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𝐄𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫? 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧’𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target in mid-2025, five years ahead of schedule. Sugar prices were around ₹39,000 per tonne then, fell to ₹36,500 by March, and then surged to ₹54,000 within just five months. That sharp spike doesn’t... fit the narrative that ethanol was steadily draining sugar supplies. In fact, mills diverted 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝 towards ethanol. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐭? 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. 🌍 Brazil’s sugar output fell 26%, while Thailand’s dropped by over 15%, turning an expected global surplus into a 𝟑.𝟑 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭. Watch the debunking of the sugar crisis myth, backed by real facts and numbers. 📊⛽show more

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𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐁𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐓 𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐂𝐁𝐈 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐓 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 #𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐦! ! How a policy that promised to lower fuel prices turned into a massive transfer of wealth that enriches politicians while bleeding the common citizen dry. Understand the Chronology: 1️⃣ The Broken Promise: Citizens were promised petrol at ₹15/litre via ethanol blending. Instead, the E20 timeline was prematurely forced ahead to 2025 instead of 2030. 2️⃣ The Sugar Crisis: PSU bank loans funded ethanol distilleries. Then sugarcane was diverted from food production, thus engineering an artificial sugar shortage. 3️⃣ Economic Damage: As sugar prices went through the roof INDIA had to shif from a sugar exporter to an importer, hurting our foreign reserves. 4️⃣ Vehicle Destruction: 80–90% of vehicles on Indian roads are only E10-compliant. Forcing E20 fuel by advancing the date of implementation caused damage and heavy repair bills on top of increasing Fuel Bills. 5️⃣ Who Really Profits? Farmers aren't prospering. The skyrocketing Food inflation & Fuel bills means Citizens suffer. The actual beneficiaries? The kids, friends, and relatives of netas. The #SugarScam was designed as a policy to line elite pockets while everyday Indians pay the price. If the CBI Director fails to take cognizance and register an FIR immediately, WE WILL MOVE TO COURT AND TAKE HIM TO COURT AS WELL. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! 💥 JAI HIND 🇮🇳 JAI BHARAT TEHSEEN POONAWALLA, Founder, TEAM BHARAT Bharat Bachao Aandolan Nidhhi Sharma Dinesh Rattan Dhillon Ishaan Bharadwaj Vishal Singh Jain gauri joshi Shanky Ram Nachiket Deshpande

𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐁𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐓 𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐂𝐁𝐈 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐓 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 #𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐦! ! How a policy that promised to lower fuel prices turned into a massive transfer of wealth that enriches politicians while bleeding the common citizen dry. Understand the Chronology: 1️⃣ The Broken Promise: Citizens were promised petrol at ₹15/litre via ethanol blending. Instead, the E20 timeline was prematurely forced ahead to 2025 instead of 2030. 2️⃣ The Sugar Crisis: PSU bank loans funded ethanol distilleries. Then sugarcane was diverted from food production, thus engineering an artificial sugar shortage. 3️⃣ Economic Damage: As sugar prices went through the roof INDIA had to shif from a sugar exporter to an importer, hurting our foreign reserves. 4️⃣ Vehicle Destruction: 80–90% of vehicles on Indian roads are only E10-compliant. Forcing E20 fuel by advancing the date of implementation caused damage and heavy repair bills on top of increasing Fuel Bills. 5️⃣ Who Really Profits? Farmers aren't prospering. The skyrocketing Food inflation & Fuel bills means Citizens suffer. The actual beneficiaries? The kids, friends, and relatives of netas. The #SugarScam was designed as a policy to line elite pockets while everyday Indians pay the price. If the CBI Director fails to take cognizance and register an FIR immediately, WE WILL MOVE TO COURT AND TAKE HIM TO COURT AS WELL. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! 💥 JAI HIND 🇮🇳 JAI BHARAT TEHSEEN POONAWALLA, Founder, TEAM BHARAT Bharat Bachao Aandolan Nidhhi Sharma Dinesh Rattan Dhillon Ishaan Bharadwaj Vishal Singh Jain gauri joshi Shanky Ram Nachiket Deshpande

Tehseen Poonawalla Official 🇮🇳

25,491 views • 5 days ago

THE E20 DEBATE: FACTS VS HYPOCRISY. HERE'S AN UNDENIABLE FACT: The E20 programme did not begin under the Modi government. Ethanol blending was approved years earlier, during the UPA. The difference is in execution. Blending remained stuck at roughly 1–1.5% for years before accelerating significantly under the NDA. So, let's first get the politics out of the way. If ethanol blending was acceptable in principle then, why is it suddenly portrayed as anti-people now? Now, let's look at the arguments being presented by critics: CRITICS ARGUMENT 1: E20 FUEL IS BEING PUSHED BY NDA TO KEEP SUGAR CANE FARMERS HAPPY. There's no doubt Ethanol is creating an additional income stream for sugarcane farmers. But governments have always handed out subsidies or incentives to farmers. + MSP exists for 23 crops. Sugar cane farmers get SAP or State Advised Price. + Fertiliser subsidies. + Cheap or free electricity. + Irrigation subsidies. + Procurement policies. If these benefits to farmers are accepted as legitimate public policy, why is E20 policy being targeted in isolation for market distortion? CRITICS ARGUMENT 2: ETHANOL PRODUCTION IS WATER CONSUMING. Yes, sugarcane consumes a great deal of water. But so do + Paddy cultivators. Just look at the tumbling water tables in Punjab, Haryana. + AI and data centers. + Semiconductor manufacturing. + Steel and cement production. The question is not whether something uses water, but whether the benefits justify the costs. Again why are critics holding E20 alone to a test that they don't set for others? CRITICS ARGUMENT 3: THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT MAKE E20 MANDATORY. LEAVE IT TO CHOICE. We're in a democracy and choice matters. But governments routinely make decisions that we, the people have no choice but to accept. + Taxation rates + Emission norms. + Fuel quality standards. + Safety regulations. + Identity Proof. These are often choices imposed to achieve broader national goals. Shouldn't E20 should be judged in the same way? Here's how E20 usage serves NATIONAL INTEREST: + India imports 85–90% of its crude oil. E20 seeks to address that by replacing up to 20% of petrol volume with domestically produced ethanol, helping diversify the fuel mix and reducing import costs. + With E20 NDA estimates saving Rs 1 lakh crore in foreign-exchange. CRITICS ARGUMENT 4: COST OF CAR ENGINE WEAR AND TEAR, MILEAGE INEFFICIENCY OUTWEIGHS BENEFITS. It is true that Ethanol has about 34% less energy per litre than petrol. But because E20 contains only 20% ethanol, the overall energy content of the fuel falls by roughly 4%–7%. So at 5% a car that gives 20 km/L on pure petrol will give 19km/L. But usage also improves air quality. Which increases longevity in humans and lowers healthcare costs over time. That is s fair trade-off. CONCLUSION: Every policy is a trade off. E20 isn't perfect. But if agricultural subsidies, procurement, irrigation policy and fuel regulations are accepted as legitimate public policy, then judge ethanol using the same yardstick.

THE E20 DEBATE: FACTS VS HYPOCRISY. HERE'S AN UNDENIABLE FACT: The E20 programme did not begin under the Modi government. Ethanol blending was approved years earlier, during the UPA. The difference is in execution. Blending remained stuck at roughly 1–1.5% for years before accelerating significantly under the NDA. So, let's first get the politics out of the way. If ethanol blending was acceptable in principle then, why is it suddenly portrayed as anti-people now? Now, let's look at the arguments being presented by critics: CRITICS ARGUMENT 1: E20 FUEL IS BEING PUSHED BY NDA TO KEEP SUGAR CANE FARMERS HAPPY. There's no doubt Ethanol is creating an additional income stream for sugarcane farmers. But governments have always handed out subsidies or incentives to farmers. + MSP exists for 23 crops. Sugar cane farmers get SAP or State Advised Price. + Fertiliser subsidies. + Cheap or free electricity. + Irrigation subsidies. + Procurement policies. If these benefits to farmers are accepted as legitimate public policy, why is E20 policy being targeted in isolation for market distortion? CRITICS ARGUMENT 2: ETHANOL PRODUCTION IS WATER CONSUMING. Yes, sugarcane consumes a great deal of water. But so do + Paddy cultivators. Just look at the tumbling water tables in Punjab, Haryana. + AI and data centers. + Semiconductor manufacturing. + Steel and cement production. The question is not whether something uses water, but whether the benefits justify the costs. Again why are critics holding E20 alone to a test that they don't set for others? CRITICS ARGUMENT 3: THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT MAKE E20 MANDATORY. LEAVE IT TO CHOICE. We're in a democracy and choice matters. But governments routinely make decisions that we, the people have no choice but to accept. + Taxation rates + Emission norms. + Fuel quality standards. + Safety regulations. + Identity Proof. These are often choices imposed to achieve broader national goals. Shouldn't E20 should be judged in the same way? Here's how E20 usage serves NATIONAL INTEREST: + India imports 85–90% of its crude oil. E20 seeks to address that by replacing up to 20% of petrol volume with domestically produced ethanol, helping diversify the fuel mix and reducing import costs. + With E20 NDA estimates saving Rs 1 lakh crore in foreign-exchange. CRITICS ARGUMENT 4: COST OF CAR ENGINE WEAR AND TEAR, MILEAGE INEFFICIENCY OUTWEIGHS BENEFITS. It is true that Ethanol has about 34% less energy per litre than petrol. But because E20 contains only 20% ethanol, the overall energy content of the fuel falls by roughly 4%–7%. So at 5% a car that gives 20 km/L on pure petrol will give 19km/L. But usage also improves air quality. Which increases longevity in humans and lowers healthcare costs over time. That is s fair trade-off. CONCLUSION: Every policy is a trade off. E20 isn't perfect. But if agricultural subsidies, procurement, irrigation policy and fuel regulations are accepted as legitimate public policy, then judge ethanol using the same yardstick.

Rahul Shivshankar

270,027 views • 1 month ago

EXXON CEO WARNS $150 OIL WITHIN WEEKS: THE SHORTAGE THE MARKET IGNORED Josh Young of Bison Interests and Bison just laid out the numbers that flip the entire oil narrative on its head. The numbers coming out of the energy markets have flipped from bearish complacency to outright crisis faster than almost anyone modeled. A balanced global oil system has lost up to 14 million barrels of daily supply in a matter of weeks. Inventories are draining at hundreds of millions of barrels per month with virtually no demand destruction to offset the loss. THE SUPPLY SHOCK AND CYCLE REALITY ➡️ Global supply has dropped by 10 to 14 million barrels per day to around 90 to 92 million barrels daily. ➡️ The market was already 15 years into a down cycle of underinvestment before the conflict hit. ➡️ Traders had positioned for a glut that the fundamentals never supported. THE INVENTORY CRISIS ACCELERATES ➡️ Storage has plunged from 8.3 billion to nearly 7 billion barrels in just months. ➡️ Monthly depletion of 300 to 500 million barrels continues without relief. ➡️ Tank bottoms are approaching fast, threatening the basic functioning of global oil logistics. THE DEMAND AND RECOVERY DYNAMICS ➡️ Demand destruction remains minimal and largely availability driven rather than economic. ➡️ Even immediate reopening of key chokepoints would require two to three months for normalization. ➡️ Additional inventory losses of 500 million to 1 billion barrels are already locked in. THE $150 OIL WARNING FROM THE TOP ➡️ Exxon and Chevron CEOs stated within weeks they expect $150 plus physical oil. ➡️ Their conservative stance makes this warning all the more significant for the market. ➡️ The data on collapsing supply and vanishing storage fully supports their assessment. THE BOTTOM LINE The war has accelerated an already tightening oil cycle into a full-blown supply crisis. With inventories crashing and almost no demand response to cushion the blow, the market is now set for materially higher prices over an extended period. The old glut fears have been exposed as fundamentally misplaced. This is the supply crisis that forces the re-rating of oil higher. #OilSupplyCrisis #HigherOilPrices #InventoryDrawdown #EnergyBull #WTI #TankBottoms #SupplyShock HT: YouTube Natural Resource Stocks Josh Young

EXXON CEO WARNS $150 OIL WITHIN WEEKS: THE SHORTAGE THE MARKET IGNORED Josh Young of Bison Interests and Bison just laid out the numbers that flip the entire oil narrative on its head. The numbers coming out of the energy markets have flipped from bearish complacency to outright crisis faster than almost anyone modeled. A balanced global oil system has lost up to 14 million barrels of daily supply in a matter of weeks. Inventories are draining at hundreds of millions of barrels per month with virtually no demand destruction to offset the loss. THE SUPPLY SHOCK AND CYCLE REALITY ➡️ Global supply has dropped by 10 to 14 million barrels per day to around 90 to 92 million barrels daily. ➡️ The market was already 15 years into a down cycle of underinvestment before the conflict hit. ➡️ Traders had positioned for a glut that the fundamentals never supported. THE INVENTORY CRISIS ACCELERATES ➡️ Storage has plunged from 8.3 billion to nearly 7 billion barrels in just months. ➡️ Monthly depletion of 300 to 500 million barrels continues without relief. ➡️ Tank bottoms are approaching fast, threatening the basic functioning of global oil logistics. THE DEMAND AND RECOVERY DYNAMICS ➡️ Demand destruction remains minimal and largely availability driven rather than economic. ➡️ Even immediate reopening of key chokepoints would require two to three months for normalization. ➡️ Additional inventory losses of 500 million to 1 billion barrels are already locked in. THE $150 OIL WARNING FROM THE TOP ➡️ Exxon and Chevron CEOs stated within weeks they expect $150 plus physical oil. ➡️ Their conservative stance makes this warning all the more significant for the market. ➡️ The data on collapsing supply and vanishing storage fully supports their assessment. THE BOTTOM LINE The war has accelerated an already tightening oil cycle into a full-blown supply crisis. With inventories crashing and almost no demand response to cushion the blow, the market is now set for materially higher prices over an extended period. The old glut fears have been exposed as fundamentally misplaced. This is the supply crisis that forces the re-rating of oil higher. #OilSupplyCrisis #HigherOilPrices #InventoryDrawdown #EnergyBull #WTI #TankBottoms #SupplyShock HT: YouTube Natural Resource Stocks Josh Young

Mark

18,685 views • 2 months ago

Wall Street just pulled off the exact move that turned 2008 from a housing problem into a global collapse. They turned Nvidia graphics cards into bonds, stamped them investment grade, and started selling them into the funds that hold retirement money. Here is what happened while everyone was busy arguing about whether AI stocks were overvalued: The company at the center is CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips to AI companies. To buy those chips, it borrows enormous sums, and the collateral on the loans is the chips themselves. That alone is alarming because a graphics card LOSES most of its value within a few years as the next generation makes it obsolete. You are lending against an asset built to rot. In January, Nvidia invested $2 billion straight into CoreWeave, which then used borrowed money to buy more Nvidia chips. On March 31, CoreWeave closed an $8.5 billion loan backed by its chips, and for the first time the rating agencies stamped that chip-backed debt investment grade, with Moody's assigning it an A3. Debt secured by depreciating graphics cards was rated nearly as SAFE as a blue-chip corporate bond. Then on May 18, CoreWeave closed the first chip-backed facility designed to be publicly syndicated and traded on secondary markets. And that's the part that really matters because it means this debt can now be sliced up, passed around, and bought by anyone, including the bond funds and pension managers who are required to hold "safe" investment-grade paper. On June 11, it announced another $3.5 billion in bonds on top of all of it. Now compare this to what happened in the past: Subprime mortgages in 2007 were not dangerous because some people got loans they couldn't repay... They became a global bomb the moment that debt got rated AAA and sold into the wider financial system, because the rating is what let it bleed into money market funds, pensions, and bank balance sheets that were supposed to be boring and safe. The bad loans were the spark but the packaging and rating were the detonator. And that detonator just got built for AI. Debt backed by graphics cards is now rated investment grade and trades on secondary markets, which means the AI bubble is no longer trapped inside tech stocks you can choose not to own. It has been quietly converted into bonds and routed toward the retirement accounts of people who have never typed a single prompt in their lives. And the whole structure rests on a backlog of customer "commitments" that CoreWeave values at nearly $100 BILLION, backed by a $21 billion Meta deal and a $6 billion Jane Street deal. Those are promises to pay over many years, made by AI companies that are themselves mostly unprofitable and burning cash. If even a few of those customers slow down or walk away, the collateral sitting under all this rated debt is a warehouse of chips losing value by the month. The AI bubble used to be a stock-market story you could opt out of. But as of this spring, that isn't the case anymore. So here's the real question: When the people packaging this debt swear to you that it's safe, who do you think is standing on the other side of that trade?

