Israeli settlers are to the IDF what Basij are to the IRGC.
What US Congress Doing?
I mean, my understanding was that the US was a constitutional republic with sophisticated, tripartite system structured around the principle of checks and balances, established by the 1789 Constitution to prevent any branch of the government - executive, legislative, or judicial - from becoming overly powerful.
Yet all recent US policy decisions seem based on the whims of its increasingly demented president, and his small clique of sycophants.
Revolting statement. This is not normal behaviour by a head of state.
Harvard has ~20% Jewish undergraduate students, many Jewish staff and the current president is Jewish. Claiming Harvard is institutionally antisemitic strikes me as unreasonable.
What this lawsuit will achieve though, is to fuel the perception that Jews are being unfairly favoured over other ethnicities / religions, which in turn will feed antisemitism.
More evidence Netanyahu is dead and has been replaced by an AI droid. The real Netanyahu was far too slick to make such a blunder when messaging the West ...
Assassinating heads of state has been taboo since at least the Treaty of Westphalia. There are a number of very practical reasons it's a very bad idea. For one, it makes it near impossible for states to negotiate. It also galvanizes public opinion (in places such as Iran) behind the regime. It's seen as an attack on the whole people.
How are they spreading disinformation?
A photo update on Tiny, Sniffy, Pookie and Wolfie.
I suspect this post has been largely misunderstood. To clarify, I still believe in the values of the West, the enlightenment, democracy and human rights, and I feel so disappointed right now, by the supine governments in Europe and the inane administration in the US, unwilling and unable to rein in the current psychotic regime in Israel.
This is performative nonsense aimed at Western audiences. Those daily pogroms in the West Bank wouldn't happen without the support of the IDF
Trump is planning to send Netanyahu a strongly worded cheque ...
If only Trump had a say ...
The world's on fire. Millions of people got displaced in the Middle East. Iran's getting bombed back into the preindustrial era, and as it lashes out again its neighbours, the global economy is getting obliterated.
Meanwhile, North London is in the throes of the most bizarre "pastry war".
Very, very bad news.
As I wrote in Material World, Ras Laffan is one of the most important industrial sites not just in the Gulf but in the world. LNG, helium, other products. Massive.
Whatever happens next, serious damage to this site could reverberate for months, maybe years.
You may complain about it, but this is obviously correct. I think the preferences of Israelis are psychotic, but it's their preferences and, given those preferences, what is bad for other people is good for them.
For instance, to the extent that Israeli actions make it harder for Trump to find an off-ramp, this is bad for the US and the rest of the world because it means the economic fallout will be worse, but it's good for Israel because it means that Iran will be wrecked even more. They will also suffer economically but think it's worth it.
The only risk for Israel is that, if shit really hit the fan and the war results in a global economic meltdown, a future US administration will prevent them from "mowing the lawn" again to prevent that from happening again, which incidentally gives them even stronger incentives to drag the war out and collapse the regime if they can.
There is also a risk that, beyond the question of Israel's freedom of action toward Iran specifically, Americans will get tired of constantly being wrapped up in Israel's affairs and it will destroy the "special relationship", but rightly or wrongly the Israelis assume that it's just a matter of time before this happens anyway.
Surprisingly strongly worded article in the Guardian condemning the latest assault on Lebanon by Israel - quite an outlier in the meek and supine Western media.
IMPEACHMENT ODDS CLIMB TO 72%
Prediction market data shows the probability of Donald Trump being impeached before 2028 has risen to 72%, trending steadily higher in recent months.
https://kalshi.com/markets/kximpeach/president-impeached/kximpeach?utm_source=walterbloomberg
Donald Trump is easily the worst president for free speech in modern U.S. history, and now there's data to prove it.
South Carolina must be a weird place ...
No love lost for the Basij but the Israelis are exhibiting absolutely zero care in their strikes in Tehran. They are bombing checkpoints in the middle of the busy street. This will be killing and wounding civilians. It is the same permissiveness towards civilian casualties as seen in Gaza. Reprehensible targeting strategy. You can see probable civilian casualties in this footage alone and it’s just what the IDF has released.
