[X] Very interesting, if true. Let’s look for proof either for or against
SAUDI ARABIA—US—IRAN—INCENTIVES FOR US & ISRAEL TO FINISH THE JOB
In exchange for continuing the fighting, Saudi Arabia offered the U.S. an unprecedented package of economic and strategic incentives.
Key points in the offer:
• $100 billion transferred directly to finance American war costs
• Full and immediate normalization with Israel after the fall of the regime
• Direct oil pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the port of Ashdod, turning Israel into a major energy hub
• Investment of approximately $1 trillion in the U.S. economy + purchase of $500 billion in American weapons
• Establishment of a new regional defense alliance, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other moderate countries under an American umbrella
• Joint naval force to control the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb
• Funding of strategic U.S. bases in Israel
• Joint reconstruction fund for a post-regime “secular and moderate” Iran
ME: WOW!
Posted by: 3dc ||
04/13/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1791 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
The disinformation center, operating under the Turkish Communications Directorate, said the false attribution was not incidental but part of an organized effort originating from a specific source, though it did not identify that source publicly. Officials described the campaign as involving black propaganda and psychological warfare tactics aimed at manufacturing a false international perception of Türkiye's position.
#2
So, the TDS crowd going to blame Saudi for taking us into the war rather than Israel? Will Qatar tell Tucker and Candice to shift their positions? Enquiring minds would like to know.
[Reuters] TSMC, the world's largest manufacturer of advanced artificial intelligence chips, will likely notch up a fourth consecutive quarter of record earnings with a 50% surge in net profit for January-March thanks to booming demand for AI infrastructure.
Analysts say that demand for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's (2330.TW) 3-nanometre technology to produce AI chips and its advanced packaging technology continues to outstrip the firm's current production capacity.
That's driven Asia's most valuable company, a key supplier to Nvidia (NVDA.O) and Apple (AAPL.O), to new heights. Its market capitalisation is now nearly double that of South Korean rival Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) at around $1.6 trillion.
On Thursday, TSMC is expected to report a net profit of T$542.6 billion ($17.1 billion) for the quarter, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate compiled from 19 analysts. SmartEstimates place greater weight on forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.
An earnings call at which it will provide second-quarter and updated full-year guidance is scheduled for 0600 GMT.
Any profit result above T$505.7 billion would mark the company's highest-ever quarterly net income and its ninth consecutive quarter of profit growth.
Last week, it posted a 35% year-on-year rise in first-quarter revenue, ahead of market forecasts.
[StrategyPage] What Strategy Demands from Influence Practitioners
by John Wilcox and Ryan Walters
Influence practitioners are currently trapped in this “temporal mismatch.” They are expected to deliver deterrence and alliance cohesion using organizational structures and employment concepts designed for kinetic operations. The system is calibrated for a fight where we control the tempo, but in the cognitive domain, the adversary votes constantly and instantly. This article argues that the gap between the new strategic demand and current institutional capacity cannot be closed by simply working harder.
How about this: it cannot actually deploy a heavy (armored) division to Europe if required.
Just in case you missed it - this is the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff failing to confirm that the British Army could deploy 1000 troops to the continent of Europe. pic.twitter.com/GnyvLfiJjY
More than a decade after a review noted the country's inability to meet its basic NATO obligation to defend its allies, the country still cannot deploy a fighting force.
Britain has always focused on having a powerful Navy and a relatively small, highly professional Army.
But currently it has neither. Its navy is a shadow of what it once was, with only 15 surface combatants, most of which are in dry dock. It currently has no deployable destroyers, although they are rushing to get one that has been in dry dock for nearly a decade back to sea. The destroyer it deployed to the Mediterranean had to come back to port after its water filtration system broke down.
The Spanish Prime Minister, a socialist, who just legalized somewhere between half a million and a million illegal immigrants and put them on the fast track to citizenship, wants a European Army. What a joke. Spain spends 1.3% of its GDP on "defense," and apparently, it includes some green energy spending as "defense."
Almost 1 in 5 dollars of "defense" spending goes to "climate resilience." Yep. Good luck fighting with that.
The idea that Spain could contribute substantial military power to anything is a joke.
Its yearly military budget is less than the US spent on bombing Iran. The US has more troops based in Europe than the entire Spanish military.
France? Macron talks big, struts around in sunglasses looking cool, but can't deliver.
