What Matters. Again.

James Kunstler yesterday summarized, artfully as ever , the essence of the American economy nowadays: 

Real capital is grounded in the production of real things of real value, of course, and when it’s detached from all that, it’s no longer real capital. Money represents capital, and when the capital isn’t real, the money represents…nothing! And ceases to be real money. Just now, America is producing almost nothing except money, money in quantities that stupefy the imagination — trillions here, there, and everywhere. The trouble is that money is vanishing as fast as it’s being created. That’s because it’s based on promises to be paid back into existence that will never be kept, on top of prior promises to pay back money that were broken or are in the process of breaking. The net result is that money is actually disappearing faster than it can be created, even in vast quantities.

Many of us (yes, me included) wrote about it for years and years, yet, through the new crop of "market analysts", the idea that money is the only thing that matter was being carved into the minds of majority, while covering up for the real state of what I call them--tangibles. Let me demonstrate. This is US industrial (that means tangibles) output within last 12 months:

Now take a look at the 10-year span:

These graphs based on US official data should be kept constantly visible for people who continue to press the idea that Covid-19 is the reason for this all. Obviously, it is not. As I repeat ad nauseam since the start of this pandemic--virus is merely a trigger, one of. The shit was going down the drain for a long time and, as the recent increase in anti-Chinese rhetoric based on a totally false (what's new, really?) accusations on Covid-19 origins demonstrates, things are not that good for the United States. 

Obviously, US "elite" knows how to manipulate the currency and conduct currency wars--it is expected from them. Most of them never saw modern industrial plant and never ran any kind of productive business which would have been based on those tangibles--main capital, as in buildings, machinery, cadres (yes, people), manufacturing plans and training, trucks, ships, what have you. From the get go those people were "educated" in banks' operations, debit, credit, fees, "valuations", stocks, margin calls and other mambo-jumbo in the foundation of fake American GDP. As new update of old Soviet/Russian anecdote about cowboys goes today:

Two cowboys, Bill and John, ride their horses in prairie. While riding there, Bill sees a pile of horse shit and because he has 100 dollars it occurs to him--why wouldn't I dare John to eat this pile of horse shit for a hundred dollars. So, he dares John to do just that. John thinks: hm, of course, eating horse shit is really humiliating and disgusting but 100 bucks, damn, too serious of a money to pass on such an opportunity. So, he agrees and eats this pile of shit and Bill gives him his 100 bucks. They continue to ride side-by-side after that. While riding both think. 

Bill: well, it is all cool that John ate a pile of horse shit but, man, 100 bucks is too great sum of a money to pay even for such an atrocious challenge. I wish I never dared Bill and kept my 100.

John: well, it is really cool to have 100 bucks, but, man, I ate a pile of horse shit for that and now Bill will taunt and humiliate me for this. I wish I never agreed to accept his challenge.

While thinking like that they pass another pile of horse shit and John dares Bill to eat this pile of shit for 100 bucks. Bill agrees and does just that, John gives him 100 bucks. After that both cowboys continue to ride side-by-side in full silence. After few minutes of riding in silence John breaks it: "Hey, Bill, you know what? Don't you think that we both just ate a load of horse shit for free?" 

Bill replies: "But we just created $200 worth of GDP and created two new jobs." 

So, while the United States is getting ready to squeeze China for whatever it can--I think T-bills "targeted" default and putting "pressure" on Chinese owning businesses in the US is a natural choice (I could be mistaken, of course), evidently some rags in the US are beginning to experience a hangover from giving up tangibles: now they are lamenting the "mistake" of outsourcing. No shit, morons. And the problem here is not just classic issue of export of capital well described more than 100 years ago by many classic Marxists. Not just that, in Marxism basis (foundation) of the productive forces (and productive capital) defines the superstructure of morality and culture. This applies fully for a number of the Americans' generations we can identify by the letter or title: X, Z, Millenials, what have you most of which were brought up by the imagery of the office universe in which real life was and is happening non-stop. In fact, once you take a broader look on who is dramatically over-represented in modern art, two categories stand out--financiers and artsy types. One after another, stock brokers, bankers, art galleries owners, programmers, fashion designers and "free thinkers" dominate every single facet of cultural life in the West, with the actual labor and the images of the complex machinery and industrial technologies being absent from socio-cultural "space" in the United States. 

