Category: the search for a new order

The Potsdam Declaration- a prayer

This declaration made on 26 July 1945 demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan and warned of “prompt and utter destruction,”….

It was followed by not one but two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the Japanese government would not surrender unconditionally …. (sound familiar?) .

There were warnings of devastating bombings but no specific mention of nuclear bombs or their devastating power.

Japanese forces had already been defeated in all areas except the Japanese home islands themselves. There had been devastating bombings of Japanese cities. Firebombs in Tokyo had already killed 80, 000 and left over a million people homeless.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” seems to be a clear statement preceding another nuclear bombing.

There can be no justification for strategic attacks with nuclear bombs ever, yet we have a madman threatening just that. Trump cannot control his mouth, why should we believe he will control his finger?

Who will be next to justify their own nuclear bombings: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, India, … Russia?

Now we know why there has been a purge of the US military command with appointment of a Hegseth stooge as Chief of Staff. Who is left to resist power crazy madmen?

I feel ill when I consider that for a number of years I have regarded the US as a bastion of democracy and the western civilisation. Now I see it as a barbaric global bully with no political control over its governance and armed forces.

The Great Satan indeed!

At least, Trump may have taught all countries to review their dependencies and promote self sufficiency as far as possible …. and not to forget to maintain strong and effective armed forces.

Just to remind you:

Immediate Aftermath of a nuclear bomb.

  • Blast Wave: An intense pressure wave crushes buildings, with 5 psi overpressure destroying most residential structures, leveling everything for kilometers.
  • Thermal Radiation: The intense heat instantly vaporizes human tissue, causes severe burns, and ignites massive firestorms.
  • Immediate Death/Injury: Tens of thousands are killed instantly or severely wounded by flying debris and burns.
  • Infrastructure Failure: Hospitals, power grids, and communication systems are destroyed, preventing emergency response.

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects

  • Radioactive Fallout: Radioactive dust and debris fall downwind, creating deadly contamination zones that make areas uninhabitable for years.
  • Radiation Sickness: Survivors face acute radiation syndrome (nausea, hair loss, bleeding) and long-term health issues.
  • Cancer and Chronic Disease: Survivors experience significantly higher rates of cancers, leukemia, and chronic diseases like cataracts and heart disease.
  • Reproductive/Genetic Damage: High rates of miscarriage and birth defects, including intellectual disabilities in children exposed in utero, were observed in previous bombings.

Global Consequences

  • Environmental Damage: A large-scale nuclear exchange could cause a “nuclear winter,” with smoke blocking the sun, disrupting ecosystems and global food production.
  • Famine: The disruption of food supply could cause mass starvation, putting over a billion people at risk of famine worldwide.
  • Economic Collapse: Infrastructure destruction on a massive scale would likely cause the total collapse of modern economic systems.

Please don’t do it.

Pandemonium: better plant some potatoes

John Milton coined the word for the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost.

While we are using Greek, how about another pan-word: Pandora’s Box.

This is what I am thinking:

Epstein was an agent provocateur given licence and resources to indulge hedonistic elites and capture their excesses for the potential leverage yielded.

He captured lots of juicy stuff which prominent people would rue if it hit the public eye. Free parties, jiving with the rich and famous, hedonism like modern day orgies.

All secretly filmed, archived and presumably shared with his sponsor, probably Mossad. Oh, and the FBI got some of it too, eventually.

Randy Andy was leaked as an appetiser and the Brits reacted … puritanically:

You can do what you like old boy, but if you get found out you’ll have to resign your membership of the club…

A few more names have been tossed around and some very heavy manipulation of the FBI info is apparent. More and more leaks indicate that the biggest target is still very much in the mix!

If that evidence, those video images, is around, my bet is that Epstein’s sponsor is pulling most of the strings.

Hence we see an almost senseless (from US perspective) attack to neutralise Iran. For Israel this is an imperative strategic objective, as it is not likely to have been able to survive long term against Iran and its proxies.

Notwithstanding real urgency and absence of provocation the big man says “do it!!” and his dogs of war roar in and wreak death and destruction.

For a president who boasted on his avoidance of warfare and peacemaking prowess, this was astounding, as is the prospect of 5000 US boots on the ground.

But where is the victory?

Some mullahs are dead or dying, surface military installations and navy has been pulverised.

The 440kg of enriched uranium has not yet been discovered; the Iranians are still firing back from their bunkers.

Is the snake dead? It has already regrown one head….

Maybe the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East will be subdued and the power of radical Muslim theocracies diminished. That will be a good thing.

But… the box has been forced open and suddenly the global economy has a knife to its throat.

The realisation has dawned like a blinding light on just about everybody. Breaks in supply from a major supplier, destruction and shut down of supply chains affect every country. Even now there are shortages of petrol.

