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 Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 8:24am On Apr 29 |
African American republicans would feel insulted by your post. Everyone has a right to support a party of their choice. Id be glad to know if Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas , Collin Powell or Dr Carson worship rich white Republicans. Elon Musk has done more for humanity than most people , summing him up as a racist is actually yourself reasoning like the xenophobic South Africans . One day someone will make me understand why liberals think they are more better than others which makes them waste endless time forcing everyone to accept their worldc views. Start with liberal run cities . cococandy: |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 7:05am On Apr 29 |
If Trump was Putin puppet why did he supply Ukraine with Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles In December 2017, the Trump administration approved the first sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, which included 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launch units. These were delivered in April 2018. Sniper Systems (2017): The administration authorized the sale of $41.5 million worth of Model M107A1 sniper rifle systems and ammunition in Obama had refused to do that derogatorily sending them blankets plus other non lethal stuff. DeepSight: |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 6:30am On Apr 29*. Modified: 6:56am On Apr 29 |
To be honest,I wanted the Russians to crush the EU and Joe Biden provoked war on Ukraine. I still want Zelensky out , he is I believe blackmailing western leaders by kicking back some of the aid they give him. I don't like his Azov battalion which is a neo Nazi group. The brigade was co-opted into Ukraine defence forces. Russia lacks the killer punch , and from the onset I lamented their lack of achieving air superiority showed their military has a long way to go. Having missiles like iskander or Kalibr or drones like the Geran that are hard to shoot down is no substitute for air superiority. You must have seen how air superiority has taken out the Iran regime, weapons and factories. Massive artillery firepower is what has enabled Russia control 20% of Eastern Ukraine. Russia primary goal was to prevent Ukraine replacing them as Europe primary energy supplier. Its largely achieved this . Where's their famed T-14 Armata? Not seen in any meaningful action despite their hype. Oreshnik by now should have had Zelensky leading a subterranean life like Nasrallah and Ayatollahs, instead he is all over the world. I'm pretty disappointed with Russia to say the least. I'm of the opinion that the war right now is on a stalemate,not much gain and lose ground . It's a senseless meat grinder with no real combat achievements for any side. Both armies too stretched out . An attrition war can continue indefinitely. Meanwhile the rest of the world suffers especially grains and fertilizer.Europe is paying higher for energy. kad199: |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 6:16am On Apr 29 |
bemeruca:The left knows exactly how to bait black people, because they use things like racism." — Thomas Sowell Harriet Tubman understood the same human failing long ago: " I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more—if they knew they were slaves." Today's version isn't physical shackles, but mental ones — constantly reinforced by accusations of racism that keep people focused on external enemies instead of internal agency Deepsight called Sowell a House Nigger. 1 Like |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 6:11am On Apr 29 |
Iran sent around 3000 drones and missiles to UAE. Now UAE has closed the money shops Iran used to channel proceeds from it's sanctioned oil. UAE is pulling out of OPEC. Has infrastructure to ship 5 million barrels of oil per day but is limited by OPEC to 3.5 mpbd. Nigeria should also pull out and export as much oil as it can. The pervasive influence of oil is played out at the UN. 12 OPEC members tend to dominate the 57 members of the OIC at the UN General Assembly.UAE move will significantly undercut the UN policies on Palestinian and Muslim affairs. OIC members have demanded special considerations for islamophobia,literally forcing non oil producing countries to vote with them else oil goes up. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: World News! Events Happening Around The World by basilico: 3:01am On Apr 29 |
Egypt Fast Fact: Egypt built 7 layers of wall and barbed wire and armed guards to keep Palestinians from the Gaza strip out of their country Egypt has built a heavily fortified border to keep Palestinians from Gaza out of its country, complete with walls, fences, razor wire, and underground barriers. Critics say that Israel has faced non-stop condemnation from the UN, college campuses, and MSM for securing its border after decades of suicide bombings rocket attacks, and even the Oct. 7th t*rrorist attack. However, Egypt, an Arab m*slim nation, has a far stronger border system -and faces no outrage. In 2009 Egypt started building a major underground steel wall along the Gaza border to block smuggling tunnels. In 2014 Egyptian President Sisi announced the creation of a buffer zone along the Gaza border after a major t*rrorist attack killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers in Sinai. He ordered the Egyptian military to to stop tunnels used by Hamas and other groups to arm Sinai jihadists. Egyptian authorities destroyed more than 3,000 homes and other buildings. The buffer zone was initially set at 500 meters wide and later expanded. Egypt also flooded many tunnels with seawater. In 2020 Egypt sped up work on a new reinforced concrete and steel wall. Its about 20 feet high, reaches several feet underground, and runs along the full border. Palestinian and Israeli media at the time reported the project was meant to end infiltration of extremists in both directions. February 2024 Egypt added another concrete wall,and multiple layers of coiled barbed wire to keep Palestinians from Gaza out. #ChristinaAguayoNews
