Three of the Women seeking assylum from the Iran Womens soccer team have withdrawn their claims after an alleged infiltrator loyal to the regime gained entry into the safe house and showed them videos of their families being detained in Iran.
I think the general population wil be cheering if regime change is a result of this war.
Select to expand quotecammd said..
I think the general population wil be cheering if regime change is a result of this war.
And the odds of that happening unfortunately look very remote right now. Meanwhile, Iran will keep pummeling Israel and the U.S. bases in the region with rockets and drones.
If Israel decide to stop their attacks soon, the Iranian regime will be weakened and a change could take place, over time. But while that plays out that won't help the U.S. or the Iranian people and won't help with social cohesion.
There would be few winners, maybe China and Russia will gain something?
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
Select to expand quotecammd said..
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
But Iran haven't got them. That threat was eliminated three months ago during the 12 day war. Are you thinking that you were lied to?
Israel have nuclear weapons and have a history of ignoring international taboos. My bet is they will be the next country to break the world's last taboo, and when they do that, there are no more rules.
Select to expand quotecammd said..
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
I'm interested to understand.
Is this position based on the belief that if Iran had nukes, they would use them?
Interesting read
Alright, let me put my old reservoir engineer hat back on for a minute, because when I hear politicians and television talking heads explaining how oil markets respond to something like the strike on Kharg Island, I can practically hear every drilling superintendent, completions engineer, and pipeline scheduler in Texas muttering the same thing: that's not how any of this works. From the outside this looks simple. America hits a strategic oil location, Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices jump, and according to the cable news experts American producers immediately crank up drilling and save the world with a heroic wave of new barrels. It makes a great television story. It also has very little to do with how oil production actually happens.
First, understand what Kharg Island is. It isn't just another island in the Persian Gulf. It is the loading dock for most of Iran's oil exports, with roughly ninety percent of their crude moving through that terminal before heading toward Asian markets. The interesting detail in the strike reports is that the military infrastructure around the island was hit but the oil loading facilities themselves were left standing. To people outside the industry that seems odd. To anyone who understands oil logistics it makes perfect sense, because you don't have to destroy an oil terminal to stop exports. You only have to make insurers nervous. The most powerful choke point in global oil trade today is not a navy or a missile battery, it is a room full of insurance underwriters in London deciding whether a tanker is insurable. Tankers carry war-risk insurance, and the moment missiles start flying around loading terminals those insurers either jack up premiums to absurd levels or stop writing policies entirely. Once that happens ships stop sailing because no bank, charter company, or shipping operator will send a hundred-million-dollar vessel into a combat zone uninsured. The terminal can be sitting there perfectly intact, tanks full of crude and loading arms ready, and nothing moves because tankers are anchored offshore waiting for insurance clearance. You've effectively choked off exports without lighting a single storage tank on fire.
Now let's talk about the next part television always gets wrong. The moment oil prices spike, commentators start saying American producers will just drill more wells. I spent decades working reservoir engineering and production, and drilling programs are not decided by one exciting week of oil prices. Wells get drilled when companies believe prices will stay high long enough for those wells to make money. That means sustained prices, forward contracts, pipeline capacity, rigs, frac crews, casing and tubing, water handling, and somewhere to sell the oil once it comes out of the ground. Oil wells are not lemonade stands you open because it's a hot afternoon. Even in the Permian Basin, where development moves faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, there are still physics and logistics involved. A horizontal well with a ten to twelve thousand foot lateral takes a couple of weeks to drill, then it waits for completion crews, then the frac takes another week or so, then flowback, then tie-in to gathering lines and pipelines. If everything goes smoothly you might see first production in a month or two, and that assumes rigs are already contracted, pipe is available, frac crews exist, pipelines have space, and someone has agreed to buy the oil. Scaling production across a basin takes months of planning and billions in capital. Companies do that when they believe the price environment is durable, not because oil spiked for two weeks during a geopolitical crisis. Oil markets respond to expectations, not headlines.
