Arnon Grunberg's Blog, page 18

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On medical equipment in Gaza - Clayton Dalton in The New Yorker:

‘On January 29th, two weeks after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, I crossed into Gaza as part of a twelve-person medical mission. After traversing southern Israel in a U.N. convoy, we followed an Israeli military escort through a maze of concrete barriers. Then we got out of our vehicles and lugged suitcases full of essentials—gauze, antibiotics, catheters, trauma shears—through a metal blast door. We passed a no man’s land of razor wire where, improbably, dandelions grew. Finally, we climbed into a van with a shattered windshield and drove to Khan Younis, a city of several hundred thousand in southern Gaza. Our driver swerved to avoid craters; almost every structure we passed was damaged. At one intersection, a minaret stood over a ruined mosque. Still, the city was alive. I saw a family drinking tea in a building with no roof.’

(…)

‘Our guide at Al-Aqsa was a burly thirty-five-year-old orthopedics resident named Mohammad Shaheen. He joked that the conflict had been great for his figure—he’d lost thirty kilos. He slid open the door of a cavernous metal shed that had served as a makeshift ward. “We built it in ten days,” he said. Now it was dark, with empty stretchers in the corners. “We are turning from trauma to reconstruction,” he told me. Countless Gazans needed medical care for past injuries and untreated medical conditions. Entire neighborhoods had to be cleared of rubble and unexploded ordnance.’

(…)

‘Israeli forces have now dropped more explosives in Gaza than fell on London, Dresden, and Hamburg combined during the Second World War. More than fifty thousand Palestinians have been killed. Hospitals have not been spared; most are no longer functional. A few weeks before my trip, the World Health Organization reported that more than a thousand health-care workers had been killed, and that it had verified six hundred and fifty-four strikes on Gaza’s medical facilities. The territory’s health sector was “being systematically dismantled,” a W.H.O. representative said. Just last month, Israeli soldiers were filmed opening fire on ambulances in southern Gaza, killing fifteen rescue workers. An I.D.F. spokesperson initially claimed that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals,” but the I.D.F. walked back that statement and opened an inquiry after footage published by the Times showed a uniformed medic next to motionless and clearly marked ambulances, followed by five minutes of gunfire from the I.D.F.’

(…)

‘We entered a large storage room in the corner of the I.C.U. which was crammed with medical devices: ultrasound machines, I.V. pumps, dialysis machines, blood-pressure monitors. Each had apparently been destroyed by a bullet—not in a pattern one would expect from random shooting but, rather, methodically. I was stunned. I couldn’t think of any possible military justification for destroying lifesaving equipment. When I asked the I.D.F. for comment, the spokesperson said, “Claims that the IDF deliberately targets medical equipment are unequivocally false.”’

(…)

‘Sidhwa said that one of his last patients that night was a sixteen-year-old boy named Ibrahim, who had sustained intestinal injuries from shrapnel. Sidhwa stitched up the boy’s rectum and created an ostomy—a hole that exits the abdomen—to allow his digestive tract to heal. Ibrahim had black hair and looked thin from malnutrition. He was expected to make a full recovery. The boy’s father seemed to know only two words in English—“thank you”—and kept repeating them. “It was sweet,” Sidhwa told me.
Five days later, Ibrahim was almost ready to be sent home. That afternoon, Sidhwa was on his way to check on him when a colleague flagged him down. As they were discussing a patient, an explosion rocked the hospital. Sidhwa’s Palestinian colleagues pulled him away from the windows; the building had been hit. The I.D.F later said that the strike had targeted a senior Hamas political leader named Ismail Barhoum. A spokesperson alleged that Barhoum was “in the hospital to commit acts of terrorism.” Sidhwa called this claim “fucking ridiculous.” Barhoum was related to Ibrahim, Sidhwa told me, so they received medical treatment in the same room. “He was wounded and he was here as a patient,” he said. “I’m telling you this as an eyewitness.”After the attack, Sidhwa again raced to the E.R. “We didn’t know if the Israelis were going to raid the hospital, or bomb it again,” he told me. Eventually, several men rushed in, carrying a teen-age boy in a bedsheet. They brought him into the trauma bay and set him down on a gurney. When Sidhwa drew the sheet back, he was shocked. The patient’s abdomen was shredded and his bowels were spilling out. It was Ibrahim, and he was dead.’

Read the article here.

