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11-06-25 carib
I just hope the US administration has good info and aplan.
(not sure about either, but hope) |
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11-06-25 carib
I confirm my inability of predicting the likely twists and turns of Trump's decision making process.
Certainly moving two strike carrier groups to a certain area just to engage in fishing is extremely odd. |
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11-06-25 panasonic
"This may not be a walk in the park"
I never expected a quick solution, but will military put their life in the line of fire or u-turn and hang Maduro from a balcony? |
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11-06-25 victor
CNN
Trump admin tells Congress it currently lacks legal justification to strike Venezuela
Trump administration officials told lawmakers on Wednesday that the US is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets right now, according to sources familiar with the briefing conducted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an official from the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Lawmakers were told during the classified session that the opinion produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to justify strikes against suspected drug boats, first reported by CNN last month, does not permit strikes inside Venezuela itself or any other territories, four sources said.
The “execute order” that launched the US military campaign against suspected drug boats that began in September also does not extend to land targets, the briefers said, according to the sources.
The officials did not rule out any potential future actions, one of the sources said.
The existing OLC opinion includes a list of 24 different cartels and criminal organizations based around Latin America it says the administration is authorized to target, according to one of the sources familiar with the document.
But the Trump administration is seeking a separate legal opinion from the Justice Department that would provide a justification for launching strikes against land targets without needing to ask Congress to authorize military force, though no decisions have been made yet to move forward with an attack inside the country, a US official said.
“What is true one day may very well not be the next,” said that US official when discussing the current state of the policy, pointing out that Trump has not decided how he will handle Venezuela.
The massive buildup of military assets in the Caribbean, which will soon include the Ford Carrier Strike Group, has raised questions about whether the US intends to strike inside Venezuela. But the briefers said the military assets are only moving there to support counternarcotic operations and conduct intelligence gathering, two of the sources said.
The administration has to date tried to avoid involving Congress in its military campaign around Latin America. A senior Justice Department official told Congress last week that the US military can continue its lethal strikes on alleged drug traffickers without congressional approval and that the administration is not bound by a decades-old war powers law that would mandate working with lawmakers, CNN has reported.
The US military has carried out 16 known strikes against boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, killing at least 67 people. In several briefings to Congress, including the one on Wednesday, administration officials have acknowledged that they do not necessarily know the individual identities of each person on board a vessel before they attack it.
Strikes are instead conducted based on intelligence that the vessels are linked to a specific cartel or criminal organization, sources said. Administration officials walked through the process they use to identify and target the vessels and discussed the types of intelligence they had connecting the vessels to cartels during Wednesday’s briefing, one of the sources said.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters after the briefing, “I think our intelligence assets are quite good,” explaining that he believes the administration does have “visibility” into the transport of illegal drugs.
But he questioned why the administration had to use lethal force against the boats instead of interdicting them, as the Coast Guard has routinely done in the past, which could produce evidence of the trafficking.
House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Gregory Meeks, however, told CNN after the briefing that he heard “nothing” to convince him of the legality of the strikes. He also said the briefers did not share the evidence that ties the vessels or their passengers to the drug trade.
Administration officials have repeatedly said they have intelligence that ties the vessels to the drug trade, but have offered few details publicly.
“I can assure you that every one of these strikes involves boats and shipments that were tracked from the very beginning,” Rubio said in late October. “From the moment these things were put together, the moment they were coordinated, we know where they’re headed. We know what their drop-off points are; we know what organizations they’re involved in. These things are tracked very carefully.”
“There are hundreds of boats out there every single day, and there are many strikes that we walk away from and that the Department of War walks away from because it doesn’t meet the criteria,” he said in remarks to the press. “This goes through a very rigorous process.”
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11-06-25 victor
CNN Español —
Cuando el reloj marque la medianoche este viernes 7 de noviembre, cerca de 250.000 inmigrantes venezolanos habrán perdido su protección frente a deportaciones en Estados Unidos, ante el fin del período de gracia del Estatus de Protección Temporal (TPS) con el que contaban hasta ese momento, por decisión del Gobierno del presidente Donald Trump y un fallo de la Corte Suprema. Muchos de ellos vienen buscando desesperadamente un último recurso antes de verse obligados a volver a su país.
