Weathering Changes

It is summer in Alabama, but until this week it has been very moderate. Last week the furnace kicked on. I've been going out about 6 AM, doing chores, and back in by 9 AM or so. Looks like another week of it. But there's plenty of other changes to weather as well. We call it adventures in aging. Learning to adapt to my new found limitations. The old gray matter just ain't what it used to be, nor my strength and stamina. Then, we have the decline of the US empire and the ensuing economic consequences. Every week there are more and more items missing from the grocery shelves, and gas is back on the rise. Fortunately we are adaptable creatures. Given the future we're looking toward, we will have to learn to adapt to many new challenges. This weeks news and more below the fold...

The model for adaptability and change that appeals to me is Water...

Why Lao Tzu Was Obsessed With Water: The Tao Te Ching Explained

(15 min) 2,500 years ago, a philosopher living through one of the most violent eras in human history wrote a text that completely dismantled everything we believe about strength. Lao Tzu didn't tell us to fight harder. He told us to look at water. ...
The Warring States period of ancient China ran for over 200 years. Every king, every general, every philosopher of the era believed the same thing: to survive, you had to be harder than your enemy. Thicker walls. Stronger swords. Heavier armor. The entire civilization was locked in an arms race of rigidity. And Lao Tzu watched all of it — and noticed that the hardest things were also the most fragile. A stone wall holds for months, then cracks. An iron sword shatters against rock. Rigidity requires enormous energy to maintain, and eventually, it always breaks...
So he looked to nature. He found water. And what he found changed everything.
00:00:00 - The lie the modern world taught you about strength
00:01:25 - The world Lao Tzu was living in: the Warring States period
00:03:07 - Why Lao Tzu chose water
00:03:59 - Pattern 1: Persistence over force (Chapter 43)
00:05:19 - Pattern 2: Formlessness and the absence of ego
00:06:51 - Pattern 3: Stillness and the muddy pool
00:08:12 - Where water goes: the physics of the valley
00:09:43 - The mountain is dead. The valley is alive.
00:11:25 - How we live today: iron armor in a world that requires swimming
00:12:38 - How to actually become water in the modern world
00:13:56 - The ultimate key Lao Tzu handed us

Three translations of the Tao Te Ching Verse 8 on Water

If you liked that clip, you might enjoy their video:
The Tao Te Ching Explained: The 81 Poems That Hold Everything Together (16.5 min)

I'm not religious nor proselytizing any belief.
I was trained as a soil scientist. Learning how to manage water is a key goal of agricultural engineering, and is at the heart of permaculture.
Keep the soil in place, and absorb as much water as possible.
Somewhere along the way I learned of Yu the Great.

Also known as Da Yu, Yu the Great founded the Xia dynasty, the China’s oldest dynasty around 2070 to 1600 BCE. In Chinese mythology, he’s known as the Tamer of the Flood who became famous by controlling the waters that covered the territories of the empire. Eventually, he was noted by Confucians as a role model for Han emperors.
Yu’s reign predates the oldest-known written records in China, the Oracle Bones of the Shang dynasty, by nearly a thousand years. His name wasn’t inscribed on artifacts discovered from his time, nor was it inscribed on the later oracle bones. The lack of archeological evidence has led to some controversy about his existence, and some historians consider him to be purely a legendary figure.

He was renown for using the power of flowing water to shape drainage basins and ditches
(7.5 min video here)

A couple of thousand years after Yu the Great...
The Dujiangyan Irrigation System, built in 256 BC, stands as an outstanding exemplar of ancient Chinese hydraulic engineering. Confronted with the Minjiang River’s frequent flooding, Li Bing, a local official of Sichuan Province at that time, along with his son, led residents in creating this innovative water conservancy project based on thorough field surveys.
This engineering marvel transformed the Chengdu Plain completely. What was once a flood-prone region became the fertile “Land of Abundance,” ensuring agricultural stability while providing crucial material support for the Qin state’s eventual unification of China. Historical records indicate that crop yields increased significantly after Dujiangyan’s completion, substantially bolstering Qin’s military campaigns.
Remarkably, after weathering 2,200 years of natural elements, Dujiangyan continues functioning effectively today. Even during the devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the ancient structure remained largely intact, still irrigating over 1,000 square kilometers of farmland across more than 30 counties. In 2000, UNESCO recognized Dujiangyan as a World Heritage Site, celebrating it as a masterpiece of ancient Chinese engineering wisdom.

Let's shift the theme to geopolitics. But, while we're waxing philosophically let's hear some perspectives on a variety of "Grand Strategies".
We'll start with John Mearsheimer. He considers a variety of approaches.

(62 min) U.S. Grand Strategy After Hegemony
The comments under the clip are not flattering. His perspective that conflict between hegemons is inevitable is challenged.

Alastair focuses on how Iranians think and reviews a bit of history...