Meanwhile the insurance market can do something much faster and far more powerful. By making tanker voyages risky or uninsurable it can reduce global oil flows almost overnight without firing another shot. That brings us back to Kharg Island. By striking military infrastructure around Iran's main export terminal while leaving the oil facilities intact, the move sends a very specific signal: the oil lifeline is still there, but the risk around it just went through the roof. That pressures Iran's revenue without immediately destroying global supply and injects uncertainty into oil markets, which pushes prices higher. The irony is that oil markets are resilient. If disruptions last long enough, supply eventually reroutes. More crude flows from the Americas, Africa, and the North Atlantic, shipping routes get longer, tanker rates rise, and drilling programs eventually expand. But none of that happens overnight. Reservoirs don't care about political speeches, steel pipe doesn't appear because a senator demanded it, and drilling rigs don't teleport into place because gasoline prices jumped on Tuesday. Oil production runs on geology, engineering, capital cycles, and logistics. The insurance market, on the other hand, runs on fear, and right now fear is doing exactly what missiles alone often cannot: slowing the flow of oil.
~ Kat Romenesko
Also interesting
THE METHOD IN THE MADNESS: WHY TRUMP LOOKS LIKE THAT
By Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez for ALISA WRITES
Can we talk about Donald Trump's hair and makeup, please?
Hold your jokes, scoffs and punchlines. I mean, I get it. He looks atrocious. And foolish. We all know that. I don't want to talk about that - or, at least I don't want to talk about it the way we all usually talk about it. Which is to say, we make fun of him and feel superior.
Instead, I want to propose a concept: What if - and hear me out, now - the clownish look he cultivates (unblended tangerine foundation plus the flopsy cotton candy "hair") is a deliberate instrument of manipulation?
What if he wants us to mock his appearance, because to do so would minimize our capacity to properly process the legitimate threat he poses to the world?
Soviet military strategists, back when they were building the doctrine that would later define Russian information warfare, developed a tactic called reflexive control. It's a method of manipulating your opponent into doing some predictable thing - based on their psychological profile - that they think is quite clever and demeaning towards you, their enemy, but which in reality benefits you, their enemy.
The more I learn about Vladimir Putin and Trump's relationship with him, the more I happen to believe reflexive control is what Trump's clown-face is all about. It's not a crazy, tacky old man. It's a form of geopolitical con artistry. Stay with me here. I admit, freely: Trump ain't good at much. But at being a con artist? Probably one of the most astonishingly successful liars who has ever walked the earth. Not something most of us would be proud of, but Trump ain't most of us. (And thank God for that.)
There's another technique, this one used by con artists generally, called The Confidence Game. It's foundational to con artistry, and has a well-documented first move. Before the grifter asks you for anything, before trust is built or money changes hands, the mark must be unwittingly disoriented. Thrown off balance. Made to question their own perception of what they're seeing.
In her landmark study The Confidence Game, psychologist Maria Konnikova documents how this works at the cognitive level: human beings don't like to exist in a state of uncertainty or ambiguity - when something doesn't make sense, we want to supply the missing link. The mark who is busy trying to make sense of something strange is a mark who has been momentarily disarmed. Their critical faculties are occupied. The con can proceed.
Trump's hair and makeup produce exactly this effect. They are so visually strange, so persistently wrong by any conventional standard of grooming or presentation, so out of keeping with a man who has the means to employ the best image consultants money can buy, that they generate an involuntary cognitive response: is this real? Can he not see it? Does he not care? How can someone who looks like this be taken seriously?
That loop of incredulous processing reframes your encounters with Trump, from a confrontation with a powerful and potentially dangerous authoritarian fascist figure to a confrontation with a figure who seems, at least on the surface, ridiculous.
And a risible figure is much easier to underestimate than a threatening one.
The makeup isn't to make him look good. It's to throw you off balance.
The timing of Trump's transformation is telling. In photographs from the 1980s and 1990s, Trump is flashy - big suits, big personality, tabloid-ready - but not yet clownish caricature. That version of Trump hardened into its current form precisely when scrutiny of his depraved goals by serious people became his primary threat.
So here's what I'm asking: stop laughing at the hair.
Every minute spent mocking how he looks is a minute successfully stolen from you - a minute you're not watching what he's actually doing. The makeup is not the mistake. You thinking it's a mistake is the mistake.
He is not ridiculous. He is dangerous. He has spent years making sure you'd find it hard to hold both of those things in your mind at once.
That's the con.
Select to expand quoteD3 said..cammd said..
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
I'm interested to understand.
Is this position based on the belief that if Iran had nukes, they would use them?
