The world seems to have learned absolutely nothing from COVID. Governments destroyed supply chains through lockdowns, shortages spread from semiconductors to automobiles, freight rates exploded, inflation followed, and politicians then acted surprised when consumers could no longer afford the same standard of living. We are now watching another supply-chain shock develop, except this time the source is not government lockdowns. It is WAR, and the Strait of Hormuz is rapidly becoming the choke point through which the economic consequences will spread.
Reuters reported that only SIX vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. That compares with an average of about 11 during the previous 10 days, which is already disastrous when you understand what normal traffic looked like. Before this war, roughly 130 to 140 ships crossed the Strait every day.
The Strait of Hormuz is not merely about crude oil. The Persian Gulf is an artery connecting the global economy to oil, LNG, LPG, refined petroleum products, petrochemicals, fertilizers, aluminum, industrial materials, and countless products whose manufacturing costs depend upon cheap energy. Reuters reported that of the mere six vessels crossing Monday, four commodity vessels entered while only two departed. The outbound ships were carrying liquefied petroleum gas and residual fuels. This is becoming a bottleneck at the very foundation of industrial production.
Oil exports through Hormuz have already been severely reduced. Reuters reported separately that weekly oil exports through the Strait recently fell to about 3 million barrels per day from 4.4 million. Brent briefly touched $90.03 on Tuesday before pulling back, while WTI reached $84.61. Markets are still trading every rumor concerning negotiations between Iran, Oman, and the United States as if politicians can simply announce peace and everything instantly returns to normal. That is not how supply chains function.
Everything moves through transportation. Companies compensate by carrying additional inventory, which ties up capital. Manufacturers pay more for inputs and ultimately pass those costs downstream. Governments will blame corporations for “price gouging” because admitting that geopolitics created the inflation would require admitting responsibility for the policies that helped create the crisis.
Then there is LNG. Europe spent years destroying its relationship with Russia and restructuring its energy supply under the assumption that replacement energy could simply be purchased somewhere else. Qatar became critically important to that strategy, particularly for LNG. Japan and other Asian economies are likewise heavily dependent upon imported energy. If Gulf LNG shipments remain constrained, Europe and Asia will increasingly compete for alternative cargoes, and that competition does not magically create additional natural gas. It simply raises the price.
The economic consequences extend far beyond gasoline. Natural gas is critical to fertilizer production. Petrochemicals feed plastics, packaging, pharmaceuticals, textiles, electronics, construction materials, and manufacturing. Energy is embedded in virtually everything you purchase. A sustained disruption therefore moves through the economy in waves. First energy. Then transportation. Then industrial inputs. Then manufacturing. Then food. Finally consumer prices.
This is why wars become economic events regardless of whether the fighting occurs thousands of miles away. There is also another major problem that few politicians understand. The world never truly rebuilt resilient supply chains after the pandemic. Corporations diversified some suppliers and governments suddenly discovered the phrase “supply-chain security,” but the fundamental structure remains dependent upon enormous volumes of goods moving through a handful of maritime choke points. Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Suez, Malacca, and Panama are arteries of globalization. Disrupt one and costs rise. Disrupt several simultaneously and globalization itself begins to fracture.
Bab el-Mandeb remains operational for now. Reuters reported 25 vessels crossed there Monday, close to its 10-day average of 24. That does not eliminate the danger. The Houthis have already demonstrated that commercial shipping in the Red Sea can become a military target. We therefore have instability surrounding TWO critical maritime corridors connected to the Middle East while the Ukraine war continues disrupting another major source of energy, grain, fertilizer, and commodities.
This is precisely why the War Cycle matters economically. War is never isolated to the battlefield. Politicians calculate military objectives while capital calculates RISK. Capital does not care about patriotic speeches. Insurance companies do not insure vessels because some politician promises everything will be fine. Businesses do not invest billions based upon diplomatic rhetoric. Capital retreats when uncertainty rises, and once it retreats, governments discover that restoring confidence is considerably more difficult than destroying it.