Wall Street just pulled off the exact move that turned 2008 from a housing problem into a global collapse. They turned Nvidia graphics cards into bonds, stamped them investment grade, and started selling them into the funds that hold retirement money. Here is what happened while everyone was busy arguing about whether AI stocks were overvalued: The company at the center is CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips to AI companies. To buy those chips, it borrows enormous sums, and the collateral on the loans is the chips themselves. That alone is alarming because a graphics card LOSES most of its value within a few years as the next generation makes it obsolete. You are lending against an asset built to rot. In January, Nvidia invested $2 billion straight into CoreWeave, which then used borrowed money to buy more Nvidia chips. On March 31, CoreWeave closed an $8.5 billion loan backed by its chips, and for the first time the rating agencies stamped that chip-backed debt investment grade, with Moody's assigning it an A3. Debt secured by depreciating graphics cards was rated nearly as SAFE as a blue-chip corporate bond. Then on May 18, CoreWeave closed the first chip-backed facility designed to be publicly syndicated and traded on secondary markets. And that's the part that really matters because it means this debt can now be sliced up, passed around, and bought by anyone, including the bond funds and pension managers who are required to hold "safe" investment-grade paper. On June 11, it announced another $3.5 billion in bonds on top of all of it. Now compare this to what happened in the past: Subprime mortgages in 2007 were not dangerous because some people got loans they couldn't repay... They became a global bomb the moment that debt got rated AAA and sold into the wider financial system, because the rating is what let it bleed into money market funds, pensions, and bank balance sheets that were supposed to be boring and safe. The bad loans were the spark but the packaging and rating were the detonator. And that detonator just got built for AI. Debt backed by graphics cards is now rated investment grade and trades on secondary markets, which means the AI bubble is no longer trapped inside tech stocks you can choose not to own. It has been quietly converted into bonds and routed toward the retirement accounts of people who have never typed a single prompt in their lives. And the whole structure rests on a backlog of customer "commitments" that CoreWeave values at nearly $100 BILLION, backed by a $21 billion Meta deal and a $6 billion Jane Street deal. Those are promises to pay over many years, made by AI companies that are themselves mostly unprofitable and burning cash. If even a few of those customers slow down or walk away, the collateral sitting under all this rated debt is a warehouse of chips losing value by the month. The AI bubble used to be a stock-market story you could opt out of. But as of this spring, that isn't the case anymore. So here's the real question: When the people packaging this debt swear to you that it's safe, who do you think is standing on the other side of that trade?

Ricardo

212,004 views • 2 months ago

The Oil Shock Is Hitting A Supply Chain Already Rewired Under Stress The real danger here is hat the global economy is entering the worst energy shock of our lifetimes after already spending the last year rewiring trade under tariff pressure, China decoupling, front loaded inventories, and longer supply routes. That matters because fragility rarely comes from one shock. It comes when one shock lands on top of a system that already had its buffers removed. The China Trade Collapse The China trade collapse is real. Census data shows U.S. goods imports from China fell from $438.7 billion in 2024 to $308.4 billion in 2025, a decline of almost 30%. U.S. exports to China fell from $143.2 billion to $106.3 billion, and the bilateral goods deficit dropped to $202.1 billion, the lowest level in years. That is not a blip. That is structural decoupling. But the key nuance is that global trade did not collapse with it. UNCTAD says global trade still grew about 7.5% in 2025 to a record $35 trillion, while BEA data shows total U.S. imports rose 4.8% and the overall trade deficit barely moved, falling only 0.2% to $901.5 billion. The Rerouting Illusion That means the world did not stop trading. It rerouted. China was partly replaced by Mexico, Vietnam, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and other nodes. On paper, that looks like resilience. In reality, it also means more complexity, more shipping dependence, more customs friction, more insurance risk, more working capital tied up in inventory, and more fuel burned per unit of goods moved. The supply chain survived the tariff shock by becoming less efficient. Now Place An Oil Shock On Top Of That The IEA says global observed oil inventories fell by 85 million barrels in March, while stocks outside the Middle East Gulf fell by 205 million barrels as Hormuz flows were choked off. It also said oil export losses now exceed 13 million barrels per day, with cumulative supply losses of more than 360 million barrels in March and 440 million projected for April. The peak daily supply loss is already above 12 million barrels per day, larger than the 1973 Arab oil embargo at roughly 4.5 million barrels per day and the 1978 to 1979 Iranian Revolution at roughly 5.6 million. The Inventory Signal The chart is showing the physical cushion disappearing. Once inventories fall fast enough, price stops being the only rationing mechanism. The system starts rationing through behavior, policy, and scarcity. Airlines cut routes. Truckers pass through diesel costs. Food prices rise. Fertilizer gets tighter. Refineries prioritize. Governments release reserves. Then come pressure campaigns, fuel allocation, export controls, industrial curtailments, remote work mandates, speed limits, and priority access for military, emergency services, farming, and food logistics. What An Energy Lockdown Would Actually Look Like That is what an energy lockdown would look like. Not necessarily COVID style house arrest, but a forced reduction in mobility because the fuel system cannot support normal economic life at normal prices. The 1970s gave us gas lines, odd even rationing, Sunday station closures, and a 55 mph speed limit. Today’s version would be more technocratic, more targeted, and probably sold as temporary conservation. But the logic is the same. When energy is scarce, freedom of movement becomes a policy variable. My Take The oil shock is bad enough by itself. The real danger is that it is hitting a trade system already made more fragile by tariffs and China decoupling. Trade did not collapse in 2025. It rerouted. But rerouted trade depends on cheap, available fuel. If Hormuz stays disrupted, this becomes an inflation, logistics, food, credit, and political stability shock. The market is focused on the price of oil, but the real warning is the inventory draw. Once the spare barrels are gone, energy stops being managed by markets alone and starts being managed by allocation.

The Oil Shock Is Hitting A Supply Chain Already Rewired Under Stress The real danger here is hat the global economy is entering the worst energy shock of our lifetimes after already spending the last year rewiring trade under tariff pressure, China decoupling, front loaded inventories, and longer supply routes. That matters because fragility rarely comes from one shock. It comes when one shock lands on top of a system that already had its buffers removed. The China Trade Collapse The China trade collapse is real. Census data shows U.S. goods imports from China fell from $438.7 billion in 2024 to $308.4 billion in 2025, a decline of almost 30%. U.S. exports to China fell from $143.2 billion to $106.3 billion, and the bilateral goods deficit dropped to $202.1 billion, the lowest level in years. That is not a blip. That is structural decoupling. But the key nuance is that global trade did not collapse with it. UNCTAD says global trade still grew about 7.5% in 2025 to a record $35 trillion, while BEA data shows total U.S. imports rose 4.8% and the overall trade deficit barely moved, falling only 0.2% to $901.5 billion. The Rerouting Illusion That means the world did not stop trading. It rerouted. China was partly replaced by Mexico, Vietnam, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and other nodes. On paper, that looks like resilience. In reality, it also means more complexity, more shipping dependence, more customs friction, more insurance risk, more working capital tied up in inventory, and more fuel burned per unit of goods moved. The supply chain survived the tariff shock by becoming less efficient. Now Place An Oil Shock On Top Of That The IEA says global observed oil inventories fell by 85 million barrels in March, while stocks outside the Middle East Gulf fell by 205 million barrels as Hormuz flows were choked off. It also said oil export losses now exceed 13 million barrels per day, with cumulative supply losses of more than 360 million barrels in March and 440 million projected for April. The peak daily supply loss is already above 12 million barrels per day, larger than the 1973 Arab oil embargo at roughly 4.5 million barrels per day and the 1978 to 1979 Iranian Revolution at roughly 5.6 million. The Inventory Signal The chart is showing the physical cushion disappearing. Once inventories fall fast enough, price stops being the only rationing mechanism. The system starts rationing through behavior, policy, and scarcity. Airlines cut routes. Truckers pass through diesel costs. Food prices rise. Fertilizer gets tighter. Refineries prioritize. Governments release reserves. Then come pressure campaigns, fuel allocation, export controls, industrial curtailments, remote work mandates, speed limits, and priority access for military, emergency services, farming, and food logistics. What An Energy Lockdown Would Actually Look Like That is what an energy lockdown would look like. Not necessarily COVID style house arrest, but a forced reduction in mobility because the fuel system cannot support normal economic life at normal prices. The 1970s gave us gas lines, odd even rationing, Sunday station closures, and a 55 mph speed limit. Today’s version would be more technocratic, more targeted, and probably sold as temporary conservation. But the logic is the same. When energy is scarce, freedom of movement becomes a policy variable. My Take The oil shock is bad enough by itself. The real danger is that it is hitting a trade system already made more fragile by tariffs and China decoupling. Trade did not collapse in 2025. It rerouted. But rerouted trade depends on cheap, available fuel. If Hormuz stays disrupted, this becomes an inflation, logistics, food, credit, and political stability shock. The market is focused on the price of oil, but the real warning is the inventory draw. Once the spare barrels are gone, energy stops being managed by markets alone and starts being managed by allocation.

EndGame Macro

41,818 views • 4 months ago

$Jeff Currie of Carlyle went on live television and said the oil market is completely mispriced. He said futures price crude at around $100 a barrel, but physical oil delivered to Asian refiners is actually costing between $130 and $170. At one point this month, Oman crude, the benchmark for oil on the free side of the Strait spiked all the way to $173 a barrel. The paper market and the real world have completely split from each other and Currie was explicit about why that split is dangerous. He said jet fuel spiked to $230 a barrel in Singapore last week, then the same spike hit Rotterdam at $220 a barrel, then Thailand, then the Philippines, then New Zealand, then Australia. He called it molecular contagion, a physical shortage virus spreading across global supply hubs one by one. To understand why that phrase matters, consider what the Strait of Hormuz actually is. Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day moved through that single 100-mile waterway. The IEA now says flows have dropped from 20 million barrels per day to what they described as a trickle and Barclays estimates the effective supply loss at 13 to 14 million barrels per day in a prolonged closure scenario. Currie said there are no more spare barrels in the system. The price spread between Singapore and Rotterdam which normally tells traders where surplus oil is sitting has completely disappeared and when that spread goes to zero, there is no buffer left anywhere on earth. He said this supply shock is nearly equal in size to the COVID demand crash, and he reminded viewers what COVID did to global supply chains. COVID wiped out approximately 20 million barrels per day of demand and fractured supply chains for two full years. This war has now wiped out a comparable volume of supply and supply chains cannot work from home. The data behind his warning is already visible. Middle Eastern crude exports to Asia have collapsed from roughly 19 million barrels per day in February to under 7 million barrels per day in March. Dubai crude surged past $166 a barrel on March 19, hitting an all-time record and Oman crude crossed $150 for the first time in history just days before. Meanwhile, Chevron's CEO and Shell's CEO both stood up at the CERAWeek conference in Houston and confirmed the same thing Currie said, physical disruptions are now spreading from South Asia into Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and are beginning to reach Europe. Currie said the reason WTI and Brent paper prices stayed suppressed is that Russian Urals crude rallied 65 to 70 dollars a barrel after sanctions were lifted. That closed the gap between cheap Russian oil and expensive Western benchmarks. Once that gap closed, the last pressure valve in the global system shut off and now the entire complex has nowhere to hide.$

Jeff Currie of Carlyle went on live television and said the oil market is completely mispriced. He said futures price crude at around $100 a barrel, but physical oil delivered to Asian refiners is actually costing between $130 and $170. At one point this month, Oman crude, the benchmark for oil on the free side of the Strait spiked all the way to $173 a barrel. The paper market and the real world have completely split from each other and Currie was explicit about why that split is dangerous. He said jet fuel spiked to $230 a barrel in Singapore last week, then the same spike hit Rotterdam at $220 a barrel, then Thailand, then the Philippines, then New Zealand, then Australia. He called it molecular contagion, a physical shortage virus spreading across global supply hubs one by one. To understand why that phrase matters, consider what the Strait of Hormuz actually is. Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day moved through that single 100-mile waterway. The IEA now says flows have dropped from 20 million barrels per day to what they described as a trickle and Barclays estimates the effective supply loss at 13 to 14 million barrels per day in a prolonged closure scenario. Currie said there are no more spare barrels in the system. The price spread between Singapore and Rotterdam which normally tells traders where surplus oil is sitting has completely disappeared and when that spread goes to zero, there is no buffer left anywhere on earth. He said this supply shock is nearly equal in size to the COVID demand crash, and he reminded viewers what COVID did to global supply chains. COVID wiped out approximately 20 million barrels per day of demand and fractured supply chains for two full years. This war has now wiped out a comparable volume of supply and supply chains cannot work from home. The data behind his warning is already visible. Middle Eastern crude exports to Asia have collapsed from roughly 19 million barrels per day in February to under 7 million barrels per day in March. Dubai crude surged past $166 a barrel on March 19, hitting an all-time record and Oman crude crossed $150 for the first time in history just days before. Meanwhile, Chevron's CEO and Shell's CEO both stood up at the CERAWeek conference in Houston and confirmed the same thing Currie said, physical disruptions are now spreading from South Asia into Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and are beginning to reach Europe. Currie said the reason WTI and Brent paper prices stayed suppressed is that Russian Urals crude rallied 65 to 70 dollars a barrel after sanctions were lifted. That closed the gap between cheap Russian oil and expensive Western benchmarks. Once that gap closed, the last pressure valve in the global system shut off and now the entire complex has nowhere to hide.

