Making sense of the world through data
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We need to leave it to Canadian Prepper to use the right amount of expletives to qualify the Trump Administration in the video below. These people are little more than criminals and the only, flimsy, hope is that the rest of the world, i,e, China, Russia, India and other BRICS nations can summon the courage to say stop to this nonsense.
It is of course very unlikely to happen and therefore, almost on schedule, we will see the start of World War III in the coming months, maybe weeks. It is at this stage almost unavoidable.
Soon you won't be able to log on to the Internet without a Microsoft online account. The age verification systems that most countries are putting in place will oblige most applications in order to be compliant to confirm your age an in order to do that you will have to have a Microsoft account linked to your machine.
The video below on YouTube is technical but explains very well why it will soon become impossible to bypass the system since it is based on the TPM (Trusted Platform Module), a hardware, not a software that every new machine must possess in order to be able to run Windows 11.
If you are already running a Linux based operating system, you may be immune for a while but this probably won't last long since one by one most applications will stop working on Linux, unless "Linux" implements a similar scheme to Microsoft which by design is impossible.
So what should you do? Well, most people will do exactly nothing and will comply with the new requirement, saying goodbye to privacy. Was it that important to start with?
I did try to install Linux Ubuntu that I have been using for almost 15 years now on some of my friends computers. It usually lasted a week during which they enjoyed the new features and ease of use of Ubuntu. Then about a week later, they discovered that an "essential" application wasn't working with Linux. I would show them an alternative which invariably was dismissed as less convenient or incompatible with another software. And lo, requested to de-install Linux and revert to Windows immediately.
Never mind the fact that we do not fully understand why ANY of the cycles exist to start with, be it the 11-year solar cycle or the chaotic El Nino cycle, the narrative will squeeze the juice out of the event to justify further tightening in Europe and restrictions elsewhere since humans are obviously the cause of these natural but repurposed events.
Great timing too in fact since the war with Iran will trigger a recession which would of course never have happened otherwise, requiring tightening of demand beyond what normal recessions usually achieve.
Unfortunately we have left solid ground if there ever was such a thing and entered the fuzzy land of narrative where what governments say is the truth policed by restrictive laws and compliant medias becoming de facto virtual truths.
I was shocked recently to realize that most people I talk to believe that mankind never went to the Moon and were conversely genuinely surprised that I didn't share this "belief" since I tend to be on the conspiracy side.
The truth is that propaganda works. Most people do not bother looking further than the headlines and gobble up the fast-think narrative which is served to them daily. Life is already hard enough, why bother "thinking" on top of it all?
Good news: With AI, soon, thinking will become optional.
Weather
forecasters are sounding the alarm about what could become a "super" El
Niño event, potentially one of the strongest on record.
"Strongest
El Niño on record this year?!" meteorologist Ben Noll wrote on X. Noll
said the latest ECMWF outlook indicates a 75% chance of a super El Niño
by October, with "some scenarios suggesting the most intense event in
more than a century."
Noll said, "El Niño forming by May, potentially becoming strong by August — new ECMWF seasonal modeling."
Latest El Niño odds:
22% chance of a super El Niño by August
80% chance of a strong event
98% chance of a moderate event
Meteorologist Ryan Maue noted:
Impacts for agri traders:
If
that scenario materializes, it could shift weather patterns worldwide,
increasing the risk of flooding in some regions, drought and wildfires
in others, and further raising global temperatures. An El Niño event
typically strengthens the Pacific jet stream and redistributes heat and
moisture globally.
Across
the U.S., an El Niño influences seasonal rainfall, especially during
winter. The stronger, more active jet stream typically shifts south,
bringing wetter-than-average conditions to the southern U.S., including
California, the Gulf Coast, and the Mid-South.
The good news is that El Niño reduces Atlantic hurricane activity.
Remember,
left-wing corporate media is just a few months away from firing up the
"hottest ever" global warming headlines to peddle junk climate science.
Global
warming doomers, such as Greta, have shifted more recently from climate
alarmism to Palestine activism. It is all about following the money.
