Month: October 2024

Authored by Fred Fleitz via American Greatness,

Iran has made enormous progress in its nuclear weapons program during the Biden/Harris administration and reportedly can now enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel nine nuclear bombs in one month. Although Iran may be nine months to a year away from having an operational nuclear weapon, recent attacks by Iran and Israel against each other’s territory have raised concerns that Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program could lead to a nuclear war in the Middle East.

Biden/Harris administration officials have tried to blame President Trump for the advances in Iran’s nuclear program because he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA. Democratic Governor Tim Walz made this claim during the October 1 vice presidential debate when he said, “There had been a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in . . . Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place.”

This is absolutely false. The huge advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons program are the result of major flaws in the JCPOA and a series of terrible national security policy decisions, including repeated attempts to appease Iran, by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The first of these bad policy decisions was when the Obama administration conceded to Iran the “right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, such as nuclear medicine and nuclear reactor fuel.

This decision reversed the positions of prior Republican and Democratic administrations who believed Iran could not be trusted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes because of covert Iranian efforts to establish a nuclear weapons program and because it is easy to reconfigure uranium centrifuges supposedly constructed for peaceful purposes to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Allowing Iran to enrich its own uranium for peaceful purposes has never made economic sense due to a glut of reactor fuel and nuclear medicine on the world market. Iran also does not need nuclear power due to its vast oil and natural gas reserves.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained this to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in an October 2014 interview when he said Iran’s centrifuges “are only good for one thing: to make bomb-grade material.”

The JCPOA Was a Dangerous Fraud

The Obama administration’s dangerous uranium enrichment concession to Iran was enshrined in the flawed 2015 JCPOA agreement which, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to reactor-grade and develop advanced centrifuges. In effect, this gave Iran the world’s blessing to continue to develop a uranium enrichment program whose only practical purpose was to make nuclear weapons fuel.

But it gets worse. The JCPOA lifted sanctions on Iran and provided it with $150 billion in sanctions relief. This included $1.7 billion in “pallets of cash” that the U.S. secretly flew to Iran in small planes as ransom to release five innocent Americans being held in Iranian prisons. A related UN resolution imposed limited, short-lived sanctions against Iranian conventional arms transfers, which expired in 2020, and missile transfers, which expired in 2023.

The JCPOA has a weak inspection regime that Iran did not cooperate with. This inspection regime was further weakened by secret side deals, discovered by then-Rep. Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton, that allowed Iran to evade inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Obama officials reportedly wrote the secret side deals and refused to share them with Congress.

And to top off this all off, there was substantial cheating on the JCPOA by Iran.  This included clandestine efforts to acquire illicit nuclear technology and equipment, violating JCPOA restrictions on advanced centrifuge development, and excess production of heavy water.

In 2018, a huge cache of documents on Iran’s nuclear weapons program stolen by Israel provided evidence of massive Iranian cheating on the JCPOA, including several undeclared sites where nuclear weapons work had been conducted since 2015. IAEA inspection of two of these sites found evidence of enriched uranium particles, which proved covert nuclear weapons work had occurred at these locations.

In addition, Iran quietly worked to develop advanced centrifuge designs and parts in violation of the JCPOA between 2015 and 2020. This allowed Iran to start deploying advanced centrifuges in 2021. This included completing a factory in July 2018 to make carbon fiber rotors for advanced centrifuge machines.

These and other extremely serious weaknesses of the JCPOA are why Donald Trump justifiably called it “the worst deal ever” and why he withdrew the United States from this agreement in 2018.

Iran said it would no longer honor its JCPOA commitments after Trump withdrew from the agreement and began to slowly back out of JCPOA limits in 2019 and 2020. However, Iran did little to ramp up its uranium enrichment program until January 2021—weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration.

The reason why there was not a surge in Iran’s nuclear weapons program during President Trump’s term after he withdrew from the JCPOA was because Iranian leaders were afraid of how Trump would respond. The global American deterrence Trump established helped keep Iran and other U.S. adversaries in check during his presidency.

Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program Takes Off Under Biden/Harris Administration

It is clear that Iran’s leaders were not afraid of Joe Biden. They saw a new American president desperate to revive the JCPOA and who would resume the Obama administration’s appeasement policies. The results have been a catastrophe for global security, with huge advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran also gained at least $100 billion in additional revenue during the Biden administration because it refused to enforce U.S. oil sanctions. Most of this oil has been sold to China. Iran spent this windfall on its military, nuclear, and missile programs as well as to fund its terrorist proxy groups: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq.

The Biden administration took office in January 2021 determined to renegotiate the JCPOA to make it “longer and stronger.” Iranian officials repeatedly said they would not agree to changes to the JCPOA, but they participated in fruitless talks in Vienna to restore the JCPOA until March 2022. Not only did Iran refuse to negotiate in good faith in these talks, a Russian ambassador, with the assistance of a Chinese ambassador, ran the Vienna talks because Iranian diplomats refused to meet in the same room with their U.S. counterparts.

Iran significantly stepped up its nuclear weapons program while multilateral talks to revive the JCPOA were underway between April 2021 and March 2022.  This included deploying advanced centrifuges in February and April 2021 and producing uranium metal in February 2021.

The most serious development was when Iran announced in November 2021 that it had enriched uranium to the 60% U-235 level for the first time. 60%-enriched uranium can be further enriched to 90% (weapons-grade) in about a week.

Biden officials worked hard to convince Iran to agree to a new nuclear deal by offering a series of dangerous concessions. This included proposing to take Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Several members of the U.S. negotiating team resigned in late 2021 because they believed the concessions being offered to Iran were excessive and would lead to a bad nuclear agreement.