StockMarket.News

360,518 views • 4 months ago

FRESH PET IS A REAL DOG OF A STOCK My good friend Tom Chanos said at last week’s conference: SHORT FRESH PET STOCK And the market finally started to figure it out. FRPT dropped 10% yesterday on reports that Costco is developing its own fresh dog food under the Kirkland Signature brand to compete directly with Fresh Pet and Blue Buffalo. This is a death blow for a company that was already in serious trouble. For anyone who's been following the Fresh Pet short thesis that was presented at my Best Stock Ideas Summit last week, this is the nail in the coffin. The case was already devastating BEFORE this news: Fresh Pet's Q4 2025 revenue growth came in at 8.6%. Down from 43% in 2022. Down from 22% in 2024. That's an 80% collapse in the growth rate in 3 years. They guided 2026 at 7% to 10%. The lowest in company history. FOUR consecutive quarters of guidance cuts. One year ago they guided 21% to 24%. Now 7% to 10%. Blue Buffalo, backed by General Mills and its $19 billion in revenue, had already launched its "Love Made Fresh" line into Walmart, Target, Kroger, and Costco. At Walmart and Target, Blue Buffalo undercuts Fresh Pet by 30% to 38% on price per pound. That alone was a serious problem for a stock trading at 30 times earnings. Now add Costco private label on top. This would explain something that was flagged at my conference: on a recent Costco store check, the Fresh Pet refrigerator was MISSING. Replaced by a regular Costco refrigerator stocking both Fresh Pet and Blue Buffalo side by side. If Costco launches Kirkland fresh dog food, it will be cheaper than both. That's what Kirkland does. That's the entire playbook. Fresh Pet had the luxury of operating as a monopoly in refrigerated pet food for years. But then First Blue Buffalo entered. And now Costco private label. The monopoly is being dismantled from multiple directions simultaneously. And Fresh Pet's response to Blue Buffalo? They CUT their marketing budget by $13 million last quarter. Right as 2 massive competitors enter the market. The earnings beat everyone celebrated came ENTIRELY from expense cuts, not business strength. Meanwhile, input costs are surging: Beef prices rose 15% in 2025. The USDA forecasts another 5.5% increase in 2026. Cattle inventories at a 75 year low. Fresh Pet can't raise prices because the competition is undercutting them. Sequential revenue went negative for the first time in 17 quarters. Feeding your dog isn't cyclical. So if sequential revenue goes negative, they're LOSING existing customers - before Costco even enters the picture. Over the last five years, Fresh Pet is down 60%. And today's 10% drop isn't the end. It's the beginning. Incredible call from Tom at the conference last week!

George Noble

40,596 views • 5 months ago

CRUDE SHORTAGE WHIPLASH: WHY OIL PRICES WILL SPIKE AFTER THE BACKLOG CLEARS IN DAYS Troy Eckard of Enterprises Oil & Gas Investing has just revealed why the headlines about record crude oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz are misleading at best. What looks like a sudden flood of supply is actually the release of oil that has been loaded and waiting for nearly four months. This temporary surge is masking a much deeper supply problem that the world has been papering over with strategic reserves. Once the backlog is gone, the real supply picture will come into focus fast. THE HORMUZ BACKLOG REALITY ➡️ The recent movement of 19.1 million barrels per day is not new oil from opened wells or increased production. ➡️ It is not coming from storage tanks sitting at the ports ready to go. ➡️ Every single barrel was loaded onto tankers before the strait closed and has been stuck waiting for safe passage. ➡️ The main body of the strait is still not open and remains full of mines. ➡️ Only a narrow pathway is being used to let these long-delayed vessels through. THE SCALE OF WHAT JUST MOVED ➡️ When the strait closed, estimates show 110 to 120 million barrels of oil were trapped on vessels behind the gate. ➡️ That amount equals just one day of total global consumption at 104 million barrels per day. ➡️ At the pace seen recently, that entire backlog will clear in roughly five to six days. ➡️ After those days pass, there will be no equivalent volume of new oil taking its place. THE FOUR-MONTH SUPPLY HOLE ➡️ The closure created a massive 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrel deficit over almost four months. ➡️ The world responded by draining strategic reserves, pipelines, and every available storage to prevent prices from reaching 150 or 200 dollars. ➡️ That emergency action suppressed prices and created the current calm at around 70 dollars and fifty cents. ➡️ But those reserves cannot be drained indefinitely. THE PRICE ILLUSION ➡️ Oil trading near 70 dollars today exists because traders are dumping positions on the back of this one-time inventory release. ➡️ The media is calling it a solution and record progress through the strait. ➡️ In truth, production has not ramped up and new infrastructure is still months away from delivering. ➡️ This is a pretend moment of adequate supply that will not last. THE COMING WHIPLASH ➡️ In five to eight days the extra 100 million barrels of backlog oil will be absorbed into the global supply chain. ➡️ Physical buyers needing real barrels for customers will then enter the market in force. ➡️ A daily shortfall of 8 to 12 million barrels could become clear within three to four weeks. ➡️ The shift from trader covering losses to genuine physical demand will create a sharp reversal. THE BOTTOM LINE The recent drop in oil prices is riding on the final escape of oil that was already in the system long before the recent disruptions. That temporary relief is ending fast, and the underlying four-month supply hole remains unfilled. The market is about to discover that celebrating this surge was premature. This is the sound of the real supply picture reasserting itself. HT: YouTube Eckard Enterprises | Oil & Gas Investing #OilPrices #HormuzBacklog #CrudeOilReality #SupplyShortage #EnergyMarkets #OilWhiplash

CRUDE SHORTAGE WHIPLASH: WHY OIL PRICES WILL SPIKE AFTER THE BACKLOG CLEARS IN DAYS Troy Eckard of Enterprises Oil & Gas Investing has just revealed why the headlines about record crude oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz are misleading at best. What looks like a sudden flood of supply is actually the release of oil that has been loaded and waiting for nearly four months. This temporary surge is masking a much deeper supply problem that the world has been papering over with strategic reserves. Once the backlog is gone, the real supply picture will come into focus fast. THE HORMUZ BACKLOG REALITY ➡️ The recent movement of 19.1 million barrels per day is not new oil from opened wells or increased production. ➡️ It is not coming from storage tanks sitting at the ports ready to go. ➡️ Every single barrel was loaded onto tankers before the strait closed and has been stuck waiting for safe passage. ➡️ The main body of the strait is still not open and remains full of mines. ➡️ Only a narrow pathway is being used to let these long-delayed vessels through. THE SCALE OF WHAT JUST MOVED ➡️ When the strait closed, estimates show 110 to 120 million barrels of oil were trapped on vessels behind the gate. ➡️ That amount equals just one day of total global consumption at 104 million barrels per day. ➡️ At the pace seen recently, that entire backlog will clear in roughly five to six days. ➡️ After those days pass, there will be no equivalent volume of new oil taking its place. THE FOUR-MONTH SUPPLY HOLE ➡️ The closure created a massive 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrel deficit over almost four months. ➡️ The world responded by draining strategic reserves, pipelines, and every available storage to prevent prices from reaching 150 or 200 dollars. ➡️ That emergency action suppressed prices and created the current calm at around 70 dollars and fifty cents. ➡️ But those reserves cannot be drained indefinitely. THE PRICE ILLUSION ➡️ Oil trading near 70 dollars today exists because traders are dumping positions on the back of this one-time inventory release. ➡️ The media is calling it a solution and record progress through the strait. ➡️ In truth, production has not ramped up and new infrastructure is still months away from delivering. ➡️ This is a pretend moment of adequate supply that will not last. THE COMING WHIPLASH ➡️ In five to eight days the extra 100 million barrels of backlog oil will be absorbed into the global supply chain. ➡️ Physical buyers needing real barrels for customers will then enter the market in force. ➡️ A daily shortfall of 8 to 12 million barrels could become clear within three to four weeks. ➡️ The shift from trader covering losses to genuine physical demand will create a sharp reversal. THE BOTTOM LINE The recent drop in oil prices is riding on the final escape of oil that was already in the system long before the recent disruptions. That temporary relief is ending fast, and the underlying four-month supply hole remains unfilled. The market is about to discover that celebrating this surge was premature. This is the sound of the real supply picture reasserting itself. HT: YouTube Eckard Enterprises | Oil & Gas Investing #OilPrices #HormuzBacklog #CrudeOilReality #SupplyShortage #EnergyMarkets #OilWhiplash

Mark

73,368 views • 2 months ago

Warren Buffett just poured $31 BILLION into a stock he swore off for decades. He refused to touch a single tech company for 60 years. Now he's admitting it was his biggest regret. Here is why he finally changed his mind: For decades, Buffett had one simple rule: Only buy businesses you understand, at a fair price. Tech never fit. It moved too fast and was too easy to lose money in. He watched Google go from startup to over $2 trillion and never bought in. He called it one of his biggest mistakes ever. Then something changed: In late 2025, Berkshire quietly started buying Alphabet shares. Alphabet is the company that owns Google, YouTube, and Google Cloud. By mid 2026, the stake had exploded. On June 1, Alphabet raised $80 billion to build AI data centers. Buffett put in $10 billion of it directly. Today Alphabet is one of Berkshire's five largest positions, worth about $31 billion. On July 15, Buffett went on live TV and admitted it was his idea, not his successor's. So why did the man who avoids tech finally break his own rule? > The numbers. In April, Alphabet reported earnings that stunned Wall Street: > Profit per share came in at $5.11 > Analysts expected $2.63 > Revenue hit $109.9 billion, up nearly 22% in a year. > Google Cloud grew 63%. > Its backlog of future cloud orders reached $460 billion. That is real money coming in the door. But here's the part people missed: Even Buffett admitted the business has a problem. Alphabet is spending up to $185 billion this year on AI. That spending cut its free cash flow by 47% in a single quarter. He bought anyway, because the profits were real, the price was fair, and the moat was wide. He waited over 20 years for the math to make sense. Then he moved with total conviction. Now compare that to how most people invest in AI. They chase whatever is going up. They buy on hype, headlines, and fear of missing out. They pile into names they do not understand. Then they panic the moment the story wobbles. Buffett did the opposite: - He ignored the noise for two decades - He waited for the fundamentals to line up, and - He only acted when the rules said yes That is the whole game. It runs on a system that waits for the setup, not emotion. Most people cannot do that on their own. They feel the fear and they act on it. The fix is to take the emotion out completely. That is exactly what Surmount was built for. Automated, rules-based strategies that buy on logic, not feelings. So when the next great setup arrives, you are already positioned.

Warren Buffett just poured $31 BILLION into a stock he swore off for decades. He refused to touch a single tech company for 60 years. Now he's admitting it was his biggest regret. Here is why he finally changed his mind: For decades, Buffett had one simple rule: Only buy businesses you understand, at a fair price. Tech never fit. It moved too fast and was too easy to lose money in. He watched Google go from startup to over $2 trillion and never bought in. He called it one of his biggest mistakes ever. Then something changed: In late 2025, Berkshire quietly started buying Alphabet shares. Alphabet is the company that owns Google, YouTube, and Google Cloud. By mid 2026, the stake had exploded. On June 1, Alphabet raised $80 billion to build AI data centers. Buffett put in $10 billion of it directly. Today Alphabet is one of Berkshire's five largest positions, worth about $31 billion. On July 15, Buffett went on live TV and admitted it was his idea, not his successor's. So why did the man who avoids tech finally break his own rule? > The numbers. In April, Alphabet reported earnings that stunned Wall Street: > Profit per share came in at $5.11 > Analysts expected $2.63 > Revenue hit $109.9 billion, up nearly 22% in a year. > Google Cloud grew 63%. > Its backlog of future cloud orders reached $460 billion. That is real money coming in the door. But here's the part people missed: Even Buffett admitted the business has a problem. Alphabet is spending up to $185 billion this year on AI. That spending cut its free cash flow by 47% in a single quarter. He bought anyway, because the profits were real, the price was fair, and the moat was wide. He waited over 20 years for the math to make sense. Then he moved with total conviction. Now compare that to how most people invest in AI. They chase whatever is going up. They buy on hype, headlines, and fear of missing out. They pile into names they do not understand. Then they panic the moment the story wobbles. Buffett did the opposite: - He ignored the noise for two decades - He waited for the fundamentals to line up, and - He only acted when the rules said yes That is the whole game. It runs on a system that waits for the setup, not emotion. Most people cannot do that on their own. They feel the fear and they act on it. The fix is to take the emotion out completely. That is exactly what Surmount was built for. Automated, rules-based strategies that buy on logic, not feelings. So when the next great setup arrives, you are already positioned.

Surmount

12,298 views • 22 days ago

Wherefore In The World Is Paula Prado Serageldin Dos Santos? After the shortest media tour in the history of PR, Juror 11 from the John O'Keefe and Karen Read re-trial has vanished from the internet like a modern Carmen Sandiago (just hours after it was reported her father-in-law was jailed for stealing classified U.S. Military documents in 2019). Read Saturday's breaking story as it initially appeared here - Ahmedelhadi Yassin Serageldin (the father of Paula's husband) was convicted of retaining classified U.S. military documents related to our nation’s missile defense systems in 2019. Ahmedelhadi Serageldin formally plead guilty in December of that year and was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge. Strangely, however, Paula’s father-in-law served that sentence in a private federal ICE detention center in Pennsylvania. Per my sources, most inmates are not released from that facility, but instead deported (as the prison where Ahmedelhadi was held was a holding facility). Read the announcement following Serageldin’s sentencing from then-U.S. Attorney For The District Of Massachusetts Andrew E. Lelling here - Paula’s husband Karim, indeed, wrote a letter to the court on behalf of his father (originally from Egypt) at the time of sentencing. Paula’s father-in-law was caught by the FBI and a litany of U.S. Military intelligence agencies after time-card fraud led to an investigation whereupon Paula's father-in-law attempted to hide evidence of his crime from federal authorities (and his employer, Raytheon). However, despite efforts by Paula’s father-in-law, the FBI discovered 3,100 electronic files and over 100 paper documents in Ahmedelhadi's home - over 500 of which were marked classified (and five of which contained documentation about U.S. Missile defense technology). Shortly thereafter, Paula and Karim left the United States and went to Brazil for three years. Then, Paula --who is a lawyer in Brazil-- returned to the U.S. in March of 2024 and took a job at a Target in Walpole before becoming a juror in the Read and O’Keefe re-trial in the late spring of 2025. In recent days, Paula has done a whirlwind media tour (parroting defense narratives) that has led many (including international news outlets) to probe further into Paula’s background. Read more here - See video of Paula's interviews about the Read and O'Keefe re-trial combined into a single compilation here - Interestingly, Karim interviewed his wife Paula for his podcast around 2021, where both husband and wife discussed the importance of finding a way for Islam to exist in harmony with American feminism on domestic soil. Listen to a backup of that episode here - Read the indictment of Juror 11's father-in-law related to the unauthorized possession of classified U.S. missile defense documents here - Read a case study of the charges against Paul’s father-in-law here - Anyway, here's a full compilation of Paula's media interviews over recent days for your consideration.

