“Heroin, cocaine, and marijuana…originate as extremely low-cost agricultural products – weeds, essentially, that require almost no cultivation.”

That’s one of the interesting things in George Friedman’s book “The Next Decade: Empire and Republic in a Changing World”. It’s of geopolitical significance to the USA because of the instability on our southern border being caused by Mexican drug gangs.

Here’s another interesting thing from the book: Everybody knows that the Russians stole nuclear technology from the USA 60 years ago. But to this day, nobody has been able to make nukes from scratch:

“Only one country ever produced a nuclear weapon from scratch, and that was the United States. The British got their nukes in compensation for their contribution to the American research effort. The French also acquired the technology from the Americans, which they then regifted to Israel. The Russians stole the knowledge from the Americans, then transferred it to both the Chinese and the Indians. The Chinese gave the technology to the Pakistanis.”

Chances are that we don’t really need to worry about the Iranians and North Koreans developing their own nukes. Unless they get help, of course. And nuclear proliferation should be pretty easy to contain – as long as nuclear countries just stop sharing.

And we might be able to get rid of nukes altogether. The science and technology is so hard that we could easily forget how to do it. When the Department of Energy decided to refurbish some warheads in 1996, it took 10 years to reverse engineer the super-secret FOGBANK material.

And now that there is no testing, you have to wonder how well these decaying systems will work. Ask any engineer if he could build a complicated device and expect it to work, and continue working for decades, without any real-world testing, and he will just laugh at you.

Nuclear weapons will likely prove to be a “use it or lose it” technology. If nuclear war erupted today, there would probably quite a lot of fizzling going on from all sides.

If our nukes do decay into duds, I think the USA would be the geopolitical lottery winner because of our geographical isolation from other world powers. It’s one thing for Beijing or Moscow to press a button and launch missiles at us, but it’s quite another for them land troops on our beaches and actually invade. The naval power required to do that would take generations to develop – even for a mighty industrial power like China.

On February 2, 2012 I posted “Iran Cannot Close the Straight of Hormuz, Unless…” where I talked about the Tanker War of the 1980s. At that time, nobody in the media was talking about that forgotten conflict. (See the screenshot below of a Google News search showing no results found.)

Three weeks later, Steve Forbes wrote “War With Iran Is Coming!” which contains a summary of what I wrote. However, as you can see by the exclamation point in Forbes’ title, he is a raging warmonger. So, of course, he had to conclude:

“Nevertheless, you may see a repeat of the Tanker War. In the heat of battle the ayatollahs may not be able to contain themselves.”

Forbes is implying that Iran would take action only after the war started, giving us a little glimpse of the matrix. An attack on Iran is clearly being planned right now.

But what “heat of battle” is Forbes talking about? Iran’s military is pathetic. Read journalist Eric Margolis’ report here. Excerpt:

“Iran has been unable to modernize most of its 1960’s/1970’s vintage military arsenal, much of which was supplied by the US and Britain to the Shah.”

I’m no fan of the Ayatollahs, but I can’t help but notice that the federal treasury is empty. And I can’t help but notice that warmongers like Steve Forbes are largely responsible.

Here is the Google News search that I mentioned above:

Note: I shouldn’t have described the “Tanker War” was “forgotten”. Of course, the mainstream media knows about it, but their job is to sell the war on Iran. So, of course, they have to harp on how dangerous Iran is – not on how we gave them a serious beating when they tried to close the Strait of Hormuz 25 years ago.

Note: I would have linked to Eric Margolis’ website directly, but it was off line when I was writing this. In any case, it is well worth adding to your reading list as you will learn things that are concealed by the mainstream media.

To hear CNBC talk, you would think that Iran could close the Straight of Hormuz with the flip of a switch. Once again, we see appalling journalism on this poor excuse for a news network. CNBC is likely just doing its part to agitate for another war on behalf of the military-industrial complex.

USS Samuel B. Roberts being towed away after hitting an Iranian mine.

If you go to CNBC.com and enter “tanker wars” into the search box, it will return no results. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

You see, the Iranians already tried to close the Straight of Hormuz during their war with Iraq back in the 1980s. And the US Army, Navy, Marines, and SEALS gave them a serious beating. In fact, it is considered one of the most important naval engagements in US military history because it established US control of the Persian Gulf.

There was plenty of fighting and casualties during the Tanker Wars, but the Iranians were no match for the USA. Operation Prime Chance and Operation Praying Mantis taught the ayatollahs a lesson that they surely remember to this day. And Iran’s navy is actually weaker now than it was back then. The idea that they could shut off tanker traffic is laughable.

Unless…

…Iran gets some help. During the Tanker Wars, the Iranians fired Chinese Silkworm missiles at tankers and oil terminals. And now, DEBKAfile is saying that a Chinese hacker team is responsible for downing our RQ-170 stealth drone over Iran.

If that’s true, and the Chinese know how to neutralize our highest of high-tech secret weapons, then the Iranians might have a better chance at closing the Straight of Hormuz this time around.

How much do the Chinese know? We have been transferring quite a lot of technology to them in the name of globalization, so it could be considerable. We won’t know the full extent unless we actually fight them.

Or one of their proxies, such as Iran.

Note: According to this page, the price of oil actually feel during the Tanker War years of 1984-1988.