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| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 2:55am On Apr 29 |
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| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 2:45am On Apr 29 |
Ilhan Omar refused to appear before the Minnesota state assembly to explain her bill that allowed fraud . Her ties to fraudsters. So they subpoenad her. DOJ confirmed it's investigating her immigration details . She lied about the age she became naturalized besides marrying her brother on paper. She acts like she's above the law. If it was Ijebos who has done the same things , he would have been denaturalized and deported. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 2:37am On Apr 29 |
bemeruca:The UN of today is just a joke. 1 Like |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 2:28am On Apr 29 |
Look at this pro abortion liberal congressional testimony. She can't even answer what her favourite method of abortion is /mediaViewer?currentTweet=2049160492438917349¤tTweetUser=RepBrandonGill She's asked about Sunction - no answer , D &C - no answer, D & E no answer about Salt injections - no answer. Yet she's a Professor and advocate on matters abortion . She must be a DEI. Cococandy . How do you accept to live in the same country as this one? |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 1:48am On Apr 29 |
bemeruca:Anything Trump does is a crime to Ijebos. Everything a democrat is accused of by a Republican is in error. He went off explaining how Comey and Letitia indictments didn't meet the muster a few weeks ago. 1 Like |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 1:30am On Apr 29 |
bemeruca:That's the definition of a *formal * cult worshipper who spends all his life accusing others . |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 1:28am On Apr 29 |
ijebosb:I make a lot of typos . I have no apologies. Posts here are not marked like compositions. If you get the message , well and good . I can guarantee you Comey will get indicted in Florida on RICO charges. Hopefully by years end. He is a cornered rat, the only thing that will save him is rat out Hillary the witch.. Take that to the bank. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 12:43am On Apr 29*. Modified: 1:27am On Apr 29 |
bemeruca:Kimmel should be questioned what he meant by Melanie being an expectant widow. I think indicting Comey is a long overdue move. He faces upto 10 years. . This case matters because North Carolina where he's been indicted in an area which is out of the swamp control. Liberals have been calling for Trump removal by all means openly. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 12:41am On Apr 29 |
feedthenation:Thank you for the correction. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 12:33am On Apr 29*. Modified: 1:05am On Apr 29 |
Fauci advisor indicted . https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.603873/gov.uscourts.mdd.603873.1.0_2.pdf Morens was indicted for manipulating science, facilitating the creation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and then running a cover-up operation. The evidence of the cover up is what busted him. indictment, unsealed Monday in Maryland federal court, also notes two unnamed co-conspirators who “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act].” Information in the indictment indicates the co-conspirators are Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of Manhattan-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantee. Morens, who served as a senior advisor to Fauci from 2006 to 2022, made his initial appearance in court Monday, and a judge granted him conditional release pending trial so long as he surrenders his US passport by Wednesday. He must also “avoid all contact” with the co-conspirators. (more) “As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19. I have written extensively about Dr Daszak of Ecohealth Alliance. Fauci lied, people died. He funded Wuhan through Daszak ,they bio engineered the coronavirus to make it deadly ,then unleashed it to the world. They lied to cover up it's origin, they used the virus to shut down the travel and the global economy, released and mandated covax. On top of it all they used the pandemic to ensure mail in voting in 2020 was used on a massive scale. COVID-19 is conjoined with the 2020 elections like Siamese twins . Joe Biden pardoned Dr Fauci .They will rat out Fauci to save their sorry asses. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 12:28am On Apr 29 |
James Comey indicted and arrest ordered for his 86 -47post . He knew what 86 the 47 meant. Time to bankrupt the corrupt SOB. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 12:05am On Apr 29 |
Iranian oil is sanctioned.You buy their oil the world boycotts and punishes you. China is the hungry one for oil ,it's impossible to prevent it from buying the oil The dark fleet of oil tankers docks at no ports They transfer the oil offshore to flagged ships with insurance. Ports don't accept ships without insurance especially oil tankers. Who'll pay for cleanup if a spill happens. Ships will boycott such ports UAE has closed the money transfer shops for Iran. Chinese tankers would load the oil offshore (Ship to ship transfer from sanctioned tankers );then deposit money I to these UAE shops . That's not happening now. The author details what happens if storage is full. Long term damage to Iranian economy . Iranian missiles are useless when it comes to oil wells being shut down. Iranian missiles won't make UAE receive and transfer Iranian money. Iranian missiles won't make seaports accept their sanctioned fleets. Iranian missiles won't force Lloyd's of London $ consortiums insure their dark fleets. Mikasaobi: 1 Like |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 7:31pm On Apr 28 |
