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The underlying problems are energy-related
A few years ago, I analyzed the growth of world energy consumption, breaking it down into (a) the growth in energy consumption needed to support the growth in world population, and (b) the growth in energy consumption available to support higher standards of living. This analysis covered the period 1820 to 2020. I found that periods of low growth tended to coincide with wars, depressions, and collapses. This is not surprising in a world economy governed by the laws of physics. Every part of the economy requires adequate energy of appropriate kinds.
In this post, I analyze data for 5-year periods, ending in 2024, to obtain an updated view of recent energy consumption and population trends. My conclusion is that total energy consumption growth in recent years has not been sufficient to forestall major problems. A more detailed analysis reveals that growth in certain vital resources (the diesel+jet fuel part of oil supply, and critical minerals related to electricity production and usage) is particularly problematic.
These findings indicate that the economy is already beginning to hit energy limits. Because of energy-related shortages that are already being encountered, national economies are beginning to act like the players in a game of musical chairs, with one too few chairs. Leaders have taken to building up armies, cutting off exports of critical minerals, imposing tariffs, and bombing other countries, even though these actions might not make sense to peace-loving citizens.
[1] Figure 2 is a stacked bar chart showing similar indications to Figure 1.
The total of the red and blue segments is the average annual increase in world energy consumption over a particular 10-year period. The blue amounts (usually at the bottom) are those necessary to provide services at the same level as in the past, given the population increase. The red amounts (usually at the top) are determined by subtraction. Large red caps are good, while red caps below the zero line are very bad. They indicate that the per-capita energy supply is declining.
[2] The largest increases in Figure 2 correspond to favorable economic times.
The vertical text in Figure 1 provides examples of how low points in energy consumption have proven to be very bad. In this section, I show that the opposite is also true: High points tend to correspond to very good times economically.
One peak in Figures 1 and 2 coincides with the 1901 to 1910 period. This period corresponds to early electrification and advances in the mechanization of agriculture. It was before 1913 when the United Kingdom hit peak coal, limiting the amount of coal that could be profitably extracted. Germany hit peak hard coal shortly before World War II. After peak coal was reached, less coal was available per capita. Leaders felt the pressure of “not enough coal to go around” and opted for war.
In Figures 1 and 2, rapid energy growth occurred after World War II, during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The lower peak in the 2001-2010 period coincided with much greater use of coal after China was added to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 2001. High-wage countries started transferring their industry to China because costs would be lower in two ways: Wage costs were lower, and coal was an inexpensive fuel, reducing energy costs. Furthermore, by transferring industry, including manufacturing and mining, to China, high-wage countries could also lower their own CO2 emissions, as required by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
We would expect the patterns we are seeing in Figures 1 and 2 if the world economy is governed by the laws of physics. The availability of plenty of inexpensive energy, of kinds that match built infrastructure, is what is needed to allow the world economy to grow.
[3] Figure 3 shows more recent world energy data organized by 5-year periods. It shows how small the “red caps” of the types leading to favorable economic outcomes have been in the last decade.
The latest two 5-year periods comprise the years 2015 to 2024. The short red caps on these two 5-year periods mean that the economy is already being squeezed in the direction of not-enough-to go-around.
[4] Viewed on this same basis, diesel and jet fuel supplies are being squeezed even more than the overall supply of energy products.
Diesel and jet fuel are somewhat similar in composition. They are grouped together in some energy reports as “middle distillates.” They are relatively heavy oil products that come out of oil refineries. If there is a shortage of one, there likely is a shortage of the other as well.
Diesel and jet fuel are of concern because, since 2015, there has been an actual shrinkage in the amount of these fuels available relative to population. In fact, every five-year period since the 2000 to 2004 period has shown less growth in diesel and jet fuel than in the overall world energy supply. (Compare Figures 3 and 4.)
The low growth of diesel+jet fuel is particularly concerning because these fuels are essential for international transportation. With too little of these oil types, trade across the Atlantic and Pacific needs to shrink back. The physics of the situation makes tariffs look like an attractive solution for reducing trade.
Another concern is that diesel is essential for food production and transportation. Even if some other types of energy are available in plentiful supply, we cannot get along without food. While wind and solar are popular energy types today, they are not very useful for either international transport or for operating modern agricultural equipment.
[5] The underlying problem is that populations tend to outgrow their resource bases, including energy supplies.
The issue of the world not being able to support endlessly rising human population is an issue that no politician, auto maker, or economist wants to mention. The standard work-around is to show energy supplies without using an adjustment to a per-capita basis. This tends to make the energy situation look much better than it really is. Figure 6 is an example of such a chart.
Figure 6 emphasizes how modest the recent add-ons to the fossil fuel supply really are. These add-ons are made possible by fossil fuels; they would tend to disappear if fossil fuels were to disappear. Nuclear, which is the largest of the add-ons, requires both uranium and fossil fuels. The category “Wind+Solar” is the tiny green stripe at the top of Figure 6. In 2024, Wind+Solar amounted to 2.8% of world energy supply.
[6] It is easy to make electricity look like a growth area that can continue its pattern forever.
Figure 7 is a world electricity chart that, like Figure 6, is not on a per-capita basis.
There are a few details that are easy to miss:
(a) Current electricity production is quite small compared to the total energy supply. As counted by the Energy Institute, electricity amounts to only about 20% of total energy, varying by year and by part of the world. It is already incorporated in Figure 6.
(b) Almost all the non-fossil fuel part of the energy supply (“Add-Ons”) is electricity. In Figure 6, the only type of non-fossil energy shown that is not electricity is biofuels. These are mostly ethanol and biodiesel.
(c) Another detail that is easy to miss is the fact that the growth in the world’s electricity supply, as shown in Figure 7, has been almost exclusively outside the Advanced Economies–that is, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Advanced Economies group includes the US, most of Europe, Japan, Australia, and several other countries.
Figure 8 shows the growth in electricity generation separately for the Advanced Economies and the Other Economies. The chart shows that generation of electricity by the Advanced Economies grew until 2007 but flattened after that date. Electricity generation by the Other Economies has grown the entire time since 1985. The rate of electricity production growth of Other Economies became noticeably more rapid after China joined the WTO in 2001.
Also, population growth since 1985 has disproportionately taken place in Other Economies, as contrasted with Advanced Economies.
[7] In the Advanced Economies, electricity production has recently been falling on a per capita basis, making a shift to greater electrification seem difficult.
A major issue is that the Advanced Economies are already seeing their electricity supplies per capita declining as shown on Figure 10 below. This is true for all five of the selected economies. Some of the lower consumption is due to efficiency improvements, but some is the result of the offshoring of jobs and industries to low-wage countries.
In comparison, electricity production per capita of other economies, with typically lower wages than Advanced Economies and often accompanied by more rapid population growth, has tended to rise, as shown on Figure 11.
The four “Other Economies” are less similar to each other than the five Advanced Economies. But what is striking is that they all have shown growth in per-capita electricity production since 1999. In 2024, Saudi Arabia’s electricity production had risen to about the per-capita level of the US’s electricity production. By 2024, China’s per-capita electricity production had surpassed that of both the EU and the UK. Russia was part of the Soviet Union before the latter collapsed in 1991. Once Russia’s economy had started recovering from the collapse, about 1999, its per-capita electricity production also began to rise.
[8] Other issues are also making a continued shift to electrification appear difficult, particularly for the Advanced Economies.
Trying to work around using fossil fuels leads to the need for more specialized minerals to produce high tech electrical goods and electricity transmission. The problem faced by Advanced Economies is that they produce practically none of these minerals; they must import them. The US has a long list of minerals it considers critical.
Some of these minerals aren’t rare in the earth’s crust. Part of the problem is the lack of industrial capacity in Advanced Economies today, as industry has been moved overseas to reduce costs and local CO2 emissions. For example, the US used to be a major producer of aluminum, but this production has dwindled; other countries, including China, can produce aluminum at lower cost.
Another issue is that China produces the majority of quite a few of these minerals. The US, and probably the other Advanced Economies, had planned to buy what they needed on the world market. Now, production is not keeping up with the amount the world could easily use. In 2025, China announced export restrictions on some minerals, including gallium, germanium and antimony. It has become clear that if Advanced Economies want to have adequate supplies of high-demand minerals (including silver, copper, platinum, rare earth minerals, and uranium, among others), they need to start producing them themselves.
Diesel is used in extracting many of these minerals. If diesel is in short supply, that adds another layer of problems. All these issues may lie behind President Trump’s interest in Greenland.
[9] We don’t hear about these issues partly because academic researchers live in ivory towers, and partly because politicians don’t dare explain the issues to voters.
Part of the problem is that economists don’t understand how tightly the various parts of the world economy are interconnected through the laws of physics. Economists tend to believe that if there is a shortage, prices will rise, and these higher prices will solve nearly all problems. This is not necessarily the case. Buyers cannot purchase more than they can afford. Prices may spike temporarily and then fall back. Production of fossil fuels or minerals may end because prices do not rise high enough, for long enough, for producers to depend upon the higher prices for the long term.
In the case of a shortage, most people assume that the only change the economy will make is in prices. However, the economy is tightly interconnected. It can move production to a different part of the world, where wages and energy costs are lower. An indirect result, in the country losing jobs, may be more wage and wealth disparity. The US seems to be experiencing this issue now, with fewer young people being able to find a job that pays well.
Needless to say, politicians aren’t willing to admit, “We have difficulties for which we can see no solution.” Even leaders of universities are reluctant to suggest that there might be major problems ahead. They don’t want to frighten students or their parents. University officials want all problems to be ones their students can work on, with the hope of solving them in the next few years.
[10] What is happening now is similar to the outcome of a game of musical chairs, when there is one fewer chair than the number of players.
In the game of musical chairs, players walk around a group of chairs until the music stops. At the end of each round, one chair is removed, leaving one fewer chair than the number of players. In the next round, the remaining players all scramble for the chairs available, which often leads to small fights over who gets a chair. This not-enough-to-go-around problem explains the poor relations we see today among countries and political parties. It is also the underlying reason for the interest in imposing tariffs and in bombing other countries.
Financial markets tend to perform well during periods of economic growth. However, if certain kinds of essential resources are in short supply, this will tend to hold back growth. Debt defaults and falling stock markets could result. For these reasons, problems in financial markets may be ahead.
Major governmental changes may be ahead. Representative governments require more energy than simpler types of organizations, such as dictatorships. Furthermore, citizens do not like disorder; they may want to overthrow leaders who seem to allow too much disorder. They may vote them out of office or even try to assassinate them. The problem of resource inadequacy is structural, however. Getting rid of a particular leader doesn’t necessarily help the situation.
Everywhere in the world, at least part of today’s problem is that there are not enough jobs available that pay well. Economists have told us to expect high prices if there are shortages. In a way, not having enough jobs that pay well is the opposite problem. But from a physics standpoint, the result is the same. Only a few people can afford many of the goods that are available. The economists’ misinterpretation of what is going wrong further confuses people’s understanding of our current situation.
Mainstream media needs to cater to advertisers. Because of this issue, we cannot expect them to tell us what is happening. That task seems to fall to bloggers, like me. I try to write an article approximately every month. I hope that the graphs and other figures I have presented in this article will help readers understand why we are currently seeing more types of disruptions, such as tariffs and bombings.
perhaps many haven’t seen this, Tim Watkins with a warning:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2026/03/21/a-great-reset-of-sorts/
“The fact is that even the worse oil shocks of the past – the 1973 oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution – pale in comparison to the loss of oil and gas that Europe is about to experience… Meanwhile, nobody will be looking seriously about how we simplify an oil-based economy which is going to have to get by with a lot less oil… a Great Reset indeed!”
Yeah, it’s a case of humans being stupid. The world requires a lot more oil to function than it did in 1973 and I remember that well. Although living in NYC, there was always mass transit.
