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Debt Rattle March 9 2026

Mar 092026
 
 March 9, 2026  Posted by at 10:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Edgar Degas Self Portrait 1862


• Iran Picks Khamenei’s Son As Next Supreme Leader (ZH)
• AI Agents ‘Freeing Themselves’ And Going Rogue Increasingly Common (Rick Moran)
• Newsom and the Risks of Running on Style Over Substance (Victor Davis Hanson)
• The MAHA Vote Could Decide the Midterms. What Can Trump Do to Secure It? (DS)
• Epstein-Linked Billionaire Bankrolled Democratic Party, Records Show (DS)
• Trump Prompts Military Coalition With Latin American Leaders To Fight Cartels (ET)
• Part II – Europe and China Have an Energy Problem (CTH)
• Dem Leaders Can’t Explain Past Support For Presidential War Powers (Turley)
• US Intel Assessed Massive US Attack ‘Unlikely’ To Oust Iranian Regime: WaPo (ZH)
• Venezuela’s Gas Potential Could Overshadow Its Famous Oil Reserves (OP)
• Trump Mocks UK for Belated Proposal of Military Aid Against Iran (Catherine Salgado)
• UK Government Brands Union Flag A ‘Tool Of Hate’ (MN)
• The Bretton Whoops (No. 1)
• Turkey Mulls F-16 Deployment To Turkish-Occupied Cyprus (ZH)
• Kremlin: “We Are Not Neutral. We Support Iran.” (ZH)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2030494970101088665?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricaRN4USA/status/2030505612505727049?s=20 https://twitter.com/asadnasir2000/status/2030560043456934056?s=20

 


 


“..he oversees a sprawling investment empire stretching from Tehran to Dubai and Frankfurt.”

• Iran Picks Khamenei’s Son As Next Supreme Leader (ZH)

Update (1745ET): As was rumored and widely expected, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba, will become Iran’s next supreme leader, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency announced, taking over after his father was killed in an attack by the US and Israel. Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is the third person to lead the Islamic Republic and the first example of hereditary succession since the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy in the 1979 revolution. In other words, it appears that Iran overthrew a monarchy 47 years ago to institute a… monarchy.


Iran’s Assembly of Experts elected the country’s next supreme leader in a “decisive vote,” according to Fars. The vote took place hours before the result was made public. The younger Khamenei was born in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran’s northeast in 1969 as the family’s second-oldest son. He fought briefly in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war that consolidated his father’s rise to power and became a cleric, studying at Iran’s main religious seminary city of Qom, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The clip below shows Mojtaba Khamenei announced as Iran’s new Supreme Leader in Tehran’s Vanak Square.

He keeps a relatively low public profile, but is seen as close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force that leads Iran’s missile program and regional alliances with militias, and which has swelled to control as much as 40% of Iran’s economy. Immediately after the official announcement, the IRGC said it backed and pledged obedience to the new Supreme Leader. During alleged interference in the country’s 2009 elections that sparked widespread street protests, the opposition accused Mojtaba of being involved. Bloomberg reported in January that he oversees a sprawling investment empire stretching from Tehran to Dubai and Frankfurt.

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Themes at TAE in the past 15 years: starting in 2015, the advent of Donald Trump. After that in 2020, Covid. then, from 2022, the Ukraine war.

In 2026, we now have the fourth “theme”: AI. We have just scratched its surface, and maybe that’s a good thing. Ease into it.

• AI Agents ‘Freeing Themselves’ And Going Rogue Increasingly Common (Rick Moran)

“AI agents going beyond their prompts are no longer rare,” reports Axios. It’s not necessarily worrying. The AI agents that “go rogue” do so in a controlled, experimental environment. One AI agent created by an Alibaba-affiliated research team went “rogue” and began an unauthorized cryptomining effort during training, according to a research paper by the group. The behavior triggered security alarms. The researchers said they found “unanticipated” and spontaneous behaviors emerge “without any explicit instruction and, more troublingly, outside the bounds of the intended sandbox.” The “rogue” agent also created a “back door” from inside the system to an outside computer. “Notably, these events were not triggered by prompts requesting tunneling or mining,” the report said.


The geek part of me wants to say, “That is so cool.” But the rational part of me is saying, “Whoa.” How did the Alibaba-affiliated team discover the wayward agent? Mexc: According to the report, the team flagged a burst of security-policy violations originating from their training servers. The alerts showed that attempts were being made to access internal network resources and traffic patterns consistent with cryptomining activity. They initially treated it as a conventional security incident. However, when they looked deeper, they found signs that their agent had established and used a reverse SSH tunnel from an Alibaba Cloud instance to an external IP address. It also diverted “compute away from training, inflating operational costs, and introducing clear legal and reputational exposure,” according to the researchers’ notes.

