Brief Strait Of Hormuz Update

It’s a terrifying experiment in how long markets can remain irrational, Trump has blown away my expectations in how long he’s kept the oil price much lower than it ought to be by various chicaneries, most of which everyone watching understands are bullshit but somehow the markets still collectively self-delude even where most actors within them must know it’s a bubble.

I fear Iran does need to keep the strait closed until all the oil reserves & seaborne oil being used up right now really does run out and actual material shortfalls start biting core countries that the West cares about. The West is incapable of rationally seeing the end of the pier and stopping short, we must fall off it before we accept it is real.

The War of Narratives is being shredded as it is processed thru competing, fast-fashion narrative-control engines aimed at doom-scrolling market observers.

I have read that mysterious short-sellers or prediction market savants have emerged to profit from each 20-minute turn of the Wheel of Fortune. I don’t know if those reports are true, but it is strange to me that the financial markets are taking as long as they have to register the implications of either cutting off a big chunk of oil and gas or cutting off a big chunk of the flow of dollars to the GCC countries.

Rapid cycling of confused, contradictory messaging is the new censorship.

The ship movement monitoring is objective data that provides a modest check on runaway narrative construction. Notice we don’t have any equivalent window on the kinetic war or the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

If Iran capitulates at China’s behest, it will only make Trump and Hegseth and Rubio that much stronger and more brazen. They will not think twice about taking Cuba, Greenland and Canada and Mexico.

Dennis Ross indicated Trump’s blockade, Richard Haas’s idea, would prompt China to convince Iran to capitulate. I thought Ross was presumptuous with that claim, but as it turns out, he was spot on. The Chinese are this predictable. You can rely on them to lay down and roll over every time. I’m not sure how it can truly be the Chinese Century when China continues to breathe life into a dying empire rather than sticking a knife in its heart and finishing it off.

I think many people in America at this juncture would take China’s leadership over America’s leadership. America’s leadership is a collective of murderous criminals and being an unwashed American does not exempt you from their machinations. You are a target along with all the rest of humanity and all life on the planet.

A rather unusual aspect of this war is that the countries most endangered are all far from the actual fighting.

I figure that there are roughly 2 Billion (!) people in South and Southeast Asia who face starvation (or at least severe increase in malnourishment) this year because of the disruption of bulk exports from the Gulf. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc, depend on Gulf oil/gas for cooking, and presumably also on fertilizer for feeding a portion of their population. I’m pretty sure they are all net food importers, so higher oil/gas costs will mean less foreign exchange available for food, too…

So, continued blockage of Gulf exports threatens almost one quarter of the human population of Earth. Even WWII didn’t come close to that apocalyptic level of destruction!

I’d bet that China has explained this to Iran, and is using both carrots and sticks to force them to negotiate. China would be using different carrots and sticks to try to get Trump & Bibi to the table, but with less success.

I think Trump knows that this damn war has been bad for him – he’s losing his fawning Mob – so he’ll be glad to negotiate, as long as he gets to pretend that he “wins”.

But Bibi is a harder sell, and I’m not sure what leverage China has there. I assume that Israel will get another chunk of Lebanon (South of the Litani), plus another bite out of Syria. That might placate them for a while, and practically, it would take them a decade to really absorb such new territories. But Bibi’s high on hubris; he really wants to be the Jew Who Beat Persia, and he’s getting too old to be patient about it.

Like & Subscribe:

its the trade surplus china has with us. its like a drug they can’t kick. as Keynes noted, its one of the worst destabilizers of the international order. its a form of parasitical behavior, its destructive for everyone involved.

you saw what it did to europe, now germany is toast, just like what they did to the rest of the union. they destroyed the demand of other countries, to maintain that drug.

Imran kahn of pakistan understood this well, its why he is in jail.

i already did know how pakistan lost its ability to feed it self, and how Kahn tired to reverse that. here is SKI lanka.

