The Blink
A Blinking Reversal?
As April 9th draws towards the early evening here on the West Coast, the favorite media word with respect to tariffs is “blinking,” and apparently it is Trump who is doing it, though not so much, yet, on China. In the meantime, an editorial in The Economist (Economist) explains the reasons why it is that China thinks that it can outmanouver the tariffs, not least of them being that Tesla sells one fifth of its cars in China.
The others?
(1) A belief in China that it China is better positioned than America to bear the inflation and economic discontent that the tariffs unleash, which may be as soon as when American consumer prices begin to rise or employment begins to fall. This could be exacerbated were the yuan to be strengthened but, then, in that case Chinese industry and supply chains would also be suffering.
(2) Li Qiang, Mr Xi’s deputy, said in March that the country was preparing for “bigger-than-expected external shocks” and that it was willing to enact policies to ensure economic stability. This could indicate cuts to interest rates and banking-reserve ratios.
(3) Local governments are expected to help struggling exporters to find new sources of demand at home and in non-American markets. China could lower tariffs on the rest of the world, while increasing export subsidies.
(4) China is propping up the market by buying stocks.
(5) That China’s economy could fully decouple from America’s is contemplated. There is growing support for this. China is considering the suspension of all co-operation with America on fentanyl. Another idea is to ban imports of American poultry and other agricultural products, such as soyabeans and sorghum, which mainly come from Republican states.
(6) China may impose restrictions on American services, where the US enjoys a trade surplus, impacting American consultancies and law firms still operating in the country. It could also probe intellectual property held by American firms.
For the New York Times (New York Times) Daisuke Wakabayashie speculates that the tariffs might have encouraged some companies to hunker down in China, making China an even more appealing place to produce in and buy from. He writes that they have eliminated some of the motivation to diversify production or sourcing to places like Vietnam, India or other Asian countries. These companies are wary about adding more upheaval with a drastic change to their supply chains, and are choosing to stay with what they know. They are looking for ways to save costs or develop new products. One source notes that cost advantages are not the only factor of importance but that sophisticated Chinese manufacturing and engineering processes also count for a lot. Most American factories cannot match China’s manufacturing capability, capacity and speed even if the tariffs eat into its cost advantages. Finding suppliers is a difficult, expensive and time-consuming process. The perception of haphazard decision-making in the United States is not exactly an attraction to relocate there.
Israeli Atrocities
(1) IDF in Gaza. For Consortium News, Brett Wilkins (Consortium News) addresses an Israeli human rights report (Breaking the Silence) in which IDF officers and soldiers described alleged war crimes including indiscriminate killing, as well as the wholesale deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in what multiple whistleblowers called a “kill zone.” To create a buffer zone, Israel launched a major military engineering operation that, by means of wholesale destruction, entirely reshaped about 16% of the Gaza Strip… an area previously home to some 35% of Gaza’s agricultural land.” The area extends from the coast in the north to the Egyptian border in the south, all within the territory of the Gaza Strip and outside of Israel’s internationally recognized borders. This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished.”
“The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions,” the paper says. “Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting.”
One informant claimed: “we’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs,” they added. “We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”
Another was briefed that all Palestinians in the area were terrorists. Yet another described the borderline as a kill zone.”
An investigation published by Haaretz in December described a “kill zone” in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot “anyone who enters.”
“The forces in the field call it ‘the line of dead bodies,’” one commander said. “After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that’s where you must not go.”
(2) AIPAC Shenanigans. For the Grayzone, Max Blumenthal (Blumenthal) reports how AIPAC’s CEO has unintentionally detailed his organization’s grooming of Trump’s top national security officials, and how his group’s “access” ensures they continue to follow Israel’s agenda. AIPAC’s new CEO, Elliott Brandt, described how his organization has cultivated influence with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Director Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe – and how it believes it can gain “access” to their internal discussions. The three named officials had relied heavily on pro-Israel donors to fuel their campaigns for office and all had relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities.”