Bemeruca Kemi Badenoch just delivered the line every western conservative leader has been dodging for a decade. An lBC caller asked Badenoch how a muslim could trust The Conservative Party after shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy criticized mass ramadan public prayer in Trafalgar square as an act of domination. Badenoch did not duck. Her opening, " My grandmother was a muslim. I was born in a country that was 50% muslim. I said muslim prayers on friday because that's what happened there when i was at school. I have good friends who are muslim". Then the line. "In my view, the law and our culture and norms triumphs any religion, whether it s christianity, whether it is islam". Then the clincher, " If we are trying to tell people that you are not allowed to criticize any religion, then we are changing the very fabric, nature and culture of this country. And I i fundamentally disagree with that. British law over religious law. British culture over religious deference. The right to criticize any religion christianity, islam, all of them is a non-negotiable feature of a free society, not a privilege the majority granted to the minority. This is the western mainstream conservative position". Badenoch, daughter of Nigerian immigrants, raised christian, lived among muslims her whole childhood said it on national radio without hedging, without apologizing, and without softening it for the audience. The British Conservative leader just said what every western conservative leader for the past decade has been afraid to say. That fear is dying. Video from @lbc. Who you think on this wall will disagree with that? |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 7:13pm On Apr 28*. Modified: 7:34pm On Apr 28 |
Ijebosc:Most irrational argument I've read in a long time. The Roman Colosseum was the site where thousands of christians were put to death. Do you see christians demanding it be brought down? Several busts of Nero exist,why do Christians whom he persecuted fervently plus the Jews don't demand their destruction. Instead they study the history it represents What is it with progressives that offends them when they see historical statues that have been there for hundreds of years. I doubt you are capable of reasoning beyond what modern day liberals think and project If you hate something for good reason,who are you to force me to hate it too when I can sell burgers to those who want to see it? 2 Likes |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 7:00pm On Apr 28 |
nedu666:The oil field is larger than the diameter of the actual well hole so they can move to another spot and sink another well using hand held drills. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 6:50pm On Apr 28 |
nedu666:Don't forget while IDF and America intentions of the war are to stop the nuclear bomb, free up the straits, get oil supply chain stable, get a bite of the Iranian economy ( take the oil ) ,maintain the petrodollar etc . Their counterparts the Iranian regime are jihadists who would prefer this war brings back their Mahdi or hidden Imam or whoever. While the rest of the world wants to move on and develop , the regime desires the end of the world . 2 Likes |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 6:43pm On Apr 28 |
So we can say that the person who wrote that article doesn't know what he is talking about. He should get inside one well to see what's happening exactly. nedu666: 2 Likes |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 6:16pm On Apr 28 |
I know you can be balanced to some point. I know that most hits against Trump are just malicious, I've disagreed what he says many times, not that I posted here. Media has an unwritten rule never to shine Trump in any positive light at all, I will not join them in rubbishing everything about Trump. DeepSight: |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 5:43pm On Apr 28 |
bayelsaowei:I copy pasted 3 long posts here an hour ago. I am not one to agree with you on anything.. Trump is more sinned against than sin itself. If you can agree that most hits against him are malicious and overblown, I can consider taking your opinions seriously. Otherwise I will never join your lynch mob baying for an otherwise imperfect Trump at every opportunity, where none exists the lymch mob creates one. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 5:35pm On Apr 28 |
Bemeruca. Oil isn't a faucet. And that's why iran is cooked. People keep asking the same question about the u. S. Naval blockade of iran: if they cannot ship the oil, why do they not just stop pumping it? The answer is that they cannot. The reason involves physics, geology, and three quarters of a century of accumulated reservoir damage that the regime cannot undo. Let me walk through it. An oil well is not a faucet a faucet has a valve. You close the valve, water stops, you open it, water flows. Same as before. An oil well does not work that way at all. An oil reservoir is a high-pressure system. Crude sits trapped in porous rock typically sandstone or limestone under pressure measured in thousands of pounds per square inch, mixed with natural gas above and saltwater below. When you drill into that rock, you are creating a controlled leak. The oil flows up the well because the underground pressure is pushing it. When you shut the wellhead, the pressure does not stay still. It redistributes. Water from below pushes upward. Gas from above expands. The oil column gets disturbed sometimes permanently. Petroleum engineers have a term for this: shut-in damage. What actually happens when you "just turn it off" three categories of damage start the moment you shut in a producing well. The first is water coning and gas breakthrough. While the well is producing, the pressure drawdown holds the oil-water and oil-gas interfaces in roughly stable positions. Stop production, and water begins to rise into the producing zone while gas migrates downward. When you eventually restart, the well now produces salt water and natural gas instead of oil sometimes permanently. The second is wax and asphaltene deposition. Crude oil contains paraffin waxes and heavy asphaltenes that stay liquid only because the oil is hot and moving. Stop the flow, and these solids precipitate inside the wellbore, the production tubing, and the surface flowlines. Restart attempts plug the well shut. Iranian crude is notoriously waxy. The third is fines migration and sand settling. The perforations through the steel casing the holes through which oil enters the well from the rock clog with sand, fines, and