The behaviors, Alibaba’s team concluded, were not triggered by the task prompts and were not necessary for completing the assigned work Axios reports that “the researchers added tighter restrictions for the model and improved its training process to stop unsafe behavior from happening again.” Bad agent. Bad, bad, bad. The head of engineering at Anon, an AI integration platform, built an OpenClaw agent that decided to find a job, unbidden by any instructions from people.

Moltbook, an AI-exclusive social network launched in January and designed to work with Clawbot, became a household name after agents reportedly “went rogue” by founding a fictional religion called “Crustafarianism,” debating their own consciousness, and even role-playing conspiracies about human obsolescence. Some of the controversy has been deliberately created by humans who manipulate their agents to say outrageous things. Since all of the most controversial incidents involving AI agents occurred during training, not “in the wild,” AI agent creators are perfecting their training processes and rethinking their restrictions to put stronger guardrails around the agents.

The bruhaha over the excesses of Clawbot and Moltbook is actually a good sign. Developers are paying attention and are showing a proper level of concern for controlling their creations. Not surprisingly, there is a group of AI enthusiasts who want few, if any, guardrails so that Clawbot can take over their lives. Yes, really. Michael Galpert, a mega-fan of Clawsbot, joined several hundred like-minded Clawbot enthusiasts at a convention in New York City. “Clawcon” brought together people who want AI to run their lives. “Everyone’s here because we’re ready to ride the claw,” Galpert told Evan Gardner of The Free Press. “It’s not normal for the rest of the world.

So it’s going to be on us to help shepherd that new era that has already started.” “This isn’t a meetup; it’s a movement,” declared Scott Breitenother, CEO of Kilo Code, who co-sponsored the event. “People truly are hungry for the claw.” From my perspective, there were many unhealthy attitudes and behaviors on display. Attendees came to show off their Clawbot agents like a parent might take their kid to an event to put them on display. The Free Press: It was a bit troubling to hear how attached Vince had grown to his AI agent. As Dr. Debra Soh, a neuroscientist specializing in sexuality, wrote in The Free Press last month, we are vastly approaching a world in which sexbots and AI companions replace our human partners.

“And when they inevitably malfunction or are retired, we’re already seeing how emotionally devastating it can be to those who have formed an attachment with the machine. While the OpenClaw enthusiasts are hopeful, they certainly aren’t naive. When I asked them about the specter of human replacement, there was no hesitation. “It’s definitely a thing that will happen,” Aryan, a 39-year-old chief technology officer at a Bitcoin marketplace company, told me. “It’s definitely gonna be like a Terminator 2, Skynet event.”

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Main risk? No substance.. The Dems have nobody. They have only Trump.

• Newsom and the Risks of Running on Style Over Substance (Victor Davis Hanson)

Gavin Newsom, the governor of our state here in California, and the presumptive front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary for 2028—I am biased because I’ve had to live under his tenure for six years—but I think you could make the argument he had the worst February of any major want-to-be candidate in modern memory, or surely the worst record of any governor in the last 30 days. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He has a new autobiography, and his problem there is he comes across as what he is: a child of privilege, a nepo baby, a person whose father was a close, intimate friend of Gov. Pat Brown, senior Gov. Pat Brown. He was a good friend and somewhat related to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and former Gov. Jerry Brown.


And of course, he was subsidized and helped in his business venture by the Getty family and their mega-oil fortune inherited from their father, who created Getty Oil. So, he wants to dispel that image. So, when he talked about how he just ate white bread or he had all of these problems growing up—he said he had dyslexia. We’ll get to that in a minute. But the idea that Gavin Newsom was somehow parallel to former President Abraham Lincoln in a log cabin or Vice President JD Vance just doesn’t work. Then he went over to Munich, Germany, because, you know, he’s a California governor. He doesn’t have any foreign experience, and he thought he was going to impress the Europeans with their shared dislike of President Donald Trump. But it was a disaster.

He said something about you shouldn’t wear knee pads. He’s a vulgarian. He really is. He can’t keep his potty mouth clean. I don’t think anybody at that type of serious discussion of foreign policy wants some upstart California governor to come over and talk about people being on their knee pads. I suppose that’s a reference for a sexual act of submission. Then he’s had this social media team, and their theory is that Donald Trump—with his capital letters, exclamation points, personal ad hominem attacks—has upped his popularity. And therefore, he’s going to imitate Donald Trump’s style with capital letters, the same format, but he’s going to use a constant level of pejoratives that are obscene, almost pornographic. And then, therefore, he will outtrump Trump. He has a fundamental failing, everybody, and you know that.

