Jessica and I conferred briefly and our consensus evaluation is "yuck".

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, June 18, 2026 - 05:44 pm: Edit

Not to beat a dead horse or anything . . . but I have to wonder if we could have been in a better place if the US knew how to use $5k drones to fight a sustained campaign.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, June 18, 2026 - 06:10 pm: Edit

Just saw that Trump signed the peace agreement at Versaille of all places!

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Thursday, June 18, 2026 - 06:26 pm: Edit

Now Trump can claim he ended another war

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 01:04 am: Edit

it's not bragging if you did it!

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 06:47 am: Edit

It won't count for the Nobel prize, however, if it was you who started it.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 07:43 am: Edit

oh, this is too easy…
According to Google, the list of provocation’s by the nation of Iran since 1979 includes:

Quote:
“Several organizations, including the U.S. government and foreign policy institutions, maintain partial or select chronological records of international terrorism linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran

since the 1979 revolution. Because Iran has utilized proxy networks (such as Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) for "plausible deniability," no single official or completely exhaustive list exists, but extensive timelines detail decades of hostility.Prominent, documented records of Iran-sponsored and Iranian-backed terror attacks and hostilities include:1979–1981:

U.S. Embassy Hostage Crisis — Militant Iranian students, backed by the regime, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage for 444 days.1983:

Beirut U.S. Embassy and Marine Barracks Bombings — The Iran-backed group Islamic Jihad (an early branch of Hezbollah) carried out suicide truck bombings in Lebanon, killing 63 people at the embassy and 241 U.S. military personnel at the Marine compound.1983:

Kuwait City Bombings — Hezbollah operatives drove explosives-filled trucks into the gates of the U.S. Embassy, French Embassy, and other infrastructure in Kuwait.1984–1988:

Lebanon Hostage Crisis — Systematic kidnappings of foreign nationals (including Americans and CIA station chief William Buckley) in Lebanon by Iran-backed Hezbollah.1996:

Khobar Towers Bombing — Iranian-backed militants detonated a truck bomb at a coalition forces housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.2003–2011:

Iraq Insurgency — The U.S. Department of Defense found Iran and the IRGC-Quds Force responsible for providing weapons and funding that resulted in the deaths of at least 608 American personnel in Iraq.2023–2026:

Regional Escalation — Ongoing support for Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and various militias that have launched strikes in the Middle East and globally.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 09:48 am: Edit

I'm holding out some small hope that Congress will exercise its oversight via the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 and torpedo this 'deal'.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 11:39 am: Edit

"Russia still has the fifth largest economy in the world..."

I think Russia has around the 8th to 10th largest economy.

from wiki:

United States
China
Germany
Japan
United Kingdom
India
France
Italy
Russia
Brazil

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 01:05 pm: Edit

BTW, the list above doesn't include the "Tower 22 Attack (Jordan, 2024): An Iran-backed militia launched a drone strike on a U.S. military outpost in northeastern Jordan, resulting in the deaths of three U.S. Army soldiers and injuring more than 40 other personnel."

Speaking just for myself. I propose that the US announce,, and follow through, with a policy of enormously over the top retaliatory strikes on sponsors of terrorism. Tom Terrorist kills an American as a member of the Proxy Militia Army? We bomb the Proxies HQ AND the Sovereign Government of Sponsor-ia.


And wee tell them bluntly, "This is fot Arnold & Amelia America. Quit it or it gets worse."

It should be that terrorists know that doing bad things to America is a losing strategy. Rather like how the Commies learned them back in the olden days. The most common version goes:

"The Incident: In September 1985, four Soviet embassy personnel were abducted in Beirut by the Islamic Liberation Organization. One of the hostages, Arkady Katkov, was quickly killed by the militants."

"The KGB Retaliation: According to intelligence sources and historical accounts, a KGB team and the elite Alpha Group deployed to the region to secure the release of the remaining three hostages. Abandoning standard diplomacy, they reportedly identified the militants, abducted their relatives, and sent a clear, violent warning—severing some body parts of one of the captor's relatives and mailing them to the militants along with a threat to kill the rest."

Since the Jessica Buchanan incident I haven't heard of any Americans getting snatched for ransom in East Africa...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Carl, Trump will never get a Nobel Peace Prize because the committee that awards it all hate conservatives.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 02:54 pm: Edit

This is definitely more nominations than I have heard about.....

Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at least 12 times. Because the Norwegian Nobel Committee keeps all nominations strictly sealed for 50 years, the exact official count is not publicly released, but he has been publicly put forward by various lawmakers and officials.

No doubt there is some animosity from both sides....

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 02:55 pm: Edit

SVC, who knows how the committee thinks? One thing I can say for sure is that they tend to miss the target a lot when they give it to individuals.

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 04:34 pm: Edit

I think President Trump has two chances at a Nobel Peace prize.

1) A peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine that does not give Putin all/most of what he wants.