We are already seeing the fallout from the Trumpenyahu blunders. It will be interesting to see what it will look like in another 3-4 weeks. That’s the problem with Neocons. They think linerally and never consider the what if’s. Sen Lady Graham wants to see Trump create Iwo Jima 2.0
We are being governed by clowns.
Shell CEO Wael Sawan said that Europe will soon begin to experience the same kind of disruption to fuel supplies that Asia has faced due to the war in Iran in recent weeks
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-24/shell-boss-warns-europe-is-next-after-asia-suffers-fuel-squeeze?taid=69c2ba32f8e548000120c527&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&leadSource=reddit_wall
I can believe that Europe will soon see the kind of disruption that Asia is already encountering.
Tim’s article makes good points:
Don’t count on rationing:
Nor is official state rationing likely to save us for two key reasons. First, European governments do not really do anything these days. Most of our critical infrastructure and life support systems are in private hands which may not act in accordance with government emergency plans. Second, the complexity of the European economies works against planning because a breakdown anywhere in the system can rapidly spiral into a cascading collapse. To illustrate this, consider the almost nostalgic events in the UK in the second week of September 2000.
A breakdown of any part of the system threatens a complex system:
You don’t have to take out an entire organisation to make it fail, you only need to deprive it of one key component.
His conclusion: We won’t figure out how to adjust by ourselves.
The fact is that even the worse oil shocks of the past – the 1973 oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution – pale in comparison to the loss of oil and gas that Europe is about to experience. And it is doubtful that our elders and betters in Versailles-on-Thames have the wit to think beyond next week. Not least because on one side of them, the people with nose rings and blue hair will be telling them to embrace this leap along the road to net zero, while on the other side, the people with smart suits and 1980s ideology will be urging them to drill for oil and gas which doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, nobody will be looking seriously about how we simplify an oil-based economy which is going to have to get by with a lot less oil… a Great Reset indeed!
This also fits well into Tim ‘s viewpoint .
The world is not a Hydra but a chain
A few thoughts on the theory and the theory Anti fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb — why the world is not anti fragile (and never was) and does not, in fact, benefit from disorder
We have come to believe that our world grows stronger from shocks. That crises make us smarter, systems more resilient, economies more robust. It is an attractive idea. Almost comforting.
It stems from the work of Taleb, who argues that some systems do not merely withstand stress, but actually improve because of it. The Hydra that grows two heads when one is cut off. The immune system that strengthens through infection. The entrepreneur who learns from failure.
All true.But a dangerous misunderstanding slips in when we apply this principle to the world as a whole. Because the world is not a Hydra.
Antifragility only works under strict conditions. Shocks must remain local. Damage must be contained. Recovery must be fast and inexpensive. And above all: there must be a stable ground on which experimentation can take place.That is exactly where it breaks.
Our modern economy is built on the opposite. Not local failures, but global dependencies. Not buffers, but efficiency. Not rapid recovery cycles, but slow, capital-intensive infrastructures. A refinery learns nothing from shutdown. A container chain does not grow stronger from interruption. A farming system does not recover from a fertilizer shortage — it produces less.
What emerges here is not antifragility, but cumulative fragility. Shocks reinforce one another.
The confusion arises because we mix up micro and macro. On a small scale, antifragility often works well. Muscles grow through stress. Startups thrive in uncertainty. Individuals adapt. But at the system level, a different logic applies. The larger and more complex the structure, the harder it becomes to isolate damage.
What is a learning process for the individual becomes a chain reaction for the system.
And chain reactions learn nothing.There is more. Antifragility presupposes a surplus — a space in which errors can be absorbed. But that space has been systematically optimized away in the modern world. Inventories are minimal. Timelines are tight. Energy and material flows are maximized.
Efficiency is not a strength here. It is a form of vulnerability. The moment the flow stutters, there is no margin left.
What follows is a strange paradox. We have built a world that has become more adaptive on a small scale, but more brittle on a large one. Local flexibility, global rigidity. Individual resilience, systemic dependence. We think we are an organism. But we function as a machine.
And machines have a simple property. They do not improve from damage.That is the real lesson of our time.
Not that we should become antifragile, but that we must recognize where antifragility ends. That not everything can learn. That not every system recovers. And that some structures, however impressive, ultimately depend on one condition:that they keep running. Because the moment that is no longer self-evident, the world reveals itself not as a Hydra, but as a chain.
And chains break.
Zip at C§E
It is sad. It would be nice if every system could recover, but it can’t.
Waste industry warns that trash collection may be paused due to the fuel crisis
https://x.com/r3tarddownunder/status/2036603568363544827
Yuck..
Also, we might not bother sending food either. Who needs that garbage?
Oil and gas supply chain is about to snap, warns energy economist Peter Tertzakian
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/oil-gas-supply-chain-about-to-snap-peter-tertzakian
This is in Australia.
Gail, there has been a lot of market manipulation by trump and other actors to suppress the price of oil. Do you think their efforts make any difference? And do you think it’ll make things worse in the medium term, that they are artificially keeping the price lower?
I bought all the fertilized I need as soon as the war started.
Around me, everyone is driving as normal (rural Pacific Northwest USA). They complain bitterly about gas prices and gnash their teeth, but are still booking flights and holidays.
I believe that creation is an ongoing process. Somehow, our self-organizing system figures out events that work together in a way that we cannot model or comprehend.
Somehow, the self-organizing system will make use of whatever market manipulations trump and other actors happen to produce. No matter how terrible actions may appear to us, somehow the system will make use of them.
I am not sure we can fix the system or break the system, even though we think we can do both of these things.
Beekeepers in New Zealand are now being ordered to burn their healthy bees.
https://x.com/ValerieAnne1970/status/2036503313273987575
This seems to have been going on for a long time. There are a lot of articles from 2024. This is one of them:
https://www.apiaristsadvocate.com/post/fire-fury-and-a-whole-lot-of-hot-air
It’s a New Zealand beekeeper’s worst nightmare – burning diseased hives or beekeeping equipment on a large scale. On May 14 Springbank Honey owner Steven Brown went public with emotional pleas on social media for help in fighting what he deemed an unlawful order to destroy “10,000 boxes” of beekeeping equipment which burned behind him. Now he is threatening legal action and vowing to continue his fight for compensation, while the Agency who ordered the destruction say compliant beekeepers have nothing to fear, and destruction of equipment on such a scale is lawful and only a last resort in their ongoing effort to help beekeepers eliminate the disease.
This is another 2024 article. Burning seems to be used to stop American Foul Brood disease:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/springbank-honey-beekeeper-furious-over-destruction-of-2m-crop-wants-biosecurity-act-changed/WEPLDCPBBVFHHBHICZDDEMIUR4/
Brown said the new Government needed to “shut down immediately” the outdated pest management plan and the agency.
“The plan was supposed to reduce AFB by 5 per cent per year. They haven’t complied with that. It’s gone rampant throughout New Zealand,” he said.
“I want the Biosecurity Act changed, but the one we’re operating under, the pest management plan – the [Biosecurity] Minister needs to stop that immediately.” . .
Long said fewer than 8 per cent of the country’s 8000 beekeepers were currently affected [in 2024] – and there were 2900 reports of AFB made in the past year to May, down 15 per cent on the 3449 reports the year before.
I didn’t see many 2026 articles related to this.
another bs oscar nomination it seems
Why would they do this because honey production uses a lot of energy ,energy that shortly will not be available all good things come to an end as OFWder’s have been saying for many years my entire family is still living in delusistani land but I can see cracks appearing in their thought processes as whispers of energy saving start growing in the conventional media . Yes it feels good the truth
uh oh!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/great-toilet-paper-panic-back-192951341.html
“I am the mob” posted a similar link before.
I responded:
I am sure that toilet paper production uses oil for harvesting the wood, and electricity (based on natural gas) for processing the toilet paper. All processes tend to hit bottlenecks when oil and natural gas are not available. These folks are not crazy.
dark chocolate is going to go next.
I wouldn’t want to have to choose one and not the other.
The CEO of Shell has warned that Europe faces energy shortages as early as next month. He is saying that fuel is not just going to get pricey, but that it will not be available to meet the usual demand. He adds that the energy situation will be ‘critical’ for national security.
Jet fuel is already hit, diesel will be next, and then petrol by the summer. Germany’s Economy Minister is also saying that energy supply shortages are coming in late April/ May. So we are looking at both energy shortages and sky high prices likely for a prolonged period.
Thanks a lot, Donald!
“already affected supplies of jet fuel, with diesel set to be next, followed by gasoline as summer driving season gets underway”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ceraweek-energy-security-key-national-security-shell-ceo-says-2026-03-24/
> Energy shortages in Europe could hit by next month, warns Shell CEO
HOUSTON, March 24 (Reuters) – Energy shortages could hit Europe by next month, Shell CEO Wael Sawan said on Tuesday, adding that securing adequate energy supply was critical to national security.
Countries cannot have national security without energy security, Sawan said, adding that Shell was trying to work with governments to help them address the energy crisis, including with storage and purchasing.
The Middle East conflict, now in its fourth week, has already affected supplies of jet fuel, with diesel set to be next, followed by gasoline as summer driving season gets underway in the Northern Hemisphere, Sawan said.
The war has damaged major energy facilities and nearly halted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – which handles about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
“South Asia was first to get that brunt. That’s moved to Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and then more so into Europe as we get into April,” he said while speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas.
Germany’s Economy Minister Katherina Reiche also warned that energy supply scarcity could occur in late April or May if the conflict continues.
This seems quite possible.
and what is Mirror going to do to try to prepare?
IRAN JUST SENT A MESSAGE THE U.S. CAN’T IGNORE! | Larry C. Johnson (16:50)
2,184 views Mar 24, 2026
Recent developments are raising serious concerns about a potential direct conflict between the United States and Iran.
According to reports, a U.S. F-35 fighter jet narrowly avoided being hit by a heat-seeking missile. The pilot deployed flares as countermeasures, causing the missile to explode nearby. Although the aircraft suffered shrapnel damage, it managed to return safely to base.
At the same time, reports emerged that Iran may have launched missiles toward the Diego Garcia region, home to a key U.S. military base. While there is no full confirmation, analysts suggest this could have been a calculated move to test U.S. response and signal long-range strike capability.
Meanwhile, questions are growing around the USS Gerald Ford after reports of a fire lasting up to 30 hours. The unusual duration has sparked speculation about possible hidden damage, though no official evidence has confirmed external attack involvement.
Inside the United States, concerns are also rising over increasing politicization within intelligence agencies, potentially affecting threat assessments and decision-making at the highest level.
Most critically, signs are pointing toward a possible escalation, including discussions of deploying U.S. ground forces into Iran. If confirmed, this would mark a major turning point and could push the region toward a broader conflict.
As tensions continue to rise, the key question remains: how far can both sides go before the situation spirals into full-scale war?
Breaking Points posted a video today and their guest said he believes that Usrael will try and convince Trump to attack Iran’s oil infrastructure and if he doesn’t Israel will have no choice but to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
Israel has always been able to attack Iran’s power plants and other energy infrastructure with conventional missiles.
why haven’t they?
I think part of the problem is that the US and Israel are running out of missiles. They also need more money allocated by congress. It is not clear that this will happen. And building more munitions requires minerals that China is not willing to sell to us, partly because the minerals are in short supply. So, it is difficult to make more munitions.
When Israel runs out of conventional munitions, there is the temptation to use nuclear weapons. But Iran has the ability to make nuclear weapons, too. Iran is likely to shoot back. (perhaps with a week or two lag, to finish bomb production.) Iran is a big country. One nuclear bomb won’t do much. One speaker claimed that it would take a dozen nuclear bombs, in carefully planned placement, to succeed against Iran.
Iran is a large mountainous nation, with a diverse and spread out infrastructure. The squat on the other hand could have all its power, water and refining capabilities wiped out with half a dozen dancing missiles.
If any of the latest stories were true, the squat would, very quickly, become uninhabitable.
