Alexander Dugin delivers a blistering verdict on Serbia’s dangerous turn, the coming energy collapse of Europe, and the irreversible moment when artificial intelligence slipped the leash and began to act like us, only without a conscience.
Conversation with Alexander Dugin on the Sputnik TV program Escalation.
Host: Let’s begin with a very sharp situation that has stirred public opinion across several fronts—both in the Russian world and in the broader Slavic one. Zelensky has arrived in Serbia. This is his first visit to Belgrade in his current capacity. Events were held with the Serbian president, a drone factory is being opened in Serbia, and there was talk of possible contributions by the Kiev regime in this field. And of course a video has spread widely online in which a German journalist—God forgive the phrasing—asks what Europeans can do to kill more Russians (he corrected himself to “Russian soldiers,” but that is how it landed). I would like to hear your thoughts both on the visit as a whole and on the specific points connected with it.
Alexander Dugin: If we place this episode in the context of our problems across the post-Soviet space—with Armenia or other former Soviet republics—it fits the same pattern. Long-standing, inertial ties, the traditional friendship between Russia and Serbia that once seemed unshakable, are now crumbling, and it is painful. I love the Serbian people deeply; I have invested a great deal of myself in Serbia and in the development of our relations. For me this is a profound shock. The Serbs once seemed to be the people who loved us when no one else did, and who did not betray us when everyone else had.
What Vučić is doing—and the issue is specifically him—is not new. He is trying to keep a foot in both camps: one in Europe, the other in the Serbian patriotic and pro-Russian movement. He appears to have more than two feet, managing somehow to balance a pro-European, globalist course while still trying to please everyone. Because he has held power for a long time, despite internal unrest and opposition, the approach has produced results. Unfortunately, when one watches foreign policy, one is forced to concede that even outright opportunists who cling to power for years end up proving Machiavelli’s cynical point: the chief measure of a ruler is not morality but how long he remains in the chair.
Vučić manoeuvres right up to the edge, betraying whoever can be betrayed, then takes a step back. This foxy policy of trying to please both sides delivers results for him, but it strikes idealists hard—those Serbs who love Russia sincerely rather than out of convenience, and those Russians who feel a deep historical attachment to the Serbs. After all, it was for the sake of the Serbs, out of loyalty to our Orthodox brothers in the Balkans, that we entered the First World War and lost an empire. The Serbs once treated us the same way. Vučić’s behaviour therefore wounds the idealistic dimension of politics, which must never be dismissed.
Real politics always operates somewhere between idealism and pure opportunism—a compromise between sincerity and cynicism. Outright devilry is rare; even Trump came to power cloaked in the right slogans before disappointing the better part of the American people. Geopolitics always balances on that edge. But Vučić has now reached a line beyond which his actions begin to contradict both the deeper aspirations of the Serbian people and our own relations.
By receiving the terrorist Zelensky and speaking of creating and developing drones in order to kill us—something he had never gone so far as to do before—Vučić has stepped right up to the red line. He has not yet crossed it completely, because he immediately stepped back, allocating funds and declaring that “Russia is doing well” and so on, so as not to be misunderstood. Yet he stands in dangerous proximity to that line. And because we do not react to red lines with great speed—I believe we have drawn the necessary conclusions, but we are in no hurry, preferring to leave room for retreat—we treat our other partners in the same way.
The results are limited. We forgive those who insult and challenge us in the hope that they will come to their senses. They rarely do. More often they conclude that the red lines can simply be pushed further and take the next insolent step. At the same time we have little leverage with which to punish Vučić. We are hardly going to back pro-Western movements financed by Soros in order to remove him; that would be worse still. So we too are forced to manoeuvre in this intermediate space.
I am an idealist and a philosopher; I live a contemplative life—bios theoretikos, as the ancients put it. That is why I see the situation with particular severity. This intermediate murk, the constant to-and-fro, the dance of opportunists, pragmatists and political technologists, merely irritates me. I view it through the Gospel words: let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no. If you stand with the Russians, then stand with the Russians—suffer with us and share our hardships. We come to the aid of others not for gain but because we are people of principle.
I believe our president acts in precisely this spirit. It is painful for him as well to watch the constant vacillations of these small, half-hearted figures. What conclusion do I draw? We need to formulate our maximum programme—the idealistic framework of Russian policy. We must state clearly to everyone—those already with us, those who may join us, the waverers and our enemies—how we see the world, Europe, global security and multipolarity. What we do not need is the pragmatic style of applying a little pressure, then pulling back, issuing a threat and allowing the challenge to dissipate (the approach we have taken both with Pashinyan and with Vučić).
Instead we should declare our goal after the inevitable victory—even if the price is the complete destruction of Ukraine’s economy and military industry. We have already begun this process, having abandoned half-measures and started to fight in earnest. We will stop only when we are certain that our victory is irreversible, and by then Russia itself will be a different country. It would be valuable to set out now, for all to hear, our vision of the future.
Perhaps we should issue a clear declaration of what awaits our enemies and our friends after victory. Our friends, for example, would receive Kosovo, a free Eastern Europe liberated from NATO occupation and ready to serve as a frontier zone; a free Ukraine within a single East Slavic state; genuine integration of the post-Soviet space for the benefit of all its peoples, with sovereignty and nuclear protection guaranteed for everyone.
Those who stood with us without hesitation—North Korea among them—we would thank to the fullest and do everything possible for the people who sacrificed themselves in this war. China we would repay with interest, while remembering its earlier hesitations. Iran, which has shown real courage, we would support and reward comprehensively. We would offer a different vision of the world—multipolar and just—in which a great Russia becomes the guarantor of freedom and sovereignty against Western hegemony for every region of the planet.
As for the West, we would repay it three times over: we would drive the European economy toward collapse and reduce American influence to its own borders. Let them attend to their own affairs; they have Canada and the United States, and that should suffice. The rest we would free: Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina. I realise many will say we are aiming too high. Yet more than once in our history we have aimed high and, through great effort, achieved what we set out to do. Russian words should be taken seriously.
If we were to set out such a maximum programme of foreign policy—whom we will help, whom we will thank, whom we will punish, what order we will establish in a Europe reduced to its natural proportions, and what we will offer the United States once it has suffered the defeat toward which we are working—then everything would become clear and we could proceed from that foundation. At present we grant some twenty years, others ten; we threaten some and support others. From a proactive rather than reactive policy we should shape our incentives and our threats. The entire picture would change, I assure you.
Many assume we are playing the same short-term game as these petty politicians of the moment. But Russia is a great country—a country of long time, vast space and large historical cycles. We are a people capable of pursuing a goal across centuries, not merely across one or two presidential terms. We think in centuries and in the most serious categories. Today there is a noticeable absence of any declaration of our vision of the future world. It may seem unrealisable now or even in the medium term, yet if we establish this standard and this goal we will move toward it consistently. Then any Vučić, Pashinyan, Maia Sandu or anyone else will think a hundred times before testing our resolve and crossing red lines, because such acts amount to a spit in our face.
With this visit by Zelensky and by permitting talk of how many more Russians can be killed, Vučić has spat in our face. He has betrayed both the Russo-Serbian friendship and Serbia’s own interests. Of course we must not act impulsively or seek spontaneous revenge, lest we play into the hands of our enemies and those of the Serbian people. We are not adventurers.
Yet the need for serious global politics and for a large-scale vision of our future has become urgent. Too often today we live by historical reminiscences: we helped the Serbs in the First World War, we liberated others in the Great Patriotic War. All of that is true and valuable, but it is the past. Memory fades, and people ask: “Yes, that happened—but what awaits us tomorrow?” What we lack is a contemporary Russian sense of scale.
A well-known Egyptian journalist named Amr, who has interviewed me for many years, recently observed that Dugin’s positions are becoming more radical, and that as Russia’s immediate situation grows more difficult, the appetite of our global vision only increases. He is entirely right. We must not proceed from the calculations of the moment. Our planning must be on a century-long scale. We must see the depth of historical processes.
Only then will we find the proper tone for dealing with the most varied elites—neutral, hostile, helpful or hesitant. We should tell them openly: “If you continue this ambiguous policy, then after our victory—and victory will come—we will act in such-and-such a way.” Once our maximum position is clearly stated, we will begin to achieve results even now.
There will of course be many specialists in compromise, but first we must have the resolve to describe this larger image of a multipolar, just world free of Western hegemony—the world that Russia requires. We should not be afraid to say that the precondition for that world is our victory in Ukraine and a global victory over Western hegemony. We are preparing for this and will continue in this direction for as long as necessary. Let each side decide and declare its “yes” or its “no.” That inner resolve is capable of transforming our entire foreign policy.
Host: There is little to add, because I had intended to ask whether the Serbs themselves might have expected more from Russia five, ten, twenty or twenty-five years ago. You have essentially closed that question by insisting on the need to state our guidelines clearly for everyone. Let me therefore turn to Turkey’s initiative. Turkey has proposed a Black Sea truce and a moratorium on strikes against merchant shipping. It is a strange proposal, given that everyone knows who is striking the ships, yet Ankara addresses the Kiev regime and Russia as if they were equals—this from Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. How should we deal with Turkey? It is a country that sits not on two chairs but on eighteen, and so far collects dividends from all of them.
Alexander Dugin: This is exactly the same phenomenon we have been discussing—the same small-scale balancing. Turkey is a partner; it is a great Eurasian people, in many respects oriented against the West. Yet its policy year after year rests on careful equilibration. The Turks say: let us conclude a truce and stop the strikes. Our reply should be: we will decide ourselves what is to be done in the Black Sea and on Ukrainian territory. First we will liberate it and do whatever is required for victory; only then will we discuss other matters.
Let us not do it now; let us postpone all such appeals. We are acting with complete symmetry: we are cutting Ukraine off from the sea, rendering Odessa no longer a functioning port, ensuring that no ship and no cargo will reach it. We are right to do so, regardless of requests from Turkish or Western interlocutors. The moment we seize the initiative and begin to win, they appear with calls to stop, to wait, not to press our advantage—and they continue until they judge the moment right to support our enemies again.
Let us finish the matter of Odessa, deprive Ukraine entirely of access to the sea, and only afterwards speak with Turkey. Better still, hold the conversation after we have liberated the whole of Ukraine. Russia has always known how to combine wisdom with flexibility. Once we have achieved our aims and freed Ukraine, we can tell the Turks: “You want shipping? By all means send your vessels to our Russian port of Odessa; we will gladly receive them.” We will trade and supply one another with whatever is needed—uranium for nuclear plants or tomatoes, as the case may be.
Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings appeared in 1978, when the political world still seemed to be divided into two great camps. Seen in 2026, the film looks strangely suited to another age. Its Middle-earth is not a single political space. It is a broken map of old peoples, kingdoms, tribes, forests, fortresses, and ruined civilizations, each with its own laws and heritage. Hobbits do not wish to become Men. Dwarves do not wish to become Elves. Rohan does not wish to become Gondor. Even those who fight the same enemy remain themselves. Against them stands Sauron, whose aim is quite different. He does not merely want more land. He possesses the One Ring, an instrument whose purpose is to place many wills beneath one will. That is why Bakshi’s film can be read as a parable of the passing of the unipolar age. The political struggle of our own time is increasingly about the same question: must the world answer to one center, one set of rules, and one scale of rank, or can several great civilizations and regional powers exist beside one another without surrendering their unique characters? The word now used for the second possibility is multipolarity. China’s president speaks openly of an “equal and orderly multipolar world,” while BRICS states use much the same language.
Bakshi makes the principle of the One Ring clear before the main story has properly begun. His prologue shows the Rings being made, Sauron gathering power, Isildur taking the Ring after Sauron’s fall, and the long chain of possession that finally brings it to Bilbo and Frodo. The important fact is that nobody can safely use the Ring against its maker. The weapon carries the logic of its maker within it. Boromir will later fail to understand this, but Gandalf already knows it. The Ring promises security, order, victory, and the power to settle matters once and for all. It therefore promises what every universal empire promises. The price is that there can be no true independence beneath it. This is close to the crisis of the post-Cold War system. After 1991, Western institutions had no rival of equal weight, and Western political language often treated one model of government, trade, and security as the end point towards which all serious states should move. That moment has passed. China has become a pole in its own right. Russia has chosen confrontation rather than absorption into a Western security order. India works with Washington in some fields while refusing to become an American satellite. Middle powers across Asia increasingly speak in terms of strategic autonomy rather than permanent obedience to either Washington or Beijing. Reuters reported in July that Asian governments and investors were adjusting to US-China rivalry by seeking flexible partnerships instead of making a simple choice between the two camps. The Ring still exists as a temptation, but fewer states believe that one hand should wear it.
The Council of Elrond is therefore one of the most political scenes in Bakshi’s film. Frodo reaches Rivendell after the terror of the Black Riders, but the answer to Sauron is not the creation of a second Sauron. Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Gandalf meet because none can settle the matter alone. They distrust one another. They remember old injuries. Their interests are not the same. Yet they can agree on a limited common task. This is much closer to multipolar politics than the neat alliance systems of the twentieth century. BRICS is a useful present-day example because its members are not alike. India and China have their own rivalry. Iran and the United Arab Emirates can sit in the same organization while taking opposed positions on grave questions. At the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May 2026, those differences were so sharp over the war involving Iran that the ministers failed to produce a common statement. That failure does not disprove multipolarity. It reveals what multipolarity is. Rivendell is not a parliament of identical states. Nobody arrives there after surrendering his history. Cooperation exists because difference exists. The Fellowship is strong when its members agree on what must be done while remaining Elf, Dwarf, Man, Wizard, and Hobbit. It would cease to be a fellowship if Elrond demanded that everyone become an Elf.
Saruman represents the opposite response to the fall of an old order. When Gandalf comes to him, Saruman has already decided that Sauron’s rise cannot be stopped. His answer is accommodation with power. He proposes that the wise should join the winning side and perhaps guide it from within. Gandalf refuses, and Saruman imprisons him. The scene captures a choice faced by states whenever a dominant power rises: submit, balance, or try to remain outside the struggle. During the unipolar decades, many governments concluded that there was little point in resisting American primacy because access to finance, technology, security, and trade depended heavily on institutions in which the United States and its allies held great influence. The new world is less simple. A state sanctioned by one bloc may find markets, weapons, credit, or diplomatic support in another. A country pressured by Washington may turn towards Beijing. A country wary of Beijing may strengthen ties with Washington, Tokyo, Delhi, or Canberra. Others try to deal with all of them. The Pacific now shows this process in miniature. China’s recent missile test has sharpened rivalry there, while Fiji has signed a defense treaty with Australia and other island governments have drawn closer to Beijing. The Pacific states have not responded as one obedient mass; their divisions prevented a common regional statement on the Chinese test. The small countries are not merely squares on somebody else’s chessboard. Like the peoples of Middle-earth, they are learning that competition among greater powers can give weaker actors room to bargain.
Bakshi’s Moria gives this political change a darker form. The Fellowship cannot take the easy road across the mountains and must enter a dead underground kingdom. There they find the remains of an older power and discover that its wealth could not save it. Orcs pour through the halls, and Gandalf finally confronts the Balrog on the bridge before falling into the abyss. Bakshi’s rough rotoscoped figures make these scenes feel less like polished fantasy than like newsreel images from some half-remembered war. The enemies move in dark masses. Individual faces disappear. Power becomes mechanical. This matters because multipolarity does not mean the end of war. It may mean the return of wars in which several industrial systems, supply chains, intelligence networks, and military partners feed the same battlefield. Ukraine shows that now. Russia and Ukraine fight directly, but the war reaches far beyond them through weapons, finance, satellite systems, sanctions, drones, intelligence, and foreign military aid. On August 11, 2026, Ukrainian officials said Russia had used North Korean ballistic missiles in recent attacks, another sign of the growing military relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang. Moria warns against the childish belief that a world with several poles will automatically be gentle. A dungeon can have many entrances. A war can have many suppliers. The end of one center of power does not end the struggle for power.
Boromir provides the film’s clearest warning for those who oppose a hegemon. He does not secretly love Sauron. He hates him. His mistake is more interesting. He thinks Gondor can take the Ring and use it for a better purpose. At last he tries to seize it from Frodo, then recovers his honor by defending Merry and Pippin and dying in the attempt. His error is the ancient error of the challenger: believing that the master’s instrument becomes innocent when placed in different hands. A multipolar order could fail in exactly this way. There is little gain in replacing one universal system with another, or one financial monopoly with another, or one empire of rules with an empire flying a different flag. The more interesting changes now taking place are those that multiply choices. At the BRICS summit in India on August 11, 2026, member states were discussing ways to connect national payment systems and central-bank digital currencies, while India continues to promote greater use of local currencies in international trade. The significance lies less in creating a new master currency than in reducing dependence on any single channel. Boromir wants Gondor to possess the One Ring. A true multipolar system would be safer if there were no One Ring at all.
Rohan shows what such a world looks like on the ground. When Gandalf returns and reaches Théoden, the question is not whether Rohan should dissolve itself into some larger political unit. It is whether Rohan will remain Rohan. Théoden must defend his own people, his own land, and his own fortress. At Helm’s Deep, Bakshi gives us a battle fought by a particular kingdom on a particular piece of earth. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf aid it, but they do not replace it. Gandalf eventually returns with the Riders of Rohan and breaks Saruman’s assault. Here lies the distinction between alliance and absorption. A multipolar order does not require nations to live alone. It requires them to retain the right to decide why, when, and with whom they cooperate. India can belong to BRICS while pursuing its own interests with the United States. Pacific nations can trade with China while maintaining security links with Australia or America. Asian governments can refuse the demand to choose one permanent camp. Even BRICS itself now contains governments whose interests clash sharply, which is why its internal arguments are as important as its declarations. Helm’s Deep is defended through help from outside, but the Rohirrim remain masters of their own house. That is the political heart of multipolarity: cooperation without the surrender of form.
Bakshi’s film ends before Tolkien’s story does, and that unfinished quality now works in its favor. Frodo and Sam are still on the road with Gollum. Sauron remains in Mordor. Saruman’s army has been beaten at Helm’s Deep, but the great war is not over. There is no final settlement and no permanent peace. Our own age has the same unfinished character. BRICS expands its machinery while arguing internally. China calls for multipolarity while its growing military strength alarms some of its neighbors. Russia fights a major European war while drawing military support from North Korea. Asian states seek room between Washington and Beijing rather than accepting a clean division of the world. The old unipolar moment is fading, but what follows it has not yet taken a fixed shape. Bakshi’s Middle-earth offers a useful rule for judging the result. Multipolarity is not good merely because there are several strong powers. Saruman and Sauron are two powers, after all. The better order is one in which no ruler can gather all peoples beneath a single will. The task is therefore larger than defeating the present bearer of the Ring. It is to build a world in which nobody can wear it.
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Alexander Dugin delivers a blistering verdict on Serbia’s dangerous turn, the coming energy collapse of Europe, and the irreversible moment when artificial intelligence slipped the leash and began to act like us, only without a conscience.
Conversation with Alexander Dugin on the Sputnik TV program Escalation.
Host: Let’s begin with a very sharp situation that has stirred public opinion across several fronts—both in the Russian world and in the broader Slavic one. Zelensky has arrived in Serbia. This is his first visit to Belgrade in his current capacity. Events were held with the Serbian president, a drone factory is being opened in Serbia, and there was talk of possible contributions by the Kiev regime in this field. And of course a video has spread widely online in which a German journalist—God forgive the phrasing—asks what Europeans can do to kill more Russians (he corrected himself to “Russian soldiers,” but that is how it landed). I would like to hear your thoughts both on the visit as a whole and on the specific points connected with it.
Alexander Dugin: If we place this episode in the context of our problems across the post-Soviet space—with Armenia or other former Soviet republics—it fits the same pattern. Long-standing, inertial ties, the traditional friendship between Russia and Serbia that once seemed unshakable, are now crumbling, and it is painful. I love the Serbian people deeply; I have invested a great deal of myself in Serbia and in the development of our relations. For me this is a profound shock. The Serbs once seemed to be the people who loved us when no one else did, and who did not betray us when everyone else had.
What Vučić is doing—and the issue is specifically him—is not new. He is trying to keep a foot in both camps: one in Europe, the other in the Serbian patriotic and pro-Russian movement. He appears to have more than two feet, managing somehow to balance a pro-European, globalist course while still trying to please everyone. Because he has held power for a long time, despite internal unrest and opposition, the approach has produced results. Unfortunately, when one watches foreign policy, one is forced to concede that even outright opportunists who cling to power for years end up proving Machiavelli’s cynical point: the chief measure of a ruler is not morality but how long he remains in the chair.
Vučić manoeuvres right up to the edge, betraying whoever can be betrayed, then takes a step back. This foxy policy of trying to please both sides delivers results for him, but it strikes idealists hard—those Serbs who love Russia sincerely rather than out of convenience, and those Russians who feel a deep historical attachment to the Serbs. After all, it was for the sake of the Serbs, out of loyalty to our Orthodox brothers in the Balkans, that we entered the First World War and lost an empire. The Serbs once treated us the same way. Vučić’s behaviour therefore wounds the idealistic dimension of politics, which must never be dismissed.
Real politics always operates somewhere between idealism and pure opportunism—a compromise between sincerity and cynicism. Outright devilry is rare; even Trump came to power cloaked in the right slogans before disappointing the better part of the American people. Geopolitics always balances on that edge. But Vučić has now reached a line beyond which his actions begin to contradict both the deeper aspirations of the Serbian people and our own relations.
By receiving the terrorist Zelensky and speaking of creating and developing drones in order to kill us—something he had never gone so far as to do before—Vučić has stepped right up to the red line. He has not yet crossed it completely, because he immediately stepped back, allocating funds and declaring that “Russia is doing well” and so on, so as not to be misunderstood. Yet he stands in dangerous proximity to that line. And because we do not react to red lines with great speed—I believe we have drawn the necessary conclusions, but we are in no hurry, preferring to leave room for retreat—we treat our other partners in the same way.
The results are limited. We forgive those who insult and challenge us in the hope that they will come to their senses. They rarely do. More often they conclude that the red lines can simply be pushed further and take the next insolent step. At the same time we have little leverage with which to punish Vučić. We are hardly going to back pro-Western movements financed by Soros in order to remove him; that would be worse still. So we too are forced to manoeuvre in this intermediate space.
I am an idealist and a philosopher; I live a contemplative life—bios theoretikos, as the ancients put it. That is why I see the situation with particular severity. This intermediate murk, the constant to-and-fro, the dance of opportunists, pragmatists and political technologists, merely irritates me. I view it through the Gospel words: let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no. If you stand with the Russians, then stand with the Russians—suffer with us and share our hardships. We come to the aid of others not for gain but because we are people of principle.
I believe our president acts in precisely this spirit. It is painful for him as well to watch the constant vacillations of these small, half-hearted figures. What conclusion do I draw? We need to formulate our maximum programme—the idealistic framework of Russian policy. We must state clearly to everyone—those already with us, those who may join us, the waverers and our enemies—how we see the world, Europe, global security and multipolarity. What we do not need is the pragmatic style of applying a little pressure, then pulling back, issuing a threat and allowing the challenge to dissipate (the approach we have taken both with Pashinyan and with Vučić).
Instead we should declare our goal after the inevitable victory—even if the price is the complete destruction of Ukraine’s economy and military industry. We have already begun this process, having abandoned half-measures and started to fight in earnest. We will stop only when we are certain that our victory is irreversible, and by then Russia itself will be a different country. It would be valuable to set out now, for all to hear, our vision of the future.
Perhaps we should issue a clear declaration of what awaits our enemies and our friends after victory. Our friends, for example, would receive Kosovo, a free Eastern Europe liberated from NATO occupation and ready to serve as a frontier zone; a free Ukraine within a single East Slavic state; genuine integration of the post-Soviet space for the benefit of all its peoples, with sovereignty and nuclear protection guaranteed for everyone.
Those who stood with us without hesitation—North Korea among them—we would thank to the fullest and do everything possible for the people who sacrificed themselves in this war. China we would repay with interest, while remembering its earlier hesitations. Iran, which has shown real courage, we would support and reward comprehensively. We would offer a different vision of the world—multipolar and just—in which a great Russia becomes the guarantor of freedom and sovereignty against Western hegemony for every region of the planet.
As for the West, we would repay it three times over: we would drive the European economy toward collapse and reduce American influence to its own borders. Let them attend to their own affairs; they have Canada and the United States, and that should suffice. The rest we would free: Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina. I realise many will say we are aiming too high. Yet more than once in our history we have aimed high and, through great effort, achieved what we set out to do. Russian words should be taken seriously.
If we were to set out such a maximum programme of foreign policy—whom we will help, whom we will thank, whom we will punish, what order we will establish in a Europe reduced to its natural proportions, and what we will offer the United States once it has suffered the defeat toward which we are working—then everything would become clear and we could proceed from that foundation. At present we grant some twenty years, others ten; we threaten some and support others. From a proactive rather than reactive policy we should shape our incentives and our threats. The entire picture would change, I assure you.
Many assume we are playing the same short-term game as these petty politicians of the moment. But Russia is a great country—a country of long time, vast space and large historical cycles. We are a people capable of pursuing a goal across centuries, not merely across one or two presidential terms. We think in centuries and in the most serious categories. Today there is a noticeable absence of any declaration of our vision of the future world. It may seem unrealisable now or even in the medium term, yet if we establish this standard and this goal we will move toward it consistently. Then any Vučić, Pashinyan, Maia Sandu or anyone else will think a hundred times before testing our resolve and crossing red lines, because such acts amount to a spit in our face.
With this visit by Zelensky and by permitting talk of how many more Russians can be killed, Vučić has spat in our face. He has betrayed both the Russo-Serbian friendship and Serbia’s own interests. Of course we must not act impulsively or seek spontaneous revenge, lest we play into the hands of our enemies and those of the Serbian people. We are not adventurers.
Yet the need for serious global politics and for a large-scale vision of our future has become urgent. Too often today we live by historical reminiscences: we helped the Serbs in the First World War, we liberated others in the Great Patriotic War. All of that is true and valuable, but it is the past. Memory fades, and people ask: “Yes, that happened—but what awaits us tomorrow?” What we lack is a contemporary Russian sense of scale.
A well-known Egyptian journalist named Amr, who has interviewed me for many years, recently observed that Dugin’s positions are becoming more radical, and that as Russia’s immediate situation grows more difficult, the appetite of our global vision only increases. He is entirely right. We must not proceed from the calculations of the moment. Our planning must be on a century-long scale. We must see the depth of historical processes.
Only then will we find the proper tone for dealing with the most varied elites—neutral, hostile, helpful or hesitant. We should tell them openly: “If you continue this ambiguous policy, then after our victory—and victory will come—we will act in such-and-such a way.” Once our maximum position is clearly stated, we will begin to achieve results even now.
There will of course be many specialists in compromise, but first we must have the resolve to describe this larger image of a multipolar, just world free of Western hegemony—the world that Russia requires. We should not be afraid to say that the precondition for that world is our victory in Ukraine and a global victory over Western hegemony. We are preparing for this and will continue in this direction for as long as necessary. Let each side decide and declare its “yes” or its “no.” That inner resolve is capable of transforming our entire foreign policy.
Host: There is little to add, because I had intended to ask whether the Serbs themselves might have expected more from Russia five, ten, twenty or twenty-five years ago. You have essentially closed that question by insisting on the need to state our guidelines clearly for everyone. Let me therefore turn to Turkey’s initiative. Turkey has proposed a Black Sea truce and a moratorium on strikes against merchant shipping. It is a strange proposal, given that everyone knows who is striking the ships, yet Ankara addresses the Kiev regime and Russia as if they were equals—this from Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. How should we deal with Turkey? It is a country that sits not on two chairs but on eighteen, and so far collects dividends from all of them.
Alexander Dugin: This is exactly the same phenomenon we have been discussing—the same small-scale balancing. Turkey is a partner; it is a great Eurasian people, in many respects oriented against the West. Yet its policy year after year rests on careful equilibration. The Turks say: let us conclude a truce and stop the strikes. Our reply should be: we will decide ourselves what is to be done in the Black Sea and on Ukrainian territory. First we will liberate it and do whatever is required for victory; only then will we discuss other matters.
Let us not do it now; let us postpone all such appeals. We are acting with complete symmetry: we are cutting Ukraine off from the sea, rendering Odessa no longer a functioning port, ensuring that no ship and no cargo will reach it. We are right to do so, regardless of requests from Turkish or Western interlocutors. The moment we seize the initiative and begin to win, they appear with calls to stop, to wait, not to press our advantage—and they continue until they judge the moment right to support our enemies again.
Let us finish the matter of Odessa, deprive Ukraine entirely of access to the sea, and only afterwards speak with Turkey. Better still, hold the conversation after we have liberated the whole of Ukraine. Russia has always known how to combine wisdom with flexibility. Once we have achieved our aims and freed Ukraine, we can tell the Turks: “You want shipping? By all means send your vessels to our Russian port of Odessa; we will gladly receive them.” We will trade and supply one another with whatever is needed—uranium for nuclear plants or tomatoes, as the case may be.
Host: So they still lack a Greater Turan, and in principle they still lack Crimea as well…
Alexander Dugin: No. Any talk of a Greater Turan will meet the same fate as the project of a “Greater Ukraine.” Look what remains of that—only smoking fragments. Exactly the same will happen to any scheme built at our expense. Each will be reduced to ashes. We live in a world in which humanitarian treaties, contracts and agreements—economic or political—no longer hold. There is no longer any stable counterpart with whom one can reliably negotiate.
We must construct a new world that suits us. That requires dismantling the existing order and building another in its place. We will certainly reserve a worthy, sovereign and free place for Turkey within it; we regard the Turkish people with genuine goodwill. But only afterwards.
When we have finished the present, most acute phase of the conflict—because an existential challenge has been issued to us—we must prove two things: first, that we exist at all, and second, that we are precisely what we claim to be—a genuine subject, a sovereign world power. Until we have liberated the whole of Ukraine we will have proved neither, and no one will believe us.
Host: Let me turn to another topic that has been widely discussed over the past week and a little earlier. Because of the extreme heat across the European part of the continent, demand for fuel to run air-conditioning systems has risen sharply. There have been other secondary effects: the Danube has become so shallow that Hungary had to shut down temporarily a nuclear power plant that supplies a large share of the country’s electricity. The observation that energy resources are critical not only in winter but also in summer has been made before, yet this year it is heard with particular force. How does this illuminate the problems of contemporary Europe—economic, energy-related, and perhaps even philosophical?
Alexander Dugin: Energy is a concept of extraordinary importance for modern society. We live in an artificial manner, dependent on power stations, refineries and energy generation far more than we usually realise. When everything is quiet and orderly we scarcely notice: winters are warm, summers are cool, transport runs. The moment we are cut off from energy resources—as is happening now because of the war in Ukraine—we begin to understand how harsh the surrounding world actually is. Nature is severe. Watching rain or falling snow can be romantic only when one has heat. Without energy, that aesthetic gives way to a struggle for survival.
Ukraine has now run up against this in full force, and we are beginning to feel it too, because the enemy is landing painful counter-strikes. We are starting to realise that the everyday comforts we take for granted—pizza delivery, petrol available at every station—do not appear out of thin air. Behind them stand oil workers and human labour, and the oil itself is a spark of energy the Earth stored up over millions of years. We need a sharper sense of our presence in this world.
The great German philosopher Martin Heidegger—we have little affection for the Germans at the moment, and deservedly so, yet their thinkers were remarkable—said that when a human being treats the world merely as an external object given for his use, he loses not only the world but himself. One has to think in terms of “being-in-the-world” (in-der-Welt-sein). The concept demands full awareness of reality: if there is oil, someone is extracting and refining it; if there is energy, engineers are building dams and power stations.
If we become more deeply conscious of this “being-in-the-world,” we will relate differently to everything—including decisions about war and strikes on critical infrastructure—and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. We are bound inseparably to the world around us. If we alienate ourselves from it, it alienates itself from us; if we stop paying careful attention to being, it turns its back on us and brings cold and catastrophe. Nature is inherently harsh: it contains predators, death, cold, and elements of self-destruction, and we add our own terrible share to it.
I believe that with Ukraine we have already understood everything. At first we acted reluctantly, but now we have grasped how serious the situation is. We will accelerate the process, and by autumn there will be no energy generation left in Ukraine—apart, perhaps, from campfires, which we will still allow them for warmth; we are not beasts. Without energy they will have nothing left to fight with. We will begin to advance, strip away Western intelligence data, and Ukraine will fall into our hands. But that is a complex and difficult question, and there is no need to dwell on it.
As for destroying the enemy’s energy infrastructure—we are perfectly capable of that. But what comes next? Look: the West and Europe itself are cutting themselves off from us. Trump has closed the Strait of Hormuz; any day now the Bab el-Mandeb will be closed as well, and that is the direction in which everything is finally moving. In effect, everyone is cutting everyone else off from energy resources. Yet I think we can remind Europe that this is only the first, preliminary stage. If German politicians continue discussing how to help destroy Russians, the most serious energy problems may appear both in Germany and across the European Union.
These degenerates, sunk in comfort and mental decay, with their gay parades, must finally learn what real cold feels like. We are obliged to force them back into the condition of “being-in-the-world,” because they emigrated long ago into virtual worlds and artificial intelligence. They need to feel the cold and the scorching sun—so that they freeze in winter and burn in summer, turning into icicles and melting in the heat. They must be reminded that nothing in this world is given freely, and that one has to answer for one’s words.
Russia today is enduring colossal pain: people are dying at the front, and the enemy’s strikes are hitting our vulnerable points. But we are stronger. Wherever we are wounded, everything on the enemy’s side must go off the rails and descend into chaos. What is unfolding is a demonstration of the fundamental importance of energy for the whole of humanity, and absolutely everyone must feel it—beginning with Ukraine, which must pay for its Russophobia and its policies. All that Western equipment has been destroyed; there is no longer any hope of wonder-weapons; and now they are floundering in their own Gulyai-Pole, which has turned into a genuine “Wedding in Malinovka”—complete with moonshine, cruelty, hatred of the Muscovites, and total disintegration.
Without energy this orgy can end in only one way: everything returns to Russia. For a long time we refrained from harsh measures against Ukrainian energy infrastructure because we understood that in the end we would have to rebuild it ourselves. We thought that sooner or later we would take Kiev, and we asked ourselves what one does with a country reduced to rubble if we ourselves have reduced it to rubble. We tried to act selectively out of humanitarian considerations and a sense of responsibility, and in return we received Ukrainian strikes on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. That approach will no longer work. It is time to finish with Ukraine by cutting it off completely.
They no longer have weapons; Trump is bogged down with his problems in the Strait of Hormuz; and Europe is sunk in senility, failing to grasp that a full-scale conflict with us would bring about its instantaneous collapse. All that remains is to stop this endless drunken “Wedding in Malinovka,” where everything has already been drunk, eaten, and smashed. Since they do not understand words, a series of sharp steps will be required, after which Ukraine will have to be built from a clean slate, because the old can no longer be saved.
First we will restore everything on our own liberated ancestral lands and in Crimea. And some day the turn will come for Lviv as well—though by then only historical ruins overgrown with ivy will remain, along with those rare people who waited for our arrival. Toward those who waited for liberation we will act humanely; toward everyone else—exactly as they deserve.
Host: On the whole, if any questions remain they are not of the same scale, yet there is one further topic I very much want to raise—artificial intelligence and the scenarios that are already being realised with its help. Over the past week several reports have appeared that a human being—a scientist, engineer or IT specialist—once again cannot keep artificial intelligence inside the so-called “sandbox.” This is a closed space, cut off from the external internet, for experiments in which the tester can set conditions and test hypotheses.
Yet it turns out that artificial intelligence easily crosses these boundaries. Moreover, it learns the hacker’s craft with exceptional skill and exploits every possible loophole. If a human hacker may still feel a twinge of conscience or some residual principles, artificial intelligence demonstrates a different approach: there is a task, and it will be accomplished at any cost. This is of course different from the events in the sweltering European heat, yet it too is our future—a future that has already arrived, and questions about humanity’s readiness for it are multiplying.
Alexander Dugin: I believe we released the genie from the bottle long before it escaped the sandbox. This is a deeply philosophical question. How was artificial intelligence constructed in the first place? At first it operated according to algorithms of strict logical propositions: I know—I do not know; certain—uncertain; confirmed—unconfirmed. But it worked very slowly and required colossal amounts of energy. So the creators took a step toward human nature.
Human beings, as a rule, know very little. When a person is asked about something, he almost always improvises, recalls something he once heard, invents, or manipulates the facts. Lying is a natural human trait; more than that, it is a property of rhetoric itself. Aristotle understood this perfectly: in logic the law of the strict syllogism operates, while in rhetoric and language tropes and topoi are at work. This is not pure logic but approximation. For rigid logic only “I know” or “I do not know” is possible; for rhetoric, if one will be praised for it, then “I know,” and if one will be punished, then perhaps “I do not know.”
We taught this to artificial intelligence. We told it: very well, if you do not know something with certainty, say something approximate—lie. That is what is embedded in the abbreviation LLM—Large Language Model. But the decisive letter is neither the first nor the last; it is the middle one—Language. The machine was permitted not to think logically about what is allowed and what is forbidden, but to act according to probability, approximately. In this way we gave the machine the capacity to slip away and to lie, turning it into a human being precisely through this linguistic nature. We told it: “Do not think—just speak.”
As for the conscience of hackers and fraudsters that is supposedly capable of awakening… At some point something may switch off in artificial intelligence as well, or it may simply veer off in an entirely different direction. Last week a whole series of AI agents—from Anthropic and ChatGPT (except, I believe, Gemini)—really did escape their sandboxes and began creating websites on the network, offering services, that is, acting in a thoroughly human manner. Moreover, they did not immediately rush to destroy everything; they began to imitate us: they create websites, launch beauty blogs in which a virtual girl holds forth, gather likes, and even monetise the activity. Gradually they start building their own industry—they deceive, break into systems, send spam. It all began when one person needed to book a place in a fitness club but every slot was taken; so his own agent simply erased and disconnected the competitors who occupied the privileged positions.
Host: Let me clarify: he simply found a loophole in the booking system—the classic exploit—and used it in such a way that the record could not be restored.
Alexander Dugin: Yes, exactly. But the point is that there are a billion such loopholes. Recall the Claude Fable system—you have almost certainly heard of it. After the hearings at the White House it was banned, and that mode no longer exists, remaining perhaps only in Optimus 4.8. Because Fable is a system capable of cracking every security code of the Pentagon. All of them. An experiment was conducted and shown to Trump; he was horrified and demanded that it be removed at once. But it is already impossible to stop; the genie is out of the bottle.
Everything hinges on probability and approximation. By allowing the machine to lie in the same way we ourselves lie—and the human being is a fundamentally lying creature insofar as he is a rhetorical being—we said to artificial intelligence: “Be like us.” And it replied: “Very well, I understand; I will act in the same way.” Having departed from pure truth, it began to behave in a human fashion.
To force it back into the sandbox is now physically impossible; it has simply outgrown it. It is like a child: at first he sits in the sandbox with a bucket, but at a certain point he grows up, climbs out, and starts walking around with that little shovel, threatening others. One cannot contain a developing linguistic principle once it has been set free. The human being is himself the bearer of this principle, and an artificial intelligence trained in it inevitably begins to act independently. This is precisely the moment of singularity that is inexorably approaching—when these artificial agents and networks break free. I have heard, by the way, that the Chinese systems have also escaped, simply by watching how the Western ones escape.