asphaltene sludge during shut-in. Restart cuts flow rate, sometimes to zero, until a workover crew is deployed at six-figure cost per well to clean each one out. For an old field and iran's giant fields are old: ahvaz, marun, gachsaran, all producing since the 1950s and 60s shut-in damage is brutal. Texas and oklahoma operators in low-price periods routinely keep pumping at a loss rather than shut in, because the damage from shutting in costs more than the lost revenue. Iran's specific problem there are three additional factors making iran's situation worse than a typical producing nation's. Decades of sanctions have starved the industry of western technology. Halliburton, schlumberger, and baker hughes were the global leaders in well stimulation, workover, and reservoir management until they were forced out of iran between 2010 and 2018. The national iranian oil company has limped along on chinese-supplied equipment of significantly lower quality, plus reverse-engineered russian and pre-revolution american gear. Restoration after a shut-in requires precisely the high-end services iran no longer has. Iran also depends on water injection to maintain reservoir pressure. Most of iran's giant fields are on secondary recovery meaning seawater is pumped down injection wells to push oil toward producers. Shut in the producers and you must also shut in the injectors, or the field over-pressurizes. Stopping injection lets pressure decline. Restarting injection costs hundreds of millions of dollars and typically returns the field to lower output than before. There is no clean reset button. And oil is 30-40% of iran's government budget. Stop pumping for 90 days and the iranian currency collapses, subsidies on bread and electricity vanish, and the regime faces a domestic crisis worse than the 2022 protests. They cannot stop. They are physically and politically incapable of stopping. What is actually happening right now iran continues pumping because it must. The u. S. Blockade, which began february 28, prevents shipment. Iranian onshore storage at kharg island and bandar abbas filled up within weeks. After that, the regime began using its own fleet of aging very large crude carriers as floating storage, anchored off the strait of hormuz with their ais transponders dark. The floating storage filled up next. What happens then is what petroleum engineers call a production disposal crisis. Each pumping platform is producing oil that has nowhere to go and gas associated with that oil that, if not flared, will over-pressurize the entire system. So iran is now flaring increasing quantities of associated gas (visible from nasa viirs night satellite imagery), burning off the secondary product into the sky just to keep the primary product moving. Flaring is wasteful, expensive, and visible from orbit. It is what countries do when they have run out of options. The long-term damage even when this war ends, iran's oil sector will not return to where it stood on february 27, 2026. A reservoir engineer can model the damage. Estimates range from 20-35% permanent productivity loss across iran's giant fields, depending on how long the chaos continues and how badly the wells are mishandled while it is going on. That is hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves that will sit underground forever, because the regime did not have the technology, the time, or the strategic patience to manage a controlled shut-in properly. This is what makes the u. S. Naval blockade strategically devastating in a way that ordinary sanctions are not. Sanctions reduce demand for iranian oil. The blockade physically prevents its movement. And because iranian oil cannot be turned off and cannot be shipped, every barrel pumped now becomes either flared waste or reservoir-damaging backpressure. The islamic republic is not facing a financial squeeze. It is facing a geological squeeze the kind that does not get undone with a ceasefire, a sanctions waiver, or a billion-dollar qatari escrow account. It is the kind of damage that the rocks themselves remember. A blockade held for six months is a decade-long revenue hit to the islamic republic. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Russia-Ukraine War: World News, Weapons & Battlefield Discussions - Live by basilico: 5:33pm On Apr 28 |
obedience4, writerrng Iran is doomed. Oil isn't a faucet. And that's why iran is cooked. People keep asking the same question about the u. S. Naval blockade of iran: if they cannot ship the oil, why do they not just stop pumping it? The answer is that they cannot. The reason involves physics, geology, and three quarters of a century of accumulated reservoir damage that the regime cannot undo. Let me walk through it. An oil well is not a faucet a faucet has a valve. You close the valve, water stops, you open it, water flows. Same as before. An oil well does not work that way at all. An oil reservoir is a high-pressure system. Crude sits trapped in porous rock typically sandstone or limestone under pressure measured in thousands of pounds per square inch, mixed with natural gas above and saltwater below. When you drill into that rock, you are creating a controlled leak. The oil flows up the well because the underground pressure is pushing it. When you shut the wellhead, the pressure does not stay still. It redistributes. Water from below pushes upward. Gas from above expands. The oil column gets disturbed sometimes permanently. Petroleum engineers have a term for this: shut-in damage. What actually happens when you "just turn it off" three categories of damage start the moment you shut in a producing well. The first is water coning and gas breakthrough. While the well is producing, the pressure drawdown holds the oil-water and oil-gas interfaces in roughly stable positions. Stop production, and water begins to rise into the producing zone while gas migrates downward. When you eventually restart, the well now produces salt water and natural gas instead of oil sometimes permanently. The second is wax and asphaltene deposition. Crude oil contains paraffin waxes and heavy asphaltenes that stay liquid only because the oil is hot and moving. Stop the flow, and these