The preliminary U.S.-Iran peace agreement reached in June has already broken down. Iran is demanding sanctions relief and compensation. Trump has responded with demands that Iran itself pay compensation for deaths arising from wars, attacks, and protests. Meanwhile, commercial vessels are disappearing from Hormuz while politicians negotiate over who owes whom money.
The world should be paying attention to the ships, not the speeches. When normal traffic is 130 to 140 vessels per day and suddenly we are counting SIX, something is profoundly wrong. If this persists, inventories will tighten and shortages will emerge unevenly across industries and countries. The public will probably not recognize the connection immediately. They will simply notice that another product takes longer to arrive, another manufacturer announces a surcharge, another utility bill rises, another airline increases fares, another food producer raises prices, and another government statistic claims inflation is somehow under control.
The next supply-chain crisis does not need to resemble 2020. There does not need to be empty toilet-paper aisles for the economic damage to be severe. This version can manifest through energy shortages, freight bottlenecks, fertilizer prices, industrial inputs, shipping delays, insurance costs, and another wave of inflation hitting households that have never recovered from the last one.
Watch Hormuz very carefully. Six ships where there were once 130 to 140 is not normal commerce. It is a warning.
I find these newly released messages because they expose once again how differently these people spoke privately compared with the absolute certainty projected upon the public. Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul have now released an initial batch of messages recovered from Anthony Fauci’s government-issued iPhone, reportedly containing more than 34,000 texts. In January 2021, while officials were discussing vaccination during pregnancy, Fauci himself raised a concern about the second dose and wrote that it “theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.” That is Fauci’s language, not mine.
Fauci said the second jab specifically raised fever and what he called a “cytokine storm.” Vivek Murthy responded that Fauci had raised “a really good point” and said it was worth examining. Fauci also noted that more than 10,000 pregnant women had already received the vaccine without apparent “red flags,” but these women and unborn children were used as test subjects. Behind closed doors these officials were discussing uncertainty while the public conversation increasingly became one in which anyone asking difficult questions was treated like an idiot.
Pregnant women deserved to know precisely what government officials knew, what they did not know, and what they were privately debating. In January 2021, nobody possessed five or ten years of pregnancy data for these vaccines because that data could not possibly have existed. Instead, “the science” mandated these vaccines and insisted they were safe and effective for everyone from newborns to unborn babies in utero.
By July 30, 2021, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine were recommending vaccination for pregnant women, with ACOG saying there was evidence of “safe and effective use” during pregnancy. On August 11, the CDC went further and issued a statement literally titled “New CDC Data: COVID-19 Vaccination Safe for Pregnant People,” recommending vaccination during pregnancy after citing surveillance data showing no increased miscarriage signal.
By September, ACOG declared that its message “cannot be stronger or clearer” and described vaccination during pregnancy as “safe and effective.” In January, Fauci was privately discussing a first-trimester miscarriage concern surrounding the second dose; months later, America’s most powerful health organizations insisted upon vaccinations. The public deserved to understand how officials went from one position to the other, but asking questions during the COVID madness era was not permitted. You were to blindly follow “the science” and condemn anyone who dared to inquire.
A federal study was published in April 2021 depicting the miscarriage rate at around 12.6% for pregnant women exposed to the mRNA vaccine. The science decreed that remaining unvaccinated was a far deadlier risk to pregnant women and their unborn children. We know now that the vaccine failed to prevent against infection or transmission. FAR WORSE: the federal study actually documents a MISCARRIAGE RATE OF 82% for women who took the toxin in their second or third trimester. The study showed that the vaccination had the exact same rate of miscarriage as the abortion pill. WOMEN WERE MISLED TO ABORT THEIR CHILDREN. How is there not an absolute uproar over these findings?
Johnson and Paul say these messages are only an initial release from more than 34,000 recovered texts. Paul has already sought answers from Fauci concerning other aspects of the government’s pandemic response, while Johnson says additional records should be examined. Release them ALL. Stop protecting bureaucracies, pharmaceutical companies, politicians, Republicans, Democrats, or anyone else. The government spent years demanding transparency from ordinary Americans while treating its own internal deliberations as something the public had no right to see.
