Apocalypse, American Style
Crises both self-made and unaddressed will determine the future
When I was a kid, there was a show from 1969 to 1974 called Love, American Style. Aired on ABC then of Paramount Television, the station is now owned by the Disney Entertainment. I knew the program was inane as little boy and know what passes for entertainment now is worse.
Do you need another zombie or apocalypse movie in your life? How about a “survivor” show where contestants “fight for their lives” surrounded by a camera crew? Intellect, American Style.
The Paramount of today is one of ever shape-shifting variations of oligarch owned media which has undergone radical mega-mergers in recent years. In July 2025, the FCC approved the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance for $8 billion. Skydance media was founded by David Ellison in 2006, the son of 81-year-old tech oligarch Larry Ellison (briefly worth more than Elon Musk) and co-founder of the software giant Oracle. An unwavering backer of Trump and radical conservative candidates (details here from the indispensable OpenSecrets.org), Ellison and Oracle attempted to buy the popular and controversial Beijing-based app TikTok in 2025. Although that bid failed, after tortured machinations by both the Biden and Trump administrations, in January 2026 TikTok was finally sold to three conglomerates: Oracle, Silver Lake (the twelfth largest private equity firm group as of 2024), and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, whose goal is to manage $100 billion in AI-driven investments.
Combined the three hold an 80.1 percent stake on TikTok with China’s ByteDance retaining 19.9 percent ownership. Thanks to the gods. With this sale, our national security interests are secured, and certainly these benevolent new owners won’t keep databases on citizens critical of say waging war for profit or getting annoyed over ICE assaulting, abducting and murdering citizens in the streets or warehouses filled with chain link cages. After all, how else does one populate a booming concentration camp system? Prisons and AI. It’s the new economy, stupid.
In additional interest of an honest media system, Trump wishes for the Ellison’s to own Warner Bros. Discovery as well, which includes HBO and CNN. Ha, ha! Move over Murdoch family! Being but an old white guy of modest means, in Larry and David I trust to entertain and inform me. Who needs enforced antitrust laws slowing a burgeoning fascist state? As Bugs Bunny, err Porky Pig says, “That’s all, folks.”
Apologies to Porky, and thanks to reader Rob for calling out my misattribution of that quote. Let the subscription drops begin.
Love, American style: Chemical warfare on Tehran
On Sunday, March 8, the people of Tehran experienced Hell. Israel directed missile strikes to at least four oil storage facilities near the city of 10 million. In the night fireballs rolled across the sky. As day broke, the sun was blotted out as toxic black oil rain fell from the sky. Witness videos showed flames flowing through neighborhood streets. Residents described a river of fire moving through the city. If this senseless criminal war does not end in nuclear Armageddon, the environmental and health consequences will cost lives for decades to come.
The four major oil facilities targeted were oil depots in Karaj, Shehran, Aghdasiyeh and a refinery in Tehran. The Tehran facility alone has the capacity to process about 225,000 barrels of oil per day.
Make no mistake, these attacks were a war crime — chemical warfare directed against civilians, two breaches of international law in one (as if laws ever govern wars). After witnessing three years of Gaza flattened to moon dust including double tap strikes on hospitals, this is hardly a surprise. A double tap strike as you may know waits for the rescuers to arrive then blows their limbs and heads off, too. That was the method of massacre of the 165 Iranian school girls that preceded this attack, now conclusively shown to be an American hit. And these oil facility attacks by the IDF make America complicit yet again, as Israel’s weapons supplier.
Yes, Iran is attacking Israel as well, Tel Aviv in particular. Little wonder. After three years of Israeli genocide killing possibly 600,000 Palestinians — not the BS sanitized mainstream number of about 72,000 — my sympathy for Zionists is zero. These words come from someone who can easily differentiate between a Jew and a terrorist state, thank you. I’ve had Jewish friends and colleagues. I am white, but not a KKK member. That the people perpetrating genocide now were victims of the same within just two lifetimes of memory can commit these atrocities makes me feel hopeless. Homo sapiens frontal lobes attached to opposable thumbs was an evolutionary mistake.
Who is this war for? The military industrial complex of course, making money on human blood. For Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Palantir these are good times. BTW, Peter Thiel’s Palantir is assembling databases on you US citizens which will be handy in predictive policing. Better to lock you up before you even think of a crime. Remember little people, real crime is for billionaires.
World fallout from the Iran War
It feels insensitive to write about anything but the direct victims of this war or the victims of genocides that take place continuously, world over, but I must because no one will be unaffected by this madness. Any country dependent on shipping or receiving oil through the Strait of Hormuz is directly and immediately affected.