Multilateral talks with Iran to revive the JCPOA broke down in March 2022 after Russia threatened to block a new nuclear deal unless its trade with Iran was exempted from U.S. and European sanctions imposed on Russia due to its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

After the multilateral talks broke down, the Biden/Harris administration used Oman as an intermediary to negotiate a secret, oral, and unwritten agreement with Iran. Biden Administration critics claimed this was done to evade Congress’s oversight of this agreement.

The secret deal was described as an interim agreement with major U.S. concessions. These reportedly included freezing Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60%. This concession meant the Biden/Harris administration agreed to accept Iran enriching to the dangerous 60% level. Iran was also allowed to keep its nuclear infrastructure, including advanced uranium centrifuges, and permitted to continue to develop this technology.

Iran reportedly agreed under the deal to stop its proxy groups from attacking U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq and to cooperate with IAEA investigations of its nuclear program. Iran never abided by either of these provisions.

In exchange for agreeing to the above requirements, Iran was to receive over $20 billion in sanctions relief. The U.S. also reportedly agreed not to impose new sanctions on Iran.

In addition, this agreement included a U.S.-Iran prisoner exchange and a U.S. ransom payment to Iran of $5 billion. This payment was frozen in October 2023 after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.

Meanwhile, Iran engaged in other malign activities during the Biden/Harris administration, such as selling attack drones and missiles to Russia for its use in the Ukraine War and working with Russia, China, and North Korea to form a new anti-West “axis.”

There also were significant advances in Iran’s missile program, including a possible hypersonic missile launch, advanced cruise missiles, space launches (which were believed to be ICBM test launches), and new missiles designed to evade missile defenses.  It is unclear whether Iran fired its newest missiles during two missile attacks on Israel this year.

The Biden/Harris Administration’s Appeasement of Iran Caused the Middle East to Explode

The breakdown in security and stability in the Middle East since the October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis by Hamas is a consequence of the Biden/Harris administration’s incompetent Iran policies. Their appeasement of Iran emboldened Iran and its terrorist proxies to attack Israel and U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. Iran also attacked Israel twice in 2024 with missiles and drones.

There have been conflicting press reports of Iran’s involvement in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 8, 2023, that Iran helped develop and fund the Hamas attack and gave Hamas the green light to launch it. A Hamas spokesman told the BBC on October 8 that Hamas had direct support from Iran. However, although Iranian leaders praised the attack, they claimed that Iran was uninvolved in it. A senior Hamas official backed up this claim on October 9 by saying that Iran and Hezbollah were not involved in the Hamas terrorist attack.

Although Iran’s exact role in the horrendous October 7 Hamas terrorist attack is unclear, I also believe it will at least be proved that Hamas could not have conducted the attack without arms and funding from Iran.

Iran is Much Closer to Becoming a Nuclear Weapons State Because of the Biden/Harris Administration’s Incompetent Iran Policies

This article provides a summary of the profoundly incompetent and naïve Iran policies by the Biden/Harris administration that did enormous damage to Middle East and global security. Because of these deeply flawed policies, Iran today is enriching uranium at the 60% level, just below weapons-grade.  It can enrich enough uranium to fuel nine nuclear weapons a month. Iran has installed advanced centrifuges that will significantly increase the amount and speed of the production of weapons-grade uranium if Iran’s leaders decide to do so.

Iran is at least $100 billion richer today than it was when President Trump left office because of unwise concessions by the Biden administration, especially its failure to enforce U.S. oil sanctions. Iran used this additional revenue to fund its military, nuclear, and missile programs, terrorist proxies, and meddle in regional conflicts.

There is no question that the Biden/Harris administration’s Iran policies have been a spectacular failure.

Obviously, attempts by Biden/Harris officials and their allies to blame the surge in Iran’s nuclear program and its belligerent behavior on President Trump are absurd.  The greatly increased threat from Iran occurred during the Biden/Harris administration due to their weakness and incompetence. The JCPOA has also been proven to be a deeply flawed agreement that actually facilitated Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. President Trump made the right decision to withdraw from this terrible deal and kept Iran in check with enhanced American deterrence and his maximum pressure policy, which almost bankrupted Iran.

America and the world desperately need a strong and decisive U.S. president to undo the enormous damage done to American and global security by the Biden/Harris administration’s disastrous Iran policies. Although there is a lot of damage to repair, I am confident that if Donald Trump wins the 2024 U.S.  presidential election, he will quickly do this with a capable and experienced national security team that will halt Iran’s belligerence by restoring American deterrence and peace through strength.

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

For the entire lives of anyone under the age of seventy-five, the US has been at the top of the heap in almost every way. For decades, it had greater freedom, greater prosperity and higher production than any other country in the world.

America was a cornucopia – the centre for innovation and trends in technology, the arts and social development. And today, many Americans, even if they complain about changes for the worse in their country, come back quickly to say, “This is still the greatest country in the world.” Or, “Everybody is still trying to come here.”

Well, truth be told, neither of these knee-jerk comments is accurate any longer. But even those who have come to that realisation tend to resort to the inevitable fall-back comment: “Well, whattaya gonna do? It’s just as bad everyplace else.”

And yet, this is also inaccurate. Throughout the history of the world, whenever a country had entered its decline stage, others were in the process of rising up.

And this is just as true today. There are countries where prosperity and production are far greater than in the US and, increasingly, countries where the key ingredient that made America great – Liberty – is present to a far greater degree.

In fact, this is the one characteristic of America that’s most rapidly in decline. This was especially true in 2020, when a virus was used as a justification to dramatically increase governmental dominance of the populace.

It matters little whether the US had a hand in creating the virus, or whether it was merely co-opted as an opportunity to expand control.

The result has been heavy-handed governmental meddling in medicine, business and personal freedoms.

As regards the latter concern, the odd halfway measure of personal movement control is not great enough to keep a virus from spreading, but it has been sufficient to collapse businesses, create record unemployment and make it impossible for some people to feed themselves.