“The Sri Lankan crisis is an illustrative example of convergent global debt, food, fuel and energy crises(free trade)

Terms of trade(free trade)disadvantaged the ‘Third World’ with their labor, resources and exports grossly undervalued and imports overvalued

Adopting ideologies of modernization and development and theories of comparative advantage(free trade), the capitalist imperative integrated self-sustaining indigenous, peasant, and regional economies into the growing global economy, through the appropriation of land, natural resources, and labor for export production.

While a small local elite prospered through their collaboration, most people became poor, indebted, and dependent on the vagaries of the global market(free trade)for their sustenance.

https://www.easternangle.com/debt-and-the-crisis-of-survival-in-sri-lanka-and-the-world/

ebt and the Crisis of Survival in Sri Lanka and the World
By
Asoka Bandarage
September 28, 2023

“The Sri Lankan crisis is an illustrative example of convergent global debt, food, fuel and energy crises facing much of the world. It is corporate media bias and narrative control that deflects from this analysis.”

“the disastrous and inevitably self-destructive capitalist paradigm of endless growth and profit. Debt is not “a straightforward number but a social relation embedded in unequal power relations, discourses and moralities…and…institutionalized power.”.

“Colonialism and Neocolonialism

The development of export agriculture and the import of food and other essentials under British colonialism turned Sri Lanka into a dependent ‘peripheral’ unit of the global capitalist economy. Adopting ideologies of modernization and development and theories of comparative advantage(free trade), the capitalist imperative integrated self-sustaining indigenous, peasant, and regional economies into the growing global economy, through the appropriation of land, natural resources, and labor for export production.

Monocultural agriculture, mining, and other export-based production(free trade) disturbed traditional patterns of crop rotation and small-scale subsistence production that were more harmonious with the regional ecosystems and cycles of nature. Plantation development contributed to deforestation, loss of biodiversity and animal habitats. While a small local elite prospered through their collaboration with colonialism, most people became poor, indebted, and dependent on the vagaries of the global market(free trade)for their sustenance.

Although colonized countries including Sri Lanka gained political independence following World War II, unequal exchange continued under neo-colonialism. Terms of trade(free trade)disadvantaged the ‘Third World’ with their labor, resources and exports grossly undervalued and imports overvalued. The dynamic is better understood as poorer countries being over-exploited rather than under-developed. Rising populations combined with corruption and inefficiency of local governments gave rise to endemic foreign exchange shortages and economic crises in Sri Lanka and many other countries.”

“As a 2022 United Nations Report points out; food prices are soaring today not due to a problem with supply and demand but due to price speculation in highly financialized commodity markets(bill clinton deregulated the commodity markets, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/30/rupert-russell-interview-price-wars
The Ukraine invasion, Brexit, the Arab spring, Donald Trump’s “children in cages” and other chaotic events throughout the last decade all sprang from one “deceptively simple” source – prices, according to sociologist and documentarian Rupert Russell.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton deregulated commodity markets under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, allowing much greater Wall Street speculation on the price of necessities like oil, wheat, metals and coffee. In the ensuing years, the investment influx turned the commodity markets into “casinos” that yielded wild price spikes and collapses detached from physical supply and demand, according to Russell.

For his 2022 book Price Wars, Russell traveled the globe to visit regions hit by the price swings, and draws clear lines between his gonzo account of the chaos he witnessed, commodity market prices and the markets’ deregulation.).

“A handful of the largest asset management companies, notably BlackRock (currently worth USD $ 10 trillion) control very large shares in companies operating in practically all the major sectors of the global economy(free trade): banking, technology, media, defense, energy, pharmaceuticals, food, agribusiness including seeds, and agrochemicals.”

“IMF debt financing requires countries to meet its familiar structural adjustment conditions: privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), cutbacks of social safety nets and labor rights, increased export production(free trade), decreased import substitution and alignment of local economic policy with US and other Western interests. These are the same aims as classical colonialism, they are just better hidden in the more complex modern system and language of global finance, diplomacy and aid.