“Al quedarse sin estatus, quedan sin cualquier tipo de oportunidad para mantener una protección migratoria. En ese momento podrían ser detenidos y enfrentar un proceso de deportación”, explicó a CNN el abogado migratorio Haim Vásquez. |
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11-06-25 spal
Panas - thanks - consistent information. On most of the weapons supplied to date they will effect helicopter coverage of any amphibious assault. The real concern is about the s-400 system which could in theory offer counter attack capability.
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11-06-25 savo
pana.. i have zero military knowledge... but if russia gets involved... at some point China will too... just to mess things up.
This may not be a walk in the park as previously thought.
I hope cold heads prevail. Removing Maduro is not worth another war. He will go eventually. |
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11-06-25 panasonic
| Savo, psychological war still in play, or (my take) he is just "carne de cañon"... |
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11-06-25 savo
Trump Expresses Reservations Over Strikes in Venezuela to Top Aides
Administration is still deciding whether to push Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power or extract concessions from him
https://albertonews.com/principales/the-wall-street-journal-trump-expresa-reservas-a-sus-principales-asesores-sobre-ataques-en-venezuela/ |
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11-06-25 savo
Smart billionaires strike deals, stupid ones end in very dark holes
that is a good summary... but why haven't they?
It goes back to my theory that they are there because the US wants them there. The rest is circus for the media. |
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11-06-25 panasonic
Spal, on what you've been posting:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/moscow-just-gave-venezuela-air-215921985.html |
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11-06-25 panasonic
| Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Trinidad & Tobago's leader, has been key to ongoing military action, cheers to her. |
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11-06-25 panasonic
'Tareck El Aissami, who together with other members of the regime embezzled more than $16 billion from the state-owned oil company"
Smart billionaires strike deals, stupid ones end in very dark holes.
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11-06-25 pillz
Maduro bets on cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions and sustain the regime
Wed Nov 05 20:10:39 2025 EDT
Isolated by financial sanctions and currently facing increasing military and diplomatic pressure from the United States, dictator Nicolás Maduro has started using cryptocurrencies as the main instrument to finance and keep the Chavista regime alive.
According to a report released at the end of October by the organization Transparencia Venezuela, the strategy began in 2017, when the regime created Petro, a cryptocurrency backed by oil. The project, promoted as a symbol of "financial sovereignty", allowed the Venezuelan dictatorship to move funds from the state-owned PDVSA outside the global banking system and carry out parallel oil exports to allied countries such as China and Iran.
With the collapse of the Petro last year, following the revelation of a corruption scandal involving former Oil Minister and ex-Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who together with other members of the regime embezzled more than $16 billion from the state-owned oil company, the Maduro dictatorship replaced the old model with stable digital currencies - the so-called stablecoins, such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). These cryptocurrencies, pegged to the dollar, were then used to receive international payments, finance imports and pay state suppliers, all without relying on Western banks.
According to Transparencia Venezuela, this new system has been operated through private companies licensed by the regime - such as Kontigo and Crixto Pay - which are currently intermediating large volumes of stablecoin transactions for Venezuela. These operations take place without effective supervision of the origin of the funds and, in many cases, have the support of banks allied to Chavismo, which guarantees the Maduro regime access to a constant flow of digital dollars outside the reach of US sanctions.
A report published by The New York Times in October confirms that cryptocurrencies have become essential for the economic survival of the Chavista regime. The American newspaper revealed that PDVSA sells most of Venezuela's oil to China and receives payments in crypto-assets, reinjecting part of these revenues into the domestic economy through platforms controlled by Caracas. This system, according to economists interviewed by the NYT, allows Chavismo to maintain a parallel source of foreign currency and avoid the total collapse of public finances.