On HTR, there is a story that Iraq leadership has joined the war… with Iran. If true, sides are being picked. I think Iran has played this to the point where Israel will take everything down.
If you can’t beat them, join them. In this case, “them” is Iran.
The young soldiers today are part of the video game generation. There is not a huge difference between playing video games and the live action they see.
This is downright strange:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/two-republicans-currently-lead-california-governors-race-and-could-lock-out-dems-general
Two Republicans currently lead in the California governor’s race according to recent polls, making a Democrat lockout in the November general election a distinct possibility.
California’s top-two primary system allows the two highest vote-getters to advance, regardless of party, and Republicans Steve Hilton and Sheriff Chad Bianco have emerged as the top contenders in the race. Unless one of the Democrat candidates break out, the two Republicans could face each other in the final runoff in November.
Hilton, 56, is a conservative commentator who formerly served as a political advisor in Great Britain. Bianco, 58, is a “law and order” sheriff and coroner of Riverside County.
Polls have consistently showed the two Republicans leading the pack.
That to me is NO surprise if a Republican governor gets elected in California. Gavin Newsom has damaged the State of California with his leniency on crime, high taxation and his woeful handling of the California fires a few years ago.
The wealthy are leaving the State in droves to avoid the California “wealth tax” and so are the large corporations who are leaving places like Texas. He has left the State in dire financial straits.
Norm, this one is for you Buddy..
He is 80 years old, lives alone in an adobe house built in 1920, draws water from a well, cooks with firewood, and his daily routine leaves thousands of people speechless
By Kevin Montien Published On: March 23, 2026 at 3:00 PM
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/he-is-80-years-old-lives-alone-in-an-adobe-house-built-in-1920-draws-water-from-a-well-cooks-with-firewood-and-his-daily-routine-leaves-thousands-of-people-speechless/29755/
Francisco Matias is not just an internet curiosity. In rural Hidrolândia in Brazil’s Northeast, the 80-year-old known as Seu Chiquinho lives alone in the 106-year-old clay house his father built in 1920. He brings in well water, stores it in clay containers, cooks on a wood stove, and still spends part of the morning tending the land.
What does that kind of life tell us in an age obsessed with smart homes and instant everything? Quite a lot, actually.
Seu Chiquinho’s routine is straightforward, but not light. He fetches water from a nearby well every week, transports it in drums, and stores it in clay pots inside the house. The wood stove is still his kitchen. After breakfast, he spends two to three hours clearing brush, fixing fences, and preparing small plots near the Rio Feitos
Sounds right up your alley, bruh
This is what we should be teaching our children is a sustainable lifestyle. It works in northeastern Brazil. I am not sure about elsewhere, however.
Seemingly it’s ~easier in warmer climates (own set of !negatives).
But lets recall from praxis in northern populations and their hurdles – some of the workarounds for illustration:
-> heavy snow fall (without motors):
you get out from cottage via your window or roof hatch instead normal doorway; and wooden snowshoes for errands outside
-> sudden seasonal dry period (w. springs/ well no yield) :
you have got water tank buried in the cellar or in front of house – that existed even pre-concrete times; stone perimeter-walls with some water tight ~adobe like surface plaster, ceramics, or various lather-wood buckets as per native tribes; you economize and wait out for water replenishing again etc.
..
.
My firewood for next season was delivered a few days ago, here in northern Vermont. He’ll be 80 years old this May, said most of the two cords he split by hand, and that he’s got a ways to go, his father was doing this until he was 89.
Resource depletion is changing warfare. Gone are the days of B52 carpet bombing and fire bombing. The players do not have the resources to do so.
Technology now means precision. Precision means that anything else is a war crime. Not that anything like that matters to the psychopaths who ostensibly seem to be driving things.
Dropping old bombs with big slow aircraft is probably very risky.
But even fast aircraft can be taken down by drones when they are sitting unprotected in fields. This is also true of unprotected radar. It is easy to think that fast and precise are sufficient.
It seems to be possible for even a poor country to purchase fast and precise missiles. They can do an amazing amount of damage to our costly equipment.
Traders placed $580 million in oil bets ahead of Donald Trump’s social media post on Iran talks. Well-timed bets took place based on what looks like insider information.
War seems to be waged for the few benefitting from insider information.
I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
Trump Bibi attack!
This looks like a tag team operation. Trump says one thing. Israel does the opposite. Needless to say, Iran retaliates.
Island nations will go first . Tainter, Tainter, Tainter .
Philippines declares energy emergency . Heck not financial not disaster not climate but energy .
https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/philippine-president-declares-state-emergency-energy-supply/
Evenings, and then nights around the open fire pits, the elders of the tribe with their frail hands up pointing towards the starry night go through incoherent litany declamations :
” .. ELM ! , Tainter ! , Gail ! , Surplus energy people ! , .. “
Poor Fast Eddy…he just has poor planning….maybe China would be better for him…after all the has ties with Hong Kong..
China is building a massive 83-mile canal to transport goods directly from the interior to the sea, and the project’s scale explains why half the world is watching it closely
Image Autor
By ECONEWS
Published On: March 24, 2026 at 3:42 AM
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/china-is-building-a-massive-83-mile-canal-to-transport-goods-directly-from-the-interior-to-the-sea-and-the-projects-scale-explains-why-half-the-world-is-watching-it-closely/29820/#google_vignette
China is deep into building the Pinglu Canal, an 83-mile shipping route meant to connect inland rivers in the southwest to international sea lanes. The goal is simple to say and hard to build: let big cargo vessels move from the interior to the coast without taking a long detour.
Canals worked in the “good old days.” Back in 2011, when my husband and I first visited China, we saw a huge amount of goods being transported down the Yangtze River.
rivers are not canals
and you can’t have a canal to every town an village…
this is why contaner ports are so succesful—containers are offloaded from boats onto trucks—then delivered where needed…usually in sub-loads..
Good point.
I bet if we all got stoned around the fire we’d be like, “ocean routes, rivers, roads, canals: it’s all just a canal network, maaan, and we’re all just narrowboating with steel horses. The more things change the more they stay the same. Natural Law, brah.” Gail is right of course that ultimately all civilizations are river valley civilizations. Most major ports to this day are still located at the mouths of major rivers.
Norman, I’m sure you are aware of the vast network of canals that we built(and for the last decade or two have been slowly restoring).
Remember, Birmingham used to be known as the Venice of the North and not because of its weather, or its (lack of)proximity to the coast.
When the trucks stop, you might be quite glad that some of us have payed for that(if you could only find a suitable barge). Before you say it, yes you will still be here, I have faith in your longevity and no, it won’t be the end, just because diesel is scarce.
oh i know—-in 1830 the uk had 4000 miles of canal. (there was one at the bottom of my garden)
but over time they were almost all abandoned,– yes some have been restored, but only for the liesure market.
bear in mind, that you have to get goods onto the canal—then offload them at the other end—all that needs energy input…that was why uk canal were ultimately abandoned…—plus the fact that horse power moved a lot of the stuff..
We will be going back to them, including digging the old back up. Unfortunately few horses to ease the burden.
Bottom of the garden is fortuitous(eventually). Set a Hormuz toll and let others be the beasts of burden.
most of the canals have been built over years ago—
but in any event, 200 years ago, life went at a walking pace—hence the horse.
you cant move goods for 8bn people using horse and manpower
We’re going back to walking pace and the numbers will adjust accordingly.
Rapid rise and brutal fall, the fate of all plague species.
i can only agree fitz
Horse-drawn barges on canals in 18th and early 19th century England worked very well in tandem with horse-drawn carts to get goods to and from the barges, as Norman well knows.
Their use declined mainly because they were replaced by railway trains running on coal from the 1830s, which later gave way to oil-powered road vehicles but moving goods by canal could be practical and fuel efficient if energy became so expensive as to render fossil fuel or electric powered vehicles unaffordable.
Norman has checked the deeds and is presently online purchasing mines and a toll booth.
In the past canals worked
they will work again powered with wind and mus
cle power. We are probably looking at ancient technology saving the world
see my comment stating the obvious
“Poor Fast Eddy…he just has poor planning….maybe China would be better for him”
If memory serves correct, Eddy only lives in colonies. Canada, Hong Kong(when under colonial occupation), short stint in Indonesia(but they didn’t have the slave mindset, so quick exit), New Zealand and then Australia.
Next stop surely USA(maybe a 6 months in Diego Garcia to break up the journey). He’ll undoubtedly complete the cycle and end up back in Canada.
70% of the world is covered in water so technically we’re all “islanders”.
Earth Islanders
Question is are you on the island in the loop or outside of the loop…maybe called “the core”
Oil is at about $102, and it does make one wonder what is going on.
> Iran: Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf:
We are aware of what is happening in the paper oil market, including the firms hired to influence oil futures. We also see the broader jawboning campaign.
But let’s see if they can turn that into “actual fuel” at the pump -or maybe even print gas molecules!
https://x.com/ME_Observer_
In the comment section, I see the headline:
America’s Cash Crisis: Why Trump Is Shaking Down the World.
Unfortunately, America’s financial problem are one of the reasons for the war.
donnie sees the world as his personal atm machine…
another of my years-old observations…
he’s creaming off the nation, while the maganuts see him as god’s messenger…
Indian basket still $ 157 .50 . Was $ 156 when I last posted . Jawboning .
https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/#prices
It is actually somewhat available to those with adequate funds.
SHELL CEO: DISRUPTION TO SPREAD TO EUROPE FROM ASIA NEXT MONTH
https://x.com/FirstSquawk/status/2036444880369754228
Australia is batting. Europe is on deck. UK in the dugout.
America is on the mound..
I like the baseball analogy.
so a question for the Europeans here:
anyone stocking up on essentials?
or just being totally complacent?
Norm has been saying that Europe would be in trouble “mid 2020s”.
quite right??
not just europes
in fact it was the usa mainly
then you look totally wrong, because hardship looks close to your doorstep.
are you stocking up, or just complacent?
Here’s a poignant and pertinent song written in 1854 by Mr. Stephen Foster, who was no stranger to hard times. It could be summed up as a socially conscious lament that functions as a plea or prayer for compassion. Many of us will singing songs like this around the camp fire if and when the tankers and trucks stop running.
Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh Hard times come again no more
Tis the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door
Oh hard times come again no more
Here is a beautiful soulful version sung by Mavis Staples.
Kevin reports on bombing ships on the cheap. Add this to clogged toilets on carriers.
It’s almost ironic that attention had been focused on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) for decades even as the energy costs of traditional continental ground war seen in WW I &II, 2003 Iraq Desert Storm were ignored. (actually Hitler was least was aware of the need for oil from the Caucasus to fuel his war machine, as were the Imperial Japanese – but this is overlooked by most historians.) Wars are fought and won on logistics first, tactics second.
We are at the end of a military era. This end is being played out in the transition in the Ukraine conflict. This war started out in 2022 with who had the most guns, heavy artillery, tanks, 155mm shells, aircraft which are costly to manufacture, fuel requirements and other logistics. Now the focus is on low cost asymmetric warfare- offensive drones vs the more costly anti-missile defense systems.
This warfare disparity will correct itself as we face the new version of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction ), not with atomic bombs but by slow exsanguination via cheap offensive drone attacks by both sides. It will be a global economic and resources death by a thousand cuts. Property and industry get destroyed, yet paradoxically one country will be unable to conquer another at any meaningful scale even if the countries are reduced to rubble. The energy and material costs to follow through are too great.
As I have posted before, even without war, we are burning the candle at both ends. One end is through debt, a man made artificial construct that acts as a temporary smoke screen to allow cost shifting to the present into wasteful bridges to nowhere, ghost cities, and military waste. The other end of this burning candle is the law of physics and nature: the depletion of energy, raw materials, fresh water, top soil and the substitution with pollution, pesticides and plastic microparticles.
The conflicts over remaining resources only accelerates the problem.
