Who Won the Fake War?

If the USA has to pay Iran just for the privilege of resuming diplomacy, doesn’t that indicate Iran won the first round of the Israel-Iran War?

As reported on July 31, 2025, Iran has set unprecedented preconditions for merely resuming talks with the United States: “US compensation for damage to Iranian facilities; US recognition of Iran’s sovereign right to enrich uranium.”

This isn’t negotiating—this is demanding tribute just to sit at the table.

The brilliance lies in the reversal of traditional diplomatic dynamics. Usually, concessions come during negotiations, not before them. But Iran has learned that American promises made during talks evaporate like morning dew. So why not demand concrete commitments upfront? If America balks at preliminary guarantees, it proves they were never serious about keeping their word anyway.

This approach reflects the strategic calculations I outlined in “The ministry of Silly Wars”: Iran doesn’t need these negotiations as desperately as America thinks. With China purchasing 90% of their oil and Russia providing military technology, Iran has options. The question isn’t whether Iran will negotiate—it’s whether America is willing to pay the entry fee.

The demand for compensation particularly stings American pride. It forces acknowledgment that the June 2025 strikes were aggression, not self-defense. It monetizes the damage, creating a paper trail that can’t be denied in future “misunderstandings.” Most importantly, it establishes the principle: actions have costs, and those costs must be paid before expecting diplomatic rewards.

Recognition of enrichment rights strikes even deeper. For decades, America has treated Iran’s nuclear program as inherently illegitimate, despite NPT rights. Now Iran demands this recognition as a precondition—not a negotiating point, not a concession to be earned, but a basic acknowledgment required just to begin talking. It’s diplomatic jujitsu at its finest.

It’s pretty clear that Israel is negligible militarily if Iran is forcing the USA to pay tribute before even coming to the table. It will certainly be remarkable if the period of American global hegemony fades without there even being an attempt at a Sicilian Expedition. Perhaps the last Clown Worlders in Washington are a little more rational and inclined toward self-preservation than their rhetoric would have us believe.

Although we still can’t rule out one last cavalry charge against the tanks in either the Red Sea or the South China Sea.

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Talks Collapse

Trade talks between the United States and Switzerland have collapsed.

Switzerland’s President Karin Keller-Sutter and other top officials traveled to Washington on Tuesday to try to convince Trump that the measure — among the highest from the Trump administration — was too much and could cut profits for famed Swiss industries like chocolates and watchmaking.

Despite two days of intense negotiations, President Trump declined to alter the Tariff Rate against Switzerland.

Personally, I doubt they were even meeting with the actual President. Anyhow, we will be fine one way or another thanks to the revisions and restructurings we’ve made.

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A Conquered People

The British people still haven’t figured out yet that neither their police nor their government represent them or are on their side. And they’re still too “law-abiding” and respectful of “authority” to take matters into their own hands, even when their homes are literally being occupied by foreigners. From 4chan:

Back from holiday. Random people living in our home. Police won’t remove them as they presented a fake “tenancy agreement.”

We’ve already got a solicitor saying they’ll call us back in the morning, but we’re freaking out right now. There’s a random group of people we don’t know in our home. The locks have been changed.

Police were called, but the family inside presented a fake tenancy agreement that we NEVER signed.

We’ve been told to sit tight until 9:30am tomorrow, but there’s people in our home. My husband wants to break in and throw them out with his brothers. I’ve told him not to do this.

From what we know it looks like 4 males in 20’s and 30’s and 1 woman in her 20’s.

Yes, we’ve called police

Yes, we’ve called insurance

No, we can’t speak with the intruders. Police had to use thebigword to talk with them at first. They don’t speak English.

Yes, we’ve got a solicitor calling us back at 9:30am tomorrow.

We’re in England

No, calling the police back and reporting robbery isn’t working. They know what’s going on at this property and aren’t intervening.

The police aren’t on the side of the native British people. Expecting them to do anything is foolish and outdated.

If you won’t even defend your homes, your wives, or your daughters, you are a conquered people. You WILL be dispossessed and no one will shed any tears for you. Notice that the wife has actively dissuaded her husband from doing the only thing that will recover their home in a reasonable amount of time.

This is what happens to feminized societies that subscribe to Enlightenment pseudo-values. They are conquered, dispossessed, and eliminated.