Before the Assemblée Nationale even began debating the update to the military planning law on Wednesday, April 8, which includes an additional €36 billion for the armed forces by 2030, the budgetary equation was already proving challenging. On Thursday, before the defense committee, Carine Camby, president of the first chamber of the Court of Auditors, warned MPs that the financial sustainability would be complicated. "The additional effort for defense will require significant [budgetary] trade-offs, unless new resources are found," Camby said, explaining the opinion issued by the High Council of Public Finances on this bill on Wednesday, following a referral by the government.
In short, France currently lacks the means to fulfill its military ambitions unless it engages in serious debate over its economic, fiscal and budgetary policies. According to the High Council of Public Finances, the increase in defense funding planned by the new military planning law will inevitably prevent France from meeting its European commitments on public spending from 2027 onward.
Poland, from what I can tell, has a real military. Germany's air force is a shadow of its former self, and most European surface combatants are frigates, which are not fit for purpose in fighting a real war.
NATO without the United States could, I suppose, fight a medium-sized country with modest military power and win decisively, but it couldn't muster the transport capabilities to do so. It certainly couldn't be considered a global power.
The UK likely still has superb personnel. Its military traditions have likely endured despite political leaders' failure to support them. No doubt American troops would be proud to serve with them in a conflict.
But it would be US aircraft that would transport them to the fight.
[AI] Yes, the **Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS)** remains fully operational as the British Army's primary officer training institution. Officer training has continued **unbroken for over 200 years**, and RMAS currently trains all new British Army officers, including those from the Regular and Reserve forces, professionals such as doctors and lawyers, and senior soldiers commissioning from the ranks.
## Training Programs
### 1. Regular Commissioning Course
- **Duration**: 44 weeks, divided into three 14-week terms.
- **Intakes**: January, May, and September each year.
- **Structure**:
- **Junior Term**: Focuses on basic military skills, fitness, and fieldcraft. Culminates in **Exercise Long Reach** in Wales.
- **Intermediate Term**: Develops leadership and tactical skills at the platoon level, including live firing and battlefield exercises.
- **Senior Term**: Involves complex operations, urban warfare, and culminates in **Exercise Dynamic Victory**, often held in Germany.
- **Accommodation**: Cadets rotate through Old College (Junior), New College (Intermediate and Senior), and Victory College.
### 2. Short Commissioning Course
- **Duration**: 8 weeks (can be completed in modular format over several years).
- **For**: Army Reserve officers and Professionally Qualified Officers (PQOs) such as doctors, lawyers, and chaplains.
- **Structure**: Four modules covering navigation, weapons handling, leadership, and tactical exercises, with final modules conducted at Sandhurst.
### 3. Late Entry Officer Course (LEOC)
- **Duration**: 4 weeks.
- **For**: Senior Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCOs) transitioning to commissioned roles.
- **Conducted at**: RMAS, with training tailored to experienced soldiers.
## Facilities and Leadership
- **Location**: 600-acre estate straddling Berkshire and Surrey, featuring historic buildings like **Old College** (1808) and **New College** (1908), and modern facilities such as the **Victory College** and the newly opened **Duchess of Edinburgh Hall** (2024).
- **Command Structure**: Led by the **Commander RMAS** (a brigadier), with a ceremonial **Commandant**. The **Academy Sergeant Major** is one of the British Army’s most senior warrant officers.
- **Academic Faculty**: Offers modules in War Studies, Defence and International Affairs, and Applied Behavioural Sciences. The course is accredited and contributes to postgraduate qualifications via partnerships like the University of Reading.
## International Engagement
- **International Cadets**: Around **90 cadets from approximately 50 countries** train at RMAS at any time, including from NATO, Commonwealth, and Middle Eastern nations.
- **Global Influence**: RMAS is a key tool of British soft power, fostering long-term military and diplomatic relationships. Alumni include heads of state and senior military leaders worldwide.
#7
They still have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Gurkha_Rifles
While one Battalion is always in Brunei (paid for by Brunei) there as another full battalion and 4 more training companies that could probably formed into another battalion if necessary. There are also additional dupprt units.
[Space] SpaceX launched launch a massive cargo ship packed with over 5 tons of gear for astronauts on the International Space Station early Saturday (April 11), then aced a rocket landing minutes after the Florida liftoff.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soared into a blue sky over Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:41 a.m. EDT (1141 GMT) on Saturday, sending Northrop Grumman's "Cygnus XL" resupply freighter toward the International Space Station (ISS). The mission, called NG-24, is Northrop Grumman's 24th resupply flight to the ISS for NASA.
Absolument tous les commentateurs français, qu’ils soient dissidents ou grands publics, vous racontent la même histoire : les USA se sont plantés et l’Iran a totalement gagné la guerre.