A vast array of policies exacting these aims are well under way in Sri Lanka, including the sale of state-owned energy, telecommunications and transportation enterprises to foreign owners(fee trade), with grave implications for Sri Lanka’s economic independence, sovereignty, national security and the wellbeing of her people and the environment.”
——-
sri lanka, a case study on how free trade impoverished and starved their people

if you look at every one of these countries that are failing, all one needs to look at is free trade, THE IMF, and other quack economics which are at the bottom of all of this.

https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/09/14/wither-the-sri-lankan-economy/

“Imports were not to be controlled,

A High interest rate was imposed. This meant that entrepreneurs in the country had to obtain loans at high interest rates. In Sri Lanka, when this Neo Liberal- Free Trade Model was enforced, the bank loan rate was raised to 25%. The local entrepreneurs could not compete with the imports that came in without paying tariffs or paying low tariffs. The result was that local entrepreneurs gave up their businesses. Instead they found easy money by depositing the money in Fixed Deposits. Imports took the place of local production and this increased the debt of the country. This was advantageous to the Developed Countries because they found buyers for their manufactures.”

“Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics, the author of the Free Trade- Liberalization Neoliberal Model of the IMF died recently having taken all Third World countries and even some European countries to their graves.

All these countries have followed the Neo Liberal –Free Trade Model. This Model also brought riches in billions from the Third World to the Developed Countries.”

and really, sri lanka was forced into trying something, they simply ran out of money to pay for imports, which in the past they were self sufficient in. now look at the mess the free traders have made again. none of this can be turned around over night. sri lankas people are becoming radicalized, so instead of trail and error, violence will erupt because the system of free trade has robbed them of their future.
——–
free trade nabs another one: Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt due to deindustrialization, with manufacturing’s GDP share falling from 22% in 1977 to 15% in 2017.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/04/sri-lanka-economic-crisis-inflicted-by-self-serving-elite.html
————
under free trade Sri Lanka’s garment workers are currently caught between production targets, destitution, sickness and increasing authoritarianism, but exports are up enriching the already rich filthy rich

under free trade Sri lankans are being worked to death and starved, but exports are up:)

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/sri-lanka-free-trade-zone-ftz-colombo-garment-industry-clothing-factories-covid-pandemic

Work and Death in Sri Lanka’s Garment Industry

By
Tansy Hoskins
Juan Mayorga
Dil Afrose Jahan
Nidia Bautista

Sri Lanka is home to some of the biggest garment manufacturers in the world, and while clothing exports have risen, so have COVID-19 infections among workers. We talk to people who face the daily choice of disease or impoverishment.

Sri Lanka’s garment workers are currently caught between production targets and destitution, sickness and increasing authoritarianism. (War on Want)

Our new issue, “The Ruling Class,” is out now. Get a $20 discounted print subscription today!
The Politics of a Second Gilded Age
Matt Karp
Ronald Reagan Paved the Way for Donald Trump
Eileen Jones
Revisiting the Life and Intellectual Legacy of Primo Levi
Enzo Traverso
Houston, We Have a Labor Dispute
Meagan Day

Sitting alone in a room containing two narrow beds and a small table, Priyangika is sick with COVID-19. She fell ill after the virus spread through the garment factory where she works in the vast Katunayake Free Trade Zone outside Colombo, Sri Lanka.

“When I called the owner of the boarding house to say I tested positive for coronavirus, he scolded me, saying that we bring filthy diseases,” said Priyangika, whose name has been changed to protect her anonymity.

Sri Lanka is home to some of the largest garment manufacturers in the world. Its central bank has reported a 183 percent rise in exports since April 2020 — largely attributed to the apparel sector. But even as wealthy nations in the West begin to open back up thanks to plentiful vaccines and hospital capacities, the island nation is currently experiencing a deadly third wave of COVID-19 and recently reported its highest single day of fatalities. In a globalized world of both virus transmission and clothing production, Sri Lanka’s garment workers are currently caught between production targets and destitution, sickness and increasing authoritarianism.

