Rob Shum

Of course, it always has been, for poor Iran.

It really is quite bad that there are *still* no consequences to epistemic suicide.

International affairs characterized by a revolving door of assassinations, decapitations, and extractions.

Welcome to the Age of Neofeudalism.

👇 🎯 (7/n)

🇮🇷 🗺️ (6/n)

The new version of Augustine’s prayer: Please God, make me transition, just not yet.

Forget it, Sammy: It’s Kodak-town. 🔌💡

Management of an obsolescing but highly-profitable analog technology will never cannibalize existing profit streams — they’ll fund R&D and even develop an impressive portfolio of patents in the obviously ascendant digital tech, but then sit on it.

OTOH… (5/n)

More depressingly: Do present-day institutions actively favor & incentivize bandwagoning over balancing?

Or, in other words: Cheer up, Middle Powers — you always have “The Mussolini Option”!

It’s a Post-San-Franciscan / Neo-Westphalian international system now.

We live in an empire of informational isolation.

Moving the Overton Window? It’s been completely bricked up at this point.

Everyone in the Gulf will have always been against this. (4/n)

So… the only scenario where being an ally of the US might be helpful is when you want to attack an ally of China?

Much blood and treasure will be lost.

But not by makers of EVs. 🔌💡

Well fuck, if this doesn't change then you can kiss reasonably priced energy goodbye.
#EconSky #EnergySky

"No new wars" really just meant "f*ck Ukraine" and everyone knew it.

“Rules-based international order” was a typo. We really meant “RULER-based-international-DISorder.”

Re: Snyder’s corruption point, there is 👇.

Organized support from the Gulf hardly likely seems, even if some excitable desert hawks have guzzled enough energy drinks to sheer on the bombing during these early hours.

The enabling of domestic authoritarianism is still what worries me most. (3/n)

My “many people,” I of course mean Netanyahu above all.

There are many people to blame, but the main culprit is still your neighbor/uncle/they/them/whatever who watches Fox News. 🗺️

“… The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. …”

“… The presumption created by the surrounding evidence is that this war could very well be about (1) subverting US democracy, (2) enriching the president, or both. …”

Carney and Albanese praised US/Israeli strikes. Starmer, Macron and Merz condemned only Iranian retaliatory strikes. in the last quarter century the west has moved from preemptive war on the pretense that a country *has* weapons of mass destruction to preemptive war on the basis of aspirations

If I was the UAE I'd want my Board of Peace membership fee back.

Havel’s grocer putting the sign back on the window, it seems.

Trump targets SCOTUS for stochastic terror He knew what he was doing by bringing up justices' families.

"It is now simply a standard, often unmentioned part of our politics that those who the president dislikes, within his own party or outside it, will be the target of stochastic terror."

Pakistan Declares ‘Open War’ With Afghanistan After Cross-Border Attacks ‘Patience has run out’ over Taliban attacks, Pakistan defense minister says.

Breaking: Pakistan’s defense minister declared his country is at “open war” with Afghanistan, following what he said was a series of cross-border attacks.

Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data A court on Thursday issued an opinion on a data-sharing agreement between the taxpayer agency and federal immigration authorities.

Breaking news: A federal judge found that the IRS violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.