Politically idiosyncratic. — Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
Joined August 2013
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"The claim that Jesus is a Jew has indeed been hijacked and used for pro-Israel propaganda, which has dangerous implications—theologically, historically, geopolitically—and it’s why we have to define very clearly what is meant by 'Jew'."
(My latest—link in replies)
Michael Colom retweeted
When being just and honest comes at a price, pay it. When forgiving seems like a defeat, forgive. When everyone tells you to think of yourselves first, do not be afraid to put yourselves in the last place. Be willing to give up time, money, comfort and plans to serve others. May those who see you find themselves asking: “Why do they live in this way? Where do they get this freedom? Why do they love one another so much?” #ApostolicJourney #Uruguay
"usher in" what, exactly? All this paranoia about this supposed plot where American Muslims will turn the USA into a theocratic caliphate, but where's the evidence of this? Is that really what most American Muslims want? How would they achieve it at <2% of the the population?
Michael Colom retweeted
do you know how crazy it is that Elon Musk is the normal PayPal co-founder?
NEW: In leaked recordings, Peter Thiel argued that Nashville should be a moral alternative to Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church, which he called “a dubious ally” against a hypothetical future Antichrist Democratic president.
“America is the last and final form of the Roman Empire,” Thiel told a closed-door crowd in Nashville’s Masonic Temple. “There is no successor.”
He has attacked Pope Leo XIV at least four times this year, once calling him “a useful idiot for the CCP.” thelettersfromleo.com/p/the-…
We have to stop permitting these people to avoid professional consequences and allowing what they say to just get memory-holed.
Salon is now infamous for the hyper-woke culture war slop it churned out.
However, for me, it's where I first came across the work of @ggreenwald as one of the few lefty journos critical of Obama at the time.
In fact, I started this very Twitter account just to follow him
Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication. It has been an extraordinary privilege. salon.com/2026/11/05/goodbye…
Are we blaming Russia again? Or is it Qatar this time? I can’t keep track.
My prediction is that neocons will blame the paleocons and the paleocons will blame the neocons.
But the real story is that a sophisticated foreign demoralization campaign led by the likes of Jack Poso, Bannon, Dugin, Candace, and Tucker viciously cracked up the only coalition that has been preventing total electoral collapse for decades: conservative Evangelicals.
Michael Colom retweeted
The fundamental problem here is that Jeffries and Schumer still support the war against Iran they’re just happy that Trump is taking the blame for it. They’re not going to obstruct his ability to wage it. Welcome to modern US “democracy”
Born in Israel, barred from IDF service: 43 young people fight to enlist
'There are enough of us to form an entire company': Children of Filipino migrant workers who grew up in Israel want to enlist in the military, but despite a w...
ynetnews.com/article/h1yk2cb…
Michael Colom retweeted
The main difference is probably that Azov now has around 100,000 NATO-funded troops. Its 'White Fuhrer' Andriy Biletsky is a brigadier general in charge of managing the most important section of the frontline. Azov's 1st and 3rd corps are regularly described as the best units in the army. Biletsky is in the top-3 candidates for president.
None of this exists anywhere else on earth. Governments glorifying genocidal figures happens in most places.
Specific attention being given to Ukrainian Nazi apologia is so obviously selective. This shit is common throughout Eastern Europe. What makes Ukraine’s attempts at creating a non-communist national history via sympathizing with collaborators any different from Croatia and the Ustase, Serbia and the Chetniks, Hungary and Horthy, Romania and Antonescu, Slovakia and Tiso, or Belarus and Astrouski
What about this exactly is so far-fetched?
People in Washington and Tel Aviv casually talk about “glassing” Israel’s enemies all the time. And, as Mr. Carlson points out, America is the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in war.
Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.
Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.
The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.
And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.
We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.
Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.
They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.
One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.
Michael Colom retweeted
Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.
Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.
The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.
And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.
We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.
Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.
They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.
One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.
Halloween is a fascinating example of the acceleration of Globohomo in recent years.
A decade or two ago, it was mostly an American/Anglosphere phenomenon, perhaps with a niche subculture outside that. Now it’s become a lot more mainstream in even the most unexpected places.
Ron Paul here is of course intended to be the butt of this prank, but it's actually Cohen who ends up looking embarrassing. He just comes off as a creep and a degenerate. Paul just does what any normal person would do.
Knee-jerk, maximal skepticism regarding assassination conspiracy theories has never made sense to me.
In politics, factions vie for power, sometimes over issues one's rivals might consider worth killing over. Of course violence and threats of violence play a major part.
From Hobbes, to Mao, to Rothbard there is the popular misconception that political power comes from violence—i.e. that the ruler is the guy who commands the most guns.
But the fallacy here is that it is not the violence per se, but the ability to organize it. Political power, therefore, flows not from the barrel of a gun, but from effective leadership that can organize forces large enough and unified enough to achieve and sustain state power (for good or for ill).
