Why the USA is Under Pressure

If the talking heads are to be believed, Iran is on the brink of surrender and Israel is all but unscathed. But the world press is skeptical and not even the Wall Street Journal is convinced.

Despite claiming major successes against Iran’s military infrastructure, Israel is rapidly depleting its supply of long-range missile interceptors, raising alarm over the sustainability of its defence systems, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a US official familiar with allied intelligence assessments.

The report came amid relentless missile exchanges between Israel and Iran. Since Israel launched Operation Rising Lion last Friday, Iranian forces have fired roughly 400 ballistic missiles — part of an estimated arsenal of 2,000 capable of reaching Israeli territory. Israeli defences, particularly the Arrow system designed to intercept high-altitude ballistic missiles, have managed to neutralise most incoming projectiles, but not without significant strain.

Officials in Tel Aviv told WSJ that one-third of Iran’s missile launchers have been destroyed and claim to have achieved air superiority over Iranian skies. Still, intelligence sources warned that over half of Iran’s missile inventory remains intact, with a portion likely concealed in underground facilities.

The cost of maintaining Israel’s layered missile defence — comprising the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, the Arrow system, and US-supplied Patriots and THAAD batteries — is becoming a critical concern. Israeli financial daily The Marker estimated that nightly missile defence operations are costing up to 1 billion shekels ($285 million). The Arrow system alone fires interceptors priced at $3 million each.

With Iranian missile barrages continuing almost daily, Israeli air defence stockpiles are now under severe pressure. Without rapid resupply from the United States or direct intervention, Israel can maintain its missile defence for 10 or 12 more days if Iran maintains a steady tempo of attacks, a source briefed on US and Israeli intelligence told WSJ. “The system is already overwhelmed. Soon, they may have to choose which missiles to intercept,” the source said.

That strain is beginning to show. On Friday night, Iranian missiles evaded Israel’s defences and struck near the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. On Sunday, a direct hit forced the shutdown of a major oil refinery near Haifa. And on Tuesday morning, verified social media videos captured multiple Iranian missile impacts close to Israel’s intelligence compound north of Tel Aviv.

The truth is being obscured by both sides, which is why it’s foolish to try to make any determinations on the basis of the very censored information that is being released by the various military PR agencies. Given that the Israeli/US strategy is based on a combination of airpower and special ops, a combination that has never been particularly successful and has proven all but useless on the modern battlefield in Ukraine, I’m skeptical that it can be successful even if the USA does go in heavily as anticipated.

Also, Steve Bannon is wrong. MAGA will never get behind Trump’s Israel First policy.

Steve Bannon dramatically predicted that Donald Trump’s supporters will rally behind the president if he decides to blow up Iran’s mountain nuclear base.

It’s a massive flip from Trump’s former chief strategist who has in the past been adamantly opposed to strikes against Iran. Bannon said that the MAGA movement will stand by Trump – even if they might not be fully on board with the idea of the U.S. backing Israel ‘s attacks on Iran.

‘If President Trump decides there’s not a diplomatic alternative… because he’s been consistent, no nuclear weapon,’ Bannon said during a Christian Science Monitor event on Wednesday.

He continued: ‘The vast majority of the MAGA movement will say, ‘look, we trust your judgment, you walked us through this… Maybe we hate it but, you know, we’ll get on board.”

No foreign wars, period. We’re rapidly approaching what looks like the USA’s late imperial Sicilian Expedition.

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The War Drums Get Louder

The mainstream media is entirely convinced that President Trump is going to break his promises to the American people and go to war for the benefit of what would appear to be his Israeli masters:

U.S. officials have indicated that Iran has 24 to 48 hours to surrender and save itself from an American military onslaught as President Trump considers joining Israel’s war. White House officials said the next two days will be critical in determining whether Washington and Tehran can find a diplomatic solution to the burgeoning crisis in the Middle East.

Earlier yesterday Trump posted on Truth Social that he knew where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei is hiding but would not launch a strike ‘yet’. He then added ‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER’!. Israeli officials have also cryptically promised a ‘surprise’ on Thursday night similar to its pager attack on Hezbollah leadership.

As Trump met with advisors in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday, insiders told ABC News that the President has grown frustrated by Iran’s manner of response since Israel began bombing on Friday.

The President will also not want the situation to develop to a point where it appears Iran has called his bluff, the outlet reports.

Why would Iran surrender unconditionally after a few days of light bombing when the Kiev regime hasn’t done so after three straight years of relentless defeat and destruction?

And why is the USA so blustering while Russia and China are almost entirely silent. Something doesn’t add up here.

For example, what if Russia adopts Israel’s strategy of war via assassination and applies it to the member states of the European Union? It could enact similar regime change in Germany, France, Poland, and the UK overnight.

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There is No “We”, Kemosabe

A lot of talk. We’ll see how much of it is real and how much of it is of the “Russia is out of ammunition and Putin died of cancer two weeks ago while the Ghost of Kiev was shooting down the entire Russian air force” soon enough.