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Backing the Bindery

Now that THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY are ready to go to print, we’re giving everyone two weeks to become a retro-backer of the bindery before we place the order for the interiors. For more details and interior images of the two books, including the title pages, please visit the Castalia Library substack. We’re also looking into the possibility of making them signed and numbered editions, if that’s of interest. Although Homer is obviously unavailable, we could arrange for them to be signed by either a) the bookbinder or b) me, depending upon which would make these very special editions even more desirable.

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Russia Bans International Satanism

The media is portraying this recent judicial action as the banning of a fictitious, imaginary, and non-existent group.

Russia’s highest court has declared the “international satanism movement” an extremist and terrorist group, despite the organization not actually existing. Members of this non-existent group could face up to eight years in prison.

Senior MP Andrei Kartapolov, who heads the Russian parliament’s defense committee, made unverified claims that Western funding was fueling satanism in Russia, posing a “direct threat to Russian statehood.” This ruling by the Kremlin’s Supreme Court on the imaginary movement is the latest in President Vladimir Putin’s series of crackdowns on ideological dissent in Russia.

It follows his characterization of the war in Ukraine as a holy battle against the “satanic” West.

The Prosecutor General’s Office issued a statement describing the non-existent “satanist” group as one “based on extremist ideology, hatred and hostility toward traditional religious confessions.” The fictitious movement was also accused of causing “destruction, damage and desecration” of Russian Orthodox churches.

It would be wise for President Trump to issue an executive order doing the same. I just wonder how long it will take before the media starts shrieking about the banning of this non-existent group being anti-semitic?

Most people don’t realize that China already did this starting back in 2010, although it’s usually just portrayed as a campaign against “Western values”.

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WWIII is Already Underway

If Ron Unz is correct and Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping have already reduced their international travel due to concerns about assassination by Clown World, I think it’s safe to conclude that peace is not even a remote possibility in the near future:

The Hudson Institute is a leading DC think-tank, quite influential in mainstream political circles, and a report with five co-authors that runs 128 pages must surely carry considerable weight in establishment circles. So when it suggests that the Chinese government is fragile and might soon collapse, those policy makers hostile to China are likely to take such views quite seriously.

Suppose that a leading Chinese think-tank with close ties to the PRC government published a weighty report predicting that America might soon collapse, then went on to argue that Chinese military forces would need to be deployed in our own country to seize our key military and technological assets and also establish a new government organized along Chinese lines. I doubt that most American political leaders or ordinary citizens would view such Chinese proposals with total equanimity, and indeed the blogger quoted a shocked Western pro-China business executive who succinctly summarized some of the striking elements in that Hudson Institute research study:

…which provides detailed operational plans for inducing Chinese regime collapse through systematic information operations, financial warfare, and covert influence campaigns, followed by detailed protocols for U.S. post-collapse management including military occupation, territorial reorganization, and the installation of a political and cultural system vassalized to the U.S.

Rand and Hudson are two of our leading mainstream think-tanks and the New Yorker is one of our most prestigious media outlets. Taken together those major articles and reports could easily convince the ignorant and suggestible ideologues in our government that the Chinese military was weak and the Chinese government fragile and ripe for collapse.

If delusional beliefs regarding the fragility of the Iranian and Russian governments had already led to American assassination attempts against their top leadership, similar reasoning might easily result in targeting those of China as well, especially President Xi Jinping, widely regarded as the strongest Chinese leader in decades. And given all of the recent American assassination projects, the Chinese government might certainly have itself reached such conclusions.

China and Russia are the two leading members of the BRICS movement, which held its 17th summit last month in Brazil. The media noted that neither Russian President Putin nor Chinese President Xi attended in person, with the latter missing his first BRICS summit since he came to power 13 years ago.

Xi’s surprising absence caused some discussion in the media. I initially paid little attention to this issue, but then some commenter suggested an obvious explanation: Both Xi and Putin were concerned about the possible risk of American assassination.

Brazil is located within the Western Hemisphere, a region under full American military domination. Given the extremely reckless and unpredictable behavior of the American government, with President Trump having publicly threatened to assassinate Iran’s top leader just a couple of weeks earlier, both China and Russia may have believed that some risks should best be avoided.

Over the years, Xi and Putin had both met on numerous occasions with Iranian President Raisi, with whom they had developed an excellent working relationship, and surely his 2024 death in a mysterious helicopter crash while returning from a foreign trip would have concentrated their minds.

It’s been very difficult for Americans to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t aspire to become like them. And while Americans also like to think of the USA as the big dog on the world stage, I don’t think many of them grasp that many countries around the world, including some very powerful ones, are beginning to conclude that the big dog is now rabid.