In the bargain, it has served as an ideal cover story for an economic collapse that had been inevitable. The government can say, “Don’t blame us for the collapse; it was those naughty Chinese and their pesky virus that did it.”

The decline is not an accident. It’s a planned demolition. And it’s going well. For those who actually pull the strings, profit will be made from the crisis. Not for everyone, of course, but most certainly for those few who are creating it.

But many say that the US is waking up, that its citizenry are coming to the conclusion that the Deep State – that corporatist ruling class that are made up of governmental and big-business leaders – has increasingly destroyed the prosperity, production and liberty that once existed and replaced them with massive debt, an exit of production to other countries and a vanishing middle class.

And they’d be entirely correct. The endgame for the once-great US Empire is now underway, and over the next few years, we shall bear witness as it tumbles downhill.

So, what are Americans to do?

Well, my belief is that – as is always the case when a country declines – the populace will divide into several groups.

The first group, which will be by far the largest, will increasingly grumble, but ultimately do little or nothing to save themselves.

They will go down with the ship.

The second group will say, “We don’t have to accept this.”

They’re the preppers, the ones who have a store of food and have been stashing away guns and ammunition. They’re the folks who are seen at the corner bar, saying, “If they come for me, I’m locked and loaded.”

Their friends nod in agreement, but in fact, if a trained and outfitted SWAT team were to arrive on their porch, there would be very few who would succeed in getting off a single shot, and for those who did, their remaining life would be brief.

On the more thoughtful side of this group would be the third group. They would also say, “We don’t have to accept this,” but their choice of a solution will be to “work within the system.”

This is a much larger group – the ones who wait for each election as though it holds a solution. Each time, they’re disappointed. If the party they supported is elected, the winners somehow fail to return the country to the free society it had once been. If the other party is elected, the decline only accelerates.

Incredibly, the lightbulb never seems to go on for this group. They never get to the point of realisation that, “Oh, I get it: neither party has any intention of returning the country to a state of liberty. The only question is which group of pretenders gets to be in charge of the decline this time around. Either way, I lose.”

It could be said that this is the most tragic group. They’re sincere and dedicated. They endlessly hope that a solution is just around the corner, without there being any actual substance for their hope.

The commonality in all three of these groups is that they all end up as casualties. They may differ in their approach to the decline, but they’ll share in the loss of their wealth (however large or small) and their liberty.

But there’s also a fourth group – those who leave. Their numbers are small and they tend not to make a large impact on the consciousness of the other three. In fact, they’re never even mentioned by the media. It’s as though they don’t exist.

So, let’s step back a few centuries. America was founded by a hardworking assortment of settlers who came from several countries in Europe. In their home countries they witnessed oppression – limitations to both their liberty and their ability to create a good life for themselves and their families.

They were independent-minded and self-reliant. They carved out lives in the wilderness and later built towns, then cities. But all the while, they hung on to their core belief of independence and liberty.

Today, they’re still revered as being the backbone of what made America great. And this view is accurate. Yet, today’s Americans are nothing like them. None of the three groups above thinks like them, although the middle group would like to believe they do, merely by owning guns. They’re not independent-minded. They’re not self-reliant.

The key here is that the founders of America recognised that there was no chance that they could change the corrupt and controlling systems they were born into in Europe.

So they left Europe and started over elsewhere.

The fourth group are following a similar path: Seek out a destination where the government does not yet have the power to rob you of your wealth and freedoms.

The choice is a simple one. If you value your liberty – the ability to make your own decisions and to keep more of what you’ve earned – pack your bags and go.

*  *  *

Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare… The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past. That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video. Click here to watch it now.

Authored by James Durso via RealClearWorld,

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently declared, “Israel is trapping Iran and America.”

If that is true, perhaps the U.S. and Iran should cooperate to extricate themselves from that trap.

In the wake of the most recent exchange of fire between Israel and Iran, the region is on the cusp of more violence and instability, but who benefits from the chaos?

Previously, the Arab Gulf states may have been happy to see Iran distracted from fighting an American ally, but that’s not likely anymore. First came the  China-brokered deal in 2023 that restarted diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Then last week the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members declared their neutrality in the new round Iran-Israel fighting, and at the Doha meeting between the Saudi foreign minister and Iran’s president the minister stated, “We aim to permanently close the chapter on our differences and focus on resolving issues, developing relations as two friendly and brotherly countries.”

Who’s left? The U.S., Israel, and the defense contractors.

The defense contractors will do as they’re told, and Israel appears locked on a path of escalation, partly to restore deterrence vis-à-vis Iran but also to keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of jail.

That leaves the Americans to reassert stability as only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu benefits from the fragmentation of the region. Regional chaos encourages Jerusalem to appeal to Washington for even more subventions of cash and transfers of weapons, the latter of which may be reducing the U.S. inventories to a dangerously low level. Unrest will also motivate Israel’s American confederates to press Washington for policies that are good for Israel (so they think) but that erode U.S. influence abroad.

Netanyahu recently spoke to the Iranian people, “Iran will be free soon…” and regime-changey talk like that should be all Washington needs to back away from any association with a coup in Tehran as it made that mistake once before and is still living with the result.

In 1953, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s MI-6 sponsored a coup to depose Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, an idiosyncratic politician with authoritarian tendencies, the concern being the possibility of Communist influence on his government. The concern about the influence of the communist Tudeh Party was exaggerated, but the Americans also probably wanted to help Britain retain control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and reverse the 1951 nationalization of Iran’s oil industry.

The Americans installed another idiosyncratic authoritarian, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as the Shah and he showed his gratitude in 1973 when he convinced the other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to double the price of a barrel of oil from $5.11 to $11.65.

The foreign imposition of an absolutist monarch stirred popular discontent that contributed to the successful 1979 Iranian Revolution (and 444-day hostage crisis) and arrival of an even more absolutist theocracy that promptly used Iran’s oil and natural gas resources to fund its aggressive designs at home and abroad.

