The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Iran missile attack: what we learned last night Mindless march to World War 3 may have hit a brick wall yesterday Alex Krainer During the night of 2nd October 2024, Iran unleashed their operation "True Promise 2," launching between 200 and 400 ballistic missiles into Israel. As the video footage coming from Israel has shown, many of these missiles reached their targets inflicting extensive damage on the ground. Apparently, some offshore gas platforms were also struck. Claims and counterclaims are a bit all over the place at the moment: Israelis have claimed that the Iranian attack failed and that most of the missiles were intercepted. Netanyahu's aide  Hananya Naftali  even  tweeted a "BRAVO"  to Israel's aerial defence systems for intercepting "nearly all the missiles." But the footage from last night gives a very different impression; it corroborates those who claimed that many missiles hit their targets. A few of the videos also confirm that t

   

  "Modern Economy Rests On Single Road" In North Carolina Where Hurricane Collapsed Bridges  by Tyler Durden In March, a Wharton professor who studies artificial intelligence and start-ups claimed on X,  "The modern economy rests on a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina . The road runs to the two  mines that are the sole supplier of the quartz required to make the crucibles needed to refine silicon wafers ."  Ethan Mollick noted at the time, " There are no alternative sources known " if supply disruptions were seen in Spruce Pines.  Fast-forward to this past weekend across the Western North Carolina area, where a  major disaster continues to unfold  after tropical system Helene dumped torrential rains and unleashed devastating floods that  pulverized entire towns , destroyed roads, highways, and bridges, and left tens of thousands without power.  Back to Mollick. He shared with his followers a detailed list of the top miners in Spruce Pine, highligh

  Of Cool Heads and Hot Heads Philip Kraske   Ever more desperate, Israel is working hard to start a world war with the United States on its side. The elimination of  Hassan Nasrallah  won’t make much difference to Hezbollah’s fight; the new leader will soon step up. But Israel might regret the absence of the cool-headed Nasrallah. Cool-headedness has actually been the norm this past year, and is among the few hopeful notes on the international scene. Lots of leaders are keeping calm, holding back the factions in their governments that would love to take a crack at the folks thumbing their military noses at them. China merely tut-tuts about foreign navy ships traversing the Strait of Taiwan, Hezbollah keeps its big missiles in their silos, Iran responds to Israeli attacks with a few half-hearted firecrackers, and Vladimir Putin frowns and issues warning after warning when Ukraine, with Nato help, hits Russian refineries and radar installations. Meanwhile Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Syria, and

  Powerlessness Patrick Lawrence Damage in Gaza Strip during the October 2023. Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Let us begin with some facts of the cold, hard kind concerning conditions in Gaza and the West Bank after nearly a year of terrorist Israel’s daily assaults on the Palestinian populations in both places. These statistics derive from a World Bank report issued this month,  Impacts of the Conflict in the Middle East on the Palestinian Economy . They cover conditions through March; we can confidently conclude things have since worsened. “Eleven months into the conflict in the Middle East, the Palestinian territories are nearing economic freefall, amidst a historic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” the report begins. “Official data reveals a 35 percent decline in real GDP in the first quarter of 2024 for the Palestinian territories overall, marking its largest economic contraction on record. The