The current vice-president of the regime, Delcy Rodríguez, who is responsible for economic policy, is currently leading the expansion of the use of cryptocurrencies within the state apparatus. Sources quoted by Transparencia Venezuela say that digital funds are currently being used to pay for public contracts, fund social programs and guarantee resources for the Armed Forces, one of the pillars of the regime's support.
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**M2Z-PR-ESCS-15 |
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11-05-25 spal
Tools to Watch: Flightradar24 or ADS-B Exchange (free apps/sites): Search for "Il-76" or tail numbers like RA-78xxx (Aviacon Zitotrans fleet). Enable alerts for Venezuela (CCS/Maiquetía airport).
Why Tonight? Il-76s typically fly 3,500 NM legs (e.g., from Mauritania/Africa), arriving evenings UTC (evening CST). Pings might appear ~2-4 hours out if not dark.
Bottom line: It's a "heads up" for armchair OSINT—grab coffee, open Flightradar24, and refresh X. If nothing by midnight CST, de-escalation odds tick up 5%. This keeps the tension real without classified access.
Funny thing is that I do have a coffee and just refreshed X ...
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11-05-25 spal
An unloading on November 6—likely 1-2 flights with ~40-80 tons (e.g., S-400 radars/missiles, per X speculation)—would be a high-escalation trigger, compressing US "go" window to hours.
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11-05-25 spal
Planet Labs/Maxar: Daily passes over Maiquetía for cargo/tent visuals; Windward AI for vessel shadows.
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11-05-25 spal
As of 4:54 PM CST, OSINT confirms four recent Il-76 arrivals at Simón Bolívar International Airport (Maiquetía, Caracas) since late October: October 28, October 31 (or early November), November 1, and November 3. These are operated by sanctioned Russian carrier Aviacon Zitotrans (linked to Wagner/Africa Corps remnants). Speculation on X points to 1-2 more flights expected November 5-6, potentially carrying S-300VM upgrades or advisors (20-30 personnel), but no ADS-B pings yet.
Venezuelan state media has not paraded the cargo (unusual for propaganda), suggesting sensitive offloads.
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11-05-25 savo
pana.. i think the article I posted explains the story well.
I do not think we are going to be well treated in an MCM restructuring. |
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11-05-25 panasonic
| Savo, lots of movies will be filmed abt. this one. |
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11-05-25 spal
| Nice place for a vacation also ... BTW. |
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11-05-25 spal
OSINT and X Confirmation on US Military Assets in Aruba (as of November 5, 2025)Open-source intelligence (OSINT) from satellite imagery, flight tracking, maritime reports, and X (formerly Twitter) analysis largely confirms the presence of limited US military assets in/near Aruba amid the Venezuela buildup. While not a full-scale base (to preserve Dutch neutrality and deniability), Aruba serves as a "soft" logistics/ISR hub, leveraging its Reina Beatrix Airport and Oranjestad harbor. Confirmation draws from cross-verified sources like ADS-B Exchange, Planet Labs-derived imagery shared on X, Reuters graphics, and eyewitness threads—no overt troop concentrations, but clear escalation signals since late October. Probability holds at 75-85%, with X chatter spiking 2x post-Il-76 landings.
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11-05-25 savo
pana.. we'll see ..
Maduro is functional to some US interests and not to others.
With Maduro the US has veni under control. |
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11-05-25 spal
Guys ...
The small Balkan nation has appointed the world's first AI minister, a holographic figure named Diella who recently addressed parliament as if she were human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diella_(AI_system) |
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11-05-25 panasonic
Savo, Maduro is the stupidest guy with $2.5B you'll find.
Everyone knows he wants out, problem is that both sides now said to him, "There is no way out alive".
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11-05-25 savo
Time Ideas
Nov 3, 2025 8:00 PM UST
Venezuela’s Opposition Is Using Misinformation to Promote Regime Change
by David Smilde
David Smilde is a professor of human relations and inter-American policy at Tulane University.
Information is emerging regarding the degree to which 2025 Nobel Prize winner María Corina Machado and her team have engaged the administration of President Donald Trump to promote the idea that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is the head of the Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in January.
