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Marco Rubio is a pro war Christian Zionist. Susie Wiles worked on Netanyahu‘s reelection campaign. it’s all still kind of in the family there.
I think the better case is that Rubio/Miller/Vought and Susie Wiles are Trump's handlers.
I tend to doubt Lutnick has much sway as Commerce Secretary. One gets a sense that Witkoff, Trump's personal envoy, seems to be minding the president's personal stakes in US foreign policy -- whether it be in Russia, Israel or the Persian Gulf. It doesn't seem Witkoff has very much power to tell Trump what to do either.
Marco Rubio is a pro war Christian Zionist. Susie Wiles worked on Netanyahu‘s reelection campaign. it’s all still kind of in the family there.
What’s your take on Norman Finkelstein?
Ah, there it is -- the special knowledge gambit.That dude does great reporting. He has very good sources, he's smart, and he's a real good guy.
You don't know who any of these people are.. because you're a complete normie,
I guess if I sourced something from Bari Weiss that would be acceptable.
So who is Pepe, Escobar, professor and who are his sources?
Italian journalists can't be taken seriously. Their names are funny!
What/Who should I be reading Chump?
First things first:
Is his name actually Pepe Escobar?
If not, what is it?
sorry, had to refresh my memory the name Norman Finkelstein is familiar to me, the man isn't.
I don't have a handy opinion about Norman Finkelstein.
Last edited by Winehole23; 03-11-2026 at 05:21 PM.
Here's a recent youtube video with Judge Napalitano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GoB8_DOl20
Political scientist, lost family in the holocaust. Staunchly anti- Zionist. Often debates Zionists like Alan Dershowitz. Very outspoken and knowledgable. I think a brave and good person.
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I didn't ask for a video that calls him Pepe Escobar.
Kinda awkward he's asking you to explain it to me and you're still asking him to explain himself.
—The Middle East accounted for around 24% of global sulphur production at 83.87 million metric tons last year; including 50% of seabourne trade of sulphur — which must be exported via the Strait of Hormuz.
Sulphur is essential to sulphuric acid which, in turn, is essential to processing critical minerals, including copper and nickel.
And, the sulphuric acid market was already tight before the latest Middle East disruption, increasing 500% before the latest conflict in Iran started.
htps://theoregongroup.com/commodities/nickel/strait-of-hormuz-is-also-the-chokepoint-for-sulphuric-acid-and-critical-metal-processing/
Metal / sector How sulphuric acid is used Exposure to Hormuz‑linked sulphur Nickel HPAL and other laterite leach circuits are highly acid‑intensive, both for MHP and nickel sulfate production Indonesia’s HPAL capacity is heavily reliant on Middle East sulphur imports and carries minimal inventory cover Copper Widely used in heap leaching, SX‑EW and other hydrometallurgical routes, especially for oxides and low‑grade ores Central African copperbelt imports ~2 Mt/y sulphur from the Middle East; disruptions directly hit oxide leach capacity Cobalt Often co‑produced with copper and nickel in acid leach circuits DRC supplies 70% of mined cobalt; reliance on imported sulphur links cobalt supply to Hormuz flows Uranium Sulphuric acid is a standard reagent in acid leaching and in‑situ recovery Projects using acid ISR or leach, particularly where sulphur is imported, face rising reagent costs and potential curtailments Rare earths Used in acid cracking and leaching in several flowsheets Projects outside China that rely on imported acid or sulphur are most exposed; Chinese operations are partly shielded by captive capacity Lithium Acid used in some leach‑based routes and in upstream reagents for conversion China’s refining base is indirectly exposed via higher global sulphur and acid prices and any constraints on imports anium dioxide Sulphate process reacts ilmenite or slag with sulphuric acid Pigment producers using the sulphate route face higher reagent costs; chloride‑route producers are less affected Zinc, manganese, and others Various hydrometallurgical flowsheets and secondary processing use sulphuric acid Exposure is more asset‑specific; operations with captive acid are advantaged over toll buyers
when was the last time "bomb them until they give up" worked?