(3) Meta Zionism. Also for the Grayzone (Grayzone), ¡Do Not Panic! reports Meta’s recruitment of vast numbers of former Israeli soldiers and provides a peek into a biased content moderation process that’s been heavily censoring pro-Palestinian accounts amid the Israeli siege of Gaza. More than one hundred former Israeli spies and IDF soldiers work for tech giant Meta, including its head of AI policy, who served in the IDF under an Israeli government scheme that allows non-Israelis to volunteer for the Israeli army. Many of the former soldiers worked for Israel’s spy agency Unit 8200. These ex-IDF members are based evenly across Meta’s US offices and in its Tel Aviv office, and a significant number of them, like Anderson, have a specialization in AI.
(4) UN Report on Israeli Gender-Based Violence. Kit Klarenberg of Global Delinquents reports on the recent (March 2025) UN Human Rights High Commission exposure of how the Zionist entity has employed “sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians” on an industrial scale since the Gaza genocide erupted in October 2023. (See UN HRHC)
“The UN concludes these hideous acts are a central component of Israel’s “broader effort to undermine [Palestinians’] right to self-determination,” their systematic nature pointing unambiguously to endorsement by Tel Aviv’s military and political leaders...
“The UN encountered no obstacles collecting voluminous highly incriminating evidence of this vile abuse. In addition to a welter of victim and witness testimony, perpetrators often voyeuristically captured themselves and their confederates openly committing these crimes on camera.
“Frequently, these abhorrent images were pridefully posted on the culprits’ personal social media accounts. Such actions amply attest to the culture of total impunity in which ZOF soldiers literally rape and pillage.
“The UN documented multiple statements by Zionist entity officials actively supporting ZOF militants accused of sex crimes, and “legitimizing rape and other forms of sexual violence” against Palestinians, particularly detainees. That Israel’s rulers advocate sexually-charged attacks on Palestinians is further reinforced by a deliberate ZOF strike on a women’s rights centre in Gaza, in mid-November 2023. The UN noted the broadside’s “clear gendered dimension,” with soldiers daubing deeply offensive, sexist insults directed at Palestinian women on the building’s inner walls in Hebrew”.
“The UN Commission report contains five separate sections on the Zionist entity’s weaponisation of sexual abuse; “sexual harassment and public shaming of Palestinian women”; “filming and photographing acts of sexual violence against men and boys during arrest”; “sexual violence during ground operations including at checkpoints and evacuations”; “sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence in detention”; “sexual and gender-based violence by settlers and other civilians.” Each is rife with repulsive descriptions, and stomach-churning attestations.
“While ranking circles of hell is a tawdry task, the section detailing sexual violence directed towards male and female Palestinian detainees is most vital to examine. The sheer scale of abuses documented, and consistency of accounts provided by victims imprisoned in over 10 separate Israeli military detention facilities, means it cannot be plausibly argued this savagery is aberrational, or attributable to ‘rogue’ ZOF militants or units. It can only be deliberate, determined policy, signed off and directed at the highest levels”.
Iran: Will We See Sunday?
Larry Johnson seems to think so. The US has said it expects “direct” talks with Iran this weekend; Iranian sources refer to “indirect” talks through Oman mediators which might conceivably pave the way to direct talks. Johnson has consistently argued that (1) Russia’s strategic partnership with Iran (which has now passed Russia’s lower house) explicitly commits Russia and Iran to supporting the principle of non-proliferation; and (2) that one plausible outcome would be a recreation of JCPOA in which both Russia and China (whose representatives met with Iranian in Moscow earlier this week) would act as guarantors and the US would lift sanctions on Iran. Iran has ruled out including discussion of missiles in any talks. Johnson has also consistently underlined (3) the importance of Russia's main interests in Iran - the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which is a 7,200 km (4,500 mile) long multimodal network of shipping, rail and road routes for the transportation of goods between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe. It is intimately related to the opening up of the Arctic as a consequlence of climate change, which none of the parties seems to want to take seriously.