We cannot last long without petrol arriving – supermarkets can’t be supplied, crops can’t be harvested, industry falters….

The US is already on the brink of a recession, maybe it will be saved by its own and Venezuelan oil. Not many others will.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s a grand plan to diminish oil supplies for China and Russia to bring them to heel, but that seems absurdly dangerous… ?

It is probably too late, but planting potatoes instead of dahlias may be prudent.

The other outcome which will have a resounding impact on Mediterranean and European countries is refugees. The western civilisation (excluding the good ol’ USA) has been unable to emulate the Arab world and reject refugees and asylum seekers, rather paying them off to stay elsewhere.

Iran is generating a tsunami of terrified, desperate families. Turkey and Iraq are full, as are Sudan and Ethiopia. Israel and the Arab states won’t take any.

This is a major domestic policy issue which will topple governments and hasten the pendulum swing to the right.

It is already impacting Australian politics reeling from its Government Ministers’ partiality for the Palestinian cause.

It might not quite be World War 3 but the impact is going to be enormous.

Dahlias are overrated anyway!

The Limbo Rock?

How low can you go?

What is passing through my mind is:

  • how far will a head of state be allowed to go before being stopped?
  • And how is the stopping done?

Recent history about the stopping of modern day dictators :

Mussolini was lynched by his own people after Italy was invaded and vanquished

Stalin died in office of natural causes (maybe accelerated ?)

Idi Amin was exiled after attempting to take over his armed forces which had mutinied after invading their neigbour Tanzania.

Hitler shot himself in the ruins of Berlin with invaders at the door

Pol Pot was ousted after invasion by neighbouring Vietnam. He died under house arrest serving life imprisonment.

Robert Mugabe was ousted by his own party at age 93, after ruling for 37 years. He was a fan of ethnic cleansing.

Ceaucescu (and his wife) were executed after an uprising against his rule.

Saddam Hussein was hanged after arrest by US invaders. He was a bad boy.

Muammar Gaddafi was killed, probably by his own bodyguard, in a counter revolution.

Bashar Al Assad was ousted by a counter revolution and fled to Russia

but….

Fidel Castro died in his bed after ‘retiring’

Mao Zedong died in office of natural causes

Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, Al Kameini, Erdogan, Lukashenko (“Europe’s Last Dictator” ?) are still alive and in office…

It seems that killing millions of citizens is not sufficient motivation for ouster:

Mao killed 30 million of his own people, Hitler’s score was about 21 million including 6 million Jews, Stalin’s death toll was only 6 to 9 million, Pol Pot killed about 2.4 million, mostly intellectuals and skilled workers, which was about 40% of the population.

Of the mass murderers, only Pol Pot was ousted from power.

The others died in office.

How far will the current most prominent autocrat go?

Instead of arresting and prosecuting, will he start bumpimg off illegal migrants, Democrats and those that don’t agree with him…?

What’s next? The invasion of Greenland with obliteration of NATO forces placed there. …

Hmm! Australia is strategically located and has lots of natural resources including rare earth metals…

Heyy! What about Canada…. I’ve always said it should be one of our states!

Who is going to stop him?

The military is already doing his bidding. (There has been a purge of some command staff)

Congress hasn’t checked his acts of war like bombing Iran, sinking boats in the open sea, kidnapping the president of a foreign state, bombing Nigerians…

It seems that the answer to my questions at the beginning are:

  • Killing 40% of the population was the limit for Pol Pot
  • Removal from office and indictment

or ….. Revolution, which is extreme, but not far fetched. I recently saw a movie of a modern day civil war in the US …

… or maybe just keep digging into the Epstein files…?

Risk

Risk is another word like woke that has swindled the world.

Way back in the old days the concept of risk was devised by a marketing spin wizard. Brave heroes like Marco Polo, Columbus, Drake and Raleigh and no doubt Arab and Chinese explorers set out to find riches in undiscovered and thus unexploited parts of the world.

In those days explorers with better weaponry and technology easily prevailed over indigenous populations. In fact it was their duty to bring the True Faith to the heathens, whether they wanted it or not and morality be damned.

Nevertheless their endeavours were heavy with danger. History rarely records the unsuccessful endeavours of those who were shipwrecked or annihilated by the peoples they invaded…

Heroes and warriors attract people who are not so brave but who are clever. For a share of the explorers’ spoils they will ‘insure’ the expedition, so the loss of disaster can be ameliorated for those left at home.

So the fear of leaving families destitute if they failed was removed.

Soon insurers persuaded everyone that every risk of loss could be made less severe. Eventually, of course, it was found that every endeavour had risk and required insurance.

Governments were persuaded to legislate insurance against risk.

So the insurers started dictating how every endeavour should proceed and go about minimising risk.

Safety became a holy word that sanctified restrictions. Insurance is required and won’t be provided unless myriad steps are taken to eliminate risk.