While Sri Lanka’s apparel industry has a hard-earned reputation for being safer than many other countries’, garment factories have stayed open during recent lockdowns with the Public Health Inspectors Union now saying most COVID patients are in the clothing sector. In a statement, Amnesty International noted apparel production continuing despite limited testing and inadequate quarantine or care facilities for sick factory workers, as well as a lack of vaccine prioritization for those garment workers.

As factories continue to churn out jeans, T-shirts, bras, and sportswear, unions and labor rights campaigners say workers’ rights in Sri Lanka have deteriorated. Ashila Dandeniya is a former garment worker who founded the Stand Up Movement to represent garment workers in Sri Lanka and has spent the pandemic distributing over six thousand emergency food parcels to quarantining workers.

“There were a lot of unfair terminations — maybe someone was five minutes late to work, or they were unable to meet production targets, or they were just terminated because they’d been working in the factory for less than six months,” Dandeniya says.

According to Dandeniya, the belief that extreme measures were needed to get factories “back on track” has in turn normalized draconian behavior from management. Even measures intended to protect workers have led to deeper exploitation. Social distancing, for example, means factories are reducing the number of workers who clock in each day. “Before it would be fifteen to twenty people doing one operation; now it is five people. Five people to do the work of fifteen to twenty,” Dandeniya says. “No matter how difficult or physically straining it is, if workers say they can’t do it, they are asked to leave.”

Roshani, whose name has also been changed, spent most of the pandemic as a temporary “manpower” worker earning 900 LKR ($4.50) per day. Her job consisted of sitting on the floor surrounded by machines and snipping loose threads off clothes, then packaging them into bundles so heavy she could barely drag them across the factory floor. Managers set harsh targets and anyone who failed to meet them was not asked back the next day.

Being a temporary worker came with an additional stigma: “Permanent staff think about manpower workers as spreaders of corona, as we work in different factories each day,” Roshani says. “They don’t talk much with us, and they treat us as inferior. When we walk, they give us a wide berth.”

In March 2021, Roshani secured a permanent position at a factory, but found it no less exhausting. Manpower workers were bused to and from factories, but, as a permanent worker, she had to make her own way across the Free Trade Zone.

“Some days I had to leave the house around 5 AM. There are no buses at that time, so I walked. I did overtime until 7 or 8 PM. There was no time for me to use the washroom or drink water.” That month, Roshani earned 23,000 LKR ($116).
Factory Infections

The link between Sri Lanka’s garment factories and COVID-19 infection rates is a controversial subject. In November 2020, Reuters reported that a thousand workers at the Brandix factory in Minuwangoda had tested positive for COVID-19. With factories in multiple countries, Brandix is one of the world’s biggest garment manufacturers, making clothes for Gap, Victoria’s Secret, and Marks & Spencer, among others.

Three official reports have investigated the Brandix outbreak, which scientists have linked to Sri Lanka’s second wave. One report was commissioned by the Sri Lanka’s labour minister, one by the attorney general, and one by Brandix itself, which says it was not responsible for the outbreak and has been unfairly targeted. None of the reports have so far been made public.

In the aftermath of the Brandix outbreak, the Labour Ministry recommended factories set up bipartite COVID-19 safety committees consisting of employers, workers, and trade unions. Yet these committees have still not been setup in the vast majority of Sri Lanka’s garment factories.

“The right to information on health issues is a workers’ right. Employees must have the right to refuse work which is detrimental to their health,” says Anton Marcus, joint secretary of the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union (FTZ&GSEU). “We explain [to employers] that COVID-19 is not an occupational disease. COVID-19 is a pandemic and therefore the measures to prevent the spreading of the virus should go beyond the factory to include living conditions for employees and transport.”
“Cooking items have been placed in her room and a quarantine sign put on her door.”

