europeans when asked to help unblock the strait of hormuz
the national-security clean-energy messaging just echoes the rhetorical tropes of petro-authoritarianism (hard borders, nationalism, military power) and promises to deliver it with other means.
This actually reinforces the power of clean-energy's political opponents, by valuing their goals.
2/n
As much as I love all the discourse about clean energy enabling "energy security," "energy independence," "national autonomy," etc, I think also that this language worryingly remains in the right-wing frame of facing military & economic threats.
And that makes this messaging weak, because...
1/n
It's almost like there's a reason why no administration has been stupid enough to go to war with Iran up until now
Trump: "Who are you with?"
"BBC News."
Trump, confusing the organizations: "ABC News is one of the worst, most fake, most corrupt, it's maybe the most corrupt on the planet."
Sad to see the Ides of March becoming commercialised like this. I really feel like we're losing track of the true spirit of the holiday. It's not about how many knives you can stick in a tyrant all at once, it's about the whole community coming together to stab the tyrant as many times as possible.
"Brian Stelter posted a December 9, 2017, quote from the New York Times:
"Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals."
Stelter wrote: “I think about this quote a lot.” "
This is a performative war of macho posturing by third rate figures who mistake the audience of social media and right wing cable TV for the gravitas (?) of diplomacy and foreign policy. It would be comic if it was not so painfully tragic.
100% this
i don’t know exactly how to articulate it but like, we’re absolutely at war yet it doesn’t feel like it because the people leading it are so fucking stupid so the typical climate of seriousness is missing? if that makes sense?
“‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein said. “You lose it through countless small little acts of complicity." ”In the name of our future, & the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” Pavel Talankin, film co-director.
apnews.com/article/best...
Today's Trade Secrets. As he promised, Trump is rebuilding his tariff wall after the Supreme Court demolished the last one. As we expected, he's starting investigations into unfair trade among trading partners which are as likely to end in acquittals as were Stalin's show trials. ALSO: re Iran...1/2
I really don't understand why non standard genders make people - specifically governments - so twitchy. Like, recognising them would make literally no difference to anyone else. Nothing would change, apart from a whole load of people would get to feel included with the rest of society. So weird.
I gotta say, I think turning everything into gambling is already ushering in more corruption and violence in ways that were entirely predictable but will make *everything* worse
This Weeks Reminder That Somewhere in Us, the Light Remains
open.substack.com/pub/marygedd...
Kushner breaks pledge, seeks $5 billion more from foreign governments
open.substack.com/pub/populari...
economy expert here. markets only do this when they're in extreme distress
Uh. What?
One of the seminal figures in the decline of the United States, the man who made extreme partisanship the standard for our governance, now has some thoughts on how the world should end.
“Over the weekend, Donald Trump and top US officials spent much of their time begging American allies (and also Trump’s good pal Xi in China) to bail him out of the economic fiasco he created with his illegal war.
The amount of begging was jarring and unbecoming, even for them.”
A point we make in this story is trump and his ruling party and minions like Vance, Miller, Hegseth, Rubio et al spent more than a year doing the most cartoonish form of being a dick to key allies and others as possible— tariffing insanely, threatening to invade a NATO ally for no reason, and…
but the book itself is highly readable, if memory serves, and in any case is worth your time. a Bookshop link:
bookshop.org/p/books/hitl...
for a shorter read that provides a tidy and clear representation of Whitman's legal history, you can check out Rebecca Brenner Graham's write-up for AAIHS:
www.aaihs.org/how-american...
Crazy crazy story. Times of Israel reporter ( English language Israeli news site ) gets escalating death threats to change story that’s at center of big polymarket bet. www.timesofisrael.com/gamblers-try...
Chump Manchin Feels Flim Flammed After Cornyn's Predictable Filibuster Flip Flop
open.substack.com/pub/ser1897/...
They are going to test the limits of what people are willing to sign onto to avoid cognitive dissonance.
It would be an interesting psychological experiment if it wasn’t also an existential crisis.
I am not arguing this is the worst or bloodiest war we’ve ever had. I’m very narrowly stating that it’s the worst run
Weird because they got rid of all the dei hires right? It couldn’t be that anti dei politics was simply white identity politics intended to preserve racial and gender hierarchy regardless of merit bsky.app/profile/swin...
it’s always two bitches telling each other exactlyyy
