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Historian Niall Ferguson likens the US situation circa 2024 to a “late, Soviet America.”
He notes that in 1990, observers were noticing a “ghastly and tragic... loss of morality” within the USSR. “Apathy and hypocrisy, cynicism, servility, and snitching,” were running wild. Nearly half the population thought that theirs was an “unjust society.” USSR leaders were old party hacks...
The Soviet economy was largely fake... almost all of it directly or indirectly controlled by the Communist Party. The government ran chronic deficits... supporting a bloated military that looked powerful, on paper, but couldn’t win a war.
“Sound familiar?” asks Ferguson:
"Look at the most recent Gallup surveys of American opinion and one finds a similar disillusionment. The share of the public that has confidence in the Supreme Court, the banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, and organized labor is somewhere between 25 percent and 27 percent. For newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business, and Congress, it’s below 20 percent. For Congress, it’s 8 percent. Average confidence in major institutions is roughly half what it was in 1979."
Bill Bonner
This week, the US President gave an apparently delusional update of the Iran conflict. Iran's military is decimated, and it's President is asking for a cease fire, he reported.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman immediately rejected that. State broadcaster IRIB quoted Esmail Baghaei as saying Trump's statements were false and unfounded.
Trump attributed the request for a ceasefire to Iran's "New Regime President."
On the same day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticized the US war against his country in an open letter to the people of the United States on Wednesday, calling it an absurd operation that is costly for their nation.
Within hours of Mr. Trump's analysis of a destroyed Iranian military, Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to attack even as US President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated and predicted the war would end soon.
In Mr. Trump's speech to the nation, Paul...
Today's assymetrical warfare: Iran's cheap munitions are taking out American's most expensive aircraft.
One internet observer:
"Iran, still using their pawns, while Israel and the US out there, with only their King n Queen left. Who will fall first?
"5 pawns and a king versus a king and queen in a chess end game, the side with the 8 pawns always wins. 5 pawns is enough. That’s standard.
"In a way, you could call it asymmetrical warfare."
Well, it's not "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius."
It's $400,000 Bentley automobiles. A lot of them. Of all the dealerships in Europe, the one in Kiev is in third place for sheer volume.
Take note of this tragic truth:
"Foreign aid is a mechanism by which poor people in rich countries are taxed to support the lifestyles of rich people in poor countries. The aid primarily serves three Ms—: munitions, monuments, and Mercedes for leaders and cronies."
--- Peter Thomas Bauer, a Hungarian-born British development economist:
