Kevin Duffy on U.S. aggressions against Iran

The world doesn't trust Iran because it has memory-holed past U.S. aggressions: 

1953 - CIA-led coup overthrows democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh; installs U.S.-friendly Shah, authoritarian monarch. 

1957 - SAVAK (secret police) is established with CIA and Israeli (Mossad) assistance; this becomes the Shah’s primary tool of repression. 

1979 - U.S. first imposes sanctions after the Shah is overthrown; these undergo a major expansion in 1995 under Clinton. 

1980-1988 - U.S. backs Saddam Hussein in Iran-Iraq War, costing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives 

1988 - USS Vincennes “mistakenly” shoots down civilian Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3 over the Strait of Hormuz. All 290 aboard are killed, including 254 Iranians and 66 children. The US calls it a tragic error in a combat zone; Iran views it as deliberate. 

2025-2026 - US and Israeli strikes on Iran (starting late February 2025/early 2026) cause thousands of Iranian deaths, including a missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, costing 156 lives, 120 of them schoolchildren.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, April 28, 2026

 

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on democracy

What is true, just and beautiful is not determined by popular vote.  The masses everywhere are ignorant, short-sighted, motivated by envy, and easy to fool.  Democratic politicians must appeal to these masses in order to be elected.  Whoever is the best demagogue will win.  Almost by necessity, then, democracy will lead to the perversion of truth, justice and beauty.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed, 2001 

 

Kevin Duffy and Jeremy Hammond on participatory democracy, i.e. voting

Duffy: A key pillar of the statist belief system is participatory democracy.  Everyone gets a say (or vote), no matter how ignorant they are of the inner workings of the system.  This way critics like us are more easily dismissed.  Normally, 10,000 hours of study would qualify us as "experts," but not in this case.  There are no valued experts on the system itself.  It's simply assumed to be the greatest system of societal organization ever conceived by mankind.  To suggest otherwise is to be dismissed as a heretic. 

Hammond: Ah, yes, a huge part of the problem is the compulsion to vote—or as I prefer to describe it, to act to legitimize the criminal organization in Washington. I don't want to bicker over which head of the beast should devour us; I want to slay the beast.

~ Kevin Duffy and Jeremy Hammond, email exchange, April 29, 2026

 

Jeremy Hammond on statism

It is too discomforting for people who cling to a statist belief system to conceive of the possibility that their whole perception of society and government is mistaken, that the government is not some benevolent force for good but a criminal organization perpetually doing evil.  Their minds cannot handle it.  They choose self-delusion over love of truth.

~ Jeremy Hammond

 

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