Mastodawn

Peter Broks Mar 22

Do you understand why Trump has lifted the oil sanctions that were punishing Iran, the country he’s bombing, and Russia, the country that’s helping it?

Do you understand why Trump is sending 5,000 Marines to sail through the Strait of Hormuz while complaining that none of our friends and allies will help him reopen it?

Here's the whole explanation.

https://no01.substack.com/p/march-19-21-god-is-a-comedian

March, 19-21: God is a comedian

A stiff drink is recommended

Gold and Geopolitics

Gregatron5 Mar 22

@gleick I’d like to understand the reasons why people who are against fascism keep posting on a fascism-supporting platform. If that’s your post, can you put it somewhere else? If it’s not your post, can you ask the author to move somewhere else? Ghost, buttondown, and beehive are good alternatives.

James Gleick Mar 22

@gregatron5 Take your tiresome harangue elsewhere. Don’t drag me into your crusade.

Gregatron5 Mar 22

@gleick My apologies. I can see that the way I phrased it could be offensive.

What's a better way to preface the question “Could you please post content about your anti-fascism crusade on a platform that doesn't openly support fascism”?

Graham Perrin Mar 22

RE: https://mas.to/@gleick/116273021474400955

@gregatron5 suggested preface:

"Anti-fascists might like to mute me indefinitely for hasty and repeated interjection in a context such as this."

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 22

@grahamperrin @gregatron5

@gleick @gregatron5 posting as someone who was going to read the article but didn't because of where it's hosted:

Snapping at someone for pointing out people's discomfort with a platform that openly defends hosting of literal Nazis is really disappointing.

Guess I'll just scroll past all of your posts now, because this response has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

James Gleick Mar 22

@HunterZ @gregatron5 I'm the one who was snapped at. My idea of common courtesy is this: If you don't want to read an article because you don't like the platform that hosts it, don't read the article. Or, if you must, reach out to the article's author. It's neither necessary nor appropriate to scold someone for posting a link to it.

Life is too short, and there’s already enough unpleasantness.

@gleick Okay, I guess you're just a dick then. Disappointing.

@gleick @gregatron5 I was going to like and share your post, but I don't want to reward you for being a dick. Right or wrong, this is how a dick talks to people. Maybe this isn't how you really are -- I wouldn't know -- but online, our words are our raiment, and most of what other people 'know' about us. Like it or not, fair or not, we are all judged by the choices we make.

George Girton Mar 22

@gleick Very similar to the Joseph Heller novel Catch 22🍸😺

@gleick This is a project to shift Europe (e.g. white nations) back to imperialism. That's why mine sweepers were sent away from the region and Iran's oil refineries were bombed: Create a surge in energy prices for Europe and force them to go abroad and take what they want.

Alex Block 🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦Mar 22

@gleick My head exploded reading the final paragraph...

@gleick Who could blame them? I think I myself sometimes attempted such daring missions when playing Command & Conqueror.

Chris Goss Mar 22

@gleick Holy shit ...

@gleick
"The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do." 🎯

Joy_intl Mar 22

@gleick Holy .....
- what I kept repeating while reading..

Quote: "This is a clusterfuck of historic proportions and everyone who's ever held a rank knows it."

Accurate.

Darwin Woodka Mar 22

@Joy_intl @gleick

Been posting this since Donny got elected and it's applicable to so many situations

Tim Finnerty Mar 22

@gleick "Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran."

Wouter De Borger Mar 22

@gleick what I don't understand is this: the stock market part of this (as I understand) is Trump making bets and making a lot of money on them. Who is still willing to take these bets? Why is there still any trust in the stock/derivatives market at all? Take that away and he loses...

GhostOnTheHalfShell Mar 23

@wdeborger @gleick

When you get an understanding of just how consolidated ownership of stocks are starts with the top 10% income brackets owning 94% of all stocks I think I hope I haven’t gone senile in a week.

But the top .1% has something like 23% ownership. Whales of that size can tip prices easily by buying or selling a tiny fraction of their total holdings between each other.

It’s hard not to see this is a game between peers to manipulate their net worth

Rich Stein (he/him)Mar 22

@gleick
Lest we forget this brilliant move —

Where are all our minesweepers?
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/iran-strait-of-hormuz-minesweepers-b2936416.html

Trump pulled mine-sweepers from the Middle East and they’re sitting in Philadelphia as the Iran War rages

The Navy went through with plans to pull the ships from service despite ongoing tensions with Iran

The Independent

Conny Nasch Mar 22

@RunRichRun @gleick read the first comment.

Rich Stein (he/him)Mar 22

@gleick
Unrelated — I was doing some housecleaning recently, and this note from Ralph Leighton fell out of a book. I lived in Glendale in the late 80s and early 90s — attended a memorial service for Feynman at Caltech at which I recall Murray Gell-Mann speaking. I can't recall, but perhaps Ralph Leighton spoke then as well. I must have dropped him a note for some reason. Small world.

James Gleick Mar 22

@RunRichRun I was there. Thanks for sharing.

Jaime Robertson Mar 23

@RunRichRun @gleick Goes along with the hospital ships he was going to send to Greenland, the ones in dry dock in Mobile, Alabama.

swggrkllr3rd Mar 26

@RunRichRun @gleick Like when bush jr. pulled finances for embassy protection before the Benghazi embassy attack.

thecampbell Mar 22

@gleick it's like going from the kitchen to the dining room and not expecting the cat to jump on you in the hall, but with explosives...

