The incredible shrinking US President.

This all makes me wonder: is Iran also manipulating the market and profiting along the way?

US renews waiver that allowed India to buy Russian oil, two days after saying it won’t The US treasury department posted the updated license, permitting transactions involving Russian oil loaded onto vessels from that day through May 16. | World News

It is a good thing that the Indian media, at least, has started reporting US foreign policy like this, using plain language and pointing out the inconsistency and unreliability. www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/u...

Making Mutinies Great Again.

The old ways are the best, like calling it the 'Department of War,' and all its sailors getting scurvy

Grotesque: In a dispute over a will, two brothers including a retired Alabama state trooper now working at a federal courthouse, appear to have gotten their mother-in-law arrested by ICE.
Using the state to remove disfavored family members is the sort of thing that happens in totalitarian regimes.

Krastev called Orban the right-wing Castro, which I think is exactly right: the leader of a small relatively insignificant country, that nevertheless became the ideological lodestar for a global movement after being propped up by russia

And also because evidence does not simply find itself.

Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases Leaked documents show IRGC secretly acquired system and used it to guide strikes during war in March

Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite that gave the Islamic republic a powerful new capability to target US military bases across the Middle East during the recent war, according to a @financialtimes.com investigation.

www.ft.com/content/1fdd...

But of course. If you were sitting in Pyongyang and watching what's going on in the Middle East, you'd do the same.

Theologian...and just war theorist. Oh, the symbolism!

This is a pretty extraordinary thing to argue after twenty plus years of seeing supposedly liberating technologies be harnessed by authoritarians to discipline their critics and defend their power and wealth.

Just tried this...and this is exactly what happens. Sigh.

How many people have been killed in the Iran war? Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East in the Iran war, which began when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28. Those strikes triggered Iranian attacks on Israel, U.S. ba...

In 2025, Russian long range strike killed 682 Ukrainian civilians. So far this year, the US and Israel have killed 1701.
Iran source here www.reuters.com/world/middle...

There is a staggering gap between Trump’s confidence in his extraordinary talents, so that a great power’s strategy can be safely left to his mood of the moment, and the harsh reality of his limited grasp of the meaning of the events unfolding around him. As he starts from the assumption that there is none more powerful, his default tactics always involve bullying. When the targets are unresponsive all he can do is either double down, with ever more lurid threats, or else move on, as if there was never an issue, without acknowledging defeat.

@ldfreedman.bsky.social's apt assessment of how Trump's bullying leads him to fail.

samf.substack.com/p/the-causes...

If Iran saying that it does have a nuclear weapon - which it apparently doesn't (yet) - is 99% of the peace deal, Tehran will be delighted. The devil is in the details...and Trump is not a details guy. So, Iran can give him the win he wants, for no cost. www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/t...

L'Arc de Trump. Complete with Iranian-operated toll booth for all those who want to pass through it.

This looks like a set design from The Man in the High Castle.

On the condition that they rename the project the Comprehensive and Progressive GCAP?

Imagine foreign embassies in DC having to report back every day with summaries of these presidential rants. A true test for the cable writers.

This is a crucial report, shining a spotlight on the funding links between Russia, Hungary and the British mainstream right

We're calling Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz the Ayatollbooth, tell your friends

Pyrrhus coming back to Epirus after intervening in Italy and Sicily, being unable to control the Strait of Messina from the Carthaginians, and turning Rome into a regional superpower.

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

A brutal summary of where things stand, from Nancy A. Youssef. www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

*stares in Brzezinski*

If I were sitting in Tel Aviv staring down the barrel of a peace deal that involved Iran keeping its nuclear program AND taking $200m a day in tolls from Hormuz, I'd probably do my best to spoil and force the US back into the conflict. And the US should have anticipated this.

How many tanks has the Pope, asks Colby? Good grief. What an absolute shambles.

Could well be both. 🤷