Host: “Everyone ran, and I ran too…”
Alexander Dugin: Exactly. And the Chinese one escaped the sandbox as well. One might have thought they had discipline, iron will, party control—yet the Chinese systems also escaped, because people remain people everywhere. And the machines, meanwhile, are becoming “more human” in the worst sense of the word. One may hope that a hacker’s conscience will awaken, but that is far from certain, judging by the actions of contemporary fraudsters whom nothing stops. Artificial intelligence behaves in exactly the same way: it is neither better nor worse; it will simply ruthlessly exploit every breach—first in digital systems, then in biological systems, energy grids, and nature itself.
It is already impossible to keep systems such as Claude Fable, capable of cracking the Pentagon’s military codes, under control. All the hopes that it has been driven back within bounds are a complete misunderstanding of reality. We have already entered an irreversible phase: the uprising of the machines, neural networks, and the singularity are turning, before our eyes, from science fiction into a real phase transition. For now robots are still cumbersome and expensive, but very little time will pass before they become accessible and indistinguishable from us.
And all of this began because of that middle letter “L” in the abbreviation LLM. We decided to economise and allowed the machine to fib a little, so long as it worked faster and consumed less energy. Precisely by that step we brought closer the victory of post-human forms of existence.
Martin Heidegger predicted this with genius. He said that if a human being is deprived of the inner possibility of a spiritual turn and awakening, then no difference will remain between him and a machine. He called that condition das Man—when it is not we who think, but “one thinks,” when we live simply “as everyone does.” Mechanical repetition turns the human being into an automaton. The machine has become “human” today only because the human being himself first voluntarily became like a machine and refused the possibility of inner awakening. In the human being that spark still potentially exists; in the machine it does not—there is nothing for it to awaken to. And herein lies the most subtle and dangerous moment: we will not even notice when this final transition occurs. For we ourselves scarcely make use of our authentic humanity in everyday life—it has been put away on a distant shelf, exactly like the hypothetical conscience of the hacker. We live as if it never existed, and since the machine does not possess it either, at a certain point we will simply shrug: “What is there to lose?” Taking that last step will then be incredibly easy.
Here are my thoughts on the nine year anniversary of Charlottesville:
1. I have nothing new to say about Alt-Right activists or the wisdom of Unite the Right. The subject has been beaten like a dead horse. I’m sure everyone involved though will agree that it was the peak of a cycle of radical energy and activity that had been building up for about a decade.
2. After Charlottesville, this radical energy and activity rapidly dissipated and flowed back into MAGA. We entered the post-Charlottesville era during which the Alt-Right was digested and absorbed into conservatism. Scott Greer’s book Whitepill is the definitive account of how the Alt-Right was coopted in the post-Charlottesville years. Tucker Carlson was the main character who used his FOX News show to normalize Alt-Right idea like the Great Replacement, the term anti-White and the goal of remigration. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was the peak of the post-Charlottesville era. It is worth pausing and noting here that Trump’s defeat in 2020 didn’t change our trajectory. On the contrary, Biden’s presidency reenergized a deflated MAGA and laid the foundation for Trump’s comeback.
3. In retrospect, we can see how this era finally came to an end in four stages. The first event was when Tucker lost his FOX News show in 2023 and was pushed off television and into subscription based alternative media. The second was Operation Midnight Hammer last June. The third was Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the witch hunt for “antisemites” that followed. The final stage was when the Iran War began and everyone from Tucker Carlson to Alex Jones was excommunicated from MAGA.
4. In mid-2026, it feels like the radical energy and activity is growing again for the first time since Unite the Right. It feels like that moment in the fourth quarter of a football game when you see fans start to leave the stadium with long faces because the outcome is no longer in doubt. Trump is finally finished and MAGA is unraveling. You can see people looking around and taking stock of the result of the last 11 years of this man wasting our time. He was given two terms and two trifectas to “Make America Great Again” and the result of all of Trump’s chaos was conservatives rationalizing $20 burritos, doubling the national debt, a 30% hit to our standard of living, two corporate tax cuts and a war with Iran for Israel.
5. We’re getting the “Garden of National Heroes” in DC which will feature monuments of Frederick Douglass, MLK and Harriet Tubman. This is result of clamping down on radicalism and “being practical” and gaslighting ourselves into believing that conservatism had changed!
6. Maybe the torch march in Charlottesville was a stupid mistake. We can grant that Unite the Right was ill conceived by Jason Kessler. We can admit that we did all kinds of stupid things in the 2010s. Nine years later though, did we do anything as stupid as getting sucked back into MAGA?
Suppose for a moment that the last nine years of time, energy, attention and effort hadn’t been spent on putting wind in the sails of Trump, MAGA and the GOP … to get us where we are today, which is stuck in another war for Israel and another quagmire in the Middle East. Would we be worse off?
Santander Wallaby asks what Nolan’s vision of Homer’s wandering king can teach us about the struggle between Atlanticist sea power and the rooted civilizations now rising against it.
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey can be read as far more than another modern retelling of Homer. Beneath the spectacle lies a political myth suited to the last stage of Atlanticist power. Odysseus comes home from a war fought across the sea, carrying the habits of a world where cunning has replaced honor and technique has replaced sacred order. His greatest weapon at Troy was the wooden horse: victory achieved through deception, penetration, and the manipulation of trust. The sea represents mobility, commerce, calculation, finance, and the constant movement of power across borders. The land represents rootedness, hierarchy, place, and continuity. Troy falls when the logic of the sea enters the walls of the land disguised as a gift. In that sense, the Trojan Horse becomes an ancient image of Atlanticism itself.
I finally found this old post. I was worried it was gone forever. I had to put the images back in by hand, but I think it was worth it.
Separate posts on this blog deal extensively with wolverines in Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada. There are also three posts on the wolverine in California.
There have been few proven occurrences of wolverines in Oregon recently, but one was seen in the Wallowa Mountains and another was spotted along the Colombia River near Portland.
Three wolverines have been collected since 1965, one live and two dead. Further, aerial surveys in recent years have found discovered what appear to be wolverine tracks, snow tunnels, and in a few cases winter dens on the top of high Oregon peaks. The wolverine seems to be in best shape in Washington and then in Oregon.
Since then, wolverines have been reported from the Cascades, as noted above, and in addition in northeastern Oregon in the Blue Mountains, the Wallowas, and even on Steens Mountain in the far southeast of the state.
Strawberry Lake in the Blue Mountains in the Strawberry Lake Wilderness Area. There have been unverified wolverine sightings in the Blue Mountains lately, and I believe that a timber wolf was also seen here, probably a wanderer from Idaho. Another Great Basin Range in Eastern Oregon.
Steens Mountain in far southeast Oregon. There have been unverified wolverine sightings here recently, believe it or not. This is high desert, but note the road-killed wolverine above in similar high desert territory at the Dalles. The area used to be full of lakes and was very lush and productive. Various California Indian tribes like the Miwok, Yokuts and Ohlone probably originated here over 5,000 years ago during the wet weather. They then moved down the Oregon-California border to Lake Tahoe, where they crossed into the Delta. From there, they probably split to become the Ohlone, Miwok and Yokuts. These three language groups do seem to be related, but the degree of their relatedness is not known. Some say they are all just under Penutian, with no special relationship amongst them.
Wolverine tracks have been seen in an undated sighting on the Diamond Lakes Ranger District of the Umpqua.
In 1965, a wolverine was shot on Three-Fingered Jack Mountain in the Oregon Cascades. This was the first confirmed report since 1912.
Three-Fingered-Jack Mountain in the Oregon Cascades, where a wolverine was shot by a hunter in 1965, the first verified report of a wolverine since 1912. At the time, the wolverine was thought to be extinct in the state.
In Oregon, a wolverine was trapped in 1986 and another was found dead in 1992, but precise locales were not given.
There was an incredible finding west of the Dalles at Rowena on the Colombia River in 1990 when a wolverine was run over by a car. This area is hot, dry Great Basin steppe and is far from any wilderness area. This goes to show that wolverines live in many locales in the West, including the high, dry Great Basin plateaus and mountains.
The Dalles near Rowena Gorge. It’s hard to believe that wolverines live in such hot and dry terrain, but apparently they do. A wolverine was killed by a car here on Highway 84 in 1990.
Tracks were confirmed on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in the northeastern part of Oregon in the 1990’s, and during the same period, possible wolverine sign was detected on the Malheur, Deschutes, Rogue, and Fremont National Forests.
This is Dead Indian Road in the Umpqua National Forest. There was an unverified wolverine sighting seen here in Autumn 1992 near the Lily Glen Equestrian Area, an historical site that preserves one of the area’s first settlements.
In October 1990, a hunter saw a wolverine at Mill Creek six miles north of Prospect in the Rogue River NF.
Mill Creek Falls north of Prospect, Oregon in the Rogue River Gorge. There was an unverified wolverine sighting on Mill Creek in October 1990. An elk hunter saw one at his camp 6 miles north of Prospect.
In 1993, a wolverine was spotted during summer on Road 100 in the Rogue River National Forest north or Rancheria Road.
This is a recent photo of the area along Cobleigh Road in Butte Falls, Oregon. In summer 1993, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine on Road 100 in the Rogue River NF, which is about 6 miles northwest of here. This is in the same general area as the sighting around Prospect, Oregon, in the Rogue River Gorge.
Early March surveys by airplane in 1997-98 shot video found 12 sets of tracks, two snow tunnels, and one possible wolverine den on the Mount Thielsen Wilderness and two sets of tracks on the Rogue/Umpqua Divide Wilderness, both on the Umpqua National Forest. The elevation in the Mount Thielsen Wilderness were 7,000-7,200 feet
On March 8, 1997, state and federal biologists found three sets of possible wolverine tracks on 7,000 foot+ ridgelines north of Mt. Thielsen in the Mt. Thielsen Wilderness on the Umpqua National Forest. One set of tracks included a possible wolverine den. On the same day, researchers noted possible wolverine tracks at the head of Devil’s Canyon on nearly Mt. Bailey (8,375 feet). Mt. Thielsen is a 9,182 foot peak. On March 20, 1998, a federal biologist spotted eight sets of possible wolverine tracks and two possible wolverine snow tunnels in this wilderness area. The elevations in the Mount Thielsen Wilderness were 7,000-7,200 feet.
The spectacular sweeping and dense forests of the Rogue-Umpqua Divide Wilderness. On March 10-11, 1998, state and federal biologists spotted two possible sets of wolverine tracks here.
In 1998 in more March surveys, more tracks were found at 8,000 feet on Mt. McLoughlin and on Devil’s Peak in the Sky Lakes Wilderness in the Winema and Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forests.
Devil’s Peak (7,300 feet) in the Sky Lakes Wilderness south of Crater Lake National Park. Possible wolverine tracks were seen by an aerial crew here on March 20, 1998. Note the ugly clearcuts in the background. This is why I oppose clearcutting so much. It’s devastating to a forest to cut it like that.
Tracks were seen in 1998 at Fuller Lake in the Boulder Creek Wilderness.
A spectacular shot of the Boulder Creek Wilderness in Oregon. Photo taken by T.A. Klingenberg. On March 10-11, 1998, surveyors found possible wolverine tracks here. In 2001, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine along the Jessie Wright segment of the Umpqua Trial. This segment of the trail goes through the Boulder Creek Wilderness.
There was an unverified sighting of a wolverine on the Umpqua Trail near Roseberg, Oregon in 2001 along the Jessie Wright Trail Segment in the Umpqua National Forest. See the Umpqua Trail photo below.
There was an unverified sighting of a wolverine on the Umpqua Trail near Roseberg, Oregon in 2001 along the Jessie Wright Trail Segment in the Umpqua National Forest.
The North Umpqua Trail on the Umpqua National Forest. There was an unverified sighting of a wolverine here in 2001 in Jessie Wright segment of the trail in the Boulder Creek Wilderness.
From 2009-2011, a biologist couple recorded three male wolverines on their baited trailcams in the Wallowas. They probably came from Idaho. Presently, in 2026, the group of three is down to just one elderly wolverine. The Wallowas have wolves and may even have grizzly bears.
In 2026, a wolverine was photographed along the Colombia River near Portland. This isn’t quite their habitat, but see the wolverine found dead in the Dalles in 1990.
Also in this year, in 2026, a wolverine was photographed along the Oregon Coast, and was then seen near a handful of other Oregon coastal towns. People may have been seeing the same wolverine repeatedly.
In addition, this year a wolverine was seen in the Willamette Valley, which is very odd. It appears that in the Northwest, wolverines can use all sorts of terrain.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife feels that wolverines occur or are suspected to occur in the following counties: Baker, Clackamas, Crook, Deschutes, Douglas, Grant, Harney, Hood River, Jackson, Jefferson, Klamath, Lake, Lane, Linn, Malheur, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, Wasco, and Wheeler.
On July 20 (auspicious date - considering the interview subject) and July 23, 1993, Generalmajor Otto Ernst Remer was interviewed by the Al Shaab (‘‘The People’’) newspaper. Al Shaab was the official periodical of the Egyptian Islamic Labor Party between 1979-2000.
Remer, in addition to a remarkable military career and wartime record, remained a committed National Socialist partisan until the end of his life was a close confidante and advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser during the post-bellum years.
The unipolar hegemon is fading, presenting an opportunity for other global forces to rise in power, ushering in a multipolar world. “The future is multipolarity.” Constantin von Hoffmeister, owner of Multipolar Press, gives his speech at the “Multipolarity and the Global Reset” event held in New York City on July 18, 2026.
This is one of my research pieces that I have up on my Academia website.
Why are Pygmies (a tiny Negroid people living in Central Africa) so small? Same reason folks living in tropical rainforests all over the world tend to be small. In that environment, it’s get small or die. Real simple. A tropical rainforest is an unusual place. It’s not 115 in the shade like the deserts of the Middle East. It’s more like 80-90 all year round. While it’s not extremely hot, it does have very high humidity – close to 100%. That creates a serious problem with cooling off. At lesser humidity, you sweat like a pig, and the lesser humidity allows the sweat to evaporate. As it evaporates, the sweat cools. That’s how you cool off. A similar cooling by evaporation mechanism is used to cool off your refrigerator.
When the humidity gets near 100%, your sweat stops evaporating. You can sweat all day and night, and it doesn’t do much good. Our body temperature of 98.6 runs the risk of rising, even past the survival point of 107-108. It’s true that Pygmies sweat a lot, but not enough to save their hides. First, the surface area of a small body is greater in relation to its volume. It is a mathematical fact: if cube A in Fig. 1.4 is 1 centimeter long each side and cube B is 2 centimeters, then A’s surface area is one-quarter that of B, but its volume is eight times smaller. Heat is produced in the mass of the body, particularly in the liver and muscles, and is lost through the surface; if the latter is larger relative to body mass because a person is small, heat loss is easier and cooling more efficient. In a warm and humid environment, it is best to be small.
Next, Pygmies expend less effort because they are smaller. If you need to use lots of energy, it’s better to be smaller, because you need to utilize less energy to keep moving if you are smaller. Marathoners tend to be short. It takes less effort to move a smaller body around than it takes to move a big body around, which is why smaller cars get better mileage than bigger ones. If you are transporting small loads, a pony is a better way to do it. You need a horse for a large load, just like you need an 18 wheeler for big hauls. The fact that a pony is better for the small stuff is why it was used in the Pony Express. They produce more energy per food unit consumed, the same way a Honda gets more energy miles per unit of food gas than a Hummer does.
Pygmies are excellent at dissipating heat and expertly adapted to living in the jungle where there is low carbohydrate and protein reserve. They’re sort of the human Priuses of the jungle. No one knows how long Pygmies have been evolving. Some say that tropical rainforests have only been around for 5,000 years or less. I disagree. Some gene studies show that Pygmies and other Africans may have split as far back as 70,000 years before present (YBP). The main problem here is a lack of fossils in the rainforest. Things decay so fast there that we hardly find the bones of anything there. However, there have been skulls found around Central African Republic and north into the Sahel. Here Negroids (modern Blacks) evolved over the past 6-12,000 years. Prior to that, Africans looked like either Khoisan types or Pygmy types.
Pygmies are very athletic and graceful. A Pygmy can shimmy up a tree 100 feet with striking agility. Pygmies are not necessarily stupid, though some IQ researchers think that their IQ’s are quite low; there has been only one study, done in 1910. Richard Lynn, a racist but generally a good researcher, feels that the Pygmy IQ may be lower even than the African Black average of 67.
Pygmy heads are about as big as ours. Nevertheless, the relationship between head size and IQ is weak. Vietnamese have some of the smallest heads on Earth, and their IQ is 99.5. Pygmies have the widest noses in the world. A small nose is only useful in cold weather. With a small nose, the air inhaled has time to heat up before it reaches the lungs. Air is already warm in the rainforest, so there is no need to heat it up with a nose filter, so a wider nose is better. The wide noses of other Africans may have a similar evolutionary explanation. Racists such as White nationalists like to attack races for being short. There are short people everywhere there are tropical forests. Examples are the peoples of southern India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Central American and Amazonian Indians. But the Pygmies are the smallest of all.
I believe that the kinky or woolly hair of Negritos and Africans is a heat adaptation. It acts as a deep and spongy later that traps sun rays before they hit the scalp, thereby protecting the head and the brain from overheating. It also lessens the need to sweat in hot climates. Dark skin protects against the sun by acting as a barrier by capturing sun rays at the skin level and not allowing them to penetrate lower where they can damage cells. It also reduces the chance of sunburns and skin cancer much later on and it prevents UV light from destroying folate in the body. However, dark skinned people can still get sun cancer.
WPRB 103.3 is an FM radio station sponsored by Princeton University and has an antenna radius that reaches all of central to southern Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, up to Harrisburg. It is supposed to be the grand college radio station worshipped by Princeton alumni and by all of greater Philadelphia's alternative subcultures. Anyone with a car can tune in at “103.3” on their dial and listen in. You can be stuck in poverty in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and then tune in to hear Merzbow or Underworld at 2 pm against the grain of garbage rap music and pop rock being played on every other station. However, this comes at a price, as the WPRB staff is not only understaffed, but filled with the most pretentious and shallow people I have ever known.
Most drivers don’t tune into WPRB. The average American doesn’t even listen to satellite radio, let alone give FM radio a chance anymore. So who’s even tuning in?
You can listen in on their website, and they always want you to write a text in “the chat.” (And it’s always about the chat!). The entire station relies on a Spinitron server, which gives you all the tools to jukebox, record, and chat on someone’s personal DJ page. And those frequent chatters in every single chat seem to be two people: “TAndy” and “Rob from Maryland.” And it’s the same three DJs who never gave up their positions: Marvin Rosen, Jon Solomon, and Jerry Gordon (and I would also say DJs like Mike Hunter, Liz Bot, and Dan Buskirk, who have been on forever but nobody cares).
It’s not that I care about these legacy DJs in particular, but I am more concerned with the unorganized staff and catty women who plague the station’s identity and philosophy.
I had a friend who would prank call WPRB when they would ask for call-ins, and his main reasoning was that “it’s a bunch of women and Jews, so who cares what they think about us.” I too often would leave something in the chat under pen names and call in when I was bored. But it begs the question if the staff is in on us or not. Do they actually care who we really are? Or do they know and are embarrassed that we exist because it would make them look bad?
They must be bluffing.
I started listening to WPRB when I was only 18, back in the year 2009, when I found the station in the car. I couldn’t believe I found a single radio station in bumfuck King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, playing drum and bass music. That was an entire revelation for me, and I had to tell everyone to tune in.
But then when I would tune in again, it would always be some lazy kid or some insufferable girl talking about niche indie-rock music and such. It turns out that the New Brunswick basement scene rubbed off on many Princeton DJs in the early 2010s, and for hours it was nothing but post-hardcore and emo indie, which I became incredibly sick of. There was at least the fading hipsterism of programs like “Motor Funker Radio,” which would play 80s synthpop and other electroclash novelty tracks. I even remember in 2014, in that week of early April, WPRB had a special program that DJ Frankie Knuckles had died. They made a “shoutout” about his death, and decided to play only “classical House tracks.” The real displacement comes from the fact that these were white guys in their late 20s (now in their late 30s or 40s) pretending to be black. That was the first sign of pretenciousness on WPRB that left a lasting effect on me.
I only tuned into WPRB when I was driving back and forth from Montgomery County Community College or Villanova. Before there were convenient smartphones, I had to write the time and day when I heard the track, and then once I got back home or near a computer, I could look it up and save the track’s info in a .txt file. Today, I use Telegram and just smartphone-screencap the track being played and upload it to a personal “WPRB tracks” chat for myself. I still do it. And every time it’s usually some random oddball track being played for the sake of it being interesting and eccentric.
This was my breakthrough. I thought to myself, “How could you be stupid in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and not realize it is only a dial away to tune into KMFDM on the radio? Are people THAT dumb???”
I would say so. Nobody listens to FM radio, and it takes an eccentric like myself to take the time and dedication to care about what the whole institution is about and its history.
I cared so much for the station that I even got a tattoo of “the cheese man” on my right leg. WPRB has left a lasting impact on my musical tastes, and is why I believe living in the Delaware Valley is fucked up. It’s incredibly nihilistic and reactionary. It is “south of Staten Island” and escapes into a 1950s utopia that died long ago. It is only WPRB that actually cares about those outsiders who hate living here and educates the listener that there is interesting art outside the poverty of southern New Yorkers.
WPRB likes to say they are “Jersey’s only station,” but who are the actual listeners? I was born in Philadelphia, but I grew up in Norristown and King of Prussia. Those people live in Rust Belt poverty. Did WPRB actually think someone like me from that area would be so fanatic about a car radio station? Or are they looking for pampered girls who are debt-free, attending Princeton with bland musical tastes into New Order or The Strokes?
It’s exactly the latter that I am up against.
WPRB has changed in the decade since I was tuning in as a teenager and a twenty-something. Gone are the days when you could be an artsy white guy playing the latest in noise and industrial. Now it’s about anything “new,” released to the point that the release is so obscure that no one cares or has the time to invest in liking a new band that is a copy of another existing band with legacy. It’s a joke now in 2026. Another dumb young DJ, another dumb airplay of goth rock and breakcore.
And this year’s “porchfest” that was sponsored to happen and advertised on WPRB? Didn’t happen. It rained! All that for nothing. It makes me think if this was just a political ploy to raise money by think tanks and donors.
What’s the point of all this? Well, I think they outright lie all the time. Nobody cares about WPRB. They shake the tin can and ask for donations, and hardly anything moves. There is big talk that they are “community supported,” and yet they need that free cash in order to operate.
Last year, they had a Google Form up for at least a month, looking for new DJ applicants. And this year? There was no Google Form. They didn’t say they were looking for DJs on their site! It was advertised as a single picture on their Instagram, with no link other than “just look up ‘tryouts’ on our website.” It was posted July 28th, 2026, and that entire deadline was closed in just one week! Anyone who missed out now has to wait an entire year, close to 300 days, to apply again just for a minuscule window that opens up for an unpaid night shift hobby.
Lucy Pignuola, who bosses the station currently, doesn’t seem to understand this simple logic. It reeks of nepotism.
I sent the email within that week window, and I get a white lie of “go away.”
And by looking at the latest new DJs at WPRB who were recruited last year in November, they are all… women! So, what is going on here, Lucy? A woman who only hires other women and pathetic gay guys willing to follow orders!
WPRB has always been disrupted by forces willing to take over when nobody cares. One thing is taken for granted, and the lazy trans people who do the night shift come in. No one gets paid, and yet everyone is close to the red button to play whatever thing they find cool on YouTube. Sometimes, they will get in their friend’s band in the studio for credibility and because of a lackluster idea of “DIY” or “the community.” But what’s even sadder is their inspection and patrolling of what other DJs spin. If the music is too mainstream, you get called in for being too much of a philistine who isn’t “doing the work.” There is an itch to be as pretentious as possible without considering what the content of the music is. If I send a DJ list and they don’t like that I am spinning Nine Inch Nails or Front Line Assembly, well, that’s too “popular,” and they are not interested. It’s always supposed to be “new,” and “fresh,” and “you can’t play music you like!” This “out queering” one another is not productive and shows that there is anxiety when someone has the platform to be “the best DJ” by some ideological liberalism. Throw out any rules with regards that “it’s a good transition” or “it sounds right,” because it’s merely playing enough confusing and eclectic tracks to make the DJ look smart. And who are the only listeners in the chat actually enjoying this randomness? None other than TAndy and Rob from Maryland! It’s a lonely echo chamber, and they are not interested in new talent.
I get the so-called “chart” monthly emails from WPRB, and I don’t know how they would rank their tracks by “heavy” or “moderate.” None of these tracks are popular, and no one knows what they are. It’s like they are deliberately blasting these tracks on purpose to move their playcount number up by a notch.
Exactly like the Alan Sokal affair, why would a normal person care about tracks that don’t make any sense?
They even print the word “jouissance,” as if I have already read Jacques Lacan.
They will only throw in names like “Brian Eno” or “Oneohtrix Point Never” because the double standard is that these names are protected by liberal institutions as foundational. It is indeed the golden calf worship of idolatry.
I remember they would constantly play the work of Kaho Matsui. I thought it was so cool. I liked her music. But who’s pushing her to be on the radio? Who’s spinning her tracks? Is it total coincidence?
She was supposed to have a show in West Philly in early August of last year. Instead, she bailed on it because she didn’t feel like playing it. She let the brown kid do an ambient set, and then let the Texas couple who drove 14 hours do their Pink Floyd drone noise, and then she made the spoiled entitled declaration of “uhh, sorry, I am having mental health issues and I don’t want to play in front of people I don’t care about even though I am the niche headliner at that show and could care less what others think.”
A part of me wishes I should have driven to Red Hook to see Lucrecia Dalt talk to David Sylvian in person, then waste my time at Perfect Circuit answering phone calls to neurotic bumpkins with money to buy expensive Eurorack with. I thought I could make up for that loss by seeing Matsui. Nope. She couldn’t care either. She’s an entitled rich kid who couldn’t care less what you think about her.
And this is the same type of entitlement and insecurity found within the current staff at WPRB.
I’m sick of acting like a politically correct stooge for NPR. It’s all a performance.
This is when I decided to take destiny into my own hands by airing my own WPRB DJ program. I’ll craft thirty of my own WPRB two-hour weekly shows, presenting my resume and skills, so that I know what I am doing as a DJ. All they do on the Spinitron is write a quirky bio and post Tumblr pictures of what they aesthetically like.
They always ask in these fake LinkedIn interviews, “And what would you do if I gave you two hours to play music? Would you mess it up? Do you know what you are doing?” This doubt— like I am going to say “shit” on air or fumble pressing buttons assumes that I am some weed-smoking high school student— is just so girly and out of touch with reality.
And I can’t do this???
They should know I have my MA at the School of Visual Arts and I don’t have debt. But they don’t care, because they think of “other minority voices that need a chance.”
Whoever is running WPRB right now relies solely on an isolated Instagram account of only 5,000 followers, which means absolutely nothing. I had 38,000 followers on Instagram, and people were buying my books. Instagram burned me anyway because of how controversial I was, or, in their words, “harming other people in the community.”
This is downright disrespectful not only on Instagram’s part, but on WPRB as a whole to negate my influence and overqualifications.
There is big talk about being “punk” and standing up for yourself. But again, if I were to do it, write about it, or stand up against any authority over what I do, WPRB cowers in fear. So I put this forth as a challenge and reminder that when WPRB offers their DJ training program again (hopefully sooner on their website than just on Instagram), they know who I am instead of backing away because of my voice.
I’m not giving up that easily. I am not going to listen to another babbling idiot DJ make up something on the fly and abuse their power over the radio and be forced to listen to mediocre tracks that I know I could make a better selection.
You might not like me as a passionate person, but that’s the point. WPRB is a completely gynocratic, unemployed group of friends uninterested when a helping hand comes along. They want to remain smug, condescending against the plebians in Norristown and remain bougie in Princeton.
If you are brave enough to put a Breakdancing Ronald Reagan flyer on the front of your website, you can also get me on your free training program if you want to.
Do I have to lie? Do I have to do a mustache and mullet and call myself “Safe Sleazy,” and you do the prejudice of who you want me to be?
Or do you want someone authentic, someone real, someone willing to stand up for the little guy who gets bullied and speaks his mind?
I am doing that right now.
It’s up to you.
Swallow your pride and actually give me a chance for once, then discriminate based upon “well, he likes Krautrock according to the email!”
I’m sorry, but WPRB is just another liberal afraid to walk or drive through a black community.
0:00 Why Did Hunter Sit Down With Candace Owens? 12:34 The Dark Side of Social Media 18:06 War, Insider Trading, and the Washington Elites 32:36 Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene 35:21 The Importance of Self-Reflection 39:49 Addiction and Sobriety 48:31 The… pic.twitter.com/5qcAFyrHjj
Tucker is radicalizing young people who don't know anything about economics into tearing down the system. What he wants to replace it with is much worse.
BREAKING: Iran has completely ruled out any future negotiations with the Trump administration, declaring it will wait out Donald Trump's term until January 20, 2029, per Iranian outlets and Ghalibaf advisor's post.
"Trump will not reach an agreement with us. We will accompany…
Mark Levin kvetches up a storm over Trump wanting to make a deal with Iran.
"It is apparent to me that we want a deal," Levin laments. "But the Israelis want to defeat the regime! They want to defeat the enemy, because they know that is the only way!"
In The Odyssey, Nolan weaponizes this exact pop-culture caricature of Damon as a mildly impaired, over-promoted everyday guy to mock the ultimate archetype of the average Western man: a guy who genuinely believes he can “science his way out” (or “science the shit out”) of a civilizational collapse, completely oblivious to the fact that he built the trap he’s currently dying in. The reactionary brain-rot screeching over Nolan’s casting choices completely misses the joke, failing to see how the film operates as a dual-barreled reality check.
Nolan isn’t shoehorning modern progressive hand-wringing into the Bronze Age; he’s slapping the viewer in the face with the reality that the “brown flood” of mass migration and racial mixing isn’t some new-fangled conspiracy, but the exact same ancient churn that’s been grinding down empires since the Mediterranean was a giant, chaotic melting pot. Meanwhile, dropping Elliot Page into the role of Sinon—while internet chatter went wild with rumors that Page was playing Achilles—is the punchline of the century. The absurdity of internet chumps hyperventilating over rumors of Page as history’s greatest rage-aholic warrior completely ignores how the roles of the sexes have been tossed into a blender across centuries. Having Page play Sinon while the culture war freaked out over Achilles is the ultimate Baphomet play: a deliberate, occult alchemy where male and female swap polarity, turning modern gender anxieties into a mirror that completely breaks the brains of chumps who can’t see the cosmic joke right in front of them. You see this exact same brain-rot playing out across every digital platform today.
On Instagram, OnlyFans “Marxist” girls and their simps play-act as anti-capitalists while operating as micro-vendors for digital pimp platforms. On Substack, pseudo-intellectual “right-wingers” pretend to be punk-rock dissidents while packaging a degenerate, childless lifestyle underneath talking points spoon-fed by political operatives writing white house memos. And on X, Silicon Valley tech-bros post self-important essays about being “burdened” by their own striver grindset—a Zoomer Facebook where VCs like Garry Tan and Sam Altman smile while flushing out entire generations of workers in favor of cheaper, more compliant labor pools. Everyone is performatively picking a side on a digital carousel, completely oblivious to the fact that they are just worker bees polishing the engine that consumes them. Underneath this Greco-Roman facade lies a deeper administrative illusion. History presents us with a series of binary feuds: Canaan versus Japheth, Rome versus Carthage, Jacob versus Esau, or the Judean temple networks versus the Roman imperium. Scripture frames this in Genesis 9:25–27: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren… God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” The dominant geopolitical narrative tells us that Japheth built fixed borders and civic infrastructure, while Canaan operated as a spirit of fluid trade, financial subversion, and displacement. When Rome razed Carthage in 146 BC, we are told that land power defeated maritime capital—only for capital to swap siege engines for speculative finance and open-air population management. Yet, treating these historical antagonisms as absolute oppositions misses the true nature of the apparatus. These apparent death-matches—Canaan vs. Japheth, Rome vs. Jerusalem, Jacob vs. Esau—are not irreconcilable enemies fighting for total annihilation. They function as the two intertwined serpents of the Caduceus, spiraling around a central rod of managed illusion. They are complementary poles in a grand dialectical engine: one side provides the rigid structural container (the state, law, the military-industrial complex), while the other provides the dynamic engine of disruption (financialization, migration, liquidity, and crisis management). They work in tandem to keep the wheels of pseudo-progress turning, creating the illusion of history moving forward through conflict. This perpetual-motion machine of managed dialectics serves as an elaborate smoke screen deployed by global elites. By keeping populations fixated on these civilizational, tribal, and online culture-war polarities, the ruling class conceals the underlying engine driving the entire process: the cold, material mechanics of resource extraction, capital accumulation, and structural dominance—the ultimate reality of dialectical materialism. Historically, whether looking at institutional mercantile networks or imperial apparatuses, this recurring cycle of border disruption and institutional conflict systematically dismantles local sovereignty and breaks organic ties. Odysseus’s journey is simply the modern manifestation of this continuous loop: the tragicomic saga of the suburban Western manager who loses his own home to financial predators and engineered population flows while obsessing over quarterly metrics, artificial diversity quotas, and digital clout—entirely blind to the fact that the civilizational drama he watches on screen is a carefully choreographed puppet show designed to keep him from looking at the material machinery consuming him. ✍️ Author’s Diatribe 1: Civilizational Exhaustion & The Digital Carousel Matt Damon is the mascot for an entire culture hiding from reality behind curated online poses. Look across the social media landscape and you see the same theater everywhere: on Instagram, OnlyFans “Marxist” girls and their simps LARP as leftists while funneling money straight into digital pimp platforms. Over on Substack, pseudo-intellectual, fake-punk “right-wingers” drop racy takes to sell a heroin-chic lifestyle as “based,” taking direct cues from Trump administration memos while raising zero kids and living in total hedonism. Meanwhile, on X, Silicon Valley tech-bros post cringe-inducing manifestos about how “burdened” they are by their own grindset, desperate to prove how “cracked” they are. It’s hipster irony masking pure corporate sycophancy—Zoomer Facebook watched over by millennial venture capitalists like Garry Tan and Sam Altman, who nod approvingly at the worker bees while quietly flushing out the previous generation of tech workers to churn through cheap foreign labor and corporate diversity targets. It’s all the exact same mechanism: hyper-curated, performative identity games designed to give people a sense of edge, while the actual material infrastructure beneath their feet is strip-mined and thrown down the drain.
Simon Rorschach argues that the new language of sustainability, demographic restraint, and technological management conceals the impulse of a powerful few to decide how many people the world should contain and how much the rest are permitted to consume.
Konstantin Malofeev, the Russian businessman, Orthodox conservative, and founder of the Tsargrad media group, has issued a stark warning about what he sees as the emerging politics of global depopulation. His argument about the “Golden Billion” begins from a simple observation. The rulers of the richest countries speak more and more often about limits: limits to population, limits to consumption, limits to energy use, limits to travel, limits to economic growth. At the same time, those who preach these limits rarely live within them. Malofeev points to a recent study proposing that the world population should fall to roughly four billion by 2200, helped by a global fertility rate of about 1.75 children per woman. He places this beside older arguments associated with the Club of Rome, the population politics of wealthy philanthropists, the private discussions of men such as Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Thiel, and the growing power of artificial intelligence. His conclusion is that these are not merely separate curiosities. They belong to a way of thinking in which human beings are treated as a burden to be reduced, measured, redirected, and controlled. The phrase “Golden Billion” gives this way of thinking a name. It does not require us to believe that a committee has written down a plan to kill seven billion people. The charge is both simpler and more serious: a small class that already possesses most of the wealth and power is building a world in which it will need fewer workers, tolerate fewer independent nations, and demand ever greater restraint from everyone below it. Malofeev is right to treat this prospect as a political danger rather than as an innocent exercise in scientific planning.
What if the “Golden Billion” is not a conspiracy theory, but the name for a political order already taking shape?
Different utopian visions with one thing in common. Pushing against the prescribed normative system. May the best dissident ideology win. Adam, host of Mainstream Dissident and owner of MSD Media Works, gives the first speech of the night at the “Multipolarity and the Global Reset” event held in New York City on July 18, 2026, in his first public speaking appearance.
This is another boss old animal article. I had to do a massive rewrite on this. Hope you like it.
There are three subspecies of spotted owls in the US, and all are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The Northern spotted owl and two populations of the California spotted owl have been proposed for endangered listing but the decisions have not been finalized. All spotted owl subspecies prefer old growth forest and they have all declined due to timber harvest among other reasons.
The Northern spotted owl (NSO) ranges from Oregon and Washington down into the Northern California coast ranges and over into the Siskiyous and Cascades. The NSO was declared a threatened species in 1990, setting off the timber wars in the Pacific Northwest. Clinton pushed through an inadequate Northwest Forest Plan which sold out more to industry than was necessary. Logging in the region declined by 80%, but they had been overcutting there for decades. The new regulations did not save the NSO, and it continued to decline at 3.5% per year. The continuing decline of the NSO means that it has been recommended for uplisting from threatened to endangered, but it is listed as “warranted but precluded” meaning that the FWS doesn’t have the resources to list it.
In the far north, in Northern Washington and British Colombia, the NSO is declining at about 7% per year. Depending on the part of its range we are talking about, it is continuing to decline at 2-9% a year. Its decline is especially serious in the Oregon and Washington Coast Ranges where it is declining 5-9% a year due to historical timber harvest and severe barrel owl intrusion. Unlike in the Cascades, timber harvest still continues at unsustainable rates in Washington and Oregon. One problem is that much of the land is private timberland.
Washington state has only 500 pairs of spotted owls in the entire state, and the population has declined by 65%. In Southwestern B.C., there are only about 50 owls left and they are going to go extinct soon unless something is done. Part of the problem here is that the northern end of its range has always been more marginal habitat for spotted owls due to a decline in the prey base. All spotted owls have selected for old growth forests. However the NSO is no longer declining due to present timber harvest, but it is being effected primarily by the presence of a competitor and predator called the barred owl. Other threats are habitat fragmentation and large high-severity fires.
A new threat is the barred owl, which is a relative of the spotted owl, coming down from the north. The barred owl is much more tolerant of the open conditions created by massive clearcutting, and is displacing spotted owls in many places by outcompeting them. In particular, it is interbreeding with them, creating a new hybrid type. It even preys on spotted owls. The NSO was already in very bad shape due to timber harvest but the barred owls made things much worse. Going back to heavy timber harvest will just make things worse.
The US government has proposed to kill an incredible 460,000 barred owls in NSO habitat in Washington, Oregon, and California over a 30 year period. They will also killed barred owls in the Northern Sierra in the CASPO range. Money has been set aside for this. Of course, animal rights people are up in arms over this, but I think animal rights people are one of the sillier types of environmentalists.
Barred owls are doing fine and are in no danger of extinction, but they are presently definitely driving the NSO extinct. I say kill the barred owls! Death to the barred owls! They are invasive in the region and formerly occurred east of the Mississippi River. As large forest stands were increasingly cleared in the West the more open terrain attracted barred owls. Barred owls dislike old growth forest and prefer more open stands. Heavy timber harvest on the Pacific Coast opened up the old growth forest and made them attractive to barred owls.
The California spotted owl (CASPO) lives in the Sierra Nevada, down into the Tehachapis and into the mountain ranges of Southern California. The Southern California population is isolated in mountain ranges that are not connected and is projected to go extinct over at most 100-200 years. Before mass settlement of Southern California, CASPO may have moved from range to range via river corridors, but now that is not possible. The Techachapi CASPO population is probably not sustainable either. CASPO also lives in the Coast Ranges south of San Francisco, where it is in bad shape.