So, Washington tried to stop communist influence in an oil-producing state on the Soviet Union’s border and help its British ally that was seeing its empire dissolve, and ended up losing two times: the West lost control of Iran’s energy resources and set the stage for the overthrow of the Shah.

Fool me once…

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared the Islamic Republic considers nuclear weapons un-Islamic but we are only a revised fatwa away from a new policy if Israel pursues escalation and regime change. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman declared, “…without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would follow suit as soon as possible.”

Saudi Arabia is a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and a move to develop nuclear weapons would incur sanctions, though it will be a grand opportunity for the world to ask Washington why it lets Jews (Israel) and Hindus (India) slide, but sanctions Muslims (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia.)

Iran’s vice president, and former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, agrees with Haaretz and says Iran will not fall into the Israeli trap, and that “[Israel] thrives on tension, on conflict, and we will not provide it to them.” Zarif also says that Hamas will not be defeated which aligns with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert who declared the destruction of Hamas “will not be achieved.”

Netanyahu is bringing people together but not the way he hoped.

And Israel’s indifference to civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon may rebound to America’s disadvantage. The Pentagon’s lawyers and spokesmen have spent two decades since 9/11 hand-waving away criticism of excess civilian deaths by piously declaring that bombing that wedding party was a real shame but it was “collateral damage” and is “in accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict.”

In the future it may be harder to dismiss tragic follies like the U.S. trying five times to kill Qari Hussain, a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, before getting lucky the sixth time, but in the process killing 128 unlucky people, 13 of them children. The West’s power has allowed it to take advantage of the “double standard of terrorism and state violence” where terrorism is what you call the other guy’s weapon of choice. But the reaction to Israel’s careless targeting and its American patron’s likewise unenviable track record in Iraq and Afghanistan (and its indulgence of Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Yemeni civilians), may erode the “distinction between state violence and terrorism,” and expose civilian officials and military commander to legal jeopardy.  

If the U.S. decides to work with Iran to lessen tensions it will then be pressured to restart the nuclear deal with Tehran. In that case, it will have to craft an entirely new arrangement as Iran has steamed ahead with nuclear research and development after Washington scrapped its commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, and Europe maintained the restrictive measures that were to have expired in 2023 (though Iran didn’t help its case by expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

There is a lot of bad faith to go around.

If the U.S. can start talking to Iran and avert Israeli escalation that will kick off a region-wide war, it will have to get used to a greater role for Russia and China have declared their interest in supporting peace in the region, and conveniently undercutting the U.S. in the process. Iran will continue to follow a multi-vector foreign policy and privilege relations with Russia, China, and the BRICS countries, and eschew the diplomatic monogamy demanded by Washington which views diplomatic relations as a reward for complaint behavior instead of a way to pursue the national interest.

And would U.S. forces be ready and able to attack Iran? No. Ammunition transfers to Ukraine and Israel and the attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen have depleted U.S. inventories; the only ship that can replenish aviation fuel for aircraft carriers ran aground and is out of service, and the U.S. Navy recently sidelined 17 supply ships over a crew shortage.; the GCC declaration of neutrality may mean its airspace is  closed to U.S. forces poised to attack Iran (Tehran has called “unacceptable” the use of GCC airspace or military bases against Iran); and local suppliers of military-grade aviation fuel may not provision U.S. forces.

Another year to remember is 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran (Iraq received extensive  U.S. support after 1982.) The invasion was seen as a direct threat to Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and fostered a sense of national unity and solidarity among Iranians. The war, which lasted until 1988, became a rallying point for the Iranian population, who mobilized in defense of their country and the Islamic Revolution. The conflict also helped consolidate the power of the clerical leadership in Iran, as they framed the war as a defense of Islam and the revolution. 

A U.S. attack on Iran, especially if it is seen in the service of Israel, will be a godsend for Ayatollah Khamenei who will be spoiled for choice: America will be not just the “Great Satan” but also the “New Saddam.”

William Burns, the director of the CIA reported this week, “…we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program.” If that is the case, Israel is not in extremis and there is no need for the U.S. to spearhead an attack on Iran. 

And on top of all that, a recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found, “Whether attacked by its neighbors or Tehran, majorities of Americans oppose using US troops to come to Israel’s defense.” In the wake of two decades of war, a ruinous bout of inflation, and the destruction of Hurricane Helene, Americans may be in the mood for what former president Barack Obama called “nation-building here at home.”   

They say, “Cash rules everything around me,” and Israel’s intentions for Iran are no exception. Iran has proven skills in nuclear technology, and rockets and missiles (as Israel understands after 1 October.) Iran and Israel are the two key native sources of technology in the Middle East and it is important to the recovery of Israel’s post-war economy that Iran remain isolated and unable to be an economic competitor. And Iran has over 90 million potential consumers and employees to Israel’s nine million, and may be a more attractive target for investors.

The Jerusalem Post reports, “The US has reportedly offered Israel a “compensation package” if it refrains from attacking certain targets in Iran,” which is an admission of Washington’s inability to halt escalation. If true, Jerusalem will continue to demand more compensation to prevent its next move, and then the move after that… Extortionists do not stop after the first payment.

Without a moment’s delay, Washington and Tehran should put aside their differences and work today to avert what Ehud Olmert calls “a war for his [Netanyahu’s] personal gains.”

James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

Ukraine’s cross-border Kursk incursion, which has resulted in dozens of towns and settlements being occupied in the Russian southern border region, has entered a third month.

It started on August 6th and appeared a shock to both Kremlin leadership and even many Western leaders. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a hawkish think tank in Washington, DC, says that based on its mapping analysis the Ukrainian army has managed to hold on to about 300 square miles of territory at this point.

The border region was by all accounts very poorly defended, and it took a significant amount of time for Moscow to send reinforcements to begin pushing the Ukrainians back.