This teeny-weeny detail about modern "culture" aversion to any productive labor, since George Lopez spoiled brat niece Veronica's hysterical reaction to an offer to work at airplane parts plant, speaks volumes. Let's face it, we have an enormous number of people around who would faint at the very sight of your average run-of-the-mill CNC machine or paint booth in some large machine and production shop, as well as from the necessity to learn about safety on the production floor. It is so not cool, it is so not iPhone and orange mocha frappucino, it is so not progressive and sophisticated that life, as in real life, by definition cannot be happening there. But, as the story goes--it is precisely there where REAL life actually happens and where REAL value, as in crucial tangibles, on which civilization exists, are produced. Well, the United States in the last 20+ years was reducing these productive forces to a small fraction of what they used to be and, in doing so, also cleared the space for planting the most destructive and dangerous cultural practices, which now are in the symbiotic relation and mutual influence of those proverbial Marxist basis (foundation) and superstructure. They go hand in hand today with opioid catastrophe, rampant drugs use, overall degeneration of cognitive faculties of whole generations and, as the result, increasing number of almost insurmountable  hurdles towards the ONLY thing which may save this country--economic self-sufficiency. 

Economic self-sufficiency which is also a foundation of REAL national security starts from industry. No industry--no American nation. Simple as that. Modern generation of American "elites" has no idea, or, possibly, doesn't even care about what happens when the attempts to re-industrialize fail precisely because no one knows how to do it for real, not by doing what they got used to do--"printing" money which only accelerates a decline, towards eventual disintegration. So, here it is--no real recovery without real industries, which translate into real employment, this means reorienting production for the internal market and.... here we pause, because this seemingly simple scenario requires a long and substantive debate because this is where the issue of trade comes in and 99.99% of the American "elite" are a free trade neo-liberal fundamentalists who have neither knowledge nor skills to avert what is already not just on the horizon but knocking on the door. If you think otherwise, just take a look at the graphs above, especially a 10 year one. Things just got worse, not better since 2010. I am sure vast number of events coordinators, DJs and shopping assistants will have to rethink seriously their career choices if they even want any shot at any vacancy in a dramatically shrinking America's basis, before collapsing superstructure buries them.   

Was Israel First In Space Too?

I am sure Mel Brooks' Jews in Space was based on real events (wink, wink--I love Mel): 

So, I think statements such as this:

Military drone technology was pioneered by Israel in the 1980s and later developed by the U.S. to fight the global war on terror. But success brought complacency, and in recent years countries such as China, Turkey, Iran, and Russia have made rapid progress in building their own drones

Should only be attributed to sheer ignorance and Israel sucking up culture which permeates neocons rags such as National Review, but since the author of this drivel is Mr. Frantzman, originally from Jerusalem Post, it is not surprising that working with facts is not the strongest trait of their craft. The next you know they will declare US to be a main force defeating Nazism... oh, wait.  So, I think a bit of a retrospective on the origins of "military drone technology" is due and we go back to 1964, when TU-123 Yastreb (Hawk)--my-my, Russians even "stole" the name--was introduced into regular service with Soviet Armed Forces., which was... well--a drone. The technology was raw and imperfect, to put it mildly, but these machines were doing exactly what modern, much much more advanced, drones do--primarily provide intelligence. So, the issue of Israel "pioneering" this technology is at best debatable. Moreover, Lavochkin design bureau came up with its LA-17 drone even earlier--in 1962 it introduced Lavochkin-17R. 

