Ptolemy I Soter

Caption: Ptolemy I Soter was a prominent Macedonian general and one of Alexander the Great’s closest companions. He played a key role in the partition of Alexander’s empire after his death, eventually becoming the ruler of Egypt and establishing the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

Ptolemy was born in 367 BCE and served with Alexander throughout his campaigns, including the invasion of Persia and campaigns in India. He was known for his military skills and strategic thinking. After Alexander’s death, Ptolemy was appointed satrap (governor) of Egypt, a strategic region that he would eventually transform into a powerful Hellenistic kingdom.

In 305 BCE, Ptolemy declared himself Pharaoh, establishing the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which would rule Egypt for nearly three centuries.

Ptolemy founded the city of Alexandria, making it a vibrant center of culture, trade, and learning. He established the Great Library of Alexandria and the associated Mouseion, which became renowned for its scholarship and intellectual pursuits.

Ptolemy I Soter’s reign is considered a golden age for Egypt, and his dynasty significantly contributed to Hellenistic civilization.

Cleopatra VII (above, flanked by Romans) and Ptolemy Soteria were not directly related, as Cleopatra was a descendant of Ptolemy Soteria, and several generations separated them. Cleopatra VII’s father was Ptolemy XII Auletes. She was the last active monarch of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Cleopatra VII died in 30 BC. Her son Caesarion (Ptolemy XV) by Gius Julius Caesar was executed, and Egypt became a Roman province under the rule of Octavian (later Emperor Augustus). Octavian’s rule marked the transition to Roman rule in Egypt. 

When I think of Cleopatra VII, I will always think of Elizabeth Taylor. I realize that’s impossibly retro these days. It may also be patriarchal and both Egyptophobic and Hellenophobic.

 

Bullet Points:

** Prices paid to U.S. producers of goods and services unexpectedly declined in April, defying predictions that tariffs would reignite inflation.

** While green advocates commonly use renewable, sustainable, and net-zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills. The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals – not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines – pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.

** Should you seek advice on American foreign policy from Pedo Joe Biden, head of the Biden Crime Family?

** (Alex Berenson) “In 1944, nobody said we should end World War 2 and let the Nazis rule Germany forever because winning would mean killing a lot of civilians.”

“Hamas started a war. Hamas lost a war. Hamas doesn’t get to ask for a takeback. The war in Gaza will end when Hamas surrenders. And newsflash: no one is coming to Hamas’s aid.  Absolutely no one. The Trump administration isn’t even pretending to slap Israel’s wrist, and that hasn’t exactly hurt America’s standing with the Gulf states, as you might have noticed this week.”

** Kid Rock: “We have this low birth rate in America..it just hit me right now because who’s going to sleep with these fat, ugly, ass broke liberal women with bad hygene? Look at these rallies, it’s like a bunch of women that no guy wants to sleep with & a bunch of dudes that want to sleep with each other.”

** People clap for a trans-dog. Is this what Western civilization comes down to?

** Should I move the Virtual Mirage Blog to Dubai? Pack up the White Wolf Mine, put it into storage or something, and head to the Middle East? To be fair about it, unless you went totally off the rails, they’re unlikely to censor content. Yeah, I’m too old to do that. But will they entice creators to make the move? They will. Will it work out for them? That remains to be seen. They want to build the world’s most prominent artists’ colony and make it appealing. You know, the attractive thing for me would be to have a hot glass studio where they covered the financial overhead, and I could spend the day in front of the furnace churning out glass art. Pack in society and create art… wow. Become the next Dale Chihuly without worrying about making a profit. You see, I don’t like what I do for a living. I did it because I was good at it, and it paid the bills and kept a roof over my family’s head.

Art – yeah. Writing and working in hot glass. But would living in the Middle East under the soft thumb of a Muslim monarch work out? No, I don’t think it would, not in the long game. I’m not so naive as to think I’m not under the thumb of power in the USA, but it’s a more familiar arrangement here.