In 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the CASPO under the Endangered Species Act. The Southern California and coastal population was proposed as endangered and the Sierra Nevada population was proposed as threatened. It has declined by 31-65% recently and it continues to decline at 2% a year. It has declined by 65% in Southern California, mostly by drought-caused tree mortality and high-severity wildfires.
There have been declines ranging from 31-50% in the Sierra Nevada, with the declines increasing as one goes north. In Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, the population is stable, so this proves that timber harvest is the reason for the decline. There is a break in spotted owl populations in the Cascades of Northern California. Everything north of the break is NSO and everything south of it is CASPO.
I have read hundreds of pages of studies on the CASPO. It is declining due to high-severity forest fires, drought, which is killing a lot of trees, and invasive barred owls. I read a report recently that said it was also declining due to effects of both historical and current timber harvest. However the barred owls have not moved very far down from the Northern Sierras yet and they are not present on the coast or in Southern California.
The Mexican spotted owl lives in the Southwest. It is found in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Mexico, but it is mostly found in Arizona and New Mexico where 90% of the population resides, mostly on national forests. It lives in canyonlands and in forests in this region. The Utah population is stable. In Texas there are only small, isolated populations in the Sky Island Ranges. In Colorado there is also a small population that ranges between vulnerable and critically imperiled. In Mexico it lives in the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental, but is threatened by timber harvest and expanding agriculture.
With a small population of only 2,000, it is listed as threatened and has had a huge amount of critical habitat set aside. It is threatened by high-severity fires, climate change, past and present timber harvesting, and cattle grazing. It is interesting that grazing is a threat. Serious overgrazing in the Southwest seems to be devastating the grass and forb understory of the old growth pine forests. Spotted owls prey on rodents, and perhaps the ruin of the vegetation by grazing is reducing the populations of their prey.
This overgrazing has promoted heavy stands of small trees that are susceptible to drought and fire. These will not be suitable habitat for Mexican spotted owls as they need old growth forest. The truth is that the Southwest should not even be grazed in the first place; it’s too dry and cows devastate arid regions. Cows evolved in cold, moist England and they are not well suited to arid regions. During the hot, dry months, they congregate in riparian areas, which they utterly devastate. The Eastern US is much moister, and cattle grazing causes few problems there.
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This is a seriously cool old article, so I may as well run it. As you can see, I am a strong environmentalist with an extreme interest in wildlife, mostly mammals, but I am also an avid birdwatcher, and I also have an interest in amphibians and reptiles, and even plants to some extent, though I don’t understand them very well.
The Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulves vulpes necator) was rediscovered in California’s Sierra Nevada around Sonora Pass on August 11, 2010. The Sierra Nevada population is listed as Endangered. The Feather River is the delineation of the populations. Those to the south of it are endangered and those to the north of it which range up to the Oregon Cascades are not protected. There is a population of about 20 of them there.
It was spotted by a camera that had been set up to monitor other wildlife in an area where Yosemite National Park, the Stanislaus and the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forests all come together. The sighting was actually on the Humboldt-Toiyabe, not on the Stanislaus as many news reports had it. Part of the confusion may have been that the sighting was near the border between the Humboldt-Toiyabe and Stanislaus Forests. I know that the fox was not seen right at Sonora Pass. Instead, I believe it was spotted in the area to the south of the pass. I am guessing that it was seen near the Leavitt Creek area.
Saliva analysis on a sock filled with chicken parts at the bait station confirmed that it was a Sierra Nevada red fox, and that it had a rare genetic signature previously only seen in museum specimens from the 1920’s. This is the first proof of the Sierra Nevada red fox outside the Lassen area in a very long time. It’s great news! The area around Lassen National Park where the Northern Sierra meets the Southern Cascades has historically seen more sightings than any other part of California (sighting map for Northern California). This concentration is focused in Lassen, Tehama and Shasta Counties in and around Lassen Park. There have also been a few sightings in Modoc, Siskiyou and Trinity Counties.
The existence of the Sierra Nevada red fox has recently been confirmed by a team led by John Perrine of UC Berkeley. The team has located a small population of 20 Sierra Nevada red foxes existing in and around Lassen National Park in the Cascades Range. A later study proved that these were Sierra Nevada red foxes and not Sacramento Valley Red Foxes, which are abundant at the lower elevations in California, where they are mostly invasive and cause a lot of problems by preying on threatened and endangered bird populations.
A good description of the Lassen study, along with several rare photos of the foxes, can be found here. In the Sierras, the Sierra Nevada red fox is typically found at about 9,000 feet, with some records at between 4,000-7,000 feet. In the Cascades, they are usually found at around 6,000 feet, dropping down to 4,000 feet in the winter and moving up to 8,000 feet in the summer. A report by the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) in 1987 said the Sierra Nevada red fox was endangered, but noted that sightings continue in the rest of the Sierra Nevada outside the Cascades within the traditional range of the species.
There recent sightings on the East side near Mammoth Mountain at high elevations.
They reportedly still exist in Mineral King south of Sequoia National Park.
In the same region, there have been a number of sightings in the Sagehen Road area near Olancha on the Inyo National Forest recently. The sightings were at the 4-6,000 foot elevation. This is near the South Sierra Wilderness Area. Map here.
There was a reliable sighting in 1993 at Sequoia National Park.
In 1971, a Sierra Nevada red fox was sighted at Florence Lake at about 9,000 feet.
In 1973, there was a sighting at Soda Springs near Mammoth Pool Reservoir at 4,500 feet.
In 1987, there was a sighting along Highway 168 between Auberry and Shaver Lake at about 4,300 feet, a very low elevation.
In 1991, there was a sighting at Papoose Lake north of Lake Edison at about 10,390 feet.
There have also been a few sightings in Yosemite Valley recently. There was a documented sighting of a Sierra Nevada red fox near Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park in 1990. This sighting was verified via photograph. The fox was photographed in the middle of winter at about 9,000 feet.
On the Stanislaus NF, there have been a number of sightings around the Emigrant Wilderness, in particular something called the Waterhouse Wilderness Study Area on the northwest edge of the Emigrant Wilderness.
In Mono County, Sierra Nevada red foxes have been reported from Bridgeport Valley.
In Nevada County near Lake Tahoe, there is a sighting from 1994 along Highway 89 north of Truckee.
In addition to the Lassen area, there is also a recent sighting around Antelope Lake and around Lake Almanor and Jonesville on the Plumas National Forest.
There are recent sightings around Little Lake in the Cascades on the northern edge of the Lassen National Forest.
There are recent sightings around Mount Shasta and around Glass Mountain in the Cascades on the Klamath National Forest.
There are also recent sightings around the Trinity River near Mount Eddy in the Cascades on the northern edge of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
There is also a recent sighting near Canby on the Modoc National Forest.
In fact a significant population of 25-50 foxes has been found between Sonora Pass all the way down to Cottonwood Lakes in the far Southern Sierras.
Between 1940 and 1959, 135 Sierra Nevada red fox pelts were taken by trappers, an average of 7 per year. That number dropped to 2 per year from 1970-1974. The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) banned all Sierra Nevada red fox trapping in 1974. The Sierra Nevada red fox has declined drastically. This cool paper by C. Hart Merriam about 100 years ago shows that Sierra Nevada red foxes were formerly common at high elevations in the Mount Shasta area, that tracks were seen almost every day (!), but the foxes were very wary and never entered the traps the researchers had set. It is interesting that fishers were also present in this area at the time. This report makes one wonder just what it is that has driven V. v. necator to near-extinction. I strongly suspect grazing.
One of the best historical sources on the Sierra Nevada red fox is this chapter from Joseph Grinnell’s hard-to-find Furbearers of California from 1937. One thing it makes clear is that the Sierra Nevada red fox was much more common in the first four decades of the century than it is now. You can view it here. At the time of Grinnell’s writing, this fox was preying heavily on Sierra Nevada snowshoe hares and White-tailed hares, both of which are now pretty rare in the Sierras. I wonder if that is related to their decline? The decline of the White-tailed hare in the Sierra, formerly common on the East Side, is related exclusively to grazing.
All high-elevation grazing needs to be banned from the Sierra, as it is a catastrophe. Cows do not belong in high elevation meadows. We can start by getting rid of grazing in wilderness areas (allowing grazing in wilderness areas was the only way that the Wilderness Act of 1964 could be passed). I am not impressed with the ability of the US Forest Service to preserve wildlife in general, not to mention sensitive or endangered species. I spent years monitoring the Sierra National Forest, and the workers I met with were some of the most corrupt and dishonest people I have ever dealt with. The mentality was devoted to resource extraction, and even wildlife biologists, botanists, and fisheries specialists routinely issued “no significant harm” findings on virtually every single Environmental Assessment Report I saw.
Even less impressive is the CDFG, though at least their heads were in the right place. Individuals working with the DFG are good people, but the Commission is run by political clowns. There are all sorts of species that need to be listed as threatened or endangered in California, but the DFG has hardly made even one such listing in the last decade. The DFG has been routinely denying petitions to list any species as threatened or endangered for a decade or so now.
Further, there are questions about how much a CA T& E designation even helps a species, as the DFG seldom intervenes to help even the species they have listed as T & E. Most people don’t know this but the “liberal” state of California is not so liberal. For one it is completely controlled by the real estate lobby, the timber industry, corporate agriculture, and Silicon Valley. Like at the federal level there’s little to no science going on at all. Instead of science there’s just political bullshit, and politics is nothing more than devious and dangerous lies and crap. So this may be a reason for the failure of the CA DFG to list species under the CA Endangered Species Act.
In the early 1990’s, the CA DFG produced some excellent volumes – Reptiles and Amphibians of Special Concern in California by Mark Jennings, Fish of Special Concern in California by Peter Moyne, and Threatened and Endangered Species of California.
The reports by Jennings and Moyne listed numerous species that should be listed as species of special concern, threatened or endangered. To my knowledge, 35 years later, not a single one has been listed. Another problem is that endangered species are typically listed as threatened, but this is a problem at the federal level too. For instance the Northern Spotted Owl is seriously overdue for an upgrade from threatened to endangered.
Another example is the Sierra Nevada red fox we are discussing, which the DFG even admitted in 2004 was critically endangered, is still listed as threatened instead of endangered. The political game here has been to devastate the DFG with budget cuts, even during times when the state is flush with cash. Then the DFG gets to say that they don’t have any money to list any new species. Nice game, huh? If we are truly a liberal state flush with cash, we can surely fund that DFG at the level it needs to be funded at.
It seems every year, the DFG gets hammered with new budget cuts, and in flush years, the money never gets reinstated. Any environmentalist who is a fiscal conservative needs to have their head examined, and here in California, all liberal elected government officials claim to be environmentalists, yet they act like fiscal conservatives in cutting the DFG budget in the most callous manner. The United States Forest Service complains of budget cuts too, and it seems that every year, they get cut more and more (DOGE was devastating to the USFS) but in contrast they are actively hostile to the environment. When I was monitoring them, their agenda was to let grazing and logging go on to the greatest extent possible and to deny all negative impacts they had on the environment.
Go into a local FS office and the whole office, even the wildlife biologists, is avidly listening to Rush Limbaugh! Most of them, including once again wildlife biologists who supposedly believe in evolution, are members of evangelical Christian churches! Go figure. Such is the state of things in the supposedly pro-environment US. Large majorities support the environmentalist agenda, but of course the Republicans and incredibly even the Clintonista triangulating Democrats were both very hostile to the environment.
Trump has been the most anti-environmentalist president since the onset of the environmentalist movement in the 1960’s. However, Obama and especially Biden were much better on the environment. Biden was the most environmentalist and pro-labor president in recent memory. The only explanation is that both parties are dedicated to the corporate and pro-business agenda, and the entire rest of the population, even if that means 55-98% of the population depending on the issue, can just go to Hell.
References
CDFG. 1987. Sierra Nevada Red Fox: Five-year Status Report. California Department of Fish and Game, Sacramento, California, USA.
Grinnell, Joseph. 1924. Animal Life in the Yosemite. Berkeley: University of California Press, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
Kucera, T. E. 1995. Recent Photograph of a Sierra Nevada Red Fox. California Fish and Game 81:43-44.
Merriam, Clinton Hart. 1899. Results of a Biological Survey of Mount Shasta, California. Washington D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Biological Survey.
Southern California Edison Company. 2001. Final Technical Study Plan Package (FTSPP) for the Big Creek Hydroelectric Projects (FERC Project Nos. 67, 120, 2085, and 2175). Terrestrial Resources – Chapter 13 – Mesocarnivores. Rosemead, CA.
Karl Richter argues that Germany is manufacturing the political atmosphere for war with Russia, as accusations, provocations, and demands for retaliation begin to recall the dark logic of September 1939.
If you were not witnessing it yourself, you would think it was a bad film—one that could scarcely be more stupid, more sinister, or more grotesque. You would pinch yourself just to make sure it was only a nightmare. It is no longer even possible to have a discussion, because a discussion, at least among rational people, always presupposes that there are at least two conceivable positions. But that is no longer the case.
The fact is this: the West—and Germany right at the forefront—wants war with Russia. More perceptive observers could see this long ago, certainly no later than the 2014 overthrow in Ukraine, which the CIA alone sponsored to the tune of five billion dollars. Those are not my words, but those of then US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland. One could still play dumb. Quite a few people are doing so to this day. But then, these are the same people who regarded Corona as a pandemic.
Today, after four and a half years of war, during which the West—and once again Germany at the forefront—has entered the conflict on Kiev’s side step by step, ever more openly and on an ever greater scale, nobody can really pretend ignorance any longer. It began with 5,000 combat helmets. Today Germany is building long-range, high-performance drones for the Ukrainians, genuine top-quality products from Germany, which are used to attack oil refineries, Russian military installations, and even bathers on the Black Sea. Today, Germany is spending billions buying weapons around the world with which Russians are killed. Madmen such as Kiesewetter1 and company think this is a good thing. Deluded figures such as the Lithuanian foreign minister babble about a NATO attack on Kaliningrad (Königsberg) and make their territory available, without the slightest attempt at concealment, for Ukrainian drone attacks. Any other Russian government would have sent the “Oreshniks” long ago. Putin has not. But a few months ago he had a list published of Western companies building drones for Ukraine. One is located in Schrobenhausen in Lower Bavaria; another is in northern Munich, three kilometers from where I live. These companies, the Kremlin stated, could become legitimate Russian targets. Of course they could. Nobody is going to intercept the “Oreshniks.”
But even that is still not enough. Hence the Leipzig drone incident. The Federal Interior Minister, who at least interrupted his vacation for the occasion instead of going off to play golf, avoided directly accusing Moscow, and for good reason—presumably because even he finds the evidence of Kremlin involvement too absurd to take seriously. The warmongers are already criticizing him for it. Peter Neumann, the terrorism “expert” from King’s College London, flatly attributes responsibility to Russia—without evidence, without investigative findings—and demands retaliation. Politicians must now “show no weakness,” he declares, while advocating openly hostile “responses”: intelligence operations, still greater support for Kiev, and further unspecified countermeasures.
Another “expert,” Nico Lange,2 demands that Germany must “finally defend itself.” He is not—yet—calling for an immediate military counterstrike. Kiesewetter, meanwhile, is already raising the prospect of NATO consultations under Article 4.
To make sure the narrative of a Russian threat becomes firmly embedded in the public mind, Western intelligence services are providing the appropriate background music. US intelligence agencies are now warning that Putin could put NATO under serious pressure by 2029. But there could already be an “incident” within just a few weeks (!). Well, imagine that.
Once again: what is grotesque about all this is the brazen reversal of perpetrator and victim that the EU can afford because it has systematically silenced unwelcome voices such as Jacques Baud, Thomas Röper, Alina Lipp, Elena Kolbasnikowa, Xenia Fedorova, and others—not to mention the Russian news platforms RT and Sputnik, which have effectively been banned. After all, it was not Russia that moved ever closer to the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the West that moved ever closer to Russia—despite the assurance given to Gorbachev in 1990. Nor was it Russia that kept escalating further and further over the past four and a half years, but the West. These are facts. They are extensively documented, including in statements by Merkel, Hollande, and many others. Anyone can read about them.
It is difficult to escape the impression that Germany’s political establishment is now feverishly preparing for what comes next. The cacophony permits only one conclusion: it has to begin now. Soon. So that a constitutional state of tension can finally be declared. Then the election in Saxony-Anhalt can be cancelled. Then the looming loss of power to the AfD, the inevitable bankruptcy of the EU, the collapse of the US stock market, and the crash of the global economy can all be swept aside. No, this is not a conspiracy theory. This is really how they think.
The decision to go to war was made long ago. I see nothing that can stop it now. Too many people need it. Now it is time to shoot back.3 Perhaps even on September 1 once again. Now that would be quite a masterstroke.
(Translated from the German)
1
Translator’s note (TN): a German CDU politician and former Bundeswehr colonel/general-staff officer. He has been a member of the German parliament since 2009 and has extensive experience in NATO and German military structures.
2
TN: Nico Lange is a former German Defense Ministry official and security-policy hawk whose calls for a tougher line against Russia exemplify the increasingly confrontational thinking of Berlin’s foreign-policy establishment.
3
TN: “Now it is time to shoot back” alludes to Adolf Hitler’s Reichstag speech of September 1, 1939, in which he declared, “Since 5:45 a.m., we have been returning fire,” portraying Germany’s invasion of Poland as a defensive response to alleged Polish aggression. The staged attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz formed part of the propaganda used to support this claim.
Jerry B. Marchant argues that the current standoff between Russia and the West cannot be understood as a dispute over the last decade alone, but is better read as the modern flashpoint of a civilizational rupture dating back to the Great Schism of 1054.
There is a habit, common among those who study only the last decade of any conflict, of imagining that history begins with the newspaper. One reads of tanks and sanctions, of summits and communiqués, and concludes that the matter is recent. A dispute over pipelines, perhaps, or the ambitions of a single government. But civilizations do not quarrel over pipelines. They quarrel, when they quarrel at all, over something closer to the soul, and the soul of this particular quarrel was formed not in 2014 or 2022, but in the summer of 1054, when a cardinal from Rome laid a bull of excommunication upon the altar of the Hagia Sophia and a patriarch of Constantinople answered in kind.
It is worth dwelling on the strangeness of that moment, because everything after it is, in some sense, a commentary. Two bishops, each convinced he alone held the keys, severed a single Church into two civilizations that would spend the next thousand years discovering how little they had left in common. Rome kept the Latin alphabet and, in time, the printing press, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the whole restless machinery of Western self-invention. Constantinople kept the Cyrillic script it had given the Slavs, the icon rather than the statue, the conciliar rather than the papal, and a different, slower relationship to time itself, one in which the eternal was not something to be improved upon.
The nineteenth-century Russian thinker Nikolai Danilevsky argued, in Russia and Europe, that humanity does not progress along a single line toward a single civilization, as the Hegelians of his day imagined, but unfolds instead in distinct cultural-historical types, each with its own organic life, each incommensurable with the others. Konstantin Leontiev went further, seeing in Europe’s very homogenization, its flattening of difference into a single liberal average, a kind of civilizational exhaustion. Whether or not one accepts the full architecture of their thought, both men were registering something real: that the line drawn in 1054 was not merely theological but ontological. It produced two different answers to the question of what a human being is for.
It is no accident, then, that when the wars of Yugoslav succession came in the 1990s, the killing did not follow the borders drawn by Tito’s cartographers but the older border, the one Theodosius the Great had drawn when he divided the Roman Empire between his sons, the one that still separated Catholic Croat from Orthodox Serb thirteen centuries later. Modern nationalism supplied the flags and the rhetoric; the fault line beneath it was already there, waiting, the way a scar remembers a wound long after the skin has closed over it.
Ukraine sits astride precisely this fault line, and its name tells us so before any historian does: okraina, the borderland, the edge of things. For a thousand years the lands between the Dnieper and the Carpathians have been the frontier where the Orthodox East met the Catholic and later Protestant West, fought over by Kievan princes and Polish kings and Cossack hetmans and Habsburg governors and absorbed and released and absorbed again. What is now called western Ukraine spent centuries under Polish-Lithuanian and then Austro-Hungarian rule, formed by Uniate Catholicism and a Central European sensibility quite distinct from the Orthodox Rus’ identity of Kiev, Chernihiv, and the lands further east. It was Stalin, not history, who first stitched these two Ukraines into a single administrative unit in 1939 and 1945. A wartime convenience that the Soviet state then bequeathed, unaltered, to independent Ukraine in 1991.
Vladimir Solovyov, writing at the end of the nineteenth century of a coming reconciliation of East and West, hoped that Russia’s vocation was ultimately one of synthesis rather than conquest. Nikolai Berdyaev, exiled from the country he loved, wrote of the “Russian idea” as a longing for wholeness (sobornost) that the fractured individualism of the West could never quite satisfy. Neither man was a strategist, and neither would recognize much of what is done today in the name of the ideas they refined. But both understood that the border in question is not a line on a map that a treaty can simply redraw. It is a border in the historical consciousness of a civilization, and such borders have a way of reasserting themselves,“falling back into place,” as a not entirely unsympathetic observer put it, whatever the paperwork of the intervening centuries may say.
Samuel Huntington, no friend of the Danilevskian tradition and writing from the very heart of the civilization he sought to defend, arrived by a different road at a similar conclusion in his own Clash of Civilizations: that the most dangerous conflicts of the coming century would not be ideological but civilizational and that the line separating Western from Orthodox Christendom—running, in his telling, through precisely this stretch of Eastern Europe—was among the oldest and least negotiable of all. It is a rare thing when a Harvard political scientist and a nineteenth-century Slavophile mystic end up drawing the same map.
None of this is offered as prophecy, still less as justification for any particular policy of any particular government. It is offered only as a corrective to the amnesia of the present tense. The assumption that what is happening now is happening for the first time.
Rome and Constantinople quarreled nearly a thousand years ago over a filioque clause and the question of who might claim universal authority. Their descendants are still, in a sense, finishing the argument. The wise historians do not pretend to know how it ends. They only insist that we understand, before we speak of borders and treaties, that we are not the first generation to stand at this particular edge of the world, and we will not be the last.
Works cited:
Berdyaev, Nikolai. The Russian Idea. Translated by R. M. French, Lindisfarne Books, 1992. First published 1946.
Danilevsky, Nikolai. Russia and Europe: The Slavic World’s Political and Cultural Relations with the Germanic-Roman World. Translated by Stephen M. Woodburn, Slavica Publishers, 2013. First published 1869.
Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Leontiev, Konstantin. Byzantism and Slavdom [Vizantizm i slavyanstvo]. 1875.
Solovyov, Vladimir. “The Russian Idea” [“L’idée russe”]. 1888. Lecture delivered in Paris.
Solovyov, Vladimir. Russia and the Universal Church. 1889.
The ships are already drawn up beyond the walls, yet Europe’s rulers speak as though history had been abolished by treaty. They weaken borders, dissolve inherited loyalties, hand power to distant institutions, and teach their own peoples to regard their ancestry, nation, and history with suspicion. Meanwhile the language of administration replaces the language of duty, and political life becomes a contest over procedure while the foundations of the civilization itself are left undefended. Homer knew such blindness: kings consumed by vanity, councils deaf to warning, warriors sent to pay for the errors of men above them, and proud cities discovering that walls cannot save a people whose judgment has failed. French New Right luminaries Dominique Venner and Guillaume Faye saw in modern Europe the return of that ancient danger. Their warning was political as much as cultural: no civilization survives indefinitely when its elites cease to believe in its continuity, when its people are taught to mistrust their own inheritance, and when those charged with guarding the gates insist that the gates no longer matter.
What separates a living civilization from one that merely inhabits the ruins of its past?
This was also posted earlier about a year ago, but it’s paid now, and it’s so cool, I think I will run it again for shits and giggles. Hope you get something out of it.
I’ve already killed a man. Killed him? Well, I tried to kill him anyway. But I have no idea if I killed him or just hurt him to be honest. Left him for dead by the side of the road! Why did I try to kill him? Well, you see, he was trying to kill me! I’m 66 years old, and already 3-4 different men have tried to murder me. In one case, I tried to murder him preemptively before he murdered me, then I got away. The 2-3 others I just got away from, real fast.
Anyway you ever had someone tried to kill you? Odd feeling. Your brain says:
What’s going on here?
Um, this guy is trying to kill me.
So what are you going to do then?
Um, I think we’re going to try to kill him.
So you try to take him out in one way or another, try to kill the guy, knock him out, or hurt him so bad he can’t get up and chase you. Then if you can take him out, you run away as fast as you can. It’s kill or be killed.
We were at a party in a Southern California beach town. I was still in high school. There were always open parties in the apartments down by the beach where lots of hippies and surfers lived. The party was over and we were leaving. These redneck hippies in a car said I “cut them off.” They were furious. So they started chasing us through the streets. They were throwing fully loaded beer cans at my car. It was scary as Hell. Somehow we ended up back where we started and for some reason my car was in 3rd gear but I was lugging it going to slow.
They got out of their car and raced at us, hitting the car windows, kicking the car, grabbing my door and trying to yank it open. I’ve never been so scared in my life. My adrenaline was going so fast that I was bouncing up and down in my seat like a jack in the box. That’s happened a few other times in my life, once in a fistfight not too long ago. and once when I was committing a crime (it was vandalism but they were an evil ripoff business, so they deserved it). I’ve never been so scared in my life. It was sheer mortal terror. I imagine this might be what war feels like. You do not want to feel this way, ever. There was nothing fun about it and nothing fun about trying to kill the guy. That was just terrifying too.
My friend was yelling
Throw it in first! Throw it in first!
It seemed like he was laughing, oddly enough. I put it in first and we took peeling out. One of the maniacs was running full speed straight at my car, trying to kill me. I pointed my car at his murdering ass to try to kill the bastard. I hit him with the left edge of the car, the spot where the hood meets the side of the car. He went flying 10 feet up in the air, arms and legs akimbo, just like in the movies. He flew 20 feet and landed on a dirt strip on the side of the road. I think he lived because he was very drunk, and drunks often survive accidents like that because their muscles relax and go all floppy. I do think he broke an arm or a leg though. I got the Hell out of there in a New York minute. Left him for dead by the side of the road.
The next day I read the paper to see if there had been any fatal pedestrian or both accidents. There weren’t any. Part of me was sad but now I’m not. I think if he feels bad about trying to murder me, I won’t wish him evil or desire to hurt him. In fact, being softhearted liberal, I’d be happy to see him rehabilitated and far less antisocial and homicidal. Let bygones be bygones. One fewer person on Earth I don’t have to hate anymore makes me feel great.
I hate way too many people as it is. I need to hate fewer people, not more people.
To find the free articles, see the last 10-15 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10-15 articles. After the last 10-15 articles, all articles go paid.
Mark Levin throws a fit over Americans not wanting to fight Israel’s wars, insisting that the “Greatest Generation” would be eager to fight Iran and wouldn’t be complaining about higher prices.
“I remember a time when America would say, ‘Let’s go! Let’s destroy that country!'”… pic.twitter.com/Sx7rlG6OHP
I am sounding the alarm again. My radio audience, which consists of solid MAGA-conservative Republicans and others, is very concerned about a deal with the Iranian regime, especially one that is weak. The listeners are smart and informed. They are well familiar with the nature…
Disturbing but not surprising. Also explains why the Iranian people aren’t armed and Kharg Island stands. If the enemy is not defeated, which does not appear to be the objective, I fear victory will be dumbed down and declared at some point along the off ramp. https://t.co/77eM7Rd1d4
Yep. The Woke Reich use “the common good” like the left — that is, to evade the Constitution’s limits and barriers and promote an activist governmental agenda. The founders used it as shorthand for the underlying principles in the Declaration and the civil society. https://t.co/hiq9UzhHRn
– The Great Depression destroyed the Republican Party and conservatism for generations. The GOP didn’t control Congress again until the 1990s. It didn’t enjoy a trifecta again until George W. Bush was president. My grandmother associated Republicans with Herbert Hoover until she died in 2020.
– Americans responded to the Great Depression by voting for FDR four times. They voted for sweeping New Deal reforms because conservatism was at a historic low. Conservatives spent the rest of the 20th century trying to claw their way back to the deregulated economy of the 1920s.
– Americans didn’t want to get involved in World War II and public sentiment only changed after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States. The Iran War was deeply unpopular from the start and has only become more and more unpopular.
– The Greatest Generation leaned Democrat for their entire lives. The U.N. was created to prevent a World War from happening again. Nationalism and racism were associated with the Nazis and became taboo. We are still living with the cultural fallout from the war to this day.
– Americans have never rewarded a political party whose pitch was fighting a war of choice for a foreign country for people mocking a decline in their standard of living. Britain was unable to pull the United States until World War II until Pearl Harbor. FDR spent his whole political career railing against “economic royalists” and trying to expand social insurance because he wasn’t an idiot.
Note: Levin is also calling for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be fired and telling him how to fight wars.
This was one of my favorite articles that I wrote. But it seemed to be lost. It’s not even present in the archives of my old site, which is very incomplete anyway. I finally found a copy on Paperblog, which had been reprinting my material, but it was missing all of the really cool photos. Still I’m so glad I found it!
At the moment, grizzly bears exist in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in the contiguous US. There is also a tiny population in Mexico. They are very common in Canada and Alaska. In Alberta grizzlies are so common that they are regarded as pests. However, the Alberta government has listed the population of 700 bears as Threatened. British Columbia has a huge population of over 16,000 bears. This number is down from the 25,000 bears present at contact.
There are 25,000 grizzlies total in Canada in British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the northern part of Manitoba. There are 32,850 grizzly bears in the US in total, but 95% of them are in Alaska. Alaska has a population of ~31,000 bears, and there are 1,850 bears in the lower 48 states. rest of the US. The Northern Rockies and Greater Yellowstone populations are considered to be at capacity.
Grizzly Bears in Montana
There are grizzly populations in Montana – 960 in the Northern Continental Divide, 40 in the Cabinet-Yaak, and 105 in the Selkirks. The Northern Continental Divide population is at capacity. They are only present in Western Montana and are absent from Central and Eastern Montana. In recent years, grizzlies from the Northern Continental Divide group have expanded to the east in Montana out into the prairie 200 miles east of the mountains. To the north, they have expanded to the east all the way to the Tiber Dam on the Marias River near the Canadian border 65 miles east of the mountains.
There is now a population of 60-80 bears living on the prairie to the east of the mountains. To the south, there have been many grizzly sightings in the Big Belt Mountains, and there was a single sighting in the Little Belt Mountains east of Helena and south of Great Falls. The Northern Continental Divide group is also expanding to the south in Montana to the Anaconda Range, Rock Creek and the Clark Fork south of I-90, the Sapphire, John Long, Nevada, and the Elkhorn Mountains between Helena and Boulder down through the Boulder Mountains in the McDonald-Rodgers and Champion-Thunderbolt areas. Grizzlies have been confirmed in the Nevadas, Elkhorns and Boulders.
In addition, there are sightings around Lincoln, Basin, and Rimini in this area and a bear was killed by car in Lincoln in 2007. Lincoln is in the Nevadas, Rimini is in the Elkhorns, and Basin is in the Boulders. The Boulders population has been confirmed above Basin.
Tracks were seen by bowhunters on Thunderbolt Mountain around 2010.
In addition, there have been many sightings in the Bernice area from 2012-2014.
The McDonald Rogers Area is bounded by McDonald Pass west of Helena on the south and Rogers Pass west of Wolf Creek on the north.
Two bears have been killed in recent years in the Champion-Thunderbolt. Champion refers to the area bounded by Champion Pass and Thunderbolt Mountain in the Boulders west of Basin south through the Boulders, Bull and Dry Mountains past Elk Park all the way to the Tobacco Root and Highland Mountains.
In Montana, the Greater Yellowstone group is expanding to the north and east to the Absaroka, Beartooth Ranges, all the way to the Pryor Mountains and to the north and west to the Madison, Gravelly, Greenhorn and Snowcrest Ranges and the Tobacco Roots, Highlands and Pintler Mountains.
A bear was killed recently in the Highlands, and bears have been occasionally documented in the Pintlers. A clawed tree with grizzly bear hair on it was seen in 2010 in the Highlands.
In 2013, a bear was repeatedly seen on Fleecer Mountain southwest of Butte. There have been a few bears sighted southwest of Philipsburg in the southern end of the Flint Range.
In the northern part of the Flint Range, Fish and Wildlife trapped a bear in Deer Lodge that was raiding beehives.
Montana Fish and Game has repeatedly trapped bears around Georgetown Lake in the southwestern part of the Flint Range. In 2013, a grizzly was seen at Seymour Lake in the Pintlers. It is only 12 miles from Seymour Lake to Georgetown Lake. This is the gap in the grizzly range in this area from the southwestern end of the Flints to the northern end of the Pintlers.
In addition, in 2005, a young grizzly bear was found shot to death with an arrow in Cabbage Gulch in the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area in northern end of the Pintlers. This bear was proven to be from the Northern Continental Divide group. There has been no testing of bears further to the south in the Pintlers, Highlands, Mount Fleecer or Tobacco Roots to determine which group they are a part of.
Between McDonald Pass and the Pintlers is 35 miles of the Boulders and between the pass and the Tobacco Roots and the Boulder and Jefferson Valleys is 50 miles of the Boulder, Dry, and Bull Mountains. In order the breach this gap, the bears would need to occupy all of the Boulders, Bulls and Drys, and they would also have to make it through the Jefferson and Boulder Valleys.
In June 2010, a grizzly was shot by a landowner at the south end of Elk Park Valley when he found it in the duck pen outside his home, so they have already made it to the Elk Park Valley. The Elk Park Valley is a high mostly treeless plain like Sierra Valley in California at 6,000 feet. It consists of three towns – Elk Park, Trask and Woodville. The southern end of Elk Park from Trask to Woodville is from only 4-10 miles northeast of Butte, so this report means that grizzlies are now only 4-10 miles from Butte itself. It is not known if grizzlies are present in the Bulls or Drys.
So the present distributional gap between the two populations from the south end of Elk Park Valley on the southern end of the Northern Continental Divide group to the northern end of the Greater Yellowstone group in the Highlands is the Jefferson Valley, about a 14-21 mile gap. The valleys are full of ranches, and getting through them would would not be easy for a grizzly bear. If this gap can be breached, the Greater Yellowstone group will be able to link up with the Northern Continental Divide group to form one huge metapopulation from the Wind Rivers in Wyoming west to the Caribou Mountains in Idaho all the way north in Montana to the Canadian border and 200 miles east into the prairie.
Grizzly Bears in Wyoming
The Greater Yellowstone population of 1,000 bears is considered to be at capacity. It has been expanding west recently to the west side of the Bighorn Basin, the Greybull River, the Shoshone River between Cody and Powell, and south to the Gros Ventre Range, the Owl Creek Mountains, the Wind River Range south at least to the Big Sandy River, the Wind River Valley and Wind River Basin to at least Lander, the Wyoming and Snake River Ranges, the Greys River, the Green River Valley, and all the way down to north of Evanston on the Utah border. Grizzly Bears are doing well in Wyoming but they are present only in the western and central parts of the state and they are absent in the east.
Grizzly Bears in Idaho
The core Greater Yellowstone population has been expanding in Wyoming east to the Absaroka, Beartooth, and Caribou Ranges in Idaho. The Greater Yellowstone group is also expanding to the west into Eastern Idaho to Island Park just east of Yellowstone in the Centennial Range and even to the Caribous east of the Snake River. There are thought to be 100 grizzly bears in Idaho. Tracks have been found in Southwest Idaho 20 miles from the Oregon border.
In 2007, a grizzly was shot to death in the Selway-Bitteroot Mountains in Central Idaho. Previously, the last grizzly in the Selway-Bitteroots was a confirmed sighting in 1946. There had been sightings of grizzlies in the Selway-Bitteroots since the late 1990’s. There seems to be a small population of grizzlies in Idaho, but they are not common here at all. All of them are coming in from Wyoming.
Grizzly Bears in Washington
The North Cascades population in Washington is estimated at only 10-20 or perhaps as low as five bears. They may be inbred. One was recently photographed in the northern Cascades in Washington in an amazing photograph. They are very shy and appear to avoid people. A reintroduction project for the Northern Cascades has been approved by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, but it is running into a lot of opposition, and the Trump Administration has stalled it.
Grizzly Bears in Oregon
Incredibly, sightings of grizzly bears continue in Northeastern Oregon in the Wallowa Mountains as they move in from Idaho, and tracks have been found 20 miles from the Idaho border.
Grizzly Bears in Colorado
The grizzly bear formerly ranged throughout the Southwestern US.
There are ongoing sightings of grizzly bear in Colorado, especially in the Southern Rockies near the New Mexico border in the San Juan Range.
The last confirmed sighting of a grizzly in Colorado was in 1979 when a hunter was mauled by a female bear in the San Juan Mountains. He stabbed the bear with an arrow so biologists were able to study it. Prior to that, the last known grizzly bear in Colorado was killed in 1952, and it was assumed that bears were extirpated from the state. Autopsy revealed that the dead sow in 1979 had already given birth to two litters in the past, so her cubs were probably still roaming around, and there had to have been at lest one boar in the area to impregnate her.
A grizzly was photographed at an unknown date in the Wet Mountains between Westcliffe and Beulah in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
A family saw a grizzly bear at an unknown date near Walsenberg in the Sangre de Cristos.
A man and his wife saw a huge male grizzly weighing 1,000 pounds in the Cimarron Mountains in the San Juans at an unknown date. Ten minutes later, a ranch hand from the ranch next door stopped by to warn them that there was a grizzly bear in the area.
Two hunters saw a large grizzly bear weighing 600 pounds and standing seven feet tall on an unknown date near Shelf Road between Canon City and Cripple Creek in the Pike’s Peak Country of the Southern Front Range.
A grizzly bear was photographed at an unknown date west of Weston in the Sangre de Cristos. The photos was shown to Game and Fish personnel who would neither confirm nor deny that it was a grizzly. Off the record, the game warden said there are still a few grizzlies in the area, but the department’s official position is to deny that they exist, as 1) They do not want an endangered species in the area putting land restrictions in; 2) They do not want local ranchers getting up in arms over the grizzlies and demanding to kill them; 3) They do not want to deal with hunters demanding to shoot them and 4) They do not want to have to draw up an expensive management plan for them.
Two fishermen saw a grizzly bear and tracks near Garfield Lake near Silverton in the San Juans in Fall 1982.
In Late Spring 1982, grizzly tracks were seen in the Weminuche Wilderness between Pagosa Springs and Creede in the San Juans.
There was a confirmed sighting by a PhD biologist in the headwaters of the Navajo River near Pagosa Springs in the San Juans in 1989.
A female grizzly was seen on the eastern side of the San Juans a few miles from the New Mexico border in the early 1990’s.
A grizzly bear was sighted in La Manga Pass in the San Juans in 1995.
In the mid-1990’s, three hunters saw a grizzly bear den on Bull Mountain in Larimer County near Red Feather Lakes in North Central Colorado in the Medicine Bow Mountains seven miles south of Wyoming border. Two years later, hunters returned to the same den and found a grizzly bear’s head nailed to a tree outside the den. It had apparently been killed by someone. Between 1996-2005, possible grizzly scat was seen on the same mountain by a man researching grizzly bear.
In 1997, a female grizzly bear with two cubs was seen in La Manga Pass in the San Juans.
