𝑅𝒾𝓈𝑜𝓃

@Reech___ Well, he sure answered that question!😂 Pre-portal, I assumed players were at a disadvantage when changing teams, schemes, play calls, etc. But, it's clear that great players are great players no matter what. And, while some positions are at a scheme disadvantage, not all are.

🤣

@svembu This is some revisionist bullsh*t. As a white American that owns companies in Mumbai & Surat, the overwhelming majority of Americans LOVE Indians. They are amazing people, smart, hard-working, family oriented, w/ a (generally) strong moral compass. Don't make up lies.

Open letter to Indians in America. -- Dear brothers and sisters from Bharat: Like I did 37 years ago, you arrived in America with no money but with a good education and cultural heritage from Bharat. You achieved outstanding success. America was good to us. For that we must remain grateful - gratitude is our Bharatiya way. Yet today, a significant number of Americans, may be not the majority but not too far from it either, believe that Indians "take away" American jobs and our success in America was unfairly earned. You may think the next election will fix this, but your choice would be between people who hate our Bharatiya civilisation and people who hate civilisation itself. That is the "hard right" vs "woke left" battle. You are mere bystanders to that conflict. Meanwhile there is one thing that is true now and will be true in the future: the respect Indians command world-wide will substantially depend on the fortunes of India herself. If India remains poor, the woke left will give us moral lectures with pity and the hard right, different moral lectures with scorn ("hellhole") and we must not confuse either with respect. Respect in today's world, along with prosperity and security, comes from one source: a nation's technological prowess. India produces sufficient brain power to achieve that prowess but alas we exported so much of that talent, particularly to America. As we develop that prowess in India, our civilisational strength will assert itself. As difficult as it is for many of you to contemplate this, please come back home. Bharat Mata needs your talent. Our vast youthful population needs the technology leadership you gained over the years to guide them towards prosperity. Let's do it with a missionary zeal. Respectfully Sridhar Vembu

@TheAmer96874779 @JasonMBrodsky I can only speak from knowledge of the US banking system. Our (US) banks have handled money for terrorists, cartels, ponzie schemes, money launderers, people that seek to subvert the election system, et al. Those crimes are only discovered by audits and/or whistleblowers.

@AnalyticsGOAT @JasonMBrodsky They know very well what's going on in their banks.

The Trump administration is sending letters to banks in four areas about handling #Iran regime money. The letter obtained by FOX Business says the Treasury Department has evidence that banks in Oman, the UAE, Hong Kong and China have allowed Iranian funds used for illicit activities to be funneled through them. A senior administration official not authorized to speak publicly says this is the first step to adding secondary sanctions on those banks, which would cut them off from the U.S. financial system. foxbusiness.com/politics/trump…

@yarbatman x.com/miadmaleki/sta…

The picture is far more complicated than this and now would be a good time for economists to start to look into how Iran's economy actually works. First, oil exports have long been a constrained source of FX liquidity, as evidenced by the fact that Iran's currency has continued to devalue *even as oil exports surged*. Second, the impact of the war on consumption in Iran will also depress import demand. Iran spends the equivalent of 4.5% of its annual crude oil export revenue just on smartphones! Recent currency devaluation is primarily a story of exaggerated import demand. Third, Iran's non-oil trade with Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan is significant. Iran is not as dependent on the strait as its regional neighbors. Fourth, this analysis total ignores Iran's enormous international reserves, exceeding $100 billion. Even if export revenues fall, Iran can try to gain access to a larger share of reserves. China might be willing to oblige to keep Iran in the fight. To be clear, Iran can't sustain this war indefinitely. The window is probably 6-months before the economy starts to unravel, shorter if Trump commits war crimes by targeting infrastucture like power plants. But Iranian leaders know this and that is why they were *already* at the negotiating table, in good faith, before the blockade was announced. Trying to justify the blockade based on the economic pain it may cause makes little sense when Iran had effectively *blockaded itself* from the outset of the war. Moreover, the blockade isn't really enforceable, certainly not without actions that would violate the ceasefire. Trump just made policy by social media post again and there is no point in trying to dress it up as a measured or intelligent move.

