You Asked. I Answer.

Part III: What did the US send to Iraq in the 80s? What happened to the French pension protests? Was there a strategic logic to US arms transfers? Where in Seattle did I grow up? And a cute dog.

What does this dog have to do with this newsletter? Nothing! But it’s sure cute. By thisisfranpatel via Pixabay.

Sales Pitch Time

Today we continue with our blowout bonanza Ask Me Anything.

But first, a sales pitch. If you read the Cosmopolitan Globalist regularly, would you please pay for it?

I am not kidding when I say there’s terrific stuff behind the paywall. I just spent all morning re-reading it and I was amazed how much of it was excellent. You’ll be so pleased you paid when you find out what we keep in the secret closet for our paid subscribers.

Frankly, I’m thinking there’s now so much paywalled content that I should really write a guide to it. You don’t see older articles on the Substack webpage unless you look for them. But how would readers know what to look for without a guide?This occurred to me because some of the questions you asked, the other day, have very complete answers—much better than I could do in an AMA—in the archives.

So I reckon we need to do a better job of letting our subscribers know what exactly they’ve bought, so they can enjoy it even more. You can scroll through the archive here to get a sense of what’s in it, but you’ll be scrolling for a long time. Therefore, I’m going to get to work on a guide called “The Best of the Cosmopolitan Globalist.”

Meanwhile, here’s a very quick tour.

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3. Climate summits are an expensive waste of time.

4. We can’t electrify everything. Renewable enthusiasts, take note.

5. Anthropogenic Global Warming: Our climate scientist presents the evidence.

6. The Green Worldview: Is Europe’s Green movement the future?

7. The Energy Debate: Why are we having one, again?

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9. The Eternal Promise of Fusion: How close is the holy grail?

10. More questions for Dr. X—and answers.

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Or social media:

• Social Media and the New Man, Part I

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• The New Caesarism: Part III

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Now what would you pay for that?

What if I tell you there’s more?

For the same low, low price, you also get everything I’ve written since December 16, 2020, when the Cosmopolitan Globalist was born. …

But that’s not all!

You also get lots of things I wrote before that, too, like The Year of Living Hysterically, my short book about the #MeToo movement, which is available nowhere else.

And we’d be so glad if you read it all. Why, I think this archive is so valuable that I’m almost tempted to share it for free—except, as Dr. Johnson teaches us: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

The archive represents years of work, which I couldn’t dream of doing but for our paid subscribers.

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Back to your questions

9. [Your doctoral research concerned] American arms transfers to the Middle East 1967-1988? Does that include the aid transfers to Iraq in the late 80s? … I was paying attention at the time, so I could gather roughly the size of the packages they were transferring to Iraq (I thought the policy was an evil and stupid idea), but the details were always murky. So: what exactly did they hand over to the Iraqis during that time period? And what in the way of technical assistance were they giving to Iraq?