Donald Trump is a man who lives by a singular philosophy: “Aaj kuchh tufani karte hain” (Let’s do something daredevil today).But sadly, his deep desire to be disruptive is completely at odds with what the world actually needs. Today, the entire planet is paying a steep price for his almost orgasmic fixation on…
Read the note →Russia is not running out of new soldiers to send to the meat grinders in Ukraine: The main sources of data on new recruits signing up are federal and regional budget spending reports, which include a separate section on bonuses paid for signing military contracts. The sizes of the bonuses paid at both the federal and…
Read the note →Brilliant piece by Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi:
In a farcical re-enactment of the Iraq War script, we were told that the Islamic Republic would collapse like a house of cards. But unlike in 2003, there has been little attempt to persuade the wider world, or even the US Congress. The rhetorical labour that accompanied the invasion of Iraq, however flawed or dishonest, has largely been abandoned. Even senior US military officials have struggled to explain how the campaign’s objectives would be achieved swiftly or decisively. The assumption of inevitability has replaced the burden of argument.
The absence of justification is not incidental. It is a morbid symptom of an international system in crisis. The certainties of the United States’ hegemonic stewardship of the ‘international rules-based order’ have been deformed beyond recognition by the Gaza genocide, but no alternative architecture has cohered in their place. Instead there is a politics of gangster imperialism that has neither international nor domestic consent.
Brilliant editorial analyzing the pathetic nature of American actions in Iran through the lens of Simone Weil’s prophetic writing.
Read the note →💯 China is quite aggressive and territorially self-aggrandising in its immediate backyard, but restrained beyond. Even occasional border skirmishes with India are basically fought with sticks and stones. Outside of the military build up triggered by the US during MAGA 1.0, China is not interested in projecting power…
Read the note →We don’t give a shit about anything anymore because we are bored, distracted and getting dumber by the second in the flickering shadow of the screen.
Read the note →Nic guide on navigating geopolitical volatility by Joachim Klement.
Read the note →What the Epstein saga exposes.
Read the note →Things are so good that we can’t bear it.
Read the note →The reason could be that when you are powerful, people take note only when that power falters. The world was hardly impressed when Trump went on his tariff rampage; what struck people was when China successfully fought back. America demonstrated stunning military power in Venezuela but it was also expected; what people have noticed is Russia’s military failure in Ukraine.
People also notice who envies whom. And it is no secret that Trump envies China; and that to his chagrin the envy goes unrequited. The US president fantasises about the scope of China’s industrial power, so much that he now practices state capitalism Chinese-style. It is as if Trump has lost trust in his country’s political and economic system. As the saying goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and now it is Washington imitating Beijing.
Hamilton Nolan on Trump’s attack on Venezuela: For those of us interested in reality, the question becomes: Might there be some downsides of kidnapping the president of a sovereign nation, because he is not sufficiently in America’s pocket? One thing we have done is to supercharge the urgency of almost all smaller…
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