GD—The discussion centers on the US transition from military strikes to a strategy of economic strangulation or “siege warfare” against Iran.

Prof. Marandi argues that this approach stems from a misunderstanding of post-revolutionary Iran and a reliance on flawed narratives (1:45-3:31).
The Nature of the Conflict: Marandi characterizes the current situation as an active war, noting that the JCPOA (nuclear deal) has effectively ended and that countries in the region hosting US assets are participants in this war.
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Iran’s Strategic Response: Marandi outlines that Iran is no longer just seeking survival but is prepared to retaliate militarily. He mentions that Iran would target US assets and infrastructure if economic pressure is intensified, potentially impacting oil exports from the Persian Gulf.

MW—“Trump learned from Cohn that the court of public opinion is far more important than a court of law,” Bird says. Had he lived long enough, Cohn might have coined “fake news,” one of the current president’s favorite insults. Both men, of course, loved the media spotlight and privately sought favorable coverage to reinforce their strongman reputations.

Also like his mentor, Trump inspires hatred in his enemies. Indeed, he seems to feed off it. Readers who endure Cohn’s remorseless crime spree across four decades of American life will better understand how his kindred spirit and protege could eventually make it to the White House.

PE—They have, on the surface, what was always supposed to be a distinct choice between parties, reinforced by conventional ideas of what they stand for, which did not always bear scrutiny.

The difficulty—thoroughly justified—comes in trying to identify, comprehend, and credit what the parties affirm as their prevailing philosophies now, and what actual positions they vow to defend.

Since the ridiculous implosion of the senile Biden apparatus and the Democrats frantic musical chairs farce to field a candidate, the Republican Party has undergone a hostile takeover by Trump.

In abject genuflection to him, it has abandoned any pretense of a coherent platform, and adopted in full that of Trump Victor, which consists of anything and everything he decides at any given time.

DH—Russian Academy of Sciences Academician Sergei Yuryevich Glazyev, listing potential conflict scenarios, writes about the “advisability of using effective weapons to neutralize the enemy’s advantages in information technology and communications systems”:

This could include cutting communications channels on land and on the seabed, disrupting data centers, destroying enemy reconnaissance and command aircraft within our strike zone, regardless of their nationality, and disabling communications satellites, including the notorious Starlink constellation, which forms the backbone of the enemy’s telecommunications network. Without communication with American and British target controllers, planners, and analysts, the Ukrainian Armed Forces would be blinded and lose the ability to systematically conduct combat operations.

BL—The prehistoric invasions of the Indo-Europeans had a transformative effect in Europe, inaugurating a prolonged period of aristocratic individualism that resulted in several different strands of Indo-European genetic and cultural influence. MacDonald points out there is a northwest-southeast genetic and psychological gradient in Europe with individualism being more common in the historical populations of northwest Europe. The Indo-European research found massive migrations into Europe about 4,500 years ago as associated with the Corded Ware culture. The profound influx of Pontic steppe ancestry of Indo-Europeans spread westwards into Europe and east into central Asia with metallurgy, horse riding and probably Indo-European language. The Indo-European expansion carried Yamnaya  genes over vast distances from Scandinavia to South Asia. Indo-Europeans did not eradicate people whom they dominated. They extracted services. Females were taken as mates and men for labor. Upward mobility would be possible for males of the conquered group for those with military talent. What was important was reputation for group coherence, not kinship. Being honest, trustworthy, fair, cultivating a reputation was crucial in a military leader in Indo-Europeans.

JM —Cheerful, energetic, and highly social exteriors hide childhood trauma, and, in the case of corporate executives and politicians, psychopathy, which I have been writing about.

Psychopaths oddly are particularly prone to depression.

A major public failure, loss of power, financial setbacks, or legal attacks are a kind of “narcissistic mortification” usually aggravated by childhood trauma. People who suffer such problems externalize with deep anger, feeling that the world is failing them, or persecuting them. In their minds they are not ever wrong—others in power are incompetent if not evil and they must constantly strike and take back the power that they think was, or might be stolen from them. Setbacks reinforces their feeling about the decline of the world they live in and their hunger for the world of the Past, that Golden Age.

Fake personae offer protection, and prevent these people from being seen as weak or, worse–twisted.

WYSIWYG? Not ever!