A lot of folks are hoping that Yemen’s Houthi government (Ansarallah) will fall like Syria’s Assad did in 2024. They’re going to be disappointed. Today’s podcast covers this quite silly comparison in detail. The accompanying Substack post reveals why I still think the Arab Spring was a step forward.
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Pakistan has kind of always been doomed. It’s a testament to the grit of the country and the savvy of (some) of its leaders that it has survived this long. We discuss Pakistan’s challenges in today’s podcast. But I also wrote on the incredible potential of Pakistan’s region, and why we should pay more attention to it in today’s substack.
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We’ve got bigger problems than Trump. Today’s discussion, aided greatly by this fantastic article by Les Coleman, tries to get at some of the larger problems and solutions, as does today’s Substack on Trump lessons and Tax Policy.
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Spain is doing surprisingly well. A week after we recorded the episode above, Morocco’s swamping of one of Spain’s African enclaves with migrants made the news. That didn’t make the episode, but I wrote a substack about it.
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Jake Tapper gets offended if you don’t celebrate the assassination that started our insane Iran war. That’s pretty weird. We decided to look into that for today’s video.
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Turkey is in a very depressing place. It’s riding high geopolitically, it’s won in Syria, and the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran make President Erdoğan
indispensable to his NATO allies in the US and Europe. But in the process it has lost its democracy and its economy is in shambles. These processes are deeply interrelated. Today’s podcast dives into those connections, which most avoid.
We’ve also got a new substack up, on the topic of my optimism about Turkey and whether or not it’s sustainable.
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Everybody hates taxes. But they are really important. The fact that folks in the US are reacting to government by insanely corrupt tax cutters by advocating to cuts to their own taxes is a real problem.
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Tucker Carlson is taking an interesting turn. I’ve rejoiced at his turn against pro-war fundamentalism, but it’s always come packaged with a more sinister edge. In recent weeks, that edge has become really apparent, with his new closeness to open white supremacists. With today’s video, I dive into just one thing Tucker gets very wrong, World War II history, and explain how that may contribute to some of other right-wing mistakes…
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This Donald Trump thing has been going on for quite some time now, hasn’t it? Back in 2017 I did a survey of past times of turmoil in US history. My conclusion was that folks in Trump’s first administration were blowing things out of proportion. Do I still feel the same way today? Not so much. We’ve been in worse places on some metrics, but our situation today can no longer be explained away. Check out today’s video for my detailed analysis.
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We don’t hear much about Taiwan semiconductors anymore. This often happens in national security circles. The point is to make you scared, not to make any meaningful changes to the strategic vulnerability that is claimed to have been identified. Solving this problem would be counter-productive. It’s declining importance means I’ll probably never do a produced video talking about Taiwan chips, so I thought it made sense to throw together an unproduced version. I hope you find it useful.
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