Wherefore In The World Is Paula Prado Serageldin Dos Santos? After the shortest media tour in the history of PR, Juror 11 from the John O'Keefe and Karen Read re-trial has vanished from the internet like a modern Carmen Sandiago (just hours after it was reported her father-in-law was jailed for stealing classified U.S. Military documents in 2019). Read Saturday's breaking story as it initially appeared here - Ahmedelhadi Yassin Serageldin (the father of Paula's husband) was convicted of retaining classified U.S. military documents related to our nation’s missile defense systems in 2019. Ahmedelhadi Serageldin formally plead guilty in December of that year and was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a federal judge. Strangely, however, Paula’s father-in-law served that sentence in a private federal ICE detention center in Pennsylvania. Per my sources, most inmates are not released from that facility, but instead deported (as the prison where Ahmedelhadi was held was a holding facility). Read the announcement following Serageldin’s sentencing from then-U.S. Attorney For The District Of Massachusetts Andrew E. Lelling here - Paula’s husband Karim, indeed, wrote a letter to the court on behalf of his father (originally from Egypt) at the time of sentencing. Paula’s father-in-law was caught by the FBI and a litany of U.S. Military intelligence agencies after time-card fraud led to an investigation whereupon Paula's father-in-law attempted to hide evidence of his crime from federal authorities (and his employer, Raytheon). However, despite efforts by Paula’s father-in-law, the FBI discovered 3,100 electronic files and over 100 paper documents in Ahmedelhadi's home - over 500 of which were marked classified (and five of which contained documentation about U.S. Missile defense technology). Shortly thereafter, Paula and Karim left the United States and went to Brazil for three years. Then, Paula --who is a lawyer in Brazil-- returned to the U.S. in March of 2024 and took a job at a Target in Walpole before becoming a juror in the Read and O’Keefe re-trial in the late spring of 2025. In recent days, Paula has done a whirlwind media tour (parroting defense narratives) that has led many (including international news outlets) to probe further into Paula’s background. Read more here - See video of Paula's interviews about the Read and O'Keefe re-trial combined into a single compilation here - Interestingly, Karim interviewed his wife Paula for his podcast around 2021, where both husband and wife discussed the importance of finding a way for Islam to exist in harmony with American feminism on domestic soil. Listen to a backup of that episode here - Read the indictment of Juror 11's father-in-law related to the unauthorized possession of classified U.S. missile defense documents here - Read a case study of the charges against Paul’s father-in-law here - Anyway, here's a full compilation of Paula's media interviews over recent days for your consideration.

Grant Smith Ellis

26,705 views • 1 year ago

The Rode Mic Theory: A Timeline Let me lay the incidents out in order, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Late March 2025. Charlie Kirk started to go hard against a war with Iran, breaking with the neocon/zionist establishment in Washington. Charlie is thought to have had a significant influence on Trump's restrained posture during Midnight Hammer. Charlie was exerting real influence, and making real enemies. Early April 2025. And the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, places an order with explosives manufacturer Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) for an EXEPTIONALLY SMALL ANTI-PERSONNEL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE. The order - later confirmed by a FOIA response obtained by Baron Coleman detailed the order date, the description, that there was a construction/specification drawing, and a deadline. The order specifies that the device must fit inside another object so precisely that the host can be resealed to look as though it was never touched. ONLY TWO STIPULATIONS ARE FIRM; it must fit inside that second device, and it must be delivered on schedule. The deadline was August 25th, 2025 - just over two weeks before Charlie Kirk is killed. September 10th, 2025. Charlie Kirk is assassinated. Within minutes, the crime scene is contaminated. The missing camera. Terrel Farnsworth is filmed removing the camera and SD card positioned directly behind Charlie - the angle that would have captured everything that happened behind the table where he was sitting and fell to the floor. When asked why, Farnsworth said he took the SD card so Erika Kirk wouldn't see footage of her husband's death despite that footage already circulating worldwide online. The footage he did show to Candace Owens, revealed no visible exit wound in Charlie's back. None of this is disputed. The scene. He's carried to the SUV with his T-shirt bunched and held in place - negligent by any account, with a strange focus on the shirt. Here is where the supposition begins: if the kill device had been built into the Rode mic Charlie was wearing - a mic whose screen and casing use glass and components that shatter into fragments - then bunching the shirt would keep debris from falling at the scene. Photographs of his torso appear to show injuries below the right nipple, and a patch of skin where an adhesive had recently been removed - consistent with something attached and then taken off, perhaps behind the table, in view of the very camera that Farnsworth removed. The journey. The SUV is later found to contain a large quantity of shattered fragments - not broken sunglasses or a shattered phone screen, but unexplained fragments of shattered glass. Multiple people present have since recounted the drive in detail. Not one has ever mentioned these fragments or debris. Everyone who travelled with Charlie removed their clothing at the hospital and went home in scrubs, saying their clothes were bloodied. None of that clothing was taken into evidence - though if the supposition holds, it would have carried explosive residue. The hospital footage. CCTV of Charlie arriving at the hospital was removed by the FBI and has not been produced or entered into evidence. It has no obvious bearing on the case against the accused - except that if Charlie arrived without his shirt. The shirt itself would have carried traces of explosives. None of the clothing removed from Charlie or any of the team was ever recovered by investigators. The vehicle. Within days of the murder, the SUV was cleaned and handed to an auctioneer. Vehicles tied to a murder case are normally impounded until the case has been to court - often for several years. This one was cleaned, stripped, and sold anonymously at auction on 22 November 2025. When it sold, the seats Charlie had been carried on - the ones seen bloodied in other images - had been removed. Removed before sale, and possibly before the auctioneer ever took possession. Four days after the killing - a Sunday. The paver who resurfaced the murder scene later described, on the Shawn Ryan show, being called that Sunday morning with a "paving emergency" - the first such call in twenty years on the job. With his own team off for the weekend, he pulled in family members. He says he was told he'd be helping out Charlie and the authorities, and that when he arrived, ten inches of soil had already been excavated from the area. The scene was then surfaced over. His account has not been challenged by anyone in authority. October 10th, 2025. One month to the day after Charlie Kirk's death, AES - the manufacturer named in that FOIA-confirmed order - is destroyed in a massive explosion, killing 16 people. The official cause is given as an industrial accident, but this timeline notes only the date and lets the reader weigh it. To conclude: A man who tried to stop a war is dead. The evidence was cleaned, paved over, and sold. And only questions remain. Questions that, as of now, no one in authority is willing ask, let alone answer. Coincidence can explain any one of these. But it does cannot explain all of them.

The Rode Mic Theory: A Timeline Let me lay the incidents out in order, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Late March 2025. Charlie Kirk started to go hard against a war with Iran, breaking with the neocon/zionist establishment in Washington. Charlie is thought to have had a significant influence on Trump's restrained posture during Midnight Hammer. Charlie was exerting real influence, and making real enemies. Early April 2025. And the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, places an order with explosives manufacturer Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) for an EXEPTIONALLY SMALL ANTI-PERSONNEL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE. The order - later confirmed by a FOIA response obtained by Baron Coleman detailed the order date, the description, that there was a construction/specification drawing, and a deadline. The order specifies that the device must fit inside another object so precisely that the host can be resealed to look as though it was never touched. ONLY TWO STIPULATIONS ARE FIRM; it must fit inside that second device, and it must be delivered on schedule. The deadline was August 25th, 2025 - just over two weeks before Charlie Kirk is killed. September 10th, 2025. Charlie Kirk is assassinated. Within minutes, the crime scene is contaminated. The missing camera. Terrel Farnsworth is filmed removing the camera and SD card positioned directly behind Charlie - the angle that would have captured everything that happened behind the table where he was sitting and fell to the floor. When asked why, Farnsworth said he took the SD card so Erika Kirk wouldn't see footage of her husband's death despite that footage already circulating worldwide online. The footage he did show to Candace Owens, revealed no visible exit wound in Charlie's back. None of this is disputed. The scene. He's carried to the SUV with his T-shirt bunched and held in place - negligent by any account, with a strange focus on the shirt. Here is where the supposition begins: if the kill device had been built into the Rode mic Charlie was wearing - a mic whose screen and casing use glass and components that shatter into fragments - then bunching the shirt would keep debris from falling at the scene. Photographs of his torso appear to show injuries below the right nipple, and a patch of skin where an adhesive had recently been removed - consistent with something attached and then taken off, perhaps behind the table, in view of the very camera that Farnsworth removed. The journey. The SUV is later found to contain a large quantity of shattered fragments - not broken sunglasses or a shattered phone screen, but unexplained fragments of shattered glass. Multiple people present have since recounted the drive in detail. Not one has ever mentioned these fragments or debris. Everyone who travelled with Charlie removed their clothing at the hospital and went home in scrubs, saying their clothes were bloodied. None of that clothing was taken into evidence - though if the supposition holds, it would have carried explosive residue. The hospital footage. CCTV of Charlie arriving at the hospital was removed by the FBI and has not been produced or entered into evidence. It has no obvious bearing on the case against the accused - except that if Charlie arrived without his shirt. The shirt itself would have carried traces of explosives. None of the clothing removed from Charlie or any of the team was ever recovered by investigators. The vehicle. Within days of the murder, the SUV was cleaned and handed to an auctioneer. Vehicles tied to a murder case are normally impounded until the case has been to court - often for several years. This one was cleaned, stripped, and sold anonymously at auction on 22 November 2025. When it sold, the seats Charlie had been carried on - the ones seen bloodied in other images - had been removed. Removed before sale, and possibly before the auctioneer ever took possession. Four days after the killing - a Sunday. The paver who resurfaced the murder scene later described, on the Shawn Ryan show, being called that Sunday morning with a "paving emergency" - the first such call in twenty years on the job. With his own team off for the weekend, he pulled in family members. He says he was told he'd be helping out Charlie and the authorities, and that when he arrived, ten inches of soil had already been excavated from the area. The scene was then surfaced over. His account has not been challenged by anyone in authority. October 10th, 2025. One month to the day after Charlie Kirk's death, AES - the manufacturer named in that FOIA-confirmed order - is destroyed in a massive explosion, killing 16 people. The official cause is given as an industrial accident, but this timeline notes only the date and lets the reader weigh it. To conclude: A man who tried to stop a war is dead. The evidence was cleaned, paved over, and sold. And only questions remain. Questions that, as of now, no one in authority is willing ask, let alone answer. Coincidence can explain any one of these. But it does cannot explain all of them.

John Galt

51,719 views • 1 month ago

$Renewables are the key to preventing resource scarcity, argue European leaders, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, whose bestselling book Abundance became one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2025 and launched a political movement dedicated to what Klein calls “a politics of plenty.” The logic is straightforward and appealing. Solar panel costs have fallen more than 90% since 2010. Wind power costs have dropped by 70%. Battery storage prices have collapsed. If governments would simply clear the regulatory obstacles to building solar farms, wind turbines, and transmission lines, the abundance argument goes, clean energy would flow so abundantly that fossil fuel dependence would become a choice rather than a necessity. “The miracles of solar and wind and battery power,” Klein told the Long Now Foundation, “have given us the only shot we have to avoid catastrophic climate change.” But if renewables could prevent resource scarcity, then the world would not be in the midst of what the International Energy Agency’s Executive Director Fatih Birol called “the greatest global energy security challenge in history,” with global supply losses now totaling 12 million barrels per day, compared to about 5 million during each of the 1973 and 1979 crises. The United Kingdom is receiving its last shipment of jet fuel from the Middle East with nothing behind it. Australia saw over 500 gas stations run dry. And South Korea is considering driving restrictions for the first time since 1991. “In April,” warned Birol, “there is nothing.” It is true that solar and batteries have made enormous progress. Solar electricity costs roughly 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour at the point of generation, cheaper than any fossil fuel in most locations. Battery costs have fallen below $115 per kilowatt-hour. China produces more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. But the world has installed more than 1,600 gigawatts of solar capacity and over 1,000 gigawatts of wind, and still we are in crisis. Global green energy investment was $2.3 trillion in 2025 alone. And yet when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, none of that capacity mattered, because solar panels do not produce jet fuel, diesel, ammonia, or the petrochemical feedstocks that underpin modern civilization. Electricity accounts for roughly 20% of final energy consumption worldwide. The other 80%, the part that moves ships, flies planes, heats buildings, and makes fertilizer, runs overwhelmingly on oil and gas. Solar and wind cannot substitute for these fuels at any price, because the energy density of liquid hydrocarbons exceeds batteries by a factor of 40 to 80 by weight. Klein and Thompson, to their credit, also support some forms of nuclear power. Abundance opens with a vision of cities powered by “clean (nuclear) and renewable (wind and solar) energy sources.” They lament America’s nuclear stagnation compared to France’s successful buildout. Klein has said that he supports advancing nuclear power alongside renewables. But, the new nuclear power plants that Klein and Thompson support do not exist. The “small modular reactors” that populate the abundance fantasy have not produced a single commercial kilowatt-hour of electricity. NuScale, the most advanced American SMR developer, canceled its flagship project in 2023 after costs doubled. No SMR has received a commercial operating license anywhere in the world. The first commercially operating SMR, if all goes well, may produce power in the early 2030s, but SMR developers have for years said that their reactors are just a few years away. Scaling to a meaningful share of global energy supply would take decades, as opposed to building conventional nuclear plants, which Japan and China have shown they can build in just two years, so long as they are standardized and the same construction crews are used. Democrats, progressives, environmental groups, and left-wing parties across Europe diverted hundreds of billions of dollars over the last two decades from developing the new oil and gas production, pipelines, refineries, and LNG terminals needed to make energy cheap and abundant. California’s aggressive climate mandates drove residential electricity prices to 34 cents per kilowatt-hour, nearly double the national average, while the state simultaneously blocked new natural gas infrastructure. And global investment in oil and gas exploration and production peaked at roughly $780 billion in 2014 and fell to approximately $350 billion by 2020, a decline driven by deliberate policy choices to restrict fossil fuel development. The European Union’s Green Deal, America’s Inflation Reduction Act, and climate policies across the developed world channeled subsidies toward solar and wind while imposing carbon taxes, windfall levies, and permitting restrictions on fossil fuel projects. The UK’s Energy Profits Levy, introduced in 2022, discouraged investment in the North Sea at precisely the moment when more domestic production was needed. The UK Labor government then banned new exploration licenses in November 2025. Germany’s Energiewende spent over €500 billion on renewables while shutting down its nuclear plants, leaving the country dependent on Russian gas and then, after the Ukraine war, on LNG that must now compete with Asian buyers for cargoes that can no longer transit Hormuz. And the UK has lost a third of its refineries in the last 18 months, meaning that even if crude oil arrived tomorrow, the country lacks the capacity to refine it into the jet fuel, diesel, and heating oil its citizens need. The only energy abundance solution that works at the scale of civilization right now is piped natural gas and oil. A pipeline delivers energy continuously, at near-zero marginal cost per unit delivered, with no exposure to shipping chokepoints, insurance markets, or geopolitical disruption. A ton of natural gas moved through a pipeline costs a fraction of what the same gas costs when liquefied, shipped by tanker across an ocean, and regasified at a terminal. The logical endpoint is a world powered by natural gas delivered through continental pipeline networks, eventually transitioning to hydrogen produced from natural gas and nuclear power. America built pipelines while Europe and Asia built LNG dependency. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which has ramped from 770,000 barrels per day to 2.9 million since the war began, is the emergency proof of concept. If the Gulf states had built sufficient pipeline capacity to bypass Hormuz before the war, the crisis would be a fraction of its current severity. So why do so many on the Left continue to preach renewables as the solution to a crisis that renewables manifestly cannot solve?... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the rest of the video!$

