Phil Lormer

This is what is happening and what to do about it. linkedin.com/posts/kasper-b…

@timand2037 Typical rentier behaviour. Like most capitalists in the US these days.

The Strait of Hormuz is open. It has been open every day since February 28. The IRGC never closed it but rather converted 21 miles of international waterway into a permissioned gate with a toll booth, a vetting process, and a guest list. Traffic has collapsed 70 to 80 percent. But the handful of tankers that transit each day do so with IRGC clearance, paid in yuan or USDT, at $2 million to $4 million per vessel. The process is now documented. A tanker operator contacts an IRGC-linked intermediary. The operator submits vessel ownership, flag state, cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and AIS transponder data. The IRGC runs background checks: no US-linked ownership, no Israeli cargo, no flagging to aggressor states. If approved, a toll is negotiated. Payment is executed in cash, Chinese yuan, or USDT on the Tron network. The IRGC issues VHF radio clearance with a specific time window and route through Iranian territorial waters near Larak Island, where IRGC Navy performs visual confirmation. The vessel transits. No physical escort is provided. The “protection” is the removal of the interdiction threat. You are safe because the entity that would attack you has decided not to. China passes. India passes. Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Iraq, Bangladesh pass. Shadow fleet operators aligned with Russia pass. Not all pay the full toll. Some receive exemptions through government-to-government arrangements. Some pay reduced rates. Some pay nothing because the geopolitical alignment is payment enough. The system is not a blockade. It is a membership club with a cover charge denominated in currencies that are not the US dollar. And here is what nobody is covering. Lloyd’s of London and the international insurance market have withdrawn standard hull and machinery coverage for Hormuz transits. War-risk policies now carry premiums of up to 5 percent of vessel value, $5 million for a $100 million tanker, per voyage. But the actuarial models that price those premiums now incorporate IRGC vetting status as a risk-reduction variable. If a vessel can prove it has paid the toll and received VHF clearance, the probability of loss drops from above 20 percent to below 5 percent. The same models that price hurricane risk and earthquake exposure are now pricing IRGC compliance as a safety factor. The insurance industry has done something no government intended: it has formalised IRGC authority over the strait in actuarial mathematics. A tanker that pays the toll is insurable. A tanker that does not is stranded. Dozens of vessels sit outside the strait right now, unable to transit because no underwriter will cover them. The insurance withdrawal is not a market reaction. It is a structural enforcement mechanism that makes IRGC permission the prerequisite for commercial shipping. Every toll paid in yuan is a barrel that settled outside the dollar system. Every USDT transaction on Tron is a 3-second settlement bypassing SWIFT and sanctions. Iran’s parliament is drafting legislation to formalise the toll as “security compensation.” If that bill passes, ad-hoc extortion becomes sovereign law, and the precedent for chokepoint monetisation enters the international legal framework. Gold watches from the side. Spot prices muted at $5,000 to $5,400 by dollar strength and rising yields, while central banks in China, Russia, and India quietly accumulate on every dip. The short-term safe-haven has not fired. The long-term de-dollarization trade is loading. The strait is open. The molecules move. But only for those who pay the toll, in the currency the toll booth accepts, after the vetting the toll booth requires. The rest wait. The clocks tick. Saturday arrives.

@IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole Could you please supply a copy of this graph that remains clear when enlarged. I think I missread the dates and the details seem revealing. Or a more detailed reference. It does not appear in Piketty et al 2016 NBER version.

@TheRabbitHole Yeah, just look at this chart - clearly shows the poor getting richer:

Capitalism creates so there’s more for everyone. Socialism is the weaponization of greed and envy making everyone worse off.

@Erickschultz11 @nxt888 The US has bombed more countries than terrorists ever have. There are US CITIZENS living in constant fear of their government. The US is living in constant fear because of what it has done to other peoples. Is killing those that stand in its way the only solution for US fear?

Depends. If we bomb nations that terrorized other nations and their own citizens. Should we do nothing? Or is it a greater sin to let them? We make these choices to remain free and not living under constant fear. Do you want to be living under constant fear? Its easy to bitch when your not the victim.

There is something deeply grotesque about a society that calls itself "the land of the free" while operating the largest prison system on Earth. That calls itself "defender of democracy" while sabotaging elections abroad. That cries about "terror" while dropping bombs on schools and weddings. You try to point this out, and somehow you become the extremist.

Economists and politicians are always banging on about government debt (Treasury bonds). Well do I have the solution for them! The problem is easily solved: stopping issuing debt.

@barua_ashish 7/ Discredited neoliberal theory, still followed by central banks, says that raising interest rates is the only way to control inflation. There are other ways. Here’s what one country did to control runaway inflation. Which country do you think it is, how do you think it went? /8

For the last 50 years, the world has seen a massive redistribution of wealth - from ordinary people to the rich. It all started with Thatcher and Reagan. Here’s one of the ways it happened:

@nxt888 Don’t forget that Israel and the US use depleated uranium in shells, not just white phosphorus.