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-...230717678.htmlU.S. intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
A "mul ude" of intelligence reports provide "consistent #analysis that the regime is not in danger" of collapse and "retains control of the Iranian public," said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity #to discuss U.S. intelligence findings.
The latest report was completed within the last few days, the source said.
With political pressure building over soaring oil costs, President Donald Trump has suggested he will end the biggest U.S. military operation since 2003 "soon." But finding an acceptable end to the war could be difficult if Iran's hardline leaders remain firmly entrenched.
Salalah, Oman
sounds like our forces in Iraq have been pinned down by Iran -- we had to get the Brits to evacuate the US consulate in Erbil
https://abcnews.com/International/us...y?id=130981420Diplomatic staff at the American consulate in Erbil were also forced to shelter-in-place when the facility came under attack from Iran before they were ultimately flown out of the country by the British Royal Air Force due to constraints on the U.S. military, which would normally carry out such a mission, according to the officials.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense confirmed to ABC News that the RAF carried "a number of US consulate staff and contractors, at their request" from Iraq to Cyprus.
"We cannot comment on specific operational details, but as a general matter, U.S. Mission Iraq continues to implement all needed steps to ensure the safety of our diplomatic personnel and facilities," a State Department spokesperson said.
Despite repeated urging from the U.S. that the Iraqi government step up efforts to defend American interests in the country, officials say the Trump administration has been disappointed by the response.
Trump has destabilized his Persian Gulf allies
https://capitalandempire.com/p/bahra...ti-riot-troops
attrition to strategic US radars
it's hard to tell just how badly Iran has already damaged US bases, comms and missile defense
https://www.wsj.com/world/iran-is-hi...fccc?st=xbs9DcOne of the most significant strikes hit a sophisticated early-warning radar system at Qatar’s Al-Udeid, which hosts the largest American military base in the region. The attack damaged the AN/FPS-132 radar, hindering its ability to function, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. official.
The AN/FPS-132 is a wide-aperture radar designed to track many targets at once. The U.S. has five of these fixed radar systems in its North American warning system that is set up to protect the U.S. homeland from potential incoming missiles, according to the International Ins ute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank. The system costs up to $1 billion.
“These are scarce, strategic resources,” said Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Satellite images from Planet Labs show damage to the radar installation in Qatar. The images show debris on the northeastern face of the domed radar installation, the side facing Iran, along with water runoff, likely from efforts to put out a fire, according to Sam Lair, a researcher with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“It demonstrates the fragility of some of these kind of higher tier radars,” said Lair, who published an analysis of the satellite image.
Iran also struck a TPY-2 radar attached to a Thaad battery in Jordan, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. official. The radar is a critical component of the ground-based missile-defense system, which intercepts ballistic missiles above the atmosphere.
Satellite images reviewed by The Wall Street Journal also show damage to three radar domes at Camp Arifjan, a base used by U.S. forces in Kuwait, and damage to a satellite communications system at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
side effect: stimulating the transition to nuclear and renewable sources of energy
this man has a point
the proximate cause of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz was the collapse of shipping insurance
all the bombs in the world can't put that risk-market back together -- this guy thinks it will take at least six months
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack...ef=go.bsky.appEvery sell-side research desk, every geopolitical risk model, and every energy strategy team at every major ins ution on Earth is currently modelling this closure as a kinetic problem solvable by military force. The United States has three carrier strike groups in theatre. It has achieved tactical air superiority over Iranian airspace. It has destroyed 80% of Iran’s integrated air defence network, sunk 43 warships, and reduced Iranian missile launches by 86% from their opening-day peak. By every traditional metric of military dominance, the campaign is succeeding.
Yet the Strait remains commercially paralysed.
The US Navy has not escorted a single commercial tanker through Hormuz. The Development Finance Corporation’s $20 billion emergency reinsurance facility, announced on 6 March, has not produced a single confirmed insured VLCC transit at scale. And the market, anchored to a consensus of two-to-four-week military resolution, is mispricing the duration of this closure by a factor of at least three.
