Dooley Wilson

bluesman

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Anyone to the left of Paul Mason is now banned from the UK

Total occupied territory

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

⭕️ OIL: Energy markets expert Dan Dicker told Bloomberg that oil prices have remained artificially low because they are being driven by traders rather than underlying physical shortages.

🔹 Dicker said traders have repeatedly been burned after buying oil on supply concerns, only for President Donald Trump to announce prospective agreements that send prices sharply lower, even as those negotiations fail to open the Strait of Hormuz.

🔹 He warned that unless oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz resume fully and inventories are rebuilt, the physical shortage will eventually overwhelm financial markets, driving oil prices from about $75 a barrel today to $135 within a month.

[Richard @ricwe123]

Let's be honest,the Iranian delegation's performance in Switzerland was a masterclass in psychological and diplomatic leverage.
They arrived on their own terms, made the Americans wait, refused even the symbolic gesture of a handshake, held firm to their demands, and walked away the moment they usual threats from Donald Trump entered the conversation.
In doing so, they projected confidence while exposing the American desperation and weakness.

What stands out is the Persians' sophisticated understanding of symbolism and strategy.
Every move is calculated, every gesture deliberate, as though they are several moves ahead in a chess match while their counterparts is struggling to keep up.

The result is a striking contrast: Iran is composed, disciplined, and in control, while the United States is reactive and outmaneuvered.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the fact that Iran has now emerged as one of the most influential and formidable powers in the Middle East......

[Daniel Davis Deep Dive @DanielLDavis1]

Ordinarily, I would dismiss Sen Graham’s claims of retaking control of the SOH from Iran, and charging a toll as more fantasy desires, disconnected from military reality. But when he says with such confidence here that he will recommend President Trump “obliterate them “there is only one weapon system we could use to accomplish a task that size, where a country as big as western Europe can be destroyed, and that is with nuclear weapons.

We approached this point once earlier in the war, were President Trump talked about destroying Iran’s “entire civilization”, which can also only be accomplished with nuclear weapons, and one has to wonder if that thought has been resurrected.

Though let’s be clear on this too: even the use of nuclear weapons is not going to destroy the country of Iran. First of all, their underground bunkers have been designed to withstand a nuclear blast, so even though you could cause catastrophic levels of human suffering on the surface, and kill millions of Iranian people, you cannot destroy their military capacity underground.

And thus they would have a second strike capacity, even conventionally, which could devastate the globally economy for decades.

Using nuclear weapons could cause profound damage, but by itself would not destroy the country – but it may result in our own devastation, as the world almost certainly would not passively standby and let that happen.

We would be viewed as the most maniacal and immoral country on the planet, and people would compare our evil and wickedness beyond that of Hitler. Is that really what you want to become?

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

“They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was.

They knew the bright orange house in Mansouri, south Lebanon. They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon's southern coast; a sanctuary dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles and preserving life.”

Marwa Osman writes about Israel’s deliberate targeting of a prominent environmental activist in Lebanon. ⬇️

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Eric Schmidt saying the quiet part out loud: "What I don't like about [China's AI] is that it's all open source which means it's largely uncontrolled and not controlled in any way by us."

He adds, "if that makes you feel any better," that only 2 or 3 countries can be independent AI powers.

In other words, it's all about hegemony: the ideal scenario is a world where AI is controlled by the US - and the fewer countries that can resist that, the better.

Src for the video: https://t.co/Gk5iAMtBqa

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Not joking but @elonmusk should have to pay for this right?

You broke it, why do we all have to pay for it?

[Daniel Davis Deep Dive @DanielLDavis1]

Cut the crap, Mr. Secretary. This is beneath what used to b the reputation of the State Department. This isn’t about you discovering communist elites are suddenly “weaponizing” anything.

This is a nearly naked attempt to deceive the American people *yet again* into believing that we “have to” go to war with Cuba.

It is an egregious and immoral use of power to crush this tiny island that is a threat to no one, most especially the United States of America.

If you are going to b an imperial power to simply take what you want, and kill anyone who gets in ur way, at least have the guts to say so, instead of this humiliating effort at pretending this has anything to do w caring for others or protecting our country.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

If you read one article today, it should be former CIA analyst Paul Pillar’s alarm bell of how the Senate wants to force the US to share sensitive intel with Israel at the expense of the US itself.