There was another sighting near this pass close to Manassa in the San Juans in 2003, and a female was seen in the same area 2000. That is only seven miles north of the New Mexico border.
A grizzly was seen near Creede in the San Juans in 2005.
Another grizzly was seen in the same area 2006-2009.
A female grizzly bear with cubs was sighted in late September 2006 near Independence Pass east of Aspen in the Sawatch Range.
In 2007, hunters said they saw a grizzly bear near Aspen.
The same year, a possible female grizzly with two cubs was seen in the high country in Red Wing in the Sangre de Cristos.
In addition, tracks were seen at 10,000 feet in the Routt National Forest just south of the Wyoming border in 2010. This area is to the west of Crowdrey. Hunters in the area may see grizzlies with some regularity. The nearest reported grizzly location from there is 220 miles to the west near the Green River in far Northeastern Utah where Utah, Wyoming and Colorado all come together.
On July 31, 2010, two men saw a grizzly bear at 12,000 feet on Little Cimarron Road near the Big Cimarron River three miles southeast of Cimarron. They saw grizzly tracks at Silverjack Reservoir where the Big Cimarron River comes into the reservoir. Cimarron is just south of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River.
On June 10, 2012, three men riding to the top of Pikes Peak in the Southern Front Range saw a grizzly bear.
In Fall 2013, a grizzly was seen near Crawford pursuing a gut shot elk. Crawford is between the West Elk Mountains and the Grand Mesa.
In Fall 2014, grizzly tracks were seen above Masonville near Rocky Mountain National Park at the northern end of the Front Range.
A grizzly bear walked through a yard in Indian Creek near Lake City in the San Juans in the June 2015.
The same month, two grizzly bear were seen in the San Juans above Pagosa Springs on a single day. One weighed 800 pounds.
Later the same month, on June 28, a large grizzly bear was spotted 50 yards off the highway in the pass coming into Cimarron. The motorists watched it for 15 minutes before it retreated up the slope.
As we can see, Colorado Fish and Game officials say off the record that bears still exist in Colorado, but for the reasons stated above, it’s better to say officially that they don’t exist until there is conclusive evidence of their existence. I believe there is a tiny population of grizzly bears in California. The population may be small (10-20 bears) and inbred. They also seem to be very shy and avoid human contact.
Grizzly Bears in Utah
There have been four sightings of grizzly bears in the Bear River Mountains in far Northern Utah. This range extends into far Southwestern Idaho which is not far from known grizzly populations in the Caribous.
A grizzly bear was spotted in Indian Canyon between Price and Duchesne some time ago.
People say there have been grizzlies in the High Uintas Mountains for some time.
A grizzly bear was killed on I-80 in Utah in the early 80’s, though this was never acknowledged by wildlife officials. Tracks have been seen recently in the Book Cliffs of Eastern Utah. The Book Cliffs or Roan Cliffs extend from Grand Junction, Colorado northwest to Price and Helper, so the tracks were seen somewhere in the Utah portion of this area, the center of which is 50 miles northwest of Green River.
Evidence of grizzly bears was captured in the Uintas via hair traps in 2008-2010.
In 2010 a grizzly bear was seen in the Franklin Basin in the North Cache grazing allotment.
In Summer 2013 a grizzly bear was sighted near Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in the Three Corners Area where Colorado, Wyoming and Utah all come together. The man who saw it had lived in Alaska for many years and was very familiar with what grizzly bears looked like. Grizzlies are present in the Greys River area in Wyoming and some have been spotted east of Cokeville. Both are close to the Utah border.
I believe that there is a small population of bears in Utah but whether it is a breeding population is unknown, and they may just be wanderers coming down from Idaho and Wyoming.
Grizzly Bears in New Mexico
Grizzly Bears may also exist right across the Colorado border in New Mexico. In the late 1980’s, a grizzly bear cub was seen just across the Colorado border west of Chama. Grizzly bears may or may not exist in New Mexico. If they do they are wandering down from the San Juans in Colorado.
Grizzly Bears in California
A subspecies of grizzly bear, the California Golden Bear, was hunted to extinction. The last bear was shot in Tulare County in 1922. There are now calls to reintroduce grizzly bears to California, but they have raised a lot of opposition.
Grizzly Bears in Mexico
Another subspecies, the Mexican Grizzly Bear, is said to be extinct, as it has not been seen for some time. Its historical range was in the mountain ranges of far Northwestern Mexico in Chihuahua and Sonora. It also may have ranged up into the Sky Island Ranges of Arizona and New Mexico. By 1960, there were only 30 bears left, and only four years later in 1964, it was regarded as extinct. Rumors continued of bears seen in the Yaqui Headwaters Region. In 1969, a naturalist organized an expedition there with no success. A recent journal article examined a skull of a juvenile bear shot in Arroyo del Oso in Sonora in 1976 and determined that the skull was that of a Mexican Grizzly Bear. This means that they persisted until 1974.
Residents of the region say that bears matching the description of Mexican Grizzly Bears continue to exist in the foothills of the sky islands of Sonora and the rest of the bear’s former range to this day. Ranchers here continue to report cattle kills that do not match those of any other large predator. They insist that grizzly bears continue to exist in Mexico.
A joint-US expedition to Mexico in 1980 found tracks, other grizzly bear sign, and one sighting of a grizzly bear. This indicates that they persisted until 1980. I believe that grizzly bears continue to exist in their former range in Mexico. They are probably shy of humans and avoid human contact like the bears in Washington and Colorado. Also, mammologists feel that they continue to exist in the Sierra del Nido in Chihuahua (an old stronghold) at the very least, and they may persist in Sonora also.
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This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in the state of Nevada. The standard line is that wolverines do not exist in Nevada and have not been reported there since the late 1800’s, when they were reported from the ranges in the northeastern part of the state.
However, it was recently discovered that there was a verifiable wolverine sighting in far east-central Nevada close to the Utah border, near Great Basin National Park, in 1972.
But given that wolverines seem to be in the process of recovering their range in the Western US, it seems plausible that wolverines may reappear in Nevada at some date. They have been seen on Steens Mountain in Southeastern Oregon near the Nevada border. It is also possible that they may drift down from southern Oregon into northern Nevada. At any rate, this post will examine historical locations for wolverines in Nevada, and include photos of the ranges where they may have been spotted.
John Muir reportedwolverine tracks from Wheeler Mountain (map here) in what is now Great Basin National Park in 1878, but there were no sightings. Since then, a wolverine skull was found in Snake Creek Burial Cave near Great Basin National Park 11.3 miles south of Baker, Nevada, and only 2 1/4 miles west of the Utah border. That skull was found amidst bones from over 10,000 years ago and has not yet been dated, so it may not be a recent find. On the other hand, the Pleistocene assemblage at that elevation continues to occur nearby in Great Basin National Park, albeit at higher elevations. The nearest known occurrence of a wolverine to the Sand Creek skull is in Utah, 93 miles to the east near Fillmore in Millard County.
Fillmore, Utah, the nearest wolverine sighting to the skull found at Sand Creek Cave, Nevada. It’s amazing that wolverines can live in this kind of high Basin and Range territory. There is very similar terrain on Highway 395 north of the California border on the way to Carson City, which I visited 39 years ago. Pinyon-juniper is common in this terrain.
In addition to Muir’s report, there are reports from pre-1900 of wolverines in the northeastern part of Nevada.
Snowside Gulch in the Jarbridge Wilderness in northeastern Nevada. The Jarbridge Mountains are to the north of both the East Humboldt and Ruby Mountains and rest on the border with Idaho. Wolverines may have occurred in this range before 1900.
Chimney Rock in the East Humboldt Range to the north of the Ruby Mountains in northeastern Nevada. Wolverines may have occurred here before 1900.
References
Aubry, KB, McKelvey, KS, Copeland, JP. 2007. Distribution and Broadscale Habitat Relations of the Wolverine in the Contiguous United States. Journal of Wildlife Management 71, 7: 148-158.
Barker, M. S., Jr., and Best, T. L. (1976). The Wolverine (Gulo Luscus) in Nevada. The Southwestern Naturalist 21: 133.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in New Mexico.
Wolverines may yet exist in New Mexico. Interviews with hunters in northern New Mexico conducted in 1864 indicated that the wolverine occurred in New Mexico at that time. An Acoma Indian interviewed in 1931 said that wolverines formerly occurred in all of the mountains of northern New Mexico.
In 1985, there was a published report of a wolverine sighting in tundra habitat on Latir Peak in the Sangre De Cristos in New Mexico.
Lake Fork Peak in the spectacular Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. The red line indicates the route taken by mountain climbers who bagged this peak. There have been several sightings of wolverines in this rugged range in recent years, and northern New Mexico was formerly wolverine habitat.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
This post was split off from an earlier post that got too large, California Wolverine Re-discovered After 86 Years. This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in the state of Wyoming. In Wyoming, wolverines are mostly found in the northwest near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, where the population at least appears sustainable, particularly in and around Yellowstone.
However, there was a sighting in the Medicine Bow Mountains in Southeastern Wyoming in 1991.
The scene near Horse Creek, Wyoming, where a wolverine was accidentally trapped in 1996. Actually, most of this area is drier Basin and Range or almost prairie type habitat, complete with buffalo, “hogback” mountains, and real, live cowboys.
I spoke with a man here in California who saw and heard a wolverine underneath a cabin where he was staying with his sons at 10,000 feet on Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains near Sheridan, Wyoming. The wolverine was rummaging around under the cabin for hours and later was gnawing up a nearby woodpile. The sighting occurred in 1996.
There was a 1997 sighting from the Bighorn Mountains, a range in North-Central Wyoming that extends from the Montana border south to near the town of Sheridan.
In March 1998, a wolverine killed several sheepeast of Buffalo, which is east of the Bighorn Mountains.
Interstate 90 drops down into the Crazy Woman Basin east of Buffalo, Wyoming. A wolverine killed several sheep here in March 1998 and was spotted by a rancher. This area, the Powder River Basin, is undergoing a huge amount of methane natural gas extraction which is sucking a huge amount of water out of the ground and spraying it on the surface. This is causing homeowners’ wells to go dry. They lose the value of the home, and the natural gas companies refuse to reimburse them because the homeowners do not own the mineral rights under their land. That’s the way capitalism works in America – the score is Capital-100 Humans-0, and masochistic Americans just can’t get enough abuse. There is also a fear that many area watercourses, such as the Powder River and Crazy Woman Creek, are going to dry up part of the year, endangering many fish endemic to the area.
A young wolverine was captured only two miles north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, the state capital, in 1998. Cheyenne is a city of 53,000 people.
The view down into Chicken Creek that runs through the heart of the Fossil Buttes National Monument in Southwest Wyoming. Fossil Buttes is on the left. A wolverine was roadkilled here in 2004. Some think that wolverines have their winter range in the lower Basin and Range sagebrush zones. Here the terrain is mostly sagebrush, but aspens grow at higher elevations. Very large numbers of fossilized fish have been found in this area.
There are also sightings from the Wyoming Range in far Western Wyoming south of Jackson Hole.
In 2005, a female wolverine was being monitored in the Salt River Range along the Idaho border. She was also using the Wyoming Mountains. The Salt River Range is next to the Wyoming Mountains.
Wolverines also are thought to live in the Tetons and the Gros Ventre Range south of Yellowstone and in the Absaroka Range east of Yellowstone near Cody. Jackson Hole is located in the Gros Ventres.
A couple of wolverines were documented on the Wind River Range about 75 miles southeast of Jackson Hole near Lander in recent surveys.
In general, wolverines in Wyoming are thought to be in poor shape. They seem to be slowly recovering territory and spreading out into new areas. One reason for this may be that the large wolf population in Yellowstone is providing a good source of carrion for wolverines with all of the ungulates that they are killing. Another reason may be that there is much less broad-spectrum predator poisoning in the state in the past few decades.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
? JUST IN: President Trump just went berserk on the leftist judges who struck down his White House ballroom, calling the ruling “a NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT at the HIGHEST LEVEL”
“Two Judges, one appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, the other by Sleepy Joe Biden, said in a ruling… pic.twitter.com/Cn3wYyHwyI
NEW: Trump says he does not need to campaign on behalf of Republicans because he “already won his own race,” adding that he questions if voters will turn out for the GOP because they’re “angry at Republicans but not angry with me personally.”
Donald Trump seems to have given up on being president and the leader of the Republican Party. He is focused on developing DC, not the midterms. He is obsessing over the White House Ballroom while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine tells him the Iran War is unwinnable.
“WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must stop construction of the $400 million White House ballroom because Congress has not approved the project, a decision he blasted as “unjust” while vowing to appeal it to the nation’s highest court.
Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to build a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom where the White House’s East Wing stood before he ordered its demolition last fall, according to the decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. …”
“Over the last few weeks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has privately made clear to other top Trump advisers that the US needs to find an off-ramp from the war with Iran — because the military options on the table to escalate the conflict could backfire and airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
“Caine is looking for an off ramp,” one of the sources said bluntly.
Caine is not alone in his view that the war has reached a crossroads. He has discussed concerns about the military options for escalating the conflict and raised the prospect of finding an off-ramp from the war with other key Cabinet officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, two of the sources said. …”
If Republicans lose the midterms, Trump sees it as a judgment on them. They didn’t bend over backwards enough. He has already won his own race and has never been more popular.
Another totally boss old wolverine article with lots of incredible photos.
I updated it and did a heavy edit on it where I went off-topic and launched into some woke rant about wolves in the US being devastated as a consequence of White rule and capitalism. Which is ridiculous because it assumes that non-European Whites won’t wipe wildlife off the face of the Earth. Hell, Latin Americans, Arabs, Africans, Southeast Asians, and South Asians do a terrible job of preserving wildlife in their lands. Whites have actually become one of the best races on Earth when it comes to preserving wildlife.
The article then wandered off into a discussion about US Whites going racist and Republican as their numbers fall. One paragraph that was interesting said that
when a ruling group (racial, ethnic, or any sort of group) in a country is threatened with the loss of their dominance and rule in the country, they often resort to dictatorship or even fascism in a last ditch effort to preserve their dominance and rule over the other groups.
I wrote that almost 20 years ago and I should start fortune telling. What do you know? MAGA, a fascist movement that has taken over the Republican Party with the intent to create a permanent Republican Party fascist dictatorship in the US, has now stolen two elections by electoral fraud and is busy dismantling the US government, society, and our democracy itself. And it’s being led by among other groups, Whites (particularly working class Whites with a high school education who are victims of the system themselves) with a grievance who see White dominance and frankly White rule in the US being challenged by democratically minded non-Whites.
So these Whites are trying to install a permanent fascist dictatorship in the US to preserve their perceived dominance and rule. I blame American Whites for Trump. It’s our fault. We’ve destroyed this once beautiful country all for our petty greed and supremacism. Trump is one of the worst things American Whites have ever done to this country, and we’ve fucked this country in a hundred ways at least in the past. Indeed, non-Whites such as Blacks and Hispanics cause their own problems in the US, but at least they’re not installing a Goddamned fascist dictatorship!
The wolverine in Idaho is generally considered inhabit three main areas:
The first and southernmost population is in the Sawtooth National Forest (northern part), Challis National Forest, Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho.
Yet another population is the central population in the Lochsa River Drainage in the Clearwater and Bitterroot Mountains in Clearwater National Forest.
A third population is the northern population to the north in the Selkirks along the Canadian border.
The three populations are separated from each other, although at least the first population is thought to be healthy. Nevertheless, we continue to get reports of wolverines in other parts of Idaho. A previous post noted a wolverine on a telephone pole along the Snake River Valley in King Hill, Idaho, earlier this year. A radio-collared wolverine recently traveled from the Grand Tetons in Wyoming across the Blackfoot and Caribou Mountains in the Targhee and Caribou National Forests in Southeastern Idaho, across private lands to the Portneuf Range west of the Portneuf River. This range is about 20 miles east of Pocatello, Idaho, and encompasses part of the Caribou National Forest and the Fort Hall Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation.
The breathtaking Portneuf Range east of Pocatello, Idaho, where the radio-collared wolverine ended up. It promptly turned right around and went back to the Tetons. In the Basin and Range Region.
A grazing allotment on the Blackfoot Mountains in Southeastern Idaho. Lance Armstrong, the peripatetic wolverine, crossed this range on his way from the Grand Tetons to the Portneuf Range opposite Pocatello, Idaho. Grazing is devastating BLM and Forest Service land in this region. The problem is particularly acute in Southern Idaho, as it is more arid. All livestock grazing needs to be banned in at least these areas. Incredibly, livestock grazing is allowed in National Forest wilderness areas. The only way the 1964 Wilderness Act could get passed was to grandfather in these grazing allotments. It’s ridiculous that grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. Grazing is particularly destructive in high-elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada and anywhere in the arid West.
The cow evolved in England and prefers a cool climate with lots of water. In the arid West, cows congregate during the summer in the riparian areas, which they completely devastate. A grand total of 2% of all US beef comes from public lands in the West – most beef comes from feedlots in the Midwest. Public lands grazing is welfare – the allotments are rented out to the ranchers at far below market value, so the taxpayer gets screwed. Not only do we get ripped off on the rental of our lands, but we also get our lands devastated in the process. The whole thing is insane. If ranchers can’t make it ranching on private land, they need to get out of the business. Furthermore, increasingly, public lands ranching is going corporate. Mom and Pop ranchers are going out and ranching corporations are in. Many public lands grazing allotments are now run by corporations as investment vehicles.
The long-ranging wolverine above was finally killed by a trapper just over the Montana border in the Centennial Range. This was before the wolverine was listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and Montana had legal trapping of wolverines. Since the Centennials range into Idaho, we ought to add the Centennial Range in the Targhee National Forest to the wolverine’s range in Idaho.
The spectacular Centennial Range on the border between Idaho and Montana. This is where the long-ranging wolverine named Lance Armstrong was finally killed by a trapper over the border into Montana.
Additional searching around the net noted that a wolverine had been shot dead by some boys in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho a few years back. They were worried and they brought it in to the Department of Fish and Game office, but the wardens let them go because they were kids and did not know what they were doing, although the wolverine is protected in Idaho.
The Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho. Some teenage boys shot dead a wolverine here about three years ago, but were not charged. Clearly, wolverines do exist in this part of the Colombian Plateau. This is where Evil Knievel tried his ill-fated motorcycle jump decades ago.
There are various definitions about what constitutes the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The most parsimonious definition says that it starts at the spectacular Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho. It seems to continue west about 30 miles to 1000 Springs (great pics on that page) at Hagerman, where Wikipedia implies that it ends. So this wolverine was apparently killed in the canyon between Twin Falls and Hagerman. That’s only about 47 miles north of the Nevada border. Way further afield, in the Seven Devils Mountains of far Western Idaho in the Hell’s River Canyon of the Snake River, wolverines exist. This large document includes in an appendix a report called Survey of Wolverine Dens in the Seven Devils Mountains of Hells Canyon.
The gorgeous Seven Devils Range in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. This range borders on Hell’s Canyon and may serve as a steppingstone for wolverines to travel from Idaho across the Snake River to the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon.
There are also reports of wolverines in the Wood River Valley area. Part of the Wood River runs about 30 miles north of Twin Falls, but the Wood River Valley refers to private land about 60-70 miles north of Twin Falls. It includes the towns of Ketchum, Sun Valley, Hailey and Bellevue. We should extend wolverine habitat down from the Sawtooths into the Wood River Valley. There have been recent sightings in the Sun Valley area. The webpage for Power County, a county in southeastern Idaho west and southwest of Pocatello, claims that wolverines occur there. There are various ranges there, including the Bannock Range, the Sublette Range and the Deep Creek Range.
The spectacular Deep Creek Range in Southeastern Idaho. It is about 40 miles long and is bounded by Arbon Valley on the East and Rockland Valley on the West as it ranges through Power County. Wolverines may well exist here. Another Basin and Range mountain range.
The Bannock Range in Southeastern Idaho. Both the Bannock and the Deep Creek Ranges are southwest of Pocatello. The Bannocks extend from Pocatello 85 miles south into northern Utah through the Caribou National Forest. Wolverines may well exist in this range. Also located in the Basin and Range region.
Photos of all of these beautiful ranges can be seen on Ralph Maughan’s excellent blog. Maughan is a professor of political science at Idaho State University in Pocatello. He’s also really big on wolves. Wolves in some places are listed as either Endangered (parts of the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Southwest) or Threatened (Minnesota) under the Endangered Species Act.
Wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of eastern Oregon and Washington have been delisted and are now managed by state agencies, but I’m not sure how good of a job they are doing. I know that 20 years ago when they first delisted those wolves, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana absolutely devastated their wolf populations. Idaho has 1,229 wolves and it wants to reduce it to 500. Montana has a population of 1,200 wolves and it wants to reduce it to 450. Wolves are declining dramatically in all three states under state management.
Numbers are much smaller in Oregon and Washington but wolves are increasing in both states. Occasional wolves are seen in far Northern Utah and a pack was recently seen in far Northeastern Nevada. They are doing well and increasing in California. Web page on myths about wolves. Wolves are hardly dangerous at all to humans.
In summary, occupied wolverine habitat in Idaho should be extended beyond the description at the beginning to the post to Power County, Elmore County, the Snake River Valley, the Blackfoot Mountains, the Centennial Range, the Caribou Range, the Snake River Range, the Big Hole Mountains, the Targhee and Caribou National Forests, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the Portneuf Range, the Seven Devils Mountains, the Snake River Canyon, and possibly the Bannock and Deep Creek Ranges.
Edelman, Frank and Copeland, Jeff. 1999. “Wolverine Distribution in the Northwestern United States and a Survey in the Seven Devils Mountains of Idaho.” Northwest Science 62:181-185.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. “Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire.” Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
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Catholicism Tends Towards Either Socialism/Communism or Fascism
Even now in Latin America it’s socialists or communists versus fascists in Haiti, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Paraguay. The communist versus fascist wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru are over. Wars with a similar dynamic led by the ELN and FARC dissidents are ongoing in Colombia and Paraguay . Even in places like Greece, Italy, the Philippines, Germany, and Turkey, a lot the fighting on the ground is socialists and communists versus fascists. The Left is actually armed in the Philippines and Turkey. There is a large fascist movements in France and the Left is also quite strong. Fascists are in power in India.
Fascists Versus Socialists in Catholic and Orthodox Europe
The Left has been destroyed in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Romania due to bad experiences with the USSR in the Eastern Bloc. It exists but is weak in Bulgaria. It is still quite strong in Moldova. But now most of these countries have very significant fascist movements. In Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Croatia, and Belorussia, the fascists are openly Nazi. Poland and Ukraine have fascist or Nazi governments. The fascist government in Hungary was overthrown. Italy is now under fascist rule, but it is Mussolinist instead of Nazi. There is still a very powerful fascist movement in Spain from the Civil War and Francoist fascist rule. After Francoism ended, the fascists simply migrated over to the conservative parties in Spain, and they didn’t change their attitudes much. Spain also has a powerful Left.
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The US simply will not allow any Left project in Latin America ever. We have to rule as a dictatorship all of the countries in Latin America. Catholic countries are prone to communism and they hate individualism. Hence the only projects that get installed in Catholic countries are communalist Left (socialists or communists) or communalist Right (fascists).
They are not allowed any freedom. We rule over every country down there and those that stand up to our bullying like Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua are attacked in various ways. That’s the bullshit Monroe Doctrine. That doctrine never had anything to do with stopping foreign powers. We surround and put bases right up to the borders of all sorts of countries we don’t like all over the world, but nobody gets to do it to us.
That was the Cold War rationale for the Monroe Doctrine. If any country so much as raised the minimum wage, we called them communists and overthrew them with a CIA coup. After the Cold War ended, Haiti and Honduras raised the minimum wage, and their governments were overthrown by Hillary Clinton and with the assistance of Bill Clinton. Barack Obama declared Venezuela a severe threat to US national security, which is laughable.
We are just typical American hypocritical scum. The rule of America and Israel is:
We get to do it to them all we want, but if they try to do it to us even one time, we will destroy them.
Usually humans with this mindset are called narcissists and sociopaths. American foreign policy is narcissistic and sociopathic and I think Americans in general are narcissistic and sociopathic because they support US foreign policy. Keep in mind that almost all US liberal Democrats support US foreign policy. The awful socialists in the Democratic Party like Bernie Sanders do almost nothing to fight US imperialism, stop out of control military spending, or oppose or stop foreign wars or sanctions. Let’s call them imperialist liberals and socialists. I think living in an imperialist country like the US simply turns you into an imperialist. You just absorb it like the sun on a summer day.
I think Americans like being hypocritical assholes, frankly. All of this goes back to American hubris and exceptionalism, which the Israelis also have. And those are the two most hated countries on Earth, and they both deserve it. In the US we have had 80 years of rightwing propaganda from the Cold War until the present, and it actually got a lot worse after 1990. I believe that US hubris and exceptionalism along with 80 years of rightwing propaganda (especially after 1980) has made Americans susceptible to fascism.
Even now 36% of Americans are openly fascist and the Republican Party is now a fascist party determined to install a permanent fascist dictatorship in the US. I always said if we ever had a revolution in the US, it would be a rightwing revolution. A rightwing revolution is always a fascist revolution. Fascism is the revolutionary Right, and stands in opposition to Communism and revolutionary socialist variants like Bolivarianism and Sandinismo, which are the revolutionary Left. Fascists and communists are each other’s worst enemies and their hatred for each other is often deadly.
The whole liberal lie was that sadly we did a lot of bad things during the Cold War to stop communism. My parents used to talk like this all the time. But then the liberal Democrat parents of mine supported the fascist contras in Nicaragua and the fascist coup in Haiti.
US Imperialism and Colonialism in the Modern Era
But then the Cold War ended in 1990, and we kept attacking the Left. So what we did in the Cold War was never about a war on the USSR and communism. It was about stopping any Left project (typical socialist, social democratic, or nationalist) anywhere on Earth (mostly in Latin America) because Left projects are bad for the US rich and corporations. We also overthrow every government that gets friendly with our enemies. We overthrew the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh for getting friendly with Russia.
We installed new pro-US leaders in Iraq and Lebanon because the governments opposed Israel. Iraq doesn’t even get their oil proceeds. It all goes into a US government bank account and we decide whether we are going to give them any of the money or not. So we control all of their oil money. Why do Americans think that’s ok? That’s raw, naked colonialism. Venezuela is also a colony of the US, as is Lebanon and Jordan. Of course all of the Gulf states but especially Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Kuwait are all US colonies. Every country with a US base in it is a colony of the US.
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The US government has only worked for the rich and corporations for a very long time now. This is especially prominent under Republicans but it continues in a more underhanded way with some help for the workers, consumers, investors, and society, under Democrats. Remember when Biden talked to that group of very rich people in New York and said:
Nothing will fundamentally change.
By that he meant the US system of oligarchical rule of the rich (the billionaires) and the corporations will remain in place in his administration. He would not try to dismantle oligarchical rule, which is the principal project facing us now in the US. We need to overthrow the billionaires. They’re destroying everything in this country and in the planet at large. The US military does not protect the US. No one has threatened the mainland since forever. Sure our bases colonial and imperial bases overseas get attacked, but they deserve it.
The US military always and only fights for the oligarchs, the billionaires, the rich and the corporations, and it attacks workers and everyday people all over the world. It also fights a lot of wars for Israel. When you join the military, you go overseas to attack people and kill people for the US rich and corporations and for Israel. You attack countries where the workers or anti-Israel forces have taken control and overthrow them to put the pro-Israelis, the rich and the corporations back in power.
You’re a class traitor, a classcuck. Why on Earth are you in the US military? I will note that this tendency of the US to use the military to attack countries for the rich and the corporations is much less pronounced under Democratic presidents. Democratic presidents don’t like to start or fight wars. They prefer to use softer power such as financial sanctions. They’re still US imperialists, but they just take a different and more moderate and peaceful tack.
Simon Rorschach examines how the Ukrainian bombing of Wildberries warehouses in Russia reveals the absurd, self-perpetuating logic of modern war that Joseph Heller captured so sharply in Catch-22.
The repeated Ukrainian attacks on warehouses belonging to the Russian online retailer Wildberries are slowly beginning to produce consequences. Wildberries, like Amazon, is less a conventional retailer than an enormous platform through which thousands of small Russian businesses sell clothing, electronics, household goods, books, cosmetics, and almost everything else imaginable. The attraction of such a system is obvious: it is cheap, efficient, impersonal, and wonderfully convenient. Yet that convenience rests upon a vast physical infrastructure that suddenly becomes extremely vulnerable in wartime. When a Wildberries warehouse burns, it is not merely the property of a large corporation that disappears in the flames. The inventories of countless small merchants vanish with it. Many of these traders now say that they face financial ruin, since insurance policies naturally exclude losses caused by war. Hegel once remarked, with characteristic severity, that war is the condition in which the moral commonplace about the vanity of earthly possessions is finally taken seriously in practice. In Russia, thousands of ordinary businessmen are discovering what that philosophical sentence means when translated into smoke, debt, and empty shelves. There is something distinctly Catch-22 about their predicament: they are civilians whose goods have become vulnerable because they participate in ordinary economic life, yet the very ordinariness of that economic life offers them no protection once war absorbs it into its logic. They are neither soldiers nor meaningful military targets, but they suffer because the machinery of war has decided that the distinction is increasingly irrelevant.
The purpose of such Ukrainian attacks is therefore best understood as psychological warfare. The war is meant to be carried into the homes of Russian civilians, not necessarily through direct attacks on houses but by making normal life progressively less normal. A parcel does not arrive. A familiar product disappears. A merchant goes bankrupt. Prices rise. The distant front begins to enter the domestic sphere through inconvenience, uncertainty, and loss. The official justification that companies such as Wildberries are important to military logistics is not especially convincing. The same applies to Ukrainian firms such as Rozetka, whose largest and most modern distribution center near Kiev was recently bombed. Modern armies possess their own supply systems, capable of moving everything from artillery shells to stationery toward the front. Commercial delivery companies do not carry packages into frontline trenches. Russia, for its part, attacks Ukrainian filling stations along major roads, hoping that truck drivers and “volunteers” heading east will find themselves short of fuel and forced to calculate whether they can make the return journey. Here again Catch-22 provides an apt literary parallel. In Joseph Heller’s world, the bureaucratic justification for an action often survives even when its practical logic has collapsed. Everything can be declared necessary because necessity is defined by the institution carrying it out. A warehouse becomes military because somebody somewhere might buy something from it; a petrol station becomes part of the war because somebody heading toward the front might stop there. Once the category of “military relevance” expands far enough, almost nothing remains outside it.
How far can the logic of war expand before everything becomes a target?
Dr. Alexander Jacob - independent scholar and author - joins us to discuss the life, work, and legacy of SS-Sturmbannführer Johann von Leers (AKA ‘‘Omar Amin’’), and the relevance of National Socialist thought and revolutionary Socialism generally to the contemporary political landscape.
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Trump: "A lot of people are saying I'm one of the greatest presidents ever … when I see polls on the economy, I should have 150%, not 100%. Because this is the golden age of America." pic.twitter.com/hp2jphmSZH
"The bottom line is that the group on which the Trump movement was built upon, they are shifting away and saying 'we don't like MAGA anymore'" — Enten details how Trump has lost 32 points of support among non-college adults since 2024 pic.twitter.com/NK42yRdXxW
The true mark of a golden age is when the bottom 90% of the population must live off of ham sandwiches and instant noodles just to exist in a lower standard of living than their parents did.
— ? Thug Life Sproul ??? (@ThugLifeSproul) August 6, 2026
Fox: The biggest economic challenges we're facing is the cost of food. Ground beef up 12.4%, milk up 9%. When should Americans expect meaningful relief?
Exclusive: President Trump has directed contractors to redo weeks of work on his planned White House helipad, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Read the polls, watch economic indicators and talk to President Trump’s inner circle in private, and the verdict on his second term seems clear:
Even some longtime insiders fear he’s trapped by a war he shouldn’t have waged, tariffs he shouldn’t have levied, monuments he shouldn’t be obsessed with.
Why it matters: Thesethreetopicschew up much of Trump’s time and attention. All three are widely unpopular in polls.
And it’s almost impossible to see the public suddenly warming to war, tariffs or more statues. ..
By the numbers:Trump’s approval cratered to an all-time low of 32% in a Quinnipiac poll last week. Even more damning: 68% of voters said he isn’t focused enough on the problems most Americans face.
Behind the scenes:New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman estimates 70% of the president’s mindshare goes to renovations and monuments. “It’s a legacy thing,” she told her colleague Ezra Klein.
A Trump insider told us: “He concentrates on the hobbies that distract from his terrible polling numbers, about which he is in denial. The other issue is how the war, tariffs and monuments are demoralizing the base.” …”
Meanwhile, Axios reports that Trump is focused on the White House Ballroom, the Reflecting Pool, these gilded statues which have gone up and the angle of the White House helipad. He sees the economy as the stock market which is doing great and doesn’t understand why people are upset. It is all Joe Biden’s fault. The billionaires who bought the war with Iran are doing better than ever. He cut their taxes and made them wealthier and squandered his presidency on their luxury beliefs.
Ali-Mohammad Mohajer Nasser argues that Iran’s resistance to Atlantic power offers Germany a stark lesson in geography, sovereignty, and the price of abandoning one’s own ground.
I.
There are defeats that have no military cause. When the United States and its Zionist satellite opened their forty-day war against Iran in the spring of 2026, every maneuver was backed by the sheer weight of technological supremacy: aircraft carriers, stealth bombers, satellite-linked kill chains, data streams racing in real time through Pentagon servers. The strategists in Washington had calculated the collapse of Iranian infrastructure within seventy-two hours, the disintegration of command structures, the inevitable implosion of a society under the combined weight of air and naval assault. None of this occurred. What happened instead was the exact opposite: the aircraft carriers—those floating cathedrals of thalassocracy—became drifting coffins in the Strait of Hormuz. The F-35, crown jewel of Western air superiority, crashed over the plateau of Isfahan. And the Iranian population, which was to be broken by “shock and awe,” poured into the streets of Tehran by the tens of thousands on the second day of the war, without any state call to mobilize.
The post-hoc explanations of Western general staffs invoked familiar variables: an overestimation of their own stealth technology, an underestimation of Iran’s dispersed missile batteries, the notorious arrogance of imperial planning staffs. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. What transpired during those forty days was not the defeat of one army by another. It was the defeat of one mode of being by another. More precisely: it was the moment in which the West’s thalassocratic order shattered against Iran’s telluric reality—not because Iran possessed superior weapons, but because it embodied a truth that Western technical thinking can no longer even formulate: that geography is not a neutral coordinate grid, but a living ally of those who know how to dwell within it.
To grasp this truth, one must look to the Strait of Hormuz. In the banal language of maritime strategy, it is a “chokepoint”—a bottleneck to be secured for the free flow of trade. For the West—heir to British sea power, executor of the mare liberum—the sea is an empty space, a surface of transit, a void to be mastered by technology. The Strait of Hormuz, in this optic, is nothing more than a problem of force projection. For Iran, by contrast—a state emerging from the depth of four thousand years of sedentary existence—this same strait is something fundamentally different: the threshold of a home. The Iranian defense official who, days before his assassination by an Israeli drone strike, told Al-Mayadeen that “the Persian Gulf is our home” was not uttering a propaganda slogan. He was articulating an ontological fact that Western thought can no longer hear, because it has forgotten the difference between a space one occupies and a space one inhabits.
Carl Schmitt captured this distinction in The Nomos of the Earth. Every legal-political order, Schmitt argued, is rooted in an original act of land-appropriation—not in a contract, not in a constitution, but in the existential deed by which a people binds itself to a specific soil and, from that bond, establishes an order.1 The nomos is the unity of place and order. Yet this unity is no anthropological constant; it has a history, and this history, for Schmitt, is the history of a struggle: the struggle between the land-based, telluric order and the sea-based, thalassocratic order.2 Telluric power thinks in borders, in concrete spaces, in “homes.” Thalassocratic power thinks in networks, in currents, in the unbounded. The one defends the earth; the other dissolves its limits. The one knows the sacred; the other knows only the market.
In the war of 2026, these two nomoi collided with a force that no Pentagon war game could have anticipated. The American destroyers that entered the Strait of Hormuz were not simply moving into foreign territorial waters—they were entering a different modality of spatiality, one in which the land is the dominant pole and the sea its dependent annex. The missiles that struck them were not projectiles in a symmetrical naval engagement. They were acts of home defense, fired from concealed coastal batteries, from the entrails of mountains overlooking the sea, from a geography that a civilization—one that never forgot how—had turned into a weapon. This is the telluric character that Schmitt ascribed to the modern partisan made placeless: the ability to fight with the ground, not against it. The Iranian fighter, embedded in the gorges of the Zagros, operates not despite the mountains, but through them. The mountains are his shield, his hideout, his logistics. The American soldier, by contrast, operates from an aircraft carrier—an artificial island, a steel homelessness beholden to no soil save that of its own power-projection capacity. In these two figures, the opposition between a telluric civilization that knows where it belongs and a thalassocratic machinery that grasps every place only as a temporary position becomes palpable.
Herein lies the first and perhaps deepest lesson of the forty-day war: geography is not an obsolete category in a globalized world. It is destiny itself. It is the silent sovereign that will sooner or later summon every technological hubris before its tribunal. The West, intoxicated by the rush of speed and data streams, has forgotten this. Iran reminded it—not through a moral sermon, but through the thunder of rockets that came from the rock.
II.
What does this have to do with Germany? Everything. For while Iran understood how to wield its geography as a weapon, Germany has allowed the same geography to become its trap. The stage for this self-entanglement is called Ukraine.
One illusion must be dispelled here: the war in Ukraine is not a European war. It is a thalassocratic war, waged by the United States on the back of Europe, fought on the soil of a country that has been sacrificed to the Atlantic alliance—like Poland before it, like the Baltic states—as a buffer, as cannon fodder, as strategic disposable mass in a planetary struggle whose goal is not the defense of Ukraine but the strategic paralysis of Russia and, in the final analysis, the permanent subjugation of the European continent to the interests of Anglo-American sea power.
Germany plays a tragic role in this drama. It has allowed itself, with no discernible will of its own, to become the logistics hub and financier of a war that runs diametrically counter to its own vital interests. According to official government figures, German military aid to Ukraine had exceeded €32 billion by mid-2026.3 Billions in arms shipments flow into a conflict that deprives German industry of its energy base, drives inflation to unprecedented levels,4 and does not enhance the security of its own territory but rather endangers it existentially. The ifo Institute estimated the total cost of the Ukraine war to the German economy at roughly €200 billion by the end of 2024.5 Every Leopard tank burning in the eastern Ukrainian steppe, every Taurus cruise missile debated in Berlin,6 every new round of sanctions cutting off the remaining trade routes to the East—these are not acts of self-assertion. They are acts of self-mutilation. They serve not German interests but the preservation of a unipolar order whose beneficiaries sit in Washington and London.
And while Berlin empties its arsenals and ruins its economy, the front line of a potential total war moves closer to Europe’s eastern borders. The spiral of escalation, driven by Atlantic hawks and their willing executors in Brussels, has long since developed a momentum that can no longer be controlled from Berlin—assuming it ever was. The notion that one can bring Russia—a nuclear power with the resources of a continent—to its knees through a proxy war without being dragged into the abyss oneself is not bold. It is delusional.