@tara_riva @yarbatman The blockade is an enforcement of global sanctions against Iranian oil exports. It's no different than banks freezing billions of dollars of Iranian cash reserves. It's 100% legal. You don't get to oppress women & gays, murder your citizens, & bomb neighbors w/o consequences.

@yarbatman By the way, enforcing a blockade is in itself an act of war. If Iran responds, that’s a retaliation.

@TheAmer96874779 @JasonMBrodsky Note: A private bank in Oman or the UAE helping the Islamic Republic is *NOT* the same as the nations of Oman & UAE helping the Islamic Republic. We have private citizens in the US that are actively helping the Islamic Republic, Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, etc.

@JasonMBrodsky Why are Oman and the UAE still helping them?!

@Mena142 @JasonMBrodsky It's 2026. You're not hiding a digital trail.

@bearsejuk @thurais75 @DrJStrategy The Kra Canal would take a long time to build & is opposed by so many influential Thai trade partners: the US, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, et al. They also don't have the money to build it *and* are reticent to accept Chinese funding in exchange for Chinese control.

@AnalyticsGOAT @thurais75 @DrJStrategy this hasten the thai canal suggested many times ago by China. such a stupid move by Trump.

Food for thought. Trump’s Deal With Indonesia: Mahan at the Strait of Malacca Hu Jintao warned China about this moment more than twenty years ago. In 2003, the then Chinese president coined the phrase “Malacca dilemma” to describe a simple, brutal fact: the country’s economic rise depended on foreign oil sailing through a narrow strait that other powers could, in a crisis, choose to close. Most of China’s imported crude and gas still squeezes through that same bottleneck between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The US has just moved to wire that vulnerability, and it is no accident this is happening on Donald Trump’s watch. Washington’s new Major Defense Cooperation Partnership with Indonesia is being sold in the usual diplomatic euphemisms: capacity building, maritime security, joint training. Strip away the boilerplate and you see something far sharper. The agreement’s focus on maritime domain awareness, subsurface and autonomous systems, and special forces training is about giving Indonesia and by extension the U.S. and its allies, a far richer picture of everything that moves between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and greater ability to shape it in a crisis. As with Trump’s broader Indo‑Pacific posture, this is one more move to reassert the US as the pre‑eminent maritime power of the age, and to ensure China feels that reality every time a tanker clears the Strait. Hu’s “Malacca dilemma” was never only about a single shipping lane. It was about the geometry of China’s energy dependence. Oil from the Gulf and Africa has to arrive by sea. The shortest, cheapest route runs past India, through Malacca and adjacent Indonesian straits, and then up into waters where the U.S. Navy and its partners have operated for decades. A coalition that can see, track and, if necessary, interdict that flow holds a lever over China’s economy that no amount of rhetoric about multipolarity can wish away. More than a century ago, Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that sea power, fleets, chokepoints and maritime commerce, would decide the fate of great powers. The Malacca dilemma is Mahan’s theory rendered in modern energy terms: a continental power whose trade and fuel move by sea lives or dies by access to narrow maritime bottlenecks policed by others. Trump’s Indonesia move is pure Mahan: rather than chasing dominance on land, Washington is tightening its grip on the sea lanes and straits through which China’s economic lifeblood must flow. Beijing has spent two decades trying to escape this trap with pipelines from Central Asia and Russia, a corridor through Myanmar and a “string of pearls” of ports from Gwadar to Djibouti. Yet the volumes tell a less reassuring story: overland routes move at the margin, while the bulk of China’s energy still comes by tanker and still passes through Southeast Asian chokepoints. The dilemma has been managed, not resolved. That is why Indonesia matters. Jakarta insists it is not choosing sides and will continue to balance between Washington and Beijing. It doesn’t have to do more than that for this pact to bite. As Indonesian officers train with American counterparts and integrate U.S.‑supplied surveillance and patrol systems, the operational environment quietly changes. Chinese planners contemplating a crisis over Taiwan, the South China Sea or even a clash around Hormuz now have to assume that traffic through Malacca and its alternatives will unfold under a web of sensors and partnerships that lean, in practice if not in rhetoric, toward Washington. Another move by President Trump, in other words. From rebuilding American shipyards to pouring money into Indo‑Pacific maritime forces, the pattern is clear: the United States intends to remain a maritime superpower, and to make China live with Hu Jintao’s old nightmare instead of escaping it. Mahan would have recognised the logic instantly: in the end, it is the power that commands the sea, and the straits, that sets the terms for everyone else.