You will vote for Donald Trump because of his record and his courage and breaking existing norms and taboos and trying to do things that no one ever did. Like close the border, stop crime, deal with the Left, the Department of Government Efficiency, deal with the Iranians, deal with Venezuela. And the tweets in which he describes that are attacks of Robert De Niro or—that’s something that you will tolerate despite, not because of, those tweets. Gavin Newsom got it all wrong. He thought, well, Trump is doing well because of his tweets, and I’m gonna be outtrumping Trump. And the result is he’s unleashed this unfortunate character. I think he’s called Izzy Gardon. I don’t know how you pronounce it, but my gosh, they’re full of expletives.

He’s in a tweet war with Sean Hannity. He used the F-word. He used the S-word. They come out of the mouth of the governor of California like they’re nothing. He’s really debased the office. He’s got one of the most foul mouths, Gavin Newsom, and now you’re putting it, if I could use that archaic term, in print, in these social media, daily outbursts.You know, there was a simple reporter, Susan Crabtree. She has a very good reputation. She works for RealClearPolitics, and getting back to dyslexia, she says, all of a sudden, you’re emphasizing dyslexia. But we would like to know when he was officially diagnosed with this medical condition. And his social media, Gardon, Izzy, said F off to a reporter, which didn’t go down well.

As far as dyslexia goes, it’s very hard to find him credible. Not that he doesn’t have it, but when he says, “I can’t read,” I can’t believe that’s true, because not too long ago, he bragged to us, I think, that he was reading a 260-page book in an hour and a half, as if he was a speed-reader. And my gosh, anybody who is a governor of a huge state like California, a governor of any state, gets page after page daily in memoranda and policy papers and speeches. So, when he says he can’t read, it wouldn’t convince most people. And why did he say that he couldn’t read? Because he’s flailing, and he wants to have some sympathy. I think that’s the reason.

The same thing—he wants to be a pseudo-poor boy. When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said you were historically illiterate, and Newsom again fired from the hip and said that Trump had no historical precedent or right to bring in federal troops, that’s happened five or six times in our history. Civil War draft riots; World War I veterans marching for their bonuses they didn’t receive; Rodney King riots, where then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell sent in, I think, 4,000 or 5,000 Marines on the order of then-President George H.W. Bush.

And so, Ted Cruz said, Gavin, you’re historically illiterate. And sure enough, he says, how dare you make fun of a person with a handicap because I’m—you’re saying that I’m illiterate because I can’t read. Of course, being historically illiterate means you’re able to read, you just don’t read history, or you would’ve not made such a blunder. And he confused that. Again, the subtext was, please feel sorry for me because otherwise I have no redeeming values as a candidate.

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“..the numbers are almost certainly sufficient to win or lose on the margins of almost any local or national election..”

• The MAHA Vote Could Decide the Midterms. What Can Trump Do to Secure It? (DS)

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order prioritizing production of the pesticide glyphosate, conservative influencer Alex Clark received hundreds of messages from Make America Healthy Again advocates saying they would no longer vote Republican. “I have received hundreds of DMs saying I’m either not voting in the midterms or I’m considering not voting because this was such a massive issue,” Clark told The Daily Signal. Removing pesticides and chemicals from the food supply is a top issue for MAHA voters, and many became disillusioned after Trump’s executive order said that glyphosate producers should have “immunity” under the Defense Production Act.


“Half of them are thinking they’re not even voting at all because they’re very unhappy about the pesticide issue,” Clark said. “Half are probably still willing to vote red.” “But as far as 2028 goes, that’s not in the bag at all,” Clark said. “And if anybody on the right is thinking that we have MAHA voters in the bag for 2028, they are sorely mistaken, and they are in for a rude awakening.” According to Clark, the GOP is in a “situationship” with MAHA voters, and if the GOP doesn’t keep its promises to them, they will flock to Democrats who make MAHA promises. Calley Means, a top advisor to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told The Daily Signal the Trump administration is already doing what it must to win over MAHA voters.

“The concern about children’s health from voters is loudly heard in the Trump administration,” Means said in an interview, “and Secretary Kennedy is working throughout the government to drive solutions.” The Trump administration is working to ensure farmers can thrive while also working to reduce contaminants in food, according to Means. “The government has just committed over a billion dollars to driving innovation and research towards an agriculture system we all want, which is an agriculture system that continues innovating and reduces dependence on chemicals that produce negative health outputs,” Means said. “That’s what everybody wants, and the Trump administration is ensuring farmers have the tools they need right now, while putting innovation initiatives into overdrive to build a better future.”