The problem with your analysis as I see it is that it supposes that you can ascertain superior cost-benefit analyses of these wars than the war participants themselves can. And in some circumstances I might give that a pass but ANYBODY with two brain cells to rub together could see that Russian regime change and stopping Iran from blocking the strait for longer than the global economy can survive, are both impossible. So now you need to provide a convincing ULTERIOR motive to the obviously catastrophic cost-benefit analyses. Make it make sense, Hubbs.
Chinese hypersonic missiles are being sold cheaply to other countries ($99,000). They don’t need any special launch site. They can be sent from shipping containers.
Tactical advantage is going away for high-cost approaches to wage war. Now, there is a huge home-field advantage. Expensive offensive devices can be taken down easily with low cost intercepting missiles.
I haven’t watched the video(don’t have the patience, videos take so long to say so little), but as far as I know, China are, or were, very particular about giving anything out(then again, they have so much redundant stock, that beats anything western, why not). Up until very recently, only Pakistan and Egypt had any(there’s the reason the Egyptian troops that have gathered in Sanai haven’t been attacked, just ask India).
I do understand that China have been re-evaluating this position(the whole point of the purge), but am highly sceptical that any hypersonic missiles are on the open market.
Are we now considered far too stupid to reverse engineer, given that it is now undeniable that we just can’t understand the physics behind it all, after more than a decade of very expensive failure?
IQ figures would agree with this(just look up Iran and compare with various self awarded “exceptional master races”, but whatever you do, do not look up the number of female mathematicians and scientists that Iran constantly produces, because that alone would destroy the narrative perception). No wonder no one in the west bangs on about IQ anymore.
Gail, long range hypersonic missiles are rather big, the US variant around 10meters, while 40ft shipping container’s internal length is 12meters, so that seems rather tight..
Besides these are so expensive-finicky that usually specially purposed designed transport rig is necessary and used by any said country (US, CHN, RU, India, NorthKorea, ..).
Also, in case of Iran many/most of these longer range hypersonics are hidden in underground silos, i.e. often part of large underground complex, where the sections are stored separately, various lifts in place for launch position etc.
Hence, most of the rocketry shown in videos as starting off very mobile shorter 20ft~6m container version are therefore short / medium range missiles instead (be it hypersonic or mostly “standard” velocity at that).
oops, meaning Kevin in a way describes the future (and short-medium range) not what has been stockpiled from past multi year effort production (and used up to now) en masse..
The WSJ is reporting:
The Back-Channel Diplomacy Behind Trump’s U-Turn on Iran
The president backtracked on his threat to strike Iran’s power plants after a series of closed-door discussions led by Middle Eastern intermediaries
Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn Thursday in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran.
But there was one big problem, according to Arab officials involved in the discussions: finding a counterpart in Iran to negotiate with. Earlier that week, Israel killed Iran’s national security chief, Ali Larijani, who had been considered a viable partner who could engage with the West.
Egyptian intelligence officials managed to open a channel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the paramilitary group that protects the Iranian regime and is the country’s most powerful security and political entity—and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days to build confidence for a cease-fire, some of the officials said. . .
As a condition of any deal to end the war, Iran is demanding that the U.S. and Israel pledge not to launch future attacks. Tehran is pushing for compensation for damages sustained during the war. The U.S. still wants what it sought from Iran before the war started: the dismantlement of Tehran’s nuclear work, a suspension of its ballistic-missile program and a stop to its support for proxy militias.
A potential meeting
The spate of diplomacy in recent days has prompted early discussions about an in-person meeting in Pakistan or Turkey later this week between U.S. and Iranian officials, according to U.S. and Arab government aides, as well as other people familiar with the matter. The gathering hasn’t yet been completed, officials said.
they just attacked the Isfahan gas complex. why even bother?
Natural gas seems to be the thing that is especially being focused on.
Russia suspends exports of ammonium nitrate until April 21, 2026 – Agriculture Ministry
“The restriction was introduced based on a decision of the operational headquarters of the Russian Agriculture Ministry to monitor the supply of nitrogen fertilizers to agricultural producers and the procedure for their implementation. In the context of growing export demand for nitrogen fertilizers, suspending their supplies abroad will make it possible to prioritize meeting the needs of the domestic market during the spring field work period and ensure their uninterrupted conduct,” the ministry said. (Interfax)
This eliminates russian exports for 2026 to countries which need to fertilize by May 1. That means Europe and the US and China.
Price averaging, pre-stocking import warehouses to some xy% degree..
Fertilizer, even more than oil, stays with the country that produces it.
I think that all old timers here will agree we were wrong. It will not be oil but LNG that will cause the end of Industrial civilization. Too much complexity. LNG is Cool
The interesting thing about nat gas transportation is that to move the stuff over any serious distance you have to take it through a series of energy intensive processes, using vast processing facilities of the type that keep catching live rounds in the gulf.
The starting point is NG or Natural Gas, this is the stuff we all recognize and burn.
Gas is too light to put on a ship (the ship would basically be empty!), so to get enough gas onto the ship to make a worthwhile journey we have to ‘liquify’ the gas. We have to change it from an airy gas form to a dense liquid form. This is the same difference between steam and water (you wouldn’t send someone a bag of steam).
To turn the Natural Gas into Liquid Natural Gas we put it through a very complex and sophisticated process called… refrigeration. Yes we just cool it down. Exactly the same as your refrigerator at home, but obviously on an apocalyptic scale.
So we chill the gas down to a much colder temperature too, about -160°C or -260°F. You can’t swim in it.
This makes the gas condense into a liquid form and you can now get 600x more gas onto the boat than if it was in its gas form.
Now you have in charge worth moving.
The downside is that refrigerating millions of dollars of gas costs millions of dollars. So you lose about 8-12% of the value by doing this.
Then you sail the boat to some other place with a much higher gas price and you use some of the gas to power your gas turbines to drive your boat. So you lose a little more at sea too.
But gas prices are so wildly different all over the world that you can make a fortune even if you can only carry a charge in one direction, which usually sucks.
Some countries have no gas at all and some “enlightened” countries have banned their own gas wells following decades of well-funded psyops.
Not so many places have LNG terminals for handling LNG but those that do either have rock bottom nat gas prices or sky high nat gas prices. Countries with mid market gas prices don’t bother with LNG handling.
USA, Qatar, Australia are the big exporters. These countries have super low gas prices and so can make a fortune shipping it to desperate places with no resources of their own such as Japan, or places that have been “enlightened” such as Europe.
Most of the LNG moving out of Australia is run by Chevron, who have grown fiercely over the past decade, their market cap is almost eclipsing Exxon.
Whenever you see such transcontinental energy infrastructure, the energy flows one way, and the capital flows the other. Crude and LNG imports/exports are the main rivers of capital in international trade that push FX and SovX yields around. Huge and regular volumes.
https://x.com/Object_Zero_/status/2036265779226624454
I agree. It is LNG that looks like it is badly headed down. Oil could come back, to a significant extent.
LNG is horribly complex and expensive. Buying countries cannot afford its high prices. It is LNG that intermittent renewables have depended upon to balance out their serious shortfalls. Also, countries without coal or local natural gas have tried to substitute LNG. But it has to be stored, and it tends to be very expensive. Supply lines to build all of the infrastructure must be terribly long, as well.
I think this is not right. It still is diesel. LNG may become scarce, but pipeline gas is still there, and will be for 50 years once the arctic fields open. Diesel is having a slow decline because jet fuel mixed with small amounts of seed oils and bunker fuel is an acceptable substitute (“diesl” is just a short name for a certain hydrocarbon mix). Also mining equipment is being electrified wherever possible.
I agree, diesel is king.
most natural gas is never liquified, so news about Persian Gulf drops in LNG is not so big a deal as the headline numbers suggest.
Now the world has a perfect excuse . IEA has recommended rationing , just like Fauci recommended lock downs .
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/international-energy-agency-pushes-rationing-6002516?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge
Yes, we will watch together if this [ Fauciana v2.0 ] should move quickly beyond the easy recommendation stuff like distributing personal energy consumption more towards weekends lull (over-all less industrial demand) etc.
There are signs US perhaps might not go further in this war, which would mean a respite for few more yrs, obviously still regionally (as per ally / client / enemy) bifurcated impact persists in terms of the damage already done and to be yet percolating through all the global trade-energy system veins..
Guess, I’m still locked in bargaining mode (shell shock) from this untimely intrusion deemed impossible say prior idealized ~2030-5 threshold horizon in energy crunch security.
You’re adapting great, Jr. It’s only natural to bounce back and forth for a little while as your neurons repattern. Just try and take advantage IRL when you’re in adaptive mode.
On the other developing topic, just thinking to myself 2hrs ago, hm no medic heli transport for at least past day or two (perhaps was imaging things after-all), and now just boom shock wave into windows very low and close fly-over encounter, hah.
So, that’s seriously like ~5x increase in traffic per week (vs. pre ME escalation times) and for some reason always lower altitude, mind you no weather or other impeding situation for that (no runway repairs or anything, jets themselves are cruising to same approach corridor in rhythm as usual).
I notice that the IEA is pushing electricity more (such as for cooking), even though electricity is also stressed. For air transport, he says:
“8. Avoid air travel where alternative options exist. ”
In Item 6, the statement is made, “driving to the park for a picnic or visiting friends and families is not.”
These folks don’t seem to think keeping up ties with friends and families is essential. Instead, it would seem that people need to move closer together.
It’s beginning to look alot like Covid..
That’s because it’s the second set-piece of the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda. But the Hand also wants the controlled opposition to think it’s just another plandemic so that they don’t realize that it’s a terminal collapse and just think it’s a political problem.
Don’t you think the second set-piece of the Degrowth agenda (or controlled demolition) was the war in Ukraine? Anyway, everywhere I look, all I see is demand destruction.
This preceded [ Fauciana_v1.0 ] because chiefly Germany fed RU/Putin false narratives throughout the whole 2010s – hence meanwhile they armed up and fortified them well around Donbass (Eastern UKR)..
The pius-virus saga came as second and RU->UKR attack as third round (~2022) after-wards so to speak..
Yahoo on covid style measures
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/energy-agency-proposes-covid-style-225600186.html
No ravi, not just like Fauci. Rationing is rational reaction to an energy collapse that actually exists. Lockdowns were not rational, they were a psyop.
Seems like DaveInMegaYrs (active here and at Surplus) lost the bet (plot), supposedly rationing not sooner ~2035-2050 in the West.. hah.
Well, just teasing in good spirits as we are all usually correct in one domain but not the others, but more importantly there will be surely many twists and turns in this ongoing story as the time is marching forwards.. so kind of BAUish brief relapse (on lower base level) is not out of the question.
If the ceasefire news of the last hour is to be believed the yes BAU-lite might be tenable for a month or two but I think it’s more gaslighting.
South Korea’s Lee calls for energy saving campaign including shorter showers, car curbs
The government is calling on people to adopt 12 energy-saving practices like shorter showers, charging phones and electric vehicles during the day and using washing machines and vacuums over the weekend.
South Korea also plans to draft a supplementary budget of 25 trillion won ($16.6 billion) as soon as possible which could include cash vouchers for consumers and financial support for companies, amid growing stimulus talks by other economies.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/south-koreas-lee-calls-energy-saving-campaign-including-curbs-cars-2026-03-24/?taid=69c239fcf8e548000120c12e&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
I notice he is suggesting moving electricity consumption to times when either supply is more available or demand is otherwise low. Vacuum and do laundry on the weekend.
Met Police chief deploys armed patrols to London
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/met-police-armed-patrols-jewish-b1276141.html
The Belgian Army has now been deployed to cities like Antwerp and Brussels,
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2036345933185650755
Europe already seems to be encountering problems.
The Belgians have an army?
In the ranking of the highest number of Bentley cars sold, Kiev dealership won third place for best sales in 2025. This extraordinary achievement was recognized by the automaker with an awards ceremony and a grand evening gala.
The oligarchs sent a heartfelt thank you to European taxpayers for their stupidity.