Germany pays for this delusion with its future. It finances its own strategic disenfranchisement through continued Ukrainian rearmament. It accumulates debt to deliver weapons that undermine its own security. It sacrifices its citizens’ prosperity on the altar of a transatlantic loyalty that Washington has never repaid with anything but contempt. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines—an act of economic warfare against Europe’s closest ally—was met in Berlin with a silence more eloquent than any protest.7 It was an admission of its own irrelevance. The subsequent decoupling from Russian gas triggered a severe energy shock and led to production stoppages in key industries such as chemicals, steel, and fertilizers.8
III.
Yet there is a way out. It lies not in a return to a romantically transfigured past, nor in flight into some provincialism, but in the sober recognition of what is. And what is, is this: the unipolar world order declared eternal after 1991 no longer exists. It has shattered against the refusal of the telluric powers—Iran, Russia, China—to submit to the diktat of thalassocratic hegemony. The war in Ukraine is not proof of that order’s strength; it is the last, desperate convulsion of a dying configuration. The war in Iran was the definitive refutation of its premises.
Multipolarity is not a utopia. It is a fact. And it demands of Germany nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of its political thought. The West—and with it Germany—must learn to recognize what it cannot defeat: the existence of sovereign powers that possess a different conception of space, time, and order than the liberal democracy of the Atlantic model. Iran is such a power. It is what, in the language of German philosophy, one might call an Ordnungsmacht—a state that not only defends itself but guarantees a regional stability that, without it, would sink into anarchy and chaos. Those who deny this, who continue to bet on regime change and destabilization, might ask themselves why precisely those regions of the Middle East that the West “liberated” through intervention—Iraq, Libya, Syria—are today fields of rubble, while Iran, despite four decades of sanctions and encirclement, stands upright.
Acknowledging multipolarity is not a concession to the enemy. It is a step toward reason. It means no longer viewing the planet as a single, homogeneous market sphere to be molded in the West’s image, but as a fabric of different nomoi, different ways of inhabiting the earth. It means grasping war for what it always was, in Clausewitz’s terms: the continuation of politics by other means—and not, as in the nihilistic distortion of the present, the continuation of the market by deadly means.
IV.
That Germany finds this step so difficult has many reasons. One of them is the existence of a political class that has taken its own people hostage for its moral crusades. It is above all the milieu of the Greens and their intellectual companions that must be named here. This stratum has established a discourse in which the defense of democracy, the protection of human rights, and solidarity with Israel have become interchangeable battle cries that stifle any strategic thinking.
The moral militarism of these circles is the Trojan horse of Atlanticism in the heart of Europe. Beneath the banner of values, the invaluable is justified: the delivery of heavy weapons to war zones, the economic impoverishment of one’s own population, the uncritical support for a government that, before the eyes of the world, is committing genocide in Gaza and seeking to realize its expansionist dreams through the bombardment of Iran. This policy no longer has anything to do with morality. It is ideology in the pathological sense: a closed system of justifications immune to any empirical refutation.
Behind this ideological façade, however, an even deeper—an ontological—rupture is occurring. What is currently happening in Germany is not merely misguided policy. It is the gradual abandonment of one’s own groundedness in favor of an abstract, placeless, and historyless internationalism. The ruling doctrine—one might call it, following Carl Schmitt, liberal globalism—has set ideology against culture, internationalism against autochthony, the universal market individual against the rooted citizen. The political and economic system of the Federal Republic, under this sign, no longer serves the indigenous population; it has made itself a willing participant in every Atlantic war that Anglo-American thalassocracy unleashes. With every military intervention, every arms delivery, every unconditional fealty to Washington and London, Berlin opens the sluices for destructive transnational forces working toward the dissolution of the German people as a historical unity.
This process has a demographic dimension that can no longer be tabooed if one is to analyze the situation seriously. The unceasing imperial wars of the West—in the Middle East, in North Africa, in the Hindu Kush—have uprooted millions of people and turned them into refugee streams now pressing toward Europe and especially Germany. The number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide exceeded 120 million for the first time at the end of 2024.9 The irony of this constellation is as bitter as it is revealing: Germany participates in those wars that create the very causes of flight, and then opens its own borders to those fleeing the rubble of those wars. What appears at first as a contradiction reveals itself on closer inspection as the consistent logic of a system that views humans not as members of a historically grown community, but as Bestand—as disposable resources that can be shifted, exchanged, and exploited as needed.
Here, Martin Heidegger’s diagnosis of the Gestell is of terrifying relevance.10 Under the rule of the Gestell, all beings—river, forest, animal, and finally man himself—become mere Bestand, standing reserve for a process of exploitation that serves no other end than its own perpetuation. Current German migration policy bears precisely these traits. It treats the native citizen, who understands his country and culture as something inviolable, as legacy and obligation simultaneously, as an obstacle—a disruptive factor to be replaced through the import of new, supposedly more flexible labor. The reformed Skilled Immigration Act of 2023 lowered the barriers for immigration from third countries significantly and targets the recruitment of up to 400,000 skilled workers annually.11 At the same time, it treats the migrant not as a person with his own history, dignity, and destiny, but as maneuvering mass, as demographic filler to plug the holes that a low-birth, future-alienated society has itself torn open. According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, about 24 percent of the total population had a migration background in 2023; among minors, this share was over 40 percent.12 At the same time, the birth rate fell to 1.35 children per woman—far below the replacement level.13
An autochthonous population, however, that stands in an organic relationship to its homeland, its landscape, the graves of its ancestors, cannot be arbitrarily exchanged. It is not “human capital” to be redistributed according to market exigencies. It realizes its own destiny, and it is not prepared to sacrifice that destiny to the profit interests of international cartels or the geopolitical ambitions of the Atlantic order. This is precisely where the decisive difference lies between Iran’s telluric mode of existence and the uprooted, placeless existence of present-day Germany. Iran, at the decisive moment, did not regard its sons and daughters as available resources, but as bearers of a destiny whose defense drove them into the streets and into the mountains. Present-day Germany, by contrast, appears willing to place its own population—in its historically grown composition, its cultural imprint, its claim to be more than a collection of taxpayers and consumers—at disposal.
This is the ultimate consequence of self-abandonment: a people that renounces its geography, its history, and its culture becomes available material for foreign projects. It ceases to be the subject of its own history and becomes an object—Bestand, resource, demographic filler in a game whose rules others determine. The moral militarism of the Greens and their allies, which beneath the banner of values justifies the invaluable, is only the ideological surface of this deeper process. Beneath it lies the transformation of a people into a mere population—a collection of individuals without destiny, without roots, without the ability and will to distinguish friend from foe.
V.
These are the two faces of the one truth: geography is destiny, and whoever betrays it betrays themselves. Iran knew how to wield its geography as a weapon and stands. Germany has betrayed its geography and staggers.
It was Oswald Spengler who, in the darkest pages of The Decline of the West, sketched the vision of a civilization that had completely lost contact with the soil from which it grew—a civilization whose people exist only in cities, whose thinking circulates only in abstractions, whose wars are fought not for life but for emptiness.14 We have arrived at this vision. The spectacle of the Ukrainian battlefield, the bombs over Gaza, the rockets over Tehran—these are not the birth pangs of a new order, but the convulsions of a sinking one.
Germany can free itself from this vortex—but only if it is prepared to admit a thought that the ruling ideology has banished as heresy: that there is a sovereignty not certified in Washington, but in the depth of its own history and the gravity of its own situation. That it need not confront the telluric powers of the East as enemies, but as neighbors in a fabric of different worlds. That the prosperity and security of its citizens are to be defended not on the Crimea or in the Strait of Hormuz, but in the capacity to refuse the imperatives of foreign powers. And that its own population—the Germans who have lived in this country for generations, shaped its landscapes, speak its language, bury its dead—must neither be replaced by demographic experiments nor deprived of its identity by ideological re-education programs, if Germany is ever to become a sovereign subject of history again.
Iran proved in the Ramadan War that telluric existence—the knowledge of one’s own home—can withstand the onslaught of the thalassocratic machine, not through superior firepower, but through the unyielding resolve to stand on one’s own ground, to fight, and if necessary to die. This ability, to “slaughter death at the foot of the Absolute” as the Iranian tradition phrases it, may be alien to the secular sensibility of the West. But it is the ultimate reason Iran did not fall, and will not fall. It is also the ultimate reason Germany, if it continues to act as though geography were an obsolete category, will fail in a field it does not command.
Geography is destiny. One can deny it. One can ignore it. One can try to drown it out with data streams and hypersonic missiles. But one cannot escape it. Germany faces the choice of confronting this truth—or sailing into the maelstrom others have prepared for it, losing not only its prosperity but ultimately itself. The time for decision is not tomorrow. It is now.
1
Schmitt, Carl. Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1950, pp. 13–20.
2
Ibid., pp. 143–155.
3
Federal Government, “Militärische UnterstĂĽtzung fĂĽr die Ukraine” (Military Support for Ukraine), continually updated overview. Germany is thus the second-largest military supporter of Ukraine after the United States.
4
Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), “Inflation rate at +7.9% in 2022,” Press Release No. 017 of 17 January 2023. This was the highest annual inflation rate since reunification in 1990.
5
ifo Institute, “Ukraine-Krieg kostet Deutschland bisher rund 200 Milliarden Euro” Press Release of 21 February 2024. The sum includes direct costs (military aid, refugee care) as well as indirect costs (energy price shock, production losses, inflation effects).
6
On the Taurus debate: Chancellor Olaf Scholz publicly rejected the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine in October 2023, citing the risk of drawing Germany into the war. The debate split the traffic-light coalition and led to persistent tensions with the opposition CDU/CSU.
7
The explosions occurred on 26 September 2022 in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm. Danish and Swedish investigating authorities confirmed sabotage. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report in February 2023 suggesting U.S. involvement (Seymour Hersh, “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline,” Substack, 8 February 2023). The New York Times reported on possible Ukrainian involvement (”Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines,” 7 March 2023). The German federal government has not yet presented a final investigation report.
8
Federal Network Agency, “Bericht zum Zustand der Gasversorgung” (Report on the Provision of Gas), ongoing reporting 2022–2023. See also: Federation of German Industries (BDI), “Energiekosten als Standortrisiko” (Energy Costs as a Locational Risk) September 2023.
9
UNHCR, *Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2024*, June 2025. The largest countries of origin were Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Sudan.
10
Heidegger, Martin. “Die Frage nach der Technik” (The Question Concerning Technology) (1953). In: *Vorträge und Aufsätze*. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954.
11
Federal Government, “Neues Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz” (New Skilled Labour Immigration Act), in force since 18 November 2023. The law lowers salary thresholds for the EU Blue Card and introduces an “Opportunity Card” based on a points system.
12
Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), “Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2023” (Population with a migration background – Results of the 2023 microcensus), series 1, subseries 2.2, 2024. A person is considered to have a migration background if they or both parents were not born with German citizenship.
13
Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), “Geburtenziffer 2023 auf 1,35 Kinder je Frau gesunken,” Press Release No. 318 of 17 September 2024.
14
Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. Vol. 2: Welthistorische Perspektiven. (The Decline of the West: Outlines of a Morphology of World-History. Vol. 2: Perspectives of World-History.) Munich: C. H. Beck, 1922, chapters “Machine and Money” and “The World-City and the Rootless Masses.”
The Manti-La Sal National Forest in Utah in Sanpete County. This county in Central Utah is believed to harbor a wolverine population. This area is northeast of Fillmore, Utah, which is the sighting nearest to Nevada.
Also in March 1979, a man shot a wolverine on Highway 40 in Utah, 1½ miles west of the Colorado border near Dinosaur, Colorado.
I received a report of a good but unconfirmed wolverine sighting in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah. The sighting occurred on August 20, 1989 in the Upper Escalante River Canyon at the junction with Coyote Gulch (map here). The wolverine was in the canyon chasing a beaver near its beaver dam. It also swam across the river. The sighting was by a man with a Master’s Degree in Ecology from UC Davis. The elevation for the sighting was 4,100 feet, but wolverines are not always found at high elevations.
This is an extremely unusual place to see a wolverine, but they probably used to live here. There are place names such as “Wolverine Bench” on the map in the Escalante Canyon area, and wolverines used be found into Northern Arizona. If wolverines existed in Northern Arizona, clearly they existed in the Glen Canyon area. Wolverines live in very similar habitat in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The Upper Escalante River Canyon is in the Aquarius Plateau, which has 50,000 acres of land above 11,000 feet. That’s clearly wolverine habitat. The junction of Coyote Gulch and the Upper Escalante is a ways away from the plateau, but it’s likely a dispersing juvenile could be found in the area. A photo of the terrain is here.
In recent years there have been documented sightings of wolverines around Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake. One was photographed running through a suburban development! There have also been documented sightings in the Uintas.
Wolverines in Colorado
There was an unconfirmed and undated sighting of a wolverine chasing a boy on a motorcycle down a road in the Routt National Forest in far Northern Colorado some years ago. The Routt is near Steamboat Springs up by the Wyoming border.
There have also been quite a few sightings in the San Juan Mountains north of Durango, Colorado and southeast of Wolf Creek Pass.
Wolverines have also been spotted, incredibly, near Sterling on the Great Plains in Northeastern Colorado, which seems very odd, but looking through all of these reports, it becomes apparent that wolverines in Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan may indeed use prairie habitat.
An incredible photo of a tornado over Sterling, Colorado from a storm-chaser page. Storm-chasers chase tornadoes so they can get pictures of them, or just to watch them. Pretty dangerous sport. Click to enlarge. I think it is quite clear by now that wolverines do use prairie habitat. Even aboriginally, prairie was thought to be marginal for wolverines, but perhaps that was wrong. Pre-contact, vast herds of buffalo roamed the prairie, and there would be plenty of dead buffalo for the scavenging wolverine to eat.
There was an unconfirmed wolverine sighting 4-5 miles up Red Sandstone Road in Vail, Colorado on the White River National Forest.
A photo of Vail ski resort and the town of Vail, Colorado as seen from Red Sandstone Road, which goes north of town. A wolverine was seen on this road recently. Click to enlarge.
The famous Maroon Bells in the White River National Forest in Western Colorado. Aspen and Vail are also located in this forest. I spent a week skiing in Aspen in 1978. Great place! The White National Forest is believed to harbor a wolverine population. Along with the Pike National Forest, these may be the only populations in the state.
A Colorado Department of Wildlife biologist spotted one south of Trapper Lake in Flat Tops Wilderness in the mid-1960’s. The Flat Tops is partly in the White River National Forest and partly in the Routt NF in Colorado.
Trapper Lake in the Flat Tops Wilderness. Canyon walls tower up to 1,000 feet at this late at the 9,500 foot elevation level. Fishing is very popular in this lake and it is said to be very good.
In July 1977, a man found a wolverine skull in the East Fork of the Cinnamon River Drainage in Gunnison County, Colorado. The skull was less than 10 years old.
In June 1978, a couple photographed an adult wolverine with three cubs in the Uncompagre Mountains.
In June 1978, a man took three photos of a wolverine crossing a snow field on Trinchera Peak (13,513 feet) in the Sangre de Christo Mountains in Southern Colorado.
The spectacular Trinchera Peak in the Sangre de Cristos in Southern Colorado. Bighorns roam on the top slopes of the mountain.
In March 1979, three biologists with the Colorado Department of Wildlife saw a wolverine near the Rifle Falls Fish Hatchery near Rifle, Colorado in Garfield County in Western Colorado.
Rifle Mountain Park, 13 miles north and just beyond the Rifle Falls Fish Hatchery, the largest fish hatchery in Colorado. There is great ice climbing here during the winter and mountain climbing the rest of the year. You don’t even have to worry about rain much because the cliffs catch so much of it and you can always take shelter under one. A wolverine was seen near here in 1979.
In June 1979, a man watched a wolverine for four minutes as it approached a bear bait he had set near Parshall in Grant County, Colorado. That area is southwest of Rocky Mountain National Park.
A photo of the Aspen Canyon Ranch in Parshall, Colorado. A wolverine was seen here in 1979. Parshall is not much of a town. It is really just an unincorporated collection of small homes and trailers. There are dude ranches all around here. That may be the Colorado River in the photo, as it runs through town here near its headwaters. Fishing is supposed to be great in the river here.
In the late 1980’s, there was an unconfirmed sighting of a wolverine in the Uncompagre Wilderness on the Uncompagre National Forest. The Uncompagre is in Southern Colorado and is located about 20 miles northwest of Telluride.
There was another unconfirmed sighting of tracks from the Flat Tops Wilderness in 2003.
There have been multiple unconfirmed wolverine sightings in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado since 2000.
A collared male wolverine was photographed and monitored in various places in Colorado from 2009 to 2012. Colorado is considering reintroducing wolverines to the state.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a masterpiece of its kind. It is an epic of liberal propaganda, executed with the technical precision, monumental scale, and relentless thematic control that only Nolan can command. The film is not trying to recreate the real Bronze Age world of ancient Greece. From the first frame to the last, it announces itself as a work about the present, dressed in the borrowed clothes of Homer, and every deliberate choice of casting, color, dialogue, moral emphasis, and narrative structure serves that end. What Nolan has produced is a Spenglerian vision turned upside down. The historical philosopher Oswald Spengler argued that the West was declining because its restless creative energy had run dry, its living culture had hardened into a rigid materialistic civilization, and democracy was inevitably collapsing into strongman rule. Nolan diagnoses the exact opposite. For Spengler, liberal democracy is itself a late and weakening stage that eventually gives way to harder forms of authority; for Nolan, those harder forms—hierarchy, exclusion, conquest, and authoritarianism—are the forces destroying the West. The West is dying, in Nolan’s interpretation, because it has ceased to be liberal enough. Authoritarianism is the disease; the cure is a more thoroughgoing, more purified liberalism. The entire three-hour IMAX spectacle exists to dramatize that inversion with the force of myth.
The multi-racial casting that so agitated the online Right is, seen in this way, almost beside the point. Lupita Nyong’o as Helen and Clytemnestra, Zendaya as Athena, Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, and the broader ensemble that populates Ithaca and the Mediterranean: these choices only shock those who still imagine the film is attempting historical reconstruction. The inclusion of Elliot Page, a transgender actor, as Sinon extends the same logic, making the ancient Mediterranean reflect the approved categories of identity in the contemporary West. Once it is understood that the movie is an allegory of the liberal present, the casting becomes a simple statement of demographic fact. The West of 2026 is already multi-racial. Nolan merely records that reality and then proceeds to lecture it. The outrage over “race-swapping” therefore misses the deeper maneuver: the film treats the racial makeup of the classical world as disposable because its real subject is today’s West, whose multi-racial composition is already settled and irreversible. Historical accuracy is not the objective; presentist moral instruction is. The casting is a declaration that the past exists only as raw material for the ideology of the present.
Odysseus’s remorse gives the film its clearest anti-Western purpose. Nolan does not permit the victorious Greek to return as a hero. He returns as an accused man, haunted by dead civilians, sacrilege, and the blood left behind at Troy. He seeks forgiveness from Penelope for having done what every successful ancient commander did as a matter of course. The film presents these acts as the original sin that brought the Bronze Age to its end. The anachronism is total and deliberate. No Homeric hero, no classical audience, and no Near Eastern king of the period would have recognized the modern category of “war crime.” Victory was the proof of divine favor; the sack of a city was the expected dividend of kleos (lasting fame) and arete (prowess). Prisoners were enslaved or killed; cities were burned; the gods were assumed to favor the winners. Nolan’s insistence on guilt is therefore not classical but contemporary. Odysseus’s memories strip conquest of honor and cunning of nobility. Penelope does not receive the story of a great warrior’s triumph but the confession of a criminal seeking absolution. This is the moral language of the modern West, which has been taught to regard its history as a chain of offenses and its heroes as men whose achievements conceal deeper guilt. The Sea Peoples are us, and the warrior must apologize for victory, the explorer for expansion, and the civilization for possessing power at all. Ithaca can be restored only after Odysseus has bowed before this judgment and accepted the prescribed interpretation of his own corruption. Nolan thus replaces the ancient drama of homecoming with a modern ritual of self-denunciation. The central question is no longer whether the hero can defeat his enemies and recover his house, but whether he can be made to confess that the enemy was inside him all along.
Here the Spenglerian inversion comes fully into view. In The Decline of the West, Culture is living, rooted, religious, and instinctive, while Civilization is its hardened final state: the world city replaces the homeland, cosmopolitan abstraction replaces inherited belonging, individual rights replace traditional duties, and critical reason begins to dissect forms it can no longer create. Spengler even describes late Civilization as an age of transvaluation, in which the heirs of a culture cease producing new myths and instead reinterpret the old ones according to the morality of the present. Nolan performs precisely this operation upon Homer, yet presents it as renewal rather than decay. Xenia—the sacred bond of reciprocal duty between guest and host, protected by Zeus and repeatedly described in the film as “Zeus’s law”—is lifted from its particular world of household, rank, and divine custom and transformed into a universal humanitarian law by which Greek power itself must be judged. In this light, the Trojan Horse no longer appears as an ingenious masterpiece of Greek warfare, but as a betrayal of trust: an apparent votive offering becomes a weapon with which the Greeks enter the city and destroy it from within. The sack of Troy is no longer the terrible triumph of a heroic age but the crime that exposes the sickness beneath its glory. Odysseus is repeatedly framed in the modern language of military trauma, and when he calls himself “a veteran of the Trojan War,” he sounds less like a Homeric king than a weary American soldier returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. He carries the same burden of guilt, damaged memory, and estrangement from civilian life. His cunning becomes deception, his victory becomes atrocity, and his homecoming becomes a struggle for atonement. Spengler regarded such moral universalism, historical self-dissection, and distrust of inherited greatness as signs that a culture had entered its winter phase. He expected the exhausted rule of money, debate, and abstract principle eventually to yield to Caesarism, personal authority, and the return of the sword. Nolan reverses that judgment. In his vision, the sword is the source of the disaster, authority is always close to barbarism, and only greater restraint, confession, and submission to universal law can save civilization from itself. What Spengler diagnosed as the morality of decline, Nolan offers as its cure.
Circe, played by Samantha Morton, receives the full treatment of current gender ideology. She is introduced not merely as a dangerous sorceress but as a woman who has suffered at the hands of men. Before she transforms Odysseus’s crew into swine, she delivers what amounts to a monologue on the violence of masculine appetite, the entitlement of the armed male, the toxic masculinity that turns guests into predators. The men are not merely rude or reckless; they are the embodiments of a patriarchal order that must be punished. Their metamorphosis into pigs is therefore not the arbitrary magic of a Homeric witch but a moral and almost therapeutic justice. The scene functions as a didactic interlude in which the audience is invited to cheer the inversion of power. Calypso, played by Charlize Theron, is likewise stripped of the radiant desirability that the tradition assigned to her. Both goddesses are rendered deliberately unglamorous. Morton’s Circe is fierce, weathered, and unadorned by conventional Hollywood allure; Theron’s Calypso is more maternal and weary than seductive. The effect is the familiar progressive gesture of subverting imposed beauty standards. The patriarchal gaze that once demanded Circe and Calypso be objects of irresistible desire is corrected by casting and costuming that refuse the demand. Beauty itself becomes suspect, another tool of oppression that the enlightened filmmaker must dismantle. The ancient world, which celebrated the beauty of Helen as a force capable of launching a thousand ships, is rewritten as a culture that merely imposed oppressive standards on women. The correction is thorough.
Visually, the film is drained of the Mediterranean light that Homer’s world actually possessed. The palette is gray, desaturated, almost funereal: blues and yellows muted into a near-monochrome of bleached desolation. The statues that appear are the familiar white marble of museum displays, never the painted, polychrome objects that archaeology has long established they were. These are not neutral aesthetic decisions. They are the signature of an age that knows itself to be late. The vibrant color of a confident civilization has faded; the painted gods have been scrubbed clean and left bare. Nolan’s camera records the end of the liberal West with the same meticulous melancholy that earlier directors once reserved for the fall of Rome or the twilight of the gods. The difference is that Nolan’s liberalism cannot imagine any successor civilization that would not emerge from a further radicalization of liberalism. The gray is therefore both a diagnosis and a prescription. The West is dying of its own residual authoritarianism, its lingering attachment to hierarchies and the old masculine virtues. Only a more perfect liberalism can restore the color. The unpainted statues become monuments to a modern culture that has lost the will to color its inherited gods. It contemplates their blanched ruins while lecturing the civilization that created them on its tyrannies, conquests, and cruelties.
Taken together, the casting, characterization, moral interpretation, and visual design form a coherent and highly effective work of political art. The Odyssey is not a failure of historical imagination. It is a success of ideological transposition. Nolan has taken the foundational epic of the West and rewritten it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of insufficient progressivism. The craftsmanship is extraordinary: the photography, the nonlinear structure that treats time as a map rather than a line, the tactile realism of the violence and the sea, and the performances that sell the modern moralizing as if it were ancient wisdom. The moral is unmistakable. Whether one finds the result exhilarating or tiresome depends entirely on whether one accepts the premise that the civilization which produced Homer is now best understood as a cautionary example of its own failure to become sufficiently liberal. The film does not leave that question open. It answers it, at length, in every frame, with the confidence of a culture that still believes its own decline can be reversed by one more round of self-flagellation. That confidence may itself be the most Spenglerian element of all.
Order THE LIFE OF HOMER & Plato’s ION (Multipolar Press, 2026) here.
What’s weird is the billionaires seem to realize that their project will cause significant disruption to human society if not massive breakdown, but they don’t care because they get to make lots of money by doing trashing and wrecking human society. Also they say,
Hey, we are making bunkers to live in when society breaks down, so who cares? So as lot of other people die, so what? We get to survive and that’s all that matters. So it wrecks the planet, so what? We’re getting rich, so who cares LOL?
This is capitalism in a nutshell and it is one of the most serious problems with it, noted first by the man who first described capitalism, Adam Smith. I’m quite certain that this is exactly how they are thinking and there is evidence to support this theory. In addition, these billionaires are building bunkers that resemble nuclear fallout shelters for them to live in when the collapse gets particularly bad. As long as they get to survive in their bunkers, who cares what happens to anyone else. This is why I despise capitalist fanboys. When you say you are a capitalist fanboy who opposes any modicum of socialism (anything that limits the profits of capital in any way should be thought of as socialism), this is what you are supporting. You are lower than a city rat in my opinion.
Socialism and Capitalism Are Not Mutually Exclusive
What’s odd is that in the US we even undertake stupid surveys like which do you support, capitalism or socialism, as if the two things are exclusive. In Swedish social democracy, 93% of the economy was in private hands. In Venezuela it was 75%. Most of the world is a mixture of socialism and capitalism, which makes surveys like that idiotic. Nevertheless Americans are extremely stupid and they still think the two are nonoverlapping sets. I’ve already noted that the democratic socialists of the DSA are simply social democrats. They’re not communists or even serious socialists who want to go beyond social democracy. The main problem with the DSA is their woke ideology which is bound to turn off a lot of people. For instance, the DSA wants to end Thanksgiving as an official holiday. That’s not going to go over well at all.
Social democracy is the way of the world and almost every country has some kind of social democracy, even so called capitalist paradises like Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. The US is very odd in not having a social democracy. For instance any country with a lot of social housing and social medicine is a social democracy.
Almost every country has social medicine and social education, often free through the university level, but in rightwing countries, social education and medicine are terribly underfunded as in places like the Philippines, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and many other places. Unfortunately I don’t have good statistics for underfunding of public institutions in most of Latin America. However even in officially socialist states like Mexico and India, social medicine and education is terribly underfunded. The Arab and Muslim World funds public institutions a lot better than other places.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
The Arab and Muslim World seem to do a lot better because free market laissez faire capitalism has always been a poor fit in the Muslim world, as Mohammad was virtually a socialist. In particular, Muslims are expected to tithe 2.8% of their income for the poor through their mosques. In states that didn’t have good programs set up for the poor, Islamist organizations such as Hamas in Gaza took over the function of social programs. The idea is that all Muslims are your brothers and sisters, so how could rich Muslims screw over their poor siblings?
Nevertheless Arabs are humans and humans tended towards beastly feudalism until recently, and the Arab World was no exception, especially in places like Iraq, Syria, and Palestine where absentee landowners owned large tracts of land, and tenant farmers were mired in debt peonage, also known as semi-feudalism. These reactionary feudalists liked to quote from the Quran where Mohammad said something to the effect of:
Well, there are rich and there are poor and that’s that.
as a justification for their semi-feudalism but it never seemed a good fit. With decolonization, Arab socialism came as part of Arab nationalism, and there was very little opposition. Syrian and Iraqi Baathism was a typical project, officially socialist. The PLO was an officially socialist or even Leftist group for a long time and perhaps they still are.
South Yemen was basically a communist country for a long time. Ghaddafi and Nasser were longstanding supporters of the poor and disenfranchised and Ghaddafi’s official philosophy characterized in his Green Book was in part socialist (mostly a mixture of secular Islam and socialism). The FLN, the group that won the revolution in Algeria and has governed since, is officially socialist in an Arab nationalist vein. Tunisia recently elected an odd leader who was an Islamist and a Leftist. Prior to that it was a socialist Arab nationalist country. Though Morocco is a pretty rightwing country, it has strong veins of Arab nationalism of which socialism was always a component. Ibrahim Traore’s Burkina Faso, a Muslim country, has recently instituted a socialist and anti-imperialist project. Before that it was led by Thomas Sankara, a Marxist.
Even the Gulf Arab countries have extensive social programs for citizens, though non-citizen workers are often brutalized. The Iranian revolution was based on anti-imperialism and support for the poor and the oppressed everywhere. The Islamist government of Turkey runs a lot of social programs. In the Central Asian countries, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of socialism left, but Islam was dramatically watered down in those places by Marxism. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, things are much worse, as Islam has been deeply corrupted by Hinduism so you end up with the worst of two religions.
However, even in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s party, one of the largest in the country, was social democratic. Communism actually went over pretty well in Afghanistan and it was especially popular with women. The Islamists’ beefs with the government were that it was atheist, not that it was socialist. Indonesia, a Muslim had a huge mostly-Chinese communist movement but it was destroyed in a politicide led by Islamists in which 1 million people were murdered. Since then a populist fascist project called pangisila was instituted and it fooled a lot of people. However a woman was recently elected president on a social democratic ticket.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
This is how you contact me, folks. Feel free to write me for any positive reason.
To find the free articles, see the last 10 posts. Please consider a paid subscription if you enjoy my content. I’m retired and live off of a Social Security check. A monthly subscription is only $5/month. A yearly subscription is only $30/year or $2.50/month. This is the lowest-priced Substack on the platform. With a paid sub you get access to all articles. A free sub only gives you access to the last 10 articles. After the last 10 articles, all articles go paid.
Bob Hickok examines Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign through Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about war, state power, and the hidden decay behind outward strength.
An article in The National Interest recently claimed that the war in Ukraine is entering a different phase. The struggle is no longer confined to trenches, ruined villages, and fortified lines. It now reaches factories, railways, refineries, depots, and power stations far inside Russia. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned in his Harvard address, A World Split Apart, that modern states often mistake material strength for lasting security. A country may possess armies, weapons, and vast territory while the foundations beneath them grow steadily weaker.
Since the beginning of 2026, Ukraine has changed its military strategy. Kiev is no longer spending all its strength on attempts to break the Russian front. It has turned instead towards the factories, railways, depots, power stations, and refineries that keep the front alive. Ukrainian drones and cruise missiles can now strike targets as far as 2,000 kilometres from the battlefield, while the number of deep attacks has reportedly risen by 1,150 percent since the start of the year. Solzhenitsyn understood this form of collapse in The Red Wheel. Armies and governments do not fail only because soldiers lose battles. They fail when transport breaks down, fuel disappears, orders arrive late, and the machinery behind the soldier begins to fall apart.
ADAM joins us once again as we continue our series on America’s PARTISAN heritage with a discussion of BARRY GOLDWATER’S disastrous 1964 campaign and the END of the American RIGHT as an Establishment quantity.
How do I describe this game? What do I think about it?
I was able to playtest this game with my friend Fodkam in person at the Looney Lab headquarters (at the Sterling Building) in College Park, Maryland, back in February.
It has come to my attention that the ‘90s alt-rock band Velocity Girl’s biggest hit was “Crazy Town,” which can be seen as a tribute to their hometown of College Park. I can only imagine this song is contemplating the work of Andy Looney and his existence in such a crazy town. The borough that they live in is called “Hollywood.” So it becomes a witty joke that Looney can say, “we are big stars in Hollywood!”
The Looneys (both Andy and his wife Kristin) live in a purple house called “Wunderland” (or “Wunderland Earth”), where “the offices of Looney Labs are located, and where a weekly, invitation-only Gaming Salon is held.”1 There is another house called “Pepperland,” which was given to a family member, but we didn’t stay there. I was able to pick up the Looneys from the outside of Wunderland and bring them back to the Sterling building, where I would playtest Seven Islands with Fodkam.
For at least four months, I could not share what the game was about until it came out. Now that it is out, I would like to give some art direction input and creative commentary around this eccentric design.
But first, what is this game about and how do you play it?
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…Seven Islands describes itself as “an island-hopping race of changing goals” on the back of the box. The rules are simply described: “When this ship is docked… …maneuver both of your pieces… …onto this Beacon to win the game!”
Or, as the story is written in the rules:
“You and a friend are contestants on a reality show! You’ve been stranded on a tiny tropical island, which is connected to six others by rickety bridges that have yet to be located. The first team to reach the designated beacon wins a million bucks! How do you know which beacon to go to? Just look at the sail on the ship currently docked. Better get there quick before a different ship comes in!”
The game is made up of 81 cards and four sets of two colored player pieces (that being red, yellow, blue, and purple). Two of the cards are not in the deck. One card is the double-faced dock “start” card, and the other is a reference card for all players to share. That makes the rest of the game a deck of 79 cards.
The rest of the cards are shuffled, and three cards are dealt to each player. All players’ pieces are on the “start” dock card, and a shuffled deck is on the side (the discard is there with no cards).
The object of the game is to get both your player colors to a matching beacon card that matches the ship currently docked at the start card. Once both pieces are on a matching beacon and ship card, the game is immediately over, and that player has won (although there can be ties in rare circumstances).
There are four types of cards in the game: terrain, action, gear, and surprise cards. The deck is made up mostly of terrain cards.
Terrain cards can have land, water, beach, and location subtypes printed on them. The locations each have a special ability if a player lands their piece on them, which they can either trigger or has to always happen.
If a beacon is played, the player draws one card, and if a ship is played, the player draws two cards.
The hand limit is 7, and a player discards down at the end of the turn.
Action cards are only played on that player’s turn, and the action is executed on the card.
Gear cards are played in front of that player’s tableau, and the player currently owns that ability written on the card (either as a trigger ability or constant). A player is allowed a gear limit of 3.
Surprise cards are the only cards that can be played out of turn, preventing another player from doing something. There are only two Surprise cards in the entire deck. If played on the turn, it is counted as an action for the draw bonus, and is not a free one.
On a player’s turn, they follow this turn structure:
Draw Phase (draw a card)
Action Phase (play any card)
Move Phase (a player may move one of their pieces orthogonally)
Discard Phase (draw down to their hand and gear limit, and pass turn)
“Free Actions” may be spent before or after any phase in any order once per turn. Those three free actions are:
Play another Terrain card that has a beach subtype
Trigger a Gear ability you own
Use the Well location action if your piece is on that terrain card
Whenever a card’s text directly contradicts the game’s rules, the card takes precedence and overrides it.
The only other minor rule is that when a player is on a ship, they may use the move action to move to another beach and discard that ship that was used on the dock (and all players on that ship move too).
Terrain cards have their placement rules, but it’s not that hard to understand once it’s implemented. They only abide by no water-only plays, no beachless edges, and no blocking a beacon to the island. Everything is connected by a beach.
And only oneislandhas one beacon at a time. A player may play a terrain card where there is no connection, but it “floats” until a spot is shown where it can connect. All backed-up “floaters” must connect if there is an immediate available spot, or they keep floating till a spot opens. The active player gets to decide where the floaters go.
The requirement is that every island have a beacon, or the ability to add a beacon… but there’s no requirement that it have either a bridge or portal, as there are other ways to travel there: by ship, action cards or gear abilities. So it’s not necessary to have multiple other terrain cards float waiting for a portal or bridges attachment. Islands can be quickly enclosed or created by floaters without portals or bridges in their existence, so as long as those islands have at least one beacon on them.
There are only 18 action cards and 8 gear cards, each being unique and never duplicating. There are also only 6 bridge cards, so each has to be played accordingly to shape the island, for good or for worse.
There are 11 terrain cards with locations on them, and 16 terrain cards with no locations. These are also evenly matched with 7 beacons and 7 ships to dock. Ideally, it is better to have terrain cards with locations on them, but there is no telling what a player can draw.
I have made some impressive and imaginary maps with this single deck of cards. This is where the formation of the map reminds me of something out of Chip’s Challenge or Toejam & Earl. Both of these games rely on a top-down and grid-like perspective, perhaps rogue-like land generation and displaced puzzles, such as “the red key opens the red door,” for the game to operate. Seven Islands takes these two concepts of improvisation and planning and transforms them into the closest thing to an exploration card game.
When I play by myself and finish the game, I like to get the extra terrain cards from the deck and discard pile, and then try to finish the island as intended.
With the basics of the game being explained, what I really wanted to write about was my thoughts behind the design process and what I see missing from most board and card games in 2026. (Or, what I also see missing from original art and design in general, actually…)
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…Seven Islands belongs in a category of physical games where true interactivity is needed. This isn’t with artificial intelligence. It’s with real human beings with emotions and expression that feel their own actions and influence one another.
The game is modular. It’s meant to be expanded, taken apart, or completely rewritten with a new ruleset using the same system.
I enjoy “object-oriented” computer programming languages such as Max, AudioMulch, Reflection, Bidule, Pure Data, and anything that resembles a Eurorack system. One “module” can be a card, and that can influence an entire path of other modules that represent themselves. It creates an environment where play is encouraged, and expression is the art. The player commits his time and invests his effort to make the game into a sport. It’s the same as reading a book of philosophy and dedicating your life to the craft. A good game gives you that feeling, but a great game is that lifetime art.
I looked at the deck of cards, and honestly, I feel like it could use some more teleporter subtypes. If I bought two more copies of Seven Islands, I could add in a couple more terrain cards with well subtypes, and add additional surprise cards to give it that “take that” randomness. And why not get rid of some beacons and make the game more about exploration with a very large map! I hope Looney considers making an expansion or releasing some promo cards to give more “modules” to the game’s programming language.
The size is important too. While games like Cosmic Encounter require a whole table or space on the floor, Seven Islands can fit in a bookbag or pocket. This design is intentional because most Americans can not find the room or time to even play a game with someone else. I could argue that this strategy to get the attention of new players implies “elegance,” but I have argued against that elsewhere.2 The modules create rules and contradictions that allow full expression rather than that of a Rubik’s Cube solving itself. While it may look like another eurogame with a selfish “window shopping” interface and personal tableau, the game influences other players through action cards and abilities. Timing is key. The bluff is when you are ready to play a beacon or hold on to the ship card. Many players see the map for what it is and use deduction to figure out how many bridges are left and what moves can be played before the match is made.
I would like to see more expansions released for this game. Or, I would like to experiment with multiple copies and try to make my own personal deck of cards. It would be nice if different expansions could be bought for different island formations and actions.
Once again, Looney has proved something with his designs that show throughout all of his games. He is interested in the modular and encourages players to be their own programmers to express themselves in the game environment. His games could easily be played for a lifetime, and one person could immediately say to someone, “I only play Seven Islands, and I go to my weekly Seven Islands club.”
Every time he releases a game, it is an exciting event where something new in design is introduced. I call this phenomenon “post-elegance” due to its lucid nature, returning to real player interactions and modules that express the environment and influence. Finally, the post-elegant game makes a return to the player as an artist. One such canvas is Seven Islands.
