After Such Knowledge

Drawing on both the fresh reporting + the long‑range logic of this far-flung throughput empire aka Lords of the Exchange aka Orgiasts of Power, Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, ad nauseam... Short Version: This war is not contrary to the long‑range plans of the OCGFC. If anything, it is structurally convergent with the OCGFC’s long‑term incentives: disciplining an autonomous resource node, increasing global volatility, tightening capital controls, and reasserting the indispensability of Western and Gulf financial infrastructure. The war is contrary only to the surface‑level preference for stability—not to the deeper logic of managing scarcity, flows, and chokepoints.   Iran is the archetypal unruly node in the global circuitry. Iran’s entire defense architecture—mosaic defense, decentralized command, long‑war doctrine—is designed to survive and resist integration into global financial governance. What helps is Iran's stat...

  Now that we have decided that nation-states remain our only hope, which nation‑states are structurally positioned to become the first nuclei of the Century of Recovery? Not the strongest.   Not the richest.   Not the most stable. The most promising nuclei are the states with: - hollowing but not collapse - institutional memory but elite exhaustion - civic myths still alive in the public imagination   - industrial capacity that can be reactivated  - elites capable of circulation - populations that still believe the state ought to serve them   1. The United States — the prime nucleus, not because it is healthy, but because it is hollowed in the right way. Why it qualifies: - enormous industrial base (dormant, not destroyed)   - deep institutional memory   - a civic myth still potent (the republic, the frontier, the commonwealth)   - massive fiscal capacity   - a population that still expects the st...

This was written before I found fault with the Mad Arab with his Irish up and the Chinese Nostradamus, but it still holds up. Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. is not just a critique of global neoliberalism; it’s a diagnosis of what neoliberalism unintentionally cleared the runway for. In other words, autocracy in her telling is not the opposite of neoliberal globalization—it’s the mutation that grows inside its operating environment. Autocracy is not merely a reaction to neoliberalism, but what came in the wake of it. 🌐 1. Neoliberalism created the infrastructure Autocracy, Inc. exploits. Applebaum describes a world where authoritarian actors collaborate across borders through: - offshore finance   - private wealth management   - elite transnational networks   - deregulated information channels   - weak or captured institutions   All of these are products of the neoliberal order, not its negation. Neoliberalism’s core commitments—capital mob...

Not only is it possible to draw a connection between neoliberalism and foreign policy, the two have been structurally intertwined for decades. But the connection is often misunderstood because neoliberalism is usually framed as a domestic economic program rather than an international ordering principle. 🌐 How Neoliberalism Connects to Foreign Policy. 1. Neoliberalism as an International Ordering Project:Neoliberalism isn’t just about domestic deregulation or privatization. It also proposes a global system in which markets set the terms of international relations, not states.  States enforce and protect cross‑border private ordering (capital flows, property rights, trade regimes).  Globalization is treated as a humanitarian project—the idea that expanding capitalism lifts people out of poverty.   This is the core of what David Singh Grewal calls the geopolitics of neoliberalism.” 2. Foreign Policy as the Vehicle for Neoliberal Expansion: U.S. foreign policy, in parti...

When Usury Became Legal Under Paul Volcker, the Imperium Terminans Civilizationem Slouched Toward Bethlehem, Etc. True it is, interest‑bearing finance is a driver of the crisis, but it is not right that it is the root. Usury is one strand in a larger, interlocking failure of the modern economic order. The evidence we have — historical, religious, and economic — supports that high‑interest debt can destabilize societies, but it does not support the idea that interest alone explains our present breakdown. What monocausality does capture is the moral and thermodynamic dimension: debt claims that grow faster than the real economy eventually detach from productive reality. That’s where the “prophet‑engineer” voice is strongest. Across traditions and analyses, usury is consistently associated with several destabilizing effects: - Debt traps and immiseration — High‑interest lending creates cycles where borrowers cannot escape compounding obligations, reducing consumption and mobility.  - ...