_спасибi- spasybi _-thank you_
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/winner-group-ukraine_bentley-kyiv-has-proudly-achieved-3rd-place-activity-7438516997702836224-cl7-
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/bentley-kiev-third-place-retail-seller
https://t.me/MarCosent/4874
Now imagine the amount of hush money just to throttle it down from the actual spot #1 ranking first place , PR for the win!
hah
https://www.rt.com/news/635960-trump-claims-he-could-jointly-control-hormuz-ayatollah/
Trump lied. Huh.
“Tehran intends to fight the US and Israel “until complete victory,” the spokesman for Iran’s top military command has insisted.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/oil-jumps-after-explosion-and-massive-fire-one-largest-us-oil-refineries
Oh boy
Two can play this game?
It was the Hand undermining the Export Land Model again, with the Beam. And it was the diesel processing unit.
Positron Beam-related intrigue in this article. I’ve always said that reverse engineering of UFOs is presumably limited by the happenstance of an insufficient distribution of required elements on planet Earth needed to manufacture the necessary superalloys for reflectivity and corrosion resistance from gamma radiation.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ufo-gatekeeper-general-vanishes-days-after-trumps-full-disclosure-order
I found this recent update:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2026/03/24/fire-out-shelter-in-place-order-lifted-after-port-arthur-oil-refinery-explosion/
Fire out, shelter-in-place order lifted after Port Arthur oil refinery explosion
No one was injured in Monday’s explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, about 90 miles east of Houston, Mayor Charlotte M. Moses said.
Israel, US Strike Gas Facilities In Iran’s Isfahan, Possibly Triggering Retaliation Against Gulf
This was dumb
I don’t see it working out, but I can imagine why some overly-optimistic wargamers might have come up with such a plan. They might hope for retaliation that sows chaos (famine, war, breakdown of government) in the entire Middle East. Certain elements look like they would increase US — and perhaps more importantly — Israeli power, on a relative basis. Suppose no oil flows from the Gulf:
* USA keeps pumping shale, which has plateaued but probably won’t decline substantially over over the next 2-5 years, and also ramps up production from Venezuela, Canada, and Mexican basins
* Asia suffers, slowing the pan-Asian and China-centered trade network, BRICS. Asian tech and industry, LNG reliant, is severely curtailed.
* Arab countries and Africa are decimated in short order (1-3 years)
* Europe is in a depression, but they and Asia buy US LNG, supporting USD temporarily
* Israel becomes the leading power in the region and fulfills Greater Israel with continued US support as its Arab neighbors collapse into chaos
Obviously this requires that Iran not destroy Israel, which remains to be seen, but I can see elements that might be attractive to those running things. Israel is reliant on desalination for crop irrigation, but much less so for drinking water, from what I’ve read. They may think they can just have food supplied from elsewhere and that the nuclear threat will prevent any severe damage.
Interesting take, I think he probably has sources telling him this is the core reason, but of course that doesn’t mean it’s definitively true:
https://x.com/apocalypseos/status/2036261851043131476
> Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: The people behind the money behind the American empire want China taken down. That’s the real purpose of this war in Iran for this country. That’s why we’re waging this war.
I concur that they ought to concentrate their firepower on Israel and US bases. The tolls are permanent and this is already a significant result. Despite Reante’s scoffing, it is apparent that militias are waging the beginning of a ground war. Iraq will be liberated. Presumably closing the bases on the Gulf will require the intervention of Ru/Ch.
I am of two minds about China. China should have gone kinetic already a while ago. But if Russia guarantees supplies of gas and oil, why should they? Presumably to preserve purchasing power for their customers. I really do not understand the commenters here talking about thermodynamic decapitation.
But they are also getting a giant clobbering of India and Europe, and the USA expending their last military resources, and presumably invitations to be in the Gulf for a quick rebuilding, which is no bad thing in their book. am I answering my own question?
If you recall, in the opening phase CHN dispatched it’s newish missile ship towards the Gulf, so that was a very strong signal by their past metrics.. Obviously, they did not expect such escalation level back then.
So, it is / will be a combo of previous hermitty – defensive action as more pipelines finished quicker (en-route from RU) as well as some other more openly assertive moves around and beyond their perimeter yet to be manifested.
If they did not expect this escalation level they need to be fired. the West is desperate.
I hear you but clearly this was not “collective’s west desperation” towards Iran, rather certain faction or coalition at work..
Well, actually, there was massive purge inside top army layers in CHN ~before this Gulf situation. Perhaps it was in some form connected to it as well ala arguments pro/against more direct foreign involvement for the future (projecting power at distance).
In msm it was merely depicted as power struggle (perhaps a bit of corruption to boot) of elite circles though..
drb the reason that I scoff is because little you act like little you can make decisions for China better than China can make decisions for China. And what’s even more dunning Kruger about it, is that little you think that you can make those decisions from a place that completely disregards a complexity theory of Collapse. You’ve clung to your East vs West fake reality so hard and for so long that – actually I’m just going to stop talking before Gail refuses to publish this comment.
Notice how I’m the most egotistical person here yet I would never deign to armchair quarterback how things actually play out. Even if, say, ghawar gets trashed, I’m not gonna be like, “oh damn, the Hand really fucked up there.” I’m going to consider two possibilities going forward. That the Hand has bigger balls than I decided was likely. Or that the DA doesn’t exist. Obviously the likely result is that I quit DA theory and Gigantic Balls Theory (GBT) emerges, and without stablecoins. GBT theory would be the Hand as purist. The Hand as reante. Nudging the clownshow geopolitical theater into self-organizing war collapse and letting the chips fall where they may. Accelerationism once extend and pretend can no longer be managed. The Hand ripping the bandaid off and heading to their Southern hemisphere to ride it out like real, privileged men and women come what may. Saying, “enough is enough, of the People Farming. Collapse has come, and it’s time to open all the gates and let the strong survive, and may we ourselves be among them.”
But GBT is not what I see. I see that they want to try and put the nuclear genie back in the bottle and play ‘god’ in the process.
That’s the difference between dark enlightenment and true enlightenment. True enlightenment knows that you can’t fix the past. Dark enlightenment will always try come hell or high water, and I get that, because within the absolute corruption borne by absolute power lies a separate peace. Love as separation.
China leads the world in manufacturing. The US leads the world in hegemony, and wants to keep this role. To do this, the US wants to cut off Iranian oil and natural gas to China. In fact, if possible, the US would like Iranian oil for itself.
“I don’t see it working out”
I think it has worked as planned.
No reports of it being real, but everyone is talking about it, because it sounds like a win and they’re desperate to for people to think that they are in control of the situation.
Anyone got official confirmation(or even regional media talking about it)?
If it’s not real then what do you make of Iran cutting off gas from Turkey right afterwards?
Sorry, what?
Who exactly is claiming what?
No idea about the claim. Tell me all about it and its significance, assuming there is some significance.
Sorry I thought you were talking about whether or not the Isfahan pipeline bombing report was real. I don’t know if it’s true but I believe the report that Iran was stopping gas exports to Turkey followed shortly thereafter, hence my previous comment to you about that seeming pattern of events.
Thanks, that’s clear(er).
Fars, I don’t read, but I believe it was them and only them that made the false claim about downed f35s back in the June attack. They had to retract and post an apology. I’ll take it with a large pinch of salt(haven’t checked news today, so there might be more clarity).
I still know nothing about the Turkey claim(again, maybe something will pop up today), do you have a link?
As for the ceasefire that never was, I’ll leave you with the words of Lieutenant Colonel Zolfaghari:
“Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you’re negotiating with yourselves?”
God, they’re good 😁
The pipeline was elsewhere from the Isfahan strike. Al Jazeera quoting Fars:
“As part of the ongoing attacks carried out by the Zionist and American enemy, the gas administration building and the gas pressure regulation station on Kaveh Street in Isfahan were targeted,” said the Fars news agency.
The facilities in central Iran were “partially damaged”, added Fars, which was Iran’s only news outlet to report the incident. It said an attack also hit the gas pipeline of the Khorramshahr power plant, in the country’s southwest.”
The interesting part is that no major media is reporting this? 😬I think it’s very newsworthy
There is no historical precedent. The energy tap is smashed. Even if everyone in Iran is gone mysteriously, the energy infrastructure in Persian Gulf will not be able to be repaired, pump and deliver energy (oil and LNG) in time for any help.
Just the fact that if petrol pumps are dry for 2 days, it is enough to cause disaster. Herd mentality.
2027? 2028? I enjoy every waking day of my life?
I hope the war will end soon.
meanwhile the problems will spread very unevenly.
there is zero chance that IC will collapse because of this small regional war, in my opinion.
Europeans and Asians and others should be stocking up on essentials as much as possible.
complacency is not wise.
Actually there is a high chance.
😁👍
Well, we are back to definitions..
For certain segments of pop then “IC collapse” proper or more realistic event for now about “merely” severe/sudden personal impoverishment makes little difference in the end.
And these grievances tend to ricochet further into over-all instability..
I think that the maximum power principle is going to keep this particular step down of the world economy from becoming too great. Pieces of the world economy will stick together. More regional economies will start of emerge. Some governments will become much smaller. Pension payments may shrink remarkably.
Stop the president in the name of God!
I can’t take all this winning!
Love this ladies videos
It is sad that, in the aggregate, we cannot fix the situation, even though it looks like we could, taken one by one.
The small quiet voice of heaven is winning. It is slow and painful but at the same time joyful. Thank God for the heroes and martyrs.
I knew it was the green stuff the whole time, Ed. This is a good new inner path for you, props.
“We are in stoppage time.
In the coming weeks, the last ships that left Hormuz before the closure will arrive, and when this happens, the shortage of will manifest itself in all its harshness and intensity. In fact, things are already going horribly wrong. The list of countries that are suffering from fuel supply problems or have even imposed rationing measures (Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India, Thailand…) is growing as the days go by. China has restricted fertilizer exports, and in the U.S. it is estimated that 25 to 35 percent of the fertilizers commonly used will be missing this season. The shortage of helium is going to cause a sharp drop in chip production in a few weeks, not to mention the disastrous situation of aluminum or copper, to name a couple of raw materials. But in reality everything is affected. Not at all surprising for traditional readers of this blog, at the moment one of the things that is most scarce is diesel, and that affects absolutely everything, the supply chain of all kinds of raw materials.
Putting myself now in the context of Spain and Europe, to be honest, unless something unimaginable happens right now (literally a miracle) we are going to crash. No other outcome is imaginable. We are going to suffer a very long-lasting, perhaps even permanent, loss of 25% or more of our energy consumption, and it is going to happen over the next few months. We are going to see a good part of our industries collapse never to recover. Let’s see how the strike shoots up. And in advanced stages of this debacle, we are going to see fuel and even food shortages.
Right now we are losing about 20 million barrels a day of oil and petroleum products, which is about 20% of world consumption and, what matters most to us, that represents 40% of the oil available for export. There is also a lack of about 20% of liquefied natural gas, 30% of nitrogen fertilizers, 30% of helium, 30% of aluminum, 30% of sulfur (it is needed to make sulfuric acid for industrial processes, including obtaining copper)… There is an incredible container jam in the area. The lack of average crude oil from the Persian Gulf area particularly affects diesel production. And also kerosene milk. In fact, some airlines are starting to cancel flights. What happens next to tourism, God will say.
This is not going to be just another crisis. This is going to be an economic catastrophe. Combined with the bursting of the outsized financial bubbles that have inflated over the past few years, it is difficult to grasp the magnitude of what is going to happen.”
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2026/03/dead-man-walking.html
I am afraid he is right, especially in Europe, Japan, and Australia. I am hoping that the US is a little better off, even if it is still an economic catastrophe.
I wonder when air travel will be restricted?
When airlines cancel flights. Or when airlines go broke.
It is not clear we will get a lot of advance notice. Some people may be in Europe and have a difficult time getting back.
