psy ops for Israeli intelligence, where would I plant an article regarding the invulnerability of the Iron Dome and Israel’s superior air defense? You wouldn’t want to run it in a publication that obviously was just spouting a line for the government. Anyone who read it is already a cheerleader. No, you need some plucky independent source which is viewed as hostile or critical to the current government like +972. But, how could I possibly get them to do that with all the power I have, would it be possible to find a quid pro quo somewhere, or would there be some kind of threat or promise I could make to get them to run my b.s. article? Maybe just appeal to their patriotism in a time of war? Maybe I know someone who socializes with the Editor?
If you are doing official journalism in a nation state in a time of war in some media context, that nation state will find a way to plant stories in that media if it has any significant audience, I don’t care where it is, and there are just too many levers that a state can use to make it so. In fact, the more democratic the state, the easier because there will be a greater infrastructure in place to manipulate public opinion because public opinion matters more in a democratic state.
Comedy from the Dubai Media Office
Authorities confirm that they responded to a minor incident caused by debris from an aerial interception that fell on the facade of the Oracle building in Dubai Internet City. No injuries were reported.
Accurate debris trope continues :)
Interesting – Iran destroys OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia’s data centers, which implodes the entire private credit market overnight because all their loans get revalued to $0 – ????? – w/a side of AI = GDP thingy ….