The War on Iran, observed beyond geopolitics: power, belief, and history shaping conflict beyond material interests
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Australia’s Fuels Dependence Turns Into a Crisis
Australia is on its way to becoming the first advanced economy major victim of the Iran war due to baffling policy choices.
Iran War: Accelerating Economic Damage Creates Urgency on Strait of Hormuz Closure; Shambolic US Assault Preparations Continue; Iran Demands Recognition of Sovereignity Over Strait; Houthis Set to Strangle Red Sea Traffic if US Makes Ground Attack
Trump’s fight with the Iran war tar baby is at great risk of creating even more dangerous escalation.
Satyajit Das: The Modern ‘Share the Scraps’ Economy
A clinical look at the extractive behavior that all that share, erm, sharing economy talk obscures.
How the US Became an International Serial Killer
An Iran-focused update on America’s shameful, destabilizing status as global killer in chief
Coffee Break: OpenAI, Sora, Iran, the Ellison Empire, and Maybe a Recognition Event?
OpenAI’s shutdown of its Sora video generation engine service and the ensuing cancellation of a $1 billion deal with Disney may represent a recognition event for the company and the larger LLM economic boom.
Easing Capital, Reviving Risk: The Quiet Return of Too Big to Fail
Less capital, more risk. The latest move on big-bank rules suggests that too big to fail was never solved, only deferred.
Iran War: Mainstream Media Starting to Acknowledge Potential Iran Victory as Trump Flails About, Readying Ground Assault; EU Reversal on Russia Oil Sanctions, Emergency Actions in Asia, Even China, Shows Accelerating Economic Damage
Today’s Iran war update: the current reduction in temperatures does not mean a resolution of the war or damage to the global economy is nigh.
Clearing the Air: Fifty Answers to Our Climate Questions
We discussed Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben earlier this year. His message is that climate catastrophe is not foreordained, even if the current “weather” is odd and suggests that something in seriously amiss. I grew up in the American South, where “hot” is the normal state of being from April through October. One […]
Concentration Camps, US Style: Dehumanization for Fun and Profit
Rebecca Gordon describes US concentration camps, um, detention centers, as money-driven vehicles for authoritarianism and abuse.
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Cheap Guidance and Big Consequences
The most important change in modern warfare is not the proliferation of drones or missiles, but the collapse in the cost of precision guidance. Weapons no longer need to be highly sophisticated to be accurate—they only need to be good enough, and “good enough” is now cheap.
Economic Questions: The Robert Nozick Question
On the simplistic reasoning Robert Nozick used to justify inequality and a minimal state
