"The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip...we'll own it.” So said President Donald Trump, reading from a prepared statement with a smirking Benjamin Netanyahu.
"A big beautiful wall, and we'll make the Mexicans pay for it"
Captain Bullshit rides again.
He likes stirring up crap, constantly, to distract everybody from whatever else he's doing - or not doing. He wants every conversation to be about him - that's the Alpha and Omega of him, not as a persona slight I mean, but as his entire business model and raison d'etre. He's like the humanoid version of social-media algorithms that profit out of grabbing eyeballs. Churnover in lackeys and newscycles alike.
On the other side of the pond, it would previously be called flying-a-kite to gauge a reaction - but it's much, much more more than this with him, because if everyone else is constantly being thrown off balance, then by default he's the one on firm ground in the centre of the storm he's unleashing.
Yeah it’s just jarring when you got a president with serious executive power doing deals like this. On the other hand it is precisely a position like this that gives this kind of style power: your threats must seem real.
It is a real and deadly threat, too - I have no doubt that in one segment of his mind he's turning this over and thinking "sure, this could really work out yuuge!".
Next up he'll try to make the schadenfreude-type reaction of relief if/when he changes tack work to his advantage, to advance whatever plans B-Z he has simmering on the back burner.
This is real neighbourhood protection-racket style tactics; in one sense, it's better now that we are seeing it all out in the open and up front, rather than the polished-turd bullshit that Foreign Affairs magazine has been selling for ages on behalf of the nice respectable people who retire in Martha's Vinyard. He's like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Establishment, and they're horrified he's so gauche in their Club.
Also, this elevator pitch looks like it was picked straight from the script of Mencius Moldbug aka Curtis Yarvin - I was about to copy and paste* (*both in writing and in actual speech he has this incessant uptalk, valleygirl "ha-ha-just-kidding" tone that I will spare you all from), but I'll just leave the relevant link here: graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-and-the-laws-of-war -
_Both Thiel and Vance are subscribers to the techno-authoritarian philosophies of Curtis Yarvin, who seeks to re-engineer governments into smaller “patchworks” controlled by tech corporations “without regard”, as he put it, “to the residents’ opinions”._
In a way, this is a magnification of how Northern Ireland was used by the British Security State (the "Securocrats") to test out and train their own forces (and apply their own creative legal tailoring for monitoring and neutralising threats), close at hand. In Palestine, we have the perfect laboratory for the mad scientists to create the beta version of the brave new world for all of us.
Of course it's a bluff. Or another senior moment. Just like Biden the man is likely in the grips of dementia.
I can't see resettlements of Palestinians into Jordan or Egypt going very well. What bribes would allow it.
He backed off his tough tariff nonsense immediately because the market would have had a sad. But wasn't it nice that he was in the news and all the leaders had to call him up and talk? Then they agreed to meaningless conditions to stop the big fentanyl mess.
It’s hard to know how much he’s bluffing and how much he’s talking shit he’ll need to walk back later. He might have heard people singing he praises about Gaza beach front property but the Israelis don’t have the capacity to do this and the US military top brass would likely recognize this as being openly illegal and refuse the order. I guess at some point someone will explain the consequences politically and legally for giving an illegal order and seeing it being ignored - not good for the Trump.
I don’t think there’s any 5D chess going on though. Trump says crazy things and now other people might need to work together to prevent those crazy things from happening, at great costs to everyone
I honestly don't think he means it - I think that he's deliberately confusing everybody by throwing out one more outrageous statement after the other so that noone knows what he'll actually do.
AND, when people hear that he's not in fact going to invade Greenland or Gaza (or Canada, for that matter) they'll be relieved that he's "only" sending all the refugees to Gitmo.
I also suspect, and I don't hope to be proven wrong, that actually taking over Gaza is such an outrageous thing to do that he couldn't actually do it if he wanted - Congress and maybe even the army itself would probably stop him. But in the meantime he's wasting his opponents' time, in a quite masterful fashion.
One not entirely incredible conspiracy theory would be that Netanyahu and Hamas leadership are actually in cahoots. Hamas don't worry about casualties so much, they think more Israeli casualties now means more soldiers for them in the next generation. I don't think they'd actually sell Gaza, though, as it is their power base.
The PA in the West Bank, on the other hand, have been considered Quislings by many Palestinians for years now, doing Israel's dirty work. Though their position, to be fair, can't be very easy either.
"A big beautiful wall, and we'll make the Mexicans pay for it"
Captain Bullshit rides again.
He likes stirring up crap, constantly, to distract everybody from whatever else he's doing - or not doing. He wants every conversation to be about him - that's the Alpha and Omega of him, not as a persona slight I mean, but as his entire business model and raison d'etre. He's like the humanoid version of social-media algorithms that profit out of grabbing eyeballs. Churnover in lackeys and newscycles alike.
