Persistent Delusion Among the American and NATO Defense Establishment

We Want One Solution, But One Solution Can't Solve Our Polycrisis Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via Substack, Whatever the problem, our minds seek one solution--preferably a simple one--to escape the trackless wilderness of complex, inter-connected problems. Problem-solving boils down to identifying the key problem and finding a fix that’s easy to understand and straightforward to apply. Our minds rebel when confronted with polycrisis, a knotted mess of inter-connected problems, and so we apply solutions we already have in hand. As I explained in previous Musings, this leads us to modify our...

President Donald Trump has spoken with Iraqi Kurdish leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes the Kurds can be used to fight against the Iranian government.  Axios reports that Trump spoke with the leaders of the two main Iraqi Kurdish factions, Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani, on Sunday. The calls followed the push from Netanyahu.  According […]

Hormuz Chokepoint Claims Next Victim: World's Largest Aluminum Smelter Cuts Capacity The world's largest single-site aluminium smelter in the Middle East cut its output by about 20% on Sunday, marking yet another troubling development for the global economy. The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is no longer just an energy story - it's now spreading into industrial metals. These second- and third-order effects could soon disrupt global supply chains and tighten aluminium availability, thus pressuring prices higher.  Bloomberg reports that Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) began a controlled, safe shutdown of three...