Nils Gilman

To make this relatable for geographically challenged Americans, think of it this way: in terms of population & total geographic area, Iran = California+Texas+Pennsylvania+Ohio

Beijing Doesn’t Think Like Washington—and the Iran Conflict Shows Why Arguing that Chinese policy is hung on alliances—with imputations of obligation—misses the point.

“Too many Western strategists expect China to behave like the U.S. — and then when China does not behave like the U.S., they conclude that it is a strategic failure rather than a deliberate choice, and that a chastened China has been put back on its heels." carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202...

Slight tweak: SCOTUS should be expanded to 17 justices, with 17 year term limits, one appointment per year—that way no single president can appoint a majority to the court.

(Also: if a justice departs before end of term, the remaining justices appoint a sitting federal judge to complete the term.)

Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher Nick Land believes that digital superintelligence is going to kill us all. In San Francisco, his followers ask: What if, instead of trying to stop an A.I. takeover, you work to bring it on as fast as ...

Nick Land is to Curtis Yarvin is to Peter Thiel
as
GWF Hegel is to Nikolai Bukharin is to Stalin

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Not sure I agree. The revealed Israeli preference is to turn Iran into a post-Qaddafi-Libya-style failed state. If that’s the goal, then the continued assassination of any and all leaderships has a logic to it.

I mean when has a hopeful moment of popular uprising against a despised regime ever given way to a new revolutionary government that came to be just as corrupt and repressive and sclerotic as the one it replaced. Certainly never before in Iran.

This is why the fight over who is responsible for what happened on January 6th is so crucial.

we appear to have four competing fascist movements jockeying for control: blood & soil nazism under miller and hegseth, darwinian ecofascism from rfk, technofascism under vance and musk, and one Big Wet Hitler who understands the true animating core of the american volk is a deep love for shopping

Beijing spins its narrative of history in today's Hong Kong Museum exhibit extols suppression of 2019 protests, celebrates National Security Law

“A basic divide between the two main ways that authoritarian governments manage the challenges posed by memories of popular protests and violent crackdowns: they have to choose between denying that anything happened at all — or seeking to co-opt the narrative.”
asia.nikkei.com/opinion/beij...

Me neither, but it's the standard against which any future democratic restoration must be measured. We don't let bank robbers keep their loot, and political criminals should be treated the same way.

To repeat: analyses of the decision to go to war that tries to explain it in terms of some national "strategy" are making a category error.

The real motives behind what he is doing are *entirely* about domestic politics (justifying authoritarian takeover) and grifting opportunities for him'n'his.

I had an excellent conversation with Joe Waters of the Per Capita podcast, about the stringent art of thinking rigorously about the future www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1X...

They are planning it out in the open

Everything You Need to Know About the Future of Iran Time to look around some corners.

“The animating idea of liberal democracy is that you put up with a lot of inefficiency because it makes the overall system more robust [&] more free. Up until this year, Americans preferred liberty to executive efficiency. But we’re clearly past that as a society.”
www.thebulwark.com/p/everything...

Restoring democracy requires that all this ill-gotten lucre be clawed back and those responsible for these schemes be sent to jail.

Kash Patel’s latest firings ousted agents with expertise in Iran The FBI director gutted a specialized, global espionage unit of counterintelligence agents, just days before Operation Epic Fury.

Saddam Hussein used to test the loyalty of his minions by sending agents of the Mukhābarāt to a general’s house in the middle of the night; they’d enter his bedroom, hold a gun to his head, and ask, “We’ve begun the uprising against Saddam: are you with us or against us?!”
www.ms.now/news/kash-pa...

Some leads x.com/cryptorugmun...

The dumbest thing about this is that the most plausible explanation for what's going on is something like that his double-cut-out hedge fund in the Caymans radically shorted the oil markets.

Pity the future historian or game theorist tasked with making sense of the "strategic logic" behind this.

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Kafka understood that an even greater indignity than being turned into a giant insect was still being required to go to work afterward.

Cui bono? tradingeconomics.com/commodities

“Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear…” is the new “developers, developers, developers….”

Yes the latter is certainly true

I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.

the bombings will continue until peace improves

He did attack Libya

The cynical view is “there’s always a tweet” or “every accusation is a confession.”

But the deeper view is that structural imperatives of the office create a logic that extends beyond any occupant.

Bombing Iran Is Easy. What Comes Next Is Not. It comes down to a straightforward question: What’s the plan to translate military force into political change?

"There is a persistent belief in Washington that enough explosions will cause the Iranian people to rise up against their government. History suggests otherwise... A regime-change strategy without a phased-action plan is not a strategy at all."

@markhertling.bsky.social warns about what comes next.

Weird use of the passive voice by a supposedly sovereign state

Democrats should say that Trump’s attacks on Iran are unconstitutional.

The American people do not want a war in Iran. The Congress did not authorize a war in Iran. It is an entirely illegitimate action that has no legal or constitutional basis. It is the act of a lawless regime.