Black immigrants are about 5% of the people in ICE detention but this year they represent nearly one in five deaths. The gap raises serious questions about the treatment of Black migrants- make it make sense @velshi.com @urbanviewradio.bsky.social @haitianbridge.bsky.social @keithboykin.bsky.social
Did you say “lethality”?
A Pentagon recruiter openly offers corruption: “unmatched access to top-level government officials and privileged information flow — whatever you need, you can get.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/u...
This is a true story. I was a guest of a con in Niagara Falls, and they picked us up in the same van as Michael.
For two hours, he entertained us on the drive and it was remarkable. He was hilarious and kind and inexhaustible. And he can SING.
Well, if it’s 14 March, that can only mean... naturally: the ninth anniversary of one of the finest exchanges from The Old Place
"You kind of have some pretty serious matters here... oil prices are skyrocketing, your troops are dying and are being injured—maybe the TV chyron isn't your top concern in you're Secretary of War right now. But you're a TV host, so."
Tim Miller reacts to Pete Hegseth's media tantrum.
Oh, I forgot to add, even if you impose a hard blockade on Iran's coasts, they can bring in key weapons and components via land borders with Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, via the Caspian Sea, etc.
Can they run all their trade that way? No.
Import the chips for shaheds? Yeah, probably.
So honestly...if you were a member of the Iranian regime, the bet that you can outlast Trump - that you are willing to endure bombs and blockade longer than the American public will accept $100 a barrel (or $150 or $200) oil...that looks like a pretty likely bet.
The tl;dr is that Iran probably isn't going anywhere. This war will be hugely costly for the regime and the Iranian people, they will bear its costs for years, maybe decades.
But the Iranian regime can probably soldier on here for *years.*
In short, there is a *lot* of ruin in a country.
While a bloody nose can convince an imperial power to give up an imperial venture, it takes spectacular amounts of pressure to get a country to buckle if it things the state's entire existence is at risk.
Or you can invade. 🤷♂️
If they need Chinese drone components, they'll bring them by ship via ports like Jask (outside the strait), burning debt and forex to do it, while restricting other imports.
The IRGC already owns most of their economy, so those businesses will keep operating even on funny money.
I am sure that some fancy analyst in the DoD has worked out a very precise estimate for how long Iran can keep the wheels turning, but I would be shocked if it were less than a couple of years.
The key weapons for closing the strait they all make mostly internally, so forex won't stop them.
Countries at war generally are going to use basically all of these strategies - with a liberal admixture of whatever shenanigans they can think up - to keep the wheels turning.
Countries in existential wars are also willing to just run shortages. No food in stores, certain weapons unavailable.
You might also lean on allies to 'loan' you the military equipment, with promises (rarely kept) to pay them back later, because you are fighting shared enemies.
I cannot imagine Iran will have much luck here - China is uninterested in sacrificing for anyone else ever and Russia can't afford it.
Iran's foreign exchange reserves last I saw were around $24bn. Enough to keep normal buying going for half a year, but in war time with anything not war essential controlled out, they could probably stretch that.
The other option is to burn down your foreign exchange reserves (forex) - because you keep a war chest for this.
Russia quite famously did this prior to the 2022 Ukraine War, although a fair bit of their forex was in places NATO could seize (whoopsies).
...the next option is debt.
There's a war on, the regime is imperiled, everyone making decisions is going to die or be poor or die poor if you lose, so there's no reason not to go ham on debt, you'll pay a fortune in interest but that beats dying.
Still, debt financing in war is hard.
Iran's advantage here is that given the current conditions, in a lot of cases its people couldn't import that stuff even if they wanted to, because of the whole...war...on.
If you are still negative - because exports are way down or you are trying to import (buy) expensive things like bombs...
For a country whose war effort is burning cash, to keep key imports flowing, you have some options.
Option 1: restrict imports to key things. You tell the public they can't have nice consumer goods (there's a war on!) and you can use currency controls to try to make it stick.
For those external transactions, you need foreign exchange to make them work.
The first option is obviously to get that with trade (and investment) as in peace time. Iran normally imports around $50bn and exports $100bn per year.
Obviously both of those figures will now be lower.
The harder part is *external* transactions.
But it is worth keeping in mind that, whereas for a household or a company, nearly all real transactions are external, for large countries a lot of their transactions are internal.
Iran is pretty trade dependent, but half its economy is purely internal.
The upshot is that *internally* so long as the actual physical labor and raw materials are available in the country, the war machine will not stop for balance-sheet reasons if the state feels existentially threatened because in that case the state will eat whatever costs are required.
There is no free lunch, all of these approaches entail costs but you can spend down pretty hard in all of these categories - defer maintenance, delay salaries, simply burn through private balance sheets.
Or print the money and eat the inflation.
Of course they can print money (and eat the inflation), but they can use a wave of patriotism to issue bonds; they can also compel internal banks and individuals to 'lend' them money, they can force domestic companies to operate below-cost or 'contribute' reserves to the war effort.
The first thing you need to separate is the *internal* economy of a country, which runs on its own currency and the *external* economy of the country.
Because a state *internally* taxes, spends and borrows in their own currency, it is really, really hard for them to run out of money.
This is a good question to address, actually.
There's often an intuitive assumption that when a country runs out of money, its war effort will grind to a halt. That's how households and (sometimes) companies work.
But those assumptions are really frequently frustrated - countries can push on.
‘“One of the things that was really notable were these circular scars, which are remnants from cookie-cutter shark bites,” said Gary Sutton, a whale researcher with the Vancouver-based nonprofit Ocean Wise.’
ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/s...
👀
Only kids subjected to WWII-style food rationing would sell their entire family out for Turkish Delight, as I will show in this five part essay....
90s and 2000s Pevensies sounds terrible.
Like, who is that even for?