Source: Wikipedia
Johnson rules out the likelihood of any kind of US/Israeli ground attack (Iran is four times the size of Germany) and, so far as an air war is concerned, he judges that the Iranians are underestimated: they have a sophisticated air defense system, which is supplemented by S-300 and S-400 systems supplied by Russia. Many reports I have seen suggest Iranian possession of kinzhal-type missiles and even that Iran has developed these independently of Russia. In the event of a Western attack, Johnson believes that the Russians and the Chinese would support Iran with weapons, logistics and money.
Kit Klarenberg (Klarenberg) is another analyst who considers that the West over-inflates the potential of its armed forces, noting how this mistake has played out in Yemen (and might therefore predict how it might play out in Iran):
“A little-noticed July 2024 Associated Press report on the return home of US fighter pilots after nine months of failing to thwart AnsarAllah’s Red Sea blockade noted that battling an enemy capable of fighting back “in the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II” had been deeply psychologically ravaging for all concerned.
“As a result, Pentagon officials were investigating how to tend to thousands of pilots and sailors adversely affected by their involvement in the bruising effort, “including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.” One pilot told Associated Press, “most of [us]…weren’t used to being fired on given the nation’s previous military engagements in recent decades.” He described the experience of AnsarAllah’s retaliation as “incredibly different” and “traumatizing”, as getting shot at is “something that we don’t think about a lot.”
“A new experience it may be - but it’s one Washington needs to urgently adapt to. As a July 2024 RAND Corporation report found the US military was woefully ill-equipped sustain a major conflict with “peer-level competitors” such as China for any length of time, while facing significant threats from “relatively unsophisticated actors” such as AnsarAllah, who have been “able to obtain and use modern technology (e.g., drones) to strategic effect.”
“Yet, as Axios has reported, Pentagon weapons procurer Bill LaPlante - a journeyman engineer and physicist - has been awed by AnsarAllah’s use of “increasingly sophisticated weapons,” including missiles that “can do things that are just amazing.” He claims the Resistance group’s capabilities are “getting scary”. Once the US has exhausted itself yet again failing to crush AnsarAllah, we could see more of its arsenal in play - and in turn, another historic defeat of the Empire, as inflicted over the course of Operation Prosperity Guardian.”
Israel and Turkey in Syria
The Economist (Economist) has recently carried a piece confirming escalating tensions between Israel and Turkey in Syria. Turkish army officials have been trying to equip at least some air bases with air-defence systems and armed drones. One of these bases, T4 near Palmyra, was bombed by Israel on April 2nd and on the same day Israel hit two other bases and military targets. Needless to say, Israeli protestations about Turkish influence in Syria, whose illegal, terrorist HTS government Turkey backed, are the height of hypocrisy since Israel illegally occupies southern Syria. Successive Israeli attacks on the infrastructure of Syria’s old army have destroyed many of the Assad regime’s ageing Soviet-built aircraft.
“Mr Erdogan has accused Israel of stirring up Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities to destabilise a country emerging from one of this century’s deadliest wars. But what worries him most is the relationship between Israel and the Kurds. Turkey suspects Israel of using the SDF to undermine Turkish influence in Syria and foment separatism within Turkey. Turkey sees the group as a front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey and most Western countries list as terrorists.”
Yet the HTS government has struck a deal with the Kurds that would allow them continuing semi-autonomous rule and at the same time would integrate the Kurdish SDF into the Syrian army, while in Turkey itself there appears to be a truce between Ankara and imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, and the PKK is said to have called a temporary ceasefire or even to have been disbanded. But Turkey is suspicious that Israel wants to create a PKK statelet on its border. Both Turkey and Israel may share a common platform in their desire, says the Economist, to keep Iran from re-establishing a foothold in Syria.
After reading your section detailing the UN report of the Zionist's explicit sexual violence toward Palestinian women and children, I am confused and disgusted by Orban's welcome extended to the chief proponent of that ongoing genocide