Asia is particularly dependent on oil that passes through Hormuz. Nearly 38 percent of China’s oil alone passes through this choke point. Middle East exporters are equally dependent.
Import oil through the Strait of Hormuz
Export oil through the Strait of Hormuz
These factors alone could push the world economy into a great depression, but unnervingly there’s more. As you likely know, our industrial food supply is entirely dependent on oil derived fertilizers. Lack of them or greatly increased expense will directly impact agricultural yields, food availability and expense dramatically. Sarah Connor just published a thoroughly researched article on the subject, Heads-up: Food crisis incoming. I highly recommended you reading this. I have great confidence in Sarah from years of following her work.
Sarah points out:
The Strait carries 20% of the global Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) trade. Qatar sends 93% of its LNG exports through this waterway; the UAE sends 96% (International Energy Agency). Natural gas provides the feedstock for nitrogen-based fertilizers.
The disruption of the Strait imperils the world’s fertilizer supply. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, and Iran produce a concentrated share of global agricultural inputs. Before the blockade, the Middle East exported 60 million tonnes of fertilizer precursors annually. The waterway supports 30% of global nitrogen fertilizer exports (International Fertilizer Association).
She goes on to say:
Farmers consume nitrogen more than any other nutrient. It drives plant growth and protein synthesis. Urea serves as the primary delivery mechanism.
The Haber-Bosch process synthesizes urea using natural gas to extract hydrogen. This combines with atmospheric nitrogen to produce ammonia, which then reacts with carbon dioxide to yield urea. The Middle East scales this production using its natural gas reserves. Qatar’s exports alone sustain the caloric needs of 43 million people across the US, Brazil, and India (IFPRI).
Staple grain crops like maize, wheat, and rice consume 45% of nitrogenous fertilizer. These crops provide 40% of global human caloric intake. When farmers reduce nitrogen application, yields decline and the global food supply contracts. Severing commodity exports threatens the caloric foundation of the global population.
Sarah’s insights need to be heard and understood. This is the kind of work badly needed in a mainstream oligarch media that won’t tell the truth. We “doomers” work hard and dig deep to find the truth. Real doom is ignorance and blithely ingesting entertainment that brainwashes us and the “news” that lies and tells half-truths at best. Survival is hanging by a thread.
Death perpetrated by these psycho clowns is being performed bomb-by-bomb and starvation-by-starvation in victimized poor nations. I came of age in a country expert in hiding the truth. The truth is no longer hidden as the evil parades openly now. If you think voting blue is going to save you, think again. Remember Biden hugging Bibi and declaring, “I am a Zionist.”
We are on our own now. Personal risk is required. Both our parties have been walking us off the cliff. I have participated in protests. They don’t care. You can write letters. They don’t care. You can sign petitions. They don’t care. You can vote. We see how effective that is.
Our superpower is money. Every missile shot that murders our brothers and sisters was built with our tax dollars. Every ICE prison camp and murder the same. Our money is a giveaway to the ultra-wealthy as healthcare, personal liberties, food safety and environmental protections are eliminated. Our money feeds the cancer destroying the planet and builds the war machine. TAX REVOLT NOW. Already, some are on this path. It’s time to join. They can’t defeat us all if we act in unison.
This war makes this moment our last chance. Please be courageous.
Hey, Geoff, you may or may not remember me as the ole doc who keeps warning anyone planning on having children that "too many humans are using/depleting too many natural resources and producing too much pollution, including GHGs and climate collapse". No? You and I know damned well that this coming El Nino will greatly exacerbate the crop failures and starvation already baked (sic) into the coming months. Too many humans, but soon to be many less. Malthus was right. Have a blessed evening.
Trees hang heavy under a cloak of fresh snow, like silent witnesses, the hazy sun a halo lurking behind a bone white sky.
We stand still on frozen lake, wondering how we got here. Some of us look at each other. Then a sound. The birds hear it first. A crackle, like a twig snapping. A flutter of wings. Our breaths float around us. Our hearts beat, but not in unison. Another sound, louder now, followed by a low deep murmur. We feel it through the soles of our feet. We look down at webs spreading across the ice. Again we glance at each other. So many of us.
No one remembers how we got here.
I look down. A face glides past me under the ice, its eyes stare at the sky, its mouth agape contorted into a frozen scream, eye sockets like sinkholes, skin of alabaster and ash, lips the colour of decaying deadly nightshade. A hand floats behind it, as if reaching for light. More bodies float silently by, so many more, most are staring at the sky, staring at us, uncomprehending, staring at the ones who let it happen.
The cracks spread outward.
Welcome to 2026.