As has been reported widely by Haaretz and probably other news organizations; some of the IDF units operating Gaza are rogue elements, making up rules on the spot. Which doesn’t mean that the politicians and the top brass are innocent.

The military advantage of killing more Hamas fighters is close to zero.

The fact that so many innocent civilians are allowed to die for the dead of one midlevel Hamas operative is a sign of the deterioration of Israeli society, deterioration according to Western standards.

Some would say that it’s the Western standards thar are deteriorating, unfortunately.

Sides

Primaries

On the nationalists - Adam Sutcliffe in TLS:

‘Israel has always struggled to find friends in the formerly colonized world, but since October 2023 the politics of the Middle East conflict have, Mishra argues, become more starkly racialized. Western leaders have been far more responsive to the suffering of Ukrainians than that of Gazans. In the American congressional primaries last year, pro-Israel organizations spent more than $25 million on campaign adverts to bring down Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, leading Black supporters of the Palestinian cause. At Harvard and many other American universities, campaigns to shut down pro-Palestinian activism, in response to allegations of antisemitism, have intertwined with opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, on the grounds that DEI prioritizes anti-Black over anti-Jewish prejudices.’

(…)

‘American Jewish leaders mostly followed their lead, ascribing to Hamas responsibility for all the killing on both sides. In many American Jewish communities, Beinart writes, “suggesting that October 7 stems from anything but Hamas’s pure evil is a ticket to excommunication”. The murders and abductions of that day have been recalled repeatedly in rabbinical sermons and at community events, while the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths are mentioned little, if at all. The implied message, says Beinart, is that “our lives matter in a way that theirs do not”.’

(…)

‘The overwhelmingly dominant call since October 2023 has been for the IDF to leave Gaza and stop bombing it. (There is much less agreement on what should happen after that.) Horvilleur mentions briefly, alongside Israeli suffering, the “sobs of Palestinian mothers” and “the ruins of Gaza”, but she doesn’t discuss the actions – egged on by the far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet – that led to the sobbing and the ruination. It is not clear how literally we should take her hearing of “Free Palestine” as a call for the mass killing of Jews, given her self-diagnosis as being gripped by “Jewish paranoia”.’

(…)

‘If Jews presented Judaism as a humdrum hobby, this approach might even, Kahn-Harris suggests, dial down the relentless global attention on the Middle East conflict, contributing to a calmer environment more conducive to peacemaking.’

(…)

‘Israel, while asserting its normality, also used to project itself as “a light unto the nations”. Its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, used this phrase from the Book of Isaiah to trumpet his country’s moral exemplarity and its bridging role between continents and civilizations. Today, however, Israel is a light unto the nationalists. Its admirers on the far right watch with fascination as it treats the Palestinians with a level of force that they can only dream of meting out to their own minorities. For Indian Hindu supremacists, Israel has become, in Mishra’s words, “an example of how to deal with Muslims in the only language they understood: that of force and more force”.
This increasingly stark political alignment is uncomfortable for many instinctually Zionist Jews and is intensifying the intellectual and ethical civil war that is dividing diaspora communities. This dispute most fundamentally pits the “light unto the nations” conception of Jewishness – the idea that the universal betterment of humanity lies at the core of Jewish values and purpose – against the single-minded focus on Jewish strength and self-assertion that makes the policies of Netanyahu’s government such an alluring model for nationalists everywhere.’

(…)

‘In the darkness, Pankaj Mishra salutes “two beacons”. One is PalFest, which brought him to Palestine in 2008 and has since organized an annual literary festival there, expanding the awareness of visitors and challenging the isolation of Palestinians. The other is Jewish Voice for Peace, which rallies American Jewish Palestine solidarity activism behind the slogan “never again for anyone”.’

Read the review here.

Yes, what is Jewishness, especially when religion has become a ‘hum drum hobby’. Of course, there is the Shoah, and the celebration of your own paranoia, this peculiarity can also be found among other minorities, perhaps Jewishness is universal humanism plus Hanukah and Passover?Indeed, humanism is universal by nature, at least in theory.

As to the beacons of hope, I hope for better beacons.

And never again for anybody is a beautiful, but also: tell this to the people in Congo.

The best line is this, Israel has become a light unto the nationalists.
Carl Schmitt would have been proud to be an Israeli in 2025.