Health agencies across the world reiterated the “SAFE AND EFFECTIVE” messaging and actively targeted pregnant women in marketing campaigns.
The greatest scandal of COVID may ultimately be the destruction of trust. People were told to trust government officials because they possessed information ordinary citizens did not. Now, years later, internal emails and texts continue showing something much more human: officials debating uncertainties, questioning evidence, worrying about risks and sometimes disagreeing among themselves. That is actually how science is supposed to work. What was unacceptable was pretending before the public that such uncertainty barely existed.
People were making decisions about their bodies, pregnancies, livelihoods and families. They had every right to know what their government was discussing. Anything less was an abuse of public trust.
C
Zelensky is once again complaining that Russia is receiving ballistic missiles from North Korea. The Kyiv Independent reported that he accused Moscow of preparing to receive additional North Korean ballistic missiles, declaring that Russia cannot continue the war without Pyongyang’s assistance. North Korean missiles have reportedly been used in attacks that killed Ukrainian civilians, and that deserves condemnation. But there is an obvious hypocrisy: Ukraine has spent years shopping the world for missiles, ammunition, aircraft, artillery, intelligence, and financing. Apparently, foreign missiles become an unacceptable internationalization of the war only when they are pointed in the opposite direction.
Ukraine has received British Storm Shadow cruise missiles, French SCALP missiles and American ATACMS, and Western restrictions governing their use have progressively changed during the war. Kyiv is now reportedly purchasing another 70 American-made ATACMS missiles from Turkey, subject to U.S. authorization. Zelensky cannot demand additional foreign missiles capable of reaching deeper into Russia and simultaneously act astonished that Russia went shopping for foreign missiles of its own.
The missile does not care what flag was painted on the shipping crate. This is how politicians play the war game. Britain supplies missiles and calls it defense, France supplies missiles and calls it defense, America supplies missiles and calls it defense. North Korea supplies missiles and suddenly everyone screams that the war is being internationalized. Moscow is guilty of precisely the same hypocrisy when it condemns NATO weapons while accepting North Korean missiles and ammunition. Every government has invented a moral exemption for its own escalation while condemning identical behavior from the other side.
Ukraine is developing longer-range weapons and celebrating strikes thousands of kilometers inside Russia while condemning Moscow for expanding its own foreign weapons supply. Support from North Korea can hardly be compared to support from the entirety of NATO.
The civilian deaths are the tragedy buried beneath all this political hypocrisy. Ukrainians die from Russian and North Korean missiles. Russians have also died during Ukrainian long-range attacks and drone strikes. Those civilians did not decide which country should manufacture the weapon that eventually landed near them.
QUESTION: You said Iran is playing 3-D Chess while we are playing checkers. That Iran is also using tactics to disrupt the Israeli and US elections. Can you provide any details to that assessment?
Jeb
ANSWER: There is never anything new under the sun. When the infighting with a country is dominant, an adversary can use that to prevent a unified decision of defense as they argue among themselves. This is the position the United States finds itself in and within Israel, the resistance toward Netanyahu is significant.
This tactic has been adopted through history in military confrontations. I remember I discussed that with the Citadel Military College of South Carolina back in the ’80s when the wanted to teach the ECM to their students. I am not certain if they ever taught this at West Point.
The example is Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. Philip brilliantly used this precise tactic to undermine Athens, which allowed him to conquer Athens and all of Greece. The political infighting in Athens significantly undermined its ability to respond to the rising threat of Macedon.
Iran is employing the same tactic today, knowing that the Democrats will champion their cause simply because Trump is the opposition. Fanning this division prevents any cohesive response to Iran as took place during the conquest of Greece by Philip II.
This polarization of politics within ancient Athens contributed directly to its loss of independence at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338BC. The city’s democratic system, while a source of strength, proved vulnerable to a combination of internal factionalism and the strategic exploitation of these divisions by Philip II of Macedon.
While Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, is famous for his military genius, his approach to conquering the vast Persian Empire was adopting this tactic. He primarily relied on decisive military force, but he was also highly strategic in cultivating political factions within conquered territories to secure his rule.
