Category Archives: Coffee Break

With Venezuela and Iran, Is the U.S. Trying to Revive the Petrodollar?

Control over Venezuela and Iran’s oil can revive the petrodollar. The U.S. pushes regime change to dictate oil currency and maintain hegemony.

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Stopping START

For the first time in over half a century, the United States and Russia operate without a single binding limit on their nuclear arsenals. As New START approaches expiration in 2026, the collapse of strategic arms control threatens a new arms race, erodes global trust, and invites a perilous era of nuclear instability.

Coffee Break: Delusion, Deception and Dipshittery: Hasbara on the 8th Front

Israel and its billionaire ally Larry Ellison are engaged in a desperate mix of deception, delusion, & dipshittery to hold narrative control.

Coffee Break: Palantir, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and the Antichrist

Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp almost embody the zeitgeist of 2025 with Palantir’s use of AI for ICE and the IDF, their Trump affiliations, and their outspoken views on the Antichrist and “Western Civilization.”

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Laser Weapons

High-energy laser weapons (HELs) are moving from lab demos to real defenses. Israel’s Iron Beam—likely the first HEL to see combat—promises near-zero cost per shot against drones and short-range rockets, easing the strain on interceptor stockpiles. But lasers aren’t miracle weapons. Power and cooling demands, weather, line-of-sight limits, and maintenance of delicate optics constrain performance, and attackers can counter with obscurants and saturation. This piece explains the tech, the trade-offs, and how Iron Beam fits alongside Iron Dome in a layered defense that could reshape the economics of air defense in the Middle East.

Coffee Break: Impunity, Incompetence, and Maybe Insight Into How Trump Works

This past week the Trump administration has put on a bravura display of impunity and seeming incompetence, but perhaps we can glean some insight into how they function.

Coffee Break: The Next Surgeon General, Gene Therapy, Ozone Hole Closes, Daylight Saving Time, and American Socialism

Part the First: The Next Surgeon General Prepares for her Closeup. In a surprise to absolutely no one, Casey Means MD discloses financial ties to supplement industry. New financial disclosures from surgeon general nominee Casey Means show that she’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting supplements and other health and wellness products, details likely […]

Israel’s Attack on Qatar Shows What Gulf States Have Yet to Grasp

It’s a cruel irony that Qatar has been bombed twice in the last three months by two sworn enemies, first by Iran and then by Israel. Neither has received kinetic retaliation from the very power supposedly guaranteeing Qatar’s security: the U.S. This signals a shift in the world order that Israel has already understood, but […]

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Plinking Narcos

The Trump administration’s stepped-up military actions in Latin America resemble “plinking”—casual target practice against weak opponents. From strikes on drug traffickers to potential aggression toward Panama or Venezuela, these moves serve domestic political theater rather than strategy. This analysis explores the motives, historical parallels, and potential fallout of treating the hemisphere as a free-fire zone.

Coffee Break: Doomscrolling the Influencer Apocalypse

The influencer apocalypse triggered by the assassination of influencer Charlie Kirk is the biggest American moral panic since 2001, but the right-wing may not be able to control what has been unleashed.