placnx

Our own Genghis Khan, or antipresident.

Before that oil prices were up 25% or more, so 6% is just a gyration. If this war continues a week or ten days with the Strait shut, producers will have to stop production in their fields, and it will take a while to restart, besides which old fields may then have reduced pressure. Looking forward a few years, the shale boom will run down, so US domestic production will decline.

Mines are not the problem. Thousands of anti-ship missiles are a threat to deter shipowners from taking chances, not to mention drones.

It would be especially costly if a slow-moving escort destroyer was sunk by anti-ship missiles.

Apparently she was promoting herself in ads with taxpayers money. She had her own agenda, not Trump's agenda, so she was fired!!!

Seriously, the Likudniks would love to control, but behind the scenes.

Netanyahu has been egging the US on for over 30 years to do something about Iran's nuclear program, but until Trump he never had a president that would slavishly execute his agenda. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-netanyahus-rhetoric-on-irans-nuclear-ambitions In 1996 a group of Washington neocons presented Netanyahu with a plan for deposing Saddam Hussein. This plan eventually became the plan implemented by George Bush, 2nd, in 2003. Each time the idea was to damage a country's politics and economy to the point that it could not oppose Israel's agenda in the Middle East: Jordan/Egypt 1967, Lebanon 1978. 1982-2000, 2006, 2023-6, Syria 1967, 2025, Iraq 2003. Now in addition to regime change, Trump wants a say in the new leadership. There is talk of sending Iranian Kurd exile forces into the ethnic Kurdish areas of western Iran. What they might be able to do is create a (probably temporary) breakaway Kurdish state. That would be quite inpopular with the Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian governments, and while it would promote instability in Iran and those other countries, it would not have the means to overturn the government in Teheran. But creating chaos and instability in the region is Netanyahu's game. Trump sounds like an 1880 imperial era throwback. Trump has difficulty explaining his agenda in attacking Iran. It's because he can't keep up with Netanyahu's agenda, which is not being fully disclosed to Trump before it happens. Then Trump has to scramble to appear that what has happened was his own plan for X reason, that later appears inconsistent with the facts, so then we hear the Y reason, and on and on.

Israel's attack on Lebanon was planned long before and just awaited some action by Hezbollah to provide a justification, however feeble. Hezbollah's engagement with the Lebanese government not to get involved in an Iran conflict presumably was not made covering a scenario where their principal spiritual leader would be assassinated.

In 1350 BC, there was no Kingdom of Israel (a/k/a Samaria), either. That appeared around the 10th C BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region) As for the Egyptian Empire, it died out around 1100 BC. The origin of the name Palestine goes back long before the Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_Palestine

The problem with "Basic Laws" is that they can be overturned by a majority vote in the Knesset, which is what Netanyahu et al were trying to do to undermine the somewhat independent Supreme Court in 2023. The provisions of a constitution should be difficult to amend, to provide social and political stability. As I mentioned before, the 1948 Declaration of Independence envisaged a constitution that would provide equal rights for all citizens.

You are getting to the heart of the impunity with which IDF and settlers are committing genocide to this day, not to mention the crimes of the last 100 years in a throwback of 19th C colonialsm.

Israel is an apartheid state. The apartheid situation in Israel itself is less onerous than in the Occupied Territories, but Israeli Palestinians don't enjoy equal rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid The problem is that non-observant Jews evidently cannot opt out of a religious edict, a Jewish analogue of Sharia law, when they want to change marriage status.

Pharoah Akenaten reigned around 1350 BC, and he introduced monotheism to Egypt, so from your information it appears that the Egyptians had monotheism first! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten Maybe archeologists should look more into cultural influences coming from Egypt, perhaps some monotheists relocating when the ancient religion of Egypt abolished the cult worshiping Aten, the sun god. At that time, Palestine was anyway in the sphere of Egypt.

These restrictions were in effect long before Oct 23, but of course when the Smotrich & Ben Gvir got in power, the situation really deteriorated.

There were incidents before October 23 when Israeli police invaded the al Aqsa Mosque building in the Haram al-Sharif. They beat people with their batons. This was incredibly shocking to me, and no doubt to Muslims.

Israel restricts access to the Haram al-Sharif a/k/a Temple Mount to many Palestinians from the West Bank. True, they are not Israeli citizens despite being under Zionist control since 1967, the reason being that then they would presumably have the right to vote in elections. Since long before the Islamic Republic of Iran, non-Muslims cannot enter the holiest part of the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad.

Israel is not a theocracy. It's an apartheid state, and the ICJ has confirmed this. The cases involving US National Guard (and ICE) may be the result of poor training. While this was promised in the aspirational "Declaration of Independence", this document promised that a constituion would be enacted by October 1948, but it hasn't happened yet. The promised terms also included equal rights for all, but this is a contradiction to the ongoing apartheid laws and practices.

I try to avoid using a card, so I wired the cash to Bumrungrad. When I had surgery in Chiang Mai, I paid cash. The main payment for surgery was just before it happened. Someone came to my room to collect the money.

Did you live in Gaza before 1948? Please provide a link for your population claims. As for other Arabs hating Palestinians, it was in 1964 that I learned about the Nakba when I went to visit friends in Saudi Arabia. They were seriously concerned about the situation in Palestine. Before that I grew up reading letters to the editor, really propaganda, in our local paper about the the new arrivals making desert bloom, etc, etc, plus the Exodus movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_(1960_film).

There is no other country that has had the effect of the tail wagging the dog. Netanyahu says and Trump/Biden does. In the last election they paid $20mn to unseat two Democratic representatives. The Israel Lobby is not just ADL and AIPAC. There are hundreds of smaller operations with various specialties to suppress opposition to what Israel does.

Time will tell. Various wrongdoers indicted by the ICC are now in jail.

Your information is wildly incorrect. Wikipedia says that the Jewish population of Gaza was 150, with 80 living in Gaza City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Gaza#:~:text=In%20the%201945%20village%20survey,Col.

I hope that the Board of Peace vanishes, but that may depend on whether UAE puts up real money along with some Zionist "investors" to make the Trump Riviera unstoppable, at least until January 2029. By then all the remaining structures may have been bulldozed over the remains of 10000++ Gazans. Then there would be much less to investigate. Those countries that he invited do not have to pay in the initial period. In the past, Egypt cooperated with Israel in controlling Rafah traffic. Hamas was not favored by the Egyptian military even when the Muslim Brotherhood government was in power (after Mubarak).

No need for Netanyahu to talk about the Israel Lobby. It's doing a great job of wrecking America, but since Mearsheimer & Walt's book in 2007, no scholars dare to mention "israel Lobby"!