Mais à l’étranger, certains experts ont une lecture différente.
Absolutely all French commentators, whether dissidents or mainstream, are telling you the same story: the USA screwed up and Iran has completely won the war.
But abroad, some experts have a different reading.
Time will tell who is right, but here’s the summary, so you can form your own opinion:
1️⃣ China must absorb the shock of the price hike + is forced to change gas stations.
Addicted to sanctioned and therefore cheap Iranian oil, it immediately absorbs an explosion in industrial costs (plastics, fibers, inputs), tensions in supply chains, and a rise in export prices. Critical dependency revealed: a major share of its energy transited through a bottleneck controlled by an unstable actor. It is forced to change suppliers and turn to its US competitor, who is rubbing its hands.
2️⃣Activation of the Iranian lever = self-neutralization Iran uses its only card: blocking Ormuz.
Real effect:
•strikes its own clients (Asia)
•triggers accelerated diversification
•incentivizes the creation of permanent bypass infrastructures
Structural consequence: irreversible loss of strategic centrality. The lever becomes obsolete as soon as it is used.
3️⃣ Rapid reallocation to the benefit of the United States
The market reacts without inertia: redirection toward American oil. Immediate effects:
•record-high US exports
•capture of Asian demand
•consolidated role as balancing supplier
Not to mention that the USA controls the Venezuelan stockpile. The United States shifts from participant to pivot of the fuel system.
4️⃣ Transformation of the global energy system. Profound mutation:
•end of critical dependency on the Ormuz chokepoint
•rise of alternative routes (pipelines Gulf → Red Sea / Oman)
•shift toward flexible producers
The shock becomes a catalyst for a new sustainable equilibrium.
5️⃣ Accelerated geopolitical reconfiguration
Decisive intervention by Saudi Arabia in the American political sequence.
A call from Mohammed bin Salman swayed Donald Trump’s decision: abandonment of a total ceasefire in favor of a temporary one.
In exchange for continuing pressure on Iran:
•massive direct funding of the American war effort (100 billion)
•structuring investments in the US economy and arms purchases
•normalization with Israel conditioned on the weakening of Tehran
•project for an energy corridor Saudi Arabia → Ashdod (Israel)
•formation of a regional defense bloc under the American umbrella
•joint naval control of strategic straits
•preparation for a “post-Iran” (reconstruction, political repositioning)
The conflict becomes a lever for regional refashioning, not a simple bilateral confrontation.
6️⃣ Differentiated trajectories
•Iran: progressive collapse (revenues, influence, internal stability). Horizon: marginalization.
•China: short-term shock, forced adaptation, diversification. Strategic dependency shifted toward the United States.
•United States: systemic winner. Simultaneous economic, energy, and geopolitical strengthening.
•Gulf: consolidation as a restructured and stabilized energy hub.
7️⃣ Conclusion
•a geographical lever (Ormuz) is activated
•this activation destroys its own value
•the system reconfigures around actors capable of absorbing and redirecting flows
Final result: transfer of the energy center of gravity toward the United States, exposure of Chinese vulnerability, and accelerated downgrading of Iran in the regional and global order.
Posted by: badanov ||
04/13/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1779 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
TDS sounds smarter in French.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
04/13/2026 6:06 Comments ||
Top||
#4
France is a joke.
In the past 100+ years, have the French gotten anything right?
Politics?
Military?
Economics?
Science?
Arts?
Within a generation, their language will no longer be spoken anywhere on earth -- except on their designated reservations where their overseers will stand around laughing at them.
Posted by: Mary Travels ||
04/13/2026 8:12 Comments ||
Top||
#5
France has no gawd damn business being a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It's said they are there because Stalin liked de Gaulle.
#9
I honestly couldn't give a fuck what ANY western European thinks. Looking at you know who!
Posted by: chris ||
04/13/2026 13:59 Comments ||
Top||
#10
well Xi's niece is doing just fine with residency in both the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands and Trump making no effort to block her from buying oil. ... 2.8 trillion $ makes her a rich girl.
Something the British Royals know how to bleed of cash.
[ConservativeTreehouse] Many people have requested that I outline some context on the Iran conflict; so, here it is.
What follows is my own researched perspective on the challenge that President Trump is facing. I anticipate the non-interventionists will not be happy with it, and also the Israel First crowd will not like the brutal pragmatism of it. Alas, having spent a great deal of time watching things unfold, here’s my take.