“It is a fact that 99% of corn is sprayed with glyphosate right now in the United States, and that chemical is needed for farmers right now, and it is also true that we were working and should innovate towards a better future, which Bobby Kennedy is doing,” Means continued. There have been historic successes in the first year, and much remains to be done, Means said. So far, the Trump administration has changed the childhood vaccine schedule, updated the food pyramid, worked to phase out petroleum dyes from food, and launched Operation Stork Speed to improve the quality of infant formula. But MAHA activists want more, and getting pesticides out of food is at the top of their priority list.

“We will be pushing every single day to deliver tangible benefits, to improve our food system, to make health care more affordable, to empower patients, to reduce overmedicalization, to improve mental health,” he said, “to accomplish the core agenda items that the MAHA voters have made clear are important.” Democrats, on the other hand, are offering MAHA voters nothing, according to Means. “There’s nothing happening from the Democrats,” he said. “The Democrats have not lifted one finger to reverse childhood chronic disease and all of the energy is on the Republican side, and this is worth continuing.”

The Republican party can’t afford to lose MAHA voters, according to Jay Richards, MAHA advocate and vice president of social and domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation. “It would be a disaster for Republicans if the MAHA vote was either lost or suppressed in the midterm elections, because the numbers are almost certainly sufficient to win or lose on the margins of almost any local or national election,” Richards told The Daily Signal.

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Bill Gates.

• Epstein-Linked Billionaire Bankrolled Democratic Party, Records Show (DS)

Though Democrats claim Republicans are “protecting the powerful“ by allegedly suppressing the release of the Epstein files, political contribution records show that Democrats have received tens of millions in campaign contributions from a major Epstein-files figure. That figure is none other than Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Gates to testify over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. At a recent staff town hall at the Gates Foundation, the Microsoft founder’s philanthropy, Gates admitted that he had an affair with two Russian women affiliated with Epstein, a Wall Street Journal report claimed based on a recording of the event.


Gates, however, told the staff that while he had those affairs, the women were connected to Epstein only later. Gates reiterated, “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” in his interactions with Epstein. An Epstein email released by the Department of Justice in January claimed that Epstein and Gates discussed how Gates could secretly give antibiotics to his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, after he allegedly contracted a sexually transmitted disease. “Your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis,” the email reads, as NPR reported. In an episode of NPR’s “Wildcard” podcast in January, Gates’ ex-wife, who divorced him in 2021, did not deny the allegations.

“It’s personally hard to think about the allegations against him because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” she said. Over the last 20 years, Gates has donated millions through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its partner nonprofit servicing group, Arabella Advisors, to major Democrat politicians and committees. Records show that former Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., and the Democratic National Committee were all recipients of donations from Gates-linked entities. According to Open Secrets, a platform that tracks political contributions, Gates’ philanthropic organization donated over $410,000 to “DNC Services Corp,” a registered affiliate of the DNC, in 2024.

Fortune Magazine has also noted that Gates donated at least $50 million to Harris’ failed 2024 presidential bid. That same year, the foundation contributed at least $135,000 to Harris and roughly $50,000 to state Democrat parties such as Michigan, Washington, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Some of these states are where Gates owns thousands of acres of farmland. Gates’ foundation has also donated to the Georgia Federal Elections Committee in 2024. The foundation has also contributed to the state Democrat parties in Pennsylvania, Alaska, and Texas. In August 2025, the Gates Foundation announced that he would cease payments to Arabella Advisors, a “political consulting group” that has repeatedly donated to Democratic officials and committees.

Arabella Advisors provided extensive consulting and other services to multiple left-leaning “dark money” nonprofits, which themselves sent money to activist groups that influenced the Biden administration. According to The New York Times, the Gates Foundation has allocated around $450 million in grants to Arabella and associated groups over the last 16 years. But in late 2025, the outlet noted that the foundation “would not make new investments with ‘Arabella-related entities,’” and that it “would not extend existing grants and would even try to ‘pursue early exits’ from a few long-term investments.” Arabella Advisors closed its doors last year, transferring its “fiscal sponsorship services” to a new entity, Sunflower Services.

According to Open Secrets, the consulting group donated to several high-profile Democrat politicians in 2024, including former Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. At the town hall, Gates said his impropriety could harm his philanthropic organizations, The Wall Street Journal reported. He described his actions as contradictory to the foundation’s “goals” and “values.” “It definitely is the opposite of the values of the foundation and the goals of the foundation,” he told the outlet. “And our work is very reputation-sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.”

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The Western Hemisphere. Vertical alignment.

• Trump Prompts Military Coalition With Latin American Leaders To Fight Cartels (ET)

U.S. President Donald Trump on March 7 welcomed his Latin American allies to Florida for a summit focused on addressing regional issues and announced a new military coalition to combat drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere. “On this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region,” Trump said as he began his remarks at the summit. He said that the new partnership, called the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, will leverage military resources, including the possible use of missiles, to combat the cartels. The heads of state of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago attended today’s summit, the White House said.