The war with Iran clearly is the black swan event that everyone expected to happen without of course knowing exactly what it would be. Now we do.
Amazingly, although the world is about to change utterly, conversely, current powers are showing us day after day that they will NOT change thereby accelerating their downfall.
The emergence of cheap drones against which the US has for now little more than expensive anti-missile systems reminds us the Huns with their horse riding techniques defeating the Roman army on foot, with speed and flexibility in the 5th Century CE.
Likewise the outdated strategy of the Israel Army against Hezbollah with columns of tanks falling into traps and being destroyed by cheap and extremely efficient manpads looks 50 years out of time.
But the most outrageous example is certainly that of Europe as explained below by Thomas Kolbe which while staring at the abyss energy-wise is doubling down on its industrial and civilizational destroying policies.
While the world, i.e. more specifically the Global Supply Chain on which its prosperity was built over the last 70 years is falling apart, Europe finds nothing better to do than waging war against... CO2. Eventually, the continent will find itself with no army, no industry and a crumbling social order with absolutely nothing to show for its efforts. Paris, London and most other European cities will become later-day Venices, beautiful but completely emptied of their economic vitality and of course prosperity. The worst is that the wound will be completely self-inflicted.
What a lesson of history! We can now understand far more vividly how and why Rome was reduced to ruins, and Venice to its open-air museum status. They in fact never ceased being themselves. Rome, the center of a long gone empire and Venice of an extinct trade network while the world around them was being transformed.
In
the media business, five months is an eternity. And it does indeed seem
like an eternity has passed since Christian Kullmann, CEO of the German
chemical giant Evonik, sharply criticized European climate policy at
the end of October.
At the time, Kullmann gave an interview to Süddeutsche Zeitung,
in which he called—if not for the outright abolition—then at least for a
significant weakening of the EU-wide CO₂ emissions trading system,
given the dramatic state of the economy.
Kullmann rightly pointed
out that there is probably no stricter CO₂ regime anywhere in the world
than in the EU. And since the climate, as we know, has no borders, he
argued it makes little sense to disadvantage domestic cutting-edge
technology in this way. He explicitly referred to the costly CO₂ trading
system, which drained a staggering €21.4 billion from the German
economy last year alone—under the banner of climate policy through this
relatively new mechanism.
Five
months after these remarkable statements—briefly breaking the
long-standing silence of German industrial leaders—the question must be
asked whether there is anywhere else in the world a comparable project
to the EU’s CO₂ regime. With the United States abandoning its policy of
artificial energy scarcity, its war on conventional energy production,
and heavy-handed regulation of its own industrial base, the EU now
stands alone in its ideological campaign against economic rationality.
No one else seems willing to join the chorus of Europe’s climate
apocalypticism.
This European isolationism may elsewhere be
perceived as a form of late-stage counter-colonization—a return flow of
capital from remorseful Europeans willing to accept self-imposed
sacrifice to help other regions get back on their feet. Around the
world, this selflessly naive “degrowth suicide” is welcomed, as it
delivers not only so-called climate support from European funds but,
more importantly, accelerated industrial investment from European
companies—served on a silver platter by eco-socialist policymakers. A
civilizational ingredient that, it seems, Europe itself now believes it
can do without.
In China, one has learned to remain quiet when a
geopolitical rival makes mistake after mistake—as is currently the case
with European climate policy. Energy-intensive firms like Evonik are
penalized by CO₂ pricing with an artificial competitive disadvantage.
Once embedded in political and administrative structures, this amounts
to a genuine stimulus program for foreign industrial locations.
At
the same time, China—like the increasingly deregulated United States
under President Donald Trump—is developing a powerful vacuum effect in
global capital markets. The world is benefiting from German engineering
and European capital.
This dynamic is particularly evident in the
chemical industry. As a highly energy-intensive sector, it has suffered
one of the hardest blows from European climate policy, alongside the
automotive industry. Kullmann’s warning about the erosion of economic
foundations was more than justified—but it came far too late and
remained, for a time, a lone voice in the wilderness.
