CleverOleg

Serbia and Kosovo were going at it hot and heavy

Coming at 4,000 comments like a Fattah-1 coming for Tel Aviv…

The protests were funded/organized by a Walmart heiress, a literal billionaire oligarch. If you combined all the Walton wealth they would be the wealthiest family in the world.

One of the useful things I’ve learned from MMT is that if you can actually “make stuff”, then there’s virtually no limit to what you can accomplish if you need to get something (major infrastructure, military buildup, etc) done. If you can’t, then all the money in the world won’t help.

I think the US Congress and Trump would sign off on virtually any amount of money for Israel if it needed to rebuild. While it’s the US that calls the shots in the relationship and it’s Israel that serves the US’ interest and not the other way around, I do think it’s true that Congress specifically is firmly under the Israeli thumb. Half of them are true believers, the other half are too reliant on AIPAC dollars (or at least afraid they will be the next Cori Bush or Jamaal Bowman if they cross AIPAC). $500 billion to rebuild Israel? I think I’ll have two chickens!

But that money has nowhere to go. WHO is gonna rebuild Israel? Palestinian workers? US contractors that can’t manage to build a proper little pier in Israel (and burning a mountain of cash in the process)? Will the US give billions to China to rebuild Israel? I mean, China would probably be down for that but I think the US would probably balk. That money will just get grifted away because that’s literally what happens whenever the US tries this sort of thing.

And I think if Israel (and the US) deplete their stocks in attacking Iran, they’re in for a rude awakening when it comes time to restock. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but the privatization of the US military I think is really gonna come back and haunt Cheney and Rumsfeld. Back to MMT, you need productive capacity you can bring online to churn out what you need fast. That means idle factories at times. But inserting the profit motive into your military, that occasionally idle capacity has to be eliminated in order to increase profits (and it has). So not only does the US military not have the productive capacity to restock fast, it doesn’t have the capacity to build new factories to build productive capacity. Privatization has gutted the military, and there has been be a sweet irony to all of the US’ military failures over the last 25 years that it’s the very same capitalist system that is doing this.

—❗️🇮🇱 BREAKING: Ronen Bar, head of Israel's internal intelligence organization Shin Bet, has resigned

@Middle_East_Spectator (on Telegram)

—❗️🇮🇷/🇮🇱 BREAKING: Locals report that a refinery was hit by Iranian missiles in Haifa

@Middle_East_Spectator (on Telegram)

I seem to recall the entity only has like two refineries, one is Haifa and the other on Ashdod.

Haifa getting pummeled right now.

Yep. I understand the desire to see Iran make the West pay by hitting Saudi oil fields and closing the Straight, but if we’re at that point we’re already in the götterdämmerung. It’s over. I can only see that as an Iranian response to a nuclear attack, because then the US is definitely getting involved on an offensive basis, and that becomes a real difficult spot for Iran.

I think it’s image. But for Israel, maintaining that image of invincibility is opsec

UCSD pulls out of San Diego Pride amid objections to festival headliner

UC San Diego and UC San Diego Health has announced it will not be participating in the San Diego Pride Festival this year over what it views as antisemitic statements made by Kehlani, one of the festival headliners, regarding the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The move to pull its sponsorship and opt out of the festival follows a coalition of Jewish groups and Mayor Todd Gloria, who announced earlier this month they were sitting out of this year’s celebrations in light of the Grammy-nominated singer’s comments and “safety concerns.”

In a statement earlier this week, UCSD officials described Kehlani’s views as “blatantly Antisemitic” and stressed they were making the move to “stand firm” in its commitment to supporting Jewish members of its campus community.