Philippine president says grounding planes due to fuel shortage a ‘distinct possibility’, Bloomberg News reports
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippine-president-says-grounding-planes-due-fuel-shortage-distinct-2026-03-24/?taid=69c24cb9f8e548000120c162&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
ive always tried to point out, that of the world’s 8bn population, keeping 1 million of us in the air at any one time, flying at 500mph on a finite resource is collective economic insanity, and was certain to come to an end….
this might be the end of it, or it might not—i havent cleaned my crystal ball this morning
Reportedly, the touristic circus has been already redirected (from ME/Gulfies) to Club-Med countrie’s destinations again..
>> Right now we are losing about 20 million barrels a day
I assumed a decent chunk was still getting through, but checked and indeed, traffic is down ~95% if these reports are to be believed:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gas-tankers-sail-through-hormuz-india-most-ships-still-stuck-data-shows-2026-03-23/
“Three weeks into the Hormuz shutdown, crude tanker markets remain distorted,” shipbroker Clarksons said on Monday.
“Traffic through the strait is down about 95% from pre-war levels, with Iranian-linked ships still moving.”
“Did I tell you? Yes I did. He is the new Fauci except for energy.”
https://x.com/jeffreytucker/status/2036158922394873913
Energy Crisis Will Not Be Resolved Quickly if War Ends, I.E.A. Chief Warns
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/world/middleeast/energy-crisis-iea-warning.html
This is Al Jareera’s version of the IEA story.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/3/23/world-in-energy-crisis-worse-than-1970s-oil-shocks-combined-iea-head-says
“This crisis, as things stand, is now two oil crises and one gas crash put all together,” Birol said in remarks to the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.
Birol said the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on energy facilities had reduced global oil supplies by about 11 million barrels per day (bpd), more than double the combined shortfalls of the 1970s’ crises.
He said liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies had been reduced by about 140 billion cubic metres, compared with a shortfall of 75bcm in the aftermath of Ukraine’s invasion by Russia.
At least 40 energy facilities across nine countries have also been severely damaged in the conflict, the IEA chief said.
“The global economy is facing a major, major threat today, and I very much hope that this issue will be resolved as soon as possible,” Birol said.
“had reduced global oil supplies by about 11 million barrels per day (bpd)”. We have to also remember that this oil had the highest EROEI.
It is really the delivered cost that matters. LNG has a terrible EROEI, even if natural gas, provided through a pipeline to nearby facilities has a higher EROEI.
Also, I believe that oil from Iraq seems most likely not to recover from shut-ins. It has no storage. It is near the edge of depletion already. This is why oil from Iraq is so easy to push over the edge. The EROEI stories you hear are not uniform. Be careful of repeating them endlessly. Even Middle Eastern wells deplete.
[ THE NEW FAUCI ]: Best Of.
Now released on LP / CD / Audio cassette
(sorry could not resist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Romantics
Leaked footage from initially stale FED party,
suddenly crashed by the livid Fauci people..
https://youtu.be/J4XP7fJ83yA?list=RDJ4XP7fJ83yA
The credo for hyper-turbulent times is to [ keep calm ] as the bloke at 0:23s and/or 3:14s ..
Missiles that hop, skip, jump their way to the target at hyper-sonic speeds make AD useless. A screen of hundreds of launchers would be required to defend a site. Doable technically might bankrupt the defender.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JP7Lq31Diw
Iranian subs sinking tankers in the Indian ocean are new that will require the US military to to vastly expand its sub sea listening devices powered by silver batteries that will be literally thousands of tons of silver, replaced every nine months.
This is clearly an AI video, but an awfully lot of what it talks about seems to be right, based on other things I have heard. There may be things that are completely false–I don’t know. But it certainly sounds credible and worrying, from Israel’s point of view. We know that getting sufficient ammunition has been a problem.
An indirect result of the Qatar LNG problem:
Thankfully China has a more robust electrical system. China may create a super brain, Wei, before the US, Sam, does.
> Speaker: Commodore Steve Jermy, Royal Navy. Commodore Jermy retired from the Royal Navy in 2010, after a successful and varied career that encompassed carrier aviation, sea command and high level staff appointments. His commands included HM Ships Tiger Bay, Upton, Arrow, Cardiff, the 5th Destroyer Squadron, and the Fleet Air Arm. His staff appointments included the MoD Directorate of Policy Planning and as Principal Staff Officer to the Chief of Defence Staff.
> TRUMP ADMITS IRAN DEFEAT, BEGS FOR CEASEFIRE | STEVE JERMY INTERVIEW
I looked through the closed captions, and I didn’t notice anything quite this strong. What I noticed is that Steve Jeremy says that the US lost in every war it has been in so far, including Ukraine, especially ground wars. It seems to be headed that way in Iran also.
Maybe some can point to somewhere in the transcript where Steve Jeremy actually says that Trump has already admitted defeat. Perhaps I overlooked it.
Commodore Jermy (ret.) follows some CHN based analyst who estimates Taiwan is 9days from blackout / industry shutdown in terms of remaining LNG-to-grid stockpiles. I know others posted about this here already earlier, so it is in progress..
I always figured that China would cakewalk through Taiwan with no resistance from the US but the Hand has outdone itself again as it looks like China is going to be ‘invited’ into Taiwan in order to save it lol. How noble. YCanMTSU.
It’s truly a macabre historical dance to which we are only seemingly invited. CHN -120yrs and now.. Or vice versa Europe 1960s and nowish into further harsh step down decline sequence..
The next question is, will it really take 10 years to fix things, once China is invited in the Gulf also? 10 years of US contractor work is 1 year chinese.
drb, under Non-Public Degrowth Agenda (DA) theory, anything destroyed by the Big Nuclear Scare (BNS) that cannot be repaired within months is never going to come back online. It is self-evident to BNS logic that any infrastructure needed for Phase 2 (of 2) of the DA that cannot be repaired in weeks to a couple months, must be kept intact, which shouldn’t be too difficult given the guidance systems these days.
Therefore, the infrastructure getting destroyed is infrastructure the Hand has decided furthers the cataclysmic imposition of the global Inverted Perestroika that is the BNS. And a major dynamic within that is completely wiping out the ability for any exporting country to follow the Export Land Model, by destroying refining capacities down to target (bare minimum) domestic consumption figures, as most easily seen thus far with Russian capacity destruction.
I would be in favor of bringing the 90 million Persians to the US as citizen to fill in for the declining population.
New York City can be the gateway for the new settlers to America. It will help bolster the northern US versus the southern US.
Two days and US bombs turns into five days and the US bombs. The US is free to begin bombing any time in those five days.
Vance is in hiding waiting for Trump to die. Anybody know what his master Thiel wants for Israel? Will he require 90% depopulation of Persia? Will he force Trump to do the dirty work?
Btw. seems like Vance using ladies dark pen for eye/brows or is it natural, serious inquiry, because in both cases that fits the profile of people eventually eager – willing to push that proverbial launch button.
But that’s at min. months away..
PS Thiel+ bros. seem to plan for Israel in its former ~max hist reach, that incl. parts of upper/delta Egypt, and on the other hand Lebanon, Syria, perhaps even parts of Turkey, Persia, .. They have it depicted on promo material like t-shirts etc.
Lots of US top honchos in that cult.
“plan for Israel in its former ~max hist reach”
No such history exists.
Where do you get this shit?
That’s their (pseudo/a)-historical narrative not mine!
Their commandos have it even (greater Israel map) on shoulder patches / combat-strike uniforms..
Your the one repeating the falsehood as truth, even though you admit you know it’s untrue.
You do that regularly, but only ever one way, so I’m left asking why.
Please provide evidence of me regularly (and willingly) repeating falsehoods.. ?!
You are perhaps mixing up stuff, if say one builds up theoretical argument from one side / viewpoint – then he obviously uses the associated argumentation base for it.
This is net forum after-all not place for long scholarly texts.
Nevertheless, thanks for the concern, I’ll try to separate these for more clarity in the future.
Evidence. Yes please.
I’m still waiting for you to provide your “easily googlable” Xi quote evidence.
Have you forgotten how to use google?
So, please remind me.
That must be some specific older case, if you are so animated about it still ? Which by definition means it can’t be regular occurrence of mine as you suggested, right?
I don’t held nothing personal against ” Xi “, I don’t rant against him daily, weekly, .. here or at any other place..
Do you have the memory of a goldfish?
You claimed Xi told Iran(as if he could) not to hit certain infrastructure, which Iran promptly did.
I called bullshit and you doubled down with your idiotic “it’s easily googlable”, but it wasn’t, because as I pointed out, no Chinese official, let alone Xi said any such thing. I then asked you to do what you claimed as so simple and google it, to provide “evidence” of your claim. All I received was silence.
Balls still in your court jr., Get googling, or accept it’s obvious you promote one-sided bs.
I think it is more that Israel wants to expand in the future. High birth rate among the very religious, for example. More territory makes it easier to have enough food and fresh water.
My pet country to watch in all this is….
AUSTRALIA.
Australia distils exactly no diesel or jet fuel…. and it has the shortest distance for delivery (Persian Gulf) of all the western style countries. However, it’s Korea an other Asian countries that provide its diesel and jet fuel.
So, it is effectively first and last in the chain for its lifeforce. I keep reading that diesel is running out in the eastern part of this distant island country. Will they be the first to suffer Alice Friedemann’s “When the Trucks Stop Running” syndrome?
Thanks. This is an unexpected addition to the short list.
Another free post by Anas Alhaji . This time EU and Russian gas . https://open.substack.com/pub/anasalhajjieoa/p/strait-of-hormuz-crisis-and-russian?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
European natural gas supplies are unusually low for this time of year (about 30%), making them exceptionally vulnerable to LNG disruptions.
I think the main reason for moving industrial capacity to the developing countries was the financial system as structured at Bretton Woods. After the dollar became a world reserve currency, the main role of US has become to run larger and larger trade deficits in order to supply enough dollars to the ever-expanding global economy.
Why TACO ? My viewpoint .
1 . Iran published worldwide the list of targets they will attack . DJT pissed .
2 . It costs $ 12 billion a day . The US has no money to finance the war . The $ 200 billion request by the Pentagon had a fair chance of failing in the Congress and Senate .
3 . Trump desperately needs an interest rate cut but the treasury market was moving in the opposite direction . Attack and push up yields .
3A . The stock market would have opened in negative territory . That is why the announcement was made before the market opened .
4 . The request of 23 countries for the opening of SOH was addressed to Iran and not to the USA . Totally isolated .
5 . His consignelare is Jared Kushner . All his pet projects are now grounded . He whispers in the ears of the Don —– back off ;
6 . The armada is sitting in the ocean for 3 weeks . The ships need bunker fuel but the hub of bunker fuel is in Singapore and is low on inventory . What to do ? Return to the depot with your tail between your legs ?
7 . Public opinion in the USA is now against this ” war on behalf of Israel ” .
8 . The MAGA base is splintering .
9 . High pump prices and food inflation are now a ” cost of living ” crisis which hits even the MAGA .
10 . This has become an issue in the upcoming midterm elections in November . The Republicans candidates will have a tough time explaining .
11 . Last but the most important . Trump knows that if he losses in November he will spend the next 30 months fighting against impeachment .
But my questions ? Does the 5 day pause apply to Israel ? If not , then what use is it ?
The more things change the more they remain the same . 😁
In five days, after the markets have closed for the week, Trump may well renew his threat.
—
donnie has trashed every enterprise he’s messed with….
the planet is no different.
Your list generally sounds good. The fuel supply for the boats is likely important.
I couldn’t find any new list of targets for Iran to bomb. The old one I am aware of is Middle Eastern branches of US based companies, such as Microsoft.
One view from Zerohedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/oil-plunges-stocks-spike-after-trumps-comments-iran
No negotiations have been held with the US, and fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.