“In intelligence, Israel is more of an adversary than an ally. Being an adversary in intelligence means indulging in the hostile act of espionage. Israel has a long record of conducting that type of hostile act against the United States.”

https://t.co/KpdR33YrTw

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The planet's most fanatical Israel loyalists now own and control (or are about to) Paramount, CBS, TikTok, Warner Brothers, CNN: all acquired in the last two years by Netanyahu's close friend, Larry Ellison, right as public support for Israel in the US and the west collapses:

[Paweł Wargan @pawelwargan]

There is nothing surprising about this. As imperialist hegemony weakens and its ability to sabotage sovereign development diminishes, the inherent superiority of socialism as a development model will become increasingly clear to all. This is one symptom of the emerging polycentric world — and part of the long systemic transition from capitalism to socialism.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Pentagon DIA says Israel has ramped up spying on US officials since Trump showed interest in a deal with Iran

Israeli human espionage and technical collection is at a ”critical level,” the DIA states

Israel placed Stingray spy devices throughout the White House during the first Trump term

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

Claudia Sheinbaum has approval ratings of between 70 and 80%, thanks to her progressive policies which have lifted over 8 million people out of poverty.

So of course the @NYTimes finds some reason to attack her.

They hate her because she shows what can be done.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's wild to watch MAGA now sound exactly like Rachel Maddow and Adam Schiff when talking about RUSSIA.

Russian civilization has produced remarkable works of literature, science, religion, architecture, politics. It's fascinating to visit. Talking to Russians is not sinister.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

The Atlantic is hysterical because China refused to become the economy the West wanted:
cheap labor forever,
low-end factories forever,
a consumer market for Western brands forever,
and never a serious industrial competitor.

Now China makes EVs, solar panels, steel, machinery, robots, and advanced manufacturing products at scale — and suddenly affordable goods are a “global threat.”

Please.

The West subsidizes banks and calls it stability.
Subsidizes weapons and calls it security.
Subsidizes farmers and calls it protection.
Subsidizes chips and calls it strategy.

But when China supports real industries that produce real goods for real people, it becomes “distortion.”

So no.

China is not taking everyone down.

China is exposing how little the West has left once cheap moral lectures stop working.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This shows that Germany obviously still doesn't get it: their "historical responsibility" isn't to support Israel even as they commit genocide.

When the lesson of Nazism is obviously a universal one about justice, they instead think it's a blood debt to a particular people.

Which is, when you think about it, the Nazi way of looking at it: hierarchizing peoples and assigning collective responsibility - or collective impunity - on that basis.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

"Save" Cuba from what? Free education and healthcare?

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Let's talk about "unalienable rights of free expression and peaceful assembly."

In 2023 and 2024, pro-Palestinian protests were banned, dispersed, or criminalized in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and across multiple American university campuses.

Students were arrested. Professors lost jobs. People were fired for social media posts.

In Germany, even displaying a watermelon emoji was treated as a potential criminal offense in some contexts.

This happened in the Western democracies that hold Tiananmen as a symbol of the cost of suppressing free expression.

The same governments posting Tiananmen commemorations were simultaneously deploying riot police against students holding vigils for children being killed in real time.

You can hold both of these things as wrong simultaneously.

Or you can keep posting about unalienable rights while your governments demonstrate, in the present tense, exactly which populations those rights are designed to protect.

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

There is a strange development in which academics of international politics are expected to publicly condemn adversarial countries before they are allowed to participate in public discourse. The complexity of international politics is reduced to a moral question of good versus evil, and academics must make moral declarations before even discussing facts, history, strategy, and interpretations. Academics should explain why states behave as they do; they are not moral validators.

What value does it bring to an analysis if the analyst "condemns" one side? After Russia invaded Ukraine, the former Norwegian foreign minister actually argued that "this is not the time to understand, but to condemn". This ridiculous position is pushed on academics. However, understanding is not endorsement, explanation is not advocacy, and ignorance is not strength. I argue it is in Russia's security interest to push NATO away from its borders, it is in Iran's interest to control the Strait of Hormuz, and it is in China's interest to create a new international economic architecture. This is not advocacy, nor is it a normative position about how the world should work; rather, it is a recognition of how the world actually works.

An academic should examine interests, capabilities, and strategic calculations that produce such policies—not participate in ritualised declarations of virtue that contribute absolutely nothing. Furthermore, moralism and condemnation often lead to a lack of understanding and increased conflict. When the conclusion is always that the good guys are confronting the bad guys, then the solution is always "peace through strength", "weapons are the path to peace", and defeating the latest reincarnation of Hitler. If you want war, condemn the other side as pure evil. If you want peace, the first step is to understand the other side.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives.

These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become.

You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity.

Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on.

So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (https://t.co/mNpCMudYyS).

First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export.

By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity."

I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (https://t.co/TcwEBoL8mD), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity."

Utterly ridiculous.

And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity."

In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market.

Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become.

Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️

Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": https://t.co/SvPKFyN0zo).

This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU.

It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve.

Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive.

The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition...

Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh!

What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree.

What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence.

No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening.

But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...