solids precipitate inside the wellbore, the production tubing, and the surface flowlines. Restart attempts plug the well shut. Iranian crude is notoriously waxy. The third is fines migration and sand settling. The perforations through the steel casing the holes through which oil enters the well from the rock clog with sand, fines, and asphaltene sludge during shut-in. Restart cuts flow rate, sometimes to zero, until a workover crew is deployed at six-figure cost per well to clean each one out. For an old field and iran's giant fields are old: ahvaz, marun, gachsaran, all producing since the 1950s and 60s shut-in damage is brutal. Texas and oklahoma operators in low-price periods routinely keep pumping at a loss rather than shut in, because the damage from shutting in costs more than the lost revenue. Iran's specific problem there are three additional factors making iran's situation worse than a typical producing nation's. Decades of sanctions have starved the industry of western technology. Halliburton, schlumberger, and baker hughes were the global leaders in well stimulation, workover, and reservoir management until they were forced out of iran between 2010 and 2018. The national iranian oil company has limped along on chinese-supplied equipment of significantly lower quality, plus reverse-engineered russian and pre-revolution american gear. Restoration after a shut-in requires precisely the high-end services iran no longer has. Iran also depends on water injection to maintain reservoir pressure. Most of iran's giant fields are on secondary recovery meaning seawater is pumped down injection wells to push oil toward producers. Shut in the producers and you must also shut in the injectors, or the field over-pressurizes. Stopping injection lets pressure decline. Restarting injection costs hundreds of millions of dollars and typically returns the field to lower output than before. There is no clean reset button. And oil is 30-40% of iran's government budget. Stop pumping for 90 days and the iranian currency collapses, subsidies on bread and electricity vanish, and the regime faces a domestic crisis worse than the 2022 protests. They cannot stop. They are physically and politically incapable of stopping. What is actually happening right now iran continues pumping because it must. The u. S. Blockade, which began february 28, prevents shipment. Iranian onshore storage at kharg island and bandar abbas filled up within weeks. After that, the regime began using its own fleet of aging very large crude carriers as floating storage, anchored off the strait of hormuz with their ais transponders dark. The floating storage filled up next. What happens then is what petroleum engineers call a production disposal crisis. Each pumping platform is producing oil that has nowhere to go and gas associated with that oil that, if not flared, will over-pressurize the entire system. So iran is now flaring increasing quantities of associated gas (visible from nasa viirs night satellite imagery), burning off the secondary product into the sky just to keep the primary product moving. Flaring is wasteful, expensive, and visible from orbit. It is what countries do when they have run out of options. The long-term damage even when this war ends, iran's oil sector will not return to where it stood on february 27, 2026. A reservoir engineer can model the damage. Estimates range from 20-35% permanent productivity loss across iran's giant fields, depending on how long the chaos continues and how badly the wells are mishandled while it is going on. That is hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves that will sit underground forever, because the regime did not have the technology, the time, or the strategic patience to manage a controlled shut-in properly. This is what makes the u. S. Naval blockade strategically devastating in a way that ordinary sanctions are not. Sanctions reduce demand for iranian oil. The blockade physically prevents its movement. And because iranian oil cannot be turned off and cannot be shipped, every barrel pumped now becomes either flared waste or reservoir-damaging backpressure. The islamic republic is not facing a financial squeeze. It is facing a geological squeeze the kind that does not get undone with a ceasefire, a sanctions waiver, or a billion-dollar qatari escrow account. It is the kind of damage that the rocks themselves remember. A blockade held for six months is a decade-long revenue hit to the islamic republic. 3 Likes |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 4:18pm On Apr 28 |
Final Part. VI. Scalise, Rand Paul and the Violence the Media Minimizes On June 14, 2017, James T. Hodgkinson, a 66 year old left wing activist from Belleville, Illinois, arrived at a Republican congressional baseball practice at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia. He confirmed with a passing congressman that Republicans, not Democrats, were on the field. Then he opened fire, shooting House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in the hip, as well as a Capitol Police officer, a congressional aide, and a lobbyist. Investigations revealed Hodgkinson had a clear and documented hatred for Republicans. He arrived living out of his van, with a legally purchased rifle and a list of six conservative members of Congress, presumably his targets. Had Scalise's Capitol Police security detail not been present, those on the field said it would have been a massacre. Hodgkinson is not a shadowy figure with unclear motives. He had been an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders and volunteered for the senator's campaign in Illinois. People familiar with him said he became intensely upset and angry about politics during the 2016 election cycle. Rand Paul survived that shooting but was later assaulted by his socialist neighbor Rene Boucher, who attacked him from behind and broke his ribs, requiring him to be hospitalized. The SPLC admitted that Hodgkinson liked the SPLC on Facebook. That connection matters because of what the SPLC had already done to one conservative organization, and what it now stands federally charged with having done at Charlottesville. VII. The SPLC and