The heritage of the Shoah turned out to be not soft power and brotherly love for refugees.
But let’s say, quite the opposite.
As a political scientist said, after three generations memory fades away and people a ready for a new war. In the case of the US perhaps we should add: the Americans are ready for a new empire.

They became bord with being the center of the universe.

Government

Movement

On a cult – Yossi Melman in Haaretz:

‘The protest movement against Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which subsided after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th, 2023 is surging once again and this time, it's spreading to more and more parts of Israel's military and intelligence services.
This new protest movement was launched by Israeli air force pilots, navigators, and ground crews. Air force personnel were also the spearhead of the previous wave of protests, which began after Netanyahu was elected for the sixth time as prime minister in 2023 and began its program of undermining judicial independence and democracy in Israel.’

(…)

‘The petition was signed by three former Mossad chiefs: Danny Yatom, Efraim Halevy, and Tamir Pardo. Another former Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, who is ideologically rooted in the right-wing, was once considered close to Netanyahu, and is believed to have political ambitions to succeed him, did not join the signatories.’

(…)

‘Their position, backed by then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, combined with public protests by hundreds of thousands of Israelis who flooded the streets across the country, forced Netanyahu's government to back down and suspend its plans to turn Israel into a quasi-dictatorship modeled after Turkey and Hungary.
But then, Hamas invaded Israel. The group engaged in massacre, torture and rape, and also abducted 251 people, most of them Israelis, into Gaza. The very same reservists, motivated by deep patriotism, who had protested in the streets, were the first to answer the call and return to active service.’

(…)

‘"Netanyahu is interested in prolonging the war," I was told by a senior Mossad operative who signed the petition, "to create a sense of emergency in order to solidify his power. This is his true goal and not security concerns."
The signatories of the petitions by IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet veterans clearly stated that, unlike before October 7, they did not express any reservations to serve and to be called to reserve duty; they were solely, if sharply, manifesting their right as citizens to voice their opinions.
Netanyahu's response was typical of a leader who heads a cult of believers, convinced that he is Israel's savior and completely deaf to the feelings of the clear majority of the public.
He dismissed them as "frustrated retirees."’

(…)

‘Magen would surely have endorsed hearing her principles voiced by David Meidan, the former Mossad operative and protest organizer, who has become an almost lyrical voice of the opposition to Netanyahu. He recently described the prime minister as "emotionally numb, attentive only to his fears. The chaos he creates in the country is his way of escaping from his own inner personal chaos. He is afraid. For him, the loss of power means the gates of hell will open upon him – and likely upon his family as well.’

Read the article here.

Create chaos, so you can avoid you own chaos.

Or create chaos in order to avoid fear of dying?

After the loss of power: hell. It’s more biblical than Shakeapeare.

Please note, that also in the protest movement Palestinians are not part of the equation.

Foreign criminals

Love

On Switzerland – Tony Judt in NY Books (in 2010):

‘One is not supposed to love Switzerland. Expressing affection for the Swiss or their country is akin to confessing nostalgia for cigarette smoking or The Brady Bunch. It immediately brands you as someone at once unforgivably ignorant of the developments of the past thirty years and incurably conventional in the worst way. Whenever I blurt out my weakness for the place the young yawn politely, liberal colleagues look askance (“Don’t you know about the War?”), my family smiles indulgently: Oh, that again! I don’t care. I love Switzerland.
What are the objections? Well, Switzerland means mountains. But if it is Alps you want, the French have higher, you eat better in Italy, and snow comes cheaper in Austria. Most damning of all, people are friendlier in Germany. As for the Swiss themselves, “Brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”It gets worse. Switzerland did remarkably well out of World War II—trading with Berlin and laundering looted assets. It was the Swiss who urged Hitler to mark Jewish passports with a “J”—and who, in an embarrassing exercise in recidivist chauvinism, have just voted to ban minaret construction (in a country that has only four and where almost all resident Muslims are secular Bosnian refugees). Then there are the tax evaders, although it has never been clear to me just why what Swiss banks do in servicing a handful of wealthy foreign criminals is significantly worse than what Goldman Sachs has done with the proceeds of millions of honest US tax dollars.’

(…)
‘During the 1950s, my parents and I took a number of trips to Switzerland. This was their brief parenthetical moment of prosperity, but in any case Switzerland then was not so very expensive. I think what struck me as a child was the uncluttered regularity of everything. We usually arrived via France, in those days a poor and run-down country. French village houses were still pockmarked with shell damage, their Dubonnet ads torn and crumbling. The food was good (even a London schoolboy could tell that) but the restaurants and hotels had a damp, tumble-down air to them: cheap and cheerless.’