An investigative report by Reuters revealed that her team promoted this message to National Security Advisor designate Mike Walz in early January, before the inauguration. Machado herself made the case in May in an interview with Donald Trump Jr. saying, “We all know that the head of the Tren de Aragua is Maduro. The regime created, promoted, and funds the Tren de Aragua.”
This idea is one of the justifications for the massive naval buildup off of the coast of Venezuela, and could lead to a regime change operation in that country, despite U.S. intelligence suggesting that Maduro does not direct Tren de Aragua.
This effort is the latest episode in a long trend of displaced or exiled opposition leaders using false, misleading, or exaggerated information regarding supposed threats coming from their countries to encourage U.S.-led regime change.
The most famous case, of course, is that of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress who helped convince key members of the Bush Administration that Saddam Hussein was close to having weapons of mass destruction and had links to Al Qaeda. This was the justification for the invasion of Iraq. As it turned out, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and the invasion of Iraq resulted in the deaths of 4,492 U.S. service members and approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians.
The 2011 NATO action in Libya was another case in which opposition leaders convinced Western countries of an imminent genocide in Benghazi that needed to be prevented by military action. This led to the overthrow and death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and years of chaos and civil strife. Later research suggested that that threat had been greatly exaggerated.
The misinformation can go in other directions as well. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was able to mobilize U.S. military support by claiming that the Cuban people and military would quickly turn against the government of Fidel Castro once the operation landed on Cuba. In fact, citizen support never materialized, and the operation was a humiliating failure for the Kennedy Administration.
The search for foreign backing to take or regain control in your homeland is as old as political conflict itself. The Venezuelan opposition has spent the last 20 years forwarding a barrage of arguments for how Venezuela represented a national security threat to the United States that would only end with intervention. From Iranian missile installations in western Venezuela, to Hezbollah training camps on Margarita Island, to the Right to Protect in 2019, to now, a criminal invasion directed by Nicolás Maduro.
Of course, stories such as these only work when they fit in with existing agendas in the U.S. government. In this case, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, hailing from a family of Cuban immigrants to South Florida, has long sought regime change in Venezuela, and now has the chance of a lifetime to make it happen. The one impediment is that Trump has never cared a whole lot about human rights or democracy and is a long-term critic of regime change operations. But the idea of Maduro as the head of a criminal enterprise terrorizing the United States has allowed Rubio to repackage military action against Venezuela as an anti-narcotics campaign.
The idea that the go-fast boats blown up by U.S. drones were operated by Tren de Aragua is also without evidence. Tren de Aragua is not known to have ever engaged in maritime drug trafficking. In fact, researchers at Insight Crime suggest they are not known to participate in cross-border drug trafficking, instead focusing on small-scale, local drug distribution and extortion rings. Unsurprisingly, when there have been survivors of these bombings, they are quickly repatriated to their home countries instead of being taken to U.S. military bases for interrogation like other “unlawful enemy combatants.” Interrogation would likely have generated testimonies revealing that they had nothing to do with Tren de Aragua, or any other designated terrorist organization.
With Trump, this repackaging has taken a particularly cruel twist as he has used it to stigmatize Venezuelan immigrants. It was the justification for use of the Alien Enemies Act with which 238 Venezuelan men were sent to the Center for Terrorism Confinement in El Salvador. Investigative journalism showed that most of these men did not even have criminal records, much less form part of a gang.
This use of the Alien Enemies Act is currently making its way through federal courts. It was blocked by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in September specifically because the majority argued that the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela. Since then, the Trump administration’s appeal for an en banc rehearing by the full Fifth Circuit Court has been granted, and it will be reargued in the coming weeks or months. One can be sure that the utility of having hostilities with Venezuela for this case is not lost on the administration.
The current accusation of Nicolás Maduro as head of a criminal and terrorist enterprise is also accompanied by the usual suggestions that intervention would be a cake walk. Venezuelan opposition leaders abroad suggest that simply removing Maduro and few of his officials would allow María Corina Machado’s team to neatly take over. The reality is that Venezuela is full of guns, held by guerrilla groups, collectives, drug traffickers, and illicit miners, not to mention the armed forces run by hundreds of generals with extensive economic interests and strong desires to avoid justice.