Since 2018,
Germany’s chemical industry has lost roughly a quarter of its production
capacity. The sector is operating at an average capacity utilization of
just 70%, a level that reflects a sectoral depression not seen in
Germany since the end of World War II.
Yet
the worse the economic situation becomes, the more firmly German
policymakers cling to their belief in the green transformation.
Corporate silence is secured by a massive subsidy machine, just as the
sympathetic media sector provides the shrill soundtrack to the broader
economic decline.
Tactically astute from a media standpoint,
Brussels—under pressure from European industry—has agreed to ease some
pressure from the CO₂ cost burden. The European Commission is expected
to temporarily freeze the volume of circulating certificates within the
market stability reserve in order to stabilize prices.
For Evonik CEO Kullmann, the outcome presented by Brussels appears acceptable.
His once sharp criticism of the CO₂ mechanism has mysteriously vanished
into the media ether. The change of heart clearly follows the promise
of further subsidies.
A destructive mechanism has emerged between
large corporations and an eco-socialist political leadership. At the
media level, corporate executives and political actors stage a kind of
ping-pong game that simulates critical debate and conflicting interests
at the highest levels of decision-making.
Evidently, there is no
willingness to even slow down the ongoing transfer of wealth—from the
productive sectors of society to politically favored extractive sectors
such as the green economy—even amid prolonged economic stagnation. The
economic and social consequences of this policy are, for now, being
conveniently ignored in both Brussels and Berlin.
The mission of the special forces sent to Iran over the weekend was NOT to extract pilots. Their job was to locate and extract Uranium and they failed.
This explains why Trump was so angry on Sunday while announcing the "successful" recovery of "one" pilot.
It also explains why generals who opposed the plan as suicidal were suddenly "retired" last week.
So what really happened?
A significant "camp" was improvised 37 km South of Isphahan, the city where the Isphahan Nuclear technology Center is located. (Far from the South-Western Coast where the F15 pilots allegedly ejected and were hiding on top of "high" mountains.)
From this camp, a significant special force was dispatched to the Nuclear Center and failed to recover the material.
In the firefight that ensued, the Americans were obliged to retreat, leaving behind large C130 transport aircrafts (mobilized to carry heavy loads, not two pilots) and four specialized helicopters which were destroyed either during or after the operation.
This was a heil mary operation. A last ditch effort to recover the Iranian enriched Uranium and for the trump Administration to claim "victory" while avoiding further heavy involvement
This was also the main reason why the large "amphibious" forces were dispatched all the way from Japan as decoy and support.
The mission failed. Now Trump is back to square one. The only path forward left is either bombing Iran until they give up, which they won't (Nobody has ever done so in history!) or "boots on the ground" to re-open the Hormuz Straight which as we discussed earlier is practically and geographically impossible.
We have reached a strategic impasse!
PS: The news is now in the open. "Obviously" this was not a pilot extraction operation but a full fledged attack on Iran nuclear stockpile which failed.
Does anybody in the US realize how unhinged Trump sounds to the rest of the world?
Conversely, Iran is taking an existential stand against the US. Clearly, a couple of bridges and power plants out are going to be painful, but they must have figured out from the beginning that when push comes to shove, the pressure would rise significantly if you endanger the petro-dollar system. We are talking about oil at or above 200 USD per barrel in a couple of months, the deepest recession since the 1930s. It's a trap. Economic and geographic, and it looks more and more that Trump will rush into it.
Unfortunately for the US, 2026 is not 1966. The US is broke and so is practically most of the West, which means that there will be real choices to make between pensions and weapons in the coming months. Conversely the balance of power between America and China has changed drastically. If the US decides to engage itself deeper in the Iranian quagmire, then the ability of the country to keep a major presence on other continents will wither dramatically.
Most empires crumble when they over-extend themselves. This is well known and confirmed by countless examples. So nothing new under the sun, then? Well, kind of, although the process itself could obviously be rather violent.