 

Enemies

/begin rant: When I was a young man, I bought a Toyota 4×4 pick-up (manually locking front hubs—before the on-the-fly style came out). My father, who fought the Japanese during World War 2 and was wounded in action and saw many friends die, held a grudge. The grudge was softly transferred to me for buying a Japanese truck. I took him for a ride in it, mudding in some horrible terrain, and he was impressed, moderating his bias only slightly.

I remember being a Naval officer in Hawaii and watching a Japanese warship sail into Pearl Harbor and render honors to the USS Arizona. Officers more senior to me growled that they (the Japanese) were biding their time until they could do a more effective job “next time.”

On another occasion, I jumped to serve as a US observer on board a Japanese submarine during the annual RIMPAC exercise. I returned with observations for another day on the blog, but didn’t hold anything against the Japanese.

I lived in England for a while and encountered a lot of Brits who hated the “Krauts” for bombing the place during WW2. They had firsthand recollections of bombings. I took German language in college from professors who were German Jews, and they spent half the class blaggarding Mercedes-Benz and BMW auto brands. They had tough feelings toward the Germans.

In both examples above, people personally touched by war carried those experiences forward in life.

The experiences of those who served in Vietnam were closer to my own generation. See my friend Mike Watson’s book, “Hunting in the Shadows” (shameless plug). I came to know that war more personally. Understanding the parties and the aftermath of the war became part of my professional life as I was personally engaged in targeting Asian organized crime from a law enforcement perspective.

Then came the wars in the Middle East, beginning with Operation Desert Shield/Saber/Storm, where I got a “go to war or go to jail” letter, packed my sea bag, and bade farewell to my wife, pregnant with our fourth. 9/11 followed a little less than a decade later. I dealt with counterterrorism in the US against Middle Eastern targets from a law enforcement perspective as well.

Okay, so much for my walk down memory lane. There’s a point to this. At what point do I hate everyone America ever fought (I guess you could include the British, too)? Today, I’m not completely sure whether the British are allies or merely distant cousins, and I was seconded at one point with the Royal Navy and became brothers-in-arms. What about the Germans, the Japanese, or the Canadians (I feel a lot of hatred coming from the cold and forbidding north these days)? You can read about the Mexicans – below.

As I type, President Trump is trying to snatch the Middle East from the jaws of the Middle Kingdom. It seems as though they chose who the bigger dragon is, and President Xi can’t be happy. Putin is throwing a tantrum in the Kremlin. Have the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia stopped hating the US (or Israel)?

I had lunch with Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar one day in Beijing many years ago. We were both staying at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse at the time. The Israelis could have liquidated him at any time – but didn’t. Why is that? Theories have circulated regarding Arafat’s cause of death, with the most prominent being poisoning (possibly by polonium) and AIDS-related illnesses, as well as liver disease or a platelet disorder. He drank a lot. I think that’s what did him in. Maybe polonium gave him a nudge into the grave? I’ve mentioned it on the blog before – long-time blog readers may recall. I won’t go into details here. Was he my enemy? That’s an interesting question. More than the Chinese were/are my enemy?

I’ve dealt with party hard-liners in the CCP, and they hate the US, and by extension, they hated me. It may or may not have been personal—I can’t say. I also dealt with Chinese people in and out of government, with whom I formed friendships that I believe to have been genuine.

As I type, the Republic of Vietnam, which was never overly fond of the Celestials in Beijing, is working to draw closer to the US, as is Pakistan (father of the Taliban), with whom we’ve had an interesting relationship over time. China liked to think that it owned that real estate, but maybe not. Should we work to destroy those overtures from Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan based on past wars?  /rant.

Parting thought – go up to the caption: Alexander of Macedon. How did he handle the Persian Empire when he conquered it? Did he pull it to the ground, put everyone to the sword, and sow salt the way a Mongol would? Why did he do what he did? Good idea or bad idea? Lord High Executioner Beans, what do you think?

 

From the Mail Bag:

I was asked to comment on the Mexican Navy. Their good will sailboat hit the Brooklyn Bridge – ooops. 2 Dead, 19 injured. Somebody has some explaining to do.