And what is the point of talking to a rabid dog? What can one possibly hope to accomplish?

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Convergence in the Home

I shouldn’t have to tell anyone who reads this site regularly to avoid all Amazon Home products, but I have no doubt that more than a few of you have decided that the convenience outweighs the possible risks. You might want to reconsider the matter.

A delivery driver for Amazon misheard an automated doorbell for “racism” and reported it.

Nobody was home.

Amazon turned off all the lights, shut the entire smart home down before it even started its investigation.

Law enforcement via corporation with no due process.

It’s fascinating that it only took eight years to actually arrive at the comedic dystopia about which some were joking back in the day. I think this has also disabused those of us with libertarian inclinations of our previous imaginings about corpocratic rule being any less insidious than rule by government.

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The Russia That Will Say No

Hal Turner contemplates the significance of the US Special Envoy’s trip to Moscow:

What does Witkoff bring to Moscow?

  • Cosmetic concessions, presumably in the area of de facto territorial recognition
  • Hints of economic cooperation
  • Classic threats of sanctions – if Moscow doesn’t “give in”

What Witkoff won’t do:

Accept the Russian minimum demands which are . . .

  • Recognition of the new regions (Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhe) as part of Russia.
  • Demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine.

He won’t accept them because that would mean: The West would have lost. And the world would have seen it.

Scenario: A Russian “no” to Witkoff’s offer would most likely not simply lead to a new low in negotiations – but to Phase II of a global systemic conflict. Then the world would no longer be in the shadow of a unipolar center, but in a new bipolar confrontation.

On the one side: The expanded West – that is, the NATO states, the EU, plus Australia, Japan, South Korea, and some dependent partners in the Global South.

On the other side: An emerging counterweight – with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and possibly other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

In this scenario, it is only a matter of time before the previously “frozen” conflict over Taiwan also actively emerges – as the next geopolitical leverage in the struggle for influence, sovereignty, and system dominance.

Conclusion: Witkoff’s trip is not a diplomatic exchange – It is an attempt to delay the end of the unipolar world order.

This smacks of a desperate Hail Mary thrown by the Short Fake Trump fake administration, and I see absolutely no sign that Russia is inclined to accept anything short of its core demands because it is winning both the economic war and the military war. Everyone, and especially the Russians, has learned that accepting Clown World’s shiny beads and trinkets comes at a steep price and is never, ever worth it over time.

And I think Hal Turner is right to believe that the Clown Worlders running the USA, the UK, and the EU will try to fight a war they know they can’t win rather than accept the inevitable end of “the unipolar world order” that they ruled for nearly 40 years. To do so would be foolish and stupid, but then, they are foolish, stupid, and evil.

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Tripling Down on Failure

Western sanctions on Russia have completely failed. Additional sanctions on China have completely failed. So now, instead of accepting their defeat in both economic and proxy war in Ukraine, both the USA and the EU are going to try sanctioning India. This effort too will fail.

On Sunday, a top aide to President Donald Trump accused India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by buying oil from Moscow. “What he [Trump] said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” said Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of the US president’s most influential aides. “People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil. That’s an astonishing fact,” Miller said on Fox News.

This marks a significant hardening of tone, signalling that bipartisan pressure on India’s Russia policy may persist regardless of the administration in power.

The Indian government issued a stern response, saying Delhi would keep purchasing oil from Moscow if it is in line with national interests. Its foreign ministry stated that country’s energy purchases are guided by market dynamics and national interests. “⁠The government is committed to prioritizing the welfare of Indian consumers. Our energy purchases will be based on price, availability and market conditions,” the statement read.

Despite Trump’s claims that India had stopped buying Russian oil after his threats, the Indian government said it is not aware of any pauses in imports. People in the oil and gas industry have confirmed that the government has not issued any officials requests to refiners to stop purchasing Russian oil.

As global energy flows are increasingly weaponized, India’s path is becoming tougher, but also more clearly defined. This is no longer merely a question of compliance with sanctions; it is about resisting the politicization of trade and asserting agency in a fragmented global order. The message to the West at large: India’s energy decisions will not be dictated by external red lines.

The era of quiet compromise is over. In its place, a more assertive India is stepping forward, redefining its energy calculus, managing geopolitical headwinds, and defending its autonomy with both pragmatism and resolve.

It’s really remarkable to observe how prodigiously stupid the flailing actions of a declining empire and the posturing rhetoric of its retarded politicians are. It’s as if they have no ability to grasp the fact that they are in no position to demand the things they are demanding.

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