(60 min) Alastair Crooke discusses Iran's announcement of a new offensive that includes targeting US soil, the deployment of the USS George Washington to the Middle East and Israel's shock about Iran's rapid recovery amid talks of renewed CENTCOM & IDF strikes.
Alastair's Conflicts Forum’s Substack

Chas Freeman

(53 min) How U.S. Decline Reshapes the Middle East
Chas Freeman's Substack

Alex Krainer

(59 min) The Balance Of Power Just COLLAPSED

What is coming in Western Asia? Here's Marandi's thoughts.
Seyed M. Marandi

(54 min) Iran & Yemen Unleash a New Offensive Strategy

To my mind we are in WWIII. Consider all the conflicts just this week. Russia and Japan are in a tiff about Islands Japan ceded to Russia after WWII. Japan, S. Korea, and the US hold war exercises pissing off the N. Koreans.

Russian ships threaten to take over European ships if any more of their ships are impeded. However, there's been no action from either side, and maybe NATO's shadow fleet nonsense is over?

(35 min) More Than A Red Line, Russian Policy To Mirror Attacks on Shadow Fleet
00:00:00 Putin's warning on seizing collective west ships
00:00:54 Is this a real red line or an empty threat
00:03:41 Russia's pattern of major escalation against the west
00:04:22 Why the UK is freaking out
00:07:08 The Royal Navy admits it is outmatched by Russia
00:08:09 Lloyds of London faces a massive insurance crisis
00:10:19 The mysterious Vienna meeting with a former Kremlin official
00:10:44 Russia's powerful and advanced submarine fleet
00:11:33 Why Europe is powerless without the United States
00:14:26 Will the Americans get pulled into this crisis
00:16:46 What happens if Europe tests Russia's red line
00:21:23 Russia's ability to crush European economies
00:22:25 Was the Novorossiysk drone attack a message to Russia
00:26:44 Inside the multibillion dollar drone war grift
00:32:48 How Putin can cut off weapons reaching Ukraine

Of course the big conflicts are in Western Asia and Ukraine/Russia. Iran continues to hit ships which do not comply with their Hormuz protocol. Additionally they are hitting Northern Iran/Kurdistan where there's been troop build ups. Why hasn't the US responded? Larry explains:
A Dependency Decades in the Making: How Washington Let Five Minerals — and China — Take the US Arsenal Hostage
...more than 80,000 parts across roughly 1,900 weapon systems incorporate just five processed minerals — and that the global supply of all five is dominated by China. The conclusion, in the report’s own words: nearly 78% of all Department of War (DoW) weapon systems are potentially affected.
The five elements are antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten, and tellurium. None is a household name. Together they form a chokepoint on American military power more absolute than any adversary’s missile, and the uncomfortable part of the story is not that China built it. It is that the United States handed it over — deliberately, incrementally, and with ample warning, across decades of procurement decisions that treated the cheapest supplier as the best one.

Bottom line: We're out of weapons and lack the materials to make more.

In the meantime we're treating our military worse than dogs.
How the US Navy Ran Its Own Sailors Short on Food and Soap
The images were mundane in a way that made them land harder than any battle footage: half-empty meal trays, a gray slab of processed meat, sailors rationing food among themselves so no one got more than anyone else...
When the conditions became public, the Navy’s institutional reflex was denial. The despicable Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, dismissed the early reporting as “fake news,” and a 5th Fleet spokesman insisted the crew “remain resilient and ready” and the ship “remains fully capable of meeting all mission tasking.” That response is worth remembering, because it is part of the failure rather than a rebuttal of it — a chain of command more prepared to defend its readiness narrative than to reckon with why its sailors were going without. ...
Here is the heart of the problem. The Combat Logistics Force today numbers about 34 ships — a figure that has stayed essentially flat for well over a decade. On paper, stability. In practice, a slow hollowing, because the demands on that force have grown while its most capable ships have disappeared.
Around 2010, the Navy operated all four of its Supply-class fast combat support ships. Today only two remain. In the mid-2010s the Navy inactivated two of them into reserve to save roughly $30 million a year each in operating costs — a decision that looked reasonable on a spreadsheet and looks indefensible from the deck of a hungry ship. ...
The shortages off Arabia were not an accident, a rumor, or a supply officer’s bad week. They were the predictable result of a decade and a half of decisions that let the margin preventing them erode — and then, when the consequences reached the mess deck, an instinct at the top to insist everything was fine. A fleet that cannot be reliably supplied cannot be reliably sustained. The hunger and shortage aboard the Lincoln were the sound of that margin finally running out, and the sailors who lived it deserved better than both the shortage and the denial.

Sailor went overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln this month
The sailor was rescued within an hour, according to one of the officials, and was medically evaluated. A different official said that the sailor had gone overboard wearing a life vest and was not injured, adding that the Navy considered the incident a mental health episode.