Renewables are the key to preventing resource scarcity, argue European leaders, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, whose bestselling book Abundance became one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2025 and launched a political movement dedicated to what Klein calls “a politics of plenty.” The logic is straightforward and appealing. Solar panel costs have fallen more than 90% since 2010. Wind power costs have dropped by 70%. Battery storage prices have collapsed. If governments would simply clear the regulatory obstacles to building solar farms, wind turbines, and transmission lines, the abundance argument goes, clean energy would flow so abundantly that fossil fuel dependence would become a choice rather than a necessity. “The miracles of solar and wind and battery power,” Klein told the Long Now Foundation, “have given us the only shot we have to avoid catastrophic climate change.” But if renewables could prevent resource scarcity, then the world would not be in the midst of what the International Energy Agency’s Executive Director Fatih Birol called “the greatest global energy security challenge in history,” with global supply losses now totaling 12 million barrels per day, compared to about 5 million during each of the 1973 and 1979 crises. The United Kingdom is receiving its last shipment of jet fuel from the Middle East with nothing behind it. Australia saw over 500 gas stations run dry. And South Korea is considering driving restrictions for the first time since 1991. “In April,” warned Birol, “there is nothing.” It is true that solar and batteries have made enormous progress. Solar electricity costs roughly 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour at the point of generation, cheaper than any fossil fuel in most locations. Battery costs have fallen below $115 per kilowatt-hour. China produces more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. But the world has installed more than 1,600 gigawatts of solar capacity and over 1,000 gigawatts of wind, and still we are in crisis. Global green energy investment was $2.3 trillion in 2025 alone. And yet when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, none of that capacity mattered, because solar panels do not produce jet fuel, diesel, ammonia, or the petrochemical feedstocks that underpin modern civilization. Electricity accounts for roughly 20% of final energy consumption worldwide. The other 80%, the part that moves ships, flies planes, heats buildings, and makes fertilizer, runs overwhelmingly on oil and gas. Solar and wind cannot substitute for these fuels at any price, because the energy density of liquid hydrocarbons exceeds batteries by a factor of 40 to 80 by weight. Klein and Thompson, to their credit, also support some forms of nuclear power. Abundance opens with a vision of cities powered by “clean (nuclear) and renewable (wind and solar) energy sources.” They lament America’s nuclear stagnation compared to France’s successful buildout. Klein has said that he supports advancing nuclear power alongside renewables. But, the new nuclear power plants that Klein and Thompson support do not exist. The “small modular reactors” that populate the abundance fantasy have not produced a single commercial kilowatt-hour of electricity. NuScale, the most advanced American SMR developer, canceled its flagship project in 2023 after costs doubled. No SMR has received a commercial operating license anywhere in the world. The first commercially operating SMR, if all goes well, may produce power in the early 2030s, but SMR developers have for years said that their reactors are just a few years away. Scaling to a meaningful share of global energy supply would take decades, as opposed to building conventional nuclear plants, which Japan and China have shown they can build in just two years, so long as they are standardized and the same construction crews are used. Democrats, progressives, environmental groups, and left-wing parties across Europe diverted hundreds of billions of dollars over the last two decades from developing the new oil and gas production, pipelines, refineries, and LNG terminals needed to make energy cheap and abundant. California’s aggressive climate mandates drove residential electricity prices to 34 cents per kilowatt-hour, nearly double the national average, while the state simultaneously blocked new natural gas infrastructure. And global investment in oil and gas exploration and production peaked at roughly $780 billion in 2014 and fell to approximately $350 billion by 2020, a decline driven by deliberate policy choices to restrict fossil fuel development. The European Union’s Green Deal, America’s Inflation Reduction Act, and climate policies across the developed world channeled subsidies toward solar and wind while imposing carbon taxes, windfall levies, and permitting restrictions on fossil fuel projects. The UK’s Energy Profits Levy, introduced in 2022, discouraged investment in the North Sea at precisely the moment when more domestic production was needed. The UK Labor government then banned new exploration licenses in November 2025. Germany’s Energiewende spent over €500 billion on renewables while shutting down its nuclear plants, leaving the country dependent on Russian gas and then, after the Ukraine war, on LNG that must now compete with Asian buyers for cargoes that can no longer transit Hormuz. And the UK has lost a third of its refineries in the last 18 months, meaning that even if crude oil arrived tomorrow, the country lacks the capacity to refine it into the jet fuel, diesel, and heating oil its citizens need. The only energy abundance solution that works at the scale of civilization right now is piped natural gas and oil. A pipeline delivers energy continuously, at near-zero marginal cost per unit delivered, with no exposure to shipping chokepoints, insurance markets, or geopolitical disruption. A ton of natural gas moved through a pipeline costs a fraction of what the same gas costs when liquefied, shipped by tanker across an ocean, and regasified at a terminal. The logical endpoint is a world powered by natural gas delivered through continental pipeline networks, eventually transitioning to hydrogen produced from natural gas and nuclear power. America built pipelines while Europe and Asia built LNG dependency. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which has ramped from 770,000 barrels per day to 2.9 million since the war began, is the emergency proof of concept. If the Gulf states had built sufficient pipeline capacity to bypass Hormuz before the war, the crisis would be a fraction of its current severity. So why do so many on the Left continue to preach renewables as the solution to a crisis that renewables manifestly cannot solve?... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the rest of the video!

Michael Shellenberger

129,394 views • 4 months ago

Elon Musk's biggest competitor is secretly paying him $1.25 BILLION per month. SpaceX just revealed its financials for the first time in 23 years of existence. And buried deep in the S-1 is a detail that changes how you should think about the entire AI race. Anthropic, the company building Claude, the company that positions itself as OpenAI's biggest threat, the company valued at over $100 billion, is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion EVERY SINGLE MONTH for compute capacity through May 2029. That is $15 billion a year flowing directly from Elon's top AI competitor into Elon's bank account. Think about what that means: Every time Anthropic trains a new model, improves Claude, or lands an enterprise customer, a massive chunk of that revenue goes straight to the guy who owns the competing AI product. Anthropic is literally funding the war against itself. And that's just the beginning of what this filing reveals... The entire SpaceX IPO is structured around a bet most people haven't figured out yet. In 2025, SpaceX spent $20 billion in capex. 60% of that, roughly $12 billion, went to AI infrastructure. Rockets and satellites got the leftovers. In Q1 2026 alone, $7.7 billion out of $10 billion in total capex went to AI. The "rocket company" is spending like an AI company. Meanwhile, xAI, the division that houses Grok, generated $3.2 billion in revenue for the full year of 2025. But its R&D costs TRIPLED to $5 billion. It's burning cash at a pace that would have destroyed it as a standalone company. Which is exactly why Elon merged it into SpaceX two months before filing the IPO. And Starlink is the engine that makes the whole thing work: $11.4 billion in revenue, $4.4 billion in operating profit, and 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries. It's one of the most profitable subscription businesses on the planet right now. But the average revenue per user DROPPED from $99 per month in 2023 to $66 per month in March 2026. Subscribers quadrupled but each one is paying a third less. Starlink is growing by getting cheaper. SpaceX has lost $37 BILLION since it was founded. Net loss in 2025 was $4.9 billion. This is a company that has never turned an annual profit in 23 years of operation, and it is about to IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation. And the total addressable market SpaceX claims in the filing is $28.5 trillion. That is a QUARTER of global GDP. So here is what investors are actually buying when this IPO prices: They are buying the most profitable satellite internet business in history, stapled to an AI lab that is burning cash, wrapped inside a Mars colonization pitch that requires building a permanent city on another planet, funded by monthly billion-dollar payments from a direct competitor who has no other option for compute at that scale. This is the kind of thing only Elon could pull off.

Elon Musk's biggest competitor is secretly paying him $1.25 BILLION per month. SpaceX just revealed its financials for the first time in 23 years of existence. And buried deep in the S-1 is a detail that changes how you should think about the entire AI race. Anthropic, the company building Claude, the company that positions itself as OpenAI's biggest threat, the company valued at over $100 billion, is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion EVERY SINGLE MONTH for compute capacity through May 2029. That is $15 billion a year flowing directly from Elon's top AI competitor into Elon's bank account. Think about what that means: Every time Anthropic trains a new model, improves Claude, or lands an enterprise customer, a massive chunk of that revenue goes straight to the guy who owns the competing AI product. Anthropic is literally funding the war against itself. And that's just the beginning of what this filing reveals... The entire SpaceX IPO is structured around a bet most people haven't figured out yet. In 2025, SpaceX spent $20 billion in capex. 60% of that, roughly $12 billion, went to AI infrastructure. Rockets and satellites got the leftovers. In Q1 2026 alone, $7.7 billion out of $10 billion in total capex went to AI. The "rocket company" is spending like an AI company. Meanwhile, xAI, the division that houses Grok, generated $3.2 billion in revenue for the full year of 2025. But its R&D costs TRIPLED to $5 billion. It's burning cash at a pace that would have destroyed it as a standalone company. Which is exactly why Elon merged it into SpaceX two months before filing the IPO. And Starlink is the engine that makes the whole thing work: $11.4 billion in revenue, $4.4 billion in operating profit, and 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries. It's one of the most profitable subscription businesses on the planet right now. But the average revenue per user DROPPED from $99 per month in 2023 to $66 per month in March 2026. Subscribers quadrupled but each one is paying a third less. Starlink is growing by getting cheaper. SpaceX has lost $37 BILLION since it was founded. Net loss in 2025 was $4.9 billion. This is a company that has never turned an annual profit in 23 years of operation, and it is about to IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation. And the total addressable market SpaceX claims in the filing is $28.5 trillion. That is a QUARTER of global GDP. So here is what investors are actually buying when this IPO prices: They are buying the most profitable satellite internet business in history, stapled to an AI lab that is burning cash, wrapped inside a Mars colonization pitch that requires building a permanent city on another planet, funded by monthly billion-dollar payments from a direct competitor who has no other option for compute at that scale. This is the kind of thing only Elon could pull off.

Ricardo

208,631 views • 3 months ago

$The Media Isn’t Really Talking About This, But Farmers in Europe Are Revolting What unfolded in Brussels wasn’t random or emotional noise. It was pressure applied at exactly the moment it mattered. Farmers showed up with tractors as EU leaders met to decide the fate of the Mercosur agreement, and only after streets were blocked and police clashed with protesters did the signing get pushed into January. That alone tells you this wasn’t just about procedure. It was about leverage on who has it, and who doesn’t. Why Farmers See a Pattern, Not a Policy Error From the farm gate, this deal doesn’t land in isolation. It lands after years of rising costs, tighter environmental rules, higher fuel and fertilizer prices, and thinner margins. Now layer on import quotas for beef, poultry, sugar, ethanol, and rice products where European farmers already operate on razor thin economics. Officials talk about caps and safeguards, but farmers know how markets work where prices move at the margin, and once cheaper supply enters, expectations reset quickly. That’s why the protests felt inevitable. Delay the signing to show you’re listening, add inspections and reciprocity language, then try again once attention fades. Over time, the structure still shifts. What Brussels Is Optimizing For Zoom out and the incentives line up. The big winners from Mercosur are Europe’s industrial exporters in autos, machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals where tariff savings and market access are meaningful. Agriculture becomes the bargaining chip that makes the rest of the deal work. On a spreadsheet, that trade off looks rational. On a farm, where income depends on prices that can’t absorb another hit, it feels like being volunteered to carry Europe’s geopolitical ambitions. Why This Feels Like More Than Trade This is where farmers’ suspicion hardens. They see strict rules at home paired with wider market access abroad, and a system that steadily favors scale, consolidation, and longer supply chains. Over time, smaller and mid sized farms struggle, land changes hands, and food production becomes more centralized, financialized and easier to manage from the center and harder to resist politically. You don’t need secret meetings for that outcome. You just need aligned incentives where retailers want cheaper supply, governments want lower headline food prices, industry wants market access, and farmers are left with assurances instead of pricing power. My View Farmers aren’t just fighting beef quotas. They’re pushing back against a direction of travel where food sovereignty erodes piece by piece while decisions that shape rural livelihoods are made far away. The delay into January buys time, not trust. Whether the EU recalibrates in a way that genuinely protects farmers or simply returns with better packaging will decide whether this cools off or becomes a lasting political fracture across Europe’s countryside.$

The Media Isn’t Really Talking About This, But Farmers in Europe Are Revolting What unfolded in Brussels wasn’t random or emotional noise. It was pressure applied at exactly the moment it mattered. Farmers showed up with tractors as EU leaders met to decide the fate of the Mercosur agreement, and only after streets were blocked and police clashed with protesters did the signing get pushed into January. That alone tells you this wasn’t just about procedure. It was about leverage on who has it, and who doesn’t. Why Farmers See a Pattern, Not a Policy Error From the farm gate, this deal doesn’t land in isolation. It lands after years of rising costs, tighter environmental rules, higher fuel and fertilizer prices, and thinner margins. Now layer on import quotas for beef, poultry, sugar, ethanol, and rice products where European farmers already operate on razor thin economics. Officials talk about caps and safeguards, but farmers know how markets work where prices move at the margin, and once cheaper supply enters, expectations reset quickly. That’s why the protests felt inevitable. Delay the signing to show you’re listening, add inspections and reciprocity language, then try again once attention fades. Over time, the structure still shifts. What Brussels Is Optimizing For Zoom out and the incentives line up. The big winners from Mercosur are Europe’s industrial exporters in autos, machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals where tariff savings and market access are meaningful. Agriculture becomes the bargaining chip that makes the rest of the deal work. On a spreadsheet, that trade off looks rational. On a farm, where income depends on prices that can’t absorb another hit, it feels like being volunteered to carry Europe’s geopolitical ambitions. Why This Feels Like More Than Trade This is where farmers’ suspicion hardens. They see strict rules at home paired with wider market access abroad, and a system that steadily favors scale, consolidation, and longer supply chains. Over time, smaller and mid sized farms struggle, land changes hands, and food production becomes more centralized, financialized and easier to manage from the center and harder to resist politically. You don’t need secret meetings for that outcome. You just need aligned incentives where retailers want cheaper supply, governments want lower headline food prices, industry wants market access, and farmers are left with assurances instead of pricing power. My View Farmers aren’t just fighting beef quotas. They’re pushing back against a direction of travel where food sovereignty erodes piece by piece while decisions that shape rural livelihoods are made far away. The delay into January buys time, not trust. Whether the EU recalibrates in a way that genuinely protects farmers or simply returns with better packaging will decide whether this cools off or becomes a lasting political fracture across Europe’s countryside.