Scott D. Strader 😐Mar 22

@gleick Anytime he causes chaos I immediately know that it's simply a way for him to make money and not solely a child's base, reactive impulses. I'm not always sure how he's making money or the breadth of those he's gifted his national security insider trading, but the impetus is money. Thank you for suffering through the details of this latest, and maybe the bleakest, grift.

@sstrader @gleick Scott, your post reminded me of a George Orwell observation. It applies well to national chaotic events as well as international ones:

Paul Healey Mar 23

@Waldorf @sstrader @gleick As some expected, the moneyed class being driven by greed and corruption goes full ouroboros; invading Iran is driving inflation and unemployment, so will likely crash shares and stock values. Thanks to the Pandora’s box of its tech magic, will we not witness them jumping out of their office windows or going for their guns? #Inflation #DeregulatedMarkets #WW3 #Poverty #Unemployment #GreatCollapse #BankruptEmpires #EcocideResistance #TheFederation

No01: “To reach Kharg Island, the Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and USS Boxer must first sail through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has mined.[…]”

It’s entirely possible for such an operation to be conducted from the Gulf of Oman. No Strait passage needed.

If only there were Rs to vote down DoD’s $200B supplemental, or a cabinet willing to invoke the 25th.

📷 Saul Loeb/Getty Images

@gleick Trump's aircraft carrier!

@gleick This moment brought to you by Joseph Heller.

Just FYI, and to be clear I'm not blaming you for this, some of the comments on that article have some really vile 1930s-style far right stuff full of bigotry and conspiracy theories. The author isn't pushing back on them, in fact he seems sympathetic in some of his replies to them.

@FediThing he also doesn't care that substack supports nazis, so maybe not surprising then

The pilot had shrapnel wounds. The aircraft, they said, “will not return to service”, which is the sort of thing you say about a car that hit a bridge abutment at speed, not about a plane that landed.You know what they say, a good landing is one you walk away from, a great landing is one you can use the plane again... Sounds like this was somewhere between a bad and a good landing

Justbeep Mar 22

@gleick
It's fascinating how easy it is to put the world to the verge of WW3 .

This may the golden chance that Russia and China have been waiting for ...
At least China's arsenals are likely full.

Even should USA be successful in Iran, there'll be nothing left for Ukraine and Taiwan.

@gleick that's art of the deal - everyone keeps going what's the end goal of the Epstein war, it is in the name, this war was just a distraction for pedo in chief to move the collective conscience from his pedo crimes to war crimes... if the cost of that is sanction relief to regimes on the same wavelength, so be it. Even he is smart enough to know no one from US ever get punished for war crimes, specially if giving the orders.

Amo a Sam amat Mar 22

@gleick "because apparently the universe was running low on irony and needed to top up." cannot read through the tears. Incredible writing.

@gleick
..."A White House source told Axios they need “about a month to weaken the Iranians more” before attempting this. One month. Of a war Trump described as ‘winding down’ on Friday - three weeks in, which by his count is basically four days… Both statements were made, as far as anyone can tell, by people who occupy the same government and occasionally share a building.

A former Navy SEAL called the plan “insane”. A retired Vice Admiral called it “a massacre-in-making scenario”. A retired Rear Admiral pointed out that even if they seize the island, Iran simply turns off the pipeline at the other end. Frankly, I think they're being extremely polite. This is a clusterfuck of historic proportions and everyone who's ever held a rank knows it."...

@gleick Strong Churchill Gallipoli vibes. But that turned out well...

@gleick excellently presented, i can see why people are mad

T Lisa B Mar 23

FYI:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters

Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

The Guardian

GhostOnTheHalfShell Mar 23

“ This week, the US Treasury lifted all oil sanctions on Iran. … Including to the United States itself.
In yuan.
The United States is purchasing, with Chinese currency, oil from the country it is currently bombing?! The same oil that funds the missiles that just shot down an F-35 for the first time. The same missiles that are redecorating allied oil infrastructure.”

Bye bye dollar reserve currency status

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @gleick

Https://www.fdd.orglanalysis/2026/03/21/funding-the-enemy-trump-rolls-back-sanctions-on-iran-without-any-guardrails/

The article also looks at the 47 million we spent fixing the Venezuelan tanker that's worth 10 million, while costing 450K a month storage.

GhostOnTheHalfShell Mar 23

It still kills me too that Europe has much more skin in the game over the straight and they’re hanging tough.

Europe also has a lot more exposure to crisis in the Middle East. It’s just a shit show and it’s a pity we can’t use it as an energy supply because it’s endless

hindsight Mar 23

@GhostOnTheHalfShell "It still kills me too that Europe has much more skin in the game "
A very casual glance might lead to that conclusion..
However, it's the Gulf States themselves along with USA..
Why, well for the gulf States that's easy, it's their oil/gas etc..

For USA, .. petrodollar comes to mind, maybe the Saudis will sell in any courrency ..
the investments into USA from these States.. well no income, no $$s investment out.. Its complicated and interwined. ;-)))

Justin Macleod Mar 23

@gleick this was literally the best piece of entertaining non-fiction I have read since Trump came to power and probably a long time before. Had me in stitches.

@gleick Comedy = tragedy + time

And "God" has all the time in the universe.