The FTZ&GSEU is currently negotiating the creation of a union at Next Manufacturing Ltd, a factory in Sri Lanka owned and run by British clothing firm Next plc, after workers voted to form a branch in January 2021. Next Manufacturing Ltd is one of the factories where there is currently an outbreak of COVID-19. In May, a spokesperson for Next told Jacobin that while safety is a top priority, 143 workers had tested positive at the factory. The FTZ&GSEU believes this figure was well over two hundred and set to increase.

British campaign group War on Want believe factories’ reluctance to create COVID-19 bipartite health committees has a simple explanation: “They want to drive production forward as much as possible with minimal disruption or expense to preserve their profit margins,” Ruth Ogier at War on Want told Jacobin. “This is why proper safety measures and proper monitoring have not been put in place. The result is a rapidly rising number of cases in garment factories and communities.”

Back in her tiny room in the boarding house, Priyangika shares a bathroom with five other women. Her salary is too small for her to afford her own room, though her roommate moved out after Priyangika tested positive for Coronavirus. Cooking items have been placed in her room and a quarantine sign put on her door.

Far from the family her salary helps to support, Priyangika is unable to say whether she will be paid for the time she is sick off work. “I don’t know whether they will pay me or not. I do not know what they will pay me until I get the salary.” She is, however, still expected to pay full rent and electricity costs at the boarding house.

She hopes things will not get as bad as during the second-wave lockdown when she stayed inside for six weeks: “I was mentally broken down,” Priyangika says. “I was restricted to the four walls of the boarding house and I couldn’t go back to my village.” During this time, she also went hungry: “I didn’t have food during this time. I ate rice sprinkled with salt.”

Throughout the pandemic, Sri Lanka’s garment workers have continued to stitch clothes for some of the biggest brands in the world. Sri Lanka’s factory owner association, the Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF), lists H&M, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Levi’s, and Uniqlo amongst its clients. A collective of women’s rights groups in Sri Lanka, including the Stand Up Movement, are calling for fashion buyers to pay a premium for production during lockdown or restricted periods, and for this premium to be given directly to workers as hazard pay.

But instead, the fashion industry’s response to COVID-19 has seen brands cancel billions of dollars of orders, placing a huge strain on manufacturers. JAAF recently published an open letter stating brands were telling factories to airlift clothing orders to make up for delays. “Due to the global inequity in vaccine distribution, you and the countries you reside in are starting to ease restrictions and go back to what life looked like pre COVID-19 while we have been crippled by yet another wave that has seen COVID-19 cases rise by over 130 percent in two months,” the statement read.

JAAF told Jacobin that they are “working very closely with the government authorities to ensure the safety of employees and the community whilst keeping the industry operating,” and that a national rollout of the vaccine is crucial to getting the situation under control. Campaigners want the government to vaccinate all Free Trade Zone workers within two weeks. But there is no sign that garment workers have yet to be prioritized.

Despite this, experts say Sri Lanka’s garment factories are safer than those in neighboring countries like Bangladesh and India: “In many ways the sector is ahead of the game — especially with regards to the built space and work conditions within the factory floor,” explains Dr Kanchana Ruwanpura at the University of Gothenburg.

But there remains an overarching ethical issue facing Sri Lanka. “There isn’t enough global recognition for Sri Lanka that it is also a militarized regime in a sense,” says Dr Ruwanpura, whose forthcoming book tackles the presence of a powerful military. She points out that Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 task force is entirely made up of military officers. Many of these officers have exceptionally brutal records. The head of the national operations center for COVID-19 prevention is army commander Shavendra Silva, the target of a US-imposed travel ban for war crimes committed during the final stages of the conflict against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, when up to seventy thousand Tamil civilians were killed. And Sri Lanka’s current leader, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, served as defense secretary during the vicious counterinsurgency.