@thurais75 @DrJStrategy Soooo your solution to Indonesia blockading the Malacca Strait....is to detour to the Sunda Strait, which is an even narrower straight fully controlled by....Indonesia?

@DrJStrategy There's always an alternative...

@genXalpha @TruthTrumpPost Who's he? He's the SOS of the world's most powerful and influential nation. You're acting like he's just a guy. In all areas of all aspects of life across all countries, different people carry different levels of influence & power. The US is rightly exerting their influence.

@TruthTrumpPost Who is he to decide where they can sell their oil?

SEC RUBIO: 🇺🇸🇻🇪🇨🇳 We don't need Venezuela's oil. We have plenty of oil in the United States. What we're not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States. You have to understand, why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil? Why does Iran need their oil? They're not even in this continent. This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live. We're not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States.

@shawnwenzel @academic_la Briana has a vagina, and has been very open about having had gender reassignment surgery.

@academic_la This one wrote a few months ago that he/she could never do a normal office job because he/she would be required to use the men's room. Paid shill doesn't need that! 😖

I’m so glad I actually grew up in Israel, because when you are there for more than a week, you can see how every one of these paid shills is full of shit.

@alexwickham @OzKaterji Americans that hate America want so badly to believe all of that rubbish is true. Is there a fraction of truth in the article? Sure, but that's all it is....a fraction. The majority is wish-casting by those whose primary allegiance is the Democratic Party, not the USA.

NEW: The Iran war and Trump’s handling of it have weakened America in the eyes of its adversaries, US allies say. The conflict has been a strategic setback, bolstering China and Russia while squandering American strengths and damaging its alliances, according to people familiar with the thinking across capitals in Europe and the Middle East. Moscow and Beijing fear US military and intelligence superiority but they have seen it couldn’t force Iran’s capitulation, the people said. Splits in NATO have left lasting doubts over Trump’s commitment to its defence which will be celebrated by its enemies.  The circumstances of the ceasefire dent Trump’s credibility as a negotiator and will likely further dissuade Putin from making concessions in Ukraine, according to the people. Officials in Europe fear Iran may end up viewed as the strategic winner despite the killing of Khamenei and more than five weeks of heavy bombardment. @LordRickettsP says Tehran “emerges strategically stronger.” The IRGC remains in place, could likely become more hardline and quickly rebuild its missile programme, the people said. Tehran will conclude its drone capabilities are sufficient to cause significant problems for Gulf states and see confirmation that its leverage over Hormuz is capable of triggering a global energy crisis that may deter any future attack. It remains unclear to what extent the war has diminished Iran’s nuclear programme and its leaders may have been incentivised to renew their ambitions to get the bomb, according to European officials. One key unknown is the influence Tehran will be able to exert over the strait longer-term, one of the officials said, noting that transit will initially be permitted in coordination with the Iranian military. If it is able to dictate the terms of movement through the waterway or even charge tolls then Iran will in some ways have been left in a stronger position by the conflict, they said.  US allies are also fearful of the impact the conflict will have on the views of countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America toward Washington.  In the Gulf, there is particular alarm among some countries that their initial pleas not to proceed with the conflict went ignored, according to people familiar with their thinking. Some Gulf officials may see walking away with the Tehran regime in place as even worse, they said, with concern over Trump’s unpredictability prompting them to strengthen alliances elsewhere, they said.  Trump had likely viewed his operation against Maduro as evidence he could decapitate enemy regimes and swiftly win wars, but that notion had now been dispelled, another official said.  Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilisation will make it harder for the US to paint itself as a benign hegemon, in contrast to Russia and China, which the West routinely accuses of war crimes and human rights abuses, they said. They warned this may push so-called “middle ground” countries toward Moscow and Beijing, suggesting it may take years of diplomacy to undo. Russia, Iran and China would likely also further strengthen ties among them in the wake of the conflict, making it even less likely that the US would be able to achieve a “reverse Kissinger,” officials said.  Officials cited mockery of Trump in Russian and Chinese state media as evidence of how his handling of the war will likely be perceived by those regimes. The TACO meme — that “Trump Always Chickens Out” — is not just an amusing political attack by his domestic opponents but now a geopolitical conclusion of America’s enemies, one said. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@dpatrikarakos Trump has NEVER said the goal was regime change, and has gone so far as to repeatedly say regime change wasn't a goal. Him tongue-in-cheek saying the regime has changed because they keep killing their leaders isn't the same as vocalizing that they want to overthrow the gov't.

