Arthur K

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not the truth.

@ArmchairW Supply chain reality: US economy runs on: Asian manufacturing: Asia runs on Gulf oil. War chokes 20% of global oil: Asian manufacturing costs skyrocket: US gets massive inflation: shortages and $8 gas anyway because oil is globally priced.

It struck me yesterday just how unimportant the Middle East is to the US in real terms. We don't need their oil and nobody who lives there poses any real threat to us. The place has given us nothing but grief and blowback for fifty years. Iran is welcome to that monkey's paw.

@CharlesHalaby @Please_NoLabels @pati_marins64 It's interesting to see the detente and the retaliatory strikes as things escalate. Iran doesn't need nuclear to survive this. Presumably the argument is that nuclear would've prevented this in the first place?

@Please_NoLabels @pati_marins64 Iran enriches uranium beyond the level required for civilian use and closer to the level demanded by weapons.

When the former commander Zaluzhnyi spoke about the mistakes in the war in Iran and how the US and Israel would lose this war, he knows what he is talking about. This is a modern model of asymmetric warfare that he knows very well. The space for superpowers to attack and occupy smaller nations will gradually shrink over the coming decades due to technology that has given much more power to asymmetric tactics.

@transit_jam The Angel of Death (one of these has my name on it).

@arrowintheblue There was an X-Files about this....😟 But really, police handle around 100+ crashes a day in HK and many more go unreported to cops.

Heard all the sirens on Cornwall and jogged down... how did this happen? It's uphill in heavy traffic! KC cops were surprisingly friendly, one of the new ones thought I was the District Councillor lol. Something lost in translation there ("pain in the ass" --> "DC"😁?)

@QcWynter So sweetheart what's your Parkrun ranking?

And here's the thing. I started my treatment as a strong man, as would any male athlete planning a gender grift. Chipping off a diddley squat 4 or 5 % here or there, or even 12% (thighs) still left me stronger than most men my age and stronger than almost any woman.

All sounds about right. My T levels were suppressed for 2 years in efforts to beat my cancerous prostate into submission & so I satisfied many sports' requirement of 2 yrs of T suppression in order to qualify as an ersatz "woman". Surprisingly (shock!), I never became a "woman".

Why, why does this account get so little reach? Are you guys still out there? 🥹

Flood the zone with Matthew Stadlen.

@CurtExplores It's called velotritus.

While it's always been an issue, I've been noticing a steady increase in people using rental bike baskets as bins of late - so much so I've started photographing it. But just now took the piss...someone dumped something in ours within the 1 minute we were in the shop (pic 4) 😂

Oh hi @RestIsPolitics @RoryStewartUK @campbellclaret Professor of palliative care here. Interesting to listen to yesterday’s episode’s discussion of the assisted dying Bill. You are wrong on so many counts, it’s hard to know where to start.

@transit_jam Thanks

@arrowintheblue Fuel from the mainland, and the mobile vans seem to cater to private car owners. The fixed illegal fuel stations in Tsing Yi etc attracted more of a diesel commercial vehicle clientele

Illegal mobile fuel vans are everywhere in HK, selling fuel by WhatsApp. Extremely dangerous. A minor crash is going to turn that into a bomb. A minor crash in a tunnel.... unthinkable disaster.

@nxt888 No, it's this.

Future historians will mark this as the moment the American century ended. Not the financial crisis of 2008. Not the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Not any of the other candidate moments that analysts have proposed as the inflection point. This. The 48-hour ultimatum that became a request for joint control of a strait the United States does not border. The strike on Ras Laffan in a country with American bases. The Haifa refinery burning behind supposedly impenetrable air defenses. Trump calling China. China saying no. The strait remaining closed after the deadline for its reopening passed without consequence. These are not the symptoms of a declining power managing a difficult adversary. These are the documented, timestamped, publicly witnessed moments when the architecture of the last thirty years of American global dominance showed its structural limits. And what makes this different from every previous American setback is not the scale of the defeat. It is the visibility. Vietnam was visible but distant. Afghanistan was visible but long. Iraq was visible but complicated. This is happening in the most strategically important energy geography on earth, in real time, with global markets responding to every development, with every government watching its screens and updating its models. The visibility is the mechanism by which it changes everything. Because the power of unipolarity was never only military. It was always also psychological. It was the belief held by allies and adversaries and neutral parties alike that American power was the fixed point around which everything else organized. Iran did not defeat the United States militarily. Iran defeated the belief. And beliefs, once defeated in front of enough witnesses, do not come back. The witnesses are counted in billions. They all watched. They all know what they saw. The fixed point moved.

@BarbaraRich_law @s8mb

@s8mb It’s all very Lymeswold, for those old enough to remember that

Crass, unimaginative and, in the case of “Seacole”, desperate. English towns are not named after historical figures - this isn’t America.

You can literally watch the colour leave Dave’s face, as he realises he’s eventually going to have to answer how its simultaneously possible to nod along, pretending to understand & yet still insist that women can have a penis…

@QcWynter There is only really one thing you can say to that. Did you?

Speaking to an old friend yesterday - a very bright chap - he told me about the one scar that he carries from childhood. Whenever he was asked by friends or family to say or explain something, it would come with the request, "just the details". Haunts him still at the age of 66.

@exRAF_Al So that's 3-4 weeks away whilst the Tripoli gets there end of next week? I reckon you're right, they're gonna wanna see if it works.

This new, distinct USMC capability will be called escalation by the mainstream media, it’s not - it’s the US military giving the US commander in chief more options (or leverage). There's a difference. Does the US public have the stomach for a limited ground war? I think so.

@exRAF_Al Interested to see what you think about these guys' views on the possible success. @pati_marins64 seems well informed with a neutral view of this war. @ArmchairW more cynical about the US as he is a veteran, but none-the-less very well informed. Neither optimistic.

@arrowintheblue Very kind of you to say so, thank you. Yes, EABO is untested, but so is everything once. I think the war was won before the first bomb was dropped. Planners and computer geeks plan wars these days, so that boots on the ground can fight less. Thankfully!

What I was saying yesterday. You do not need Supercarriers or the USS Tripoli in the Strait of Hormuz to control it - US Marines will not be storming ashore from landing craft because Tripoli doesn’t even have a Well Deck. They will probably be landing by helicopters and by Osprey to mop up. Iran’s sovereign wealth is predicated on controlling that stretch of water from the sea, not from the air or within, and its 40 year-old defence strategy is no longer worth a bean. God’s speed to those brave American men and women who will be endangering themselves for *our* sovereign wellbeing.

@semaforben Author: "I have worked for the US Department of State and advised defence and intelligence agencies in multiple countries. I have no interest in cheerleading for war." Reader: LoL

Most convincing argument I've read recently that the Pentagon knows what it's doing, from ... Al Jazeera aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/…

@chenweihua You're relentless.

@FT Get refund from Pentagon?

Gulf states lose $15bn in energy revenues since start of war ft.trib.al/7CPzJ15