Bob Dylan on war and religion

Oh, my name, it ain't nothin', my age, it means less 

The country I come from is called the Midwest

I's taught and brought up there, the laws to abide 

And that the land that I live in has God on its side

 

Oh, the history books tell it, they tell it so well 

The cavalries charged, the Indians fell 

The cavalries charged, the Indians died 

Oh, the country was young with God on its side 

 

The Spanish-American War had its day

And the Civil War too was soon laid away 

And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize 

With guns in their hands and God on their side

 

The First World War, boys, it came and it went 

The reason for fightin' I never did get 

But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride 

For you don't count the dead when God's on your side

 

The Second World War came to an end 

We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends 

Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried 

The Germans now too have God on their side 

 

I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life 

If another war comes, it's them we must fight 

To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide 

And accept it all bravely with God on my side 

 

But now we've got weapons of chemical dust

If fire them we're forced to, then fire them we must 

One push of the button and they shot the world wide 

And you never ask questions when God's on your side 

 

Through many dark hour I been thinkin' about this 

That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss 

But I can't think for you, you'll have to decide 

Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side 

 

So now as I'm leavin', I'm weary as hell 

The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell 

The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor 

That if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war

 

~ Bob Dylan, "With God With God on Our Side," 1964

 

 

Liz Ann Sonders on investing vs. gambling

When you invest, the odds are in your favor.  When you gamble, the odds are not in your favor.

~ Liz Ann Sonders, "Energy Prices Aren't Matching With Reality," RiskReversal Media, 7:20 mark, April 10, 2026

 

Winston Churchill on the Irgun and Stern Gang

If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins' pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.  If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease, and those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch. 

The primary responsibility must, of course, rest with the Palestine authorities under His Majesty's Government.  These authorities are already engaged in an active and thorough campaign against the Stern Gang and the larger, but hardly less dangerous, Irgun Zvai Leumi.

~ Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, November 17, 1944, delivered shortly after the assassination of his friend Lord Moyne by Lehi (Stern Gang) members 

Jeremy Hammond on trusting information sources

I often get asked what sources I trust, and my usual answer is: none of them. While it can be a practical necessity to take a source's word for something, we should avoid doing so unless the source has a proven track record of honest and accurate reporting on that specific topic. And just because a source provides good information and insights on one topic doesn't mean it's good on others. A source assessment is required to separate the wheat from the chaff for individual sources, just as it's necessary when comparing different sources against each other. 

Instead of relying too much on any specific sources, it's to get your information from as wide a variety of sources as possible. Seek out alternative perspectives that challenge your own. Avoid the trap of selecting sources to follow because their information confirms your own paradigm. Be cognizant of your own confirmation biases and the limits of your knowledge, and remain open to the possibility that everything you think you know is wrong. Treat your conclusions and beliefs as hypotheses to be tested against opposing perspectives. 

Critically assess each source with consideration for their potential biases. Maintain healthy skepticism and check key claims against cited sources. There mere inclusion of footnotes or links in an article can make a story or argument appear well supported, but this is commonly an illusion. Oftentimes, cited sources fail to support or even directly contradict claims for which they are cited. As you consume news media, identify the agenda being served and consider whether any political or financial interests might conflict with the aim truth-telling. 

Through that process, you'll develop a wider overview of the informational landscape and won't miss the forest for the trees. Determine common ground by identifying key claims that are uncontested. Then synthesize conflicting claims to reconcile the contradictions. Apply your source assessment to determine what seems most credible, and hypothesize an explanation that best fits the available evidence. Conflicting claims can be often be easily reconciled, for example, by simple recognizing that at least one of the sources is demonstrably lying. Through this analytical process, you'll come away with a new working hypothesis to test against new information as you continue to expand your knowledge about the topic. 

With an infinite number of topics to focus on and limited time, you'll also learn to distinguish distracting noise from matters of real importance, and the more you develop these types of analytic skills for news consumerism, the better you'll get at it and the easier it'll become, so you'll eventually be able to rather quickly and easily assess information and draw reasonable conclusions. The effort you put into developing these skills will pay dividends as you acquire actionable knowledge and avoid becoming deceived by the incessant political propaganda that permeates our information environment.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, independent journalist, www.jeremyrhammond.com

 

Scott Horton on the Iran War: "It's an asymmetric fight"

 They [the Iranians] have more offensive missiles than we have defensive missiles.  And so it only makes sense, from their point of view...  We have bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi and Oman, and the Iranians have hit every single one of them.  In the first day, they attacked every single one of those countries, including economic targets..., all up and down the [Persian] Gulf.  So far they're not hitting oil, but they're hitting 5-star hotels.  They're causing all kinds of damage.  They closed the Straight of Hormuz.  So it's not quite worst case scenario, but it's pretty bad already.  And it only makes sense that they would decide for strategy to make this hurt the United States enough that it hurts Donald Trump enough that he doesn't do this anymore...  It's an asymmetric fight, so Iran just has to hang in there long enough for Trump to be humiliated enough that he really has to stop and that, I guess from their point of view, feels so stung that he doesn't want to try it again for the next 2 1/2 years.

~ Scott Horton, "The Moronic Neocon War With Iran, With Scott Horton, Jon Hoffman and Brandon Buck," Tom Woods Show, 40:50 mark, March 2, 2026