2) The Abraham Accords, if he gets Saudi Arabia to sign on to it, along with several of the other Persian Gulf powers.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 04:58 pm: Edit

Nah, SVC is correct here. The last Republican President to win the Nobel was Teddy Roosevelt.

That said, Trump hasn't done anything to deserve the Nobel, either.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 05:28 pm: Edit

To be as frank as possible, the Nobel Peace Prize has been of dubious value since the choice made in 1973 (the year that the recipient backed a coup d'état in Chile, just two years after he did likewise in Bolivia, and at the tail end of three years of bombing he orchestrated in Cambodia).

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 05:31 pm: Edit

Mike, on largest economies, the size of the Russian economy, and others on the list, depends on whether you measure them versus a standard US $ conversion, or purchasing power parity (PPP). ie $1 billion in US funds only pays for so much when the average worker in the states is making ~$100k on defense jobs, but the average worker in Russia might be making $20k (both numbers pulled out of thin air as an example, if we look it up the numbers might be off but the general theory that a worker in the states gets paid more than someone in Russia will hold).

So, by PPP Russia is the 4th largest economy, and China is #1. Top 10 below.

China / US / India / Russia / Japan / Germany / Indonesia / Brazil / France / United Kingdom

But that doesn't mean that $1 billion dollars spent in Indonesia on Indonesian workers can buy you quality Naval/Military assets for pursuing a foreign war on the other side of the globe. Relatively wealthy countries with lots of cheap labour (ie India, Brazil are 6 and 10 nominal GDP, but become 3 and 8 by PPP) can go out and buy more cheap kit which they can make. But if you want to know what nations can afford to by the best kit, that's going to come from your nominal listing you have above.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, June 19, 2026 - 10:45 pm: Edit

Dana Madsen:

PPP(Purchasing Power Parity) has value as a tool to describe differences in developed nations vs undeveloped nations and those that are either progressing or regressing economically.

Russia may be a relatively rare case of a once developed nation regressing to a lower status (others could include but by no means limited to North Korea, Cuba)

It should be pointed out that there are several factors that make PPP less than an Ideal tool to measure national economic activity between nations.

A quick Google inquiry revealed:

Quote:” While PPP is highly useful, it is an imperfect tool. It often struggles to predict short-term exchange rate shifts because prices vary due to:

Non-Traded Goods: Services such as haircuts, utilities, and local labor cannot be easily traded across borders, meaning their prices stay tied to local conditions rather than global ones.

Taxes and Tariffs: Government intervention, sales taxes, and import duties make the same product artificially more expensive in one country than another.

Transportation: Moving goods globally incurs fuel, shipping, and insurance costs, throwing off simple price parity.”

Note: I am not disagreeing about your post, just trying to illustrate that PPP is a very simplistic analysis that ignores factors that are both material and substantial.

I did not include China, but there are signs that instead of developing, China is falling short in a number of areas that just do not occur in healthy developing nations.

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 01:19 am: Edit

Absolutely Jeff, I didn't say PPP was a good measuring tool. It has some advantages, and disadvantages. I was just giving a reason why one person may think that Russia is the 4th or 5th biggest economy in the world and another person may think it's 9th and falling. Depending on the measuring tool you choose, you can get both answers.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 02:15 am: Edit

Nobel Peace Prize has been a leftist sham since 2007; especially in 2009.

By Gucci Sneakers on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 03:44 am: Edit

Authentication Error

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 10:01 am: Edit

I dunno about the peace prize being just for libs.

"to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Begin, Gorbachev, Lech Walensa, Rabin, Trimble & Muratov certainly aren't/ weren't screaming liberal leftists...

Trump hasn't exactly engendered "fraternity" in his statements & actions.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 10:04 am: Edit

In other news, the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy is in the news again, and not in a good way.

H.M.S. Prince of Wales while on a training mission in the artic has suffered yet another engineering failure. The ministry of defense has not stated details of the incident, but did say the ship has made an unscheduled port call in Norway.

Allegedly, the crew is handling repairs, but no details concerning when the ship will be able return to sea.

It was announced that if required, the POW could get underway on her own power.

The POW was supposed to sail to the United States after the completion of current training drills, but it appears that the dates for the visit will need to be changed.

The POW has had a series of engineering problems, flooded engine room in 2020, port propeller shaft coupling failure in 2022 required 9 months dock yard repair, now this current issue (whatever it turns out to be.)

On top of the Royal Navy difficulty to provide enough ships to fulfill scheduled deployments for NATO and other obligations, it appears they may have underfunded below the necessary minimum.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 11:49 am: Edit

Hey, here's a crazy idea: how about we not discuss perceived political bias in various awards on a board that explicitly says we're not supposed to discuss politics?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, June 20, 2026 - 06:34 pm: Edit

I agree with Jessica that the well-known political corruption/bias of the Nobel Peace Prize is not a subject for discussion here. I will also note that one of the three most-left members of our group is the one who doesn't want us to discus that lefties have corrupted and taken control over what should be a major non-partisan humanitarian award. I also note that the most conservative members of our group are the ones who want to discuss it. Take that for what it's worth.