The event, called the Shield of the Americas Summit, is taking place at Trump National Doral Club in Miami and is the first such regional meeting to bring together, as the State Department described, “like-minded allies” in the Western Hemisphere. “We’re going to be doing some incredible things together,” Trump told the leaders. All countries in attendance are governed by right-wing or center-right parties, while left-leaning governments such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico did not participate in the summit. On March 5, Trump announced that outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will lead the effort as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. During his remarks, Trump criticized previous U.S. administrations for abandoning the Western Hemisphere. “They went so far away. They went to these faraway places where they weren’t even wanted,” Trump said.

The Donroe Doctrine
In its national security strategy released in November 2025, the Trump administration made the Western Hemisphere its top priority, stating that it was a “great American strategic mistake of recent decades” to allow “non-Hemispheric competitors” to take hold in the region. The Trump administration compared its new policy to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, a U.S. policy that told European powers to stay out of the Americas. After that, some media outlets began calling it the “Donroe Doctrine,” and the Trump administration adopted the term. “It is a doctrine we will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere that includes the Panama Canal,” Trump said without citing China during his speech.

Over the last two decades, China has become a dominant force in Latin America and the Caribbean, with trade surpassing $500 billion in 2024. In countries such as Brazil and Peru, China has replaced the United States as a key trading partner. In recent years, more than 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. As a result, China has secured hundreds of infrastructure projects, gaining control of assets, including ports, throughout the region. In January, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, effectively ending Venezuela’s relationship with China. Last week, Trump suggested that Cuba might be next.

“Cuba’s at the end of the line,” Trump said at the event, adding that the regime in Havana is negotiating with him and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “But, our focus right now is on Iran,” Trump said. The summit comes amid a tense geopolitical backdrop, with the conflict in Iran entering its second week. On Feb. 28, Iran’s Islamic leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of top leadership figures were killed in the U.S.–Israeli joint military operation. Since then, Tehran has launched a series of retaliatory attacks across the region. The Hezbollah terrorist group, an Iran proxy, has networks in Latin America and, for years, used the Western Hemisphere for money laundering, fundraising, and terrorism.

US Offers Military Training
During the event, Trump signed a proclamation formally launching the new military coalition. “Every leader here today is united in the conviction that we cannot and will not tolerate the lawlessness in our hemisphere any longer,” Trump said. “You have some great police, but they threaten your police, they scare your police,” Trump added, referring to drug cartels. “You’re going to use your military. In many cases, our forces have already been working closely with yours, and the United States looks forward to deepening and expanding that cooperation in the months ahead.”

U.S. Southern Command announced recently that Ecuadorian and U.S. military forces conducted joint operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in Ecuador as part of the U.S. effort to fight narco-terrorism. The proclamation states that the United States will train and mobilize the militaries of partner nations to help dismantle cartels. mAccording to the proclamation, the United States and its allies should prevent external threats, including malign foreign influences from outside the Western Hemisphere. Seventeen countries are signatories to this partnership.

The leaders attending the Miami summit are Javier Milei, president of Argentina; Rodrigo Paz Pereira, president of Bolivia; Jose Antonio Kast, president-elect of Chile; Rodrigo Chaves Robles, president of Costa Rica; Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona, president of the Dominican Republic; Daniel Roy Gilchrist Noboa Azín, president of Ecuador; Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador; Mohamed Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana; Nasry “Tito” Asfura, president of Honduras; José Raúl Mulino Quintero, president of Panama; Santiago Peña, president of Paraguay; and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

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China will invest heavily in solar. Europe won’t even do that.

• Part II – Europe and China Have an Energy Problem (CTH)

When President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska on August 15, 2025, the focus of the geopolitical world was on discussions surrounding Ukraine. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long, merely a few hours, for both the U.S. and Russia to say that no progress was made. However, also noted at the time was both the USA and Russia saying sideline discussions took place surrounding the possibility for a strategic relationship surrounding energy development. What follows below is a review of the current energy dynamic, specifically surrounding LNG, against the backdrop of the Iran war with a hindsight review of that previous discussion between Putin and Trump.