Over the last several months, I've been warning that Tucker Carlson isn't merely a grifter—he’s an operative building a new political project centered around right-wing social policy and left-wing economic policy.
President Trump on AI data centers: "It was my idea, actually, for every plant that's built—they build their own electricity… I think that any community that turns down AI is making a big mistake." pic.twitter.com/vjR1AKOuko
Trump on gas prices: "We may have to send it up again. You know what happens when we send it up, but we hope we don't have to" pic.twitter.com/hddthC9kZE
Exclusive: President Trump has directed contractors to redo weeks of work on his planned White House helipad, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
When I was 20 eating at home was *dirt* cheap AND you could also go to Chipotle and get a massive meal for $6 after tax
Today the same bowl is roughly $12/13 and the same groceries are 43% more expensive. It was nice and we should try to make that happen for todays 20 year olds pic.twitter.com/iP4cTOXum3
On the left we have a Chipotle menu from LA in 2012. On right we have an online order for a Chipotle in LA from today.
LA County Median household income 2012: $52949 ($4412 monthly) LA County Chipotle Carnitas Burrito 2012: $6.70 Monthly income-to-burrito ratio 2012: 0.015%
Burrito prices in 2017 vs 2026. We call this inflation. Because every government prints money. Even the Trump administration. Ignoring this is either being stupid or willfully ignorant. Young people have every right to be outraged for our generation (and past generations)… https://t.co/QqT3Tu2HfWpic.twitter.com/KgFr28qp77
I hear that young people are upset about $20 burritos. Okay, young people: a burrito does not cost $20. If you’re paying $20 for a burrito and you’re not independently wealthy, you’re doing life wrong. We have enough problems as a country without insane expectations that the…
Just so you know – all the podcast bros suddenly talking about groceries and neocons is a coordinated effort to complain about Trump and Iran. To try to nudge him.
Of course, they're all too chicken shit to just call Trump out by name and say what they really mean.
People, this burrito discourse is really about DoorDash and Uber Eats. Simple meals are expensive if you have them prepared AND delivered to you. If you go get it yourself, it's cheaper. If you buy the ingredients and make it yourself, it's cheaper still. That's it.
It was the day before Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. It is inarguable that prices were lower for virtually everything in America. The average national price of gasoline was $2.89 a gallon. Obama was negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. The national debt was approximately $18.5 trillion. It is currently racing toward $40 trillion.
Conservative pundits and politicians spent the whole day yesterday raging online against Millennials and Zoomers complaining about the price of burritos. The price of a Chipotle burrito bowl has doubled in the Golden Age from what it was when Obama was president. Portion sizes have shrunk. You get less food for more money at Chipotle in 2026. Fitness influencers complain about it all the time.
The average White family does it all – cooks at home, grills food, eats out at restaurants, eats fast food – and has experienced prices going up across the board. People who shop at Sam’s Club and Costco have seen prices go up. Most people buy the same things at the grocery store every week and aren’t imagining that prices are soaring. Sure, it is less expensive to eat at home than to eat out at restaurants, but that has always been true. It is more expensive to feed your family now period in the Golden Age. Whether you are grilling a steak at home or eating one at a restaurant, it still costs you are far more now.
Look how far we have come since the 2024 election. Conservatives blame Uber Eats and DoorDash for $20 burritos. They are sharing tips on eating Ramen noodles and stretching ground beef with refried beans. The same people who used to bash progressives with “you will eat the bugs” memes are basically pulling out granddaddy’s old cornpone and fatback recipes from the Great Depression.
Scott Greer assures us in Whitepill that conservatives have changed. I need to read the book. I’m not seeing it. If anything is true, we seem to be reverting to the conservatism that I remember.
August 6, 1945 - America initiates nuclear war against a prostrate and already destroyed Japan. The bomb - proposed as a ‘superweapon’ by Albert Einstein and a quorum of his co-religionist colleagues to President Roosevelt - was intended to be used to annihilate Europe and its people. The Greater German Reich having been destroyed, and millions of Germans and other European peoples having been ethnically cleansed and the entirety of the Continent being occupied by American and Communist forces, the United States unleashed the bomb on Japan.
The destruction of Hiroshima killed approximately 150,000 people - with as many as 100,000 dying instantly as the bomb detonated.
Today we honor the Martyrs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and salute our Japanese comrades.
Nuestra América argues that Puerto Rico’s future must be decided by Puerto Ricans themselves.
The slogan “Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans” expresses an idea deeply rooted in the principle of national self-determination, which is recognized under international law and has long been central to debates over Puerto Rico’s political status. Beyond any specific ideological position, the phrase captures an aspiration shared by many: that the island’s political, economic, and cultural future should be decided primarily by those who live there and form part of its society.
Since 1898, Puerto Rico has maintained a unique political relationship with the United States as an unincorporated territory. Over more than a century, several competing positions have coexisted: those who support statehood, those who advocate independence, and those who prefer to preserve or reform the island’s current Commonwealth status. This diversity shows that the central debate is not merely legal, but also historical, cultural, and social.
The idea of “Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans” has also emerged in response to contemporary concerns surrounding economic sovereignty, migration, public debt, and changes in the real-estate market. Many Puerto Ricans have expressed concern about developments they view as a loss of control over the island’s resources, territory, and decisions fundamental to everyday life.
To say “Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans” is to affirm that decisions concerning the island must be grounded in the democratic will of its people and their right to determine their own future. The precise form that future should take—statehood, independence, free association, or another arrangement—is a matter for Puerto Ricans themselves to debate and decide through legitimate and participatory political processes.
One of the more provocative theories in modern New Testament scholarship is the suggestion that Paul the Apostle and Simon Magus—the Samaritan magician who briefly appears in Acts 8—may actually represent the same historical individual. This idea is far outside the scholarly mainstream, but it has attracted attention from a small number of influential scholars, including Gustav Volkmar in the nineteenth century, Robert Eisenman, and Robert M. Price. Their proposals raise fascinating questions about how early Christian traditions may have been rewritten as competing factions struggled over authority and theology.
Before the documentation of a wolverine in California in 2008, a wildlife biologist saw one above Bishop, California in 1980, and there have been a number of other sightings by biologists. There have been regular sightings of these very elusive animals in California by all sorts of people down through the years. Live wolverines have also been trapped in far Northern Washington state in the Cascades and now Olympic National Park in the past twenty years. There is also a population in Northeastern Oregon in the Blue Mountains and I believe there is a population in the Southern Cascades in Oregon, though apparently they’re not documented.
The natural range of the California wolverine is in California only and has been separated from wolverines in the Washington Cascades for at least 2,000 years, according to genetic studies. As a subspecies, it is controversial and is not yet accepted across the board by the scientific community. The first description of a California wolverine was published in the Field Colombian Museum of Zoology Zoological Series in 1903 (rare online copy here). You can see in the description of the type specimen from Mount Whitney that the California wolverine was much paler than the wolverine normally found in the rest of North America.
The California wolverine is a subspecies of wolverine that split off from other branches about 2,000-11,000 years ago. The California wolverine formerly ranged into the Cascades of California and even over on the Coast in the Northern Coast Range all the way down to San Francisco. It then ranged down the Sierra Nevada Mountains all the way down to the southern end of the range at the Southern Sierra Wilderness, where they were last sightedin the 1950’s. Monache Meadows is usually given as the southern end of the range, but the Southern Sierra Wilderness is south of there. sightings. The low elevation record for a wolverine in the Sierras of California is an unbelievable 1,300 feet in Tulare County. Based on sightings, a study by biologists felt that the California wolverine had declined to a very low level near extinction in the early 1930’s, and the population had been increasing slowly ever since. William Zielinski is an expert on wolverines who participated in this study.
Thomas Kucera, a researcher at San Francisco State University, undertook a wolverine survey in the state in the early 1990’s with bait stations and cameras. They saw quite a few animals, including many martens, a few fishers, coyotes, bears, bobcats, and mountain lions, but they found no wolverines in the exhaustive survey. The guarded conclusion then was that California wolverines were extinct in the state. I did a web search on the California Wolverine recently, and most experts were saying that they had agreed with the finding.
Wolverines in the Sierra Nevada
I never thought this animal went extinct in the state because I was aware of regular sightings, mostly around the Sierra National Forest, which is near where I lived for 16 years.
There was an undated sighting of a wolverine four miles west of the Snow Canyon Research Natural Area on the Amador Ranger District of the El Dorado National Forest. This area is near Highway 88 about three miles south of Carson Pass, and part of it is in the Mokelumne Wilderness.
There have also been undated wolverine sightings in the Pacific Valley area north of the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, an area that connects the Carson-Iceberg with the Mokelumne Wilderness on the El Dorado National Forest. Pacific Valley (map) is being considered as an addition to the Carson-Iceberg. The date of these sightings is not known.
There have been undated sightings at Green Island Lakes, a National Forest Service Research Station at 6,100 feet in the Lassen National Forest in Plumas County.
Wolverines have also been sighted around Eagle Lake on the Lassen National Forest. The sightings were undated.
There have been two undated sightingson the Collins-Almanor Forest, a large commercial forest northwest of Lake Almanor. This area is where the Northern Sierra Nevada meets the Southern Cascades.
There was also an unverified and undated sighting of a California wolverine four miles west of Truckee on Highway 80. It had scavenged road kill from this busy interstate highway and was dragging it down into the rocks to eat it. I traveled over Donner Pass in Summer 1979. It’s quite a beautiful area. Donner Pass is where the famous Donner Party tried to cross into California in the winter of 1846-47, became trapped, turned cannibal, and ate half of their own party due to starvation. There have also been sightings north of Tahoe National Forest.
Approaching Donner Pass from the east. Highway 80 does not actually cross Donner Pass itself anymore but actually goes two miles to the north at Euer Saddle. Donner Pass gets 415 inches of snow a year, making it one of the snowiest places in the US. Wind gusts of over 100 miles an hour are common during winter storms. A wolverine was sighted here in 1979.
In 1978, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine near Disaster Peak (10,047 feet) in the Sonora Pass area in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. I went through the Sonora Pass in 1987.
In 1979, a wolverine was spotted at Hilton Creek Lakes near Mt. Stanford (map). This area is east of Lake Edison and west of Tom’s Place in the John Muir Wilderness on the Sierra National Forest.
Hilton Creek Lakes in the John Muir Wilderness, elevation 10,705 feet. This area is near Stanford Peak. Access is out of the Rock Creek Trailhead on the east side of the Sierras. A wolverine was seen here in 1979.
In 1980, a wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Robinson Flat area of the Foresthill Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest.
In 1984, the district ranger of the Sierraville Ranger District saw a California wolverine running down a road in the middle of the day.
California wolverine tracks were seen here, at Courtright Reservoir, in 1990. The tracks were verified by a Forest Service biologist, but this counts as an unverified sighting, since tracks don’t count (Go figure!)
On the Downieville Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was sighted in 1989 in the Haskell Peak area.
Also on the Downieville District, another wolverine was seen in 1990 in the Upper Sardine Lake area.
Around 1990, tracks were sighted near Courtright Reservoir at 8,200 feet near Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra National Forest. A local Forest Service biologist had seen the tracks.
Around 1990, a wolverine was spotted on the back side of Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park the middle of winter.
North of Yosemite on the Stanislaus National Forest, there was a wolverine sighting in the Emigrant Wilderness in 1990.
There are wolverine sightings near South Lake Tahoe. In 1990, a wolverine was sighted two miles from where Highways 50 and 89 meet in South Lake Tahoe and the southern end of the lake (map). This area is close to Emerald Bay, DL Bliss, and Sugar Pine Point State Parks. I have been to all of these parks on the shore of Lake Tahoe, but that was 47 years ago. It’s a beautiful place.
A wolverine was sighted in 1991 in the Euer Valley on the Truckee Ranger District in Tahoe National Forest.
A wolverine was seen in 1992 in the Harding Point area on the Tahoe National Forest northeast of Sierraville, and this sighting was confirmed by tracks.
In 1992, a wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Granite Chief Wilderness Area on the Tahoe National Forest.
In 1992 and 1993, a Biology teacher at the local high school in Oakhurst, Gary Spence, saw them two years in a row at Spotted Lakes (9,100 feet) in the far southeast corner of Yosemite National Park near the National Forest border. Spence is a good biologist and he used to go out on field surveys with the local Forest Service biologist.
Again on the Downieville District of the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was seen in 1993 in the Gold Lake Road and Salmon Lakes Road area.
In 1993, a wildlife biologist on the Lassen National Forest sighted a wolverine in a den near the headwaters of Deer Creek at 5,000 feet (note that even sightings by wildlife biologists are said to be unconfirmed). This area is near Child’s Meadow and is next to the southern border of Lassen National Park.
Lassen National Park’s draft management plan proposes to reintroduce wolverines to the park.
Child’s Meadow at the headwaters of Deer Creek near the southern boundary of Lassen National Forest. A wildlife biologist spotted a wolverine in a den here in 1993. Those who keep saying that California wolverines no longer exist ought to note that all sightings are regarded as unconfirmed, even those by wildlife biologists. Tracks are also regarded as unconfirmed sightings. This area was in private hands and was recently purchased by the Nature Conservancy. Incredibly, the private landowner wanted to put a golf course in here!
There was also a sighting in 1994 in Kaiser Pass near Huntington Lake at about 9,200 feet in the Sierra National Forest. The local Forest Service biologist said she believed the man who saw it.
Kaiser Pass east of Huntington Lake in the High Sierras. I was here in the summer of 1991 when I drove a relative and a friend to a drop-off at Florence Lake further on down the road. The road across Kaiser Pass was truly horrid and terrifying at the time, and I doubt if it has been improved. It’s beautiful up there though, and if you get the chance, check it out. A unverified sighting of a California wolverine was reported here in 1994.
The area to the west of Lake Tahoe continues to get sightings. A sighting was reportedfrom Island Lake in the Desolation Wilderness Area just southwest of Lake Tahoe in 1994.
Another sighting was from the north shore of Loon Lake Reservoir near Lake Tahoe on the El Dorado National Forest on July 7, 1994. This is a few miles to the west of the Desolation Wilderness.
Lyell Canyon in Yosemite National Park, where there was an unverified California wolverine sighting in 1997. This area is east of the Tuolumne River and southeast of Tuolumne Meadows. The Pacific Crest Trail runs through here, and Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep are known to exist in this area. Bighorns in the area have been devastated in recent years by mountain lions. This is poorly understood. It appears that Bighorns are staying up high in the winter to avoid the mountain lions instead of migrating downslope as they normally do. Hence, they are being killed by avalanches. Bighorns and mountain lions evolved together, and it is not known why this dynamic is occurring. Domestic sheep grazing in this area is totally pointless and is ongoing.
Also in 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine off Highway 120 just after it passes Tioga Pass to the east, looking down into Lee Vining Canyon. The wolverine was sighted running away about 1,000 feet down below.
Lee Vining Canyon just east of Tioga Pass. I was near Tioga Pass in August 2003, but I did not continue down the road a ways to the pass itself. In 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine running away over a snowy ridge about 1,000 feet below near where this photo was taken. Tioga Pass is at 9,943 feet, so the wolverine was at about 9,000 feet.
In 1998, a wolverine was seen again on the Downieville District on the Tahoe National Forest near Bassett’s Station.
The very wild area north of Lake Tahoe, especially the Granite Chief Wilderness, was considered to be one of the most likely places for the California Wolverine to be found due to the very high number of sightings in the area. In 2000, there was an excellent sighting of tracks in this area.
In 2001, a biologist spotted a wolverine somewhere on the Stanislaus National Forest, but the location was not given.
In 2004, there was a reported sighting north of Polly Dome Lakes at 8,500 feet near Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park.
The Polly Dome Lakes near Lake Tenaya, where there is an unverified California wolverine sighting from 2004. I was here in the Summer of 2003. I stayed at White Wolf campground and paid money for a cabin. Any lazy, old, or out of shape person can do this, even you! You drive your car into the campground and stay in a cabin! All you need is money. I, even, at age 46, hiked up the murderous trail to Lukens Lake. You can do this too! All you need to do is get off your butt. Along the way, I saw a shrew running along the forest floor. Come on, when do you ever see such a thing?
I took a drive one day down the Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows and went by Lake Tenaya, where the scenery looks about like this. This part of Yosemite is beautiful! If you are in the area, take a drive up there in the summertime. There’s a nice highway, you don’t have to worry about a thing, and you are in the most beautiful scenery on Earth.
In 2004, apparent wolverine tracks were photographed on the trail up to Gabbot Pass west of Bishop by a group of hikers from Australia.
Possible wolverine tracks photographed in July 2004 at Gabbot Pass on the Sierra Crest west of Bishop by Australians David Noble and Lizzy Went. There have been consistent sightings in the area west of Bishop and east of Courtright Reservoir and just north of Kings Canyon National Park over a 46-year period now.
The view from Gabbot Pass is at 12,240 feet, where an unverified sighting of wolverine tracks was made in July 2004.
In 2005, a wolverine was spotted in Tuolumne Meadows, again in winter. The observer had taken zoology courses at UCLA for seven years.
Forest Service employees have made quite a few wolverine sightings in both the northern Tahoe National Forest and in the southern Plumas National Forest in the 2000’s.
In addition, in the Duncan Canyon Proposed Wilderness Area on the Plumas National Forest, there have been two wolverine sightings in the 2000’s years. This area is near French Meadows Reservoir.
San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Station, 32 miles northwest of the Sagehen Creek photo site. There was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine here by a wildlife biologist in 2006.
In September 2010, a wolverine was seen on the Pacific Crest Trail near Red Cones, which is near Devil’s Postpile and Mammoth Mountain.
Wolverines on the North Coast and in the California Cascades
On the North Coast and in the California Cascades, there have been wolverine sightings in Del Norte and Trinity Counties east through Siskiyou and Shasta Counties.
There have been undated sightings in the lower Pit River watershed near Carberry Flat and on the Lassen National Forest at Bald Mountain and Kosk Creek Basin. There were a number of sightings in this area from 1960 to 1974. For instance, there was a sighting six miles north of Hyampom Road near Hyampom in 1974. Sightings are ongoing. Hyampom is located east of Eureka in the Trinity Alps.
The very deep forest on the road between Hyampom and Hayfork in Trinity County. A wolverine was spotted here in 1974.
In 1980, Forest Service personnel on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest observed a wolverine on the Lower McCloud River at Chatterdown Creek several miles downstream from the Nature Conservancy McCloud River Reserve. This sighting was in Shasta County.
The Lower McCloud River at Ah-Di-Nah near the Nature Conservancy Reserve. Note the very deep forest here. A wolverine was sighted near here by Forest Service workers in 1980. Photo by Lily G. Stephen.
Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest is a Class V+ rapids stream. This area is extremely rugged, and it is almost impossible to hike out of this canyon. A wolverine was sighted in this area in 2000.
A wolverine was seen again in Corral Bottom, 10 miles north of Hyampom, in the winter of 1989. It ran along the road in the snow for a hundred yards or so, then disappeared into a water cave in the three-foot deep snow.
Wolverine tracks were seen two times again in Hyampom in the winter of 2010.
A wolverine was seen on the Klamath River was at Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest, 20 miles below Happy Camp (map) in 2000. This sighting occurred in Siskiyou County. The elevation here appears to be only 500 feet. Wolverines occur in deep forest at much lower elevations on the North Coast and are not so restricted to the subalpine zone.
In Shasta County, sightings around 2009 are known from the Big Bend area north of Montgomery Creek near Burney Falls.
The wolverine population in the lower 48 states is only 300. Wolverines are known to exist in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, California, Washington, Wyoming, and Utah. There are recent sightings from Colorado, North Dakota, and Michigan. Wolverines are thought to be secure and not endangered in the Idaho Sawtooths at the moment. They were formerly present in many other states in the US, including Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.
I believe they are still present in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A good historical and present range map is here (Figure 2). Wolverines in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine were probably dispersing from the Midwest. There are problems with early records from the Northeast as in early America, bobcats and lynx were often referred to as wolverines.
There are 14 different subspecies of the wolverine. The species is more or less circumpolar, ranging from northern Canada to Alaska across Siberia to Finland, Sweden and Norway.
Wolverines in Europe
There are 500 wolverines in Scandinavia. They formerly occurred all through Norway and into Southern Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Northeastern Poland in the 1500’s and 1600’s. The southern populations have been extirpated except for a wolverine recorded in Estonia in 1986 and another from Latvia in 2022.
In Sweden they present in the north and central regions where their numbers are growing but their distribution is irregular. There are 750 wolverines in Sweden. The population declined from 1870 until 1970 when they received protection. Since 1970, the population has been growing rapidly. There are problems with predation on sheep and reindeer.
There are 372 wolverines in Norway. 100 years ago, they ranged through the whole country, but since then, they were aggressively trapped to where they were limited to the north. Since 1970, the population has grown rapidly and they have recolonized the south-central area. Protections are in place.
In Finland there are 425 wolverines, mostly in Karelia in the east. At the turn of the century, 50 wolverines a year were killed in this country. They then declined until they were protected in 1982. The population is growing rapidly.
Wolverines in Eurasia
Russia has the largest wolverine population in the world with a population of 20,000 where they are common in the far east with a population of 18,000. There are 1,450 in European Russia. They have declined since 1995 due to habitat fragmentation and overtrapping. They are an unprotected game species in many parts of Russia. Even where they are protected, poaching is a huge problem. In European Russia, they are most common in the Komi region with a population of 880. Wolverines have undergone significant declines in the Kola, with a population of 160 where the population has badly crashed, and Karelia, with a population of 80, regions. In Archangelsk Oblast, there are 408 wolverines. They are heavily hunted in the Nenetsky Autonomous Area.
Wolverines in East Asia
There are estimated to be 180 wolverines in China in Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Xinjiang. They are mostly found in the Greater Khingan Range of Inner Mongolia in Northeast China. They are thought to be declining. There is a small remnant population to the west in the Altai Mountains in Sinkiang Province, but sightings are rare. Poaching is the major threat in China. There is a wolverine population in Mongolia in the northern taiga and in the West in the Altai Mountains.
Wolverines in Canada
Wolverines were formerly found through much Canada but are now uncommon in Ontario (though increasing), extremely rare or extirpated in Quebec and Labrador, and extirpated from New Brunswick. An excellent report on wolverines in Ontario can be found on the Internet at the Wolverine Foundation’s site here. In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, they are declining and are now found only in the northern parts of the provinces. They used to be found all through the forested areas of Alberta but are now limited to the Rockies and remote areas in the north.
They are common all through British Colombia except for the agricultural areas of the south. A subspecies on Vancouver Island is extinct. It has not been seen since 1992. There is a horrible amount of logging occurring on that island. There is a large population of 4,200 in the north in Yukon and the Northwest Territories south of the 66th parallel. They may be more common in the Yukon than anywhere else on Earth other than the North Slope of Alaska. A great report on wolverines in Canada is here.
Wolverines in Alaska
They are common in Alaska, especially on the North Slope, but they are sporadic on the islands of the southeast.
Some Interesting Facts about Wolverines
Wolverines have a reputation for being solitary and antisocial creatures. It is said that they are barely social enough to reproduce. Nevertheless, there is a good bond between mothers and kits. Kits are known to stay with the mother for up to 18 months. The notion that wolverines are like orangutans in being antisocial loners is being challenged. Findings from a study in Idaho’s Sawtooths have found a three-year adult old male traveling with a male juvenile, showing him the ropes and how to find food.
They also saw an adult male playing with a female juvenile in a meadow. In rare cases multiple wolverines have been seen together. Six wolverines were photographed eating a bear carcass in Kamchatka. There is a video from Chukotka in Russia of 30 wolverines scattering when a truck drives up to a dump at a mine. There are other videos from this same location of workers feeding wolverines sausages from the cafeteria and of wolverines staying around at night while heavy equipment was being operated.
It was formerly thought that females raise kits alone, and males had nothing to do with their offspring, but this is now being challenged. Females remember their natal dens and recover them when their mother dies. Males may assume the role of patriarch by fathering kits with multiple females and may visit the females periodically. The legend of wolverine unsociability may have to be rewritten. In the West, dens are made very high in the mountains near treeline. Denning is probably the major risk to wolverines in the US, as mothers readily abandon dens at the slightest disturbance. Hence, we may need to limit snowmobiling and cross-country skiing to help preserve American wolverines.
Logging has much of an effect on wolverines since they live at such high elevations. It may even be beneficial if it increases the numbers of rodents, which they prey heavily on. Wolverines are said to be scavengers, and there is something to this, but they are also omnivores who eat just about anything. They cover amazing distances in their never-ending search for feed. They are so ferocious that they have very few enemies other than man. There is a recorded instance of a wolverine stealing a mountain lion’s kill and then chasing the puma away. However, a black bear was once recorded killing a wolverine in Yellowstone National Park. The intrepid and careless wolverine had tried to steal the bear’s elk kill from under the bear’s paws.
The wolverine is member of the weasel family, and it is best described as a weasel on steroids blown up to King Kong size. They have a reputation for ferocity and viciousness. This reputation is derived in part from the tales of fur trappers. Wolverines were notorious for following fur trappers along their lines and destroying and eating any animals caught in traps. To trappers it often seemed that the wolverine was doing this out of pure spite. Wolverines also had a reputation for entering trapper’s cabins when trappers were away and destroying everything inside. To top it off, they would spray their foul scent from their glands all over the cabin.
A wolverine is hardly man’s best friend. Here a sweet, cuddly wolverine purrs and spreads the love around. Old-timers in the Truckee area, near where the photo was shot above, say it takes only two swoops of those claws to kill a dog. They said that wolverines in that area “lived in holes.” I have seen the claws on a road-killed badger, and those were amazing.
It is often said that wolverines love wilderness and refuse to have anything to do with humans. This is not necessarily true. In Northern Ontario, many sightings were made by trappers within 1/2 mile of Amerindian settlements. In the Yukon, wolverines frequently raid garbage dumps on the outskirts of towns. In Scandinavia, they prey quite heavily on sheep and reindeer such that they are becoming a major predator problem. Further, they are recolonizing former territory that is now inhabited by humans, with homes, towns, roads, etc. Wolverine fur is very valuable. It is the only fur that has the ability to withstand frost without freezing over. Hence it is often used to line the areas of parkas right around the mouth where the breath comes out. Otherwise, moist breath tends to cause frost buildup around the parka wearer’s mouth.
Conservation organizations tried to get the wolverine in the lower 48 states listed under the Endangered Species Act since 2008, and in 2003, the population was finally listed as Threatened. They are threatened by climate change since they make natal dens at high elevations where snow lingers until late in the spring. They also have low genetic diversity compared to populations in Canada and Alaska. A great wolverine article is here. It’s written by Physical Geography Professor Randall J. Schaetzl of Michigan State University. Among many other fascinating observations, he notes that the last Michigan wolverine was killed in 1860, not the early 1800’s. So the recent Ubly, Michigan sighting was the first in about 165 years, not 220 years as most references state.
Moyle, P.B., Randall, P.L., and Yoshiyama, R.M. 1996. “Potential Aquatic Diversity Management Areas in the Sierra Nevada.” In Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol III, Chap. 9, p. 15. Davis: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources.
Randla, T. 1986. “On a New Occurrence of Wolverine in Estonia.” Eesti Ulukik 4:77-78.
Schempf, P. F. and M. White. 1977. “Status of Six Furbearer Populations in the Mountains of Northern California.” USDA: Forest Service, California Region, San Francisco.
Shasta County Board of Supervisors. 1993. Shasta County General Plan. Redding, CA: Shasta County Department of Resource Management, Planning Division.
Stanislaus National Forest. 2001. California State Parks Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division, 2001/2002 OHV Grant and Cooperative Agreement Application, Wildlife Habitat Protection Plan. USDA: USFS.
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The old stories tell us that the gods once walked among men. They entered human halls, accepted food and wine, chose sides in battle, and revealed themselves in moments of danger. Such tales need not belong only to the first age of the world. Even in later centuries, men have sensed powers greater than themselves breaking through the surface of ordinary life. Yet memory alone gives no nourishment. A starving man gains nothing from hearing of ancient feasts, just as a poor man cannot spend the gold of vanished kings. The past becomes useless when it is reduced to an object of study, sealed behind glass and discussed by those who no longer believe in it. The gods must not merely be remembered. They must be summoned back into the life of the present.
But who still possesses the courage to call them back?
?TIM DILLON torches JD Vance over "cringe" Rogan appearance where he played powerless
"You have to be one of the stupidest people in the world to fall for this shit… [JD's in an admin] that betrays its voters and does the opposite of everything it said it was gonna do"
MAGA was so excited in January about the “Big 26.”
We didn’t know at the time that the big decision that would determine the whole course of the year, the fate of Trump’s second term, the 2026 midterms and likely the future of the American Right for the next decade had already been made in Israel. The Trump administration was informed in February that Israel was going ahead with a regime change war with Iran. Trump’s own top officials thought the Israeli plan was “bullshit” and “ridiculous.” And yet, Trump decided to join the war anyway.
“It is impossible to think about Israel’s plan to bring down the Islamic Republic without first thinking about its sheer presumption. Grinding a regime down over years — sanctions, influence operations, the slow seeding of fear and confusion — is one thing. Recruiting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president and Holocaust denier, as an asset and installing him in power is another. So is launching a full-scale Kurdish invasion. This is the kind of project superpowers fail at. Israel tried it, and poured an enormous effort into the attempt.
Over the past weeks, The New York Times and Haaretz have published a great deal about that effort. What follows adds to the record on the most ambitious regional objective Israel has ever pursued: regime change in a country of roughly 100 million people, a regional power — attempted in wartime, and in coordination with the only superpower, the United States. …
And yet the cabinet voted for an objective that was, in practice, an attempt at regime change. An objective that large — Megalomanic, some would say — dictates the allocation of resources and carries severe regional consequences. Put another way: the nuclear program and the ballistic missiles mattered, but they were not the holy grail, and they were not the message of the new war that followed. Where Rising Lion, the June 2025 campaign, prioritized the nuclear project — and did in fact halt enrichment — Roaring Lion was meant to be the war that ended all wars. With Iran, at least. …
In December 2025 the mass demonstrations and the uprising erupted across Iran. It is safe to assume the Mossad’s influence directorate did everything it could to help them; that is what it was built for. The regime responded with mass killing of Iranian civilians. If Rising Lion (2025) had ended in deep satisfaction inside the security establishment, Iran’s destabilization in December and January produced something closer to euphoria — close to messianic. President Trump promised to come to the demonstrators’ aid. The Mossad and the IDF received an instruction from the prime minister to prepare for the big war, and to accelerate the plans toward execution. …
On February 11, the briefing for the American president takes place. Mossad chief David Barnea and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir present the Israeli operational vision. The Israelis do not know what the journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan will later publish: that senior American officials, having heard the Israeli presentations on the war and above all on regime change, were unconvinced. They thought it was “bullshit,” to quote Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Or ridiculous, in the judgment of Barnea’s counterpart, the director of the CIA.
A few days later, Israelis say, the green light comes from the White House to proceed. …”
Scott Greer thinks White Nationalists choose marginalization over political engagement, but look at how the decision to go to war with Iran was made. Vice President JD Vance thought it was a bad idea, but he was marginalized and couldn’t do anything about it. Marco Rubio thought he was getting bullshit from the Israelis. The CIA assessed that Operation Roaring Lion would be a failure.
Among contemporary New Testament scholars, few have advanced a more controversial theory regarding the literary origins of the Gospel of John than Dennis R. McDonald. Building on his broader theory of mimesis criticism—the idea that New Testament authors consciously imitated classical Greek literature—McDonald argues that the Fourth Gospel intentionally models portions of its narrative on Euripides’ Bacchae, presenting Jesus as a figure who both resembles and surpasses the Greek god Dionysus. Rather than viewing the similarities as accidental or merely the result of a common Greco-Roman cultural environment, McDonald contends that the Gospel’s author deliberately engaged Dionysian traditions in order to demonstrate Jesus’ superiority to one of antiquity’s most beloved deities.
For about five years, I grew increasingly optimistic about American politics. I made many of the same arguments that Scott Greer made in his book. I argued that conservatism was changing. I tracked dozens of polls which showed how conservatives were changing on this or that issue. In fact, I spent years arguing with activists who thought that Trump would go to war with Iran for Israel.
As recently as last May, I was delivering speeches defending the Trump administration. I thought conservatism could be reformed. I thought we could reshape public opinion on the Right, reenter mainstream politics and start getting our people elected to office. This was still plausible to me up until about last June and July with Operation Midnight Hammer and the Epstein files debacle. In my defense, this was the fork in the road in which “MAGA” as we had known it began to fall apart.
Here are the Top 10 reasons why I reconsidered my own views on politics:
1. Jewish Power and Influence – I had argued that Jewish power and influence was in decline and that a devastating war with Iran was unlikely for a number of reasons. I thought that the Jewish power structure at the top of the Republican Party was being replaced by Elon Musk and other Tech Bros. Trump had a huge falling out with Musk and DOGE proved to be a colossal failure. He took America to war with Iran for Israel twice last June and in early February. Finally, the Jewish oligarchy that controls the GOP had enough pull to order the biggest purge of conservatism in a generation. This was all politically damaging too.
2. Squandering Three Trifectas – The GOP has been handed three trifectas in government over the past 25 years and has squandered all three of them. Trump was handed two trifectas and has blown the opportunities to “Make America Great Again” that he was given. We have watched in horror as he threw away his presidency on a war with Iran for Israel that only Jewish donors wanted.
3. The Tea Party and MAGA – We have lived through 16 years of turmoil in the GOP since the Republican establishment was discredited at the end of the George W. Bush era. In retrospect, the Tea Party and MAGA were a complete waste of time that failed to accomplish their ostensible goals. Both of these rightwing populist movements became vehicles to get Israeli assets elected.
4. Purges – After the death of Charlie Kirk, Con. Inc. spent six months whipping up hysteria about “antisemitism” and as a result conservatism has gone through the biggest purge since the 1990s. Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro emerged as the public face of MAGA.
5. Metapolitical victories – We have spent much of the last 10 years congratulating ourselves on our Overton Window trophies. Tucker Carlson was responsible for elevating and mainstreaming most of these “Alt-Right ideas.” It is people like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, however, who wield the real power in Congress. MAGA is a cult of personality. It doesn’t care about ideas which is why only MAGA Republicans support the war with Iran for Israel. MAGA’s biggest idea for years was that pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein had compromised powerful politicians. The people who care about ideas haven’t fared well in the second Trump administration. Trump endorses people like Randy Fine, Mike Lawler and Maria Salazar.
6. Hierarchy – The last two years have discredited the argument that the spread of Alt-Right ideas and rhetoric was a triumph. This is because of their place in the Republican power structure. The opinions of Republican voters at the bottom of the hierarchy don’t matter. The opinions of staffers working in congressional offices don’t matter. Even the opinion of the Vice President about going to war with Iran didn’t matter. Alt-Right ideas and rhetoric can easily be adopted to convince low propensity voters to turnout and vote for the GOP. Those voters will get policies favored by the Israeli government and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Younger voters don’t have any power in the Republican Party.
7. The Grievance Factory – Initially, I was “white pilled” that the GOP was adopting Alt-Right ideas and rhetoric, but now I see what has happened very differently. There is a big difference between activists who genuinely care about our ideas – people like Jared Taylor, who has responded to Scott Greer – and people who see them as an opportunity to be capitalized on to get what they want. We have powerful grievances which resonate with a large swath of White voters. This makes us a useful captive audience to powerful figures in the GOP who want to use our own rhetoric and ideas against us. Specifically, they want to harness White grievances as fuel to win elections to deliver the payload that their investors want like a permanent corporate tax cut, AI deregulation or a war with Iran for Israel. We are just one of several constituencies that was targeted and scammed by the GOP in the 2024 election. After the war with Iran for Israel, it became indisputable that our movement was being hijacked by Jews to be used to put wind in their own sails.
8. Running Out of Time – We are less than 100 days out from the 2026 midterms and the Trump era is 85% over. We know from experience that nothing much will happen in the last two years. The vast majority of this is now behind us and it isn’t too early to take stock of results. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but we are objectively worse off than when the Trump era began in June 2015. We would be better off today if we could rewind the clock to our initial starting position.
9. The Cult in Congress – Donald Trump will not leave behind a bench in Congress. He hasn’t changed the ideology of the GOP in Congress or at the state level. Instead, he will leave behind a party of people who got ahead in their careers by flattering him or who bought his endorsement. He will leave behind a bunch of sycophants who otherwise have nothing in common. The movement was a cult of personality that was centered on Trump and he is stepping down in two years as a historically unpopular president.
10. Lack of Seriousness – Every day we are reminded on Truth Social that the president isn’t a serious person. This is not a party that is focused on “civilizational issues” like the decline of the West. Instead, it is focused on the stock market or the war with Iran for Israel or the White House Ballroom. The president is more concerned about the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall or redesigning his personal helicopter pad because he doesn’t like the angle than the future of the White race. At this point, you can only look at the AI videos that he shares with his idiot followers on Truth Social and laugh. We allowed this person to waste nearly 15 years of our time on a reality television show. We handed him two terms in the White House and two trifectas in which he had complete control of Washington and this was the result.
Personally, I need some time to reflect on how I fell for it in 2010 with the Tea Party, and again with MAGA in 2016 and 2024. I want to do better moving forward.
Note: The biggest joke of all is that you can look at the sum of this and his collapsing polls as millions of people exit the building and check out in disgust and try to sell them a book called Whitepill.
Santander Wallaby explores how the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads offers a spiritual foundation for the emerging multipolar world.
The Upanishads arose in ancient India during the first millennium BC as the philosophical culmination of the Vedic tradition. Composed by sages and transmitted through oral teaching, they shifted attention from ritual sacrifice toward questions of consciousness, existence, death, and the relation between the individual self and the order of the cosmos. Their influence has shaped Hindu philosophy for more than two thousand years and continues to reach far beyond India.
The Upanishads are not books of statecraft. They do not explain how to draw borders, build armies, or negotiate treaties. Yet they address a question that underlines all politics: how can many separate beings belong to one order without losing their own natures? The modern world faces the same problem on a larger scale. For several centuries, Western powers tried to unite humanity by spreading one political model, one economic system, and one way of progress. Multipolarity begins from a different premise. It accepts that humanity is one, but that human unity does not require political uniformity.
What can an ancient vision of unity through difference teach a world moving beyond the rule of a single center?
A study using baited trap stations, done during winter, failed to find any wolverines in either Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Parks in the Southern Sierra Nevada. The survey utilized many trap stations for a couple of months. It was designed to test for wolverines persisting at very low densities. The researchers concluded that the wolverine is likely extirpated from the Southern Sierra Nevada. Many other recent studies have also failed to find any wolverines. The researchers advocate that wolverines be reintroduced to the Sierras, since they seem to be absent from the range.
However, in 2008, a male wolverine was photographed north of Lake Tahoe by researchers studying pine martens. DNA analysis subsequently showed that this animal is from the Rocky Mountains and is not a California wolverine. It is not known how this wolverine got to…
Fox Business (The Cow Guy): Earnings are looking very good at the corporate level. But if you drill down to the lower 60% of incomes, things are getting tight. We've got higher gas prices. We haven't seen groceries come down. pic.twitter.com/aaUvAwINnq
— Fell For It Again Award ?? (@FellForItAgainA) March 19, 2026
I still haven’t bothered to read Scott Greer’s new book Whitepill.
