Ummagumma

[ See all my Iran stuff. ] Reuters reported early today that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy said” it had closed the Strait of Hormuz “until further notice” after firing a warning shot at a vessel it said had attempted to transit along an unapproved route. A navy official, representing a force that has been effectively obliterated, announced that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. Traffic has crawled to a minimum. A country without a traditional navy has stopped the use of international waters. You can't make this stuff up. The IRGC does not need a navy. It’s got missiles. Probably hundreds more, though most are likely of dubious quality. It also has the ability to manufacture a multitude of drones. These are cheap and bring a lot of bang for the buck. It does not need to control the Strait in the way navies once controlled water. It simply needs to make ship captains pause. It needs insurers to reprice. It needs oil traders to flinch. It needs everyone to wonder whether the next t...

My Win Zone chart going into today's play...compare with here and here . Rk  Team        W-L     4+%   4+Rec  4+W%  4+WS  ≤3Rec   ≤3W%  ≤3WS  TotWS  Last12        L12   Trend --  ----------  ------  ----  ------  ----  -----  ------  -----  -----  -----  ------------  ----  -----  1  Dodgers     61-33   .617  53-5    .914   .564  8-28     .222   .085   .649  ++++-+++-+-+  .750  *  2  Brewers     58-34   .598  48-7    .873   .522  10-27    .270   .109   .630  -+++-+-++++-  .667  3  Rays        54-36   .611  45-10   .818   .50...

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] (Posted at noon eastern time.) The US-Iran nuclear talks survived the war longer than I actually thought they would . That is probably the strangest part of the whole thing. Before the Strait became the center of the story, the “interim ceasefire” had settled into tit for tat with minor complaints. Everyone issued statements about restraint while doing the thing the statements were supposedly restraining. It was dangerous, ugly, and absurd, but it still had a rhythm. Like most everyone, I kept waiting for the talks to collapse because the nuclear talks were supposedly the point of the war. That was the final justification. We can’t let a jihadist theocracy have nuclear weapons. It takes a pretty primitive view of the world to disagree with that. Iran's nuclear program had to be set years back if not eliminated. Iran's leadership had to be restrained. Iran's military capacity had to be whacked. As usual, Trump wanted the grand declarative ver...

Since I watched videos pertaining to my recent post , there has been sooooo much Göbekli Tepe clickbait in my YouTube feed lately. "The world's oldest temple." "The mysterious sanctuary that rewrites human history." Then a thumbnail appears showing some ancient limestone pillar next to an ominous-looking guy pointing at it like he just found proof that the Neolithic had Wi-Fi. It is mostly bullshit. Maybe Göbekli Tepe was a temple site. No one knows. That is the first thing to say. There is no surviving text. No named god. No prayer. No priestly rulebook. No account of what people thought they were doing there. No carved little sign saying, "Welcome to the Temple of the Great Fox. Please leave your offering at the front desk." There are, however, enormous limestone pillars. There are animals everywhere. There are lots of animal bones. There are some human remains, though the site does not appear to be a cemetery or a place where people we...

In July 2024 I wrote two posts about Sudan (see here and here ). The war had already run more than a year. Khartoum was being destroyed. Darfur was returning to the ethnic killing that made its name infamous twenty years ago. Millions displaced. Hunger spreading. Hospitals collapsing. The death estimate then: somewhere around 13,000 to 15,000, mostly civilians. Almost no one in the West was talking about it. Still isn't. Yet it was already one of the worst situations on earth. Ukraine became a war of attrition. Gaza took the headlines. Then the Israeli-US-Iran war. Israel has a special relationship with America. Sudan does not. South Sudan does not. Chad does not. Ethiopia does not. Some places become catastrophe as an ongoing fact rather than an event. Nobody denies it's happening. They just don't look. I read a piece this morning titled " Sudan: The Deadliest War You're Not Hearing About. " A little dramatic for my taste. But the point stands. Sudan'...