On the other side of the pond, it would previously be called flying-a-kite to gauge a reaction - but it's much, much more more than this with him, because if everyone else is constantly being thrown off balance, then by default he's the one on firm ground in the centre of the storm he's unleashing.
Yeah it’s just jarring when you got a president with serious executive power doing deals like this. On the other hand it is precisely a position like this that gives this kind of style power: your threats must seem real.
It is a real and deadly threat, too - I have no doubt that in one segment of his mind he's turning this over and thinking "sure, this could really work out yuuge!".
Next up he'll try to make the schadenfreude-type reaction of relief if/when he changes tack work to his advantage, to advance whatever plans B-Z he has simmering on the back burner.
This is real neighbourhood protection-racket style tactics; in one sense, it's better now that we are seeing it all out in the open and up front, rather than the polished-turd bullshit that Foreign Affairs magazine has been selling for ages on behalf of the nice respectable people who retire in Martha's Vinyard. He's like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Establishment, and they're horrified he's so gauche in their Club.
Also, this elevator pitch looks like it was picked straight from the script of Mencius Moldbug aka Curtis Yarvin - I was about to copy and paste* (*both in writing and in actual speech he has this incessant uptalk, valleygirl "ha-ha-just-kidding" tone that I will spare you all from), but I'll just leave the relevant link here: graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-and-the-laws-of-war -
- and a further commentary by Thomas Fazi on Yarvin's Starship Troopers view of the Future: https://www.thomasfazi.com/p/a-victory-for-covid-policy-sceptics
(and that I will quote):
_Both Thiel and Vance are subscribers to the techno-authoritarian philosophies of Curtis Yarvin, who seeks to re-engineer governments into smaller “patchworks” controlled by tech corporations “without regard”, as he put it, “to the residents’ opinions”._
In a way, this is a magnification of how Northern Ireland was used by the British Security State (the "Securocrats") to test out and train their own forces (and apply their own creative legal tailoring for monitoring and neutralising threats), close at hand. In Palestine, we have the perfect laboratory for the mad scientists to create the beta version of the brave new world for all of us.
Of course it's a bluff. Or another senior moment. Just like Biden the man is likely in the grips of dementia.
I can't see resettlements of Palestinians into Jordan or Egypt going very well. What bribes would allow it.
He backed off his tough tariff nonsense immediately because the market would have had a sad. But wasn't it nice that he was in the news and all the leaders had to call him up and talk? Then they agreed to meaningless conditions to stop the big fentanyl mess.
Yeah I know. Thats my feeling too.
Fix it all up, and build the “Riviera of the Middle East” ?
Imagine if he proposed something like that here. Western NC, maybe?
It'd be shot down as an evil manifestation of da S0c!a(ism!!!! :0000
There WAS a "Riviera of the Middle East" once, it was called Lebanon and Beirut was a lovely cosmopolitan city. Then, it paid someone to destroy it.
Like Little Finger told the Spider, "Chaos is a ladder."
He's at least half serious with dollar signs for eyes. The son-in-law probably soiling himself with anticipation.
I wonder if he is trying to distract from Elon Musk and his minions getting access to the Federal payment system.
It’s hard to know how much he’s bluffing and how much he’s talking shit he’ll need to walk back later. He might have heard people singing he praises about Gaza beach front property but the Israelis don’t have the capacity to do this and the US military top brass would likely recognize this as being openly illegal and refuse the order. I guess at some point someone will explain the consequences politically and legally for giving an illegal order and seeing it being ignored - not good for the Trump.
I don’t think there’s any 5D chess going on though. Trump says crazy things and now other people might need to work together to prevent those crazy things from happening, at great costs to everyone
I honestly don't think he means it - I think that he's deliberately confusing everybody by throwing out one more outrageous statement after the other so that noone knows what he'll actually do.
AND, when people hear that he's not in fact going to invade Greenland or Gaza (or Canada, for that matter) they'll be relieved that he's "only" sending all the refugees to Gitmo.
I also suspect, and I don't hope to be proven wrong, that actually taking over Gaza is such an outrageous thing to do that he couldn't actually do it if he wanted - Congress and maybe even the army itself would probably stop him. But in the meantime he's wasting his opponents' time, in a quite masterful fashion.
I think that the Palestinian authorities have already sold Gaza, and we are watching a theater play.
One not entirely incredible conspiracy theory would be that Netanyahu and Hamas leadership are actually in cahoots. Hamas don't worry about casualties so much, they think more Israeli casualties now means more soldiers for them in the next generation. I don't think they'd actually sell Gaza, though, as it is their power base.
The PA in the West Bank, on the other hand, have been considered Quislings by many Palestinians for years now, doing Israel's dirty work. Though their position, to be fair, can't be very easy either.