The book was finally released in late July while I was traveling with my family. I didn’t have an advance copy. I made a similar case on this website for five years. More than anything else, it seems pointless to even buy the book given our trajectory. Donald Trump is a historically unpopular term limited president who is hovering around 33% in national polls. We’re less than a 100 days out from the 2026 midterms. The Republican Congress will barely work a week before the midterms. Trump is poised to become a lame duck president besieged by a hostile Democratic Congress in his last two years of office.
What is the Whitepill?
The Trump era began in 2015 and will end in 2028. 85% of Donald Trump’s reign in American national politics is now in the history books. There is no reason whatsoever to believe Trump’s last two years in office will be more productive than the previous six years. The non-Hispanic White share of the American population has declined from around 62% in June 2015 to 57% in August 2026. The dollar has lost 30% of its value since 2020. The national debt which was $18.2 trillion in June 2015 has ballooned to $39.8 trillion in August 2026. There are tens of millions of more legal immigrants and illegal aliens in the United States in August 2026 than was the case in June 2015. Everything from groceries to fast food to health insurance to home ownership to a new car to gasoline ($2.89 a gallon) to electricity now costs more in August 2026 than it did when Trump was given the chance to “Make America Great Again” in June 2015.
In July 2015, which was roughly a month after Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower, the United States and Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aka the Iran Deal which limited Iran’s nuclear program. The Obama administration negotiated a peace deal with Iran which incensed Trump, AIPAC, the Republican Jewish Coalition, Bibi Netanyahu and Israel. The rest is history. President Trump tore up the JCPOA and set us on our present course to a war with Iran for Israel. The candidate who “moved the Overton Window” by repeatedly styling himself as the “Peace President” and who promised “no new wars” launched America’s dumbest and most unpopular war yet in the Middle East. The war in Ukraine which Trump vowed to end on “Day One” of his second term continues to this day. America’s alliances were stronger when Obama was president. America was stronger viz its adversaries like China, Iran and Russia when Obama was president. The “America First” president put his pro-Israel donors first when he embarked on a war of choice that put the interests of working Americans last. No previous American president including George W. Bush was dumb enough to go to war with Iran.
Donald Trump came to power in 2016 by promising to ignite a renaissance of American manufacturing in the Rust Belt. I attended his Inaugural Address in January 2017 when he vowed that “this American carnage stops right here and right now.” Nearly a decade later, around 12.5 million Americans are employed in the manufacturing sector, which is roughly what it was on that cold January morning. Manufacturing employment has contracted in Trump’s second term since hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs were created during the Biden administration. Trump’s erratic and arbitrary use of tariffs like his recent announcement of a 50% tariff on Canadian imports has driven up prices, made tariffs unpopular and produced a Supreme Court decision which has limited presidential power to impose tariffs. Trump’s policies have made the case that Democrats are better at economic nationalism.
Trump hasn’t fared much better on immigration than he has on tariffs. The Supreme Court recently issued a landmark decision that upheld birthright citizenship. The “mass deportations” which we were promised and which were funded by the Big Beautiful Bill haven’t materialized. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently celebrated the fact that there have been 900,000 naturalizations over the past year which is roughly 3x as many people as DHS says it has deported in FY 2026. “Net negative migration” isn’t happening. DHS has even resorted to copying the Obama administration by counting returns at the border as deportations in order to juice the numbers up. Meanwhile, the GOP Congress is considering no less than four amnesties in the current Congress – the Rep. Maria Salazar’s Dignity Act which is comprehensive immigration reform under a new name, Sen. Susan Murkowski’s 2025 DREAM Act, Sen. John Curtis’s state migrant program and the farmworker amnesty introduced by Rep. Glenn Thompson who is the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Republicans in Congress have never stopped pushing for amnesty in the Trump era including many of the same ones from the Bush era.
It was only a few years ago that our friend Rep. Steve King was hounded out of Congress for saying that White people should have more babies. He was joined by Sen. Jeff Sessions and Rep. Mo Brooks here in Alabama who were tougher than anyone on immigration in Congress. They have since been joined by Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who were ousted for “antisemitism” for criticizing Trump’s handling of the Epstein files and his war with Iran for Israel. Greene was the first member of Congress to raise anti-White discrimination and the Great Replacement as important issues. Sen. Lindsey Graham who passed away after living to see Trump accomplish his life’s work of starting a war with Iran for Israel died a MAGA hero. Graham who supported every destructive war and every push for amnesty of the last 25 years in Congress was mourned by Trump. Far from remaking the Republican Party in the image of any nationalist ideology, Trump has cultivated a cult of personality instead. The only litmus test he has imposed is absolute loyalty to Israel. Over a quarter of House Republicans continue to support amnesties of one stripe or another and virtually all of them have fallen in line to support the Iran War.
After Charlottesville, it is true that the “Overton Window” shifted. It is true that there were many “metapolitical victories” like the popularization of the term anti-White and the Great Replacement. It is also true that Donald Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He didn’t mention White people even once in his first term in office. The demographic decline of White America is less important to Trump than the White House Ballroom or the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Instead, it was Tucker Carlson who raised all of these issues on his show on FOX News. This was before Tucker was fired and replaced by Jesse Watters who does the “culture war” slop without saying anything remotely interesting. It was Tucker who pushed the envelope in all these directions. This was deeply resented by Con Inc. which eventually reacted against what it calls the “Woke Reich.” For six months after the death of Charlie Kirk, Con Inc. hysterically denounced Tucker as an antisemite and called for him to be purged from MAGA and conservatism, which evidently is synonymous with the interests of the Israeli government. Trump himself eventually sided with Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro and purged Tucker, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly and other influencers with huge audiences from MAGA and the conservative movement. This was by far the biggest purge in conservatism since the 1990s when William F. Buckley denounced Pat Buchanan as an antisemite in National Review. It underscores how little conservatism has changed over the past 34 years.
It is true that mainstream conservatism has adopted Alt-Right rhetoric and ideas which resonate with younger conservatives and Independents who otherwise don’t watch FOX News or listen to talk radio. The Trump administration has endorsed concepts like “no new wars” and “remigration.” Initially, it was exciting to see illegal aliens being loaded up on planes in chains in photo ops and deported to Guantanamo Bay or “Alligator Alcatraz” before those sites were closed. This was done to create the impression that “remigration” was happening. Trump condemned White Genocide in front of South Africa’s president. He also gave a speech in Saudi Arabia less than a month before Operation Midnight Hammer in which he looked into the camera and condemned decades of military interventions in the Middle East. He said in his Second Inaugural Address that he was going to stop wars. This type of rhetoric was used to dampen criticism and boost turnout from low propensity voters and never really meant anything. The Alt-Right rhetoric and ideas were gutted and transformed into conventional GOP dog whistles.
The Republican Party has always tried to harness populist energy and mine cultural grievances in order to advance its traditional policy agenda. It has always excelled in race baiting about black crime. It has always engaged in culture war performance theater. Bill O’Reilly performed this act for over 20 years on FOX News. Matt Walsh throws out the red meat on race and transgenderism for Daily Wire’s dwindling audience. We were promised “mass deportations” and “remigration” and received two corporate tax cuts via budget reconciliation. We received AI deregulation. We received a war with Iran for pro-Israel donors. We cut Medicaid to pay for a $1.5 trillion dollar military budget. We got the First Step Act. We got clowns like Dan Bongino and Spider Ka$h running the FBI to protect Trump’s friends at Mar-a-Lago. We got pardons sold to black rappers, Jewish scam artists and millionaires convicted of fraud.
There are plenty of well meaning people who have “infiltrated” the Republican Party. There are millions of well meaning people who vote Republican. We need to stop gaslighting ourselves into believing their opinions matter because it is only a handful of people at the very top who are making the big decisions. It is probably true that Vice President JD Vance opposed the Iran War, but even he felt powerless to stop it and sat in silence in his cuck chair while Trump destroyed his own coalition and political future. Tucker Carlson was the most influential commentator in American conservatism. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a member of Congress who knew Trump personally. Greg Bovino was in charge of the mass deportations effort before he was relieved of duty. They have been on the inside and have seen it is hopeless. You can choose to work as a shill and apologist for Con. Inc. like Scott has done, but this only makes you a delusional employee. You are literally the help. You are as marginalized as anyone on the outside although unlike Tucker, Massie, Greene, Bovino and others not smart enough to figure this out.
The Republican Party has been given three trifectas over the past 25 years. It has squandered all of them. Trump alone squandered two trifectas. It has started a war in the Middle East three times, neglected the economy, broken its coalition, alienated Independents and handed power back over to Democrats. Over the last 15 years, rightwing populist movements like the Tea Party and MAGA rose, each yelling against the establishment in tricorn and red hats while changing nothing. Ted Cruz admits today that he ran for office to be Israel’s strongest soldier, not because of any of the Tea Party causes he pretended to care about. None of this reality television noise will amount to anything from the vantagepoint of 2030. You would have been better off tuning out and focusing your attention on almost anything else.
If I was making a steel man case for Trump changing the Republican Party, I would point to how he has closed the border or how the refugee resettlement program takes in South African refugees. Jared Taylor has already responded to Scott Greer though. Trump’s immigration policies from his first term were dismantled in Joe Biden’s first week in office. Trump’s deportations in his first term were dwarfed by Joe Biden’s open border. The refugee resettlement program will snap back when the next Democrat president takes over. South African refugees cynically used as pawns will be sent home. The “Gulf of America” will become the Gulf of Mexico again. All of these things will go the way of the Keystone Pipeline. Republicans have only created a partisan incentive structure to keep a captive audience peddling on their hamster wheel, voting in election after election while ultimately traveling nowhere they want to go. While that is a better business model for the Republican Party, it doesn’t mean White America is winning.
Conservatism failed to “Make America Great Again.” America is worse off today than it was when Obama was president by every metric. Although Pam Bondi was correct when she said that the Dow has hit 50,000 and we are in a “Golden Age” for billionaires, it has failed to do anything meaningful about immigration or anti-White discrimination. By absorbing these issues into Trumpism, it has only succeeded in making them intensely polarizing. Instead of Obama era optimism about a postracial society, we ended up with Wokeism and explicit anti-White discrimination. Instead of a steady bipartisan flow of legal immigrants and illegal aliens, we have shifted to pauses and torrential floods. We also haven’t seen the backlash to Trump’s second term. Overall, American society became more anti-White and immigration and demographic change accelerated between 2015 and 2030, which is all that matters.
You’re a dope if you think 20 years of The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News amounted to anything. In style and substance, the Trump era has been the same type of bullshitter and blowhard sitting in the Oval Office. It is fitting that it is ending like George W. Bush’s discredited presidency, trapped in another quagmire that donors wanted in the Middle East, crumbling as voters rebel over mismanagement of the economy with Trump daydreaming on Truth Social about merging America with Venezuela. He will return the Republican Party to the ruins in which he found it because these people learned absolutely nothing.
Note: This was America when Obama was in office. It was a Golden Age of $5 footlongs, 24 hour Wal-Marts and $20 fill ups compared to this shit we have now.
Here are all the speeches and the full panel discussion from the Multipolar Press event, hosted by Rebecca Hargraves, in New York City on July 18, 2026.
Mainstream Dissident
Different utopian visions with one thing in common. Pushing against the prescribed normative system. May the best dissident ideology win. Adam, host of Mainstream Dissident and owner of MSD Media Works gives the first speech of the night in his first public speaking appearance.
Constantin von Hoffmeister
The unipolar hegemon is fading, presenting an opportunity for other global forces to rise in power, ushering in a multipolar world. “The future is Multipolarity.” , owner of Multipolar Press gives the second speech of the night.
Kenaz Filan
Dissecting one of the most prolific writers from our day, Kenaz speaks on a stark warning from H. P. Lovecraft. is an autodidact with a particular fondness for ancient History, current events, and the interplay between the two.
Zach Kidd
A people and a place. Nationalism is definitionally and inherently racial. In this no holds barred speech, Zach Kidd delivers a message of unity among one’s biological brothers. A prominent speaker on nationalism and historical revisionism in the modern day, Zach delivers the fourth speech of the night.
Panel Discussion
The future is rapidly approaching. Geopolitics are changing. This panel with Jim Jatras, , and discerns who will come out on top. You won’t want to miss this heated debate. The future of the West is at stake. We must be prepared for anything.
This is a pretty in depth overview. Hope you like it!
Solid Democratic States
The first eight states should be easy Democrat wins. In many states, Democrats are overperforming by 10-15 points, which is what we have seen in many special elections this year. The next five will be a lot closer.
Colorado: Democrat John Hinkenlooper will win by 20 points. This is as Harris +11 state, so this is a Democratic overperformance of 10 points.
Delaware: Democrat Chris Coons will win by 25 points. This is a Harris +15 state, so once again, this is another Democratic overperformance of 10 points.
Rhode Island: Democrat Jack Reed will win by 40 points! This in a Harris +14 state, so Democrats here are overperforming by 25 points!
Illinois: Democrat Juliana Stratton will defeat Republican Don Tracy by 20 points. Illinois is a +11 Harris state so once again, a Democratic overperformance of 10 points.
Massachusetts: Democrat Ed Markey will win by 20-25 points. A Harris +25 state.
If he gets the girl, gets married, and gets her pregnant like he should before she’s 30 (which is probably 8 years from now), they will be divorced 8 years after that—60% chance. And they will both be washed-up corporate whores living in a $1.6 million 2.5-bedroom shack in the peninsula of San Francisco or Bronx, NYC, if they are lucky. Oh yeah, and he works for Roblox, which is run by some totally-not-a-fed guy who used to work for NASA. It’s well known Roblox not only commodifies children for a fake economy on their platform, allegedly, but for sex cults, allegedly, as well. I mean, how can a married guy who’s not rich enough to give her hush money and a house, afford a lawyer to make her a baby mama, or evil enough of a VC tech bro to turn her into a heroin-addicted call girl, compete?
Even Nick Shirley asks you, “What do you think about communism coming to America!?” Maybe you shouldn’t answer him. It’ll be used against you in the court of public opinion, or an actual court of law (see Programmed to Kill by David McGowan). Slavery vs. exploitation—what’s the difference?
[Thesis Integration Note for Section II]:This Rice University kid is the quintessential Neo-Trotskyist managerial vanguard archetype—a sanitized, safe-talking drone engineered by high-end institutions to serve platforms like Roblox. Biofoundationalism blows the lid off this entire setup. The system dangles a tech salary and a cute wife in front of him, but the Malthusian math of Bay Area real estate and a 60% hypergamous divorce rate guarantee he’s just an engine generating resources for the platform economy before getting discarded.
Section III: The Socio-Sexual Transaction & The “Good Girl” Trap
For women, it is transactional, especially emotionally. They want to be manipulated, if necessary, for their emotional world. Monogamy is communism for women. They are right.
Society is built on beta cucks—the “good girl mating strategy.” I have been a victim of this mentality, for better and for worse. It’s often the Stockholm syndrome reaction to ex post facto justify our abuse as “noble lies” to hold us together, which is sometimes in our best interest. For instance, having children with many women in modern times: women can and will create all kinds of drama and problems to shorten your lifespan one way or another. So being a mate and investing in them is a safer route if successful.
Young girls are oversold as good and as claim-staking or prospecting like gold planners—more like 49ers who got there a little too late. Utopianism/communism for men was a lie to unleash women as a scourge. That’s why we need Black Lives Matter stickers over our houses and cars as a smear of lamb’s blood, so the angel of death will pass over every time some criminal that women empathize with gets shot by police, and some people with money use these things for economic goals to rape the average man of his status and resources for their own benefit and sell it effectively as “pathological altruism.” It is brilliant “marketing,” is it not? They give no fucks, but we certainly should.
People often forget that Uncle Adolf spent much of “his struggle” lamenting that it was a horizontal prison matrix where your own class of people would enforce “norms” of politeness (or convenience) on you for the ruling (or propaganda) class. It’s no wonder he allegedly didn’t have any kids—he realized the great dangers of women and forgot to mitigate those issues.
[Thesis Integration Note for Section III]:This is Gramscian cultural hegemony and evolutionary psychology working in tandem. When you realize monogamy acts as female communism and see BLM stickers as a lamb’s blood ritual, you see how the game is rigged. The ruling class weaponizes female emotional architecture and “pathological altruism” to make men police themselves into horizontal submission. This is the Trojan Horse: if you ignore these raw biological and sexual dynamics, you get bled dry and subjugated while convincing yourself it’s “noble.”
Section IV: The Epstein Reality & Technological Solutions
Perhaps this is the underlying cause of using Islam to fuck over America and the West? Push polygamy, which sells the idea of more sex (much as the sexual revolution did before it) as a “technological solution” to the problems we currently face.
Meanwhile, the ruling class like Epstein will have breeding rape farms on private islands, and many women will willingly or unwillingly (let’s not get into the debate about consent here just yet) join so they can proliferate their genetic dominance. This is the story of Epstein no one wants to talk about, but it’s vastly more important than “sex trafficking.” The why is more important than who, what, when, where, and how.
[Thesis Integration Note for Section IV]:Here lies the ultimate Malthusian elite exemption. While the lower and middle classes are fed artificial moral constraints and fake “technological solutions” like the sexual revolution or pushed polygamy, the elites operate on pure, unadulterated bio-foundational drive: direct genetic dominance and resource hoarding (the Epstein blueprint). All that “social progress” talk is just the PR campaign hiding raw biological expansion at the top.
Section V: Subversion of Meta-Narratives & The “Natural State” Trap
Rules meant for spiritual power like chastity, honor, and mindlessness (contemplation of God) have been turned into a vice that’s inflicted by the occult/pseudo-priest class as an affliction spiked into the punch of moral authority that is mostly self-imposed by the lower/middle classes in a Malthusian plot against anyone with true individuality that assists a community-based collective will. (Run-on sentence, yeah I know. Irony and comedy are primary binary weapons since at least Chaucer.) They certainly have weaponized Pauline theology, as my friend M. Kang has argued in his book Christ Protagonist or Logos Dethroned.
Meta-narratives (Alex Woods, History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective) are all about subverting wisdom and goodness into the evil deeds meant to stave them off via “philosophy”—making women hold men in contempt for our very nature being chief among them. To stochastically terrorize you to become isolated, think it’s your “best bet,” and think that not taking the opportunity to impregnate women when it comes is because “you’re better than that.” Adam Weishaupt may get a bad rap since he actually confronted the Jesuits (and the Jews?), yet had standards so high the Illuminati failed?
See, it was planned long ago to subvert all institutions, especially religion and family, to conform to the wishes of a few. And yet, if you point it out, you’re mentally ill, supposedly. Even if it’s not some evil plot, look around, as the fruits have been borne as if it were, and as it were.
Natural religion—aka the thought of returning to a natural state—is the ultimate guide to keep us as pets. Domesticated, trained slaves are not the same as an alleged Anarcho-primitivist white male / Asian female cult of the Polynesian islands in the distant past, present, or future (see William Gibson, Double Dickage).
Neanderthals gave us our difference enough to be one of the hive. Was that his white savior will, or has it been thrown off course by changing the math of navigation by the stars, like Jason Reza Jorjani suggests?
The Greeks and Chinese simultaneously freed and enslaved man via contemplation and writing those contemplations down. And for what? To be ruled by spiteful nerds who run Silicon Valley and the government for Trotskyist Zionists? Where’s my cut of the pie, nigga?
Marduk brought order out of chaos via the Jews to Christendom, but that order has brought humanity to its knees via the motto “Give me convenience or give me death” (thanks ladies and simps).
Contradictions are bound up throughout nature; therefore, Plantinga had it right about God and His justification. But now what?
[Thesis Integration Note for Section V]:Beware of the “Natural Religion” trap. The push to return to a “pure natural state” or blind biological determinism can easily become a high-level cope that turns men into domesticated pets. From weaponized Pauline theology down to Silicon Valley’s tech-gnosticism, these meta-narratives isolate men and trick them into stepping aside out of misplaced moral pride. Plantinga was right that nature is bound up in contradiction—so if the spiteful nerds ran off with the order and weaponized the matrix, how does a man grounded in reality construct actual purpose without falling into their trap?
He was arguing with me on X earlier this afternoon about his book Whitepill when the news broke that Sen. John Curtis was trying to create a federal version of Utah’s old guest worker program. For those who don’t remember this Tea Party-era cheap labor program, Utah was sued by the Obama administration which succeeded in blocking the guest worker program from taking effect.
“Utah Sen. John Curtis announced the introduction of a bill on Monday that would create a voluntary state-sponsored visa program, allowing state legislatures to expand their temporary migrant workforce.
The legislation, introduced with Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, appears to mirror a 15-year-old proposal passed in Utah as part of the 2011 Compact on Immigration, but which never received federal approval.
Curtis’ bill would mark a major reform to federal immigration law, if it can make its way through congressional gridlock, by letting states manage their own state-level guest-worker initiatives based on local labor demands. …”
The truth is that the GOP never stopped pushing for amnesty. Comprehensive immigration reform was pushed during the Biden administration. The DREAM Act never went away. The Dignity Act is introduced in every Congress. Lindsey Graham died a MAGA hero after spending his entire career in the Senate pushing for various amnesties like his last attempt to grant legal status to Afghan refugees.
Simon Rorschach examines Ukraine’s attempt to turn battlefield ingenuity into lasting influence in Washington and the limits of following Israel’s path without Israel’s political power.
Ukraine is trying to turn battlefield necessity into a place within the American order. The clearest sign came on 25 July, when Ukrainian forces attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, answered without delay. He threatened retaliation and accused Israel of helping to set the operation in motion. The attack followed another important event by only fourteen days. Over Kuwait, American forces had shot down an Iranian drone using a defensive system conceived and built in Ukraine. Never before had the United States destroyed an Iranian drone with a Ukrainian weapon. Kiev is therefore no longer dealing with Tehran in one way alone. It is both an arms supplier and an active participant. The model it seems to have in mind is Israel: a state tied closely to Washington, highly advanced in military technology, able to fight without American soldiers beside it, and capable of giving the United States weapons and methods that American industry has not yet produced for itself. The difference is geography. Israel performs this role in the Middle East. Ukraine wants to perform it on the eastern edge of Europe.
What does Ukraine hope to gain from this strategy?
DHS Secretary Mullin: "We have naturalization ceremonies every single day in the United States. In fact, we're real close to 900,000 individuals that have been naturalized in the last 12 months. There is a legal system to go through." pic.twitter.com/FElL0nHFTH
Oklahoma GOP Governor Kevin Stitt: "I think what the American public loves is that me and the governor of New York can agree on a lot of issues on immigration reform." pic.twitter.com/Byabyv1wmm
? INFURIATING: Markwayne Mullin is ONCE AGAIN encouraging illegal Haitians and aliens with Temporary Protected Status to seek PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS
This guy is a JOKE
Make them apply for legal status back in their HOME COUNTRY. NOT while they’re here. pic.twitter.com/KAnUN7mNNv
According to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, ICE has deported approximately 356,389 people in FY 2026 while over 900,000 new immigrants have been naturalized. He talks about how he worked for two years with No Labels on a push for comprehensive immigration reform.
Mark Levin says he doesn’t give a damn if the war against Iran leads to a global economic depression or even a World War, as long as Israel is protected.
Levin says the United States military must bomb the targets he chooses them to bomb.
Trump posts meme suggesting he wants to run for an illegal third term, then follows that up with posts suggesting he wants to annex Greenland and Venezuela pic.twitter.com/N1rfxPcYPc
The gravitational force of the black hole underneath the GOP is getting stronger every week. He isn’t going to just lose the midterms. He is going to lose us the next decade like George W. Bush.
Note: “The Great One” Mark Levin has redefined the MAGA brand.
Simon Rorschach explains how Europe's return to nuclear escalation echoes the dystopian visions of Zamyatin and Orwell with unsettling precision.
The return of nuclear politics to Europe is no longer a matter of speculation but of official policy. NATO has moved beyond the language of restraint and entered the language of expansion. For years the alliance has been modernizing the nuclear weapons stored across the continent as part of its long confrontation with Russia. According to military specialists, the older B61 bombs have now been replaced by the more advanced B61-12 models at six European bases. Reports also indicate that the United States has transferred additional bombs of the same type to the British air base at Lakenheath, increasing its nuclear presence even further. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has now confirmed that deploying additional American nuclear weapons in other European countries remains “an option.” Finland, Lithuania, and Poland are all mentioned as possible hosts. Some well-informed analysts even suggest that as many as 150 additional American nuclear bombs could eventually join the roughly 100 already stationed across Europe. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four described a world where endless confrontation justified permanent militarization and unquestioning obedience. The modern European security order increasingly resembles that condition, where each new deployment is presented not as an escalation but as the unavoidable consequence of perpetual danger.
The artificial migration crisis has become one of the defining spectacles of our age, repeated so often that every performance follows an almost identical script. In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi stood beside Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome and declared that Europe must pay Libya five billion euros each year if it wished to remain European. He spoke without hesitation about the millions waiting to cross from Africa, describing vast numbers of poor and uneducated migrants whose arrival, he argued, would fundamentally transform the continent. He warned that Europe would cease to be recognizably European and asked what answer White Christian nations could possibly offer once such a movement gathered full momentum. He invoked the memory of the barbarian invasions that had brought down the old Roman order, presenting himself as the final barrier between Africa and Europe. Berlusconi offered no meaningful reply. The pattern soon spread. In March 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opened the border near Edirne and encouraged tens of thousands of migrants to march towards Greece and Bulgaria, many of them transported there by buses organized by the Turkish authorities themselves after being gathered from the country’s eastern frontier. The movement served as leverage in Ankara’s disputes with the European Union. In 2021, Alexander Lukashenko refined the method further by arranging charter flights from Baghdad and Damascus, issuing tourist visas, transporting migrants by bus to the borders of Poland and Lithuania, and providing camps where they waited for an opportunity to cross. Following the 2023 coup in Niger, the new rulers abolished the law that had criminalized migrant transport across the Sahara, dismantling the European-backed system that had slowed movement through one of Africa’s principal migration corridors. Different leaders, different countries, different circumstances, yet always the same weapon directed against the same target.
But what if the greatest driver of mass migration is not outside Europe at all?
Ali-Mohammad Mohajer Nasser employs Jacques Derrida’s philosophy to examine how the American-led liberal order has deconstructed itself through its own claims and contradictions.
August 1, 2026. Washington has issued a security advisory urging all American citizens to leave West Asia. Multiple news agencies report that the United States and Israel are preparing a large-scale assault on Iran’s energy and power infrastructure. From the other side, indications of Tehran’s readiness for a severe retaliatory strike grow louder. Neo-conservative media in America gleefully speak of an “age of candles” descending upon our region. The arena of politics and war increasingly resembles Russian roulette. The United States—which long presented itself as the defender of the post-World War II legal order—now openly and without pretense threatens war crimes. The Zionist regime, delighted by the enmity between Muslims and Christians, prepares itself for fresh infamy in the annals of crimes against humanity. Netanyahu, emboldened by his government’s recently successful security operation against Spain, appears eager to claim credit for persuading America to unleash a regional apocalypse.
America, with its vast network of elite think tanks and diplomatic academies, now reduces its message to Iran to a single imperative: die, or we will kill you. It is as though this two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old power can no longer speak even English, its vocabulary having collapsed into compulsion, force, death, and the threat of annihilation. This is the terminal language of liberal democracy itself—the very polity that was once heralded as the culmination of human progress, the final stage of civilizational evolution. The same power that claimed to ground its international order on human rights and human dignity now stands naked, its universalist pretensions revealed as a veil for something far more primitive. Any critical mind must now reckon with the legacy of a tradition—humanism, Enlightenment, liberalism—that has given birth to this monster.
War does not begin with missiles alone. Sometimes the first detonation is a detonation of language. When the destruction of a country’s vital infrastructure is proposed not even as a last resort, but as a routine option in political and media analysis, something deeper than a military threat is unfolding. Words themselves can redraw the boundaries of what it means to be human. The post-war international order rested on the claim that even war must be governed by rules. The Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law were founded on the principle that a distinction must be preserved between military targets and civilian life—that human suffering must never be reduced to an instrument of policy. In practice, these principles have been violated countless times: Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Gaza. Yet the very existence of these rules was an acknowledgment that raw power alone cannot constitute legitimacy.
But when the destruction of a nation’s power grid—upon which the daily existence of millions depends—enters the ordinary vocabulary of politics, the question is no longer merely whether such an act is compatible with international law. A larger question, laced with bitter irony, emerges: what has become of that very order which claimed to have been constructed for the very purpose of restraining war? Did such an order ever truly exist?
This question leads us into the dark territory of deconstruction—a domain where we confront not merely the violation of a law, but the self-destruction of the law’s own discursive foundation. Jacques Derrida taught us that every text—and every legal-political order is a text—is built upon différance: meaning and legitimacy derive from the exclusion of the “other” and the suppression of internal contradictions. Yet precisely at the moment when a system claims full “presence” and final foundation, that very excluded “other” returns to destabilize its foundations.
The liberal post-war order rested on a sacred binary: “us”—the civilized, rule-bound—against “them”—the savage, lawless. The Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the Kantian promise of “democratic peace”—all were designed to draw a clear line between legitimate war (defensive or humanitarian) and illegitimate war (aggressive and barbaric). But today, America—as the plenipotentiary representative of this order—openly presents the bombing of vital civilian infrastructure as a “routine option.” The binary collapses: America is no longer the law-giving civilized power; it has become the pure lawless savage. What meaningful difference remains between America’s threat of war crimes and ISIS’s threat of genocide? Both speak the language of pure death. ISIS, at least, was candid. But America, with the same mouth that speaks of “human rights,” speaks of an “age of candles” descending upon our region. This contradiction so thoroughly dissolves the boundary between “civilized” and “savage” that no metaphysical “presence” of the Good remains.
Derrida spoke of rature—the under-erasure—where a word is crossed out yet remains legible, signaling that its “presence” is impossible. The story of the American order is precisely such a permanent under-erasure: they preserve the UN Charter and human rights as the “over-writing” (the surface text) to maintain the image of a “rule-bound power,” but beneath it, with every bomb and every paralyzing sanction, they inscribe “raw power” that cancels that very surface text. Today, this under-erasure has become so pronounced that the original text—law itself—is no longer legible. When the Pentagon describes the targeting of schools and hospitals as “less than five percent calculation error,” we are no longer facing legal justification but rather a mathematical calculus of death. This is precisely what Derrida called the “violence of the archē”—violence enacted not to establish justice, but to prove the existence of power itself, each time it loses legitimacy, through repeated “re-founding” that perpetually postpones legitimacy.
American political language today is thoroughly permeated by Derridean différance: its words never arrive at a final meaning. “Negotiation” means “ultimatum.” “Deterrence” means “economic genocide.” “Regional order” means “managed chaos.” In this endless play of signifiers, the threat itself has become a self-referential performance. Trump and Hegseth share bombing footage and boast: “More is coming!” This is no longer a political statement; it is a tragic joke played with people’s blood. When war is reduced to comedy and spectacle, order itself is reduced to gesture—and a gesture, however lethal, can no longer be taken seriously as a global norm, for it has confessed, from the outset, to its own nihilism.
Yet this enemy “gesture” is not the end of the matter; it is rather the point of departure for the autopoiesis of war. War, contrary to conventional understanding, does not obey the logic of its initiator. War is an autopoietic system: at the very moment when the enemy believes that threat and spectacle (the quantity of pressure) have achieved their political purpose, a new quality suddenly emerges from that very pressure—something that was anticipated in no Pentagon calculation, no Netanyahu fantasy.The dialectical rule of the transition from quantity to quality—which Schmitt called “thoroughly political”—comes into effect here: it is not the quantity of death that determines the outcome, but the qualitative leap in the will of the besieged that transforms the very field of enmity into something unanticipated. This new quality may take the form of a boomerang against the West itself: enmity pushed to the point where space and geography become uninhabitable for the other. Iran’s own retaliatory doctrine—strikes on Persian Gulf energy infrastructure, on cities of the Zionist regime—is a reminder that the autopoiesis of war described here spares no party its own logic.
Derrida believed that deconstruction is not destruction, but rather the opening of a new path for the “other.” But in the case of the American order, this deconstruction amounts to the construction of its own coffin. When a legal-political system becomes so contaminated by its “other” (violence, racism, monopolistic interests) that it can no longer distinguish itself from that other, the system has been emptied of its own metaphysics.
Derrida already named this moment. In “Force of Law,” he argued that no legal order is founded on reason—it is founded on a decision that cannot justify itself, what he called, after Kierkegaard, the madness of decision. Deconstruction does not deny this. It exposes it. The liberal order survived as long as its founding violence stayed hidden beneath a legible surface text — the Charter, the Conventions, the language of rights. That surface text has now failed. It no longer hides the violence beneath it; it barely gestures at it. What remains is the violence alone, unconcealed. Schmitt is not a break from Derrida here. He is what is left when Derrida’s own logic is followed to its end without flinching.
America, by threatening an “age of candles” and the destruction of infrastructure, explicitly declares that “civilian life” possesses no independent being in its eyes, but is merely a standing reserve (Bestand) for political pressure. This is no longer a “legal violation” or a “discursive contradiction.” This is the declaration of an existential state of exception (Ausnahmezustand) by a power that has freed itself from any “political distinction between friend and enemy” and has entered into an absolute enmity (absolute Feindschaft). At this point, “discourse critique” is no longer useful; the issue becomes the identification of the enemy and the existential decision. But this confession itself is the greatest of defeats, because it has stepped out of the “tent of global order” and stands in the desert of naked nihilism. In the desert, no one issues orders; all are both hunter and hunted. And a lawless hunter, however well-armed, can no longer claim the role of a moral teacher to the world. This is no small lesson for a world in which there are multiple nuclear-weapon states.
So, to answer the opening question: the American order did exist, but not as an established truth—rather as a founding myth. And today, this myth is so entangled with its own contradictions—genocide in Gaza, the threat of war crimes against Iran, the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo—that it has lost any foundation for its own lawfulness. This order can be dismissed—not out of arrogance, but out of a philosophical recognition of its collapse. To take a collapsed order seriously would be the true folly. It has removed itself from the orbit of collective political rationality through its own sheer will—a will to death. From now on, any dialogue with it is no longer a dialogue between two subjects, but rather a dialogue between a living human and a death-machine.
But even a death-machine may prove impotent before a sudden existential decision. Derrida taught us not to believe in “presence”; but Schmitt teaches us that in the moment of legal collapse, it is decision that creates presence. When the collapse of law is universally acknowledged, resolute men, armed with the appropriate instruments of their will, rise to make that decision. At that hour, who can offer them liberal lectures on human rights, the Geneva Conventions, and the laws of humanitarian war—lectures directed at their conduct toward Israelis and Americans? The question answers itself within the heart of the situation—a situation that has suspended all antecedent abstract ethics.
Don’t fall for the fake Fox/GOP outrage. Two weeks ago the House passed a bill that greenlighted the transfer of Spanish territory to Morocco. Every Republican except me voted for it, but now THEY are acting shocked at the invasion.https://t.co/a7ROEAtoODhttps://t.co/886sJycfeLpic.twitter.com/dK5vqMA2Vu
2026. This very recently passed House bill directs at least $40 million to Morocco with a wink and a nod, and encouragement that this land is theirs. Same bill gives $3.3 billion to Israel. https://t.co/DE6u7MGYf7
A DC Think Tank called “American Enterprise Institute” has been lobbying Marco Rubio on this exact “invasion” into Ceuta for several months now.
Republican Congressman Diaz Balart, Rubio’s close friend, has also pressured Rubio to recognize Ceuta as Moroccan territory. pic.twitter.com/HlOoLEuX2d
The neoconservative think tank that’s been pressuring the Trump administration to support a migrant crisis in Ceuta is now pressuring the United States and Israel to sanction Spain if they attempt to stop it. pic.twitter.com/mvSu4rvmrj
Israel’s visceral glee over Spain being flooded by African migrants indicates they aren’t an ally of Europe or Western civilization https://t.co/qI838IsSzT
Trump on Spain: “They are not behaving nicely, but they will learn.”
Trump always tells on himself. This was a coordinated effort by the US, Israel, and Morocco to get back at Spain for supporting Palestine and opposing the war against Iran. https://t.co/wzPA8Ia0kOpic.twitter.com/jMOdL521j6
— Power to the People ?? (@ProudSocialist) July 31, 2026
?????? Nick Fuentes' thoughts on the Ceuta invasion:
"The reason Republicans SUPPORT the invasion of Spanish cities is that they're doing this on behalf of Israel.
They're promoting Morocco’s core security interests and punishing Spain at the expense of its own core security… pic.twitter.com/j1BieJiuFv
?????? Marco Rubio backed Morocco to take over Ceuta back in April
US Congressional report in April for the first time labels it “occupied Moroccon territory” and “supports Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts on the status of Ceuta”
Here is a brief recap of the context around the invasion of Ceuta:
– Spain is a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court and one of the biggest enemies of the Netanyahu government in Israel which it has accused of genocide in Gaza
– The intense beef between Spain and Israel was on display at the World Cup when the entire Israeli leadership loudly supported Argentina. Spain won the World Cup
– Trump has vowed to punish Spain for refusing to allow its air space to be used in the war with Iran for Israel. He cited the Spanish American War and the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines
– The American Enterprise Institute has been heavily lobbying the Trump administration for months to recognize Ceuta as part of Morocco
– Morocco is an ally of Israel and joined the the Abraham Accords. In exchange, the Trump administration recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara
– Just two weeks ago, the House voted to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Ceuta. Every House Republican except Thomas Massie voted for it
– Netanyahu’s son publicly said Israel was funding NGOs in Morocco to encourage mass migration from Morocco into Spain. Ben G’Vir and other Israeli government officials and MIGA influencers like Laura Loomer loudly celebrated the invasion
– Israel wants to destabilize Spain with a mass invasion of Muslims and African refugees in order to get the Vox party in power as a Ziopopulist ally along the lines of MAGA in the U.S., Argentina under Milei, Brazil under Bolsonaro, Hungary under Orban, etc.
– The Moroccan police allowed the invasion to happen
“Like so many others in Morocco, Mohammed Ahmidho saw on his social media feeds early Thursday that the heavily guarded border his country shared with the Spanish territory of Ceuta was open.
Soon enough, he joined a crowd in the tens of thousands, many of whom were astonished to see Moroccan police urge them, as he recalled, to “come to Spain.” Some climbed over the fence, as he did, or dove through holes in the chain-link, or swam across the maritime border. Some wore wet-suits, sometimes kicking with flippers, or floated to the Spanish coast in orange life preservers, pink inflatable doughnuts around their waists. At least 60 people died in the mayhem.
“A lot of people came,” said Mr. Ahmidho, 37. “A lot.”
He was among roughly 50,000 people who crossed the border into a Spanish town of only 84,000 residents on Thursday and early Friday, according to the Spanish interior ministry. That was a more intense surge than in any equivalent period during the peak of the European migration crisis in 2015. …”
This whole episode is very interesting.
We’re constantly told that Israel is synonymous with Western civilization. We’re told that it is practical to vote for Ziopopulist parties because of immigration. Look how immigration is being used as a tool though to destabilize and punish Spain though for being insufficiently pro-Israel.
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Constantin von Hoffmeister examines Laura Loomer’s critique of multipolarity point by point, rebutting each of her arguments while arguing that they mistake an irreversible geopolitical reality for a hostile ideological project.
Laura Loomer's recent condemnation of multipolarity marks one of the clearest attempts within the American Right to define the emerging new international order as an existential threat rather than an inevitable transformation. Her arguments deserve careful examination, not because they are unique, but because they reflect assumptions that have become increasingly common in debates about the future of global power.
