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dissonant1's avatar

Wow, Seyed Abbas Araghchi does not mince words on just what Iran's position is and what Iran sees as the fundamental problem in reaching an agreement with the U.S. So refreshing to see a Foreign Minister boldly tell the truth in public (while leveling constructive criticism diplomatically). Reminds me of Lavrov in Russia. It is clear he wants to solve the Iran - U.S. problems rather than exacerbating them. If only we had a Foreign Minister (Secretary of State) with this level of authority, candor, and a true desire for peace. Then maybe Trump wouldn't need Witkoff to run around and negotiate on his behalf instead.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1916684126230286425

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal

Brooklyn klavern of the Jew Klux Klan defends Grand Wizard Itamar Ben Gvir against lone freedom rider

https://x.com/i/status/1916684126230286425

Alan Lorimer @AlanLorimer2

I'm assuming if they have dual citizenship they will be deported

https://x.com/tksshawa/status/1916882723706225073

https://x.com/RichardCaugh1/status/1916919882962375079

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Annie Johnson's avatar

?THE TRUMP MESSAGE?

The U.S. will sit at the head of every table; we will define the rules — and police them across the world.

As Robert Kagan, Nuland’s husband and leading neo-conservative pundit, puts it, “Superpowers don’t get to retire.” Kagan asserts baldly what this crew believes: “The time has come to tell Americans that there is no escape from global responsibility…the task of maintaining a world order is unending and fraught with costs but preferable to the alternative.”

FROM RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT

WHO IS DIRECTING FOREIGN POLICY?

Michael Anton is Director of Policy Planning

(REVIEW LEO STRAUSS)

Michael Anton: The Philosopher King of Claremont Institute, a Project 2025 Advisor

Michael Anton is Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State

aLSO Jack Roth Senior Fellow in American Politics at the Claremont Institute.

CLAREMONT INSTITUTE: American conservative think tank based in Upland, California, founded in 1979by four students of Harry V. Jaffa.

Harry Victor Jaffa (October 7, 1918 – January 10, 2015) was an American political philosopher, historian, columnist, and professor. He was a professor emeritus at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont Graduate University, and was a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. Robert P. Kraynak says his "life work was to develop an American application of Leo Strauss's revival of natural-right philosophy against the relativism and nihilism of our times

ENDOFPAGE

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Steghorn21's avatar

Netanyahu is in a similar situation to Zelensky: he only survives if the conflict continues and widens. Expect a lot of false flags.

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ML's avatar

Soulmates

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Steghorn21's avatar

And shared psychopathy

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Tristam's avatar

Aerial view shows three (3) discrete explosions at Iranian port

https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/was-the-explosion-at-irans-shahid

How do you spell CoIncidAnce in Hebrew?

Israelis chortling to a Bibi tune: Tehran in trouble: Deadly port explosion leaves Iran in a bind - analysis

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-851842

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Ray-SoCa's avatar

Israeli Government Corruption? I'm shocked!

Bribery transgressions has been weaponized in a cage fight between Netanyahu and the Leftists, including their Supreme Court, in Israel. Reminds me of how the ex Taiwan President got imprisoned, doing what all the previous Presidents had done, and how Marine Le Pen in France got disqualified for running for President.

Israeli politics is vicious, and the continuing Gaza Meat Grinder is building pressure.

The Qataris have also used their money to buy a bit of influence in the US. They are the 14th largest oil producer in the world, have an estimated 10% off the world's oil reserves, and only have a population of 360,000 out of a population of 3 Million. 85% or so are foreigners.

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Joe's avatar

RE: Electric -

I had thought it interesting and found the following information

" Uncharted Territory "

A massive power outage in Spain on April 28, 2025, with demand dropping from 26,907 MW to 1,846 MW in minutes,

likely due to a voltage imbalance in the European grid,

restoring power in a grid with high solar (PV) penetration is uncharted territory, as traditional black/brown start plans rely on gas and coal, not renewables, and the process could take over 10 hours due to the need for staged re-energization.

High PV penetration complicates frequency stabilization, and after 10-11 hours, substation batteries may fail, making remote re-energization impossible and requiring manual intervention,

=======================================

So no phones, no ability to say use a credit card to buy groceries or gas, of course your lights are out. A lot of comments on ' cashless society ' error

I opine -

They did not plan for it, and effectively they do not know what to do

they are experimenting -

they have never had to do a start up on such a large

portion of the grid - and never had to do a start up on such high penetration of solar -

As more time / hours go by, more battery backup/substations shall fail - the longer they wait the deeper the problem gets

they are in a panic.

----------------------------

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dissonant1's avatar

Exact description of the problem, I would guess. Thanks!

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NFO's avatar
Apr 28Edited

I recall that the knock on the shift to wind/solar around 2005-ish was that, when you added up the energy/environmental costs to build renewable facilities with the emissions generated by the backstop "peaker" plants (usually, the oldest, dirtiest coal plants that nobody wanted to spend the money on Clean Air Act retrofitting) that needed to be rumbling in the background to guard the grid against intermittence of renewable sources, the result was an environmental net negative vs. gas- or retrofitted-coal-fired power plants. To "fix" this image problem, our enlightened greenies just built more renewable facilities and did away with the peakers. Since renewable assets are not as strictly built toward hard performance specs as fossil plants (with fossils, plant performance dictates return...with renewables, its all about the tax-credits/subsidies), we end up with a governmentally-contrived product offering that often fails when tested by real-world metrics.

That said, perfect the battery/storage tech for reliably-dispatchable power from intermittent sources, and I am all-in on renewables. That's a long way off, however, for those of us living in reality.

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dissonant1's avatar

Well said. In the interim they have built a Frankenstein monster that appears incapable of even ensuring the supply of baseload energy needs aside from those of peak demand. Until the battery/storage tech problems are solved (if they ever are) it is hard to imagine how managing energy supply and demand (along with market pricing) on a grid will ever be able to be done efficiently while placing such emphasis on solar and wind.

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Steghorn21's avatar

More solar panels and wind farms should cure that said no-one ever.

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AmericanCardigan's avatar

Sounds like Texas electric grid problems.

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Joe's avatar

basically in their haste for ' green energy ' it appears they did not think it through

did not plan, and did not build backup into the system in case something like this occurred

unlike a traditional power outage that may be caused by fire, trees down, burst transformer this was apparently caused by frequency stabilization so there is no " quick part to replace and restart ".

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Mark Wauck's avatar

In Spain I've read that they're calling out the army to maintain order.

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Joe's avatar

The cities mentioned—

Madrid (3.3 million in the city, 6.7 million in the metropolitan area),

Barcelona (1.6 million city, 5.7 million metro),

Seville (700,000 city, 1.5 million metro), and

Valencia (800,000 city, 1.5 million metro)

+/- 15 million people in their metropolitan areas alone

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