A commander of a Ukrainian battalion inside Kursk told CNN of the latest battlefield situation, “Russian advances are mostly happening on the flanks of our foothold.”

“They keep trying to advance but the gains are incremental, somewhere they manage to take a street in the village,” he continued. “But it goes both ways – we also counterattack and push them back.”

While it’s unclear how many troops Ukraine has committed to holding the region, international reports have estimated Russia has sent some 40,000 of its own forces to take it back. Russia has used both conscripts and reservists, but has not appeared to divert large numbers from front line Ukraine positions in Donetsk.

Ukraine’s main base of operations from within Russia is the town of Sudzha, and a location called Veseloe village is said to be its next takeover goal.

One of Kiev’s main goals for the operation was to force Russia to divert large numbers of its forces from Eastern Ukraine to defend its territory in southern Russia.

Politico reported last month that some of Ukraine’s top military commanders actually strongly opposed President Volodymyr Zelensky’s risky gambit to invade Kursk.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the UK, opposed the ambitious scheme when Zelensky first broached the idea earlier this year. Zaluzhny opposed the offensive because there was no clear second step once the border was breached. “He never got a clear answer from Zelensky,” one of the Ukrainian officials said. “He felt it was a gamble.”

Russia intensified its efforts to drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk Oblast on the evening of October 10, advancing deep into the main Ukrainian position and eliminating almost all of the smaller positions in the Glushkovsky District. Russia also intensified its counterattacks… pic.twitter.com/VAlrrMdF6g

— Uncensored News (@uncensorednews9) October 12, 2024

Still, the fact that Ukrainian troops have been able to hold Russian territory for a full two months, and now entering a third, has proven somewhat of a public humiliation for President Putin and the Russian military. Western officials have said Putin is trying to downplay the Kursk saga, however.

“Over time, there is a degree to which the Kursk operation has become normalized,” analyst Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), has described.

Authored by James Rickards via Daily Reckoning,

Over the past century, monetary systems change about every 30–40 years on average. Before 1914, the global monetary system was based on the classical gold standard.

Then in 1944, a new monetary system emerged at Bretton Woods. Under that system, the dollar became the global reserve currency, linked to gold at $35 per ounce. In 1971 Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold. For the first time, the monetary system had no gold backing.

Today, the existing monetary system is over 50 years old, so the world is long overdue for a change.

I’ve written for years about different nations’ persistent efforts to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the leading global reserve currency and the main medium of exchange.

At the same time, I’ve said that such processes don’t happen overnight; instead, they happen slowly and incrementally over decades.

While that’s true, the process is accelerating in ways no one could have anticipated before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response, the U.S. initiated the most aggressive sanctions regime ever in its efforts to punish Russia for invading Ukraine.

The first round of financial targets included obvious attacks such as freezing the U.S. dollar accounts of Russian banks and oligarchs. The second round raised the ante by freezing the dollar accounts of the Central Bank of Russia itself. This was unprecedented except in the case of rogue states such as Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Suddenly the central bank of the world’s ninth-largest economy and third-largest oil producer with over $2.1 trillion in GDP found itself shut out of the global payments and banking systems.

The sanctions went beyond finance and banking to include bans on Russian exports, freezing Russia out of insurance markets (as a way to effectively prohibit oil shipments) and bans on critical exports to Russia including high-tech equipment, semiconductors and popular consumer goods.

Major U.S. and other Western companies from Shell Oil to McDonald’s were pressured to shut down operations in Russia, and many did.

But a large part of the world refused to join the U.S./EU/NATO financial sanctions. It’s not that countries around the world necessarily supported Russia’s invasion. It’s just that they didn’t want U.S. sanctions to disrupt their trading relationships with Russia, which they depend on.

They weren’t willing to harm their economies over a conflict that has no bearing on them, on the other side of the world in many instances.

Look at India and China. They’re the biggest buyers of the oil that Russia might otherwise have sold to Europe. China itself is selling automobiles, semiconductors and machinery to Russia.

Meanwhile, Turkey has greatly expanded its exports to Russia, while Iran is selling weapons to Russia including “kamikaze” drones that act like slow-motion cruise missiles that can linger over targets.

And importantly, the more other economies trade with Russia, the less any of them will need U.S. dollars as a medium of exchange. So the U.S. sanctions have not only failed, they’ve contributed to the long-term decline of the dollar as the world’s leading payment currency.

They’re also driving countries away from using dollars in international transactions for fear that they could become the next target of U.S. displeasure.

I’ve been warning about this for years. Almost 10 years ago, I sat in a secure conference room at the Pentagon and explained to a group of U.S. national security officials from the military, CIA, Treasury and other agencies that the overuse of the U.S. dollar in financial warfare would eventually compel nations to seek dollar alternatives.

Some took note, some ignored the warning and one Treasury official slammed the table and said, “The dollar has been the global reserve currency, it is the global reserve currency now and it always will be the global reserve currency!”

I told him I felt like I was in Whitehall in London in 1913 listening to John Bull say the same thing about sterling. Sterling would begin to be pushed aside by the dollar just one year later with the start of World War I.

More recently, I taught a seminar at the U.S. Army War College on financial warfare in which I explained that U.S. financial sanctions would not have a material impact on Russia, that Russia would not change its behavior in Ukraine based on the sanctions and that the U.S. would suffer more from its own sanctions than Russia because adversaries and neutral countries would create alternative payment platforms that did not use dollars.

I’ve also said to the military and intelligence community, “I don’t think other countries can destroy the dollar, but we can do it ourselves. We are our own worst enemy.”

As I warned, we’re destroying the dollar with the sanctions (and through other misguided policies). The U.S. is doing more to destroy the dollar than our enemies.