Copied from ZH:
“Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Mehr news wrote: “In case of the slightest attack on the electricity infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the entire region will go dark.” Here’s the target list it shared:
Saudi Arabia
The Village (near Al-Khobar): gas power plant (4,000+ MW)
Ras Tanura (Sharqiya Province): major oil and gas facility / power infrastructure
United Arab Emirates
Barakah (Al Dhafra, Abu Dhabi): nuclear power plant (~5,600 MW)
Jebel Ali (South Dubai): gas power and desalination complex (multi-GW capacity)
Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park (Dubai): large-scale solar power project
Qatar
Ras Laffan (north Qatar): gas power plant (one of the largest in Qatar)
Umm Al Houl (south of Doha): gas power + desalination plant (multi-GW capacity)
Kuwait
Al-Zour South: oil and gas power plant
Al-Zour North: combined-cycle power plant (multi-GW capacity)
Shaqaya Energy Park (west Kuwait): solar and wind renewable energy complex”
I think the power will go out in Iran over the coming weekend. Headline news shouldn’t be taken at face value. These are economic hitmen. When the dust settles. Everything will be bought for pennies on the dollar. As intended.
But you have to at least make it look like you tried looking for an off-ramp.
I expect the outcome to be worse than deflationary vulture capitalism because I expect it to end capitalism. It’s gonna be so hard and fast there ain’t gonna be time to play that field before the new politics takes the reins and outlaws that kind of rotten behavior. Hundreds of millions if not billions dead, inderectly caused by the Big Nuclear Scare, as I put the WAG at a couple months ago – THAT surely kills capitalism. So my expectation is full-spectrum nationalizations and percentage nationalizations.
Public sector vulture national socialism, creating a foundation of a public-private syndicalist marketplace wherever full nationalization does not have superior utility. All increasingly based on nationalized stablecoins (digital Lincoln Greenbacks).
Oil prices are no longer the biggest threat to markets.
It has become increasingly clear that bond markets will dictate just how long President Trump can continue increase pressure in the Iran War.
The 10Y Note Yield is now up ~45 basis points since the war began on February 28th.
This is in-line with the rapid surge seen around “Liberation Day” in April 2025.
As the 10Y Note Yield surged above 4.50% in April 2025, President Trump began floating a potential tariff “pause.”
And, once the 10Y Yield broke above 4.60%, President Trump officially implemented a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs on April 9th, 2025.
With the 10Y Note Yield now up to 4.40%, we believe the 4.50% to 4.60% range will be the “line in the sand” again.
The US economy cannot handle a 5% 10Y Note Yield.
https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2035862840284688507/photo/1
The only Treasuries that matter now are Bills, and they haven’t budged.
Yeah, the majority of the debt is short term in duration.
If the 10y goes to 6-7% everyone loads up on it. Banks, insurance companies, and everyone in between.
The dollar is the real problem. If this oil shock plays out like others have. Yields on bonds eventually go back to zero or negative. Because it’s highly deflationary.
Everyone is saying that this is the biggest oil shock ever. If that is true. Expect a deflationary bust in size that matches the shock.
What David and I want to know is, how is this going to impact the price and availability of dark chocolate?
So, the International Hoo-hoo is about to commence in few hours time..
We could be living in another world shortly..
The idea that it will be paused or delayed are not much realistic as the
assets have moved into the theater – the only “off ramp” is lesser severity or piece meal action (several dayz of strikes vs one) but that goes against the player’s motivations.
it’s been 9 hours. what do you mean by few?
The original 48hrs [ final countdown ] issued Sat night, so that should have been expiring later today Mon night US time.. yet Don called-it off before it lapsed.
Plus the context is that in the very same time (last night/today) Israel continued with ~limited strikes on their grid anyways.
Plus Iran denied the talks are ongoing, merely some token intermediary contacts via other countries in the region.
Hence, Don can any time restart it, change the 5days to say 3days or whatever kind of next in line improvisation on hand.
The bottom line remains, the bombers are now stationed close or in the region, waiting.
PS obviously, I could be wrong, and it all mellows down to diffused threat-conflict, the Iranians are themselves so strange thinking-behaving they are capable of many unusual turnarounds as well..
Perhaps they also need time to understand the battle field, since 3 more jets were hit in the last 24?
No you’re instincts are right Jak. The train has left the station. However, the Iranians have been very consistent because they are playing the part of Gravity to the Senecan cliff, or, alternatively, playing Entropy to civilizational Negentropy. The Hand is enlightened, so it must plan out the Big Nuclear Scare in accordance with universal polarity under Natural Law.
The BNS is the archetypal fight with oneself. Civilization fighting for its life. Iran is the repressed, resolute, and fearless aspect of the Self. Zionism is the self-destructive clownshow Shadow-based persona in structural conflict with itself due to diminished returns. Resolution is found in an internal coup against the clownshow that leads to civilizational individuation under the national socialisms, but the former excesses of the Shadow persona that dominated for too long, and the fight itself — took a catastrophic toll on the body, and the fight reduces it to an invalid state on a hospice protocol.
It’s a foundational story as old as the hills, which is why the Hand is making use of it in service of plausible deniability. It’s a story so effective that almost everyone, even here at OFW who have been led down the garden path by myself, will believe it was a self-organizing one rather than a managed one. Nevermind the fake assassination attempt and all the other red flags. In order to resolve civilizational Shadow under cover, the Hand counts on individual Shadow staying in its lane. So even people here at OFW stay in their lanes because the last thing they’d want to do is blow the cover off of the individuation process that their lives under hospice care depend on, if their lucky. They ain’t no dummies like me. I mean, what kind of person would go around saying it all out loud?
Allow for yet another instinct vibes theme, do you recall that feeling at the moment when there is suddenly largish traffic accident on the hw and multitude of low alt flying medic choppers then dispersing the injured into local hospital all around?
It seems to be ongoing for just past several weeks, almost daily or certainly 3-4x per week, which would rhyme with this -> Iran action, perhaps also the Iraq evacuation. If we assume several more hundreds injured of US / Israeli personnel than declared, they have to move them around Europe asap, because the US and friendly bases close to EasternMed can surely give them basic first stabilization care but then they need various specialists for the particular injuries and treatment..
I’m situated roughly enroute to mil. hospital and various large civil air traffic corridors mixing above in various heights and shapes so they had to fly the “unscheduled” choppers underneath it – low.. So, this should likely take place in other regions say IT, DE, GR, RO, .. Turkey .. as well.
Not major story, but again perhaps small tactical game how to suppress inconvenient reality from the public at large for few more weeks, months, ..
Nice. Yeah that would indicate orchestration. Seems like some info should be leaking out from hospital workers.
I guess there must be tighter lid on the staffers inside mil hospitals, but I had the same question, how long the secret-obfuscation could realistically last, few weeks maybe, but months hardly..
Perhaps up to a point it’s not that hard, I doubt most of the avg personal would be freaking out from say US vs. Aussie – UK vs continental Euro-english accents..
Goldman Sachs: Oil prices may exceed 2008
https://www.idnfinancials.com/news/62389/goldman-sachs-oil-prices-may-exceed-2008-peak-on-supply-disruption
From your link:
In its base-case scenario, Goldman expects oil flows to begin recovering gradually from April, with Brent potentially returning to around US$70 per barrel by the fourth quarter of 2026.
However, the forecast remains clouded by significant uncertainty, particularly regarding the reopening of key shipping lanes and the extent of damage to production capacity.
Although oil output can recover relatively quickly once distribution normalises, even within roughly four weeks, Goldman highlighted the risk of longer-term supply losses, especially from Iran and offshore production facilities.
OPEC’s spare capacity could offset part of the disruption, but the scale and timing remain unclear.
More broadly, geopolitical shocks to energy infrastructure are reshaping global market dynamics.
OPEC’s spare capacity is pretty speculative, especially with oil shut in for a significant time period.
Trump says he will destroy the electrical system of Iran. This will shutdown water, air conditioning, sewage removal. This will cause mass death. Isn’t this a war crime, a crime against humanity?
Where is the United Nations? The BRICS?
Trump has already backed off of this threat.
I believe he will use nuclear weapons against Iran to please his master Israel.
We should always remember the real reasons for the squat being placed where it is and who’s reasons those were.
Ronald Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem, put it best I think when he described the idea of the squat like this
“loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”
The dog controls its tail and the master controls the dog. There are no masters in occupied Palestine. Never have been and never will be.
Yet the master-funded Hamas dog is the one that kicked this all of by carrying out the 10/7 Inside Job.
Still so one eyed. That fantasy has been repeated for decades. It comes out within hours of every faux pas. Go look it up(you’ll notice a few other oft repeated fantasies if you do).
Have you ever considered that the squatters knew exactly what the plan demanded they knew and no more, or is it impossible for you to be able to contemplate a true civilisation, with higher IQ people, playing the game longer and more thoroughly.
The possibilities open up with that other eye, but only if you allow it to see.
Math Simmons used to say that it’s very difficult to reduce people’s dependence from oil, especially in US. I think the wars and the tariffs are just excuses to stop economic growth by using fear. How else to justify lowering standard of living.
“How else to justify lowering standard of living.”
If they want to lower the standard of living, that is simple. All they have to do is eliminate deficit spending.
The problem with lowering the standard of living is that it is shrinking the economy. Because of how interconnected everything is in the U.S., economy, I don’t think that the elites have found a way to shrink the economy without them decreasing their wealth and power. In a country with a smaller economy, they would become vulnerable all kinds of things that a higher standard of living protects them from, like a assignations, extortion, etc. They do not want to live like elites in Africa surrounded by military soldiers all the time yet.
It has all been planned and the goal is to stop economic growth using wars as pretext.
Economic growth stopped a long time ago. War is a pretext for covering up structural energy collapse and implementing massive emergency restructuring.
Tariffs aren’t fear-based. They cause demand destruction and restructuring.
The mad dictator Trump stand unopposed. UN? BRICS, EU?
Not quite. Iran is doing a pretty good job shutting him down. I have mad respect for that country. Their stoicism is epic.
Beware of anti-imperialist politics. Iran’s just the hero foil to King Lear’s Zionism, and nothing more. Iran is acting with the backing and guarantees of the Hand as per the Big Nuclear Scare set-piece. Easy to play hero under those circumstances. Fitz likes the quotes coming out of Iran, and I get that on the surface level, but Iran is just a composite of Shakespeare’s foils to Lear, with the primary one being The Fool. If any bookworms here need something to read, King Lear would be a timely choice. Here’s a quote from The Fool:
“Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it.”
Masinissa, stop smarting, the wheel turns, you don’t get to choose it’s path, but do take Bacon’s advice and let go(you know his writing has two messages. All of it?). You could then enjoy the show, which is far more fun than the clairvoyant game, that desperately tries to determine where the wheel will go(at least open both eyes, if you are going try. The one eyed man is never king, he just doesn’t see what’s coming. Don’t be Nuñez).
On the low IQ side we have incoherent incompetence
“We shot down three planes with our missiles… they happened to be our planes.”
Child Rapist in Charge.
On the high IQ side we have deadly deliberation
“Do not call your defeat an agreement—the time of your promises has come to an end”
Lieutenant Colonel Zolfaghari.
The Iranians even put together stuff for those of the disneyland mindset, which is very thoughtful of them, I’m sure you would agree.
https://files.catbox.moe/caml6l.mp4
I think it’s a cunning plan to get Trump to order an invasion of Legoland 😉
“Trump says he will destroy the electrical system of Iran. This will shutdown water, air conditioning, sewage removal. This will cause mass death. Isn’t this a war crime, a crime against humanity?”
These are no longer actual governments. They are in fact crime syndicates. When you view them as such everything they do starts to make sense.
Lastly, the United States as a global hegemon is on its way out and will likely get replaced with possibly China or the BRICS. The US has been hollowed out from within. All they have left is military power and the people in charge of making military decisions think they are playing a Call of Duty videogame.
They have been syndicates since at least 1913 (USA), 1698 (UK) and 1789 (France).