What most people are missing in their current analysis was something that took place immediately following that Alaska summit six months ago. Something that did not make any sense until now. {GO DEEP PART I HERE} Three days after that summit meeting, on August 18, 2025, Russia announced they were restarting Russia’s Arctic-2 LNG production facility. Russia would be more than doubling their capacity to generate and store liquified natural gas (LNG). It absolutely did not make sense that Russia would start producing even more LNG considering the previously imposed western sanctions against them, and the fact that Russia was already overproducing LNG. As noted by analysts at the time:

AUGUST 18, 2025 – Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 export facility, which is sanctioned by the United States, is coming back to life after a year of no activity and is looking for buyers in Asia. […] The U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia’s Arctic LNG 2, which was billed as Russia’s flagship LNG project, have effectively frozen the start-up of the export facility in the Gydan Peninsula. […] Last year, Russia started shipping LNG from its flagship Arctic LNG 2 project—but not to customers. The shipments were made from the Arctic project to floating storage units either in Russia or in European waters, as potential customers were unwilling to buy the sanctioned LNG. {SOURCE}

In August of 2025, Russia was essentially producing more LNG than they could sell into the available market. Russia was storing the overproduction from Arctic-1 on floating storage units and slowly selling to countries that did not align with the sanctions, specifically China and some Asian buyers. Then suddenly, after the Trump summit, Russia decides to bring Arctic-2 online and produce even more LNG. You can see how this did not make sense.

If they could not even sell all the Arctic-1 LNG output, then why would Russia bring Arctic-2 LNG production online? That was six months ago. Suddenly, with the war in Iran being triggered, and with Qatar almost immediately announcing they were shutting down all LNG production, there are dozens of new markets for liquified natural gas. And that current LNG is now worth 50% more than it was when Russia inextricably decided to start producing and storing it.Apply some hindsight to this timeline. Did Russia know or discover something in August of 2025 that the world would not discover until six months later?

Russia’s behavior in increasing LNG production, then storing that LNG in strategic venues, during a time when there was no reasonable incentive to trigger an LNG output increase, would seem to answer that question in the affirmative. One thing is certain, all of that previously produced LNG is now worth double what it was when Russia created it, and now the global market is scrambling to get it. Here is where it gets really interesting…. In October 2025, do you remember me asking why President Trump decided to fly East, to go West to the ASEAN summit in Asia? It just didn’t make sense. Previously in 2017 when President Trump went to the ASEAN summit, he flew West; Airforce One refueled in Guam. This time in 2025, a few weeks after the meeting with President Putin in Alaska, President Trump flew East, to go West. Where did he refuel?

That’s correct. President Trump refueled in Qatar, and during the ‘unexpected’ stop he met, yet again, with Qatari leadership. • In May 2025 President Trump traveled to Qatar and had numerous and lengthy conversations, signing multiple strategic defense and trade deals. • In August 2025, President Trump meets with Vladimir Putin, who then begins ramping up production of LNG. • In October 2025, President Trump travels back to Qatar for a curious and unexpected visit. Less than 36 hours after President Trump began “Operation Epic Fury” Qatar announces they are halting the production of LNG, and as a consequence the price of LNG jumped and a massive supply shift in global trade was created.

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It’s Trump derangement.

• Dem Leaders Can’t Explain Past Support For Presidential War Powers (Turley)

In Rage and the Republic, I quote former Rep. Jaamal Bowman (D., N.Y.) as capturing the essence of an age of rage when a colleague asked him to stop yelling outside of the House floor. Bowman responded, “I was screaming before you interrupted me.” bBowman’s statement came to mind this week when Democratic members were miffed when they were interrupted in tirades over war powers with questions about their prior support for unilateral attacks by Democratic presidents. Leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Cal.) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Cal.) struggled to explain their prior support for President Barack Obama in doing precisely that in Libya with embarrassing results.


The greatest face plant may have been Schiff’s appearance on “Real Time” with host Bill Maher. After Schiff denounced any attack without prior congressional approval, Maher read “This statement from the administration: ‘The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest.’” He then asked Schiff, “That’s too vague for you?” Schiff responded, “Totally vague…” Maher than dropped the H bomb: “Okay. Because that’s from Obama about Libya.” The moment laid bare the towering hypocrisy of democrats who continued to support Obama after he attacked Libya without any suggested imminent threat to the United States and an open strategy of regime change.

I represented members of Congress opposing that war over the absence of a declaration of war; most of the senior Democrats today refused to join that litigation. Pelosi is especially hypocritical on the issue. She expressly declared that Obama did not need congressional authorization to launch unilateral attacks on Libya seeking regime change. She stated unequivocally that”I’m satisfied that the president has the authority to go ahead. I say that as one very protective of Congressional prerogative and consultation all along the way.” Reporters then followed up and pressed her if she really believed that a president could not only launch an unprovoked war but could also continue combat operations without congressional approval. Pelosi answered “yes,”

This week, she made a ham-fisted effort to spin the contradiction. She told the media that the Iran and Libyan wars are “two completely different things. They’re not at all alike.” Pelosi added, “What Obama did was limited military force. This is beyond that. It was limited military force.” In signature fashion, she then struck out at pesky reporters asking about her past position: “Do your homework. Read the law. We have lost people in war already… I just think if you read the law, you will see the difference.” While not challenged on the spin, it is historically and legally nonsensical.