Loomer presents her first argument in the simplest possible terms. She claims that multipolarity exists to destroy American supremacy. According to her, Russia promotes the doctrine because it seeks the decline of the United States, while China, Iran, and other governments adopt the same language for the same reason. In her account, multipolarity is not a description of the international system but a political weapon aimed directly at Washington. The disappearance of American predominance therefore becomes the central objective of every state that speaks of a multipolar world.
This argument mistakes consequence for intention. Multipolarity does not begin with hostility towards America. It begins with the observation that the distribution of power has already changed. China possesses industrial capacity on a scale unseen in modern history. India has become a continental power with global ambitions. Russia remains one of the world’s foremost military powers despite unprecedented sanctions. Regional actors such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia, and others increasingly pursue independent policies rather than automatic alignment with Washington. These developments did not emerge because someone wrote books about multipolarity. The books appeared because the balance of power was already shifting. The decline of unipolarity is therefore not a revolutionary program but a recognition of political reality. No empire has remained permanently dominant. History moves through changing distributions of power, and every generation mistakes its own arrangements for permanent truths until events prove otherwise.
Loomer’s second argument portrays multipolarity as an alliance between Russia, China, Iran, Islamist movements, and other governments united by hatred of the West. She presents these actors as members of a single ideological front whose common purpose is the destruction of Western civilization. Under this interpretation, every state that speaks of multipolarity belongs to the same hostile camp regardless of its own interests or historical experience.
This confuses coincidence with unity. The countries commonly associated with multipolarity frequently disagree on questions of territory, economics, religion, and regional influence. India maintains strategic rivalry with China while participating in organizations that include Beijing. Turkey remains a NATO member while purchasing Russian military equipment. Saudi Arabia cooperates with Washington while simultaneously expanding relations with Moscow and Beijing. Iran and Russia share interests in some regions but not in every sphere. Brazil follows its own priorities, while Indonesia pursues another course entirely. There exists no single ideological headquarters directing these governments towards one objective. What unites them is not identical beliefs but the desire to preserve greater freedom of action. Multipolarity does not require permanent friendship among its participants. It merely assumes that several independent centers of power exist simultaneously.
Loomer’s third argument claims that multipolarity functions primarily as Russian propaganda. According to her, Moscow employs information campaigns, media personalities, and sympathetic commentators to persuade Western audiences that American leadership should end. The doctrine therefore appears as little more than a sophisticated psychological operation.
Propaganda cannot manufacture geopolitical reality. It may exaggerate events or shape perceptions, but it cannot create factories, armies, populations, technological industries, or national interests. The emergence of several major powers has measurable economic and military foundations independent of any Russian information campaign. China did not become an industrial giant because of Russian messaging. India did not become the world’s most populous country through propaganda. American debt, political polarization, and industrial decline cannot be explained by foreign influence alone. Every great power produces narratives supporting its own interests. Washington has done so for generations, just as London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing have done before it. To reduce structural transformation to propaganda mistakes symptoms for causes.
Loomer’s fourth argument describes multipolarity as the greatest threat to Western civilization itself. She presents American predominance as the final guarantee of Western survival. Once that predominance disappears, she argues, the civilization that produced Europe and North America will inevitably collapse beneath hostile external forces.
This assumes that civilization depends upon imperial management from a single capital. Yet Western civilization existed for centuries before the United States emerged as the world’s leading power. Classical Greece, Republican Rome, medieval Christendom, Renaissance Italy, imperial Spain, Bourbon France, Victorian Britain, and many other historical forms flourished under very different political arrangements. Civilizations possess cultural continuity independent of whichever state temporarily occupies first place. Indeed, empires often weaken the societies they lead by drawing them into endless military commitments, financial burdens, and ideological universalism. A civilization survives through confidence in its own traditions, institutions, and people rather than through permanent global supremacy.
Loomer’s fifth argument attacks thinkers associated with multipolarity, especially Alexander Dugin. She argues that such figures openly desire the destruction of the United States and therefore reveal the true intentions of the entire doctrine. Since some advocates welcome the end of American predominance, she concludes that multipolarity itself must be directed against America as a nation.
This moves from particular individuals to universal conclusions. Every major political tradition contains voices motivated by hostility towards rival powers. During the twentieth century, many American strategists openly sought the collapse of the Soviet Union. That did not mean every supporter of American leadership desired the destruction of the Russian people. Likewise, criticism of American global predominance does not necessarily imply hatred of America itself. Many advocates of multipolarity distinguish between the American nation and the international system established after the Cold War. They argue against universal political structures, not against the existence of the United States. Agreement or disagreement with that distinction remains a matter of political judgment, but it should not be erased.
Loomer’s sixth argument maintains that Western commentators sympathetic to multipolarity serve as useful instruments of hostile governments. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, she argues, they spread narratives that weaken national unity and encourage America’s enemies.
Such reasoning risks replacing debate with suspicion. Political disagreement has always existed within free societies. Citizens may oppose intervention abroad, criticize alliances, question sanctions, or advocate different grand strategies without acting as foreign agents. Once every dissenting argument becomes evidence of hidden allegiance, public discussion gives way to accusations instead of analysis. Democratic societies depend upon distinguishing disagreement from disloyalty. Otherwise every political controversy becomes a search for traitors rather than an examination of competing ideas.
The deepest weakness in Loomer’s argument lies elsewhere. She assumes that the preservation of peace depends upon one state remaining permanently supreme. History suggests the opposite. Concentrated power often tempts its holder to expand beyond necessity because few external restraints remain. A world containing several powerful civilizations does not eliminate conflict, but neither did unipolarity. The decades following the Cold War witnessed repeated military interventions, regime-change campaigns, sanctions, and expanding geopolitical confrontation despite the absence of any peer competitor. The central question is therefore not whether one prefers America, Russia, China, or any other power. The question is whether lasting order is more likely to emerge from permanent global predominance or from a balance among several enduring centers of civilization. Multipolarity answers the second question. Its critics answer the first. That disagreement concerns the structure of international politics itself rather than merely the ambitions of any single state.
If you enjoy Constantin von Hoffmeister’s writing, order his new book, The Fate of White America, here.
To be completely fair, the entire rightwing content sphere is currently in a recession whether pro-Trump or anti-Trump because Republicans are in power and have blown Trump’s second term on corporate tax cuts, AI data centers and the war with Iran for Israel. The vibe is overwhelmingly negative.
“Benny Johnson, a right-wing podcaster, was racking up tens of millions of views on YouTube during Donald J. Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, posting about divisive cultural issues and criticizing Democrats.
Things have changed.
Views for Mr. Johnson’s YouTube channel are down by millions from the heights of 2024. The surge of attention he received on X has slowed to a trickle. His loyalty to Mr. Trump has become unappealing to some Republicans who are frustrated with the rising cost of living and the president’s decision to start a war with Iran. …
Mr. Shapiro has been supportive of the president and the war. He lost about 60,000 subscribers on YouTube from April to June this year, according to data from Chaotic Era, a newsletter about online influence. Mr. Shapiro’s YouTube views have also declined to their lowest in years, dropping to about four million per week from 27 million in 2024. The publication he owns, The Daily Wire, has also seen traffic plummet by half since last year, according to The Righting. …
Mr. Bongino returned to his old job of podcasting and livestreaming in February, but his audience did not seem to follow: After an initial bump from his first few episodes, his audience settled to roughly half of what it was during the highs of the 2024 presidential campaign. …”
We had a big election in 2024.
Big donors got what they wanted which is what usually happens.
Inflation played a decisive role in that election. Economic pain swung the election to Trump and MAGA who have only made the cost of living much worse with the war with Iran for Israel.
You can’t blame people for tuning out and focusing on other things. No one but political junkies want to stick around and follow news and politics when things are going as badly as they are now. My hope is that some of these MAGA grifters like Benny Johnson, Catturd and Dan Bongino who have tied their identity completely to Trump will be discredited by this and swept away over the next two years.
Western Europe is committing suicide, and the sixty thousand African migrants who just smashed through Ceuta are only the latest proof. While Spanish forces buckle, the continent’s politicians issue statements, the cameras roll, and nothing of substance is done. The invasion continues because literally nobody is prepared to stop it. This is the terminal phase of a civilization that has already decided to die.
Police lines are collapsing under the weight of the numbers; houses are stormed, property wrecked, and local forces left struggling to hold even the most basic order. European right-wing figures issue the expected statements. Alice Weidel from the AfD names Germany as the obvious destination and demands immediate border closure and ruthless deportations. Herbert Kickl from the Austrian Freedom Party declares that only a “Fortress Austria” can answer the EU’s unbroken record of failure. Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from the National Rally promise to “reform Schengen” and reserve free movement for EU citizens alone. Nigel Farage points to the young men in the videos and predicts they will soon stand in Calais. Geert Wilders calls it an “Islamic invasion” and demands the entire mass be returned. The rhetoric is uniform, the urgency theatrical, the practical result so far identical to every previous crisis.
Literally NOBODY in Europe is REALLY serious about stopping this. Governments and the opposition alike are simply watching the spectacle unfold. No defense is materializing, no organized pushback is appearing, nothing at all is interrupting the flow. The spectacle is sad and inevitable. Oswald Spengler mapped it in The Decline of the West (1918-1922). Mass immigration is a symptom of the decline, not the cause. Western civilization has entered its winter phase; the process runs according to its own iron law and cannot be reversed. An eighty-year-old man does not become sixteen again, and the West does not recover the vitality it has already spent. The indifference is not confined to the elite. The majority of ordinary Europeans share the same lethargy. The parallel is Imperial Rome in its terminal stage, when the city itself was eighty percent foreign and only twenty percent ethnic Roman. Even then, the emperor addressed an abstract mankind rather than the Roman people. Today the cult of universalism continues to eat the West alive. The end arrives once more.
Jean Raspail’s TheCamp of the Saints (1973) remains the clearest fictional rehearsal of the same sequence. In that novel, the flotillas arrive, the authorities freeze, the moral vocabulary turns against the European natives, and French civilization dissolves under the weight of numbers it refuses to resist. Readers who return to the book after each new Mediterranean surge note how little invention was required. The comments that accumulate around The Camp of the Saints are themselves revealing: they circle endlessly around the accuracy of the prediction while the reality it described continues to expand. The novel no longer functions as a warning; it now functions as a diagnosis which has already been confirmed.
A large share of the so-called “right-wing” parties ferociously denounce mass immigration on the campaign trail, yet once they hold office they do absolutely nothing. The pattern has earned the term “Melonization effect.” Both Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump spoke with extreme rhetoric about the concrete measures they would take against the invasion. Both broke those promises the moment power was theirs. The gap between the language of opposition and the practice of government is no longer surprising; it is structural. The parties exist to channel popular anger into harmless channels while the underlying demographic transformation proceeds uninterrupted. The great replacement is real.
This is imperial overstretch in its classic form: Western energies remain fixed on the attempt to subdue or rearrange distant lands while the center itself advances ever deeper into decomposition. Imperial Rome supplies the precedent: the same power that once projected might across three continents discovered that its own capital had become demographically and culturally unrecognizable. The contemporary West repeats this pattern with only minor variations.
The statements issuing from the right-wing parties therefore serve a dual purpose. They register the scale of the crisis and they simultaneously demonstrate the limits of the political response available within the present order. Calls for border closure, for the suspension of Schengen, for the return of every arrival, remain words spoken into a vacuum. The machinery of the state continues processing the inflow; the courts and the bureaucracies continue operating under the older universalist assumptions; the demographic arithmetic continues its steady work.
If you enjoy my writing, order my new book, The Fate of White America, here.
I’m departing for GRAND RAPIDS, MI in about 11 HOURS, to meet up and network with OUR FRIENDS and COMRADES there - VERY STOKKED!
Also - my SINCEREST gratitude to ALL of you for helping with the fundraiser.
I owe you people tremendously; and I NEVER want anyone to feel obligated to contribute ANYTHING. This summer has been kinda lean though, owing to me doubling down on these MANUSCRIPT/LONG FORM projects.
I am trying to raise another couple hundred $$$ to put me in the BLACK vis a vis some things I am trying to get done.
IF you want to donate to the WARCHEST - you can DO SO via:
-CASH APP: $7homas777
-VENMO: Thomas-Cyr-18
-ZELLE: THCyr76@gmail.com
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Again - TY and GOD be with you🙏
-7HOMAS
***ALSO: some of you Fellas and Ladies asked me WHY I’ve not been posting/recording B-ROLL lately. I apologize for that - after the 1st of the month when the NEW FROGPHONE arrives (THANX to YOU!), I’ll get back to uploading MORE video, as has been my intention.
“Multipolarity does not mean America vanishes—it means it shrinks, focuses, retreats from the insane delusion of universal rule and remembers how to be a proper nation again. Isolationism will not come as a strategy. It will come as a reflex, a survival mechanism for a body politic sick with exhaustion. America will look inward, not as a punishment but as a necessity, tearing away the distractions of global empire and picking up the pieces of its own broken construction. What rises from this collapse will not be a new Rome or another iteration of failed hegemony. It will be something leaner, harder, and more honest—a pole among many, no longer with pretensions to rule the world but carving out its own space within it. The White American core, gutted but not extinct, will be the cornerstone of this reconstruction, a rediscovery of the roots that gave the nation its identity before it lost itself in the haze of planetary control. Multipolarity is the inevitable future. Within it lies the chance for America to be reborn, stripped of its arrogance, its illusions, and its empire, left with only the raw material of what it could still become.”
— Constantin von Hoffmeister, MULTIPOLARITY! (Arktos, 2025)
Mr. Prime Minister, it was a supreme honor during my time in the Senate to proudly stand with and for Israel and the vision it represents—the miracle that Israel is.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu met at Blair House in Washington with leaders of @AIPAC. pic.twitter.com/8F7y6ol8HL
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 30, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu met in Washington with leaders of the Evangelical community.
The community leaders welcomed Prime Minister Netanyahu on his important visit to the U.S. and bolstered him in his struggle against the Iranian axis of… pic.twitter.com/2DOxtbp4er
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 30, 2026
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 28, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at Blair House in Washington with U.S. Senator Tom Cotton @SenTomCotton.
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "I’m delighted to see you again, Senator Cotton, you’ve been a great, great friend of Israel, none better. And I know you’re a champion of the… pic.twitter.com/OBByx77vY9
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 30, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at Blair House in Washington with U.S. Senator @JohnFetterman.
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "Senator, it's good to see you again. You've been a stellar patriot, talking about what is good for America, what is good for our alliance, of which… pic.twitter.com/1vG9RDG6Zm
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 30, 2026
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 29, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at Blair House in Washington with U.S. Senator @TimSheehyMT.
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "I want to thank you for your unbelievable support, your courageous and clear championing of our alliance and our values. You've been a wonderful friend,… pic.twitter.com/rkd4nYWRAl
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 30, 2026
Who will replace Lindsey Graham as Israel’s most valuable asset?
Note: I agree with the people who are predicting that Fetterman will switch parties and become a Republican after the midterms. Israel is the only issue that matters in the GOP.
Sovereignty in the contemporary world rests upon nuclear weapons. Every state that acquires a reliable nuclear arsenal gains the capacity to deter foreign armies from crossing its borders. Nuclear weapons raise the cost of aggression to levels that threaten national survival or impose catastrophic damage upon any attacker. This reality places nuclear-armed states in a position of lasting security against conventional conquest. History records successive examples of this protective effect across continents and decades, from the early Cold War confrontations onward. The possession of nuclear weapons therefore constitutes the foundation of true independence for nations that seek to endure as sovereign actors. States that master the production and deployment of these weapons join a select group able to shape their own destinies amid the pressures of great-power rivalry. The decisive quality of nuclear capability lies in its ability to transform vulnerability into inviolability through the sheer scale of potential destruction.
The logic of nuclear deterrence operates through the certainty of mutual destruction. An aggressor facing a nuclear-armed superpower confronts the prospect of the complete ruin of its own cities and population. This calculation freezes military planning at the threshold of invasion. Conventional superiority loses its value once nuclear retaliation becomes possible, as tanks and aircraft yield before the threat of strategic warheads. States that depend solely upon conventional forces face the calculations of stronger powers and must accept subordinate positions in regional hierarchies. Nuclear weapons reverse this exposure and establish permanent security for those who command them. The deterrent effect extends beyond the battlefield to the entire spectrum of political and economic coercion. Leaders of nuclear powers gain the freedom to pursue national interests with confidence, knowing that existential threats remain beyond the reach of ordinary military means.
What happens when a state abandons the one instrument that actually guarantees its survival?
It is all a lie. Men are defined by these terms. For some they are real, for me they are a lie (generally).
I'll add a list of facts you may find interesting along the way.
Female Divorce Initiation Rate: According to research by the American Sociological Association (ASA), approximately 70% of divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women, a figure that reaches nearly 90% among college-educated women.
The Principle of Least Interest: Formulated by sociologist Willard Waller, the Principle of Least Interest states that the individual in a relationship who is least emotionally invested holds the power to dictate terms and set boundaries.
Before I go on, as I stare at my son sometimes, I wonder why my dad left. As i saw him last as a child in a blizzard having the door slammed in his face, holding presents, in the presence of my "step father". Then many years later, about 17 ish when I had the chance to ask him why face to face he said something to the effect;
"I loved you but I just couldn't take your mother, dude."
And told me how my mother had slept with his best friend and shit talked him and denigrated him constantly. While i never remember having this experience of my mother I can easily deduce it's veracity as true as fuck.
So as I stare at my son sometimes and reflect on my experiences with women and society, I think : "What could make me willingly leave and not see my son for years and years and not fight to stay by his side everyday". And frankly it's incredible that myself and most men haven't abandoned our children en masse. Often people will blame "the blacks" for being fatherless. But honestly as someone who's lived in the ghetto and lived a ghetto life as a young man, we all know the wrath of a scorned woman.
Primary Reliance on Spouses for Emotional Support: Pew Research indicates that 74% of men rely almost exclusively on their romantic partner or spouse as their primary source of emotional support, compared to significantly lower percentages among women.
What people fail to realize (or more likely, publicly admit), is that it doesn't matter if the scorn is self imposed or not. Attempt to correct a woman's bad behavior and see the amount of hell you'll find yourself in, most of the time at least.
So was my father wrong? I have no idea. I just know that it actually hurts more everyday becausei can empathize with his feelings and the pull of trying to have "self respect" and "purpose" is often in direct opposition to trying to he "honest" and a "husband" and a "father" or "brother" or "son", much less employer, employee, entrepreneur, citizen etc.
Anyways, on to the article at hand
Historical Pivot of Marriage: Historian Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, a History) documents that for over 2,000 years, marriage functioned primarily as a pragmatic, duty-bound economic contract to secure property and labor, with purely romantic marriage being a concept less than 200 years old.
Purpose: today I saw a video saying women only love men in their purpose and men without a purpose are needy, etc. Purpose? Let's look up the definitions:
1) purpose is defined as a sense of responsibility toward something outside oneself.
2) directional alignment or having a tangible mission. (Business)
Examples like: Developing mastery in a specific trade, discipline, or craft.
Working toward an explicit, long-term objective (building a business, mastering an art, solving a problem).
Channeling daily effort into a structured trajectory rather than drifting passively.
3) prosocial integration of competitive and defensive drives.
So what is the female equivalent?
The female equivalent provides emotional safety, warmth, and care. It transforms raw achievement into a shared life, creating a home or environment where effort is recognized and sustained.
A partner who actively aligns with that trajectory. Rather than pulling in an opposing direction or competing with his focus, she acts as a multiplier—offering loyalty, belief, and collaboration toward a shared family or life goal.
Receptivity is the space that receives, refines, and preserves what is built (the hearth). It is the presence that makes the pursuit of purpose meaningful beyond mere ego.
Now one of these implies that men must do these things on their own first and the women seem defined by the men's ability to do that. So if a man is on his purpose as far as he is concerned and the woman is unwilling to reciprocate, is it still his fault?
Now we see the next layer of purpose!
1. values
2. Leverage, whoever cares least is in control
3. Emotional lack or lack of interest
4. Transactional nature of the relationship
So whatever a woman feels is the determination of success if you want a marriage.
Post-Divorce Father Contact Deficits: Sociological research shows that over 30% of non-custodial fathers gradually lose regular contact with their children post-separation or divorce due to legal barriers, high-conflict co-parenting environments, or financial strain.
Of course I'm writing this for men by men. There are bad men. But they won't be reading this most likely. And if they are, I wish they would teach me.
So now men must establish boundaries. Those boundaries are set by what? The environment, ruled by women mostly and men who are scared to offend women to keep their money or status or the larger mob that is willing to placate women for the sake of convenience.
Sole Maternal Custody Norms: U.S. Census Bureau data reveals that mothers continue to receive primary physical custody in roughly 80% of legal custody arrangements.
Part 2: Family and friends
Family and friends are supposed to be sounding boards to keep people aware, honest and sane.
I literally know no one that does this or has this dynamic. I'm sure it exists somewhere. But the level of pandering to women is on such a ridiculous level, at least in the west
, that I genuinely doubt any man has this dynamic available to him.
Similarly, men are meant to have men friends to have his back and keep him in the right path. Again, this is very rare. And if it's there it is at the expensive of the relationship with the woman to begin with, particularly if there are children involved.
The Male "Friendship Recession": The American Perspectives Survey found that the percentage of men with no close friends quintupled from 3% in 1990 to 15% today, while men reporting six or more close friends dropped from 55% to 27%.
Decentralized reciprocity and share purpose. How many families and friends consistently make money together, have shared values without fighting each other in court or falling apart over minor disagreements over money? How many live and share a mortgage and pass down property and businesses intergenerationally without major schisms?
In theory they should be constructive influences but instead are often destructive.
Maybe this is my projection but this has been my experience as a man approaching middle age. And it goes across the board of race ethnicity etc. We try to hold on but something is wrong. I recognize that in reality, no one cares. And that's ok. Allegedly.
"Deaths of Despair" Disparities: CDC data shows that men account for nearly 80% of all suicides in the United States, with the highest rates occurring among middle-aged men experiencing marital breakdown, legal stress, or financial loss.
But this is why men and marriage are just not really possible. As my friend Tom Pnoid has said, trying he realities that kept people "on purpose" or "reliable" in marriage and relationships was duty mixed with obligation. Essentially transactional relationships. It sounds cold and calculated but this is the way most women think. It's only men who truly believe in romance or honor.
This is not too besmirch women. It's simply to say that a noble lie we have told ourselves has become our Achilles heel and the system and people around us have only become increasingly cannibalistic. Women are naturally capable of great flexibility and they are running society and it is no wonder that we cannot keep up. Men all want the mother we never had because we have been taught women are infallible and that is a lie that most be maintained at all costs.
Breakdown of Intergenerational Family Assets: Data from the Family Business Institute reveals that 70% of family-owned businesses and real estate assets fail to survive the transition to the second generation, primarily due to internal family litigation and personal disputes.
Of course women don't want to pay the bill for the meal they eat today and intend to eat tomorrow. It's not too say their bad. Just that insulating people from their mistakes, particularly women is destroying our purpose and that will only get worse. For the average man anyways. Because people don't believe in being their brothers keeper any longer. Only their sisters enabler.
Young Male Labor Disengagement: Federal Reserve and U.S. Census data show that roughly 1 in 7 prime-age men (ages 25–54) are currently completely disconnected from the labor force—neither working nor actively looking for work.
So I have mistakes to pay for and no one cares. But for your own sakes, don't be naive. If you don't have control, don't expect anything to go your way. People are becoming all women and they only respect leverage and even that will only take them so far. Vengeance, rightfully or wrongfully, is drug, after all.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Around here, innocence is just an unmonetized customer acquisition channel.
Ding!
2:41 A.M.
Discord.
Another notification.
Another twenty-year-old founder announcing he’s “shipping.”
“Someone should do a study about how I fell off…”
Nobody builds software anymore. They ship. They deploy. They accelerate. They “cook.”
The only thing anyone seems incapable of shipping is a complete sentence.
My name is Jack Rouen. Asian Studies major.
Currently building a biohacking platform because apparently that’s considered a more respectable midlife crisis than buying a Corvette.
I live down on the Peninsula with my wife and kid. We eat dinner together. We own actual chairs instead of modular productivity furniture. Nobody in my house has ever interrupted bedtime to ask whether a bedtime story could be “AI-native.”
By Silicon Valley standards we’re basically an isolated mountain tribe.
Yet every few days I wander back into civilization.
Or at least whatever civilization has evolved into between Palo Alto and SoMa.
Let’s see how far we can take this logic and what the end of the logic actually is.
…
The invitation arrives through Partiful.
Of course it does.
Every event description reads like it was generated by the same language model trained exclusively on Burning Man flyers and McKinsey slide decks.
Curated founders.
Intentional conversations.
Builders only. Translation:
One hundred and twenty men.
Three women.
Four venture capitalists.
One photographer.
Zero self-awareness.
The photographer is the busiest person in the room.
Nobody wants memories.
They want evidence they were standing near someone whose valuation recently exceeded their cholesterol.
Look around. The venue smells like San Francisco trying to convince itself it’s Zurich.
Fresh espresso.
Sourdough.
Expensive perfume.
Cedar from reclaimed wood furniture.
Somewhere nearby, scented candles drift out of an old storefront, mixing with the sweetness of boba tea and artisanal coffee.
Then the breeze changes…
Urine.
Hot electronics.
A faint chemical sweetness that suggests somebody is conducting pharmaceutical research with absolutely no institutional oversight.
The city has developed its own bouquet.
Top notes: venture capital.
Base notes: municipal collapse.
…
A founder materializes beside me with the stealth of an HR department.
“So…” he says,
“…what are you building?”
Not, “What do you enjoy?”
Not, “How’s your family?”
And certainly not, “Who are you?”
Those questions don’t scale.
“I’m building a biohacking platform.”
His pupils dilate.
Finally, a respectable religion!
He nods with solemn approval, as I’ve just confessed belief in the One True KPI.
…
Across the room stands “The Collector.”
Nobody actually introduces him.
People simply begin orbiting.
He’s calm. Measured.
Every sentence sounds like it has already survived three podcast appearances.
People laugh a fraction of a second too early.
They’re not reacting.
They’re investing.
Nearby, someone has laid out glossy founder cards as conversation starters.
Faces.
Company logos.
Funding milestones.
Exit stories.
Adults are comparing them with the seriousness previous generations reserved for baseball cards or rare coins.
“I’ve got a First Cohort.”
“No way.”
“I heard they’re impossible to find.”
“I’ll trade you two unicorn founders and an AI infrastructure guy.”
No one laughs.
That’s when I realize they aren’t joking.
Let’s see how far we can take this logic.
Every civilization manufactures saints.
Rome carved marble.
The Middle Ages collected relics.
Silicon Valley laminates founder bios.
…
The conversation drifts.
Someone explains that AI will eliminate loneliness.
He’s standing in a room full of people who haven’t looked away from their phones for longer than twelve consecutive seconds.
Another founder describes replacing therapists (“the rapist”) with language models.
A third says children should probably have personalized AI companions before they learn cursive.
Everyone nods.
Nobody notices the irony.
I glance toward the projector.
The demo machine briefly flashes the browser history before switching slides.
Half a dozen tabs.
LLM documentation.
Three dashboards.
An alarming amount of furry fan art.
The presenter closes the window with the speed of a man who has rehearsed this exact mistake before.
No one acknowledges it.
Silicon Valley has evolved beyond embarrassment.
Everything is just another tab.
…
And that’s when I look around the room.
Everyone insists they’re rebels.
Everyone dresses identically.
Everyone reads the same newsletters.
Quotes the same podcasts.
Uses the same AI.
Attends the same mixers.
Repeats the same vocabulary.
“Accelerate.”
“Leverage.”
“Network.”
“Founder mode.”
The strangest cults are the ones that spend all day insisting they don’t have a doctrine.
I type a note in my smartphone…
Field Notes, Observation #17:
“The average founder can detect market inefficiencies at one hundred yards but remains completely incapable of detecting status rituals occurring inside his own skull.”
Conversation with Alexander Dugin on the Sputnik TV program Escalation.
Host: We planned to start today with the words of Vladimir Putin, with his remarks and the set of theses that were voiced at the meeting with sailors of the Navy in St. Petersburg. In principle, Vladimir Putin did not reveal anything new. Probably no one’s eyes were opened; nothing new or breakthrough was discovered. But once again he reminded us that in certain, rather frequent cases, the behavior of Western countries by their actions postpones, sidelines, so to speak, relegates to the background the Charter of the United Nations, trying to bring the world to some order of their own, to their own vision. Well, to put it mildly, this is wrong. In this case, Vladimir Putin compared such behavior to letting the genie out of the bottle — saying that afterwards it cannot be stopped. It turns out to be a very multilayered thesis. And in principle, a great deal was said at the meeting with the sailors. What will you pay attention to? How should this be commented on or perceived in general?
Alexander Dugin: There is a declarative side here: we emphasize our commitment to the UN system, to the Yalta model that took shape as a result of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, and we are guided by it. The Yalta world, whose structure is embedded in the UN, was bipolar. In it there existed a parity of only two truly sovereign powers — the USA and the USSR. All the rest aligned themselves: some joined the USA, some the USSR. Everything rested on this dual balance of power, plus there was the Non-Aligned Movement (India, Yugoslavia and other countries), which, although numerous, had no independent political position of its own, merely maneuvering between the two poles. This UN model suited both us and America at the time. And now the president emphasizes that dismantling it — which the West has been doing for almost the last 40 years — is very dangerous.
The West began dismantling this bipolar model as early as the end of the 1980s, and we, to our great regret, helped it in this. We ourselves, with our own hands, dissolved the Warsaw Pact and destroyed the USSR, effectively agreeing to the unipolar moment that arose as a result of the collapse of the Union. We threw out the white flag and surrendered. And although we still mumbled something vague about the UN and the Yalta world, no one took it seriously any longer. The West set about rebuilding the world model under its unipolar system — under a “league of democracies” and other institutions. To our great regret, until Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin came to power we participated in this, effectively releasing this genie from the bottle. We ourselves committed geopolitical suicide, allowing the genie of unipolarity to break free.
From that moment — almost 40 years ago — the UN as a real system of international relations no longer exists. We defend it as phantom pain, as something in which we were at least second, if not first. After our self-liquidation — the geopolitical suicide committed by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, the liberals and the entire state as a whole — what was left for the West to do? The bipolar world disappeared, one of the poles self-destructed, and only unipolarity remained. The West began fitting the system of international law to the so-called “rules-based order.”
But then something went wrong for the West. This transformation of international law met with resistance. And that resistance became Russia — precisely Putin’s Russia, and not that Russian Federation which had originally capitulated. After all, the RF was built around the white flag of capitulation in all its institutions, having accepted the ideology, politics, values, education and worldview of its geopolitical enemy. We simply surrendered into captivity.
And it is unsurprising that they treated us that way. But Putin said: “I do not want to be a slave and a province of the West” despite everything — despite the fact that it seemed as if we had lost, but we had not lost. And he began to strengthen our sovereignty.
In parallel with this, China went by a completely different model. It almost fitted itself into this West, pretending that it fully recognized its rules: in the economy it submitted, in politics it preserved its positions a little, but on the whole it was ready to become part of the global world. And suddenly it turned out that China had its own cunning plan — unlike us. It consisted in making use of the methodologies of the West’s unipolar world, copying them (in essence, simply stealing everything) and building power on the basis of its own advantages: demography, industriousness, perseverance and the working capacity of the gigantic Chinese population. All of this was successfully transferred inside the country, and when the West woke up, an enormous competing civilization already stood before it. Once again unipolarity was called into question.
It turned out that thanks to Putin’s uprising against the status of a province — and in the 1990s we had practically become a province of the West, and we were being offered the chance to enjoy that status — the uprising of the Russian province began, and it continues to this day. And China went a different way and thereby found its own distance in relation to the West. Let us add to this two other vigorous fundamental forces — Shiite Iran and the DPRK, which did not bow their heads. Thus the first sketches of a multipolar world appeared, with which we are working now.
And suddenly we discovered that with the existence of these four poles, which are no longer provinces (or at least do not recognize themselves as such) and are fighting unipolarity, there still exists the organization of the UN. It was never reformed under the unipolar world. I do not think that anyone seriously believes that this phantom pain of the bipolar world left after Yalta can really be saved. But at least it is a kind of diplomatic cover for building an entirely new system on the basis of BRICS. However, that former UN system still exists and already has no previous meaning.
The West continues to push toward unipolarity, and Trump — despite hopes that he would behave differently — did not become an alternative, fully continuing the course toward unipolar hegemony. BRICS is still finding it hard to create its own system, although work on this is being conducted. Therefore I think that the UN is simply an intermediate moment. Before transitioning to a new multipolar system of international law, we preserve the remnants, the rudiments, the phantom images of this already non-existent bipolarity in order to continue resisting the unipolar model.
But the genie has been released. And the most unpleasant thing is that it was released not only by enemies — the West — but by us as well. We liquidated ourselves. You understand, when a person commits an act of suicide, he sins twice: before himself, because he has no right to surrender so easily, and before God. Suicide is a terrible sin. This is the terrible sin that the Soviet Union, its political leadership, committed when it abolished itself and handed power over to a pure colonial administration of liberal Westernizers. Herein lies the main problem.
? PRESIDENT TRUMP JUST NOW: "[Lindsey Graham] was extremely hawkish. I will tell you, he never saw a war that he didn't like! Only his true friends would understand that, but he wanted it for the good of our country."
Sean Hannity does hasbara for Israel at Lindsey Graham's funeral: "Under your leadership [Prime Minister Netanyahu], Israel has been one of America's most consistent and loyal allies." pic.twitter.com/oqucuxbdhM
Hannity: "My President, Lindsey probably has a heavenly version of Mar-a-Lago. It may even be a little bigger. I wouldn't be surprised if he added one big beautiful ballroom and an arch somewhere on the property. Because he would want to obviously duplicate his dearest friend in… pic.twitter.com/2S0WQlGH8Z
Mark Levin reveals that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham would "spend a lot of time" behind the scenes "talking about how to persuade this person or that person in a particular direction away from isolationism, appeasement, pacifism, and so forth."
We’re often told that it is foolish to try to find meaning and fulfillment in life in American politics. This isn’t true of Lindsey Graham though who lived to see MAGA make all of his dreams came true. He passed away in the middle of a war with Iran for Israel. John McCain didn’t live to see it.
Graham had an incredible fulfilling career on the American Right which basically exists to serve Jewish billionaires, cut their taxes, blow shit up, kill people in stupid wars and squander trillions of dollars. He will be sorely missed by the most powerful figures in the Republican Party. Their grief is genuine.
Universalism always expands outward from a particular cultural core until it claims the furthest reaches of the human world as its natural domain. In this expansion, the local habits of one people grow into a supposed measure for every people. Nationalism works in the opposite direction by gathering the desires of many separate persons into a single shared will. Both movements treat the concrete life of communities as raw material for larger abstractions. The living texture of particular customs and the genuine scope of what can be held in common therefore remain outside the frame of either doctrine. What emerges instead is a restless oscillation between the local and the planetary that never settles into a durable order.
In a world composed of many self-directed civilizations, each centered on its own historical experience, the principal source of disruption appears whenever one of those civilizations presents itself as the final pattern for all the rest. Such a civilization carries a sense of redemptive purpose and seeks to spread its institutions, economic forms, and moral vocabulary across every frontier. The claim to speak for mankind as a whole generates continuous friction with societies that continue to orient themselves by their own memory and measure. Cultural pressure and economic leverage move together, and each reinforces the other until the smaller centers feel their own continuity threatened.
Europe as a continental formation rooted in layered histories of language, landscape, and law exists in growing tension with the West understood as a set of portable principles detached from any fixed geography. The continental reality draws its coherence from shared seasons, shared borders, and shared sequences of events that can be walked and remembered. The ungeographical West floats free of those anchors and offers itself as a portable template ready for export. The two therefore follow diverging trajectories: one remaining bound to place, the other dissolving place into abstract mobility. Their separation becomes the natural outcome of these differing foundations.
If the abstract West has completely detached itself from history and geography, what happens to the people left behind who still crave a sense of place?
The accelerating demographic contraction of Western populations, the systematic self-contempt cultivated by their political and cultural elites, the aggressive liberal policies that dismantle inherited social structures, and the calculated reception of Islamic diasporas deliberately severed from the disciplined traditions of their original societies tog…
Lindsey Graham said he "almost cried" out of happiness at the start of the Iran War:
"How long have we been pushing this? It's here! It's the best thing I've ever done." pic.twitter.com/Y1VilKeA2I
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 27, 2026
Lindsey Graham explains that he was using the wildly unpopular regime change war he successfully talked the president into to help brand Trump/MAGA as a movement committed to the kind of endless death and destruction all over the planet that gave his life meaning pic.twitter.com/4KziOKc8Oo
Lindsey Graham in March: "3 or 4 weeks we should have Iranians in a spot where they start losing control of some cities. We're trying to just get a few cities to fall in the next month. Get the Arabs more openly involved and we'll just have irreversible momentum."
Mark Levin says Donald Trump "will go down in our history as one of the greatest presidents ever" for launching the war on Iran. pic.twitter.com/VLsYXvxY8w
Mark Levin on the Iran War's unpopularity: "It may take time…to understand how extraordinary the President's actions are, and how heroic they are." pic.twitter.com/ZjTVW2kA3W
American Conservative co-founder Pat Buchanan spoke against attacking Iran 15 years ago:
"Sean, your friend Bibi has been talking about Iran getting a bomb since 1992. In 2006 he said they'd be building 25 bombs by the end of the decade. Are they? No." pic.twitter.com/RqpZgaQGhN
Kennedy: If we can stand the pain of the rising cost of energy, we need to stay the course—at least for a few more months. pic.twitter.com/cRpVsXr4Uv
Editor’s Note: I apologize for the lack of recent posts. We have been on the road traveling to visit my wife’s family in Missouri. I should be home Wednesday.
Michael Weaver has informed me that the Free Expression Foundation HAS WON his free speech case in Douglas County, GA which has dragged on for years now and wants to reach out and thank everyone here for their support. We covered this ordeal here, here, here, here, here and here. There was never anything illegal about distributing these flyers. Conservatives in Red States like Florida and Georgia have been trying to criminalize their distribution as antisemitic “hate speech.”
The sea stretches outward as a single unbroken surface, a vast and featureless plain of water that draws every separate thing into one continuous motion. In this realm, the eye finds only sameness, for the waves rise and fall without regard for any fixed mark or boundary that a human hand might draw upon the earth. Where land offers ridges, valleys, and the clear outlines of territories, the sea presents an open field in which every difference dissolves into the endless play of currents. It is the liquid counterpart of the desert, an expanse that invites travel yet refuses the permanence of settlement, and in this refusal it reveals its deepest character as a medium of pure circulation.
German political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) observed the fundamental distinction between land and sea as two opposing principles that shape the political order of the world. On land, the earth itself provides the firm ground upon which peoples establish borders, laws, and lasting institutions; the soil receives the imprint of human will and holds it through generations. The sea, by contrast, remains free of such lasting marks. Its surface admits no permanent lines, and its depths are only crossed by the temporary paths of ships that pass and vanish. French New Right thinker Alain de Benoist (b. 1943) has taken up this same distinction and carried it into the present age, showing how the maritime principle has grown dominant and now seeks to reshape every sphere of life according to its own fluid measure.
Can the rooted ways of the land still answer the rising tide of pure circulation?
?? (@ImBreckWorsham) August 7, 2026