EndGame Macro

106,288 views • 8 months ago

DRC The Truth They Don’t Want Told: Rwanda, Congo, and the Thirty-Year Lie of War For three decades, the world has been told that Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been locked in a cycle of war. That formulation is repeated so often it is accepted as fact: “thirty years of war.” But it is a dangerous distortion. What the region has endured is not thirty years of war between equals, but thirty years of denial — denial that genocidal forces defeated in Rwanda in 1994 were allowed to survive, regroup, and thrive under international cover in Congo. Denial that United Nations peacekeepers and international experts, mandated to protect civilians and tell the truth, instead became complicit in perpetuating instability. Denial that successive Congolese governments have collaborated with these forces while Western institutions inverted reality to portray the victims as perpetrators. This is ultimately part of the Denial of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda 1994 and the same time a support for those who committed the genocide and their western supporting powers. This narrative inversion — turning the perpetrators of genocide into victims, and Rwanda into the aggressor — has been so persistent that it now structures international debates at the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council. The most recent sessions in New York and Geneva showcased the same pattern: Félix Tshisekedi’s government, which has integrated genocidal militias and even contracted foreign mercenaries, was spared scrutiny, while Rwanda was once again presented as the destabilizing actor. Such distortions are not just insulting; they are dangerous. They perpetuate impunity, embolden genocidal forces, and condemn millions of Congolese to continued suffering. 1994: The Crime the World Saw but Chose Not to Stop The truth begins in 1994, when Rwanda descended into the fastest genocide of the twentieth century. The United Nations Security Council was not blindsided. It had reports on its desk from the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. It knew about hate speech broadcast by extremist radio stations. It knew about militias arming and training openly. Yet when the presidential plane was shot down on April 6th and the genocide machinery was unleashed, the Council dithered. For one hundred days, more than a million Tutsi were hunted down and slaughtered while the so-called international community watched. When the genocide was halted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the perpetrators were not dismantled. Instead, they were escorted into Zaire, under French military cover, and given sanctuary by Mobutu’s regime. It was a stunning betrayal: would the Allies after World War II have tolerated a Nazi army regrouping in Switzerland or Austria, rearming, and launching cross-border raids? The question answers itself. What was unthinkable in Europe was tolerated in Africa. Thirty Years of Denial The remnants of the genocidal regime reconstituted themselves into new armed groups, most prominently the FDLR. They launched raids into Rwanda, destabilized eastern Congo, and embedded themselves into local conflicts. Rwanda and other African states were drawn into wars to neutralize them, yet the international community consistently refused to recognize the root cause. Instead, it adopted the lazy shorthand of “thirty years of war between Rwanda and Congo,” erasing the agency of the genocidal forces and the complicity of their enablers. The refusal to confront this truth has consequences. It allows the myth to persist that instability in eastern Congo is a Rwandan export rather than the direct result of harboring genocidal actors. It permits Congolese leaders, from Laurent Kabila to Félix Tshisekedi, to use the FDLR as a political tool, while scapegoating Rwanda whenever domestic failures come under pressure. And it encourages Western chancelleries and UN officials to absolve themselves of responsibility by blaming the most convenient target. MONUSCO: A Mission that Multiplied Armed Groups Since 1999, the United Nations has deployed its largest-ever peacekeeping mission, MONUC — later renamed MONUSCO — in the DRC. Its track record is damning. When the mission began, there were just four armed groups active in Congo. Today, there are more than 200. When Tshisekedi began his presidency, there were 28. This explosion of armed groups happened under MONUSCO’s watch. Even more damning is its relationship to the very forces it was meant to neutralize. MONUSCO never dismantled the FDLR. At times, it even cooperated with them. Atrocities in Ituri province continue to unfold despite MONUSCO’s heavy presence. And yet, year after year, the Security Council mandates “UN Experts” to report on the situation. These reports, opaque in recruitment and methodology, have consistently deflected blame away from MONUSCO and the Congolese government, while shifting suspicion onto Rwanda. Far from being impartial, they have helped to construct and entrench the false narrative of Rwanda as aggressor. Tshisekedi’s Calculated Escalation Félix Tshisekedi has not only inherited this machinery of denial; he has actively deepened it. His government has integrated the FDLR into the Congolese army, multiplied local militias known as Mai-Mai (later rebranded as “Wazalendo” to dodge international criticism), and even hired foreign mercenaries. Romania, a NATO member, sent a contingent that was captured during the fall of Goma. The United States, through Erik Prince — founder of the notorious Blackwater — has supplied another. Neither the UN, nor the EU, nor the African Union, which formally banned mercenaries in Africa in 1977, has spoken a word of condemnation. The hypocrisy is staggering. Rwanda is scrutinized for defensive actions aimed at protecting its borders from genocidal militias, while the Congolese government is given carte blanche to collaborate with those militias and employ Western mercenaries. This is not neutrality; it is complicity. The Manipulation of Numbers and Memory The distortion goes beyond politics into the realm of memory itself. The oft-repeated claim of “millions dead in Congo” is traced back to the UN’s infamous “Mapping Report” covering 1993–2003. That document was so riddled with methodological flaws that it reads less like professional research than a political pamphlet. Its purpose was transparent: to inflate numbers in ways that incriminate Rwanda, while erasing the structural causes of death in Congo — state collapse, corruption, and the harboring of armed groups. Yes, thousands have perished in Congo — from direct violence, from displacement, from preventable disease. But to inflate these figures into the millions without context, and to assign blame selectively, is not just bad scholarship. It is a moral crime. It erases the real victims, most of all the Congolese Banyarwanda, who have been displaced and targeted for over thirty years. And it allows those responsible — Congolese politicians, UN officials, and their international enablers — to wash their hands of accountability. Geneva, New York, and the Inversion of Truth All of these threads converge in the present. At the UN Security Council’s latest session on the DRC, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the script was repeated once more. Tshisekedi’s government organized side events and interventions designed to paint Rwanda as the aggressor, while UN officials played along. The FDLR’s role was minimized. MONUSCO’s failures were ignored. The use of mercenaries was never mentioned. Instead, the narrative inversion was complete: Rwanda, the country that stopped a genocide and has spent thirty years defending its borders from its remnants, was presented as the destabilizer. It is a shameful spectacle. But it is also a revealing one. The international system is not neutral. It protects its own failures. It prefers denial to accountability. And in doing so, it ensures that the cycle of violence continues. The Urgency of Truth Thirty years on, the question is no longer whether the world failed Rwanda in 1994. That is beyond dispute. The real question is why the world has continued to fail the Great Lakes region for three decades afterward — by denying the root causes of instability, by shielding the perpetrators, and by inverting the roles of victim and aggressor. It is time to say it plainly: this has not been thirty years of war. It has been thirty years of denial. Denial that has protected genocidal actors. Denial that has enabled Congolese governments to weaponize militias. Denial that has allowed UN peacekeepers and “experts” to preside over the multiplication of armed groups. And denial that has permitted Western chancelleries to avoid their own complicity by pointing the finger at Rwanda. Breaking that denial is not only about Rwanda. It is about justice for the Congolese civilians trapped in cycles of violence, abandoned by their own state, and failed by the international community. It is about accountability for institutions that claim moral authority while practicing selective blindness. And it is about finally affirming that African lives, African history, and African truths cannot be endlessly distorted without consequence. If the world truly cares about peace in the Great Lakes, it must abandon the thirty-year lie and confront the truth it has avoided for too long. Until then, every new resolution in New York and every new declaration in Geneva will be nothing more than a continuation of the denial that has condemned the region to endless suffering.

DRC The Truth They Don’t Want Told: Rwanda, Congo, and the Thirty-Year Lie of War For three decades, the world has been told that Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been locked in a cycle of war. That formulation is repeated so often it is accepted as fact: “thirty years of war.” But it is a dangerous distortion. What the region has endured is not thirty years of war between equals, but thirty years of denial — denial that genocidal forces defeated in Rwanda in 1994 were allowed to survive, regroup, and thrive under international cover in Congo. Denial that United Nations peacekeepers and international experts, mandated to protect civilians and tell the truth, instead became complicit in perpetuating instability. Denial that successive Congolese governments have collaborated with these forces while Western institutions inverted reality to portray the victims as perpetrators. This is ultimately part of the Denial of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda 1994 and the same time a support for those who committed the genocide and their western supporting powers. This narrative inversion — turning the perpetrators of genocide into victims, and Rwanda into the aggressor — has been so persistent that it now structures international debates at the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council. The most recent sessions in New York and Geneva showcased the same pattern: Félix Tshisekedi’s government, which has integrated genocidal militias and even contracted foreign mercenaries, was spared scrutiny, while Rwanda was once again presented as the destabilizing actor. Such distortions are not just insulting; they are dangerous. They perpetuate impunity, embolden genocidal forces, and condemn millions of Congolese to continued suffering. 1994: The Crime the World Saw but Chose Not to Stop The truth begins in 1994, when Rwanda descended into the fastest genocide of the twentieth century. The United Nations Security Council was not blindsided. It had reports on its desk from the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. It knew about hate speech broadcast by extremist radio stations. It knew about militias arming and training openly. Yet when the presidential plane was shot down on April 6th and the genocide machinery was unleashed, the Council dithered. For one hundred days, more than a million Tutsi were hunted down and slaughtered while the so-called international community watched. When the genocide was halted by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the perpetrators were not dismantled. Instead, they were escorted into Zaire, under French military cover, and given sanctuary by Mobutu’s regime. It was a stunning betrayal: would the Allies after World War II have tolerated a Nazi army regrouping in Switzerland or Austria, rearming, and launching cross-border raids? The question answers itself. What was unthinkable in Europe was tolerated in Africa. Thirty Years of Denial The remnants of the genocidal regime reconstituted themselves into new armed groups, most prominently the FDLR. They launched raids into Rwanda, destabilized eastern Congo, and embedded themselves into local conflicts. Rwanda and other African states were drawn into wars to neutralize them, yet the international community consistently refused to recognize the root cause. Instead, it adopted the lazy shorthand of “thirty years of war between Rwanda and Congo,” erasing the agency of the genocidal forces and the complicity of their enablers. The refusal to confront this truth has consequences. It allows the myth to persist that instability in eastern Congo is a Rwandan export rather than the direct result of harboring genocidal actors. It permits Congolese leaders, from Laurent Kabila to Félix Tshisekedi, to use the FDLR as a political tool, while scapegoating Rwanda whenever domestic failures come under pressure. And it encourages Western chancelleries and UN officials to absolve themselves of responsibility by blaming the most convenient target. MONUSCO: A Mission that Multiplied Armed Groups Since 1999, the United Nations has deployed its largest-ever peacekeeping mission, MONUC — later renamed MONUSCO — in the DRC. Its track record is damning. When the mission began, there were just four armed groups active in Congo. Today, there are more than 200. When Tshisekedi began his presidency, there were 28. This explosion of armed groups happened under MONUSCO’s watch. Even more damning is its relationship to the very forces it was meant to neutralize. MONUSCO never dismantled the FDLR. At times, it even cooperated with them. Atrocities in Ituri province continue to unfold despite MONUSCO’s heavy presence. And yet, year after year, the Security Council mandates “UN Experts” to report on the situation. These reports, opaque in recruitment and methodology, have consistently deflected blame away from MONUSCO and the Congolese government, while shifting suspicion onto Rwanda. Far from being impartial, they have helped to construct and entrench the false narrative of Rwanda as aggressor. Tshisekedi’s Calculated Escalation Félix Tshisekedi has not only inherited this machinery of denial; he has actively deepened it. His government has integrated the FDLR into the Congolese army, multiplied local militias known as Mai-Mai (later rebranded as “Wazalendo” to dodge international criticism), and even hired foreign mercenaries. Romania, a NATO member, sent a contingent that was captured during the fall of Goma. The United States, through Erik Prince — founder of the notorious Blackwater — has supplied another. Neither the UN, nor the EU, nor the African Union, which formally banned mercenaries in Africa in 1977, has spoken a word of condemnation. The hypocrisy is staggering. Rwanda is scrutinized for defensive actions aimed at protecting its borders from genocidal militias, while the Congolese government is given carte blanche to collaborate with those militias and employ Western mercenaries. This is not neutrality; it is complicity. The Manipulation of Numbers and Memory The distortion goes beyond politics into the realm of memory itself. The oft-repeated claim of “millions dead in Congo” is traced back to the UN’s infamous “Mapping Report” covering 1993–2003. That document was so riddled with methodological flaws that it reads less like professional research than a political pamphlet. Its purpose was transparent: to inflate numbers in ways that incriminate Rwanda, while erasing the structural causes of death in Congo — state collapse, corruption, and the harboring of armed groups. Yes, thousands have perished in Congo — from direct violence, from displacement, from preventable disease. But to inflate these figures into the millions without context, and to assign blame selectively, is not just bad scholarship. It is a moral crime. It erases the real victims, most of all the Congolese Banyarwanda, who have been displaced and targeted for over thirty years. And it allows those responsible — Congolese politicians, UN officials, and their international enablers — to wash their hands of accountability. Geneva, New York, and the Inversion of Truth All of these threads converge in the present. At the UN Security Council’s latest session on the DRC, and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the script was repeated once more. Tshisekedi’s government organized side events and interventions designed to paint Rwanda as the aggressor, while UN officials played along. The FDLR’s role was minimized. MONUSCO’s failures were ignored. The use of mercenaries was never mentioned. Instead, the narrative inversion was complete: Rwanda, the country that stopped a genocide and has spent thirty years defending its borders from its remnants, was presented as the destabilizer. It is a shameful spectacle. But it is also a revealing one. The international system is not neutral. It protects its own failures. It prefers denial to accountability. And in doing so, it ensures that the cycle of violence continues. The Urgency of Truth Thirty years on, the question is no longer whether the world failed Rwanda in 1994. That is beyond dispute. The real question is why the world has continued to fail the Great Lakes region for three decades afterward — by denying the root causes of instability, by shielding the perpetrators, and by inverting the roles of victim and aggressor. It is time to say it plainly: this has not been thirty years of war. It has been thirty years of denial. Denial that has protected genocidal actors. Denial that has enabled Congolese governments to weaponize militias. Denial that has allowed UN peacekeepers and “experts” to preside over the multiplication of armed groups. And denial that has permitted Western chancelleries to avoid their own complicity by pointing the finger at Rwanda. Breaking that denial is not only about Rwanda. It is about justice for the Congolese civilians trapped in cycles of violence, abandoned by their own state, and failed by the international community. It is about accountability for institutions that claim moral authority while practicing selective blindness. And it is about finally affirming that African lives, African history, and African truths cannot be endlessly distorted without consequence. If the world truly cares about peace in the Great Lakes, it must abandon the thirty-year lie and confront the truth it has avoided for too long. Until then, every new resolution in New York and every new declaration in Geneva will be nothing more than a continuation of the denial that has condemned the region to endless suffering.