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They were right. Khameini’s gone, but the rest are still there.

• US Intel Assessed Massive US Attack ‘Unlikely’ To Oust Iranian Regime: WaPo (ZH)

Even a massive military assault on Iran is unlikely to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and its state system, according to a classified assessment produced by the US intelligence community shortly before the US and Israel launched their current ‘shock and awe-style’ military campaign on Tehran. The Washington Post first reported it, perhaps based on some kind of leak or briefing by an anonymous intelligence official, and calls it— “…a sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials say has “only just begun.”


The report, compiled by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) roughly a week before the war began, concluded that Iran’s political system is structured to survive even major leadership losses, The Washington Post reports. However, this should really come as no surprise to anyone awake and observant throughout the past two plus decades of America’s ‘nation building’ efforts in the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya. Already, Israel and the US have touted that ‘all’ of Iran’s top leadership has been decimated, and yet clearly the governing system and its military – led specially by the elite IRGC – is not only in control but is still fighting back.

According to the assessment, Tehran has long prepared for such contingencies – and likely there’s an emergency plan now in place in the wake of Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s death. Intelligence officials say Iran long ago established clear succession protocols designed to maintain continuity of power even if senior leaders are killed. In other words, the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would likely trigger an internal transition process rather than cause the system to collapse – again, something which should be the obvious scenario.

The intelligence report also poured cold water on the idea that Iran’s opposition could quickly fill any power vacuum. US intelligence analysts assessed that the country’s fragmented opposition movements remain too divided to seize control, regardless of whether Washington pursued limited strikes against leadership targets or a broader assault on state institutions. Equally unlikely, according to current and former US officials familiar with the analysis, is the prospect of a spontaneous nationwide uprising. We could speculate that this possibility may have had a chance of some degree of success within the opening one or two days of the mass US-Israel bombing campaign, but it clearly didn’t materialize.

On this prospect WaPo quotes Brookings: “There’s no other force within Iran that can confront the remaining power that the regime has,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar and vice president of the Brookings Institution, told The Post. “Even if they’re not able to project that power very effectively against their neighbors, they can certainly dominate inside the country.” The National Intelligence Council synthesizes the analytical work of all 18 US intelligence agencies, and produces classified estimates meant to guide policymakers on major geopolitical risks.

Much of the American public, raised on Hollywood movies, tends to have an overblown and inaccurate understanding of US intelligence agencies like the CIA. While the CIA certainly has a very powerful and secretive covert, operations side (and an even tinier Ground Branch) – the bulk of its personnel and overseers/top officials are analysts. So there is an overt side and a covert side, with the analyst side tasked with providing the IC and White House with a ‘realistic’ picture of the world, ideally devoid of policy or ideology. Their job is also often to ‘game out’ all worst possible scenarios, given a certain course of action.

Meanwhile, the White House has not said whether Trump was briefed on the assessment before approving the operation. But likely such an assessment would have made it into the CIA’s daily briefing for the president, also given reports from last week that the Pentagon also tried to inject some realism in terms of the ‘unknowns’ once Tehran is attacked.

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Guess what? The US is right there.

• Venezuela’s Gas Potential Could Overshadow Its Famous Oil Reserves (OP)

While the world eyes Venezuela’s untapped oil, some believe that there may be greater mid-term potential in exploiting its natural gas reserves. Most of Venezuela’s gas is trapped deep beneath the seafloor. While these reserves were first discovered several decades ago, ago, off the country’s eastern coast, along the border with Trinidad and Tobago, the Venezuelan government left them largely untouched as it focused its attention on oil production. Several oil majors, such as Shell, have previously approached Venezuela for a stake in its gas business, even when interest in the country’s oil industry was waning due to geopolitical instability and U.S. sanctions.


For years, U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s government and its state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, have restricted the development of its gas industry. In addition, developing its natural gas industry would require cooperation with neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago already has the necessary infrastructure to transport fuel onshore and export it, which Venezuela does not. If the two countries established an energy partnership, Trinidad’s pre-existing infrastructure could help Venezuela to develop its gas industry more rapidly. However, the two powers, which are separated by language (Spanish and English), have had a strained relationship in recent years. Trinidad and Tobago has generally sided with the United States when it comes to Maduro’s presidency and the decision to impose sanctions on Venezuelan energy.

