2rafa
3hr ago
You’re making my point. The leaders of those countries are still nominally members of the state church (or indeed head of it).
Now imagine, say, the president of Germany announces he’s converting to the Anglican Church. That’s interesting. That’s unusual. That suggests a much more genuine belief than King Charles formally being an Anglican.
2rafa
15hr ago
Every Catholic monarch of a Catholic state is Catholic by definition. If you’re the next Crown Prince of Liechtenstein, a devoutly (and officially) Catholic country ruled by a Catholic monarch, you can’t really abandon Catholicism, which both your people believe in and which forms the spiritual justification for your rule. If you’re an atheist you can break the rules but you have to keep your beliefs to yourself.
A religious Catholic by choice in a non-Catholic land is already signalling much more devotion to Rome and to the Pope than someone who doesn’t really have a choice. They are more likely to actually believe. The threat of eternal damnation carries more weight.
2rafa
15hr ago
There are many Americans (including those of non-Mexican descent) who retire in Mexican resort towns, sure. That’s a very different visa class and lifestyle to working a regular job in Mexico.
The same is true even with less economic inequality in Europe. Spain is full of English and German retirees, but barring a few senior corporate executives at Inditex or Santander the only non-Spanish speaking English and Germans who work there are a small number of low pay service workers whose jobs are catering to their own nationality’s tourists and retirees.
2rafa
16hr ago
I don’t think it’s very common for even the tiny minority of successful retail traders to join a professional fund, the approach to risk management alone would make that a compliance challenge at the best of times. It has happened, but far more common is what Jane Street, Two Sigma etc do (as far as I know) where they pay savants for trade ideas directly. There are quite a few basement dweller math geniuses who make a living that way.
“Trump doesn’t need Congress to pass a bill to stop bombing Iran, just like he didn’t need Congress to pass a bill to start it”
2rafa
1d ago
“The President launched a disastrous war that he lost, and now to save face wants to claim victory by signing a far worse version of the deal we negotiated under Obama, and which he left and rejected. The Iranians know the Democrats actually stand by their word, so when we come back to power, we’ll negotiate a better deal ourselves” is a powerful argument and certainly doesn’t make it look like like they co-own the war, which Trump would claim either way if necessary. By the way, this works even if they agree to the same deal later on - there’s no game theoretical reason for the Dems to agree.
2rafa
1d ago
For the Saudis the pipeline would transit only Jordan and Syria, both effective Arab client states. For the UAE and other GCC nations the pipelines would transit Saudi Arabia, which is more contentious.
There is no doubt this is a victory for Iran. No regime change, nuclear development will continue unabated and, most importantly, an aesthetic and propaganda victory for the Islamic Republic. US sanctions relief will be limited and the Iranians know it, although the wildcard there is whether the Europeans agree to some of it in a political deal.
In the long term, I think this is more mixed for Iran than many realize. The infrastructure destruction has been extensive. As oil prices come down again, a boom in oil revenue will be temporary. Iran is extraordinarily corrupt, and that includes the IRGC; those $2m shipping tolls are unlikely to fund necessary reconstruction and might not even fund weapons purchases after the relevant figures have taken their cut.
Much of Iran’s non-oil export industry, especially around chemical, medicine and some industrial manufacturing and export, has been destroyed. If oil returns to $65 a barrel it’s unclear how fast that can be rebuilt, especially if the IRGC, now firmly in charge, channels as much as possible toward rearming and the nuclear program. The civilian infrastructure destroyed is extensive, and public anger will mount further if much of it goes unfixed while the IRGC spends all it can on munitions and drones.
Eventually, as humiliating a defeat as this is for Trump (not that he cares, and not that he will pay for it) in objective terms, it might herald the end of the Islamic Republic, some years from now.
2rafa
1d ago
Isn’t Congress required to lift most sanctions against Iran? Most Democrats are still broadly anti-Iran and won’t want to give Trump a win, and many Republicans are hardliners, why would they vote for sanctions relief?
2rafa
5d ago
The question is whether this makes a withdrawal more or less likely. Under most presidents, I’d say less, but under Trump, I think perhaps more.
My read on the strikes over the last two days is they’ve been purely aimed at destroying expensive infrastructure to cause economic chaos after a withdrawal that might, hopefully presumably, create space for some kind of popular uprising. Destroying it to make rebuilding armories more expensive doesn’t make sense, since the IRGC will always prioritize that over civilian infrastructure.
