Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 2, 2026 05:42
VIEWED: 15626
PAGE 19 of 73
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, maybe he's got those 2,500 Marines steaming from Japan to kidnap Iran's President Pezeshkian (who is pro-western and could very well be an Israeli plant) and form a "government in exile", where he can wave his arms and tell the IRGC and Iranian army to do this, that, and the other.
Iranians will ignore him.
"He who has the ability to destroy something controls it". Iran has far greater economic leverage than Trump has military leverage.
According to whom, and on whose authority?
I'll be honest, Sigs. That sentence is going completely ignored because even if it has the most remote chance of having any basis in reality, I'm sure as hell not going to read the thousands of pages necessary to draw that conclusion. Especially not when the same people writing those pages are usually wrong about everything and/or have their own agenda.
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Iran has not only closed the Strait of Hormuz with very little effort, they have the capacity to destroy every refinery, oil terminal, and processing plant within missile and drone range.
Look at the map. 
The Strait is narrow on it's own, but in addition the Iranians have (apparently) mined the widest part and are requiring ships to pass between the largish island and the coast. Not only that, the coast itself near Hormuz tends to have cave-pockmarked cliffs footed by very narrow beaches. Not exactly a good approach by sea. Or air, for that matter.
Opening the Strait would require mine clearing boats (which our NATO allies have. Us, not so much) and a major military operation.
The Saudis have been diverting their oil shipments to Yanbu, on the Red Sea, but the Houthis have that in their sites.
What can we do about that? Well, we could bomb/ strike Iran's oil and gas facilities in turn, but that would just make the oil and gas crises worse.
And I've seen videos of Iranian missiles being launched right thru light covers and a dusting of sand. So well hidden we would never find them, so I tend to believe them when they say they can do a lot more damage.
Well, we'll see. Trump has managed to wiggle out from under several times. And look! Nobody's talking about Epstein any more! Or Ukraine!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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What crisis though?
You're not talking about OUR situation, are you?
There may be other countries that are currently facing an oil crisis, but we're certainly not one of them.
Sure... Gas has gone to nearly $4 per gallon even by me right now, but I've seen prices over $4 per gallon all the way back fairly early in Obama's first term, and our prices still aren't as high as they were when they peaked under Joe Biden*'s only term.
I think maybe because of the state you live in and the problems that California currently have on top of what's going on in Iran right now might have you thinking that this is worse overall than it actually is.
If that's the case, I do feel for you. I'm not really happy that we're back up to $4/gal here either. But I feel good about the situation overall still.
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Just so you don't think I'm bullshitting you... 
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm
r_pte_nus_dpg&f=m
June and July of 2008 (early in Obama's first term), the national gas price was $4.054 and $4.062, respectively. I remember in Crook County Illinois seeing those prices at the pump at $4.75 or higher that summer. I remember it well because I bought a 1977 LTD off somebody I worked with that was in awesome condition when my car went kaput and the damn thing only got 6 miles to the gallon in the city. It was damn near $1 per mile to drive it.
At least I wasn't worried about anybody stealing it because I never kept a full tank and I figured if somebody did steal it they'd joy ride it around the block a few times and abandon it when it ran out of gas.
If you look at 2022, Gas was up over $4/gal between March and July, peaking at $4.929 in June.
I know that you're paying at or around $5.50 per gallon depending on where in Cali you live currently, but the national average for gas as of yesterday was still only $3.842. We still haven't gotten to $4 yet, but I don't suppose it will be very long before we do if nothing changes soon.
ETA: I think we're kind of getting screwed in Indiana right now. According to that chart, most of 2025 the national average was over $3/gal, except for December. We've been paying only around $2.30 to $2.50 that entire time, and only recently have the prices exploded. Right now, gas by me is $3.95 or so, which is higher than the national average. What gives?
I think a lot of the price increases we're seeing in the States right now is price gouging.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think I know why Trump started this war now. But to reel back in history...
When Trump took over Venezuelan oil, it was clear he had an "inside man". Turns out (according to the WSJ) that inside man was Ali Moshiri, a CIA asset and former Chevron executive who had been embedded since the days of Hugo Chavez.
At the time, it seemed pretty clear to me that taking over Venezuela's oil was more about denying China (and Cuba) oil than it was about capturing the oil for our oil companies. Very much in line with Hong Kong company's forced sale of Panama port facilities.
It occurred to me that attempting regime change in Iran might have the same goal: denying China Iran's oil. But why did Trump think it was going to work?
It turns out that the CIA may have had an informant in Iran too: Esmail Qaani, a top general in Iran's Quds who managed to survive multiple decapitation strikes and who has been MIA for several days. Rumor has it that he had been IDd by either Russian or Chinese intelligence and was being used to feed false info to the Trump admin, which is why Trump was so confident that a decapitation would lead to military defections and mass revolt.
Look at the planned sequence of events:
Takeover of Venezuelan oil,
Takeover of Iranian oil....
Meeting with Xi Jinping.
It doesn't hurt that Trump's donors and advisors are rabid Zionists. Two birds, one stone.
What could possibly go wrong??
Interesting video.
Brian Berletic, former marine weapons specialist, takes this strategic thinking several steps further.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Do you believe that we are in any real danger of starting a war with either China or Russia?
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Do you believe that we are in any real danger of starting a war with either China or Russia?
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SIX, we already started a war with Russia!
AND ... we thought we were going to win, easy peasy!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Not exactly sure if you're joking or not, but I reject that on several levels.
Most importantly, AutoPen Joe Biden* was not my President.
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Quote:Trump is my President. He has lowered my taxes. He has raised the prices of commodities I sell. He caused my competitors to lose their low-wage, illegal alien workforce. He is the 21st-century version of President Herbert Hoover, whose 4 year term in office was the reason Democrats took control of Congress for many decades. Without Hoover's misrule and the subsequent loss of Republican membership in Congress, Social Security would have been delayed by many years, for example. I believe Trump will do to the Republican Party far more damage to its power than Hoover did. That is why Trump is my President.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not exactly sure if you're joking or not, but I reject that on several levels.
Most importantly, AutoPen Joe Biden* was not my President.
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https://www.google.com/search?q=what+was+herbert+hoover%27s+opinion+of
+social+security
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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“Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War
Ali Gharib speaks to Afeef Nessouli about the latest strikes on Lebanon and peace strategist Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini on the U.S. Israel assault on Iran.
The Intercept Briefing
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/20/podcast-war-beirut-lebanon-iran/
From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated.
As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn’t enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries.
Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel’s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile strikes deeper into the country. The number of dead there is approaching 1,000 with Israeli missiles razing entire apartment blocks in central Beirut this week and a ground invasion getting underway. More than 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced.
“I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there’s not really anyone who’s trying to save them,” says Afeef Nessouli, a Beirut-based journalist, speaking to The Intercept Briefing. “They know that, and they know that they’re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick along with Palestine.” He adds, “The fear is that [Israel] will occupy south of Litani [River] … and just take people’s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country.”
“It’s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of ‘This is a human rights intervention’ — and yet it’s accomplished through massive human rights violations,” says Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept. Commenting on Israel’s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, he notes, the Israelis “don’t need [Reza] Pahlavi to work. They don’t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it’s not a threat to Israel anymore.”
“We’ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran,” says Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a veteran peace strategist. “The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would’ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam.”
It’s a region in upheaval, and at the center are Israeli and American fictions about liberatory bombs.
“I’ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they’re telling me the Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them,” says Naraghi-Anderlini, “And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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