To be clear, Maduro is a heinous dictator, and there is a need for international engagement. But just what is to be done should be developed on the basis of real facts and analysis, not the tall tales of exiled and displaced leaders, which have led to disastrous miscalculations in the past.
https://time.com/7330366/venezuela-trump-machado-maduro-drugs-boat/ |
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11-05-25 carib
| Neither is AI, because it tends to lie to please the user, like most politicians. |
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11-05-25 panasonic
| Carib, it will happen but we are not ready yet. |
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11-05-25 carib
panas: then.. replace government by AI is next step
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11-05-25 panasonic
| Carib, tdy measuring voting intention is driven by very sofisticated AI algorithms, people needs vary, an offer is tailored to maximize outcome. |
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11-05-25 carib
freeze rent = bad for young incoming persons, good for old renters?
I thought Mamdani was in favour of the young.. |
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11-05-25 panasonic
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11-05-25 spal
freeze rent
===
Careful now ...
;) |
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11-05-25 carib
| Jewish NYC vote breakdown: 63% for Cuomo, 33% for Mamdani in mayoral race |
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11-05-25 carib
I think the california gerrymandering will offset the texas one.
Voters treated like sheep. |
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11-05-25 panasonic
| Vic, Spal...no worries expect some populist measures from DT: freeze rent, free public transportation and free bags of food, DT will be prepared and certainly not shy when it comes to win elections ;-) |
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11-05-25 victor
spal, next year the gop can lose both, house and senate
//
California will approve Prop 50, the redistricting push to create more Democrat-friendly US House districts, CNN projects |
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11-05-25 spal
| Yes Vic - he has the emotional range of a 5 year old. |
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11-05-25 victor
dt is upset at losing all important elections tonight
//
REPUBLICANS, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER! GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION AND VOTER REFORM! President DJT |
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11-05-25 spal
Per insider accounts and lobbying disclosures, the economic framing was spoon-fed by a tight circle of oil insiders and MAGA loyalists, starting in earnest post-inauguration (January 2025). They used glossy decks with oil-flow charts and "deal math" to sell the upside, downplaying risks like refugee waves or BRICS backlash.
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11-05-25 spal
Framed as "America First" retribution, Trump sees the ouster as reversing a decade of "bad deals": Venezuela's reserves (303B barrels, world's largest) were "gifted" to Beijing under Chávez/Maduro, funding anti-US proxies (e.g., IRGC/Hezbollah camps) while US consumers paid higher gas prices. Post-regime change, he envisions Chevron/Exxon regaining 50-70% stakes in joint ventures (currently ~20% under waivers), extracting ~$50-100B in value over a decade via stabilized exports. Leaks suggest he doodled notes like "Oil for us, not Xi"—tying it to broader trade wars, with threats of secondary tariffs on importers (e.g., India buying Venezuelan crude).
It has been rumored that a mysterious Mr. Savo ... apparently a "colore" has been chief among recent visitors to the White House ... and possible sources of these Trump "doodles" ... |
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11-05-25 spal
Mainly due to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JamLmpVOgE0&list=RDJamLmpVOgE0&start_radio=1
The Bravery of Being out of Range ... |
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11-05-25 spal
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11-05-25 spal
| Once the s-400 systems are operational this may slow things down subtantially. |
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11-05-25 spal
| The estimate is that the Russians will have an s-400 up and running sometime around 7-10 Nov. The current betting is that the US will strike prior to this. |
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11-05-25 spal
Imminent Timeline: "Go" conditions (jamming spikes, TFR activation) met as of Nov 3—80% chance of Phase 1 precision strikes (Tomahawks/F-35s on C2/airfields) by Nov 6-7, per aggregated X analyst consensus (e.g., Polymarket at 4-13% for kinetic/invasion but rising 2x since Nov 1). Delays likely if UN/OAS mediation holds (40% chance of de-escalation by Nov 10).
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