Alexander’s primary strategy was to decisively seek a military confrontation to shatter the enemy’s power. His goal was to bring the Persian King, Darius III, to battle and defeat him in a way that would make him the uncontested ruler of Asia. By winning decisive victories like those at Granicus and Gaugamela, he made himself the de facto King of Kings, which led to major cities like Babylon and Persepolis surrendering to him without a fight.
Julius Caesar is closely associated with the “divide and conquer” (“divide et impera”) strategy, he adopted in his strategy during the Gallic Wars (58–50 BC). He faced a significant challenge: the Gauls were numerous and possessed formidable cavalry, but they were organized into dozens of small, independent, and often rivalrous tribes. Caesar brilliantly exploited this disunity. He actively sowed discord among the Gallic tribes, forming strategic alliances with some (like the Aedui and Remi) to help him defeat others.
Exploiting the division between Democrat and Republican is the key strategy to drag this out to undermine the Trump Administration and embarass it precisely as they did to Jimmy Carter. This is a well establish strategy to employ against an adversary. This seems to go over the heads of those in media because they are too busy reading the scripts written for them by the Neocons like the Institute Study for [Perpetual] War.
Tonight the primary results from elections in South Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Connecticut, Alabama and Vermont will be determined. A lot of focus will be on communist candidates in the Wisconsin and Minesota governor’s races.
Additional interest will be noted in the South Carolina GOP special election republican primary to replace Senator Lindsey Graham. Polling locations close at 7:00pm ET.
Consider this an open thread for any discussion related to tonight’s election results. If you in one of the states voting today and have feedback you feel would be valuable, please share in the comments.
Robert Gilman, an English teacher and Marine Corps veteran, was detained by Russian police while traveling to the U.S. embassy in Moscow in January 2022 and charged with disorderly conduct, drunkenness and assaulting a police officer, which his advocates strongly denied.
Via Truth Social – “I am proud to announce that American Citizen Robert Gilman, a former United States Marine, is coming HOME! In a well known Media story, Robert was imprisoned in Russia in 2022, during the Biden Administration. After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a Humanitarian Basis. We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return — No exchange took place. Robert will land at Andrews Air Force Base, in Washington, D.C., tonight, where my Representatives, some of whom are on the plane with him, will welcome Robert back to THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
I just spoke to him, and he had one request — A GREAT cheeseburger when he lands. I will take care of that! During my Administration, we have prioritized bringing home Americans Detained Abroad, and have done so at a level never seen before, returning hundreds of people to their families. We have also freed many non Americans who were under capture in different countries throughout the World. Robert Gilman has been reunited with his wonderful mother, Nancy, who is also on the plane with him, and will soon get to see all of his loved ones. Thank you to my incredible Team, including Special Envoy for Peace Missions, Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy for Hostage Response, Adam Boehler, Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, Jared Kushner, and the many others who made this possible. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
Via Marco Rubio – “Today, after more than four years of detention in Russia, Robert Gilman is on his way home to be reunited with his family. Mr. Gilman joins over 100 Americans whom President Trump has freed during his second term in office.
We thank Russia for working with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to release Mr. Gilman and allowing him to receive the necessary medical treatment here in the United States.
While we appreciate this positive step, we are still seeking the immediate return of all other unjustly detained Americans, including wrongful detainee Stephen Hubbard. The President will not stop until all unjustly detained Americans are home.” [citation]
Back in 2013 and 2014 we shared the story of a man returning to Florida was stopped by police in Maryland who asked him for his firearm. When the Floridian asked the Maryland police how they knew he owned a firearm, things got sketchy. {Go Deep} The event kicked off a constitutional discussion.
A few years later in 2015 the Wall Street Journal reported on a national federal database that was using Automatic License Plate Readers (APLRs) to capture and store the travel of millions of Americans {SOURCE}.
Now we fast-forward a decade and that federal database is now being exploited by local police around the nation to keep track of ordinary persons of interest to their community who travel outside their jurisdiction. This is where the Flock Cameras come into the discussion. WATCH:
The same government interests who dismiss our concerns about privacy are the same govt interests who point out how horrible China and Iran are for monitoring their citizens on CCTV systems.
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