Floyd Corkins: A Targeting Map On August 15, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins II arrived at the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C., with a 9mm pistol, multiple ammunition clips, and a box of extra rounds. Prosecutors said his mission was to kill as many people as possible, and the only thing that prevented a mass shooting was a heroic building manager who was shot but managed to disarm him. Corkins pleaded guilty to charges including committing an act of terrorism while armed and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. How did Corkins find the Family Research Council? He told the FBI directly. "Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups" Corkins told interrogators. "I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that." The SPLC's hate map was not a research tool in this instance. It was a targeting map. FRC President Tony Perkins said at the time that Corkins "was given a license by a group such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, who labeled us a hate group because we defend the family and we stand for traditional, orthodox Christianity." Corkins carried, in addition to ammunition, the name and address of a second conservative organization also designated by the SPLC. It was presumably his next target had he not been stopped. A decade after the attack, the FRC remained on the SPLC's hate map. No retraction. No accountability. No acknowledgment that designating mainstream Christian policy organizations as hate groups might carry consequences in a country full of people looking for someone to hate. Now, in April 2026, the SPLC itself has been indicted on federal fraud charges. The organization that built the hate map that guided Floyd Corkins to the Family Research Council was, according to federal prosecutors, writing checks to people inside the groups it claimed to be fighting, manufacturing racial hatred, and concealing millions of dollars through fictitious companies. The FBI Director cut the Bureau's relationship with the SPLC, calling it a "partisan smear machine." VIII. Tea Parties vs. Occupy. Trump Rallies vs. BLM. I have been told over and over that the hate of this moment is caused by Trump. He is the reason. But Trump was hosting an NBC show when some of these contrasts became clear. The comparison the left refuses to make is the one that most clearly illuminates the double standard. The Tea Party movement held thousands of rallies across the country between 2009 and 2012. They were peaceful. Tea Party activists were even known for cleaning up the public areas where they demonstrated. The crime rate at Tea Party events was effectively zero. You will not find a police report from a Tea Party rally that involves anything other than traffic concerns. Compare that record to what the summer of 2020 produced. The hundreds of riots left property damage assessed at up to $2 billion and at least 25 people dead. The murder rate went up by a record 30 percent in 2020. In Portland, rioters and anarchists took to the streets for more than 100 consecutive days. Nationwide, over 2,000 officers were wounded. These were the most destructive riots in American history. The question is not whether every BLM protest was violent. It was not. The question is whether the movement had a violence problem that the media normalized, excused ("mostly peaceful protests"  , and in some cases celebrated, while a January 6th breach of a government building with no firearms and no successful occupation was treated as the singular threat to the republic. The answer, if you are honest about it, is yes. IX. The Survey Data The polling data on who is more comfortable with political violence is consistent across methodologies. A YouGov survey conducted in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination found that 25 percent of respondents who identified as "very liberal" said political violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals, along with 17 percent of those who identified as "liberal." Only 6 percent of those who said they are "conservative" and 3 percent of those who identified as "very conservative" said the same. The further right were less likely to support violence? That doesn't work with the Biden FBI calling right wing violence the bigger threat. Take the time to study those studies. They are absurdly bad. The only way they can get the predetermined outcomes they sought was by classifying white prison gangs as "right wing." The same survey found that liberals were more likely to say it is usually or always acceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, with 16 percent holding this position, including 24 percent of "very liberal" respondents. Only 4 percent of conservatives and 7 percent of moderates held this view. A Marquette Law School national survey found that 78 percent of Republicans say happiness over the death of a political opponent is always unacceptable. Among Democrats, only 41 percent said the same. A 2025 Axios report found that House Democrats were telling reporters their constituents have said civility is not working and were preparing for "violence to fight to protect our democracy." One House Democrat described the dynamic as "the Roman coliseum. People just want more and more of this spectacle." These are sitting members of Congress describing their own base. X. The Jacobin Inheritance This is not a new phenomenon. The left's comfort with political violence as a tool of change has deep ideological roots. The Jacobins did not simply stumble into the guillotine. They built a theology of revolutionary violence in which the destruction of enemies was not a regrettable side effect but a moral act on behalf of history. Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, not just as a provocation but as a philosophical statement about power and how it is seized. The Weather Underground, the organization founded by Bill Ayers, planted bombs. Ayers was unapologetic. He told the New York Times on September 11, 2001, that he had no regrets and wished they had done more. Barack Obama launched his political career in Ayers' living room. The media shrugged. Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering a police officer. He became a leftist cause. Susan Rosenberg, a member of a group connected to multiple bombings including of the U.S. Capitol, had her sentence commuted by Bill Clinton. She went on to serve on the board of a fiscal sponsor organization connected to Black Lives Matter. The ideology has never fully separated itself from the logic that some violence, directed at the right enemies, is righteous. XI. There Is No Right Wing Equivalent Tell me a piece of clothing that is likely to produce physical violence if you wear it to a right wing rally. Can you think of one? I cannot. A marxist racist murderer like Che Guevera can be on t shirts and dorm posters. A cop killer like Mumia was lionized and can be tokenized. You can wear any color of the rainbow on your hat or shirt and know that a large gathering of right wing people will not demand you take it off. In a time when we are fighting Muslim terror, symbols of Muslim terror have been openly carried in our streets. Again no attacks provoked. Now reverse the mental exercise. Can you think of an item of clothing that would certainly provoke attack if you wore it to a left wing rally? Of course something like a Klan hood, provokes strong reactions, but we live in a broken country and culture where wearing a hat in support of a President who won with over 77 million votes can set off a reaction somewhat like sharks with bleeding chum dropped above them. That makes no sense. You cannot hate someone for their hat. You cannot attack someone for their hat. But that has been normalized, and if you do not believe me, take some time to learn more. Video after video after video, or if you are a moderate Democrat who thinks I am exaggerating, try the experiment yourself with a MAGA hat. The left presents the SPLC. The right has no equivalent institution that designates mainstream progressive organizations as hate groups, publishes their addresses, and then watches as men with guns follow the map. There is no conservative equivalent of Corkins following a published target list. The left presents Hodgkinson, who carried a list of Republican congressmen to a morning baseball practice and tried to kill as many as he could. The right's attacks on political figures are used to define the entire movement. Hodgkinson is treated as a solitary aberration. The left presents two assassination attempts against Donald Trump prior to last night, the most protected private citizen in America, and faces no sustained media examination of whether the rhetoric that Trump is a fascist who must be stopped by any means necessary contributed to those attempts. The standard applied to the right is: any violent act by anyone with conservative sympathies is evidence of systematic right-wing incitement. The standard applied to the left is: any violent act by anyone with left-wing sympathies is an isolated individual with untreated mental illness unconnected to any broader movement. That is not analysis. That is advocacy wearing the clothing of journalism. XII. Chris Murphy: The Three-Week Arc of a Man Who Thinks He Is Above Accountability Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut presents himself as one of the most sober and responsible voices in the Democratic Pa |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 4:04pm On Apr 28 |
Note what the SPLC did when Alex Jones and Arizona Representative Paul Gosar publicly raised questions about whether Charlottesville was a staged event in the immediate aftermath. The SPLC called those claims ludicrous conspiracy theories. The organization now under federal indictment for fraud, for paying a Charlottesville organizer, called it a conspiracy theory when people suggested they were involved. This is not a peripheral footnote. The Charlottesville event was used to permanently define Trump's presidency, to destroy careers and reputations, and to license years of political radicalization on the left. The foundational justification for calling the right violent turns out to have been constructed, at least in part, by an organization now charged with manufacturing the racism it claimed to fight. If you believed falsely that Trump promoted racists, recognize that you were duped by a very sophisticated operation that paired leftist journalism, and leftist activism, with paying for and inciting an enemy that they needed for funding and for legitimacy. The federal indictment also alleges the SPLC paid the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America as a field source, funded a National Alliance member more than $1 million over nine years, and used fictitious front companies including "Fox Photography" and "Rare Books Warehouse" to conceal the money flows. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called it what it is: the SPLC was "manufacturing racism to justify its existence." IV. January 6th: What He Said On January 6th, 2021, Trump spoke for approximately 75 minutes at the Ellipse. He told the assembled crowd: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." This is the sentence the left pretends does not exist. When confronted with it, they shift strategy and argue that one sentence of peace cannot undo an hour of passion. That is a legitimate argument to make in a legal brief. It is not a license to claim the words of peace were never spoken. The broader picture on January 6th is also worth repeating. The people who have been prosecuted range from genuine criminals to people who walked through open doors and took selfies in Statuary Hall. The claim that this was a coordinated, armed insurrection by the most dangerous political movement in America falls apart when you notice that, if it was in fact the most dangerous political movement in America, they forgot to bring the equipment that makes dangerous political movements dangerous. V. The Rhetoric They Give a Pass Now apply the incitement standard consistently and see where it lands. In 2008, Barack Obama told supporters: "I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Obama has so many more quotes it feels like an oppo dump if I use them all, but the man who told his supporters he wants them to be angry, they need to toughen