Albert Rudatsimburwa 🇷🇼

114,594 views • 8 months ago

BREAKING NEWS 🚨🚨 Per newly-released John O'Keefe and Karen Read trial transcripts (May 24, 2024), undercover ATF Agent Brian Higgins testified or provided information to the US DOJ in Boston under a grant of immunity at some point prior to May of 2024 regarding John's death. Source, pages 127-128 (of 5481) here - Higgins, also according to new documents, was in some kind of bisexual relationship with both John and Karen in the weeks before John's death (that, for some reason, involved "gay men.") Read those text messages here - Furthermore, Higgins was inside a home at 34 Fairview Road in Canton on the night/early morning of January 28th into January 29th of 2022 that John was killed and left to die from a brain hemorrhage and hypothermia on a lawn during a blizzard. In recent weeks, it was also revealed that the state police unit who investigated Karen Read (and who may also have been involved in the coverup of Sandra Birchmore's murder by Stoughton police officer, and affiliate of Epstein-linked Stoughton Deputy Chief Robert Devine, Matthew Farwell) were the subject of an intense federal grand jury investigation related to the "performance of the Massachusetts state police" between, at the very least, the summer of 2024 and the early spring of 2024. Read more about the document, from the Brian Walshe, confirming that federal probe of the "performance of the state police" here- That grand jury (which, per the federal information filed against leaker Jessica Leslie, was empaneled by Justice Indra Talwani on May 26, 2022) culminated in a shocking six and a half hour interview of infamous former state trooper Michael Proctor (who worked under Brian Tully at the Norfolk District Attorney's State Police SPDU unit). According to new Internal Affairs documents released about Tully, after Proctor's six hour grilling by then US Attorney For The District Of Massachusetts Josh Levy, Tully and his right-hand man John Fanning (the trooper who wrote the 2021 state police report clearing Farwell for Birchmore's murder initially, prior to federal charges coming down for Farwell in August of 2024) visited Proctor's home and were desperate for information about that federal probe. Read that IA report here - Interestingly, in December of 2023, Brian Tully also used his official position as a state police officer to ask Lindsey Gaetani if she knew information about the "target of the federal probe." When Lindsey (a witness in the orbit of the TurtleBoy and Karen Read cases) told Tully that Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey was the target of the probe, Tully reacted with shock. Interestingly, Tully would have had access to a November 28, 2023, text messages (sent at 6:42PM ET exactly) from TurtleBoy to Lindsey which indicated that Josh Levy wanted to set an obstruction trap for Read trial witness Jen McCabe (who knows Tully personally and speaks to him directly) by comparing the discovery turned over to Karen Read's legal team with records obtained by the DOJ from McCabe's cellphone between February and May of 2022. Here's the transcript of an interview where Lindsey described that moment with Tully; **Grant Smith-Ellis:** Yeah, and Lindsey, let me ask you about something because I kind of might have previewed it before you came on, but I'm very interested to hear you talk about it. Brian Tully alludes in paragraph 79 of the Karen Read search warrant affidavit to a piece of information you told him related to like something about Josh Levy or something. Did Brian Tully—in December of 2023, while the Birchmore investigation was open (we know that now in hindsight)—did he ask you who the targets of the federal probe were? And what did you tell him, and how did he respond? **Lindsey Gaetani:** Yeah, and I said, yeah—from the conversations I had with Aidan, it was implied or alluded to—from either his conversations with Karen or whatever—that the target was Michael Morrissey. And I remember this moment like as if it were yesterday: Tully, at the same exact time as Nelson—they both looked at each other like their heads turned sideways. They both looked at each other, made eye contact, and kind of smirked. And then they looked back at me and continued the questioning. But it was just like—I was frozen in that moment, and I was like—what was that smirk about? Like, was that a smirk of relief? Like, “We are not the target”? Or was that a smirk of like, “Oh good—like, this is what we thought”? Like, I don't know what that was. I don't—I didn't know how to interpret it. I just know what I saw, you know? Source - In any event, on March 7th of 2024, after Tully found out that the DOJ had the contents of Michael proctor's cellphone (showing Proctor used horrifying language towards Karen Read), Tully was then forced to write up a disciplinary report on Proctor. However, before Tully could do so, Tully was forced to sign an NDA with the DOJ (middlewomaned by Norfolk ADA Laura McLaughlin) whereupon Tully was not allowed to see or hold the records from proctor's cellphone. Instead, Tully had to enter a room with McLaughlin and McLaughlin was not permitted (by the DOJ) to allow Tully to see or touch the documents. She read them, in part, to Tully and then he left the room. Furthermore, it is of note that, in July of 2025 (after Karen's second trial resulted in her acquittal for John's death and a guilty verdict on OUI) Michael Proctor, through counsel, told a lawyer in a number of other cases that Proctor investigated (including Myles King and Brian Walshe) that Proctor did not have any phone records to turn over to those defendants because his "old phone was destroyed in November of 2024" and "his new phone auto deletes itself every 30 days." Just a few months later, however, in late August of 2025, "someone" turned over 13 years of Proctor's phone records (including records that showed Proctor "sharing an SA victims name" with third parties, "sharing intimate images" with third parties and, also, potentially using racial slurs against defendants in cases Proctor investigated. Read more background about that timeline and Proctor's phone records here - In light of that information showing up in the Norfolk DA's possession, somehow, and then being turned over to multiple criminal defendants, Proctor then dropped his long-standing appeal of his discharge from the state police and retreated from public life entirely (as did almost all of his friends and allies connected to the Read investigation, many of whom were transferred demoted or involved in strange public scandals wherein the Boston Police Commissioner called them into his office and then lied to the media about it). As a result, it may well be that Brian Higgins is, or was, cooperating as a federal witness against some of the members of the state police unit who were involved in the investigation of John O'Keefe's death (and potentially he coverup of Sandra Birchmore's murder). My name is Grant Smith-Ellis and I wrote all of that from memory.

BREAKING NEWS 🚨🚨 Per newly-released John O'Keefe and Karen Read trial transcripts (May 24, 2024), undercover ATF Agent Brian Higgins testified or provided information to the US DOJ in Boston under a grant of immunity at some point prior to May of 2024 regarding John's death. Source, pages 127-128 (of 5481) here - Higgins, also according to new documents, was in some kind of bisexual relationship with both John and Karen in the weeks before John's death (that, for some reason, involved "gay men.") Read those text messages here - Furthermore, Higgins was inside a home at 34 Fairview Road in Canton on the night/early morning of January 28th into January 29th of 2022 that John was killed and left to die from a brain hemorrhage and hypothermia on a lawn during a blizzard. In recent weeks, it was also revealed that the state police unit who investigated Karen Read (and who may also have been involved in the coverup of Sandra Birchmore's murder by Stoughton police officer, and affiliate of Epstein-linked Stoughton Deputy Chief Robert Devine, Matthew Farwell) were the subject of an intense federal grand jury investigation related to the "performance of the Massachusetts state police" between, at the very least, the summer of 2024 and the early spring of 2024. Read more about the document, from the Brian Walshe, confirming that federal probe of the "performance of the state police" here- That grand jury (which, per the federal information filed against leaker Jessica Leslie, was empaneled by Justice Indra Talwani on May 26, 2022) culminated in a shocking six and a half hour interview of infamous former state trooper Michael Proctor (who worked under Brian Tully at the Norfolk District Attorney's State Police SPDU unit). According to new Internal Affairs documents released about Tully, after Proctor's six hour grilling by then US Attorney For The District Of Massachusetts Josh Levy, Tully and his right-hand man John Fanning (the trooper who wrote the 2021 state police report clearing Farwell for Birchmore's murder initially, prior to federal charges coming down for Farwell in August of 2024) visited Proctor's home and were desperate for information about that federal probe. Read that IA report here - Interestingly, in December of 2023, Brian Tully also used his official position as a state police officer to ask Lindsey Gaetani if she knew information about the "target of the federal probe." When Lindsey (a witness in the orbit of the TurtleBoy and Karen Read cases) told Tully that Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey was the target of the probe, Tully reacted with shock. Interestingly, Tully would have had access to a November 28, 2023, text messages (sent at 6:42PM ET exactly) from TurtleBoy to Lindsey which indicated that Josh Levy wanted to set an obstruction trap for Read trial witness Jen McCabe (who knows Tully personally and speaks to him directly) by comparing the discovery turned over to Karen Read's legal team with records obtained by the DOJ from McCabe's cellphone between February and May of 2022. Here's the transcript of an interview where Lindsey described that moment with Tully; Grant Smith-Ellis: Yeah, and Lindsey, let me ask you about something because I kind of might have previewed it before you came on, but I'm very interested to hear you talk about it. Brian Tully alludes in paragraph 79 of the Karen Read search warrant affidavit to a piece of information you told him related to like something about Josh Levy or something. Did Brian Tully—in December of 2023, while the Birchmore investigation was open (we know that now in hindsight)—did he ask you who the targets of the federal probe were? And what did you tell him, and how did he respond? Lindsey Gaetani: Yeah, and I said, yeah—from the conversations I had with Aidan, it was implied or alluded to—from either his conversations with Karen or whatever—that the target was Michael Morrissey. And I remember this moment like as if it were yesterday: Tully, at the same exact time as Nelson—they both looked at each other like their heads turned sideways. They both looked at each other, made eye contact, and kind of smirked. And then they looked back at me and continued the questioning. But it was just like—I was frozen in that moment, and I was like—what was that smirk about? Like, was that a smirk of relief? Like, “We are not the target”? Or was that a smirk of like, “Oh good—like, this is what we thought”? Like, I don't know what that was. I don't—I didn't know how to interpret it. I just know what I saw, you know? Source - In any event, on March 7th of 2024, after Tully found out that the DOJ had the contents of Michael proctor's cellphone (showing Proctor used horrifying language towards Karen Read), Tully was then forced to write up a disciplinary report on Proctor. However, before Tully could do so, Tully was forced to sign an NDA with the DOJ (middlewomaned by Norfolk ADA Laura McLaughlin) whereupon Tully was not allowed to see or hold the records from proctor's cellphone. Instead, Tully had to enter a room with McLaughlin and McLaughlin was not permitted (by the DOJ) to allow Tully to see or touch the documents. She read them, in part, to Tully and then he left the room. Furthermore, it is of note that, in July of 2025 (after Karen's second trial resulted in her acquittal for John's death and a guilty verdict on OUI) Michael Proctor, through counsel, told a lawyer in a number of other cases that Proctor investigated (including Myles King and Brian Walshe) that Proctor did not have any phone records to turn over to those defendants because his "old phone was destroyed in November of 2024" and "his new phone auto deletes itself every 30 days." Just a few months later, however, in late August of 2025, "someone" turned over 13 years of Proctor's phone records (including records that showed Proctor "sharing an SA victims name" with third parties, "sharing intimate images" with third parties and, also, potentially using racial slurs against defendants in cases Proctor investigated. Read more background about that timeline and Proctor's phone records here - In light of that information showing up in the Norfolk DA's possession, somehow, and then being turned over to multiple criminal defendants, Proctor then dropped his long-standing appeal of his discharge from the state police and retreated from public life entirely (as did almost all of his friends and allies connected to the Read investigation, many of whom were transferred demoted or involved in strange public scandals wherein the Boston Police Commissioner called them into his office and then lied to the media about it). As a result, it may well be that Brian Higgins is, or was, cooperating as a federal witness against some of the members of the state police unit who were involved in the investigation of John O'Keefe's death (and potentially he coverup of Sandra Birchmore's murder). My name is Grant Smith-Ellis and I wrote all of that from memory.

Grant Smith Ellis

50,303 views • 6 months ago

Summer Holiday Photos Place the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Leader in the Emirates as Atrocities Continue Across Sudan A series of photographs circulated on Sudanese social media this month that, at first glance, appeared entirely ordinary. A spacious courtyard at dusk, a customised Mercedes parked on a quiet street, and an older man sitting on a pale sofa with a child on his lap. They could easily have been photographs from any family summer holiday, far removed from the war, famine and mass graves that have come to define Sudan’s landscape. The older man in the photographs, however, is Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, commander of the UAE-backed Rapid Support Militia, the paramilitary force commonly associated with the Janjaweed. In January 2025, the United States sanctioned Hemedti by name as it formally determined that members of the Rapid Support Militia and allied militias had committed genocide in Darfur. The decision came after nearly two years of war in which atrocities attributed to the militia had spread across large parts of Sudan. In El Geneina, Human Rights Watch documented an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit that included mass killings, rape, looting and forced displacement, among the most horrific episodes of violence since the war began. In Khartoum, the militia controlled large areas of the capital for months. Civilian homes and buildings were turned into military positions and detention facilities. As the Sudanese army advanced and retook areas previously held by the militia, detention sites, graves and bodies began to emerge, alongside testimony from survivors describing torture, starvation, humiliation and detention in brutal conditions. The period of militia control over large parts of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri was also marked by widespread looting of homes and property, the occupation of civilian residences, and repeated accounts of rape and sexual violence. The same devastation then spread into Gezira State after the militia entered the region in December 2023. Towns and villages were subjected to killings, looting and attacks, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. Many of them had already escaped Khartoum and had gone to Gezira in search of safety. In June 2024, Wad Al-Noura became the site of one of the militia’s most notorious massacres in the state. Months later, a wave of attacks swept through villages in eastern Gezira, with Al-Sireha among the communities subjected to large-scale killings. The violence extended across dozens of villages and towns amid reports of killings, looting, arson, sexual violence and forced displacement. The pattern repeated itself across different parts of Sudan: the militia entered civilian communities, killings and looting followed, homes were occupied, people were detained, sexual violence was reported, and entire populations were forced to abandon their towns and villages. El Fasher became one of the bloodiest chapters in that trajectory. After a prolonged siege, the city fell to the Rapid Support Militia. United Nations investigators documented the killing of more than 6,000 people during the first three days, while the fate of an estimated 150,000 residents remained unknown. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan subsequently concluded that the violations committed there bore hallmarks of genocide. As the geographical scale of these atrocities expanded and the war continued year after year, another question became central to international investigations: where was the militia obtaining the weapons, financing and supplies that allowed it to sustain its military capabilities? The Rapid Support Militia continued fighting on multiple fronts, acquiring weapons, ammunition, vehicles and drones while also deploying foreign fighters in a war stretching from Darfur to Khartoum, Gezira, Kordofan and El Fasher. From the early months of the conflict, evidence began accumulating around the UAE’s role in the supply network supporting the militia. In a report dated January 15, 2024, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan said information it had gathered concerning the transfer of weapons and ammunition to the Rapid Support Militia through Amdjarass airport in eastern Chad was “credible.” In July 2024, The Guardian published an investigation into Emirati passports and documents discovered among equipment linked to the militia in Sudan. In September, The New York Times investigated UAE activity in Amdjarass and allegations that the humanitarian operation there was running alongside a pipeline supplying weapons and other support to the militia. The following month, The Washington Post published an investigation based on weapons captured by the Sudanese army, together with US assessments and reports, linking equipment and ammunition found in the hands of the Rapid Support Militia to the UAE. In November 2024, Amnesty International identified the French-made Galix defence system installed on UAE-manufactured Nimr Ajban armoured vehicles used by the militia. Flight data then revealed another dimension of the supply network. In December 2024, Reuters tracked at least 86 flights from the UAE to Amdjarass since the war began. A significant number were operated by companies previously linked in UN reporting to arms-transfer operations in the region. Researcher Justin Lynch also contributed to tracking and analysing flight and supply networks connecting these routes to the Rapid Support Militia. By early 2025, the issue had reached the level of official scrutiny in Washington. On January 24, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs said that, based on a briefing from the Biden administration and other reporting, they had confirmed that the UAE was continuing to provide weapons to the militia despite earlier assurances to Washington that it would stop. Over the following months, further evidence emerged from weapons stockpiles and supply convoys themselves. In April 2025, an investigation by France 24’s Observers team traced Bulgarian-made mortar rounds found in Darfur to a transaction involving an Emirati buyer, with the UAE Armed Forces listed in documentation as the end user. On April 29, Reuters, in an investigation involving journalist Reade Levinson, reported that the UN Panel of Experts was examining how Bulgarian ammunition officially exported to the UAE had ended up in a Rapid Support Militia supply convoy in Darfur. Bulgaria said it had never authorised the ammunition to be re-exported to Sudan. In May 2025, Amnesty International identified Chinese-made GB50A guided bombs and AH-4 155mm howitzers in the possession of the Rapid Support Militia. The organisation concluded that the weapons were “almost certainly” re-exported to Sudan by the UAE. As the investigations widened, a broader network emerged involving mercenaries, financing, companies and regional logistics. Beginning in 2024, Colombian investigative outlet La Silla Vacía exposed details of the recruitment of former Colombian soldiers to fight alongside the Rapid Support Militia. Subsequent investigations traced the networks used to recruit and transport these fighters, with UAE-based companies and routes repeatedly appearing in the reporting. Bellingcat has also investigated weapons and supply routes associated with the militia, while a joint investigation by Lighthouse Reports and its partners uncovered training camps, sites used to prepare weapons and vehicles, and supply convoys in eastern Libya connected to the Rapid Support Militia, along with Colombian mercenaries operating within the same network. On the financial side, The Sentry documented networks involving companies, gold trading, financing and property linked to senior Rapid Support Militia figures, including businesses and activities operating from within the UAE. These findings added a financial and commercial dimension to the military and logistical picture. In October 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence agencies had detected an increase in the flow of Emirati weapons to the militia, including drones, light and heavy weapons, vehicles, artillery, mortars and ammunition. The UAE continues to deny providing military support to the Rapid Support Militia. Over the course of the war, however, a substantial body of reporting and investigation has accumulated from the UN Panel of Experts, US assessments and sources, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Reuters, France 24, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Lighthouse Reports, Bellingcat and The Sentry. These are multiple, independent sources using different investigative methods. Flight records, export documentation, weapons and ammunition analysis, corporate and property records, satellite imagery and testimony from people on the ground have each exposed different parts of a support network that helped sustain the militia’s war. Alongside the evidence concerning weapons, financing and logistics, direct indications of Hemedti’s own presence inside the UAE also emerged during the conflict. In June 2025, The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that Hemedti had stayed at a protected residence in Abu Dhabi, where he recorded video addresses to his supporters in Sudan. The Sentry also documented his personal ownership of three apartments in Dubai, close to Al Minhad military airbase. The photographs that surfaced this month add another dimension to those reports. Hemedti appears once again inside the UAE, this time in quiet family photographs, while the war led by his militia continues in Sudan and the consequences of its atrocities stretch from El Geneina to Khartoum, Gezira and El Fasher. The information is there. The investigations have been published. The evidence continues to accumulate. The question becomes more urgent with every new investigation: how much more evidence does the world need before it acts? #Sudan #RSFisTerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanesePeople #UAESponsorsTerrorism