I think the regime is a fanatical version of religion that has no qualms about killing people. Infidels get what they deserve and righteous followers who die are martys.
I dont know if they would use a nuke but what is certain is they actively promote, suppport and engage in terrorism. If they had a nuclear weapon it would embolden them as they would become untouchable. It would make the world less stable and less safe through increased terrorism. That would be the best scenario.
What are thoughts on that hypothesis, do you have an actual opinion one way or another.
Select to expand quotemyscreenname said..cammd said..
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
But Iran haven't got them. That threat was eliminated three months ago during the 12 day war. Are you thinking that you were lied to?
Israel have nuclear weapons and have a history of ignoring international taboos. My bet is they will be the next country to break the world's last taboo, and when they do that, there are no more rules.
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
Select to expand quotecammd said..
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
You ask stupid questions. But if you need an answer on Iran possessing nuclear weapons they dont have.
I think, like D3, Iran wants nuclear weapons as a deterent, just like every other country who possess them. Using a nuke on an opponent country is the last taboo, which no one wants, its the last resort. It would be a good thing if no country had nuclear weapons, but they do. I believe Russia possess the most.
Does my statement ease your small mind on your stupid 'if' question?
Are you on the spectrum?
Select to expand quotemyscreenname said..cammd said..
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
You ask stupid questions. But if you need an answer on Iran possessing nuclear weapons they dont have.
I think, like D3, Iran wants nuclear weapons as a deterent, just like every other country who possess them. Using a nuke on an opponent country is the last taboo, which no one wants, its the last resort. It would be a good thing if no country had nuclear weapons, but they do. I believe Russia possess the most.
Does my statement ease your small mind on your stupid 'if' question?
Are you on the spectrum?
No your statement doesnt answer the question.... again. We all know Iran wants nukes, we all know they dont have them.
The question was do you agree preventing Iran getting them is a good thing. Why can't you answer that simple.question.
Select to expand quotecammd said..
No your statement doesnt answer the question.... again. We all know Iran wants nukes, we all know they dont have them.
The question was do you agree preventing Iran getting them is a good thing. Why can't you answer that simple.question.
As mentioned previously your question is stupid.
It's not a yes no answer, so I'll frame my answer just for you 'Cammtard', so you may understand.
Your question is 'loaded' and 'stupid' as it contains no regard to costs or sacrifice involved in achieving the stated objetive.
'If' you are prepared to send your grown up children into Iran for the purpose preventing Iran from obtaining Nuclear weapon capabiliity, good for you, I wouldn't be prepared to risk my children's lives to do that.
Have you ever been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and what is the highest educational level you achieved?
It was reported that the dead Ayatollah had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
It has also been reported that the fatwa dies with him. Seems a strange way to make laws, but I guess it works for them.
In any case, if he did have that fatwa in place, it would have been in Israel's interests to make sure he never died.
Select to expand quotecammd said..myscreenname said..cammd said..
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
You ask stupid questions. But if you need an answer on Iran possessing nuclear weapons they dont have.
I think, like D3, Iran wants nuclear weapons as a deterent, just like every other country who possess them. Using a nuke on an opponent country is the last taboo, which no one wants, its the last resort. It would be a good thing if no country had nuclear weapons, but they do. I believe Russia possess the most.
Does my statement ease your small mind on your stupid 'if' question?
Are you on the spectrum?
No your statement doesnt answer the question.... again. We all know Iran wants nukes, we all know they dont have them.
The question was do you agree preventing Iran getting them is a good thing. Why can't you answer that simple.question.
All you KNOW is everything you have been told by the people you listen to or the things that you read.
Thats it in its entirety.
If you were to listen to different people you would form a different opinion. It really is that simple.
Throughout recent history it's as plain as the nose on your face that the warmongers have bombarded their populations with propaganda in order to get them to accept their wars.
All you are doing is blindly repeating it.
You have no ****ing idea whatsoever about the actual situation. If this were 2002 you'd be repeating the drivel we faced back then.
You fall into the useful idiot category.
I can't for the life of me understand why anyone attempt to debate you!
Select to expand quotecammd said..D3 said..cammd said..
I think if a Nuclear Iran is prevented from happening the entire world is the winner. You would agree with that wouldn't you msn.
I'm interested to understand.
Is this position based on the belief that if Iran had nukes, they would use them?
