[Townhall] Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others.
The Greek American Elia Kazan's 1963 film "America," "America" is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director's uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia.
The film summed up Americans' traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.
An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, "American Trojan," by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere.
He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education. What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California — arguably the most successful one in recent memory.
Snip.
But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration – an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.
During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion – even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans.
And now?
While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
[Townhall] Don’t Listen to Idiots About the Iran War
You could be forgiven for wondering who and what to believe when you go on social media or look at the regime media, or listen to politicians, and you’re bombarded with all sorts of information, opinions, and assertions about the Iran War, but take heart. There’s an easy way to sift through it all to separate the wheat of valuable insights from the chaff of absolute stupidity. If somebody’s telling you that we are losing this war, he’s an idiot, or a liar, or both, and you should ignore everything he says.
Right up front, let’s be clear about something. The American and Israeli campaign against the mullahs is an unparalleled achievement in the military art, a victory so sweeping and complete that it defies any precedent. Within a couple of days, we decapitated their leadership, and not just at the neck – we’ve made the cut down around their colons. The High Poobah they started with got smoked faster than a fat doobie at Snoop Dogg‘s birthday party. Their alleged leader du jour – a guy who once had to go to England because he couldn’t make his little mullah stand at attention – is probably dead. But it’s not only impotence in the barnyard with these guys; it’s impotence on the battlefield as well. We removed their allegedly advanced integrated air defense system. We converted their surface fleet to an all-submarine navy. We’ve smashed their ability to project combat power, degrading their ballistic missile and drone forces from a fearsome fusillade to a pathetic trickle. We dominate every sphere of the battlespace, but one – air, sea, space, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum. The only one we don’t dominate (yet) is the ground. Still, with the Israelis taking out squad-size units of whatever the Farsi word for Gestapo is using exploding drones, and the people beginning to take to the streets, it’s only a matter of time before the mullahs lose control of the dirt, too.
It’s a victory so complete that it increases the potential to doubt it because the achievement is so incomprehensible. Sure, they fired some missiles and drones. Yeah, the enemy gets a say. Of course, they tried to close the Straits of Hormuz, but that won’t last. Tactically, they can’t do anything to us that impacts our combat power. Our casualties in men and material are minimal. In fact, about half of our casualties are from accidents. The other half are from a lucky hit. Strategically, they’ve completely blown it. Their goal was to get the surrounding states to force America and Israel to stop by attacking Iran’s neighbors. Instead, this just ticks off the neighbors, and now they’re helping us. Great job, guys! Tired of all the winning yet?
As Clausewitz pointed out, war is simply politics with different means. The end result here will be a non-nuclear-capable Iran without a ballistic missile capability, but let’s understand that that’s not the real objective. Those are collateral benefits that come from the political effect that this war is meant to achieve. Regime change gets a bad name from stupid people who don’t know history. A significant number of wars throughout history have had the specific purpose of regime change. The Romans used to march into barbarian nations specifically to change their regimes into ones that would be allied and pay tribute. We don’t need Iran as our ally or a tributary; we just need an Iran that’s not run by pagan apocalyptic psychos who hate Jews and Americans nearly as much as Candace Owens, Ilhan Omar, and Medhi Hasan do.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
03/20/2026 00:00 ||
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[No01Substack] Selling the future to survive the present: Silver edition
Silver is down 25% this month. Gold is off 13%. The world’s largest gas field just got bombed. Energy infrastructure is burning across the Gulf. Central banks have been stacking gold for three years straight. The structural case for precious metals has never - and I mean never - been more obvious.
So naturally, we’re selling.
“Efficient Markets”, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me walk you through the exquisite logic of it all, because it actually does make sense, even if it requires a brief visit to the asylum to understand.
The textbook says war = buy gold. Geopolitical panic = safe haven flows. Every finance professor that didn’t enlist will tell you this. And the theory is actually correct. Reality just doesn’t agree with it. What they’re not accounting for is what happens when the war is your income stream.
Think about who got obliterated this week. Israel struck South Pars - the world’s largest gas field, straddling the Iran/Qatar border. Iran hit back, targeting Ras Laffan in Qatar (20% of global LNG supply), two Saudi refineries in Riyadh, the UAE’s Al Hosn gas field, Kuwait gas units. This is a fundamental reshaping of the global LNG outlook, with disruptions lasting months, at least.
The Gulf states are hemorrhaging oil and gas revenue. Their infrastructure is on fire - sometimes literally.
So what do you do when your income stream evaporates overnight? You sell your nest egg. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE accumulated gold (and silver) during the good times. Now those sovereign wealth machines need dollars to keep their populace from revolting. Time to liquidate something. Gold and silver sitting in those portfolios are the most liquid assets they have. Out they go.
They bought gold for a rainy day. It’s pouring now.
That’s theory one. It fits the tape.
