Andrew Filson

@FLOTUS :)

A reminder that US Embassy hostages were kept 444 days only because Reagan-Bush bribed Iran with weapons and airplane parts to keep the hostages past the 1980 election to defeat Carter and let Reagan take credit for their release on Inauguration Day 20 January 1981.

Exceptionally dumb, ideologically blinkered, unworldly and emotionally stunted men currently running the United States. Not a novelty in our history, but new depths are being plumbed.

I feel like “the cruelty is the point” doesn’t really reflect the current state of things as accurately as it used to. I think it’s much more fitting to say that the cruelty is all they 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦. it is their only policy on both offense and defense. There is nothing else.

If we lived in a proper country, the politicians we vote for would represent us and make sure companies aren’t allowed to do this. Unfortunately the truth is, no matter how many votes we give them, it doesn’t outweigh the CEOs and Billionaires own them, so we get this.

To even begin a process of democratic renewal a future US administration would have to break up media monopolies, pass campaign finance reform, dismantle DHS, eject Israel, prosecute corruption and war crimes, even before reforms like wealth taxes and universal health care. Who?

People who study this stuff say mass mobilization is the key to reversing democratic backsliding like the U.S. is experiencing today. slate.com/news-and-polit…

“The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” — Aldous Huxley

Restrictions on divorce and college admissions. The war on women is ramping up.

ASML's EUV scanners will be the last machines on Earth to lose helium. Party balloons will be the first to go. Helium is not manufactured. It is a byproduct of uranium and thorium decaying deep underground over billions of years. Vent it and it escapes to space. Permanently. A third of the global supply went offline when Qatar's Ras Laffan plant was hit on March 2. The rationing has already started. Here's what happens: Day 1. Party balloons. Distributors cut retail supply immediately. Day 7. Industrial welding and pressurization. National allocation kicks in. Switch to argon where possible. Day 14. Routine fab leak detection switches to hydrogen. Ultra-sensitive qualification still needs helium. Day 21. MRI machines. Older systems that vent helium cannot get refills. Elective scans delayed. Day 45. Global buffer depletes. Fabs enter conservation mode. Non-critical depositions switch to nitrogen. Day 60. Backside wafer cooling on older etch tools. Nitrogen conducts heat six times slower. Throughput drops. Day 90. High-power etch. Advanced memory and logic nodes cannot run without helium-grade cooling. Wafer production drops. Day 120. ASML's EUV lithography tools. $200 million scanners making the highest-value wafers on Earth. Leading-edge chip production stops. Day 240. $700 billion in data centers are being built this year. Higher GPU prices, delayed cluster expansions, slower scaling. Four months from birthday balloons to AI chip shortage.

If we don’t eat the rich, they will continue to consume us. It’ll never be enough for people like Bezos. Never enough money, acquisitions, or power, no matter the cost to the human life around him. He and every other billionaire are parasitic sociopaths.

Jeffery Sachs: “Israel's doctrine is kill its adversaries. Kill them in mass numbers, kill the civilians, kill the women, kill the children. They don't discriminate between civilians and military targets. They leveled Gaza... It is a rogue, brutal regime...”

We finally have the Israeli mentality distilled to a single line:

“We will go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost effective.” - Kurt Vonnegut

The Israeli Strike Near Iran’s Reactor is an Ominous Signal The US and Israel find themselves cornered with dwindling options and growing desperation. This is evident in their attacks on Iran’s electrical grid and their calculated attempt to shift the Overton Window toward the nuclear threshold. The statement by Trump advisor David Sacks, suggesting Israel could escalate the conflict with nuclear options, coincides with a missile strike landing just 350 meters from the Bushehr reactor. This isn’t just a warning; it’s a veiled threat. It’s a trial balloon designed to gauge the global reaction to such a catastrophic possibility. A direct hit on an Iranian reactor would inevitably force Iran to retaliate against Dimona, leading us into a spiral of nuclear escalation, but what if Dimona be empty? As global opinion is being tested, this "window" is being meticulously shifted and calibrated. Currently, US-Israeli options, beyond aerial bombardment, include sector-specific ground operations. But what if these operations end in disaster? Even a NATO intervention might change nothing. In Libya, European NATO forces depleted their ammunition in about 10 days during a low-intensity conflict. Today, Rheinmetall claims European stockpiles are bone-dry. While I usually take Rheinmetall’s claims with a grain of salt, this time it actually makes sense. We are looking at a scenario of severe ammunition shortages against a heavily entrenched and well-armed Iran. Any landing operation would be a bloodbath. I believe that, faced with mounting internal and external failures, the US and Israel will gradually push the Overton Window to a choice between total defeat or the use of tactical nuclear weapons, in the event of a catastrophic failure of ground operations. Tactical nuclear weapons are strictly forbidden for use, yet their radiation dissipates within weeks in the current environment. Even so, it would constitute a grave war crime. I do not believe the U.S. would embark on such a path, but I cannot say the same for Israel. Ending the war with Iran still possessing enriched uranium would be equivalent to admitting that Netanyahu, instead of increasing his people's security, did the exact opposite. The internal pressure would be immense. If nothing goes as planned and the death toll rises, I feel this window can shift much faster.

Trump’s FCC waived a rule so a Trump ally’s broadcast company can reach 60% of US households. Between Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting, two of Trump’s allies will control 450 local stations, including news, in 95% of U.S. markets. Trump’s billionaire allies now control X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, TikTok, Truth and Twitch. They own Fox News, CBS, CNN, WaPo, WSJ, NY Post and the majority of local news stations. This is by design. The news will be what Trump and his administration say it is.

We can't have clean energy because it will destroy the oil industry. We can't have healthcare because it will destroy the health insurance industry. We can't have peace because it will destroy the weapon industry. Capitalism built a system we can't afford to do the right thing.

Military contractors and Big Oil spent a combined $292,181,711 on the 2024 election to make sure we never have a widespread transition to renewable energy, and end our forever wars.

The country simply doesn’t function anymore. This is Republican rule, economic crashes, tax cuts for the rich, cuts to services, new wars in the Middle East. Every. Single. Time.

The Pentagon blackballed its own newspaper from covering its own press conference? Reminder, Stars & Stripes employees are US Army civilians. Their editorial independence is protected by Congress specifically to prevent political leaders from feeding troops propaganda.