I think the regime is a fanatical version of religion that has no qualms about killing people. Infidels get what they deserve and righteous followers who die are martys.
I dont know if they would use a nuke but what is certain is they actively promote, suppport and engage in terrorism. If they had a nuclear weapon it would embolden them as they would become untouchable. It would make the world less stable and less safe through increased terrorism. That would be the best scenario.
What are thoughts on that hypothesis, do you have an actual opinion one way or another.
That's probably a pretty fair assessment.
Historically speaking, Nuclear armed nations don't actually use their nukes. But the intimidation factor allows them to get away with being terrible members of the international community.
But this argument falls a little flat when the Director of National Intelligence says that Irans nuclear enrichment facilities were obliterated and had made no effort to rebuild.
Especially whe she says she did not advise president that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat to the USA.
Select to expand quotejapie said..cammd said..myscreenname said..cammd said..
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
You ask stupid questions. But if you need an answer on Iran possessing nuclear weapons they dont have.
I think, like D3, Iran wants nuclear weapons as a deterent, just like every other country who possess them. Using a nuke on an opponent country is the last taboo, which no one wants, its the last resort. It would be a good thing if no country had nuclear weapons, but they do. I believe Russia possess the most.
Does my statement ease your small mind on your stupid 'if' question?
Are you on the spectrum?
No your statement doesnt answer the question.... again. We all know Iran wants nukes, we all know they dont have them.
The question was do you agree preventing Iran getting them is a good thing. Why can't you answer that simple.question.
All you KNOW is everything you have been told by the people you listen to or the things that you read.
Thats it in its entirety.
If you were to listen to different people you would form a different opinion. It really is that simple.
Throughout recent history it's as plain as the nose on your face that the warmongers have bombarded their populations with propaganda in order to get them to accept their wars.
All you are doing is blindly repeating it.
You have no ****ing idea whatsoever about the actual situation. If this were 2002 you'd be repeating the drivel we faced back then.
You fall into the useful idiot category.
I can't for the life of me understand why anyone attempt to debate you!
The only evidence I have ever seen you put up to support your anti zionist paranoia is some nutter fron the 1920s.rambling on about khazars. If that is who listen to I am not surprised we have different ideas.
Have you got any thing else to enlighten me, I would be keen to see it. All is calling me an idiot all you really have.
Pick one of the arguments I have made and pull it apart with evidence rather than abuse.
Select to expand quotejapie said..cammd said..myscreenname said..cammd said..
Have you noticed how you don't answer simple questions that would force you to take a position. You just ignore or sidestep them. Its clear indication you have no real substance to your arguments. I think the person that most closely resembles a bag of hammers is you, you can't answer a simple question.
You ask stupid questions. But if you need an answer on Iran possessing nuclear weapons they dont have.
I think, like D3, Iran wants nuclear weapons as a deterent, just like every other country who possess them. Using a nuke on an opponent country is the last taboo, which no one wants, its the last resort. It would be a good thing if no country had nuclear weapons, but they do. I believe Russia possess the most.
Does my statement ease your small mind on your stupid 'if' question?
Are you on the spectrum?
No your statement doesnt answer the question.... again. We all know Iran wants nukes, we all know they dont have them.
The question was do you agree preventing Iran getting them is a good thing. Why can't you answer that simple.question.
All you KNOW is everything you have been told by the people you listen to or the things that you read.
Thats it in its entirety.
If you were to listen to different people you would form a different opinion. It really is that simple.
Throughout recent history it's as plain as the nose on your face that the warmongers have bombarded their populations with propaganda in order to get them to accept their wars.
All you are doing is blindly repeating it.
You have no ****ing idea whatsoever about the actual situation. If this were 2002 you'd be repeating the drivel we faced back then.
You fall into the useful idiot category.
I can't for the life of me understand why anyone attempt to debate you!
This isn't debate, I doubt the key protagonists have ever participated in a civil, formal debate. What goes on here is an endless procession of identities provocatively throwing hot ash into the air only to watch rebuttals blow the ash back. We witness the righteous and unchecked setting themselves on fire over their own precious words, ideas and opinions.
This isn't debate, this is entertainment. We are the characters in a Big Brother house called Seabreeze.
Select to expand quotejapie said..
All you KNOW is everything you have been told by the people you listen to or the things that you read.
Not true, I often read stuff from people I slight and everyone I fight.