It does seem strange that all that good ol’ American stuff would work so much better in the Middle East than it does in Eastern Europe or on the subcontinent.

Donald Trump was elected to put America first and keep the USA out of neocon wars. It doesn’t matter what he says or how he postures, no actual American is going to support war in the Middle East, Ukraine, or the South China Sea.

UPDATE: Clown World is really pulling out all the stops to get their world war.

Iran’s former President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, along with his wife and two sons, were assassinated by masked gunmen in central Tehran earlier today.

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Iran Has Nukes

Let me get this straight. Atomic/Nuclear weaponry has supposedly been around since 1945. It’s very old, very basic technology that has been acquired by countries as underdeveloped as India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Israel.

Hypersonic missiles are so technologically advanced and difficult to manufacture that only four countries in the world have deployed them: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. The USA hasn’t successfully developed one yet, neither have Japan, France, or the UK.

And yet, we’re supposed to believe that Iran doesn’t already possess nuclear warheads to install on those hypersonic delivery systems?

I don’t buy it. If nuclear weaponry actually exists – and there is very good reason to doubt that it does – then Iran has it. If Iran doesn’t have it, then no one does because it doesn’t actually exist. The fact that nuclear weapons have been held over humanity’s collective heads for generations and used to justify globalist organizations for decades is sufficient reason for them to have been among the foremost myths perpetrated by Clown World.

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The Science is Settled

How do you know you are an influential intellectual? People quote you and cite your ideas all over the world.

And how do you know you are a dangerous intellectual deemed a persona non grata by the scriptwriters of the Narrative? People quote you and cite your ideas all over the world without ever once referring to you by name or even implication.

This “Male Hierarchy Test” developed by “Experts from IDRlabs” on the basis of “the six categories of men identified by scientists” will look more than a little… familiar to the readers of this and one or two other sites.

The thing to remember is that this is standard practice when you’re not useful to the Narrative for one reason or another. It is amazing at how many innovative intellectuals have been effectively erased from history so that iconic frauds like Darwin, Edison, and Einstein can be manufactured and sold to the public in the place of the real innovators.

It’s no different than what we see in the world of political commentary, where new gatekeepers are constructed, inflated, and pushed on the public as soon as their fraudulent predecessors inevitably expose themselves as controlled opposition.

But the important thing is that the ideas get out there and take on a life of their own. The true intellectual has no need whatsoever of public adulation or awards, because the only reward that is worth treasuring is that magic moment of clarity one experiences when the summa encyclopedia of human knowledge and understanding is genuinely expanded. Not only is that something that no one can ever take away, it is something that the famous frauds, charlatans, and grifters will never, ever, know.

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Last Call

The next Based Book Sale starts Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 12:00 AM PDT and ends Wednesday, June 25, 2025, 12:00 AM PDT. Participating authors need to sign up by the end of the day Monday June 16. Follow the instructions, and comment on this post.

The link is there. If you want in, be sure to let the Based folks know. I’ve included a little SF bundle this time myself.

On an unrelated note, don’t miss the Monday Stream on UATV with the Big Bear and me.

Sacris Solemnis

“Sacris solemniis” is one of the five beautiful hymns St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) composed in honor of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament at specific request of Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) when the Pope first established the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. Today Sacris Solemniis is used as a hymn for the Office of the Readings for Corpus Christi, as well as during the procession of that day.

Being a massive and inveterate fan of Enigma, I’ve tried repeatedly to do something in that vein even before the appearance of AI-generated music and repeatedly failed. However, yesterday, thanks to the philosopher and Suno 4.5, I was finally able to create something that I found to be worthwhile. In the process, I also learned a valuable lesson in always using a DAW rather than a sound editor to make track edits. You can listen to Sacris Solemnis and even download it from Unauthorized if you’re a subscriber.

Sacris solemniis
iuncta sint gaudia,
et ex praecordiis
sonent praeconia;
recedant vetera,
nova sint omnia,
corda, voces, et opera.

Those interested in AI music beyond just listening to it should definitely visit AI CENTRAL today, as it features an article by the brilliant sound engineer, who has analog-mastered all of the Soulsigma tracks, concerning his thoughts on Suno’s new feature that provides multi-stem downloads.

I also completed a second song utilizing the second half of the six-stanza prayer in a different style and with a more conventional song structure, entitled Accipite Bibite that can also be heard on UATV.

Accipite, accipite
quod trado vasculum;
omnes ex eo bibite.

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Remember Who Owns the Media

It’s important to keep in mind that the US media is relentlessly pro-Israel when you’re reading about how Israel has total air supremacy over Tehran and only two cats and an abandoned hut were destroyed by what few Iranian missiles managed to get through the impenetrable Iron Dome air defense system. I’m not saying that Israel is any more likely to wave the white flag than Iran is, only pointing out that while the recent exchanges have been more serious than the last round, in military terms, we’re still talking about what is little more than handbags at twenty paces.