Boy, talk about not getting one's facts straight. But I have a consolation for National Review--Israel DID help Russia in 2010s to "develop" some of drones, by selling Israeli drones to Russia. Of course, even this fact has to be put in proper context but we will omit this for now, since it is irrelevant to the issue of "pioneering". This is not to mention the fact that creating things of this nature was and remains currently beyond economic and technological Israeli expertise:

So, I guess, just let them get the prize.  

So, What's The News?

The news hit the telegraph tape. Urgent. 

The US and British navies sailed into the Barents Sea to conduct maritime security operations in the Arctic Ocean, US Naval Forces Europe-Africa said in a release Monday. US Navy destroyers USS Donald Cook, USS Porter, and USS Roosevelt and the British Royal Navy frigate HMS Kent, supported by fast combat support ship USNS Supply, sailed into the Barents "to assert freedom of navigation and demonstrate seamless integration among allies," the release said. The Barents, part of the Arctic Ocean, is north of Norway and Russia. Russia's Northern Fleet, which maintains the country's naval strategic nuclear forces, has its headquarters at Severomorsk on the Barents. The US Navy said its surface ships haven't operated in the Barents since the mid-1980s and that it notified Russia's Ministry of Defense of the operation on May 1 "to avoid misperceptions, reduce risk, and prevent inadvertent escalation."

I am sure in Kremlin they are drafting now the declaration of the unconditional surrender and are preparing to surrender city keys from Murmansk and Severomorsk. Reality, of course, is much more prosaic--navies go wherever they can go and as long as they remain outside territorial waters of any state and do not violate status of the exclusive economic zones--they are free to roam whatever they want. Nor, this BS about "since mid-1985" corresponds to reality since submarines of the US and Royal Navies are not rare guests in those altitudes. In this particular situation, however, it is an attempt to demonstrate flag, "send the message" and other PR objectives, including initiating some news stream, to demonstrate a dispirited public that NATO exists still, sort of, and that NATO fleets still have operational assets.

This action has no military meaning since any surface force sent to actually fight--from launching TLAMs to conducting ASW operations--to Barents Sea in case of actual war has the staying power approaching zero and time counted in minutes it takes to receive targeting and launch, and Russia has in Arctic more than enough to launch to ensure that no hostile surface force in any combination survives. Just recall basic (of course it is slightly more complex that that but still, gives a good impression) factors which I wrote in my last book about:

This is what makes, as an example, Northern Sea Route so attractive to China and its commercial traffic, granted China can sustain pressure and possible expropriation of assets of its pro-American elite, the one which until very recently was viewing China as an extension and, eventually, substitution for the United States economically. There are many of these guys, and their children, in the US and they own a lot. Once the United States decides (not out of realm of possibilities) to cut Indian Ocean SLOCs for China, the whole thing will become really interesting. The United State, by the looks of it, is getting ready to coerce China and squeeze it for everything she has got. Rumor has it, Xi must face still powerful radically pro-American (some call it a Chinese "Komsomol" elite, I can see the relation) economic block which cares only about its pockets. 

This is not to say that the United States is in a good shape herself. And, in the end, China can always go ALL IN for petroyuan and the de facto fragmentation of the energy, and with it a whole, market will happen. The infrastructure for killing petrodollar in Eurasia is already in place, so it falls, naturally, to Russia to make sure that any moves on the American part stay non-military in nature. As for demonstration of the flag, sure, why not--it is always a great opportunity for Russian VKS and Navy to train on actual potential targets--business as usual. Nothing to see here, folks, move along, move along....

Doctrines?

Andrew Bacevich writes about Carter Doctrine. Good for Bacevich. 

Writing in Foreign Policy, three distinguished members of the foreign policy establishment—Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins, Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Ken Pollack of the American Enterprise Institute—have issued a warning: Don’t look now, but President Trump appears intent on repudiating the Carter Doctrine. If he does, all the great successes achieved by U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf over the past several decades will be lost. This, they want you to believe, would be a terrible thing.