4/12 Then there is the war’s stated goals Trump said from the outset that the aim was regime change. And in so doing he handed the Iranians a gift: every day they survived, they (correctly) claimed to be winning – and Western public discourse shifted in their favour.

🧵1/12. We have a ceasefire in Iran. Both sides claim ‘victory’’, point-based peace plans circulate. In reality nothing has been formally agreed. The picture remains contested. So what, amid the noise, can we reasonably assess?

@leylahamed @DillyHussain88 Since when are Israeli 18-20 year old kids responsible for the actions of Israeli politicians? How is anyone so dense as to think Bosnian, Israeli, Iranian, etc citizens should be held responsible, shamed, & disrespected for the actions of their leaders over the decades???

Bosnia’s U21 captain speaks after refusing to shake hands with Israeli players: “My homeland and my parents never raised me to bend my spine before those leading this world toward dishonor and violence.” What an absolute legend 🇧🇦🇵🇸

@BowTiedMara #1) Super Güerrín #2) Calabresa I love Pizzeria Güerrín!

The best

@TortoRacoon @TheLatamGuy Buddy, that's not what an Italian pizza looked like in the 1800s, when Italians populated Argentina. You're ignoring 150 years of evolution in Italy.

@TheLatamGuy Qué no los Argentinos se la pasan diciendo que son Italianos? Una pizza italiana se mira así...

The absolute state of pizza in Buenos Aires 😭

@berkie1 Let's say a community didn't want to increase density, but did want to retain young professionals....what would be your proposal?

The same study found Wellesley lost 3,100 young professionals (25–44) over the past decade, and is projected to lose nearly 9% of its under-20 population by 2050.

Since 2003, The Town of Wellesley, MA has permitted 1,200 single-family homes. Only 95 of those homes were net new. 1,105 replaced existing homes with mainly larger, luxury homes. Over that same period, median prices doubled, from ~$1M to ~$2M.

@shanaka86 You said China's response was to sell gold, but didn't explain WHY that was the response, or what it accomplished. Can you explain that part?

