Today in Fascism

“The Palestinian people
does not exist. The creation
of a Palestinian state is only
a means for continuing
our struggle against the
state of Israel for our Arab
unity. In reality today there
is no difference between
Jordanians, Palestinians,
Syrians and Lebanese. Only
for political and tactical
reasons do we
speak today about the
existence of a Palestinian
people, since Arab national
interests demand that we
posit the existence of a
distinct ‘Palestinian people’
to oppose Zionism.” 8
— Zahir Muhsein
P.L.O. Executive Committee member 1977
 
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SHOCK: 8 people arrested in Alabama after discovery of an underground bunker where at least 10 children (ages 3 to 15) were restrained, drugged, abused, and filmed.

If found guilty, what should happen to these people?

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1. HORMUZ: THE SECOND TOLL BOOTH.
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🎬 THE CLIP
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Last issue left you with paragraph ten, the moment Washington took the insurance pen back from London. This week Tehran answered with a pen of its own. Documents seen by Lloyd’s List show Iran’s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority requiring vessels to carry PGSA-issued coverage, free for the first sixty days of the memorandum, priced after that. On June 25 a drone struck the Singapore-flagged cargo ship Ever Lovely off Oman. On June 26, CENTCOM struck Iranian missile and drone storage and coastal radar sites in response, the first American strikes since the ceasefire extension. Trump’s own words on Truth Social: “One of the Drones solidly hit the upper deck of a large and very expensive Cargo Carrying Ship... Obviously, this is a foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement.” Asked whether Iran would face consequences, he said only, “You’ll find out.”



And here is the part the missile coverage skips. Chatham House’s own reporting puts an estimated eighty mines still in the Strait, mostly Maham 3 and Maham 7 blast mines built to dodge sonar, drawn from a pre-war stockpile of five to six thousand. Traffic is running at roughly twenty-five ships a day against a pre-war average near a hundred twenty-five, split across a northern route Iran controls and a southern route the United States backs along the Omani coast, both narrow, both a gamble. And by Chatham House’s own account, the United States currently has only one minesweeping ship in the entire Middle East. That is the real reason Washington needs the UK-France coalition it has been assembling since spring. The insurance fight gets the headline. The mine count is why the water still is not actually open.

📜 THE RECORD
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The City That Owns Everything and Answers to No One and The Empire That Never Died are still the desk’s biography, three centuries of pricing the risk of war and collecting on every premium. What is new is that the desk now has a rival. The American reinsurance facility from last issue, roughly forty billion dollars of revolving capacity through the Development Finance Corporation and Chubb, is still standing. Tehran’s PGSA is the answer to it, a second address trying to open in the same water.

My own Square Mile series already named the mechanism underneath this fight. The 1901 D’Arcy concession priced Persia at sixteen cents on the dollar before a single barrel was sold, and every squeeze since, the 1951 nationalization, the 1953 coup, the sanctions after 1979, has run on the same instinct I traced there: a Persia at peace is a low-premium strait and a thin order book. A Persia cornered and lashing out is a high-premium strait and a full one. The desk does not fear the friction at Hormuz. It sells it. Watch the premium, not just the missile.

🔗 THE SEQUENCE
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The public watches the drone and the retaliation. The shipowner watches which toll he has to pay to cross. Two governments now claim the right to price the same twenty miles of water, and neither one is London. That is the story underneath the missile: London still writes most of the world’s marine war-risk insurance, but the old single address is no longer the only one taking calls. What replaces that monopoly is not peace, it is competition between two new desks, one in Washington and one in Tehran, both wanting the fee.
 

2. LIBYA: THE GENERAL’S SON AND THE OIL LEDGER.
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🎬 THE CLIP
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On June 29, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Lieutenant General Saddam Haftar, deputy commander of the eastern Libyan National Army and heir to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, in Washington. The State Department’s own readout: they “discussed ongoing Libyan-led efforts to unify the country’s military, economic, and political institutions.” White House senior adviser Massad Boulos was in the room. This follows a thirty-billion-dollar unified Libyan budget agreement reached in April, the first since 2014, brokered directly between the Haftar and Dbeibah families rather than through Libya’s competing formal institutions. Reporting on the proposed arrangement: the Dbeibahs keep the prime minister’s office, the Haftars take the Presidency Council, which carries command of the armed forces. Boulos has separately told the Financial Times he is encouraging American oil companies to invest, tying the political settlement directly to access.



📜 THE RECORD
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The Empire That Never Died is the frame this belongs in. NATO broke Libya’s government in 2011 and called it liberation, then walked away from the country it broke. Fourteen years later, Washington is the broker in the room deciding which two families inherit the keys to the National Oil Corporation, while American companies wait for the ink to dry.





🔗 THE SEQUENCE
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This is the third plain question in its purest form. The big country stopped looking at Libya in 2011. Now it is back in the room, and the small country is being handed not to its own institutions but to two family names, with an oil ledger sitting on the table between them. Watch who signs the final agreement in Washington and whose name is on the well leases six months after.
 
Word is a few of these bangers had kids on US soil. All kids deserve a chance but this is gnarly. One of the kids is now a leader in the gang. Welcome to America.

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