There is only one problem, designating US produced "doctrines" by the names of US Presidents with which one or another "doctrine" originated--it is the same as designating rigid and inflexible US military "doctrines" of expeditionary warfare following throwing an ungodly number of stand-off weapons at a victim with different titles ranging from "From The Sea" to "Air Sea Battle" to whatever else. In other words it is "Same Shit-Different Angle". The only noticeable correction of the course in the US doctrinal thinking happened in early 1970s with Nixon's (forced, mind you) Detente with the Soviet Union and with eventual "opening" of China, which, as we all know today, ended up with the greatest transfer of industries from the United States to other country in history. So, discussing US foreign policy "doctrines", especially by ignoring huge political inputs (in favors, dollars, blackmail or exploitation of Christian Zionism of many in US power circles) by such actors as Israel and Saudi Arabia is a fool's errand.

I do not believe that Bacevich doesn't know that. I am positive he does. Yet, as in that process of running in circles, everything ends up with discussing a minutiae of American neocons' flaming insanity and utter military incompetence and trying to pigeonhole it into one or another US geopolitical delusion, which, for some reason, pass for "doctrines" . I looked up biographies of people whose "ideas" Bacevich discusses and concludes that:

Brands, Cook, and Pollack correctly note that various initiatives undertaken under the aegis of the Carter Doctrine have ultimately redounded to the benefit of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But if Iran is a problem, they have a solution. Kick some ass.

I don't know, last time I checked if any ass kicking was happening it was definitely not by the United States. Among those three stooges who abuse their sinecures in all those rabidly neocon "think-tanks: such as American Enterprise Institute, or CFR, only Pollack has some "intelligence" background as former CIA "analysts" with degree.... and you guessed it--political "science". Pollack is known for his active calls to invade Iraq and even wrote grossly untimely book on Arabs' military effectiveness, or, rather lack thereof. Untimely, because this issue was debated so much in the last 50 years, from Soviet military advisors to all kinds of "Strategic Studies"  courses in the Wests, to famous  Atkine's primer Why Arabs Lose Wars that, after brief acquaintance with Pollack's 2018 book about Arab military history from 1948 to 1991 one is forced to ask a question--Why? What's the purpose of re-narrating same ol', same ol'? But, my friends, this is the current level of the American or, rather, neocon "Strategic Studies". 1991 is also a cut out date for the last noticeable victory of the US Armed Forces against what was, as usual falsely, touted as the "fourth largest army in the word", implying that it was powerful, while in reality it was a backward, badly led, typical third world military.

Numbers provide a good foundation, albeit by far not all of it, of viewing modern war. In this case, Bacevich fails to disclose the real meaning of the "kicking some ass", Iranian ass that is, since this is the heart of the matter. The issue is not that impossibility of kicking some ass without receiving a lot of it back was discussed, by me included, on a number of occasions. I would love to see ass-kicking plan developed by those three--no secrets--just general idea of this plan, required forces, logistics, general strategy, operational tempos etc. Why not, I am sure these three stooges can provide a fascination expose of utter military strategic and operational ignorance and will cause many laughs along the way. Reason being that these people do not grasp modern warfare beyond experiences of massive salvos of stand-off weapons in Desert Storm at whatever targets Pentagon may identify and then... Yes, about this "then", I am always in a full attention mode waiting for some magical plan to appear explaining how the United States Armed Forces will fight war in Iran. I am all eyes and ears. But even this is beyond the point--don't expect anything which makes sense geopolitically, militarily or economically. Here is an example of this type of people's "expertise", this is from 2016. 