“Trump says he will destroy the electrical system of Iran”
Barking dogs, seldom bite.” -English Proverb
You are talking as if the Aleppo water system was never targeted ten+ years ago.
Trump says he had productive talks with Iran??! I doubt that this is true but hopefully it is. I don’t know how Iran could ever trust the US and Israel after they killed their leader in the middle of negotiations? Who is going to pay for the mess? Very strange? Maybe it’s an off ramp for his family to sell stock.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/oil-plunges-stocks-spike-after-trumps-comments-iran
Whoops never mind 🤷. Just Trump lying again! Wtf? I think he might have dementia!
The Zig Zag approach to diplomacy.
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Keep movin’, movin’, movin’
Though they’re disapprovin’
Keep them dogies movin’
Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em
Just rope and throw and brand ’em
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.
Trump had ZERO talks with Iran. Iran even said so. He caved because none of the Neocon ideas are working and won’t work. Iran has the upper hand. They are fighting an asymmetric war and are will to collapse the global economy.
They have laid out their conditions to end the war.
1. Reparations
2. Get out of the Middle East
3. Never attack us again
I’m surprised they did not mention having Israel’s nuclear stockpile which no one ever admits, verified by independent agencies.
1. The tolls will be the reparations.
2. They are getting out. Ground operation will be necessary to really clean up.
3. Probably going to happen
4. Tag team of Russia and China will then take care of stockpile.
Hahahahaha. Anti-imperialist ground operation. Lebensraum huh? It’s like you’re a repressed Catholic and you just got dropped off at your freshman dorm at Moonofalabama University. Party time!
I don’t see another way.
Another way to what? Victory over Collapse?
obtain the stated goals of removing us bases from the region. do you just listen to american sources?
You really have no idea what is coming do you?
UBS CEO says energy prices are “likely to stay high for the foreseeable future”
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2035980867655381075
Goldman Sachs says current oil crisis is “the largest-ever supply shock for global crude markets.”
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2036016603184382157
I would agree with the statement, “The oil crisis is the largest-ever supply shock for global crude markets.”
Usually, high oil prices lead to high interest rates and the combination leads to recession. It is unusual for oil prices to stay high for a long period, although they did from 2011 to 2013 when interest rates were very low and US debt levels were rising. Also, world oil and coal supplies were rising.
Why it is open in the 21st say?
Someone asked me how to keep the site open longer, and I figured out how to raise the number of days to 31.
Gilt yield for the 10 year is at 5.06%
Sorry here is the link:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-bond-yield
The link says, “The UK’s 10-year gilt yield pulled back to 4.9%, after earlier surging to 5.096%,” so temporarily the UK is saved.
Japan’s government urged citizens not to panic-buy toilet paper as social media posts suggest people are starting to stockpile daily necessities out of concern over the war in the Middle East
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/03/23/japan/toilet-paper-panic/
I am sure that toilet paper production uses oil for harvesting the wood, and electricity (based on natural gas) for processing the toilet paper. All processes tend to hit bottlenecks when oil and natural gas are not available. These folks are not crazy.
Russia is happy to regain its market in Slovakia
Last year, only 33 percent of the gas supplied by SPP came from Russia.
This year, that figure may rise.
Gas industry officials say that Moscow could cover up to the majority of our consumption, despite the suspension of transit through Ukraine.
They have signed a new amendment to the contract with Gazprom.
https://hnonline.sk/finweb/ekonomika/96271727-moskva-dosiahla-obrat-rusky-plyn-si-zas-nasiel-cestu-na-slovensko-spp-pre-hn-pokryt-moze-vacsinu-spotreby
Lucky you. The moment Fico is replaced by someone like Kaya the spigot will close.
It is not about Fico and his political camp. Fico advocates Druzhba route, while there is a war zone. It is not in the interest of Ukraine to transport Russian gas. It must come to Slovakia through different routes.
I would say that Argentina or Canada with their new projects of costly LNG are happy.
Let’s how much France and the UK are going to get. Also has anyone else noticed the vertical drop in power Bruxelles has had this month?
There are always winners and losers.
Birol of the IEA compares the situation to being more severe than both 1970s oil shocks combined
https://x.com/FirstSquawk/status/2035894184218100057
JUST IN: Pakistan has ordered cricket fans to stay home during top tournament and watch matches on television to conserve fuel.
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2035886756369719307
The good news is that Trump will lose both the House and Senate in November. The bad news is that democrats are just as supportive of USrael. So things may not look all that different when they arrive in January.
The good news is that there are still free people who can stop this insanity. The bad news is they can’t be involved with any political party.
Are we setting up for another AM3RICAN”revolution ” 2.0? How exciting (sarcasm)
Not seeing any protests yet in the streets…
How does a revolution against censorship foment with a rallying cry of, “Buy, Digress & Sanctify”?
The whole system is set to work in a zig-zag manner. Without enough energy of the right kinds, the economy will tend to work poorly. New leaders will likely to also have huge problems, but perhaps different problems.
The whole system may tend to crack. Perhaps Social Security and Medicare cannot be maintained in their current forms, for example, or major debt defaults will start.
Has anyone had “the talk” with their close friends and family about the “economy is made of only one thing, diesel”? (simplified and effective)
Is someone in another country? What happens when even jet fuel runs short? This has had a surprising reaction or two. No one gets that being across the Pacific, flying East… might be an issue … pretty quickly.
No, not directly, but there is a quiet sense of impending disaster around the corner if Trumps gamble gambit does not work, Folks just want to talk about it now, too horrible and ugly a topic. At least at my workplace.
Apple CEO Tim Cook urges people to stop “doomscrolling”
https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2035827601093091814
agree
suddenly people are paying attention—
a year or few ago, it was all a hoax, a plot by the elders—there was going to be breakthrough to give us free energy forever. (or that free tech was being with held from the masses so the elite could have the planet to themselves.)
all planned—lol…
well—whaddya know?—-Bezos backs donnie, and Bezos discovers that without diesel he becomes a pauper like the rest of us. His game of pass the parcel stops dead.
In the spirit of BAU forever, my wife and I have a Danube river cruise booked in late May. It is fully paid. The question is, will the airline still be flying?
Will the river boat company still be cruising? Will they even have any diesel?
If we manage to get over there and possibly enjoy the cruise, will we be able to get a flight back?
Will I be brave enough (or foolish enough) to try to go if this clusteryouknowwhat is not resolved?
Stay tuned…
Exactly this. If force majeure is declared, the knock on can take out everything we rely on.
Good comment JK. Now they will listen I guess. Though flights will be reduced only by 20-30%.
They believe in the green transition and tech fixes
They believe what the authorities tell them to believe.
Here it comes…
“Countries reliant on imports to power their economies will have to pay sky-high prices to compete for LNG supplies from the US and elsewhere, switch to other fuels or force households and businesses to use less.”
https://www.ft.com/content/64c5a600-1fc8-4370-b5d6-8a0bc273a33f
> World faces gas supply cliff edge as Gulf’s final LNG shipments approach ports
Carriers that departed from the Middle East before Iran’s missile attacks began are due to arrive in the next 10 days
Countries around the world are facing a cliff-edge as the flow of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf comes to an abrupt end in the next 10 days, when a handful of final tankers from the region reach their destinations.
Qatar, which produces a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, had to stop exports after Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, in the first few days of the conflict.
It has since suffered enormous damage to its giant Ras Laffan LNG plant, which was attacked by Iranian missiles this week, sending gas prices in Asia and Europe soaring.
But many LNG carriers that loaded at Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were already on their way to destinations before the war started, according to analysis by independent shipbroker Affinity, meaning that some customers are only now about to feel the pain of lost supply.
Countries reliant on imports to power their economies will have to pay sky-high prices to compete for LNG supplies from the US and elsewhere, switch to other fuels or force households and businesses to use less.
.. Until more ships are allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, global LNG supplies will remain tight.
Even then, there will be less available to the market because 17 per cent of Qatar’s LNG capacity will continue to be out of service for between three and five years because of the attacks on Ras Laffan, the country’s energy minister Saad Al-Kaabi said this week.
“This means that we will be compelled to declare force majeure for up to five years on some long-term LNG contracts,” said Al-Kaabi.
I agree with Stanislav that Europe is in deep trouble and will probably face mass starvation because of lower food yields. That possibly will include civil wars because of their immigration policies where the government will take probably care of immigrants before their own people.
The Gulf States will be uninhabitable if Trump goes thru with his promise and Iran retaliates and goes after their energy infrastructure and desalination plants.
Uh oh! Those Viking cruises better hurry up and get those rich baby boomers over there and back! I can’t imagine that Americans will be very popular in Europe now!
I of course disagree. Money talks and they have more than many Middle Eastern and Third World countries. I am convinced this is aimed at depopulating the enemies of Israel, plus some places like Cuba and Sri Lanka. The latter incidentally is at odds with the hegemon over its refusal to give a vast tract of land for a base.
Next round maybe but Europe will freeze rather than starve this time.
money is only worth the energy available to underpin it—-that is a universal law.
this is why aboriginal tribes do not need or use money—they do not try to expend more energy than their lifestyle produces.
when a nation no longer has energy energy input to support its social system, printing money will not make energy materialise out of nothing.
you cannot eat money, or put it in your fuel tank
Long term. This year euros are going to be worth more than cuban pesos, although they are both backed by little energy.
“The Gulf States will be uninhabitable if Trump goes thru with his promise and Iran retaliates and goes after their energy infrastructure and desalination plants”
I think you have been misinformed. Only squatter and US, not the Arabs.
“Following previous warnings, if Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure is attacked by the enemy, all infrastructure of energy, information technology, and desalination facilities belonging to the US and the (Zionist) regime in the region will be targeted,”
Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaqari
https://www.tasnimnews.ir/en/news/2026/03/22/3546545/iran-cautions-enemy-against-attack-on-fuel-energy-infrastructures
One for the Persian cat lovers
https://x.com/AngelicaOung/status/2034629782776987741
Listen fitz the elders had many plans up their sleeves but know this dependent on the world’s cooperation and available energy resources the world was not interested in living with intermittent energy they wanted BAU so now they will get one of the elders worst-case scenarios i believe it was called the barbarianism scenario that is why is being obliterated, for a transition into this sort of world certain religions would be wiped out. Think hunger games if society is heading for hunger games world then certain religions have to go.
The corporation have always destroyed anything that binds community. You only need to look at the hollowed out, usury worshipping shell, that is Christianity.
They allow religion as long as it’s only worn as fancy dress, rather than a thing of substance that you follow and live by. Hardly any wonder that they hate Islam.
Hunger games is just silly, but with a population so in thrall to their corporate masters, westerners are probably thick enough to go along.
Avoid these people Adonis.
Religion can help provide order, when governments and corporations are failing. Humans need rules. They need other people to interact with. They need people who are not closely related for their children to marry.
I do agree, as long as it’s run locally. Religion is one of many communal binding activities that have been slowly and deliberately eroded.
If you have time, look at how similar religious teachings can be.
https://english.masirahtv.net/post/54517/23rd-Ramadan-Lecture%2C-by-Leader-of-the-Revolution%2C-Sayyed-Abdulmalik-Al-Houthi%2C-Interpreted-into-English%2C
Of course, in that region, religions have always intermingled, as they all practise the important foundations.
I have always been amazed at how similar religions are. People pass down “best practices” regarding how we are to treat our neighbors. They gradually adapt as conditions change. People everywhere pray for good harvests, and give thanks when those harvests are received.
US LNG suppliers will benefit from sky-high LNG prices. These high LNG prices will tend to push down the economies of countries using the LNG (especially Europe and India).
If LNG prices are high, the US can extract more natural gas (from wells that would otherwise be marginal). The US has a huge amount of LNG export infrastructure “in the works.” In fact, I find it hard to believe that it all could be used, without a big long-term spike in natural gas prices.
If an economy is sufficiently efficient, it can perhaps deal with high electricity prices. electricity needs to be used mostly for production of goods–not for frivolous things like heating and air conditioning.