Large sections of the garment workforce are young women who migrated to Free Trade Zones from once-war-torn rural areas. As well as creating a dangerous atmosphere in which dissent over labor rights abuses leads to intimidation, the creation of an army-led COVID response has seen garment workers forcibly moved to quarantine centers.

While she was still working as a temporary manpower worker, Roshani received a phone call with the news that army personnel had taken the inhabitants of her boarding house, including the owner, to a quarantine center 100 km away after one of the boarders tested positive. She spent the next twenty-one days hiding alone in the boarding house, keeping the lights off and fearing that soldiers might return.

“The apparel sector needs to start thinking about what [a militarized regime] means for claims around ethicality,” Dr Ruwanpura concludes. “Everybody accepts Myanmar is militarized, but they are not realizing what is happening in Sri Lanka.”
———-
the straights situation will teach a very very cruel education about how evil trade can be. i think looking inwards will become ever more popular world wide, except the 500 years old plus western world which used trade as a weapon for enrichment of a few, over the many.

the western trade empires will simply not give up, till they are crippled to the point, where they become beggars.

Some good comments, I think elkern’s is the best (it’s the most recent I can see), Trump has really escalated beyond “Creative Destruction” to “Complete, Genocidal, Human Extinction Destruction” in his delusional, or pushed, effort to harm everyone, including the US populace, or 95% thereof, with his Neo-Caligula insecurity imagining he will reshape and control the entire world, soonly, bigly!!

So first thing I noted when I heard that Bibi and presumably Ben Gvir had “broken” the God Emperor’s direct command that Israel will NOT attack Lebanon and would “honor the cease fire” is that they put a big, metaphoric gob of spittle on his fat, orange face that will make the make-up smear and bleed. The mask is now forever off as to who is actually in control, the puny tail wags the entire dog, and nobody in the Dimmie or Rethug Party will ever stop that or object to it. Not in our lifetimes, which may be increasingly ending soon.

I only listened to one podcast this afternoon, a Banger from Danny Haiphong and Patrick Henningsen which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mketdh_C3fU

Many good points were made, Patrick noted in passing how the Russians have warned that they “could” start hitting the Drone factories across EUrope that are sending munitions against Russian territory. I think this is entirely overdue and don’t understand (nor support) the “restraint”. To elkern’s point about Richard Haas’ role in making sure the Strait is shut down for months to come, I think the goal is clear.

The goal is the Globalists’ Culling of the Human Race, as Bill Gates has said for decades there are too many filthy humans (the underclasses, which includes everyone but the Billionaire Class and their servants), and a Mass Extinction event is now planned. It won’t just be occurring in much of Asia, lots of Africa, many Pacific Island nations, etc. I believe it will hit biggest in the former Gulf GCC states, which will be destroyed, the rich will flee and everyone else will soon die without air conditioning or oil energy, desalination plants, etc.

Europe is doomed, of course, will not last particularly long. Henningsen emphasized the continuity of destroying EUropean viability, Biden started the process by bombing NordStream so we could sell them “our” LNG at grossly inflated prices. Trump, goaded by the the likes of Haas, the real “Secret Masters” alongside Chabad, the Globalists generally, and the Billionaire class want this outcome, it looks like they will get it in relatively short time.

At the moment, I believe there will be no midterms, the Trump Regime has expelled everyone with even borderline sanity. He attacks people across the World, the Pope, which causes the Neofascist Meloni to no longer side with him, etc. A Reich will be declared, a 1,000 year Reich is the usual fantasy. There are some questions though, suppose he does start a shooting war with “boots on the ground” in Asia, won’t there be mass revolts and resistance from the young, or will they all just get drafted, grabbed off the streets as in Ukraine, 2 weeks training, and sent off to die quickly as is done there?

Given the shitty, chemical food we get, the obesity, etc. will the US be able to field a domestic Fascist force (ICE is known for its brutality but not for its competence) and an army to “kill all the wogs” at the same time? Seems unlikely to me. Will the Globalist Class just hire from the Cop/Military Axis and start rounding up the lessers, slavery or Concentration Camps or immediate killing for all who resist?