(…)

‘My happiest memories are of Mürren. We first went there when I was eight years old: an unspoiled village halfway up the Schilthorn massif attainable only by rack railway or cable car. It takes forever—and a minimum of four trains—to reach the place, and there is little to do once you arrive. There is no particularly good food and the shopping is unexciting, to say the least.
The skiing, I am told, is good; the walking certainly is. The views—across a deep valley to the Jungfrau chain—are spectacular. The nearest thing to entertainment is the clockwork-like arrival and departure of the little single-carriage train that wends its way around the mountainside to the head of the funiculaire. The electric whoosh as it starts out of the tiny station and the reassuring clunk of the rails are the nearest thing to noise pollution in the village. With the last engine safely in its shed, the plateau falls silent.
In 2002, in the wake of an operation for cancer and a month of heavy radiation, I took my family back to Mürren. My sons, aged eight and six, seemed to me to experience the place just as I had, even though we stayed in a distinctly better class of hotel. They drank hot chocolate, clambered across open fields of mountain flowers and tiny waterfalls, stared moonstruck at the great Eiger—and reveled in the little railway. Unless I was very much mistaken, Mürren itself had not changed at all, and there was still nothing to do. Paradise.’

Read the article here.

Tomorrow I will go to Mürren with my son, age three, almost four.

There are many good things to say about Switzerland, it’s still the olace where I like to die. And that’s exactly the reason why I don’t want to live there, but vacation yes. And more than that.

Petition

Database

On naturalization – Etan Nechin and Ben Samuels in Haaretz:

‘Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University and former co-president of Columbia's Palestinian Students Union, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Monday during what was supposed to be a naturalization interview in Burlington, Vermont.
The arrest is documented in an ICE detainee database and a habeas corpus petition filed in federal court.’

(…)

‘A source close to Mahdawi told Haaretz he had cleared his background check but suspected the interview might be a trap and was prepared for the possibility of arrest. His legal team has since filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court in Vermont to prevent his transfer out of Vermont.
In the months before his arrest, Mahdawi was targeted by online campaigns from pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission and Betarand listed in posts by a Columbia-based network promoting a so-called "Deportation Database."
Mahdawi had previously appeared on 60 Minutes and spoken critically of the university's response to the war in Gaza and condemned antisemitic chants at a rally, saying "the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand."’

(…)

‘In addition, the administration has revoked over 600 international student visas, often without warning or clear justification, citing concerns over antisemitism and national security.
These actions are part of a wider federal effort affecting multiple institutions. The Department of Education has launched investigations into 60 universities for alleged antisemitic discrimination, and federal funding has been frozen for schools like Cornell and Northwestern.
Responding to the arrest, Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose Columbia student constituent was detained said that, "Mohsen Mahdawi of White River Junction, Vermont was illegally detained by ICE during what was supposed to be the final step in his citizenship process. Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the U.S., must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention."
Sanders' colleague from Vermont, Sen. Peter Welch, issued a similar demand. "Earlier today, Mohsen Mahdawi of White River Junction, Vermont, walked into an immigration office for what was supposed to be the final step in his citizenship process.
Instead, he was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plainclothes, armed, individuals with their faces covered. These individuals refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him.’

Read the article here.

The naturalization interview in 2025.

And if this is the fight against antisemitism, the fight will only backfire. Of course, the Jews will suffer, not the Americans who like many Europeans use the so-called fight against antisemitism to get rid of their favorite enemies, Muslims.

Some people take comfort that in the end they will come also for you.
Now it’s only refugees, certain visa or certain green card holders, in the future a US passport won’t protect you.
But of course, that’s no comfort, that’s defeat.

The deterioration of the state of law in the shining city on the hill is just another sign that war is edging closer.

Officials

Stomach

On havoc – The Economist:

‘In 1990s japan the worst days of a market crisis brought about a “triple yasu” loss: a fall in stockmarkets, a rise in bond yields and a declining currency. It is now America that must stomach this noxious combination. Although President Donald Trump’s tariff pause provided a brief respite, the triple yasu has made an unwelcome return. Most alarming lately have been movements in the bond and currency markets. In total since April 1st the dollar has fallen by more than 4% against a basket of major currencies, at the same time as yields on ten-year Treasury bonds have risen by 0.3 percentage points (see chart).’