SEMAR exists apart from the Mexican Defense Department, SEDENA. I’ve worked with them. They’re made up of naval infantry (Marines) and a littoral force afloat that acts to protect fisheries. PESCA (Fishing labor union/lobby) has a significant influence in Mexican politics.

They have one frigate and a few patrol boats that enforce fishing and work as a species of Coast Guard. Búsqueda y Rescate Marítimo is the Mexican Navy’s search and rescue element. Its primary mission is search and rescue operations within 50 miles (80 km) of the Mexican coastline.

One of my dearest friends, Admiral Wilfrido Robledo Madrid, Mexican Navy (right), was among the finest men I’ve ever known. He was courageous, honest, a fierce friend, and an all-around nice guy. He was a dear friend and a force for good in Mexico—a rare breed, now passed for two years—until Valhalla.

 

Crypto

Full disclosure: I’m not a Crypto guy. Unless it’s easily fungible, I can’t see it as appealing. Some companies accept Cryptocurrency in exchange for goods and services, but not many. It’s worse than gambling in the stock market, IMHO, but now governments are clawing their way through the firewall.

Let’s talk Crypto and Governments,

Crypto began as a radical, decentralized vision, born from distrust in centralized institutions, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. Its founding ethos was about giving individuals sovereignty over their money, removing intermediaries, and shielding assets from inflationary policies and authoritarian seizure. It attracted libertarians, cypherpunks, and idealists who saw it as a tool for financial freedom and resistance.

Today, governments and large institutions are increasingly co-opting technology designed to sidestep them. Technology is neutral; power is not. Blockchains are open-source and permissionless by design, which makes them inherently susceptible to repurposing. Just as email or the internet began as decentralized systems and were later governed by centralized actors (ISPs, platforms, regulators), crypto is undergoing a similar trajectory. Once a tool exists, power seeks to harness it.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) represent the ultimate centralization of crypto technology: programmable, traceable money controlled by a central authority. While marketed as efficient and inclusive, CBDCs offer states granular control over transactions, capital flows, and individual behavior.

Crypto initially provided an escape from traditional tax and financial reporting structures, but as adoption grew, so did government interest in reclaiming control. Tools like blockchain analytics and KYC/AML compliance have made the space more traceable. The IRS, for example, now treats crypto as property and enforces reporting rules aggressively, turning crypto into a taxable, surveilled asset class.

Wall Street’s embrace of Crypto, through ETFs, custody services, and tokenized assets, has helped tame the ecosystem into something recognizable to regulators and governments. Once decentralized assets are wrapped in compliant instruments and offered by trusted institutions, Crypto becomes another financial product rather than a parallel system.

Governments recognize crypto’s potential for cross-border value transfer and monetary policy disruption. Rather than ban it outright (which is hard to enforce), many regimes adopt a dual strategy: regulate domestic usage tightly while investing in sovereign digital currencies and blockchain infrastructure.

This mirrors how states handled the early internet—once threatening, now integral to statecraft. Governments are unlikely to surrender control over monetary systems, and as more ordinary users adopt crypto, they do so via centralized exchanges and custodians, which are easier to regulate. What starts as anti-authoritarian often becomes institutional once it becomes too useful to ignore.

Some U.S. states and even international actors have recently proposed establishing strategic Bitcoin reserves, underscored by this co-optation trend. Originally imagined as a hedge against government overreach, Bitcoin is now being eyed by those governments as a strategic asset, akin to gold or foreign currency reserves. This shift reflects a growing recognition of Bitcoin’s geopolitical significance and marks a symbolic reversal.

What was once a tool of resistance is now being stored in state treasuries, not to empower individuals, but to shore up national balance sheets, hedge against fiat debasement, or even bolster a state’s financial sovereignty. In doing so, governments lend legitimacy to Crypto—but simultaneously assimilate it into the economic and political systems it was created to challenge. Crypto’s revolutionary promise is giving way to a more familiar reality: states are not abolishing crypto—they’re institutionalizing it, regulating it, and bending it to serve their ends.

 

Identify the Aircraft

1

747 built

 

2

246 built

 

Identify the Armor

3

 

4

Hint: Kosovo

 

Parting Shot

 

End