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The Rivalry Peril has a cover! Everything Washington has told you about great-power competition is wrong. Come January 2025, @mbrenes1 and I are gonna reveal why! #TheRivalryPeril
Van Jackson retweeted
Catnip for all the guerrilla Schumpeterians and Charles Tilly fans out there: this @peer_schouten essay in @thebafflermag on Central African supply chains, gold mining and armed groups presents an entire fiscal-cervisial theory of the modern state: thebaffler.com/salvos/the-be…
Van Jackson retweeted
Wow. While my own government detained, threatened, interrogated me on arrival from Brazil, Marco Rubio opens the doors to foreign fugitives like Flávio Bolsonaro fleeing large-scale corruption charges back at home.
Van Jackson retweeted
Is the foreign policy establishment adopting MAGA’s worldview, or is Trump adopting the Blob’s?
At CFR in March, Sebastian Gorka called a New York Times reporter "some piece of human filth." He told a Harvard Law lecturer asking about war powers, "Who's the commander in chief?" On blowback from Iran, he said you’d have to be smoking Hunter Biden’s crack pipe to worry. The moderator moved on each time.
I wrote about Trump’s Blob for @nybooks:
“Growing numbers of people face grim prospects for health, employment, affordability, and community security. That energy engorges the riot...And if no policy can remedy what makes the riot potent in the first place, then no policy will pacify.” un-diplomatic.com/p/riots-of…
BREAKING: France just offered sweeping education concessions to end weeks of student protests, and students say it’s not enough, per BBC
The government’s package:
3,000 extra substitute teachers for high-need schools and at-risk suburbs
Canceling planned teacher job cuts and adding 500 teaching jobs
Capping first-year high school classes at 28 students, starting with disadvantaged schools in 2027
Up to €4 billion ($4.5 billion) in low-interest loans to renovate schools through 2030, plus €1 billion for universities
15,000 new university places across 2027 and 2028
Raising student grants and tying them to inflation from 2027
Overhauling the Parcoursup university admissions system in 2027, then replacing it entirely in 2028
Student leaders vowed to keep protesting.
Everybody I know under the age of 50 who doesn’t own their home outright is struggling financially. And I know a lot of people
I'm in my 40s. I'm a lawyer. My wife is a lawyer. We both work full time.
We cannot afford the house my parents purchased on a single electrician's income in their 30s.
We cannot afford the house my immigrant grandparents purchased on a single MTA bus driver's salary in their 30s. They had SIX CHILDREN.
For 30 years, politicians in Washington & their oligarch allies convinced regular people that this was just about avocado toast and fancy coffee.
In reality, this is end-stage capitalism. Everyone is stuck in place. It's impossible to buy a home. It's too costly to move. We work too much to have passion projects. We don't have enough savings to start our own businesses. We can't afford to go without healthcare to do it.
Thanks for writing this article @troy_closson. Would be very happy to discuss further.
nytimes.com/2026/10/25/nyreg…
Van Jackson retweeted
Counter-take: The logic of international solidarity - that what happens in Brazil (from Amazon protection to viral pandemics) matters for what happens in the United States - has never in history been more plainly important.
Europe still demanding the leopard stop eating face
Marco Rubio still owes Europe answers about America's intentions, argues Ivan Krastev in his latest piece for @ftopinion as.ft.com/r/7b01926d-a433-48…
Van Jackson retweeted
Come work with me at RS! We're looking for an ambitious reporter who can help shine a spotlight on the forces driving the US toward endless wars. Applications are due by Nov. 13:
RS is hiring! We are looking for a gumshoe reporter who can break news and help drive the foreign-policy conversation in Washington. Apply here:
jobs.lever.co/quincyinst/d8d…
The Board of Peace is a bid to assemble an imperialist order on the bones of Palestinian dispossession. This sock puppet for capital and barbarism is either profoundly stupid or has immense contempt for the public
A better answer @MattDuss: Democrats (and Republicans) should work to fix whatever is holding back the @BoardOfPeace from doing the job the world expects of it.
For starters, you're calling them corrupt when they've spent almost no money.
There's a better way to make this work.
Foreign Affairs publishes FDD now. Disappointed, not surprised.
In a piece published in Foreign Affairs by the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Miad Maleki, suspiciously published a mere 48 hours after the U.S. blockade of Iran was imposed (and also published one within HOURS), we see the REAL goal of the United States’ economic warfare campaign against Iran:
“Within weeks of a blockade, the country could run out of food…”
“A blockade will inhibit Iranian exports of all kinds—oil being the most important, but also petrochemicals—as well as imports of much of the country’s grain.”
“Iran is the largest importer of bulk grain and oilseed in the Middle East. Approximately 14 million of the 30 million tons of grain imported into Gulf markets annually are destined for Iran—all of it seaborne and all of it dependent on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. When the strait shut, grain deliveries to Iran’s primary port, Bandar Imam Khomeini, all but stopped.”
“Pharmaceutical and medical supply chains faced similar disruptions.”
First of all, let’s take a moment to acknowledge how CLEARLY one of the primary goals of the U.S. blockade is to create food and medical supply shortages within Iran.
Secondly, let’s take a moment to acknowledge how comically STUPID the Foundation for Defense of Democracy has been throughout the ENTIRE Iran War, including the claim that “within weeks of the blockade, Iran could run out of food”…
A) You’re sick.
B) You’re stupid.
Unacceptable. NZ should not be enabling the Iran War, which is both illegal and against the interests of Kiwis. The United States is actively making the New Zealand state less accountable to its citizens rnz.co.nz/news/politics/2149…
Do you work on some aspect of international political economy? Want to live by the ocean and driving distance from Peter Jackson, James Cameron, and those Flight of the Concords guys? Shoot your shot and come work with me! jobs.ac.uk/job/DTJ580/lectur…
It’s understandable that an oligarchic political system primarily reproduces politicians who can sustain the prevailing order, but you’d think that a dialectic would take hold at some point that produces its opposite
Van Jackson retweeted
“Looting sets the price for goods at zero. That makes the riot an outlaw companion to the more respectable strike...Riot is a problem of circulation; strikes are a problem of production.” un-diplomatic.com/p/riots-of…
Van Jackson retweeted
Replying to @nick_clevelands
Never a better time to revisit our discussion of Ender’s Game on the pod (also the world of Ender was a fascist planet) open.substack.com/pub/theban…
It’s called blowback and it’s a problem directly caused by US foreign policy
🚨Scoop: U.S. intelligence finds Iran has "substantially increased" its efforts to target American diplomats & officials in the Middle East and beyond, with lethal plots reaching "advanced stages," per memo to Secretary of State Rubio. My story on @axios
axios.com/2026/10/24/iran-wa…





