Suddenly safety becomes very expensive causing explorers to abandon new endeavours because insurance is too expensive.

The insurers don’t care as just about every endeavour, every building, vehicle and person is now insured against risk…

So business development is stifled except for ideas with a very high profit margin that can afford all the insurances required

Now the construction of a new pedestrian walkway requires more traffic controllers than workers.

A corollary is the mindset that believes that once an endeavour is insured and premiums are paid, the correct signage is erected and appropriate safety training has been done, risk is eliminated ….

Eradicating the stranglehold that insurers have on capitalist societies will be more difficult than reversing the woke waves of the last half century!!

It is part of finding a form of beneficial government that does not include becoming a nanny to its subjects.

The Trump card

Of course it’s the Joker – but you better laugh or at least smile or it will be the Queen of Hearts: Off with his head!!

There is this surreal feeling that 2026 has plunged us all into a rabbit hole …

One can just see the Cheshire Cat grinning through all the unimagined twists and turns…

The Maduro kidnapping was such a smart operation which suggests significant planning – this is not a madcap spur of the moment whimsy.

Behind the blather there is a whole lot of strategic planning and intent. Maybe the Don’s job is to distract and misdirect? He’s pretty good at that!

We have become too civilised, too reticent, too socially delicate. The best is not equal, it will not be seen as fair by all. It is also fast and centralised and powerful.

Our lives have become clogged by the cholesterol of good living. Bureaucracy has slowed decision making and impoverished us.

We in the Western democratic world have become too soft, forgetting the hard road it took to get to where we are.

Confession time.

I must admit to an awkward admiration for a benevolent despot, a doer who has no hesitation.

It trashes all political norms and conventions of ‘civilised’ behaviour – but it is past time for a major re-set of our perspective of the real world!

Trumping maybe the way to go to save our way of life.

It may not follow conventions and has little finesse but it’s pointing in the right direction.

Heart surgery is not a delicate science: it is basic and brutal and the squeamish may not like it. Sometimes it is necessary.

It looks more and more like a world war may be on the cards. What happens to war survivors is they re-focus on looking after their own communities. Maybe that is what we need to save us..?

Sounds a bit like what I have heard about Fuentes…

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Maybe…

He sticks in my throat, but may be the saviour of ‘our’ civilisation, i.e. the western democratic world.

Topsy turvy world

The words lebensraum and Anschluss probably have little significance for today’s world. They were clearly announced in Hitler’s book Mein Kampff.

In the 1930’s the militarisation of the Rhineland occupation of the Ruhr, occupation of Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, annexation of Austria and invasion of Poland were justified by the desire to unite German speaking people, a need for resources, a desire to expand or gain back former land, and extreme nationalism.

They were unilateral incursions by superior military forces driven by ruthless politicians

90 years later, with MAGA we have seen:

  • the unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico
  • Kristalnacht scenes of the apprehension, removal and incarceration of people within US cities by jackbooted troops;
  • the bombing of Iran
  • the obliteration of boats in international waters
  • the kidnapping of a Head of State and his wife and
  • the capture of an oil tanker under a Russian flag.
  • Threats of further action against Iran, Cuba, Colombia and Greenland have been made with impunity.

In fact, these acts have been owned with pride and self righteousness.

The two images that loom in my head are a schoolyard bully and Adolph Hitler.

These actions by the supposed leader of Western civilisation can only be seen as ‘legitimising‘ Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and lending justification to China’s invasion of Taiwan.

Guess who doesn’t give a toss?

Congress won’t check him; a few judges may rule his actions illegal in the dim and distant future…ho, hum!

Again Caligula comes to mind … initially welcomed, he reversed treason trials and brought back exiles but descended into despotism, executing rivals, squandering funds, and demanding worship, leading to his assassination by his own guards.

What next? Domestic acclaim and a stunned silence from allies and neighbours (cowed by threats of invasion?) could lead to increasingly brazen and rash acts.

Greenland to be the new 51st state, Canada to be the 52nd ….. why not Mexico as the 54th? Heyy!! Why not all of the Americas…??

Oh yeah, the other one who comes to mind is Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir of course

Ja nee

Lulu got swooped by a butcher bird the other day; it clipped her bum and she leapt away. Quite funny, until it had a go at me..!

Magpies and kiewiets/plovers also get huffy. Being strafed while cycling is not amusing.

My Auntie Bunty said it was very frightening when it was a German bomber doing the strafing, which happened to her in WW2. Obviously they missed, as she told us the story.

It’s going to be one of those days with bits and pieces.

Such a moment in time, when the world makes kiss kiss to that awful orange man. Peace in Gaza was inevitable, there was nothing left. The Donald’s timing enabled him to claim the glory, but he was really only the final straw.

Let him crack the hard nut of the Ukraine and I will echo his own nomination for the Nobel Peace prize

These are quotes from stuff I have been reading lately. Hope they titillate your fancies.

“Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.” –G.K. Chesterton

“There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”  Umberto Eco

All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. 

George Orwell 

“The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” 

Margaret Thatcher

… the Internet will bring about Idiocracy

Trump ….”tribalist, kleptocratic, authoritarian cultural imperialist? “

”  He cares about getting rich, persecuting his enemies, and eliminating threats to his own power—just like his Middle Eastern counterparts do. “

Nick Catoggio

A hit dog will holler. 

“Anyone who calls us authoritarian is going to prison,” 

“If you can’t call fascists fascists, then the fascists have won.”

Democracy insists upon enfranchising the ignoramuses, who also get a vote on any number of other issues about which they know little or nothing. Two cheers for democracy and all that.

United States and China are firmly locked in a cold war struggle whose outcome will be the most important determinant of peace, prosperity, and quality of life in international politics over the next decade.

The second half of this decade is set to be a critical inflection point in this contest.

Stephen Weber, Cold War Statecraft for the 2020s

We would be better off if we did a little bit more work understanding what people actually think (and why) rather than inventing arguments that are designed to make us feel virtuous in comparison. 

Kevin D Williamson TMD 24 Oct ’25

He was talking up the Ideological Turing Test which he believes will help us all avoid unsubstantiated sentimental pronouncements about others’ arguments.

Hope that stimulates some thought, sorry it’s so serious…

Points to ponder

These are mostly extracts from others’ articles which resonate with me.

Artificial Unintelligence

AI is only as bigoted as we make it

Feed an AI whale a lot of antisemitic swill, and it will defecate antisemitic crap on command.

These large language models just summarize whatever texts were fed to them. This is why so many of them actually ratify progressive conventional wisdom, culled from academic and journalistic texts.

July 11, 2025 The Dispatch Logo Jonah Goldberg

The global wellness economy is valued at $6.3 trillion per year and is expected to grow to $9 trillion in the next three years

… wellness influencers represent a new generation of morality salesmen, marketing the idea that health is something you can buy—and that virtue is part of the package when you purchase their products, and poor health is part of your punishment when you don’t.

This religion was a heavily moralistic one, and its road to hell was as wide as the door to dieters’ refrigerators

The influencer who gave us the idea of the body as a temple was none other than St. Paul. 

The Wellness Gospel Won’t Save You – Hannah Rowan
July 19, 2025, The Dispatch

Humans are wired with a “negativity bias” that triggers a stronger emotional response to bad news than good news – evident in the journalism maxim “if it bleeds, it leads”

… progress is often about what doesn’t happen

The modern world was built and shaped by optimists. We owe it to them to carry the torch.

We have everything we need to thrive. Our resiliency will protect us; our intelligence will propel us.

Old Fictions, New Fictions – Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch  1 August 2025

“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”  – Marx brothers

A tilt at a windmill

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.“

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian 1747 to 1813

The pampering of pets

The other day a wise woman said to me that the amount of money squandered on the pampering of pets is scandalous.

This scratched an irk that has been lurking in my mind for some time.

This irk was concretised by a recent article in the Summer 2025 issue of American Affairs by Peter Pilkington called The Limits of Consumption: Why Consuming More Makes Us Poorer.

It is quite heavy reading! What it said to me was:

We are told year in and year out that living standards are rising, but many people—especially younger people—can feel their quality of life decline as time goes on.

  • quality of life is degrading as GDP increases, i.e. many are getting poorer and some disgustingly richer
  • consumers are spending too much money on valueless crap
  • education, health and housing industries have been artificially inflated to extract more money from consumers.

In the US since 2011, the number of housing units per person stayed roughly constant at around 0.425 – that suggests there should be enough houses.

But average household price has risen by 85% !!

Non economic measures show a large decline in quality of life in recent years, but economic metrics show it is increasing.

Surprisingly the homeless populations and deaths of despair are rapidly increasing.

It is time for economists to admit that their metrics are broken

Basing the economic health of people is based on outdated calculations

Big Pharma, Real Estate tycoons and Universities have found the keys to manipulating governments for money. They inflate their markets. This results in higher prices that consumers must now pay.

There is little value increase for huge price increases, called consumer deepening which has degraded quality of life for many.

The pampering of pets is just a symptom of the general malaise that has infected capitalism:

  • consumers have lost their ability to see real value
    • corporations manipulate governments to provide funding as economic policy
  • white collar information workers are non-producing and increasing, while blue collar workers, who actually produce are disappearing
  • large, entrenched and empowered DEI inspired bureaucracies
  • the lack of willingness in politicians to challenge entrenched practices and bureaucrats
  • ruthless production and marketing of valueless goods

Trump’s rampage in the US has targeted some of these problems. Let’s hope his initiatives are noted and adopted by all (hopefully with a bit more finesse…)