The true question now is to know if we can avoid a nuclear conflagration. A year or two ago, the risk was already there but the question was still mostly academic. Now, we are talking "existential" for Iran and soon enough for the US empire too. The pressure is building up very quickly. If Iran takes possession of the Hormuz Strait, which de facto is already the case, they become instantly an "oil" super-power and the US conversely is relegated to one among many. Rarely have the stakes been so high. Las Vegas against Sun Tsu. "Rien ne va plus!..."
Trump offers Iranian negotiators amnesty, threatens to 'blow everything up' if no deal
IEA Head warns Asia (implying Beijing) is panic hoarding fuel
Trump warns Iran 'Open the Fuckin' Strait' or "you'll be living in hell'
Trump Talks With Fox Reporter About US-Iran Negotiations
Shortly
after President Trump wrote on Truth Social, "Open the Fuckin' Strait,
you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be
to Allah," the president spoke with Fox News reporter Trey Yingst for 15
minutes early Sunday.
Trump
provided Yingst with new details on the behind-the-scenes negotiations
with the Iranians and what would happen if Iran does not reach a
good-faith deal.
Yingst said Trump told him, "If they don't make a deal, and fast, I'm considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil."
The reporter went on to say that the president added that if there is
no deal, bridges and power plants will go down all over the country.
Yingst
asked the president about the possibility of an agreement with the
Iranians. The president said those negotiating on behalf of Tehran have
been granted amnesty for now so they can continue the talks.
The reporter noted that Trump thinks a deal can be reached by Monday. Trump said, "I think there's a good chance tomorrow. They're negotiating now."
International Energy Agency Head Warns Of Panic Hoarding Oil In Asia
International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol told the Financial Times
this weekend that governments must avoid panic hoarding and refrain
from imposing fuel export bans as the Gulf energy shock ripples outward
to Asia, Africa, Europe, and eventually reaches the US West Coast.
"I urge all countries not to impose bans or restrictions on exports," Fatih Birol emphasized in the interview. "It
is the worst time when you look at the global oil markets. Their trade
partners, their allies and their neighbors will suffer as a result."
The FT noted that Birol was "careful not to name China directly," but made very clear his warning was likely aimed at Beijing, which has already moved to restrict exports of critical refined products, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Birol
said that "major countries in Asia who hold major refineries" should
reconsider their current bans, adding, "If those countries continue to
restrict or totally ban exports, the impact on the Asian markets will be
dramatic."
Birol's hoarding warning in Asia comes shortly after
the IEA's coordinated release of 400 million barrels from emergency
reserves. Such hoarding by major countries would directly undercut
efforts to stabilize global energy markets. He also warned that if the
disruption in the Strait of Hormuz persists, losses of crude and refined
products in April could reach roughly double the levels seen in March.
Early in the US-Iran conflict, energy economist Anas Alhajji joined UBS analysts on a call in which he warned
of panic hoarding risks in the oil market. He said that he questioned
back in January why the Trump administration was hoarding Venezuela's
oil after the Maduro raid, instead of bringing it to market.
Alhajji
noted then, "I'm not talking about conspiracy theories. We were
criticizing the Trump administration, companies, and trading houses that
bought Venezuelan oil, and asking why they weren't able to sell it to
end users and why they were hoarding it. Now we know." He was implying
that this hoarding was in preparation for Operation Epic Fury.
Asia has been hit hardest so far. JPMorgan's top commodities expert warned
about the falling dominoes of how the energy shock transmits from Asia,
then spreads to Africa and Europe, before reaching the US, especially
California, shortly thereafter.
"Unfortunately,
we see that some countries are adding to their existing stocks during
our coordinated oil stock release," Birol said. "They are stocking up.
This is not helpful. In my view, this is a time for all countries to
prove they are responsible members of the international community."
Jeff Currie of Carlyle recently outlined the hoarding risks in a note titled "A Crude Awakening": "The physical shortfall is the trigger; the behavioral response is the multiplier."
Trump Tells Tehran: "Open the Fuckin' Strait"
Earlier
on Easter morning, President Trump unleashed a fierce message on Truth
Social: "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up
in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Is
the pressure building on Trump from the rest of the world (and
domestically) to end this 'operation'? And/or are we getting closer to
quagmire-inducing boots on the ground?