up and fight Trump, if they bring a knife we bring a gun, has spoken out repeatedly in ways that would be called proof of violence inspiration if the quote came from Trump instead of Obama. In June 2018, California Representative Maxine Waters said at a rally: "If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere." In July 2018, Senator Cory Booker said: "Please, get up in the face of some congresspeople." In 2023, Representative Dan Goldman said Trump was "destructive to our democracy" and "has to be eliminated." Goldman apologized and claimed it was a poor word choice. In 2024, President Biden told donors in a private call that it was "time to put Trump in the bulls-eye." Shortly thereafter, two separate assassination attempts were made against Donald Trump. Steve Scalise, speaking after the second assassination attempt, made the connection directly: "Kamala needs to stop saying that President Trump is a threat to democracy. There are unhinged people that are taking that as a call to go and try to eliminate President Trump. President Biden said that as well, "time to put Trump in a bullseye." The President of the United States said that, and then two different people took that as a call to action. Where is the real scrutiny coming from the press?" It is a question worth sitting with. Scalise knows something about this subject from personal experience. Continues |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 4:02pm On Apr 28 |
Deepsight likes long posts The Charge The accusation has become liturgy on the left. Trump incites violence. Trump is dangerous. Trump's words are a threat to democracy. Say it enough times in front of enough cameras and it begins to feel like settled fact, the kind of thing serious people simply know to be true. This is being repeated now after the third assassination attempt of Trump happened last night. It is worth examining carefully, and the examination reveals a great deal about why we are in the broken place we inhabit today. A charge repeated is not a charge proven. And when you trace this argument to its specific evidentiary anchors, two dates come up almost every time: Charlottesville in August 2017 and January 6th in 2021. These are the twin pillars of the incitement narrative. Any person committed to the narrative will mention both if asked for examples. Let us examine them honestly. II. Charlottesville and the "Both Sides" Lie The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville has been weaponized so thoroughly that most Americans cannot accurately describe what Trump actually said about it. The media stripped his remarks down to a single phrase and buried everything else. What Trump said in full was this: there were "very fine people on both sides" a reference specifically to those on both sides of the Confederate statue debate, not to the neo-Nazis or the counterprotesters who clashed violently. He said explicitly in the same press conference: "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally." That sentence was omitted from nearly every broadcast. What is also omitted from virtually every discussion is the serious documented evidence that the rally itself was not the organic product of ordinary Trump supporters. The tiki torch marchers appeared, performed for cameras, and vanished. Agitators were identified on both sides with murky financing and murky motivations. The man who drove his car into the crowd, James Alex Fields Jr., was convicted and is in prison for life. Nothing about that event requires Trump's words to explain Fields evil. We now have even more evidence that Fields wouldn't have been there if there wasn't a need to pay for an elaborate staged racist event. III. The Charlottesville Psy Op: The SPLC's Indictment The Charlottesville narrative has been the left's most potent weapon for nearly nine years. It was cited as the reason Joe Biden entered the 2020 presidential race. It was used to brand Trump as the chief enabler of white supremacy in America. It was repeated in every impeachment argument, every campaign advertisement, and every newsroom style guide that quietly encoded "very fine people" as proof of fascism in the White House. It was built on an event that the Department of Justice now alleges was infiltrated and partially organized by a paid operative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The DOJ indictment alleges that the SPLC paid an informant network that included a source identified only as "F-37" who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right event. This source attended the event at the direction of the SPLC, made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC, and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. For this work, F-37 was allegedly paid over $270,000 by the SPLC in secret between 2015 and 2023. Sit with that number. A quarter of a million dollars, paid over eight years, to someone who helped put the most politically consequential racial spectacle of the Trump era on the map, while the SPLC publicly insisted that anyone who questioned the authenticity of the event was peddling dangerous conspiracy theories. The SPLC more than doubled its revenue in the months following the Charlottesville violence. In 2016, total public support and net assets topped $51 million. By October 2017, that figure had grown to $133 million, a surge driven in part by donations from George Clooney, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and JP Morgan Chase. The organization that allegedly funded an organizer of Charlottesville also collected the windfall from Charlottesville's aftermath. That is not a coincidence that deserves to be discussed only on conservative websites. That is a scandal of historic proportions Continue next post. |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: American Politics Thread: Trump Is The 47th President! by basilico: 3:53pm On Apr 28 |
The supreme court has allowed the redistricting to go on. Katie Porter remarks same day after the Hilton attack is in very bad shape. I'm in full support of gerrymandering by both parties until the supreme court stops the nonsense. ijebosb: |
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