(…)

‘Moreover, America’s budget is already in an awful state. Global demand for the dollar and Treasuries has enabled America to run a more extravagant budget than that which sparked the crisis in Britain. This special status is known as “exorbitant privilege”. The federal government’s net debts are worth about 100% of gdp. In the past 12 months, America has disbursed 7% of gdp more than it borrowed, and spent more on interest payments than on national defence. Over the next year officials must roll over debt worth nearly $9trn (30% of gdp).’

(…)

‘Market moves could force further course corrections, by Mr Trump or by Congress. On April 11th the administration exempted smartphones and other consumer electronics from supplementary levies on China. But profound damage may already have been done. In recent years, economists have warned that exorbitant privilege, by making borrowing cheap, might induce America to take on too much debt, thereby making the dollar financial system fragile and vulnerable to a run. On this theory, it could collapse, much as the dollar’s peg to gold did in 1971, when the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates imploded. Little more than a week ago King Dollar’s reign looked secure and such a calamity seemed highly remote. It is a measure of Mr Trump’s havoc that it now appears possible.’

Read the article here.

Maybe by the time that summer comes time King Dollar is back on its throne – what are the alternatives? Euro, yen yuan? – but it’s also possible that the havoc is more permanent.

Sovereign debts are not necessarily a problem, a state cannot go bankrupt, but you can exaggerate your exorbitant privilege.

Trippenhuis

Fogs

On Amsterdam – Pablo Scheffer in TLS:

‘To Albert Camus, Amsterdam’s concentric waterways resembled the circles of hell. His protagonist in The Fall (1956), a “judge- penitent” who whiles away his days in a seedy sailors’ bar on the Zeedijk, unkindly describes the city’s “little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs” as an enfer bourgeois.’

(…)

‘Coates writes, for instance, that Amsterdam’s canal houses are narrow because of the cost of drilling into the marshy ground the wooden poles needed to support them. In fact, property tax in seventeenth-century Amsterdam was levied based on the width of a building’s façade. (The city was notorious for its taxes. In 1659, an English diplomat wrote that a man could not “eate a dishe of meate but that one way or another he shall pay 19 excises out of it”.) This resulted in what Coates aptly describes as “Tardis-like” houses that are regularly six times deeper than they are wide. Those few waterside properties that don’t conform to this rule – such as the imposing Trippenhuis, currently home to the Dutch Academy of Sciences, but constructed for the fabulously rich Trip brothers – were built as ostentatious markers of their owners’ wealth.’

(…)

‘The author, who has lived in and around the city for the past decade, clearly knows it intimately and is an effortlessly charming guide. He leavens his account with a rich body of literary and historical sources, from Andrew Marvell to Alain de Botton, and has an excellent eye for the fetching fact. We learn, for instance, that when Camus’s protagonist made his perch on the Zeedijk, a gay bar had been open down the road for more than two decades. By the end of Ben Coates’s enjoyable account, one can’t help feeling that the judge-penitent’s verdict was wrong.’

Read the article here.

The circles of the hell is a bit of an exaggeration, but many taxi drivers I talked to in the past decade or so would happily subscribe to the judge-penitent’s verdict. They moved out of the city, too expensive, and often complain that the mayor, the lefties or the tourists destroyed the city.

But then, complaining that things are not what they used to be is just secretly complaining that you yourself are not what you used to be.

And besides that, probably hell is more fun than heaven, at least for the spectators.

Brigade

Territory

On Schrödinger Brigade – Harel in Haaretz:

‘The secret, which has still been kept relatively well, is that there is almost no fighting going on in the Gaza Strip. Israel may have ended the cease-fire in practice, with the aerial attacks on March 18 that cost the lives of some 400 Palestinians, including senior Hamas officials and hundreds of women and children – but since then, the two sides have not really returned to battle.
The Israel Defense Forces operates three divisional headquarters in the Gaza Strip, but they have taken control of only limited territory on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and are not really advancing inward, into what is left of the built-up urban areas.’

