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Blocking the Strait of Hormuz = Mean Making the strait Unsafe enough that insurance companies and shipping companies to stop providing their serviceBlocking the strait ≠ DOESN’T MEAN lining up warships from one end to the other, literally like how bouncers block a night club!Iran confidence in its claim to be able to block the strait doesn’t arise from its 33 submarine fleet plus several dozens of other kinds of warships.In the worst-case scenario which is if Iran and the US enter an all-out war that would have started in the strait, Iran initial swing would result in the strait to get close for more than a month. If you find this exaggeration then I say you may have to forget and not compare what went on during the 1988 Iran-Iraq war and the time when oil-tanke war begun, in the time when the US literally entered the war in favor of Saddam and directly against Iran and the speed in which the US could sort out the blockad and reopen the strait,Today, in 2019, the situation is completely different… Iran at 1988 had nothing compared to now, they had to plan their defensive/ offensive strategy when the US was already attacking their sites; Iran had no anti-ship ballistic missile, no cruise missile and no torpedo, but only a few types of mine.Today, Iran has the strategy, has some of THE best or amongst the top five torpedoes, ballistic/cruise anti-ship missiles, (with few meters inaccuracy) and all kinds of minces, etc.Iran relies on its Marines and missies/torpedoes/ Mines, but a lot more on its marines than missiles. The same marine who put those wholes on nearly dozens of oil tankers that were supposed to be under the protection and surveillance of the US aircraft carrier strike group. The Kind of Marines who are willing and are ready to go head to head with 97,000 tones Warmachine.

Hold on. It is changing.In the US, not-religious people are 20% of the population - 1 in 5. More than any one religion. So, of religious positions, the "nots" are the majority, unless you add the divided factions back together, to game the numbers.In Europe, there are plenty of nots. Maybe even a majority. Some religious, like Church of England practitioners are often secrets "nots", even some of the clergy.If you take it country by country, you would almost be hopeful about religion losing a grasp on the increasingly civilized and educated world. You also can see what tips the numbers toward religious believers being in the majority. The poorest, worst educated, most troubled nations, often with large, hungry populations, are the most religious. Whole groups of studies have shown a correlation (yes, actual correlation) between religiosity and being poor, uneducated, less empathetic, more punitive, of a lower IQ and impoverished.Christianity and Islam conduct more membership drives than a PBS station. They are working hard to make up their losses by recruiting in less developed nations. Sometimes they just declare an area Islamic, by imposition of law, instantly converting a whole population, on paper, no matter what is practiced on the ground.At a high level, the answer really is, statistics insure that exactly half of the population is below average intelligence. They need a replacement parent to protect them, provide for them, watch over them and lessen their personal responsibility. It is easier to say "God will take care of me" or "protect me" than to be responsible for yourself. It doesn't work very well, but it is easier.For those of greater than average intelligence, religion can be an excellent social software, allowing a few to control the many. Imans and popes and things relay what God has instructed us to do, but we only ever hear it from the mouth of a regular human. In that context, religion is so very easily abused for harvesting wealth from the masses, making land grabs, raising an army of "holy fighters" and getting them to give up their lives in "this world" for a better one that is claimed to exist.Religious people may be in the majority now, but the tide is shifting. Radical and extremist actions are proof that the end approaches. As mental health professionals know, as you get to the problem, the patient resists the most.