Efforts to establish a dollar alternative will see major advances made at the BRICS leaders’ summit in Kazan, Russian Federation on Oct. 22–24. The BRICS summit will announce new members, which is important because expanding membership is the key predicate to launching a viable payment currency. It’ll drive the group closer to the critical mass needed to launch a currency union.

The process will unfold over time, and the dollar won’t be displaced in the immediate future. But the trend away from the dollar is definitely underway. The building de-dollarization movement represents a global sea change, which will only accelerate in the coming years.

But as I said at the outset, it’s long overdue. If you want a historical parallel to how the dollar will fall, look to the U.K. pound sterling.

Many observers assume the 1944 Bretton Woods conference was the moment the U.S. dollar replaced sterling as the world’s leading reserve currency. But that replacement of sterling by the dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency was a process that took 30 years, from 1914–1944.

The 1944 Bretton Woods conference was merely recognition of a process of dollar reserve dominance that was decades in the making.

As with the pound sterling, slippage in the dollar’s role as the leading global reserve currency is not necessarily something that will happen overnight.

But the unprecedented dollar sanctions against Russia have hastened the process. So after 80 years under the Bretton Woods arrangements, 53 years since Nixon closed the gold window and 50 years since the petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia, the reign of King Dollar as the world’s leading payment currency is coming to an end.

And although the process will likely be relatively gradual, no investor should be surprised if it happens sooner rather than later.

It’s like the quote from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. One of the characters asks, “How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways,” the other character says. “Gradually and then suddenly.” The dollar could lose its reserve status gradually — then suddenly.

Donald Trump’s recent return to Butler, PA where he was nearly assassinated due to Secret Service incompetence (or deliberate failure) has got the political left all worked up.  Perhaps in part because Thomas Crooks failed to complete his task despite being given every conceivable opportunity to succeed, but also because Elon Musk was there to support the rally.  Nothing Musk said was particularly shocking to normal Americans, but his comments on the necessity of the 2nd Amendment as a means to keep the 1st Amendment have outraged Democrats.

Coastal progressives in particular have sought to disarm the rest of the nation for decades.  Gun control and ultimately gun confiscation are foundational policies that their movement revolves around.  The question is, why?  Why are they so desperate to violate the Bill of Rights and take firearms away? 

They certainly don’t care about people’s safety.  If they did, they wouldn’t have cheered on the baseless and violent BLM and Antifa riots.  Social media is replete with woke activists calling for the deaths of conservatives.  These are not peaceful people seeking nirvana, they are happy to use violence if they think it will get them more power.

This is a problem that old-school Democrats like Jon Stewart continue to enable while pretending it doesn’t exist.  Stewart, clinging to cultural relevancy on his newly rebooted Daily Show, attempted to lampoon Elon Musk over his assertions on the 2A in Butler, but his strange diatribe about representative democracy is a retro callback to the 1990s and comes off as rather naive.

Jon Stewart has a childlike vision of how society came to exist. The ultimate arbitration in all political discourse is violence, which is precisely why the Founders wanted the public to be armed and not just the state. Basic political theory here.
pic.twitter.com/czw2lUsCnW

— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) October 10, 2024

Does Stewart really believe this nonsense?  It’s hard to say, but the past few years have made his arguments obsolete. 

The 1st Amendment is not protected by the “consent of the governed.”  Americans just experienced a three year period of active censorship under the Biden Administration working closely with Big Tech and social media companies.  Stewart shrugs off such censorship as if it’s overblown and doesn’t matter, but even Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was under pressure from the establishment to silence dissent on a number of issues from covid mandates to Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

Contrary to Stewart’s delusions about democracy, the reality is that the Constitution does not defend itself.  According to polls a large number of Democrats desired the erasure of numerous rights during the covid scare.  They don’t represent the majority, but there is more than enough of them to add weight to any authoritarian effort.  And, the only thing stopping them from getting everything they want is the existence of millions of American gun owners.

It’s not as if the progressive/globalist establishment intends to give up, either.  As John Kerry noted during a climate conference held by the WEF in September, their open intent is to shut down free speech rights regardless of the democratic process.  If they could get rid of the 1st Amendment, they would.  The only reason they haven’t is because the US government doesn’t have a monopoly on force.

In Stewart’s fantasy land, a free Republic is a self perpetuating entity that continues on for eternity once it is set in motion, driven only by the goodness and purity of ideology and the voting process.  But elections can be subverted by top-down corruption and the system has clearly been broken for some time.

One only need to look at the malicious government crackdown on speech happening in the UK to see what happens when a population is disarmed.  There are examples of this across the globe, yet in the world of The Daily Show there is some kind of magical force embedded in “democracy” that protects the populace from abuse.  To be sure, the act of violent rebellion is generally a last resort after all other measures have been exhausted.  It’s just important to recognize that there’s always a breaking point and America is very close now. 

Stewart ironically contradicts his own premise when he claims guns “only protect the speech of the people holding the guns.”  Yes Jon, that’s why the 2A exists, so that everyone’s speech is protected. 

Because a representative government can become a tyrannical government as easily as any other government.  All it takes is time.  The 2A ensures that the “consent of the governed” is never manufactured or forced without the threat of rebellion.  Once a government has a monopoly on violence, the concept of public consent is meaningless and the elites will do as they please.   

  

As Thomas Jefferson once wisely stated in reference to the potential for future citizen rebellion:

“…What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Jon Stewart’s vision of a free society without arms is ludicrous.  It is the same delusion that many progressives have about crime and criminals.  Criminals are never satiated, they will keep taking simply because they can and because no one is stopping them.  Defunding the police or diluting the laws only makes the situation worse.  Tyrants are the same; they will keep taking simply because they can, until someone stops them with guns. 

Stewart may one day find himself thankful for the very citizen militia’s he seems to fear.  They aren’t only prepared to fight for their own constitutional rights, they are prepared to fight for the rights of Americans as a whole.             