(…)

‘In fact, this was an offensive operation that required about a company of troops and did not run into any opposition. At the same time, the military says the goal of the operation is to eliminate Hamas' Rafah brigade. But the IDF had already announced the collapse of the brigade and its defeat on September 12, 2024, two weeks after Hamas murdered six hostages in a tunnel near the border between Gaza and Egypt.
A magic trick: we made the Rafah Brigade disappear – and now here it is again. Maybe it's actually the Schrödinger Brigade – it exists and doesn't exist at the same time.’

(…)

‘It has been stated many a time that Netanyahu is the sum of his fears. At the moment, because of the passage of the state budget and dubious political deals, his government is still relatively stable.
Later, it's likely he will be forced to continue to maneuver between contradictory demands, from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on one side and Trump on the other side. We can only hope he is still more afraid of Trump.’

(…)

‘In fact, the pilots and navigators – the vast majority of whom no longer actively serve in the reserves – opted for what, in their view, is a restrained protest under impossible circumstances. Moreover, the IDF's response could create an even larger crisis, almost out of nothing.
It ignores everything that infuriates the signers of the letter: The government's alienation from the hostages, the unrestrained and frequent attacks by Netanyahu against the security forces and the steadily diminishing credibility of the Israeli position, most recently after the IDF was caught in a crude lie regarding the killing of the convoy of medical workers in Rafah.
Instead of acting as if Smotrich, National Missions Minister Orit Strock and journalist Amit Segal were sitting alongside him in the cockpit, it would have been better if Bar would have exchanged a few words with his predecessors who commanded the Air Force.’

Read the article here.

That’s indeed a secret, that the war in Gaza ended? Just now and then some ambulances are being bombed.

It was Saddam who apparently invaded Kuwait to keep his soldiers busy.

The Schrödinger Brigade is a beautiful invention.
The failures of Israeli intelligence on and before October 7, 2023, can be explained in exactly the same manner. It was just a bunch of Schrödinger Brigades. I’m not sure if Netanyahu is more afraid of Trump than of Smotrich.

We will see. In the meantime the war that secretly ended continues.

Basis

Public

On beef – Alexander Hurst in The Guardian:

‘When markets dump $10tn in three days and then gain trillions back in a single afternoon on the erratic decisions of one deeply corrupt person, you can be sure that a small number of people have made immense sums of money out of that volatility. Were the people responsible for abnormal spikes buying into the markets (including call options on various indexes and exchange-traded funds) on Wednesday morning – and again, 20 minutes before the tariff announcement went public – extraordinarily lucky? Were they in the right Signal group? Or were they just simply following Trump on Truth Social, where he posted: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” –just a few hours before dropping the news that he was kind of pulling back.’

(…)

‘In the face of the Trump administration’s very real animosity towards it, the EU must act as swiftly as possible to shore up its greatest weakness: its dependence on fossil-fuel imports. Sometimes, the animosity is almost laughably tragicomic, such as when US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick ranted that Europeans “hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak”. Other times, it’s more transparent, such as when Trump claimedthere would be no negotiations unless the Europeans “pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis, number one for present, but also for past”. As in, in Trump’s mind, $350bn in annual purchases of US natural gas in exchange for lifting tariffs.’

(…)

‘The mantra going forward should be “whatever it takes” to fully replace fossil fuels with renewables – designed in Europe, built in Europe – so that it never spends $350bn to import gas from the US, Russia, or anywhere else.’

Read the article here.

My beef is better than your beef.

And to be a legal inside trader just follow the US president.

The replacement of fossil fuels is just a matter of time. Europe can do it. I said it before, Trump will make many other nations great again.

The last question is: how much greatness do we need?

Rhetoric

Relief

On relief – The Economist:

‘Donald Trump has blinked. Little more than 12 hours after his radical regime of “reciprocal” tariffs took effect, he has put most of them on pause for 90 days. Mr Trump said this was in recognition of the fact that more than 75 countries had engaged with his administration in negotiations, working together to address America’s complaints about global trade. The convulsing Treasury market may also have aided his decision. Mr Trump’s announcement provided immediate relief to markets, with stocks and commodity futures surging, as the delay alleviated fears about imminent economic damage.’

(…)

‘The next time round, investors are likely to treat his hawkish rhetoric with more scepticism. But if that means that market reactions are relatively muted, Mr Trump will only have more leeway to press on.’

Read the article here.

You can shout ‘fire, fire’ bit if you shout it too often the effect of the shouting will diminish.
Also, you can lose your reliability only once.

But the liberator has blinked and for the time being that’s hope, I guess.