April 2, 2026

SQUEEZE HARDER: Dubai crackdown hits Iran’s economic lifeline, squeezes IRGC networks.

The arrest of dozens of IRGC-linked money changers in the United Arab Emirates is one of the most serious blows yet to Tehran’s sanctions-evasion network, laying bare how heavily the Islamic Republic has depended on Dubai as an economic lifeline.

Sources familiar with the matter told Iran International that UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices.

The crackdown follows days of mounting regional tensions and comes after other measures targeting Iranian nationals, including visa revocations and tighter travel restrictions through Dubai.

For years, Dubai has served as Iran’s main offshore financial artery, where oil proceeds, petrochemical revenues and rial conversions were turned into dollars, dirhams and euros beyond the reach of the country’s battered domestic banking system.

“This is going to be a real problem for Tehran because Dubai was an economic lung for the Iranian regime,” Jason Brodsky of United Against Nuclear Iran told Iran International.

“That is economic pressure and diplomatic isolation in a way that the UAE is able to employ against the Iranian regime, and it will have a very considerable impact.”

This is no time to go wobbly.

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Nike Shares Now Slide to 11-Year Low.

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File.

Nike’s stock has slumped to its lowest level in more than a decade after the sportswear giant warned sales will keep falling through 2026.

Shares hit an 11-year low on April 1, capping a brutal stretch that has seen the company lose around 75 percent of its value since shares peaked in 2021.

It is now worth under $68 billion – a third of the value of TJ Maxx.

The latest sell-off was triggered by a bleak outlook, with Nike forecasting sales will slump 4 percent this quarter – a staggering $500 million fall in the value of shoes, tracksuits, and t-shirts.

The brand is being hit by a triple whammy: backlash to its more ‘woke’ image shift, a failed retreat from major retail partners in favor of direct-to-consumer selling, and a deepening slump in China.

* * * * * * * *

Nike’s recent ad campaigns have apparently featured not only Colin Kaepernick, who whines about being “oppressed” while enjoying fame and fortune, but also the woke Megan Rapinoe and a “non-binary esports player” – whatever that is – named Dominique McLean. That’s not very likely to draw a wide audience of loyal American buyers.

Why can’t these companies just advertise the virtues of their products? Why not just make the case to the buying public that Nike athletic shoes and so forth are better quality, longer-lasting, more comfortable, and explain why? Traditionally, advertising has promoted the virtues of a product. The company is looking to entice buyers to a free trade in which their buyers perceive a gain in value; that the shoes, or sportswear, or whatever, will return value to them greater than the cost of the product.

Promoting anti-American woke nutbars does nothing to that end. Nike seems to be learning that; they are learning, as other companies have before them, what it means to “get woke, go broke.”

How woke did Nike get before the plummet began? This woke:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NASA VERSUS SPACEX:

Tweet continues:

SpaceX on the other hand can rapidly develop their rockets because most of it is built by them. If they make changes it doesn’t result in months of back and forth they can pretty much do it on the fly. And then test them on full rockets. This ultimately saves time and money but faces more public scrutiny, especially from those who are ignorant or are simply against the company/elon and are looking for any reason to be critical.

A perfect example of this was on the last couple of flights where various heat tiles and even no tiles were all tested to see what real world effects they would have.

To boldly go where Virginia Postrel has gone before. In 1997, she explored “Resilience vs. Anticipation:”

Boston’s winter is a natural disaster, but its predictability changes everything.3 As Hutchinson suggests, New Englanders know winter is coming. Bad weather is annoying but easy to plan for: You build snow days into the school year, buy a car with four-wheel drive, get used to scraping ice and shoveling snow. You make sure you have a coat, hat, and gloves. Snow, says Hutchinson, is no big deal: “You just put on boots.” Life has a regular rhythm.

Good weather plus earthquakes creates an utterly different environment. On a day-to-day basis, you can concentrate on your goals, with no need for contingency plans. Your softball game, your picnic, your wedding won’t be rained out. But everything could change in an instant. You can’t anticipate earthquakes, can’t plan for them, can’t even predict when and where they’ll strike. Instead of providing the certainty of seasons, nature promises a future of random shocks. All you can do is develop general coping skills and resources. There is nothing familiar about the aftermath of an earthquake, and no one survives it alone.

In his 1988 book, SEARCHING FOR SAFETY, the late UC-Berkeley political scientist Aaron Wildavsky laid out two alternatives for dealing with risk: anticipation, the static planning that aspires to perfect foresight, and resilience, the dynamic response that relies on having many margins of adjustment:

Anticipation is a mode of control by a central mind; efforts are made to predict and prevent potential dangers before damage is done. Forbidding the sale of certain medical drugs is an anticipatory measure. Resilience is the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back. An innovative biomedical industry that creates new drugs for new diseases is a resilient device. . . . Anticipation seeks to preserve stability: the less fluctuation, the better. Resilience accommodates variability; one may not do so well in good times but learn to persist in the bad.

Here, then, is the basic difference between the Valley and the Hub: Viewing the world as predictable and itself as the center of the universe, Boston has encouraged strategies of anticipation. People try to imagine everything that might go wrong and fix it in advance. But in Silicon Valley, there are no certainties. The future is open and subject to upheaval. Resilience is the strategy of choice. People do the best they can at the moment, deal with problems as they arise, and develop networks to help them out.

I wonder how much of Musk’s experiences in Silicon Valley impact how his team builds and tests rockets?

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

EH, THEY GO WITH WHO PAYS ‘EM:

Bulwark: This is more evidence we’re losing, you guys!

Posted at 3:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NASA’S RETURN TO THE MOON IS THE REBOOT WE NEED RIGHT NOW:

The mission, which launches today, even follows the playbook that governs Hollywood reboots. While not challenging Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s near-final form of ‘diversity’, with virtually no men of recognisably European extraction at all, the lunar mission will return in a gender swap for the ages: Apollo has been replaced with Artemis, the Graeco-Roman god’s girl-boss twin sister. Artemis is Rey to Apollo’s Luke, Galadriel to Apollo’s Aragorn, Nahla Ake (captain of the USS Athena, funnily enough) to Apollo’s Kirk.

In some regards, the NASA mission is not quite as eccentric as Hollywood. DEI considerations are clearly visible in the four-strong squad actually riding in the warhead, but all are well qualified in traditional terms and, on the ground, NASA is at least still staffed by top scientists and engineers. And unlike the new Lord of the Rings proposal, which will adapt scenes from the books that didn’t appear in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, Artemis is at least intended to retell the whole story, and then start layering in sequels.

Faster, please; the surviving men who walked on the moon during the Apollo program aren’t getting any younger:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green

KEEP ‘EM SCARED AND RUNNING:

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Sues VW After He Was Fired for Having His Service Weapon in His Car.

Luis Rivera worked for Volkswagen at the company’s Chattanooga, Tennessee plant for 14 years. He was a production team leader there. Rivera is also a reserve deputy in the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. Last June Rivera stopped at the VW plant after some training to pick something up and had his service gun in his car. That, VW says, violated the company’s no-weapons-in-the-workplace policy and the German auto maker fired him.

However…Tennessee is one of the most gun-friendly states in US of A. Volunteer State law — Section 39-17-1313 — permits lawful gun owners to store firearms in their vehicles as long as the firearm is kept out of sight. Rivera has now sued Volkswagen for violating Tennessee law and he’s seeking at least half a million dollars.

He seems to have a strong case.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green