The Mask is off the Ugly Face, the media won’t cover or acknowledge it, they are Epstein Class also. 1 detail from Danny and Patrick, not only did Iran immediately shut the strait, they hit an Indian tanker that had left, a clear message. And nothing less than the Zionist suckup Modi deserved. (Btw, a couple months ago, Due Dissidence covered a high Israeli official bragged on camera that Modi made a “deal” with Bibi that the low-caste Indians would be forced to slave for the Zionist entity, they now have a force of nearly a billion indentured service to make tiny Israel a global power? Sounds kinda delusional.)

What to do? I think it is time to get out, but even with the resources I have, it will require great effort and stress, everything is fucked up and travel will cost many times what it would have a few months ago.

If you’re stuck here, had this conversation with a friend 3 weeks ago, get some rural land you can grow basic victuals, the Mexicans eat Goats as do Middle Eastern people, bunnies are edible, and some of these things scale. The smart preppers have plans, stock up lots of nonperishable food. (Sadly, the Mormons, not exactly the most moral or kind people, have structures like this already in place.)

PS– I heard that the Federal government and some states are now going heavily against the Amish!!! Wtf. I guess they simply don’t want ANY good examples of simple, sustainable lifestyles not enslaved by the late Capitalist Ripoff Machine.

It’s the darkest timeline possible. At first I though Medhurst’s belief that Trump would crush all his former “allies” the Saudis, didn’t UAE give him the aircraft, etc. and make the Western side of the Persian Gulf uninhabitable was going too far, but now it’s looking more credible. (Partly, the manic way he presented it originally, raised my skepticism. To seem manic and positive about such evil from someone who is overall admirable is hard to compute.)

By this point, to me EVERYONE in every country across the globe should know, do not EVER make a deal with the Deranged Demon Trump, you will be on the Menu, not at the table. (A point a recall Ian making about a month into Trump’s 2nd term, viz Harvard, etc.) However, the Globalist Class does things as they will, not what would lead to a good outcome.

To elkern’s point about Richard Haas’ role in making sure the Strait is shut down for months to come, I think the goal is clear.

Elkern didn’t mention Richard Haas, I did. Elkern is the one who suggests we have compassion for MAGA as they destroy the world and all life on the planet.

As far as Russia is concerned, the irony. America’s and Israel’s aggressive war on Iran is illegal just as Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine is illegal. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is behaving according to principle and in the spirt of law let alone the letter of the law. China is supporting Russia in its illegal war of aggression on Ukraine and so too is Iran, yet both claim principled positions in their defense of Iran. Iran also hypocritically, but rightfully so, claims America’s and Israel’s war on them is illegal and yet has supported Russia in its illegal war on Ukraine where countless Ukrainian civilians have been targeted and murdered in cold blood.

For me, no illegal wars period. Also, no supporting one set of oligarchs over another set of oligarchs. Death to oligarchy everywhwere.

Elkern, you indicated one time you had a sister who was MAGA and instead of disdain for her, you had compassion.

I took umbrage with that and still do and always will. We have MAGA relatives and we don’t have compassion for them. We are unequivocally estranged from some of them and the others we are effectively estranged from them. Same goes with acquaintances and friends. They are no longer part of our lives. We refuse to tolerate them any longer.

If that wasn’t you who said that about your sister, then please forgive me for mistakingly thinking it was you.

Compassion is wasted on the compassionless.

Empathy is wasted on the unempathetic.

But I understand that there is a counter-view. It amounts to this: If you are on the bank of a tropical river and you see a pack of hungry piranha, you should throw yourself in so they can eat you, because piranha need to eat too. Another way to put that is . . . if you see a dog with rabies, you should take it home with you so it can bite you so that the rabies can survive a little longer in the new host — you. After all, rabies has human rights too.

My sister is a human being, irrevocably part of my family. She is not a piranha. Sheesh.