Israel’s initial euphoria over its Friday morning strikes on Iranian targets is fading as Israeli inhabitants get a taste of their own medicine. Israel’s much touted Iron Dome is a total bust. I have posted a couple of videos below that show the Iranian missiles arriving unimpeded. In his latest video, BORZZIKMAN reports that the Iranian strike yesterday on the IDF version of the Pentagon destroyed a THAAD air defense system that was deployed to “protect” the building.

Pepe Escobar was interviewed earlier today by Nima and provided some important news from his impeccable Russian sources. Israel, with help from the West, hit Iran with a cyberattack early Friday morning Tehran time that disabled Iran’s air-defense system. Israel and the West anticipated this would disable Iran’s ability to track and attack inbound missiles for several days. According to Pepe, Iranian technicians got the system up and running in 10 hours.

The Potemkin Village propaganda generated by Israel and spread by Western media is coming apart at the seams. While many in the West still believe that Israel has struck a fatal blow on Iran and that Iran is just days away from a collapse, the Iranian missile force is alive and well and bombing the shit out of Israel. I suspect that Iran is employing Houthi tactics with their ballistic missiles that are fired from mobile launchers — i.e., instead of relying on fixed sites, Iran is deploying its missiles around the country on mobile launchers, which are virtually impossible to detect and destroy in a timely manner. As I write this, Iran reportedly has launched an eighth-wave of missiles. Iran is going to engage Israel in a tit-for-tat battle until Israel ceases its attacks on Iran.

That little tidbit about the cyberattack disabling Iran’s air defense makes sense, as I was wondering what Netanyahu meant when he was initially talking about the attacks going on for days. His statements make more sense in light of the expectation that Iran wouldn’t have any air defenses active for an extended period of time, and also explain how the initial attacks worked better than expected before petering out. It also explains why the Israelis have run so quickly to the US government in asking to be bailed out of a situation that pretty much every neutral analyst anticipated they would find themselves.

The whole concept of “inflict a few casualties and use them as a lever to effect regime change” is just prodigiously stupid. It’s the same strategy every single time, and while it used to work occasionally, it’s simply not a smart basis for going to war with a more powerful country. 200 fatalities is less than nothing to the Iranians, who lost more than one million dead in winning their war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

If this is genuinely the best the IDF can do, and I find it difficult to believe it is, then Israel is in more desperate straits than I’d imagined.

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Mass Deportation Order

President Trump orders the mass deportation of “millions and millions” of illegal aliens:

US President Donald Trump has instructed federal agents to dramatically ramp up deportations of illegal migrants from Democrat-led cities after riots swept Los Angeles.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday evening, Trump instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to “achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History. In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” he added.

Trump went on to claim that the Democrats are using illegal migrants to “expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”

This a very good first step. Hopefully it will be done as directed. But unfortunately, it’s not going to be enough to save America, which is why the next step will need to be addressing the tens and tens of millions of legal aliens and paper citizens.

Remember, the alternative is the collapse of the state and a decade or more of civil war. So it’s not really optional at this point. And it’s not just the USA that desperately needs to restore its previous demographics or face massive violence, as a number of European nations are in a similarly precarious state.

David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London, says his research shows is a statistically significant chance of a civil war breaking out within five years in a major European country, with a distinct possibility that the conflict could spill over to neighbouring nations.

“I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,” Betz chillingly urged. He added, “there isn’t anything they can do, it’s baked in. We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political offramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem.”

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Your Own Private AI

Markku has helpfully instructed the good people of AI Central on how to set up your own local version of Deepseek, thereby permitting you to control the data being utilized by it.

Until recently, training an AI on a set of research data has been so resource-intensive that it has been entirely out of reach for home users even for smaller (“distilled”) models intended for ordinary gaming computers. However, these days there is a methodology called Retrieval-Augmented Generation, RAG for short, that can achieve something very close to the effect of training in a relatively tiny portion of the time. The trade-off is that the understanding of the data is not as deep, and the data has to be processed every time the AI is launched.

With an average gaming PC with an NVIDIA GPU that’s in the RTX 3000 -series or newer, you can expect it to spend about 10 minutes, assuming you use a modest 7 billion parameter model. Parameters can be thought of as virtual brain cells. With a better computer, 14 billion is also realistic, especially if you are asking just a few but important questions. Since you are having the AI focus on a set of data that is extremely limited compared to cloud-based AI’s, the normally expected half trillion parameter counts aren’t important. You need them only when the AI has to essentially know the entire contents of the internet. For one set of books, 7 to 14 billion is sufficient. If you choose to get serious about using a locally installed AI, then you’d install it on a dedicated Linux server and keep it constantly running, which mitigates the problem to essentially zero.

It’s not for everyone, to be sure. Not yet, anyhow. But I’m sure there are a few hardcore programmers here who are more than up to the challenge, if interested.

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