By John Kemp of Kemp Energy

Exceptionally low gas prices have driven gas-fired generation to a record high in the United States, in the process eliminating most of the excess inventories inherited from the very mild winter of 2023/24.

U.S. electricity generators produced a record 2,069 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in the first six months of 2024, an increase of 98 billion kWh (5%) compared with the same period a year earlier.

Most of the extra electricity came from gas-fired units (+43 billion kWh), solar parks (+24 billion kWh) and wind farms (+19 billion kWh), with smaller contributions from nuclear (+10 billion kWh) and coal (+4 billion kWh).

Gas-fired units produced a record 857 billion kWh, and accounted for 41% of all generation, which was also a record high, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

As a result, gas generators consumed a record 6,264 billion cubic feet (bcf) of fuel, an increase of 314 bcf compared with 2023.

RECORD LOW GAS COSTS

The gas generation boom has been driven by extraordinarily cheap fuel, with prices declining to the lowest for more than five decades in March, after adjusting for inflation.

Gas generators were able to run for many more hours, including less-efficient single-cycle gas turbines and steam units, which normally only operate at times of peak demand.

Gas units seized share from coal-fired generators as the gas costs dipped below coal on an energy-contained basis between March and May, the first time this had happened since 1975.

On average, gas generators are more efficient, requiring 7,740 British thermal units of fuel to produce each kilowatt-hour of electricity, compared with 10,689 British thermal units for coal generators.

Because of their efficiency advantage, gas units can compete with coal when gas prices are as much as 30-40% more expensive.

Between March and May, however, gas was 10-20% cheaper, creating an enormous financial incentive to switch to gas.

SUMMER DEMAND PEAK

Since the start of the third quarter, gas generators have continued to produce record amounts of electricity, mostly at the expense of coal, according to data published by transmission operators.

In the Lower 48 states, gas units generated a record 540 billion kWh between July and September, up from 525 billion kWh in the same period in 2023.

Gas generation increased even though total electricity production was broadly flat compared with a year earlier.

Extra gas generation came at the expense of coal, where generation slipped to 201 billion kWh down from 221 billion kWh in 2023.

INVENTORIES NORMALIZE

Surging gas generation has combined with slower gas production and an increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to eliminate most of the surplus fuel carried over from last winter.

Working gas stocks in underground storage rose by just 430 bcf over the summer quarter, the smallest seasonal increase since at least 2010, and 45% less than the average for the last decade.

By September 30, inventories were just 185 bcf (+5% or +0.70 standard deviations) above the prior ten-year seasonal average.

The surplus had narrowed from 537 bcf (+21% or +1.42 standard deviations) at the end of June and 634 bcf (+39% or +1.36 standard deviations) at the end of March.

Gas prices have started to climb gradually as the surplus has eroded: front-month futures prices have averaged $2.80 per million British thermal units so far in October up from a low of $1.75 in March. 

But futures are still below the inflation-adjusted averages of $3.24 in October 2023 and $6.52 in October 2022, and barely above the cost of coal.

Gas generation is likely to continue setting record highs unless and until futures prices climb above $3.00-3.25 on a sustained basis.

France has embarked on a quiet force build-up and expansion of its troops and military presence in NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ country of Romania. It plans to send thousands more French troops to the country which shares a large border with Ukraine for major military drills planned next year.

“We used to play war,” French General Bertrand Toujouse was quoted in Politico as saying. “Now there’s a designated enemy, and we train with people with whom we’d actually go to war.”

Politico has further cited French army leadership as saying it has “new marching orders from NATO,” and that ultimately the plan is that by 2027 it “should be able to deploy a war-ready division in 30 days.” 

Within the next iteration of upcoming NATO drills in Romania, France will test “its ability to deploy a brigade, typically 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers, within a 10-day window.”

Over the past two plus years, and ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Feb.2022, France has led the way in providing soldiers for a NATO battle group stationed in Romania, including at least 800 French troops and climbing.

This build-up is happening in the face of constant Kremlin warnings about the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure right up to Russia’s doorstep, a historic grievance which spans back to the 1990s and to the early 2000s. Russia has even recently changed and lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons.

It must be recalled that in Sept. 2023 testimony to the European Union Parliament, then NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (recently retired) admitted that it was the constant US-led push to expand NATO eastward that remains Moscow’s key rationale for invading Ukraine.

Stoltenberg’s revealing words are recounted as follows:

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that.

So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

Fast-forward to this week, Oct. 2024, and a US state-funded source details the following of French military expansion eastward:

France doubled its contribution to the NATO Response Force in Romania on 28 February, 2022, just four days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sending 350 additional soldiers as well as a dozen armoured vehicles and a dozen Leclerc tanks.

Since 1 May 2022, the deployed force, operating under the name “Mission Eagle” (“Mission Aigle“) has taken the form of a multinational battlegroup of which France is the core. France also deploys a MAMBA ground-to-air defense system, logistics and fighting units, totalling more than 1,000 French soldiers.

Last month, additional vehicles from the French 7th Armored Brigade  arrived in Romania. In total eight Leclerc tanks and six armed personnel carriers reached the army camp General Berthelot, just outside Bucarest, escorted by Romanian military police. 

While French President Emmanuel Macron early in the Russia-Ukraine war attempted to play peacemaker and mediator with Russia’s Putin through a series of ‘controversial’ phone calls, any attempt at serious diplomacy between the West and Moscow has long gone out the window.

In the meantime, Ukraine has only kept up its ultra high risk drone attacks deep into Russia, destroying with some success oil depots, gas facilities, and key miliary assets at air bases, including also on the Crimean peninsula. But this has made no different on the front lines in Donetsk, where Ukraine forces are crumbling.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

This might be the first time that average Americans read a top Russian official’s views without a filter…

It’s rare nowadays for Russian officials to give interviews to Western media, both because the first suspect that their words won’t be accurately reported while the second fear being “canceled”, which is why it’s so important that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just gave a written interview to Newsweek.