The word "terror" has a legal and moral definition. It means the deliberate use of violence against civilian populations to achieve political ends. The point of the violence is not primarily military. It is psychological. It is to break will, to induce fear, to make the cost of resistance feel unbearable. That is what the word means. Apply that definition without prejudice. From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. military dropped more than two million tons of bombs on Laos, which is more than the U.S. dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos was not at war with the United States. It was a neutral country. The bombing was secret. Congress didn't authorize it. The American public did not know about it. Today, 50 years later, unexploded cluster munitions still kill and maim dozens of people in Laos every year, many of them children. That is what "collateral damage" looks like across a generation: A child loses a hand in a field because a weapon dropped before their parents were born is still active in the soil. The United States developed and deployed the "double tap" drone strike protocol. A practice in which a target is struck, and then when rescuers, family members, and bystanders arrive to help the wounded and recover the dead, the site is struck again. From Pakistan to Yemen, and most recently in Iran, the pattern is familiar. Think about what that means tactically. The purpose of striking rescuers is not military. Rescuers are not combatants. The purpose is to make rescue itself dangerous, to ensure that the social fabric that holds communities together, the impulse to help the wounded, becomes a vector for death. That is terror. That is the word. Applied accurately. The United States used white phosphorus in Fallujah. White phosphorus burns at 815 degrees Celsius. It burns through clothing, through skin, through muscle, to bone. It reignites on contact with oxygen. Water does not extinguish it. It was used in a city of 300,000 civilians. The Pentagon initially denied it, then acknowledged it, then classified it as a legitimate weapon. Doctors at Fallujah General Hospital reported a pattern of birth defects and cancers in subsequent years that researchers found statistically extraordinary. Babies born without eyes. Without limbs. With multiple heads. The contamination of a gene pool. That is what white phosphorus does to a civilian population. The line between terrorism and counter-terrorism, in practice, in the historical record, has always come down to one thing: air power. The side with the air force calls the other side terrorists. The side without the air force has no word for what is being done to them that will be heard in the international press.

@nxt888 I grew up taught not to pick up toys and sweets from the ground. Because the West targeted children. They are doing it again. The West turns a blind eye on what their governments do. Ordinary citizens either dismiss it as propaganda or mock it. Many rejoice children were hurt.

The Middle East has been terrorized for decades. The USA has no real allies. When countries are afraid of retaliation, it is called vassalage. That is how hegemony works. The fact that Russia, Iran, and China have assassinated only two heads of state combined in the past 50 years suggests who the real terrorists are. (Afghanistan, 1978/79) If you ask me, the world would be a better place if foreign US bases were turned into meadows, and if Mossad, the CIA, and MI6 focused on homeland security instead of espionage and influence in foreign countries. End the petrodollar and close foreign bases. My apologies to people around the world whose suffering has been supported by my government using my tax money. I try to avoid paying taxes. And I agree, hotels that host US defense personnel are legitimate targets for Iran.

@IronyKumar @pittman67165 @TheRabbitHole The US lost manufacturing jobs that hired many ordinary people on a decent wage. Capitalists moved those jobs to cheap labour countries. Those in the US that lost jobs are now in lower paying jobs, mostly in services. Manufacturing in the US is now more high end and automated.

@pittman67165 @TheRabbitHole US manufacturers more today than in 1960 by a significant margin. Try again.

@pittman67165 @IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole The US lost manufacturing jobs that hired many ordinary people on a decent wage. Capitalists moved those jobs to cheap labour countries. Those in the US that lost jobs are now in lower paying jobs, mostly in services. Manufacturing in the US is now more high end and automated.

@IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole We lost manufacturing.

@FakeBleac @IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole More social housing needs to be built by the government. More high cost houses for institutions, speculators and the rich won’t help ordinary oeople.

@IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole It’s a renters market. For most people, their most expensive asset is their home. However, institutions have bought up single family homes, not allowing people to acquire that asset. You don’t fix this by taxing the rich. More houses need to be built, allowing people to buy homes

@user_101524 @TheRabbitHole You want to argue that a person working a blue collar job is better off today than in 1960? Really?

1967 seems to be the year that the poor started getting poorer in the US, with resources going to the Vietnam war. Neoliberalism started to hold sway in both major parties from the early 70s. Then the US voted for Ronald Reagan thinking he would fix it. It got worse.

@IronyKumar @TheRabbitHole 1967 seems to be the year that the poor started getting poorer in the US, with resources going to the Vietnam war. Neoliberalism started to hold sway in both major parties from the early 70s. Then the US voted for Ronald Reagan thinking he would fix it. It got worse.

@TheRabbitHole The market so far under Trump. Capitalism doesn’t work under Republican leadership.

@TheRabbitHole Capitalism doesn't create. Capitalism specifically avoids creating so it can just seek rents and make money without creating anything. Read Michael Hudson.

@TheRabbitHole Poor people have literally became poorer under the richest capitalist.coubtrybinnhistory while capitalist got even richer Capitalism works, but it works for capitalists even at the cost of every body else

@TheRabbitHole capitalism: 8 men own more than half the planet. insulin costs $300 in america and $8 in cuba. people start gofundmes for chemotherapy. landlords own 40 properties while families sleep in cars. “creates so there’s more for everyone” for who?? 😭