President Trump is Angry

 

urbi et orbi

 

Liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia — literally "public work" or "service of the people." It refers to the formal, structured order of religious worship — the prescribed texts, prayers, rituals, and ceremonies that define how a community practices its faith collectively.

In the Jewish context, the most obvious example is the Haggadah — the text you follow at the Seder. It is liturgy: a fixed order (seder literally means "order") of prayers, blessings, songs, questions, and narrative that structures the collective religious act of remembering the Exodus.

Escalation

Today's Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s Mahshahr petrochemical zone, including damage at the Fajr 1 and Fajr 2 facilities in Khuzestan. It is near the key port of Bandar Abbas. No significant military assets at Mahshahr — it's a civilian industrial zone. The target is Iran's income, not its weapons. Netanyahu even said it explicitly: "money machine."

F-15E downed

 

Lost over South Iran today.

Europe Paralized

European nations are sabotaging America's effort to open the Kharg Island toll to free navigation.  I think they fear that if they take part in the effort, Iran will boycott them. More probably, they fear being seen as colonizers and are afraid of their large, violent Arab minorities at home. President Trump calls them cowards. He may be right. 

What will be the fate of that block of 500 million Whitish people? Spain and France are openly anti-American; Germany, apparently, is busy preparing to fight Russia. Most surprising is England. It is led by a milketoast Human Rights activist, uninclined to foreign expeditions. They are still living the fantasy of colonialism, loving their enemy and hating themselves.

The world continues to change. More change, more opportunities (for my grandkids, not for me).

I worked in Nigeria a few years after independence, and I see the savagery now. English colonialism was a blessing. 

A hundred years later: Germany Re-Arming

 
Astonishing statement from General Carsten Breuer, chief of the German defence staff.

"Germany no longer regards the USA as a reliable defence partner. We are assuming conflict with Russia in the next few years is inevitable, we are re-arming.

We are back to 1930. Why is the war with Russia inevitable? Why?

Maximum optionality

 Lingo for "We are waiting for the right moment". I think that this month-long war is going well. As planned, the war has messed up the Middle East and is leading to the coalescence of a Sunni coalition of the Gulf emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and maybe Pakistan. Israel is not alone in facing Iran's nuclear bomb. The Shi'a of South Lebanon are being expelled, and Iran's fanatic Ayatollah regime has been replaced by a hard but rational military dictatorship. For more than a month, I have heard nothing about Gaza. Half of the territory has been bulldozed and made ready for civilization. What the war has not achieved is the participation of Europe, but I think they, too, will be forced to defend their oil supply if they want to exist as independent nations. Thanks to their passivity (cowardice?), the Anglo-Saxons are - once again - sitting on the world's oil and gas. We are on the side of the victors.