Ian Welsh

A nice change from all the pro-natal propaganda:

archive.is/90YoU

n=1, but what I will say for serious meditation is that it worked for me. I'm not enlightened, but despite being fat, ugly, old, poor and being on my 4th bout with cancer I'm happy most of the time, far happier than when I was young, handsome, well off and healthy.

Iife=weird

NPR and (surprise) even Fox News are reporting similarly on this issue. www.npr.org/2026/03/01/n...

Iran roundup: Gulf states will soon be out of interceptors, Europe is acting against its own interest, the math of who wins, and much more.

t.co/2kjbcaIOi5

The numbers are astounding. 2025 production of US interceptors. The US CANNOT win this war if Iran just keeps going.

620 Patriot
39 SM-3
96 Thaad.

Iran WILL win the war if they keep going. They have more missiles and drones than Israel and the US have interceptors. It is that simple.

www.ianwelsh.net/the-simple-m...

Hahahahahahahaha.

The morons did manage to kill Khameini. He'll be replaced by a hard-liner and the fatwa against nuclear weapons can now be repealed.

Absolute own-goal.

What Trump did to Iran is the sort of war crime (pre-emptive war) that got Nazis hung at Nuremberg who had no involvement in the Holocaust at all.

Trump should be given a fair trial, and if found guilty, hung from the neck till dead.

If the US loses decisively in Iran, the America Empire takes a huge hit to its ability to inspire terror and compliance. Oh sure, they can still strangle weak nearby countries, but genuine middle powers with real militaries will know they can fight the US and win

www.ianwelsh.net/the-second-i...

If someone thinks ill of me I don't care enough to try and change their mind. Fuck'em.

But if someone thinks well of me I'll move Heaven and Earth to prove them right.

""No soldier who won’t shoot. No technicians or bureaucrats who get in the way of what the rulers want. The elite is served by robots who always obey orders and will do anything. They no longer need to rely on retainers who might be a threat to them."

www.ianwelsh.net/western-elit...

The impressive industrial hegemon was Britain, because they created the industrial revolution. America and China re just extending what they started.

And I'm Irish. I hate the English.

But that doesn't take away what they did.

None of this is to dis China. Regular readers know of my admiration for both their culture and their leadership.

They had to play their cards right, but if America had not been led by financial elite idiots they'd be nowhere close to where they are today.

This is the same thing Britain did. Massive investment during the 19th century in American industry. Absolutely stupid, but the profits were great and they were financiers.

Hegemons always cut their own throats. China will do the same, but we'll all be dead by then.

You know that the US was essentially autarchic for decades? Any continental sized power with a half decent population can come close.

China is NOT special. They're just the current industrial hegemon, because the US decided to financialize and send China their industry.

I’m reviewing applications for a job I’m leading hiring on. I wonder if any of these people realize that when they feed the same prompt as 170 other people into chatGPT that it gives them all the same answers.

I have read the exact same sentence about power mapping in 100+ applications.

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

When socialists, Marxists and commies say this we get called “crazy commies”, “the radical left”, “Putin puppets”, and/or smeared as “trying to get Trump elected.”

lol.

Reminder that Francesca Albanese is not being targeted for a sentence twisted and lifted out of context in a speech.

She is being targeted for daring to name the names of giant companies complicit in the crime of genocide.

They would rather destroy international law than be accountable to it.

Same with genocide. They don't support it, but they'd never vote against a Democrat because they were pro-genocide.

Liberals don’t support cruel immigration policies, they just support leaders who enact cruel immigration policies. You can criticize putting kids in cages but these liberals don’t want to see people criticize Obama for putting kids in cages. They want to keep their image of charming, classy Obama.

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it.

I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.”

1/

The short story of the 21st century in the United States is that out of malice or cowardice or some combination of both, every presidency contributed to building and expanding a federal secret police of goons and thugs, despite clear warning and obvious abuses, until we got to this point.

Tonight's beautiful murder of thousands of crows. ❤️

And that's if you don't think the numbers are cooked, which there is every reason to believe they are.

America's starving Cuba, because hey, they got away with Venezuela, so why not, if you're a psychopath?

The world or China or the EU could so something, but won't. What could they do and why should they?

t.co/R4Ge1vpJY7

Understanding these feelings, these thoughts, makes me hate evil more, not less. Evil wouldn't be much of a problem if, in fact, most people couldn't be evil under the wrong circumstances.

I get that when you're powerful and rich the only thrills left are the ones that are forbidden by your culture. I get why rich people flocked to Epstein: every other desire they had they had already bought.

Most people want to believe that they could never feel or think what evil people (however they define evil) feel and think.

But if you can't, you don't understand evil. And if you don't understand your enemy, you're much less likely to win.

I can feel what an Israeli genocider feels. "Kill them all, hurt them, rape them." I can feel what Hitler probably felt.

Empathy doesn't mean you agree, it means you understand.

And hatred of evil, because you understand it, is a road to the good.