So, Bacevich gets it very wrong, especially when he begins with "distinguished members"--distinguished by who or what, against what background or under what circumstances? If American geopolitical collapse and US being exposed as nothing more than a dangerous declining power--a process which is ongoing since 2000s--are reasons to tout human stupidity and lack of any serious background in achieving any kind of tangible "success" in anything are the reasons to be "distinguished", then--sure. Modern American political and pseudo-intellectual elite, as I stated many times, is staggering in its incompetence matched only by its arrogance--a first sign of lacking serious intellect. The aggressiveness of types like Pollack is dictated by anything but serving true American national interests and by suppressing a horrendous complex of inferiority because they know deep inside that they are losers who have nothing to show for their pseudo "academic" backgrounds and activity which is based around thinking up all kinds of military strategic nonsense. But, sadly, Bacevich doesn't write about this. Even Le Monde--a globalist French rag begins to suspect that: 

les Etats-Unis n’exercent plus le rôle qu’ils s’étaient attribué au XXe siècle, celui du leadership mondial. Ils y étaient de plus en plus réticents depuis quelques années ; ils s’en sont, dans cette crise qui les affaiblit, totalement extraits. Il a fallu prier le président Donald Trump pour qu’il accepte de participer, par visioconférence, à des réunions internationales qu’il aurait dû présider. Lorsqu’elles ont pu se tenir, ces réunions n’ont donné aucun résultat. A l’ONU, le Conseil de sécurité est, de fait, paralysé.

Western in general, and American in particular, current "elites" are totally inadequate intellectually, academically, humanly and professionally to challenges which their societies face and it is them who, being products of a dysfunctional system, exacerbate already a violent process of a departure of the Western liberalism from the world stage. Having some "distinguished" swamp creatures suggesting to "kick some ass" at this time should be viewed as a distinguished idiocy, not as a valid matter to discuss--unless, of course, we are talking about orderlies in psychiatric ward, where modern American neocons belong wholesale, I mean those who will avoid standing War Crimes Tribunal.  

Necessary Evil?

You know all my attitude in general towards Western "economic science", which, bar few exceptions here and there, is nothing more than a variety of iterations on monetary theory and, in general, is not economic, per se, but financial only at its very core. As an example--many those "economists" with degrees in "economics" from a variety of Western economics programs are primarily (not all) people who deal in stocks, currency speculations, cooking of books, fraudulent valuations--it is them who introduced risible $23 trillion US GDP to us--many of them are downright bankers who know debit and credit and bank operations but who do not operate and cannot operate (due to lack of background) in a much larger framework of real economy, real politics, geopolitics, power balance etc. Those skills require a completely different intellectual and (true) scientific training. In the end, recall Michael Hudson's recent succinct statement:

The gunboats don’t appear in your economics textbooks. I bet your price theory didn’t have gun boats in them, or the crime sector. And probably they didn’t have debt in it either.

I happen to agree and may even add, that courses on physics, engineering, industrial design, real trade, foreign relations, organization of logistics, modern transportation, maritime security, military power also do not appear in economic textbooks. So, why have I brought this up, again. 

It is a truism now that Western "intelligence" on Russia, quoting Patrick Armstrong, is "very bad", and this is putting it mildly. It is easy to explain--imagine some Western "educated" (quotation marks are deliberate) journo or "economist", people who understand only Wall Street "economic" realities and subscribe to Western "interpretation" of human rights, getting into Russia. They are immediately presented with the set of economic and human patterns they not only never encountered in their lives but never heard of them. Most of those people, in their attempt to get a grasp of that find those who are "culturally" close to them in Russia and this is precisely a narrow strata of fringe Russia's liberals (aka liberda) who use same lingo and value same things as those Western journos, economists etc. use and value. Bingo, it seems that the issue is solved. Well ...no. In fact, this modus operandi is precisely the reason behind Western "analysts" of Russia being a laughing stock and being incapable to find their own ass with their both hands in the brightly lit room, forget about making any sensible predictions (or forecasts) on Russia. They simply have no instrumentation for that. Enter RT's today's piece by Ben Aris. 