Theory two is more mechanical: the Fed held rates again, not even a hint of cuts in 2026. Energy shock equals inflation, inflation equals higher-for-longer, higher-for-longer equals dollar squeeze. The dollar is surging. Brent crude is at $111. And because precious metals are priced in dollars, a surging dollar mechanically hammers their price.
A lot of leveraged money was sitting in … well … in about everything, but let’s go with oil and energy. Now that made perfect sense before gas fields started to spontaneously combust but stopped very quickly after. When those blow up - and I’m not talking about gas here anymore - you don’t get to choose what you sell. You sell whatever is liquid. Whatever is profitable. Gold and silver at January’s prices qualified on both counts. The precious metals dump isn’t people wanting to sell those. It’s people having to sell to cover positions they can no longer hold. Forced liquidation doesn’t care about fundamentals.
#3
Big block moves in commodities by institutional investors and speculators during huge world events are sometimes trend-setting magnets to bring in the stupid money desperate to catch the wave, and then close out positions in bites while the uptrend reaches the point where the lesser people suddenly notice the altitude. Then margin-calls clean up the carnage and the froth subsides a bit.
[Gateway] Conservative historian and scholar Victor Davis Hanson just put Operation Epic Fury into historic perspective during an appearance on FOX News and compared Trump to Winston Churchill in the process.
Hanson makes the point that when Churchill was trying to warn the world about Germany, he was largely ignored by other leaders and suggests that a similar thing is happening with Trump and Iran.
He also points out that all of Trump’s recent predecessors have said that they wished they had dealt with the problem of Iran while they were in office. The difference is that Trump is actually doing it.
Transcript via Overton News:
Posted by: Besoeker ||
03/20/2026 06:48 ||
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[GCaptain] The Strait of Hormuz is twenty-one miles wide. Two shipping channels, each two miles across, separated by a two-mile buffer. There is no alternative. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline to Yanbu and the UAE’s pipeline to Fujairah can handle maybe five million barrels combined. The math doesn’t work. The bottleneck is not political. It is geological and hydrographic.
Every TV analyst in America is talking about minesweepers and carrier strike groups. They are asking the wrong questions. The binding constraint on Hormuz was never a minefield or insurance. It is the US Navy’s willingness and ability to reopen it.
Every talking point suggests the White House and Navy are working hard to reopen the strait but progress is slow. A new posts on Truth Social suggests we may have to considet a new hypothesis.
“I wonder what would happen if we “finished off” what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called Strait?” wrote President Trump in a post this morning. “That would get some of our non-responsive “Allies” in gear, and fast!!!”
Much to read at the link.
WHAT THE NAVY IS TELLING YOU
Look at what the Navy is doing. Or rather, not doing.
The U.S. Navy is in no rush to solve this problem. They are methodically, deliberately, taking their time. Army battalions are not mobilizing. The Marines called in from Japan are slow-steaming across the Pacific; it could be weeks until they are ready. Minesweepers are still far from the battlespace. Carriers are slowly rotating, not surging.
Someone at the top told them to take their time. That signal has to be coming from the White House.
Every day, approximately 1,000 trapped vessels are not available for charter. Every day, European energy dependence deepens. Every day, the DFC reinsurance facility becomes more central to the global shipping system. Every day, the case for concessions on tariffs, the IMO, Greenland, and the SHIPS Act becomes harder for Europe to refuse.
And what does the Navy get for playing along? Support for battleships and stronger allies willing to spend money building their own destroyers when it becomes clear to the world how weak their navies have become.
WHAT I AM ARGUING, AND WHAT I AM NOT
I am not arguing that Trump planned this from the beginning – The P&I club withdrawal was a cascading system failure that no central planner could have predicted or orchestrated – but it is possible.
What I am arguing is that the administration has, whether by design or adaptation, assembled the tools to exploit this moment. The DFC facility is the option. The incomplete P&I coverage is the strike price. The Jones Act waiver and Venezuela sanctions easing are hedge positions. The Navy’s deliberate pace is time decay working in America’s favor.
The strongest version of this thesis is not “Trump is playing 4D chess.” It is that the administration holds more options than anyone realizes, and the insurance mechanism, not the Navy, is the real lever of power.
The man who launched the SHIPS Act, tariffed Chinese shipping, killed the IMO carbon tax vote, brought CMA CGM to the Oval Office, signed the most ambitious Maritime Executive Order in decades, and then made the U.S. government the insurer of last resort for the world’s most important shipping lane does not lack a maritime strategy.
An alternative version of this scenario is simpler: apathy. America just does not care about ships or how long it takes to reopen Hormuz or what happens to Europe as a result. But that version raises its own question. It was European encouragement of American maritime apathy, and European exploitation of that apathy to corner the global shipping industry and keep control in London, that created this situation. If American indifference is the reason the Navy is taking its time, is that not Europe’s fault for cultivating it?
Posted by: Clem+Elmish4239 ||
03/20/2026 00:00 ||
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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.