2rafa
5d ago
As I understand it the liberal justice clerkships are much, much more competitive than the conservative ones, so some ambitious students do swap sides for their own gain. But the overall pool or spaces is so low that even among the best ‘conservative’ (real or fake) HYS law students (or even just Yale ones, as I understand that’s the best) the odds are still slim.
It’s possible Russia has some leverage over Iran or could at least stop sharing intelligence and targeting data with them. As to what Trump could do, unsanction Russia, which is worth more than any weapons shipment.
2rafa
5d ago
The real ‘rogue trade’ option here would be - given Russia is now suffering very badly from Ukrainian strikes against its oil and gas infrastructure - for Trump to ‘trade’ Ukraine for Iran.
The oil point has arguably been widely known since the 70s and the rare earth point was kind of made during the China tariff news phase last year.
Colonial wars can never be fought against zealots. You can fight them against fat local elites who value their lives and wealth and local fiefdoms over the cause, because eventually they will sue for peace or flee. But you cannot fight them successfully against those truly, strongly motivated by an ideology. The US has never been willing to pay the required price to overthrow the Islamic Revolution since 1979, and that is as true today as it was then and as it has been throughout the period between the two.
Against true believers, only total war works. In very, very limited cases (like the Boer War) an extraordinarily capable colonial power can win these, although they require extraordinarily disproportionate resources and are often not worth it even when attempted.
My guess is option 2, framed around a negotiated ‘ceasefire’. Netanyahu said this week that Iran is no longer an existential threat to Israel. That is obviously a lie, the highly enriched uranium they already have hasn’t even been confiscated, the regime is still in place and angrier, etc.
So why make that statement? The only reason you make it is to set up a US withdrawal that isn’t yours choice as something you acquiesce to. The Israel Hezbollah war will continue, and for that reason Iran will likely continue to fire missiles at Israel and vice versa, but the intensity will probably slow down.
Iran will control the strait and it will have nuclear weapons within five years. It may extract tolls from some vessels, although I have my doubts that revenue will flow to the Iranian treasury. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs will likely build more pipelines, maybe even north through Jordan and Syria to the Mediterranean. The US will be humiliated, especially once the damage to the evacuated bases becomes clear. The GCC nations, especially the weakest, closest US allies and most vulnerable to Iran like Bahrain and Kuwait will probably sign punitive peace deals with the Iranians. So might Saudi. Behind the scenes they will put a lot into air defense.
Oil prices will slowly come down. Trump will claim he killed the Ayatollah and taught the Iranians a lesson they won’t forget, and the navigation issue is for the locals who use the oil to figure out. Nobody in America cares much about the SoH. His base will believe him. Trump has extraordinary political instincts and few personal principles. A steady flow of US deaths in a long war is poison for the same reason that allowing the Pro-Life lobby to try to force a nationwide abortion ban or heavy limits on congress would be political poison when leaving it to the states washes his hands of the issue entirely.
Or put it this way - Trump chickened out of tariffs that would have been far less damaging to him than 10,000 American military deaths in a full or even partial invasion. Why would he TACO the former but not the latter?
Allegations about Melania were printed in the Daily Mail and subsequently retracted in early 2017, with the newspaper agreeing to a $3m settlement.
As for the Epstein thing referenced here, my opinion is that I think most of what he was reported to have said by the Daily Beast is probably true, but it doesn’t implicate him in anything illegal. He’s a serial philanderer (publicly known). He cheated on Melania (publicly known). He fucked his friends wives after an elaborate, somewhat camp showmanship scheme that involved sending them recordings of their husbands admitting to cheating on them? Yeah, that’s believable.
But it tells you something that it is, while the “pee tape” isn’t really. Not because Trump wouldn’t have sex with an escort in a Russian hotel room, but because wanting to be peed on is a weird fetish thing, and for the kind of person who whose idea of good sex is fucking his friends’ wives to get off on being ‘the man’, that is the fetish, the woman and what you do with or to her or what she does to you aren’t, except in the most perfunctory way to say that you did. Okay, I’m explaining this badly, but I mean that this is someone for whom sex is about what it means, about power, about who and whom. What simply isn’t important to that kind of thing.
More options
Context Copy link