A Military Run Past Its Limits, and the Leaders Who Keep Saying Everything Is Fine

In August, Bloomberg reported that US Cyber Command — the force that defends American networks and runs offensive cyber operations — was investigating a cluster of deaths among its people. As many as five individuals who worked in or closely with the command died by suicide between early June and early July 2026, according to internal communications, records, and interviews the outlet reviewed. The concentration was abnormal enough that Cyber Command reportedly invoked the Pentagon’s “suicide cluster” designation; leadership had acknowledged three deaths in an internal email as early as June. ...
MS Now reported — citing about a dozen family members and recordings of meetings between families and Navy leadership — that the Lincoln’s crew was contending with food shortages, long meal lines, broken toilets, mold in the showers, dead laundry machines, missing soap and toothpaste, and collapsing morale after roughly 250 days at sea. The reporting raised safety concerns and, in some family accounts, attempted suicides aboard a crew worn to the bone. ...
operational tempo is not an act of God. It is a policy choice about how many missions to run, how long to keep carriers forward-deployed, and how hard to push a cyber force that never appears on a casualty list. Someone chooses that pace. The recurring second thread is the response to evidence: an Army secretary who at least named the failure in writing, set against a Defense Secretary who called firsthand reporting “fake news” and a fleet that answered allegations of a broken crew with assurances about mission capability. A military that cannot admit its people are breaking cannot protect them, because the first step in every prevention program ever written is to acknowledge the problem out loud.

It doesn't look good for the US, but as Larry Wilkerson says, "A dying elephant can thrash a lot of grass."

Russia has been pounding Ukraine and making steady advances. Ukraine uses occasional missiles and drone swarms targeting one of Russia's missile factories, refineries, and civilian targets like beach goers.

Stanislav Krapivnik

(55 min) Ukraine's Fortress Belt Under Siege As Odessa Blockade Tightens
00:00:52 Setting up the discussion on Project Ukraine
00:02:23 Are the Russians close to a knockout blow
00:06:16 The push toward Kharkiv and Sumy explained
00:07:56 Ukraine's staggering casualty numbers revealed
00:08:44 Do drones really compensate for lost infantry
00:12:29 Orikhiv situation and the Syrskyi command change
00:14:41 Turning to the war in the sky
00:15:13 How weapons were smuggled through Ukraine
00:17:56 Why Russia ended the Black Sea grain corridor
00:21:22 Odesa and the Black Sea ports destroyed
00:23:47 Are Russian refineries and fuel really in crisis
00:26:49 Hornet drones and civilian terror in Russia
00:32:32 Zelensky admits using civilians as human shields
00:33:11 Russia hits Ukraine's drone logistics network
00:36:38 Escalating terror campaign against Russian civilians
00:41:56 The truth about Putin's so called palace
00:44:25 Is the West actually hunting Putin
00:53:08 Russian elections and what could change after
00:55:06 Closing thoughts and thanks to Stanislav

Then there's the teetering global economy. Japan holds the most US debt of any country in the form of treasury bonds. We bought euros to prop up their economy in an effort to maintain the USD and weaken the euro and to keep Japan from dumping US bonds.

Ray Zucaro

(28 min) Yen Is Sinking Again. Oil Reserves Near Empty
00:00 Introduction with Ray Zucaro
00:51 The yen situation and carry trade
02:20 US Treasury sells euros to prop up the yen
06:08 What this means for NATO and Europe relations
07:19 Why the yen is weakening now
09:38 Risk of another Asian financial crisis
10:05 Oil markets and the Strait of Hormuz disruption
12:19 Other oil producers stepping up supply
16:53 New Russia sanctions bill in Congress
18:31 Europe's recession risk and Germany's debt

Let's end with a laugh...or perhaps a mildly amusing video
How can we adapt to The Attack of the Killer Bunnies?

(28 min) Politics Gone Wild
Inspired by slapstick surrealism, great literature, classical art and pop culture, righteous rabbits emerge from crusader-era manuscripts to combat what Martin Luther King called "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
With hopping mad wit aimed at heartless imperial hubris, these brave medieval bunnies combat the greatest scourge upon galactic history — American exceptionalism.
How can America be great AGAIN, our big-eared warriors wonder, when its roots are so steeped in genocide, land plunder and slavery? Was there ever a page in Uncle Sam’s lifestory, when he (or his heavily-armed proxies) were NOT waging wars, imposing coups, bombing civilians or subverting democracy?
00:00 – US Pirates Israel Iran NATO Great Again
03:03 – Uncle Sam is Man Behind Curtain, Wizard of Oz
05:22 – Crusade in Gaza is Still Great?
08:11 – US is Greatest What? Purveyor of Violence!
10:44 – Machado: Grating Smile but No Friend of Peace
13:44 – Castro & Chavez: A Great Bolivarian Hug
15:53 – Reagan, Alien Zombies & The Evil Empire
18:00 – Sam & Rubio Don’t Got No Stinkin Badges!
19:59 – Gaslit Anagram for Make America First Again
25:48 – Monty Rabbit’s Flying Circus Kicks Trump Habit

May as well laugh...or at least be mildly amused

As usual there's lots more news. Nothing has changed there, and no doubt we live in a time of great change. That's one reason I can't get to all the news. I hope I covered most of the big stories. I think weather weirding is here to stay. It is a strong El Niño year. Like most changes we will all have to roll with the parade of waves we encounter.

Hope you have a great Sunday. The thread is open!