Start with this question: Considering all the years the debate over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has persisted, why haven’t its strongest allies, China and Russia, ever provided Iran with a nuclear weapon?
A very good question.
Now, before anyone jumps into the nuclear non-proliferation perspective, let me remind you we are not going to pretend things here. You can pretend that Beijing didn’t give the DPRK nuclear weapons by pretending that North Korea isn’t a proxy province of China. Or you can stop pretending. The choice is yours!
So, what’s different? Well, in the DPRK example, Beijing holds the control mechanism. For Iran, giving religious fanatics a nuclear weapon would be tantamount to giving the Muslim Brotherhood the ability to start World War III.
As recently noted, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman urged President Trump not to back down from this moment of consequence and to eliminate the Iranian threat once and for all. MbS is about as close to a Middle East pragmatist as you can find. In response, a desperate British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushed to Saudi Arabia hoping to change the position of MbS. Great Britain is almost out of fuel.
That’s a good place to start looking at the regional perspectives.
Islamic extremists, religious zealots, fanatics, cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. Even those who are sympathetic to the Iranian regime, particularly Turkey and Qatar, are pragmatic about this issue.
Nuclear weapons must never fall into the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Nusra, and all of the extreme -perhaps most authentic- factions of Islam are included in that outlook.
While it is true that Israel has carried out a brutal, over-the-top, offensive against Hamas in Gaza, it is also true that Egypt – via President al-Sisi, spent two years destroying Hamas terror tunnels on the Egyptian-Gaza border and installed a five-layer security perimeter to keep the Islamist “Palestinians” out of the Sinai.
President Sisi (Egypt) and King Abdullah (Jordan) do not want to import Palestinian Hamas promoters, despite their very public opposition to the offensive methods of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
♦ The Muslim Brotherhood represents the political face of extremist (authentic) Islam. Turkish President Recep Erdogan is one of the zookeepers keeping the big cat cages under control, while simultaneously using the big cats to draw an audience.
Qatar is the banking side of The Muslim Brotherhood, feeding the big cats and providing them indulgences to keep them satiated. The intelligence services of Israel (Mossad) and the USA (CIA) are involved in this process.
When it comes to authentic Islam, you might say that essentially Mossad and the CIA are the physical cages, while Turkey (Recep Erdogan) and Qatar (Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani) are the zookeepers.
Turkey the gateway to Europe, is a NATO member not a NATO ally. Qatar has a foot in both the lawfully constrained western world and a foot in the religious fanaticism world. While the tightrope walking might seem difficult both Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Qatari Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani have navigated this dynamic as part of their own influence and affluence operation.
That said, none of the names involved thus far want the rabid faction of the big cats to get a nuclear weapon. President Donald Trump does not want the rabid cats to get a nuclear weapon. None of the voices in the Middle East, sans the fanatical Iranian religious faction, want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
04/13/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1770 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Umm, perhaps the good sundance does not recall that , um, Israel was invaded and Israelis massacred and, um, videotaped-raped and, um, then kidnapped for a very long time.
This was supported vocally, logistically, financially by Hamas allies.
Not condemned b6 the UN.
So..... while the good Mr. Sundance resides 8n complete peace and security in the US southeast, maybe just maybe the Israelis would prefer to dissuade its neighbors from following through on their threats to do it again and again.
Idk just spitball8ng here
Dont need to be "militaristic" to prefer not to be raped kidnapped murdered.
Hey Sundance how many of your friends and family raped murdered by neighbors lately
Hey Sundance how many times you run with children to bomb shelter lately
Posted by: Ay Capitán! ||
04/13/2026 4:00 Comments ||
Top||
#2
...before anyone jumps into the nuclear non-proliferation perspective
...because it has even more impact. Japan and South Korea would be interested. We have some older 'boomers' that could be transferred rather easily. I suspect the Taiwanese have components on the shelf.
#4
Who the f--- is ms. sundancer to describe anything as "over the top"
Over the top of what, exactly
And brutal? Are you kidding? Were you alive on 7 October 2023? You self-satisfied, sanctimonious w--ker. Exactly how much brutality are the Joooz s'posed to accept this go-round, sundancer?
Hey sundancer, how does all y'all's peoples respond when y'all get gang raped kidnapped videotaped and massacred down yonder in Southwest Florida
Posted by: Ay Capitán! ||
04/13/2026 15:47 Comments ||
Top||
#5
^ Sundance over target, apparently. [smoke drifts southward]
Posted by: Pearl Noodleman5221 ||
04/13/2026 16:14 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