The problem with AI videos having become largely undistinguishable from genuine ones, is not so much the circulation of fake evidence, but that all genuine filmed evidence will be dismissed unless it supports peoples' presumptions.
We are moving fast from a post-truth, to a post-evidence, world ...
For my entire life, I believed in the values of the West, the enlightenment, democracy and human rights, and I feel so disappointed right now.
Well that doesn’t mean anything — this is pretty much all of the military infrastructure on Kharg.
I wished Europe grew a spine. The attempts by the UK (and other governments in Europe) of trying to politically disengage themselves from the Israel/US special operation in Iran, and yet facilitating it, feels untenable.
One of the most damaging consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement was the collapse of the political camp in Iran that supported engagement with the West.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was never an enthusiastic supporter of the deal. In contrast, President Hassan Rouhani consistently advocated for it and ultimately managed—despite resistance from hardline factions, to persuade Khamenei to allow the agreement to move forward.
Even at the time, opponents of the deal within Iran warned that the United States would eventually abandon the agreement and betray Iran.
The success of the nuclear negotiations became Rouhani’s most important political achievement. Riding on that success, he won reelection in 2017, defeating Ebrahim Raisi and benefiting from widespread public hopes in Iran for gradual change in the country’s relationship with the world and for economic improvement.
The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement severely undermined the political standing of Iran’s moderate and pragmatic camp. It validated the arguments of hardliners who had long claimed that the United States could not be trusted, weakening those in Iran who advocated engagement with the West.
Today, as Iran faces heightened security pressures and the possibility of war, the environment in which leadership emerges is very different. Rather than leaders shaped by diplomacy and engagement with the international community, the political system is increasingly likely to elevate figures rooted in the security establishment and confrontation with the West.
Had the nuclear agreement remained in place, the pool of viable leadership candidates in Iran might have looked very different.
#iran
Children across the world DIED and are DYING STILL because men like this were reckless, dumb, and drunk on power.
Israel are murdering faculty, again.
Yes, tragic and heartbreaking. But you don't have to be a defender of the Iranian regime to not blatantly lie.
The school was struck in the opening minutes of the war. Saturday is a school day in Iran, as Friday is the Muslim Sabbath. School starts at 7:30 am, and the first bombs and missiles began falling around 10am local time.
So children were in classes and the regime had no warning or even expectation that the war was imminent. (All schools closed immediately after.) The government was even planning to send a technical team to Vienna on the following Monday to continue nuclear talks.
It is now clear that the attack on the school wasn't even an accident of war; it was a mistake, yes, but not collateral damage. It was a deliberate strike because of faulty information and planning.
To suggest that the tragic and heartbreaking death of schoolgirls was the result of Iran placing them in harms way, or using them as human shields, is despicable.
I've been wondering whether the ongoing Iran clusterfuck is not partly a consequence of the backlash against woke, and the rejection of 'empathy' as a weak, effeminate, or suicidal trait. Empathy is not just being 'nice', it is also being able to understand our enemies' emotions, motives and perspectives, and acting accordingly.
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
R to @BallouxFrancois: Point in case. It pains me that I agree with Araghchi. In addition to the firehose of falsehood corroding the West's democracies, it is also self-defeating.
5/
R to @BallouxFrancois: It remains that this constant firehose of falsehood is eroding our democratic institution. Without, a modicum of respect for objective facts and the truth, democracy eventually dies.
4/
R to @BallouxFrancois: Obviously, a major difference with totalitarian regimes, such as Iran or Russia is that we are free to call out and challenge any claim we believe to be false - I don't worry about getting a knock on the door by the police for this thread.
3/
R to @BallouxFrancois: Morality and legitimacy of the Iran war aside, I find it unsettling that our (i.e., the West's) propaganda is more deceitful, misleading, and full of blatant lies than that of the Iranian regime.
1/