I totally get it, that RT has to present a variety of opinions on Russia, including some which may not be positive at all, and we know that Russia is affected adversely both by Covid-19 and Oil Wars, but what Ben Aris of IntelliNews (formerly of Daily Telegraph) writes is a good insight into the minds and operational mechanisms of all kinds of similar fraudster publications pretending to provide "value" for "investors" (I know, it is such a funny term), Ben Aris "covered" Russia since 1993, and the term "covered" should be used cautiously here because British media are leading propaganda outlets in the West when providing a murky stream of BS. So, Ben Aris is no different and he opens with a broadside:

When the pandemic struck, Mishustin was still in the middle of reforming his team, and focused on a technical task: implementing the 12 national projects, not dealing with an economic meltdown. Ministers who performed badly when it came to implementing their policy goals have been sacked, and a new crop of bureaucrats was installed to take over. Mishustin drew heavily on his former colleagues from the tax service, which he ran to great effect for a decade. However, these people do not necessarily make the best HR choices when it comes to crisis management. Their skill has been to fine-tune the machinery of government to make it work more efficiently. The policies now needed are about squeezing an extra 5 percent of revenues out of VAT payments, not shock actions to put a floor under the collapse and reverse the fall.

Immediate first issue: Ben Aris, as well as most of his Western colleagues CANNOT have competent opinion on crisis management anywhere, let alone in Russia, because Western "economics" and experience knows only ONE way of dealing with crisis--it is to print money, period. The way even Covid-19 has been handled in EU and the United States is the best testimony not only to the impotence and incompetence of Western "elites", of which Ben Aris and his "way of thinking" are an exhibit A, but underscored a dramatic deference between the way Russian current elites and Western ones are brought up. One of those gigantic differences, which Aris never heard of, I am sure, is mandatory annual courses, ranging between two weeks-long to months, by top government officials and governors they take in the Academy of General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces. How mobilization plans are developed and implemented is also a thing Aris most likely doesn't understand, especially if one considers a collection of clowns running modern West today, they and Aris have common "education" backgrounds. So, Aris' any opinion on adequacy or otherwise of Russia's crisis management is as valuable as my opinions in Kabuki dramaturgy.

But Aris doesn't stop here and produces another peculiar point. 

Putin is afraid the nationwide vote, now slated to happen sometime in the summer, could be turned into a referendum on his ability to deal with the public health crisis. And that could go badly wrong. Consequently, he has pushed the responsibility for dealing with the crisis onto regional governors, who have put in a mixed showing so far. But even this political damage-control move has already cost Putin politically. More Russians approve of local officials’ coronavirus-response efforts than they do of those initiated by the president and the federal government, according to a newly published survey from the Levada Center.

There is so much to unpack here in what is a characteristic feature of most Western media--making shit up or just simply lying--that we need to start with the data by Levada Center. Levada Center was officially declared in Russia a foreign agent (in Russian) and is a classic example of MO of Western NGOs around the world--growing own "dissidents" and then using them as data sources which are allegedly "reliable" and fit Western "perceptions". I wrote about this so many times that I do not see any reason to dwell on that for much longer. Aris' "independent pollsters" are provided for by foreign governments and NGOs. The only good reason of using anything from Levada Center and similar orgs inside Russia is in affirmation of positive. E.g. "even Levada Center cannot deny this..."  Of course, I am not talking about the fact that Aris does what people like him do--he misinterprets, lies that is, events suited to consumption by people completely isolated from Russia's realities. See highlighted in yellow. Obviously, Aris never took even basic course in civics in any Russian public high school and he doesn't know how many Federation subjects are there in Russia, from Districts, to Oblast, to Krai and who are in charge of those and what is their relation to Moscow, but it is expected from such journalists as Aris. So, he "discovered" suddenly that delegation of authority, which is in the foundation of any practical governing since the times of Roman Empire, to state's subjects is the evidence of... political damage control? Is this Aris dude for real? It is especially fascinating against the background of Putin being omnipresent in Russian media. Including TV. Like yesterday. 

But our indomitable British journo doesn't stop here, he continues to misrepresent a situation and uses ephemera polls (polling is a fraud as an indicator in general, GIGO) to present what is not there forgetting what "Even Levada Center cannot deny..." Putin's still high level of approval which is almost 80% higher than disapproval. That is the only metric which matters. 

