Peace studies and the class politics of geopolitics. Newsletter and Podcast(s): https://xitter.cf/t.co/1pPmD5s5Lr; https://xitter.cf/t.co/iwJgEgOm2v.
Joined June 2014
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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
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
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…
Van Jackson retweeted
If there is any true national interest, it is in a consensus prejudice against war and militarism
I canceled my subscription to a left zine that shall remain nameless so I could subscribe to the new Tribune
The new issue of Tribune is out soon.
- Andreas Malm on Trump II
- @comrade_kumar_ on chokepoint resistance
- @nihalist___ on Zionism
- @joshua_craze on Sudan
- @LJFinlayson on Pal Action
- Dispatches from ten countries in the US crosshairs
Get it here: tribunemag.co.uk/subscribe/?…
Van Jackson retweeted
“Trump’s CIA wants 'PhDs who could win a bar fight.' Pangs of embarrassment hit me—less for the fool I had been than a vicarious embarrassment. I know how many young men without real prospects in life are ready to be the fools of the next generation.” un-diplomatic.com/p/a-phd-wh…
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…
Van Jackson retweeted
The MAGA-diplomat problem and much more in our latest drop! @mattduss @RealVanJackson youtu.be/roZ9d-MEu3A?si=BU-m…
Van Jackson retweeted
Walzer gets it backwards (again): Israel’s war on Gaza did not become unjust because of its cruelty; it was unjust from the beginning as a modality of a politically, morally and legally untenable occupation. It has always been wrong to think an unjust war could be waged justly.
Michael Walzer published “Just and Unjust Wars,” an attempt to delineate the rights and wrongs of warfare in both its causes and its conduct, in 1977. In the nearly 50 years since, no other book on the subject has matched its influence. The precepts are not complicated: it is just to defend your country from an invasion and it is unjust to invade a country that has not attacked you—although Walzer does allow for exceptions, mostly for humanitarian causes. It is just to assume certain risks to avoid civilian casualties and it is unjust to bomb towns indiscriminately to compel an enemy to surrender. The justice of going to war—what philosophers call jus ad bellum—is separate from jus in bello, the justice of how a war is fought.
The war in Gaza has made Walzer rethink one of the book’s fundamental principles. “The wall between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, which had sustained his theory for almost half a century, was no longer sturdy,” Jordi Graupera writes. As Walzer said to him, “There is a sense in which the carnage of Gaza, the ongoing carnage, simply made the war unjust.” Read about why a philosopher of war is now reconsidering his seminal work: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/T7…
Van Jackson retweeted
One of McGurk's last acts in office was to lie to Congress that the UAE was not arming the RSF in Sudan.
Every American household paid $2k each to generate hundreds of American casualties, tens of thousands of Iran casualties, increase the cost of oil and food for the entire planet, and turn once-open shipping lanes into a permanent protection racket. Insane
From the @WSJ: “Persian Gulf oil exports have surpassed prewar levels, as an improvised shipping system under U.S. protection is helping tankers move oil through one of Iran’s fiercest waves of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.”
wsj.com/world/middle-east/mo…
Van Jackson retweeted
OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country. We categorically reject censorship - whether direct or indirect - and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity.
Dark nutrition, bro science, healing crystals, MAHA--it's a function of a country without healthcare. The state takes from you; it doesn’t take care of you. And so desperate people search
At some point I noticed that more and more people seemed to be telling me: everything you think you know about food is wrong. This led me down a rabbit hole that I’ve come to think of as “dark nutrition.” I wrote about this whole world for @NYTmag nytimes.com/2026/10/21/magaz…
“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…