I’ve lived in eastern Spain for 16 years (since a month before my 26th birthday), although I’m not Spanish (yet. That could change after Brexit!) As I speak fluent Spanish and valenciano, I’m often called upon by British retirees to translate for them. Being a freelance worker also ups the chances of this; people tend to see you as someone who doesn’t go to work, because you don’t have strict timetables or go to an office, even though I’m probably grafting away many more hours a week than I would in a full-time job. From a ‘Spanglish’ migrant’s point of view, this can be tiresome - I don’t mind helping, and I don’t mind if it’s medical and could be complex, because you can’t mess with that. But calling me three times a week to play secretary, make complaints in shops, ring delivery people, go to town halls and post offices in exchange for a ‘thanks’ and a box of chocolates - when it’s put my work back by easily half a day - is annoying. Especially as people assume that’s your purpose in life if you’re bilingual.From what I understand when speaking to Spanish people about retired Brits here, those who actually mix with them seem to think they’re very nice and friendly, and are keen to help them where they can. The biggest bug-bears have already been mentioned here: the ghettoisation (urbanisations on hillsides miles from the town where Brits mix only with each other, read the Daily Mail and watch UK TV via satellite) and the fact that so few bother to learn Spanish beyond what they need for ordering in restaurants or bars. I even taught Spanish to Brits for a while, and they’d rarely stick at it for more than a couple of months: “I used to go to Spanish classes, but I’ve given them up now, I go to line-dancing instead.”They need to know that learning Spanish is not a hobby and is not optional. Yes, many do live here for decades without being able to string a sentence together, and are maybe not bothered about integrating - they just want the weather and cheap food and drink, not the culture - but they generally get by via the altruism of bilingual people, who are usually younger and have jobs. Common excuses are age (as though it’s impossible to learn anything new after 60?! Well, you didn’t know line-dancing before you started it in place of your Spanish classes) and ‘haven’t got time’ (ie, social life takes up every hour).Some of this is Spaniards themselves making a rod for their own back - they feel they need to make an effort with their English because the Brits don’t (won’t) speak Spanish. If more Spaniards opted not to do so, or even pretend they don’t speak English if they do, the culture among retired Brits would HAVE to change because they simply wouldn’t be able to manage.One complaint about British retirees in Spain that I’m always trying to correct (and fighting a losing battle with) is that a high number of Spaniards believe Brit pensioners get healthcare free at the Spanish taxpayer’s expense, having never contributed themselves until their 60s, and at a time when they’re most going to need the health service. I’ve even seen comments on discussion threads about how, if Brits can’t stay here after Brexit, at least the health service will have a lot more money.This is completely untrue. Non-retired Brits in Spain fund their healthcare in the same way as any Spaniard does - through their work-based taxes and social security (national insurance). Brits of State pension age are funded by the UK government, which pays €4,300 per head per annum to the Spanish government. Okay, this is going to fall well short of many Brits’ treatment costs, but will be more than sufficient for others, and Spain hasn’t tried to negotiate an increase (which it could), so presumably, this amount is enough. The only Brits who fall into the ‘healthcare without payment’ from the Spanish State are the early-retired, but (a) many of these have private health insurance so they can use clinics which are often run by northern Europeans and have English-speaking staff, and (b) even if they do use the health service in Spain for free, it’s only for a few years until they’re pension age, they DO pay into the pot (literally every time they buy a packet of biscuits, they’re contributing to the economy), and (c) any Spaniard, irrespective of work status, even if they’d never worked there, would be entitled to free healthcare if they lived in the UK, as a matter of course. So really, it balances itself out - and healthcare IS a basic right, so one government or another needs to fund it for all citizens, somehow.Before the housing bubble burst (around 2008), Brits were often blamed for over-development, especially in rural areas and close-knit villages - rampant construction of urbanisations with hundreds or thousands of villas, swelling populations many times over, altering the traditional face of close communities, covering beautiful countryside with concrete, forcing home prices out of reach for even relatively high-earning workers, was always going to cause ‘malestar’. And quite right too - I can just imagine how your average UK community would react to the same happening to cater for a mass influx of foreigners who didn’t speak English. Of course, none of this was the Brits’ fault. They simply bought homes in the sun they fell in love with, and which were cheaper than the inflated values of their properties in the UK, allowing them to invest the difference and retire early. Why on earth not? Who wouldn’t? But corrupt local councils saw €€ signs and were able to make a killing by issuing planning licences, developers themselves could write themselves cheques and cash them without needing the funds first (huge bank loans, etc - of course, many defaulted when the market became saturated with houses nobody could afford, or nobody wanted because the areas were now ‘too British’ and too built-up, leading to banks repossessing half-built new estates, developers going out of business and disappearing, and Brits and other nationals who bought off-plan losing their entire investment). None of this was Brits’ fault; it was greed and bad business management by authorities, but many Spaniards developed a bit of bad feeling against British retirees as a result.So when Brit retirees claim they’re superior to European expats who go to the UK to find jobs, because “we bring money into the country and buy houses,” and “Spain would still be selling oranges and riding donkeys if it wasn’t for us,” they quite miss the point that Spain didn’t want all these luxury villas in the first place, and that their mere existence meant many Spaniards couldn’t afford property, or took out huge mortgages - and then lost their homes when their jobs went down the pan with the financial crisis, because they were massively in negative equity.You don’t hear much now about graffiti in bad English on urbanisation walls telling Brits to ‘build on their own mountains’, or of UK pensioners being given a mouthful in the street for ‘causing all this overbuilding’ and ‘pricing us out of the market’, because not so many homes are being built now, and prices have dropped through the floor. (Indeed, Brits - or anyone - coming to Spain and buying some of the hundreds of thousands of empty homes would possibly be welcome now).Not all British retirees believe they’re the saviours of Spain by having ‘brought money into the country’ (ie, spending their pensions in restaurants and supermarkets) - some are too far the other way, which makes Spaniards laugh, incredulous. Eg, whenever the bullfighting issue comes up, plenty of Brits will say, “we’re guests in this country, it’s not up to us to criticise their culture.” A Spaniard will respond to that with, “you’re not a guest, you’re a taxpaying member of the community like the rest of us, and it’s not culture, it’s torture.” Many Brit migrants use that ‘guest’ argument as to why they won’t vote in local elections, because they feel it’s ‘not their place’. Spaniards would disagree here, because they believe it’s important to vote and to have a say in how your town is run.Generally, Spaniards are a welcoming lot when it comes to foreigners. I do read of incidents, or hear of them, about racism, and I’ve heard the odd xenophobic comment, mainly among older residents in rural communities, but these appear to be few. Actual racism or xenophobia is conspicuous by its absence. Of course, you’ll get asked ‘where you’re from’ because ‘your accent is foreign and you don’t look Spanish’ (and refusal to believe you if you say you’re a third-generation migrant of northern European grandparents), which would be TOTALLY unacceptable in the UK; but mostly, it’s just curiosity. They want to be able to regale you with tales of their weekend trip to London and their cousin who spent the summer studying English in Manchester. Whilst the UK was voting Brexit (among other reasons, of course) for fear of would-be refugees flooding into the country, Spain was protesting in the streets about how its government wasn’t doing enough to help those living in camps in Greece or fleeing Syria, etc, and calling for more asylum seekers to be brought to Spain. Our previous, right-wing government axed all bar emergency healthcare for ‘illegal’ immigrants aged 18 or over - a move UK society would probably welcome, but which here in Spain, brought forth a wave of protests about ‘inhumanity’ and ‘condemning the most vulnerable in society to death’, plus doctors exercising a consciencious objection and continuing to treat them, and in the end, only two out of 17 regions abiding by the rule (which was scrapped again by our new left-wing president in July. Now, healthcare is free and universal to anyone living here, with or without being a registered resident).Even after terrorist attacks, there’s very little anti-Muslim sentiment in Spain - in fact, our largest non-Spanish national group is Moroccan, owing to historical ties and geographical proximity - and, in fact, Muslims spoke out to the people of Barcelona, including the sister of one of the