This is not to mention VCIOM's very own:

69% of Russians trust Vladimir Putin; 63.5% approve of his presidential performance.

So, what is exactly the problem here? A seasonal fluctuations of polls or that Russia's response to Covid-19 was extraordinarily effective? And even when Aris gets to more-or-less sensible argumentation (not that it is correct, it is not) he already "registered" himself at the onset of his piece as just yet another, run-of-the-mill, Russia "observer" whose only selling point is his fake "expertise" in interpreting political events in Russia from the Western point of view, which, as we could observe for years now, is nothing more than a wishful thinking by people who have zero knowledge and skills in fields which really matter for a nation such as Russia. In this case, the only question which remains is: will they ever learn? Why, in the same time, RT decided to publish this trash remains a complete mystery to me, albeit against the background of the collapse of Western economies and fraudulent "theories" behind them, any product of those in terms of world-view and "education", especially in relation to Russia, will come across as a pretentious ignoramus who needs to be pitied, not taken seriously. Or, maybe, to be taken as a necessary evil to remind us all how such "experts" royally fvcked Western civilization.  

P.S. Completely forgot (in Russian). Goggle Translate will help. 

Russia dramatically increased her oil export in April. Enjoy. 

In Defense Of The American Blue Collar Man And Woman. Friday.

You know that I am merciless in my judgements on the current American "elites" who brought the world in general, and the United States in particular, to the brink. While fat cats continued to enrich themselves by swindling everyone within the range, while financial "analysts" on Wall Street were talking about "margin calls" and "futures", while the Hollywood continued to produce talent-less woke fodder of an entertainment, some people in the US continued to weld, drill, machine, lay up, run CNC, assemble, drive food trucks, stock shelves, dispense medicine, clean streets and continued to maintain electric grid, water mains and sewage. They continued, without me being sappy sentimental, to run the county while simultaneously losing any hope. I work with many such people, some of them I manage, others--I simply interact constantly. These are people who can build a plane, or can come up with some amazing contraption I give them in drawing and they will make it. There are all kinds among them: excellent workers, lazy, persistent, thoughtful, stupid, alcoholics, introverts, BSers and some are even punks, but I like those people. I like to work with them, and I like them way more than office plankton--I know both. I do not idealize, though. There are problems, some of them huge.

These ARE people who keep America running, for now. Remove some hedge fund from Wall Street---who cares. Remove those people and American civilization, any civilization, will ground to a halt. It will also learn fast the real value of a productive labor, the one which constitutes productive capital and defines the barrier between advanced and third world for the nation. Machines, these are them and people who make and run those machines which civilization rests upon:

No matter how very many try to convince us that bread grows on trees and that bank transaction adds real value, or that amount of "free thinkers" matters--know it is a parasite talking. In the end, these are blue collar men and women who always moved and continue to move civilization. It is them who create this crucial "value added" reality, not some stock broker. So, I think, I can wax Marxist a bit and sing (not really) a song for a Blue Collar man or woman. Especially when it is from one of my most favorite bands of all time (Pieces of Eight album is altogether a masterpiece).
       Give me a job, give me security

Give me a chance to survive
I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line
My God, I'm hardly alive
My mother and father, my wife and my friends
I see them laugh in my face
But I've got the power, and I've got the will
I'm not a charity case
I'll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my eye to the keyhole
If it takes all that to be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man

So, it is Friday, after all. 

Before he disgraced himself with the "fight" for transgender restrooms and being a liberal non-entity, he was hailed as the American and global icon. But it is this moment of greatness we will remember: 

 

OK, it is supposed to end like this. I remember sitting at the ferry dock few years ago listening to Seattle's 99.9 FM (66.6 Lords of Evil) and hearing DJ admitting that he doesn't want to meet Jon because, and I quote, he "may like him". Jon was running his diner for hungry people for years, serving free food for people who cannot afford to pay for a meal. And it suddenly brought me back to a happier times:   

                    

I Am Always Fascinated.