BREAKING: The President of the United States told China this morning to start policing the Strait of Hormuz. China’s response was not a warship. It was gold. Six hundred kilograms of gold bars allocated by major Chinese banks this morning were sold out in under one minute at the 9am Shanghai opening. One hundred kilograms allocated for the weekend sold out in the same window last Saturday. This has been happening every single trading day while bunker-busters hit Natanz and 5,000 Marines head to the Gulf and Trump tells the world America does not need Hormuz. China heard the message. China’s answer is not military. It is monetary. The People’s Bank of China has purchased gold for 16 consecutive months. Reserves reached 2,308 tonnes by February. The Shanghai Gold Exchange recorded 126 tonnes of withdrawals in January and 85 in February. Chinese gold ETFs added 38 tonnes in January, the strongest start to any year on record. Seventy-seven percent of central banks globally now intend to increase gold reserves over the next 12 months. Gold touched $5,589 per ounce in January before correcting to $4,494 this week. Chinese retail buyers did not care. They bought the dip because the dip happened in paper. The physical metal in their hands did not lose weight. Trump said the words today: “We don’t use the Strait of Hormuz. We don’t need it. Europe, Korea, Japan and China need it. They will have to get involved a little bit.” China imports more than 70 percent of its crude from the Middle East and Africa, the largest share transiting Hormuz. Trump is telling China to send warships to protect a shipping lane that American forces are simultaneously disrupting through a war against Iran. The request is structurally impossible. China will not deploy naval assets alongside the fleet that is bombing its strategic partner. So China deploys capital instead. Gold is the asset that cannot be sanctioned, cannot be frozen, cannot be confiscated by executive order, and does not transit the Strait of Hormuz. This is not a gold rush. A rush implies speculation. This is rearmament. The PBOC is building reserves outside the dollar system. Chinese households are converting savings into a store of value independent of American financial infrastructure. Hainan’s free-trade port has become a gold shopping destination. Banks ration supply because demand exceeds every ceiling Beijing sets. The queue at ICBC is not for jewellery. It is for monetary sovereignty, purchased 600 kilograms at a time. The symmetry with Natanz is exact. The United States has bombed Iran’s nuclear facility five times in 16 years. The programme survives because nuclear knowledge cannot be destroyed by ordnance. China is building a gold reserve that the United States cannot reach because physical metal in a sovereign vault cannot be frozen by SWIFT exclusion. Both strategies operate on the same principle: the thing that matters most is the thing that cannot be taken away. For Iran it is the physics equation. For China it is the gold bar. Both are responses to the same American power projection. Both are designed to outlast it. The West is fighting a kinetic war over a strait it controls militarily. The East is fighting a monetary war over a reserve asset it controls physically. Both wars are happening on the same day. Neither side has acknowledged the other’s battlefield. The strait is 21 miles wide. The gold bar is 400 ounces. And the distance between them is the distance between the world that is ending and the world that is beginning. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@Bobby9763Bobby @DeannaIndiana @MalcolmNance The conversation is about using ground forces to take control of the gulf islands, which are small. The largest, Queshm, is smaller than the city of Houston. If we were talking about continental Iran, I'd be in 100% agreement. Different story for the mini gulf islands.

@AnalyticsGOAT @DeannaIndiana @MalcolmNance You forgot the Afghan Taliban, and Iran's terrain is as difficult as Afghanistan's but twice the size. I'm sorry, but my Marines shouldn't be dying for Israel. The US/Israel bombed Iran first and killed 176 children—it’s not like Iran attacked first.

MARINES FOR THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ? Now, Trump wants just 2,500 Marines, likely to seize the Islands in the Strait of Hormuz, They are 2 weeks away at the fastest. The problem is that Middle East Force commanders gamed this out 40 years ago and estimated we'd need 6,000 Marines plus all equipment spread across multiple Islands. The plan was to first take Larak, Hormuz and Qeshem (the Shark shape- one)/Hengam to box in Bandar Abbas. Break through the denied SOH then small landing parties to raid, Greater/Lesser Tumb, Abu Musa, Sirri, and then Kish. It would have a HUGE, detectable signature. Why didn't we do this in 1988 when they tried to sink our ships with mines? BC IT WOULD BE THE USA INVADING IRAN. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian Rev Guard and Basji would come out and bombard/suicide attack these islands from the mountains that hover over them. Also, resupply would be from UAE/Qatar bases, which will get hit again. They may not agree to do it. Then that means a supply chain that would have to come through a hotly contested SOH!? Madness. The MEU would have to launch Assault craft/LAVs/Hovercraft from off east of the Mussandam peninsula under view of the Iranian mountains, under fire from Shaeds, submarine drones, drone suicide boats or the mines we have not detected in the SOH. We don't have enough tracked amphibious armor, LCU landing craft or LCAC-100 Hovercraft to bring in the right size force to the beach ... and that force would be bombarded and suicide drones day and night. If the Pentagon would deign to bring the Expeditionary Sea Base ship from Italy to the Indian Ocean, SOF at least would have a secure platform ... but no movement so far. Add in the silly proposal of having the 82nd parachute jump into islands. If the IRGC wants it would have the makings of an American Battle of Hostemel. All of this is a STUPID concept that appears to be a hasty clean-up for lack of planning. BECAUSE THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN PLACE MONTH AGO!

@WillLewis_1976 @MalcolmNance Buddy, come on. Let's use critical thinking. The POTUS did not tell oil execs he was going to invade a foreign country & kidnap the dictator before he told anyone in Congress. Trump can be a dummy at times, no doubt, but that's a bridge too far.

@AnalyticsGOAT @MalcolmNance Venezuela was about the oil... he literally told oil CEOs what he was going to do before he told Congress.