terrorists, after the August 2017 attacks, and were met with tears and warm applause. The viral picture of an iman sobbing in the arms of a local priest after the massacre is the absolute epitome of Spain’s attitude to different cultures or nationalities. They basically don’t think of us as being any different to them.This feeling of us all being the same and equal members of the community is largely, I think, why Spaniards have trouble coping with the fact that Brit retirees here often isolate themselves from society and won’t speak the language. Very few other national groups do likewise; Spaniards blame it on our colonial past.British schools in Spain are a different matter - a high number of pupils, sometimes even the majority, tend to be Spanish, because their parents want them to grow up bilingual (trilingual, in the Valencia region). And as a result, British kids who go to these schools become trilingual, too, because they talk in Spanish (and valenciano, here) in the playground.As has been said here before, the Brits who get bad press are the younger tourists who drink too much and cause problems, acting in anti-social ways. Unfortunately for anyone who’s injured or dies in an accidental fall from a hotel balcony, it’ll be assumed they were ‘balconing’ (jumping off the terrace into the pool as a drunken stunt) until proven innocent. Loudness, lewdness, nudity, sexual acts, vandalism, vomiting, urinating and even defecating in the street are some of the behaviours among drunken Brit tourists which upset locals (funnily enough). On a recent trip to Benidorm, I actually saw a guy walking around wearing nothing but a man-kini, which is completely unacceptable in Spanish society. And unwanted drunken groping or chatting-up, whilst seen as less of a problem among boozy British men, is actually illegal in Spain as well as totally not tolerated. The biggest critics of this behaviour tend to be discussion forum keyboard warriors in Madrid, who never even see a Brit of any age, but the truth is that this scandalous comportment tends to be limited to low-cost holiday hotspots like Magaluf and Benidorm. Young Brits living in Spain (as in, not yet retired) tend to be seen as rare, and they’re usually surprised to meet us, find out we work and that we actually speak Spanish, frequently as well as any native. Although in reality, only about half of all Brits in Spain are retired.Most Spaniards are concerned about us Brits - retired or working - with Brexit on the horizon, and worried we might find our rights curtailed or have to return to the UK. Local councils with a high Brit presence among the community have issued messages of support and said they’ll fight for us. Our new-ish government is already preparing for a no-deal Brexit and intends to enshrine our rights to live, work, be treated on the health service, and vote in local elections in law - which is far more than the UK government has done for us, its own citizens. They’re also offering support for those Brits who want to become Spanish nationals to avoid any hassle. As a sign of how welcoming Spain is to foreigners, the Spanish nationality process isn’t too onerous, either - the multiple-choice ‘culture and legal’ exam, with 25 questions of which you need to answer 15 correctly, isn’t too difficult if you study the material in advance; the language exam is only level A2, or a good GCSE standard (above beginners’, a good elementary or lower pre-intermediate) which is well within the reach of any pensioner with all the normal mental faculties for their age in place, even if they only went to Secondary Mod and left without any CSEs. This alone ought to be an incentive, but unfortunately, the ongoing refusal to even try to learn is forever going to be the biggest barrier to being totally accepted.Not even just for ‘getting by’ in everyday, difficult situations - without my Spanish, I couldn’t banter with shopkeepers, strike up on-the-hoof conversations with people at bus stops, in bars, etc…I’d feel isolated. Disabled, even. It’s like having your power of speech cut away from you, and I feel it even as a tourist if I’m in a country where I don’t speak a language they understand.But for as long as Spaniards continue to be overly accommodating and force themselves to communicate in a foreign language to Brits who should know better, at great effort to themselves and when it’s not their place to do so (doctors, police, etc, studied medicine, law, et al, not languages. They shouldn’t have to worry about communicating ‘in foreign’ unless they want to) then Brits will never have an incentive to pull their fingers out and learn.After all, many of us have. Very few Brit expats in Spain have been speaking Spanish from birth, but we can now, because we worked hard at it. There’s no easy or quick way, it involves repetition and dedication, but it’s as essential as signing on the padrón, getting a NIE number, registering with a doctor and getting a SIP card. Such a shame so many don’t see it that way.