When American "diplomats" begin to wax all strategic and come up with bizarre statements like Doug Bandow's last one in his piece in TAC re: Iran. 

The U.S. would win any full-scale conflict, but Tehran has demonstrated its ability to wage asymmetric warfare, including rocket attacks on American bases, proxy assaults on personnel stationed in Iraq and Syria, drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and missile and small ship threats against U.S. vessels. The Islamic Republic also could increase aid to the Taliban, which Tehran originally opposed before Washington laid economic siege to Iran.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire. He also is a graduate of Stanford Law School and a member of the California and D.C. bars. While Bandow's background speaks volumes I still am interested in how he views such "full-scale" conflict with Tehran. What does he even mean by this "full-scale conflict." This is one of those cases where one is forced to dissect every word in context to even begin to grasp what was meant to be said. What is, in the end, "asymmetric warfare" in the context of "full scale conflict" between the United States and Iran. 

Behind this Bandow's errand statement loaded with exceptionalist fervor one can see the ghost of Desert Storm, which took a half-year to prepare under the most favorable political, geographic and military conditions, which saw a demolition of the weak badly trained Iraqi Army by a dramatically superior force. As Anthony Cordesman noted: 

Future enemies are not likely to wait for the U.S. and other states to deploy their power projection forces, and there is a clear need to develop better forms of strategic mobility, prepositioning, and interoperability. Iraq did not exploit the limits in Western capability to rapidly deploy power projection forces, but there is no question that several months elapsed before the U.S. could deploy sufficient heavy land forces to ensure the forward defense of Saudi Arabia, and several more months elapsed before the U.S. could deploy large enough land forces to liberate Kuwait. 

But Bandow, obviously, is not interested in those puny operational details such as Iran, unlike Iraq, preparing for the conflict with the United States for decades and developing military stand-off capability which allows not only to keep every single US base in the region in the cross-hair but also dramatically interrupt any deployment of "projection force" into the region. To fight Iran and "win", that is toppling Tehran regime by means of taking Tehran and disabling Iran's Armed Forces, requires a force which must be capable of dealing with this beaten to death cliche of "asymmetry" and here we all run into a slight problem, politely speaking. Or, rather, problems. 

1. Colonel Wilkerson was pretty explicit in admitting that the only viable, and disastrous, military option is to "bomb Iran" and try to stay the hell away from any land operation. Considering Iran's terrain and size one can only speculate what level of losses US Army would sustain in trying to take Tehran in a combined arms operation; 

2. I already singled out this factor before, I will reiterate: as rumor has it, Iran's ballistic missiles, not just a variety of anti-shipping missiles, have a capability to hit moving targets and that changes logistics completely for any invading force;

3. Finally, the number of land attack missiles in US arsenal is finite to "repeat" an impact of SEAD against one of the four countries in the world which actually produces own versions of long-range AD complexes. Yes, Russia, US, China and... Iran. 

I, of course, omit here the issue of counter-insurgency in case we assume (hard to do) that somehow US is able to assemble and properly deploy force capable of "defeating" Iran. In the country with mostly young population of 80+ million--good luck with that. Mountains of Mazandaran, Ardabil or East Azerbaijan are so lovely in the spring. But beyond these few points, I still have a question which eclipses all of them--can Mr. Bandow present to anyone at least SOME record of successful US operations against determined and even mildly competent opposition on land? Grenada? Sure. There is a famous proverb in Caucasus--no matter how many times one repeats the word halva, it is not going to get sweeter in one's mouth. Non stop mantras, about US military power, by people who never served a day in the armed forces nor faced tactical and operational realities in any battle "domain", in my opinion, are psychological defense mechanisms against grim reality of a numerous US military failures in the last two decades. It is especially true for people who have "humanities" civilian background and have no business expressing their opinions on modern warfare, which requires a little bit more to grasp than degree in law or media career, as an example.