Summer Holiday Photos Place the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Leader in the Emirates as Atrocities Continue Across Sudan A series of photographs circulated on Sudanese social media this month that, at first glance, appeared entirely ordinary. A spacious courtyard at dusk, a customised Mercedes parked on a quiet street, and an older man sitting on a pale sofa with a child on his lap. They could easily have been photographs from any family summer holiday, far removed from the war, famine and mass graves that have come to define Sudan’s landscape. The older man in the photographs, however, is Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, commander of the UAE-backed Rapid Support Militia, the paramilitary force commonly associated with the Janjaweed. In January 2025, the United States sanctioned Hemedti by name as it formally determined that members of the Rapid Support Militia and allied militias had committed genocide in Darfur. The decision came after nearly two years of war in which atrocities attributed to the militia had spread across large parts of Sudan. In El Geneina, Human Rights Watch documented an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit that included mass killings, rape, looting and forced displacement, among the most horrific episodes of violence since the war began. In Khartoum, the militia controlled large areas of the capital for months. Civilian homes and buildings were turned into military positions and detention facilities. As the Sudanese army advanced and retook areas previously held by the militia, detention sites, graves and bodies began to emerge, alongside testimony from survivors describing torture, starvation, humiliation and detention in brutal conditions. The period of militia control over large parts of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri was also marked by widespread looting of homes and property, the occupation of civilian residences, and repeated accounts of rape and sexual violence. The same devastation then spread into Gezira State after the militia entered the region in December 2023. Towns and villages were subjected to killings, looting and attacks, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. Many of them had already escaped Khartoum and had gone to Gezira in search of safety. In June 2024, Wad Al-Noura became the site of one of the militia’s most notorious massacres in the state. Months later, a wave of attacks swept through villages in eastern Gezira, with Al-Sireha among the communities subjected to large-scale killings. The violence extended across dozens of villages and towns amid reports of killings, looting, arson, sexual violence and forced displacement. The pattern repeated itself across different parts of Sudan: the militia entered civilian communities, killings and looting followed, homes were occupied, people were detained, sexual violence was reported, and entire populations were forced to abandon their towns and villages. El Fasher became one of the bloodiest chapters in that trajectory. After a prolonged siege, the city fell to the Rapid Support Militia. United Nations investigators documented the killing of more than 6,000 people during the first three days, while the fate of an estimated 150,000 residents remained unknown. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan subsequently concluded that the violations committed there bore hallmarks of genocide. As the geographical scale of these atrocities expanded and the war continued year after year, another question became central to international investigations: where was the militia obtaining the weapons, financing and supplies that allowed it to sustain its military capabilities? The Rapid Support Militia continued fighting on multiple fronts, acquiring weapons, ammunition, vehicles and drones while also deploying foreign fighters in a war stretching from Darfur to Khartoum, Gezira, Kordofan and El Fasher. From the early months of the conflict, evidence began accumulating around the UAE’s role in the supply network supporting the militia. In a report dated January 15, 2024, the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan said information it had gathered concerning the transfer of weapons and ammunition to the Rapid Support Militia through Amdjarass airport in eastern Chad was “credible.” In July 2024, The Guardian published an investigation into Emirati passports and documents discovered among equipment linked to the militia in Sudan. In September, The New York Times investigated UAE activity in Amdjarass and allegations that the humanitarian operation there was running alongside a pipeline supplying weapons and other support to the militia. The following month, The Washington Post published an investigation based on weapons captured by the Sudanese army, together with US assessments and reports, linking equipment and ammunition found in the hands of the Rapid Support Militia to the UAE. In November 2024, Amnesty International identified the French-made Galix defence system installed on UAE-manufactured Nimr Ajban armoured vehicles used by the militia. Flight data then revealed another dimension of the supply network. In December 2024, Reuters tracked at least 86 flights from the UAE to Amdjarass since the war began. A significant number were operated by companies previously linked in UN reporting to arms-transfer operations in the region. Researcher Justin Lynch also contributed to tracking and analysing flight and supply networks connecting these routes to the Rapid Support Militia. By early 2025, the issue had reached the level of official scrutiny in Washington. On January 24, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Sara Jacobs said that, based on a briefing from the Biden administration and other reporting, they had confirmed that the UAE was continuing to provide weapons to the militia despite earlier assurances to Washington that it would stop. Over the following months, further evidence emerged from weapons stockpiles and supply convoys themselves. In April 2025, an investigation by France 24’s Observers team traced Bulgarian-made mortar rounds found in Darfur to a transaction involving an Emirati buyer, with the UAE Armed Forces listed in documentation as the end user. On April 29, Reuters, in an investigation involving journalist Reade Levinson, reported that the UN Panel of Experts was examining how Bulgarian ammunition officially exported to the UAE had ended up in a Rapid Support Militia supply convoy in Darfur. Bulgaria said it had never authorised the ammunition to be re-exported to Sudan. In May 2025, Amnesty International identified Chinese-made GB50A guided bombs and AH-4 155mm howitzers in the possession of the Rapid Support Militia. The organisation concluded that the weapons were “almost certainly” re-exported to Sudan by the UAE. As the investigations widened, a broader network emerged involving mercenaries, financing, companies and regional logistics. Beginning in 2024, Colombian investigative outlet La Silla Vacía exposed details of the recruitment of former Colombian soldiers to fight alongside the Rapid Support Militia. Subsequent investigations traced the networks used to recruit and transport these fighters, with UAE-based companies and routes repeatedly appearing in the reporting. Bellingcat has also investigated weapons and supply routes associated with the militia, while a joint investigation by Lighthouse Reports and its partners uncovered training camps, sites used to prepare weapons and vehicles, and supply convoys in eastern Libya connected to the Rapid Support Militia, along with Colombian mercenaries operating within the same network. On the financial side, The Sentry documented networks involving companies, gold trading, financing and property linked to senior Rapid Support Militia figures, including businesses and activities operating from within the UAE. These findings added a financial and commercial dimension to the military and logistical picture. In October 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence agencies had detected an increase in the flow of Emirati weapons to the militia, including drones, light and heavy weapons, vehicles, artillery, mortars and ammunition. The UAE continues to deny providing military support to the Rapid Support Militia. Over the course of the war, however, a substantial body of reporting and investigation has accumulated from the UN Panel of Experts, US assessments and sources, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Reuters, France 24, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Lighthouse Reports, Bellingcat and The Sentry. These are multiple, independent sources using different investigative methods. Flight records, export documentation, weapons and ammunition analysis, corporate and property records, satellite imagery and testimony from people on the ground have each exposed different parts of a support network that helped sustain the militia’s war. Alongside the evidence concerning weapons, financing and logistics, direct indications of Hemedti’s own presence inside the UAE also emerged during the conflict. In June 2025, The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that Hemedti had stayed at a protected residence in Abu Dhabi, where he recorded video addresses to his supporters in Sudan. The Sentry also documented his personal ownership of three apartments in Dubai, close to Al Minhad military airbase. The photographs that surfaced this month add another dimension to those reports. Hemedti appears once again inside the UAE, this time in quiet family photographs, while the war led by his militia continues in Sudan and the consequences of its atrocities stretch from El Geneina to Khartoum, Gezira and El Fasher. The information is there. The investigations have been published. The evidence continues to accumulate. The question becomes more urgent with every new investigation: how much more evidence does the world need before it acts? #Sudan #RSFisTerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanesePeople #UAESponsorsTerrorism

Sudanese Echo

123,567 views • 8 days ago

Kharg Island is widely known among Iranians as the “forbidden island.” Behind its modern geoeconomic significance lies an ancient history, from early human settlements dating back more than 4,000 years to occupation by various empires that understood its strategic maritime importance as a trading post. The small coral outcrop sits around 25 kilometers off the coast of Iran. Up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports pass through the terminal there, which is able to load 10 supertankers at once. Access is restricted and the island is guarded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The island became Iran’s dominant export port for two reasons. First, it could be connected by pipeline to the major oil fields in south-western Iran. Second, its deep water location made it one of the only places on Iran’s western coast that could accommodate supertankers. In 1956 work began to build oil reservoirs on Kharg. In the 1960s, under the Shah, the island was developed into an oil terminal in partnership with US company Amoco. By around 1975, there were three major oil terminals. Amoco’s property was expropriated after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The island was particularly important for French energy giant Total. Over time it became such a priority target during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s that its destruction would have economically crippled Iran. The war destroyed most of the facilities on the island, and after it ended, Iran made it a priority to rebuild them. Since then, Kharg Island has become one of Iran’s best defended sites. The economic artery No other major oil-producing country is so reliant on just one facility. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and massive producers elsewhere such as Russia, Mexico and Venezuela, do not concentrate almost all their export capacity in a single location. About half of the nation’s $50 billion oil industry is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. Targeting Kharg would deprive the regime of a key funding source for controlling the population. “If they can’t sell their own oil, they can’t make payroll,” as one analyst put it. As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran entered its third week, Kharg remained unscathed. That restraint was deliberate. Crippling Iran’s entire oil industry for months, if not years, would shatter the already fragile confidence in financial markets that Trump can achieve his vague war aims without long-term disruption to the global economy. Some analysts predict that oil prices could soar to $150 a barrel if Kharg is hit. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused Brent crude to rise above $100 for four months, contributing to roughly 9% inflation at the time. Analysts interpreting satellite imagery noted that Iran apparently expected Kharg to become a target and had started reducing the amount of oil in storage there since early February. By 7 March, only nine of the oil tanks were estimated to be full, compared to 27 in mid-January. In the days prior to the outbreak of war, Iran ramped up exports from Kharg to near-record levels. Brent crude futures climbed to $103 a barrel on the first Monday of the conflict, their highest level since mid-2022. Experts note that a third option may be on the table: sabotage and cyberattacks affecting the oil infrastructure on the island, which “would certainly choke the Iranian economy without having to engage militarily.” The island is a pressure point without a clean trigger. Whoever controls the decision to strike it controls the price of petrol in every country on earth. That is precisely why it still stands. Gandalv Gandalv

Kharg Island is widely known among Iranians as the “forbidden island.” Behind its modern geoeconomic significance lies an ancient history, from early human settlements dating back more than 4,000 years to occupation by various empires that understood its strategic maritime importance as a trading post. The small coral outcrop sits around 25 kilometers off the coast of Iran. Up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports pass through the terminal there, which is able to load 10 supertankers at once. Access is restricted and the island is guarded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The island became Iran’s dominant export port for two reasons. First, it could be connected by pipeline to the major oil fields in south-western Iran. Second, its deep water location made it one of the only places on Iran’s western coast that could accommodate supertankers. In 1956 work began to build oil reservoirs on Kharg. In the 1960s, under the Shah, the island was developed into an oil terminal in partnership with US company Amoco. By around 1975, there were three major oil terminals. Amoco’s property was expropriated after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The island was particularly important for French energy giant Total. Over time it became such a priority target during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s that its destruction would have economically crippled Iran. The war destroyed most of the facilities on the island, and after it ended, Iran made it a priority to rebuild them. Since then, Kharg Island has become one of Iran’s best defended sites. The economic artery No other major oil-producing country is so reliant on just one facility. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and massive producers elsewhere such as Russia, Mexico and Venezuela, do not concentrate almost all their export capacity in a single location. About half of the nation’s $50 billion oil industry is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. Targeting Kharg would deprive the regime of a key funding source for controlling the population. “If they can’t sell their own oil, they can’t make payroll,” as one analyst put it. As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran entered its third week, Kharg remained unscathed. That restraint was deliberate. Crippling Iran’s entire oil industry for months, if not years, would shatter the already fragile confidence in financial markets that Trump can achieve his vague war aims without long-term disruption to the global economy. Some analysts predict that oil prices could soar to $150 a barrel if Kharg is hit. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused Brent crude to rise above $100 for four months, contributing to roughly 9% inflation at the time. Analysts interpreting satellite imagery noted that Iran apparently expected Kharg to become a target and had started reducing the amount of oil in storage there since early February. By 7 March, only nine of the oil tanks were estimated to be full, compared to 27 in mid-January. In the days prior to the outbreak of war, Iran ramped up exports from Kharg to near-record levels. Brent crude futures climbed to $103 a barrel on the first Monday of the conflict, their highest level since mid-2022. Experts note that a third option may be on the table: sabotage and cyberattacks affecting the oil infrastructure on the island, which “would certainly choke the Iranian economy without having to engage militarily.” The island is a pressure point without a clean trigger. Whoever controls the decision to strike it controls the price of petrol in every country on earth. That is precisely why it still stands. Gandalv Gandalv

Gandalv

83,398 views • 5 months ago