This is not a geopolitical risk overlay. This is the first live demonstration of Actuarial Warfare: a paradigm in which private reinsurance desks, operating under regulatory capital constraints, exercise de facto sovereignty over the planet’s most critical maritime chokepoint more durably than navies, missiles, or executive orders. The closure mechanism is financial, not kinetic. Its reversal requires not military victory but the sequential, multi-party reconstruction of a commercial risk market that was already structurally hollowed by 26 months of Houthi losses before the first bomb fell on Tehran. And this mechanism is now interacting with four other channels, each independently severe, in ways that produce emergent dynamics no compartmentalised ins utional framework can synthesise.
What follows is the mechanism, the timing, the positioning vulnerability, the evidence chain, and the executable trade. Inside this analysis: why the reinsurance cascade cannot be reversed by political will on any timeline shorter than six months.
Global seaborne trade does not run on naval protection. It runs on a layered stack of private financial guarantees. At the base sit the Protection and Indemnity clubs, mutual associations of shipowners pooling third-party liability risk across their membership. Above them sit the treaty reinsurers, predominantly London-based syndicates that absorb catastrophic ac ulation risk. Above those sits the retrocession market and insurance-linked securities, a $41 billion capital pool providing the ultimate backstop. This stack possesses a critical structural vulnerability: the retrocession and ILS market systematically excludes war risk. The war-risk market therefore operates under a hard capital ceiling of approximately $1 billion in annual premiums and a handful of treaty reinsurers whose aggregate capacity cannot absorb a single major total-loss event.
When Operation Epic Fury commenced on 28 February and the IRGC declared the Strait closed to ships from the United States, Israel, and their Western allies on 2 March, London reinsurance desks did not convene committees. Their Solvency II risk models immediately flagged the Gulf as an uninsurable ac ulation zone. The problem was not merely that the probability of loss was elevated. The problem was that the tail was unlimited. A single VLCC total loss could easily exceed $150 million for the hull, $100 million for the cargo, and virtually infinite liability for environmental pollution. Against a premium pool that writes $1 billion annually, a single major claim would consume the entire global war-risk market’s revenue.
War-risk premiums for a seven-day VLCC transit surged from the pre-crisis range of 0.05% to 0.25% of hull value to between 1.0% and 3.0%. For a modern VLCC valued at $100 million, this translates to between $1 million and $3 million in additional, unrecoverable cost for a single transit. When the premium exceeds the voyage margin, the coverage is commercially unavailable regardless of its theoretical existence.
This is Verification Cost Inversion operating at planetary scale. The very attempt to price the risk forces capital flight at the precise moment coverage is demanded. Each additional day of closure feeds new data into insurer models, raising the actuarial cost of reopening and extending the closure in a reflexive, self-reinforcing loop. The down-barrier to closure was crossed in hours. The up-barrier to reopening, measured in the time required for sustained safe conditions, actuarial recalibration, and reinsurance capital replenishment, operates on a timescale of months to years.
The insurance mechanism is amplified by a second channel that the market cannot price at all: the atomisation of the counterparty that would need to guarantee safe passage.
Marine insurance does not merely price hazard. It prices governance. When the en y that can credibly guarantee non-attack is ambiguous or internally fragmented, underwriters face a qualitatively different risk, because assurances cannot be validated or enforced.
The 28 February decapitation strikes succeeded kinetically but produced a strategic paradox. When Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of Operation Epic Fury, the IRGC immediately activated its pre-planned Decentralised Mosaic Defence doctrine, a framework developed over two decades by former commander Mohammad Ali Jafari to survive precisely this scenario. The doctrine divided the IRGC into 31 autonomous provincial commands, one for each of Iran’s 30 provinces plus Tehran, each with independent firing authority, local command-and-control infrastructure, integration with Basij paramilitary elements, and pre-delegated authority to launch missiles, drones, or conduct naval harassment without requiring authorisation from the capital. Provincial commanders do not need real-time communication with Tehran. They execute pre-programmed retaliatory protocols designed to function in the absence of central leadership. Foreign Minister Araghchi stated the doctrine “enables us to decide when, and how, war will end.”
Negotiating safe passage with “Iran” now requires simultaneous agreement from multiple counterparties whose incentives diverge by port exposure and revenue dependency. Insurance markets demand a unitary sovereign guarantor. The Mosaic supplies the opposite.
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