He concisely summarized his country’s positions on the Ukrainian Conflict, multipolarity, and the US’ upcoming presidential election, which will be reviewed.

Regarding the first, he reaffirmed the official position that Kiev should comply with Putin’s ceasefire request from over the summer and that Moscow wants to address the root causes of this conflict, not just freeze it for some time.

The spring 2022 draft peace treaty could form the basis for resuming talks with Ukraine if the latter revokes its decree on banning them, though some details would have to change. He also warned against letting Ukraine use Western long-range weapons deep inside of Russia.

As for the second, Lavrov emphasized the regional dimension of multipolarity by referencing several leading blocs before describing BRICS as a model of multilateral diplomacy and confirming the importance of the UN as a forum for aligning the interests of all countries. Respect for one another’s interests, a greater say in global governance for developing countries, and mutual cooperation are considered the driving forces behind this trend. China also shares Russia’s views on this too, he said.

Lavrov doesn’t expect that anything will change in Russian-US relations after the election regardless of who wins since both parties are committed to countering his country.

The Kremlin will consider whatever new proposals might be made in the event that this happens, however, thus leaving open the possibility for improving their ties if the will exists on the US’ side and it respects Russia’s interests. He ended by hoping that the US will stop looking for adventures abroad, but this comes off as wishful thinking.

There’s nothing novel in what he said and those who’ve been following this conflict closely won’t learn anything by reading his interview, but the importance rests in the fact that average Americans might hear more about Russia’s actual policies towards these subjects for the first time. They’ve mostly been insulated from this since it hasn’t been accurately reported by their media until now. To Newsweek’s credit, they shared Lavrov’s responses without any editorializing too, thus removing the usual filter.

None of this means that average Americans will now all of a sudden agree with everything that Russia is aiming to achieve in Ukraine and the world more broadly, nor might they be disabused of the false perception that it’s meddling in support of Trump, but it might warm some of them up to these ideas. Depending on the battlefield progress in the coming months, the outcome of the election, and next month’s G20 Summit in Rio, the trappings of a realistic compromise might finally begin to appear.

In that scenario, other Mainstream Media outlets might follow Newsweek’s lead by requesting interviews with Lavrov and other Russian officials. The purpose would be to precondition the public for accepting that the West’s maximalist goals in this proxy war aren’t realistic and that some of Russia’s goals aren’t as threatening as they were earlier portrayed. Of course, it’s also possible that nothing might happen, in which case this interview will stand out as an exception instead of the start of a new trend.

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,

Americans are like members of a quarrelsome family, so intent on arguing their petty grievances around the kitchen table that they don’t smell the rising smoke from the oven. As our nation fumes and the world burns, neither major party presidential candidate is addressing the lapping flames around us.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are not simply ignoring our frightening national debt – both vow to ramp it up. Neither candidate has a serious plan to respond to the threats posed by China, Russia, or Iran.

The strangling costs of health care, the sharp decline in mental health, the disintegration of our public schools – which is sharply tied to the breakdown in the family – are all ignored in a race marked by gauzy references to policy and sharp personal attacks.

It’s not just Harris and Trump – our leadership in Washington has long refused to face up to the growing threats to our republic. Their empty promise is that everything is the other side’s fault. Help us annihilate the other guy and everything will be peaches and cream.

A third-grader wouldn’t fall for this nonsense. Neither side can vanquish the other. A Harris victory will not be the death knell of Trump’s populist message; Trump’s win will not defang progressivism’s leftward lurch. Whatever the outcome, we will continue to be a divided, angry nation. And yet, seemingly thoughtful Americans have bought this line hook, line, and sinker.

More importantly, even if one side did seize absolute power, they have no legitimate plan to right the ship of state. Sixty years of Great Society programs have shown us we can’t spend our way out of problems. The 44 years since the Reagan Revolution show us that tax cuts can only set the stage for reforms that have never come – a task that nears the impossible as ever more Americans become dependent on government aid.

America is in a second Age of Nero – our leaders fiddle as the country burns.

In past crises, the strength, resilience, and ingenuity of the American people have saved us from the depths of want and war. It is not clear we retain that grit.

Instead of demanding leadership, we seem content with the bread and circuses of mindless politics more akin to the gladiatorial battle of Rome than the edifying debates of ancient Greece. The broad embrace of victimhood and grievance on both sides has replaced any question of sacrifice for the common good with the desire to demonize our imagined tormentors. If anything, we savor the fight. It makes us feel important, alive – it gives our lives meaning.

Although we have serious problems, we are no longer a serious people. Hence our choice between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris.

They are not the disease, however, but a symptom. The first step toward a treatment, if not cure, is obvious: we must reject our empty politics of diversion in order to identify and address our urgent crisis. Honesty really would make a difference. It might also make us happier as we re-channel our energies from angry partisanship into thoughtful partnership.

Still, that would only get us so far. Life teaches that identifying one’s problems is the relatively easy part of change – we all know what’s wrong with the other guy and, sometimes, ourselves. Finding the will and discipline to do something about it is far harder. 

We are sinking before that challenge because it still seems possible to ignore the building fire. Many of us have it pretty good; our fears are mitigated by our confidence in escape. It won’t get me.

Ironically, the fact that much of the rest of the world is crumbling imparts a false sense of security. Instead of seeing those problems as canaries in the coal mine, we think, Hey, we’re still doing okay.

It’s true that history confutes the doomsayers. The world does get better in the long run. But that is little consolation to those whose one short life is spent during the ebbing flow.

History also teaches that judgment for past failure often comes with sudden swiftness, like a thief in the night. As we think about the immense problems we are allowing to smolder, recall Ernest Hemingway’s pithy warning from “The Sun Also Rises.”

“How did you go bankrupt?” one character asks a friend.

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.