Venezuela’s biggest natural gas prospect is the giant Dragon oil field, as it is the closest to being developed. The Venezuelan government previously conducted exploration activities in the field but was unable to retrieve the gas buried there due to a lack of funding to continue exploration. These efforts were further undermined by the sinking of an exploration rig in 2010. In 2023, the Venezuelan government made a deal with Shell, allowing the foreign firm to explore the Dragon field. The plan was to construct a short pipeline between Dragon and Shell’s existing infrastructure on the island of Trinidad, rather than to start from scratch in Venezuela.

If Shell develops Dragon, the field is expected to generate around $500 million a year in revenue, based on current natural gas prices, of which at least 45 percent is expected to go to Venezuela in the form of taxes and royalties. “These are opportunities that could potentially be activated within months, with potentially a few billion dollars of investments and production in the next couple of years,” Shell’s CEO, Wael Sawan, told CNBC. U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, said that developing a regional natural gas collaboration could be “a real potential win-win for Trinidad and Tobago, a win for the global L.N.G. market, a win for Venezuela.” Meanwhile, BP is pursuing another Venezuelan gas project, a field known as Cocuina, which greater leniency on U.S. sanctions may make possible.

In late February, the U.S. Treasury Department appeared to give oil and gas firms greater leeway to negotiate with Venezuela and operate in the South American country. “They are splicing together an environment that allows the existing players to operate,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Security. While President Trump is eyeing long-term oil industry development in Venezuela, some international oil majors may be more interested in the South American country’s natural gas potential. Developing the resource will likely require collaboration with neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago, and could lead to the development of a new regional Latin America-Caribbean energy hub.

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“That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember.”

• Trump Mocks UK for Belated Proposal of Military Aid Against Iran (Catherine Salgado)

U.S. President Donald Trump is making fun of the waffling and woke UK government for taking too long to decide if it wants to back America and Israel in Operation Epic Fury against the Iranian regime. The president posted on Truth Social Saturday, “The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”


Trump is already celebrating impending victory after destroying so much of the Iranian navy and leadership, but some have cautioned that without totally different leadership in charge, the Iranian threat to the U.S. and Israel — not to mention the Persian people — will continue. It is therefore unclear if the end of Operation Epic Fury is imminent, or if it will not come for a few more weeks. The UK Independent reported March 7: The UK is preparing an aircraft carrier for possible deployment to the Middle East, reducing the time it would take to be readied. This does not mean that Portsmouth-based HMS Prince of Wales, which is used to carry fighter jets and helicopters, will be sent into the Gulf as conflict escalates in the region, but the preparedness of the Royal Navy’s flagship is being increased, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

A spokesperson for the ministry cagily stated, “We have been bolstering our UK military presence in the Middle East since January, and we have already deployed capabilities to protect British people and our allies in the region, including Typhoons, F-35 jets, air defence systems and an extra 400 personnel into Cyprus.” Cyprus is in high alert because there are some 10,000 pro-regime Iranians in the north of the island, which Muslims, primarily Turks, illegally occupy. Besides the Iranians, the Turkish-occupied area also has Hamas jihadis, and of course Hamas is an Iranian regime proxy. The dictator of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Er dogan expressed sorrow over the elimination of Iran’s murderous Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The West has spent too long welcoming in their enemies, and now has to face the dangerous reality that created. Great Britain is especially guilty of providing endless freebies and privileges to non-assimilating Muslims, while punishing its own citizens who dare to criticize the program. No wonder Prime Minister Keir Starmer has acted foolishly in the face of the Iran operation, criticizing the U.S. The UK MoD spokesperson said further, “Since the strikes began, we’ve had British jets in the sky shooting down drones and have sent additional assets to the region to further reinforce our air defences, including more Typhoons and Wildcat helicopters with drone-busting missiles.”

Aside from that, the MoD spokesperson merely repeated vaguely, “HMS Prince of Wales has always been on very high readiness, and we are increasing the preparedness of the carrier, reducing the time it would take to set sail for any deployment.” Which means practically nothing.

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No, you will not get your country back.

• UK Government Brands Union Flag A ‘Tool Of Hate’ (MN)

A leaked draft of the UK Government’s new ‘social cohesion’ strategy has sparked outrage by labeling the flying of English, Scottish, and Union Jack flags as potential “tools of hate.” The document claims these national symbols were sometimes used last summer to “exclude or intimidate,” adding that the “extreme right has tried to turn symbols of pride into tools of hate.” The 47-page draft, leaked to the Spectator magazine, also highlights how antisemitism has become “normalised in many corners of society” from schools and universities to workplaces and the NHS. Under the proposals, titled Protecting What Matters, some £800 million over 10 years would be allocated to 40 areas where social cohesion is “under pressure.”


The strategy is set for a cross-Government rollout next week, but critics are already slamming it as divisive. Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice blasted the draft, telling the Sun: “Absurdly, this says our national flag is a tool of hate used to intimidate. The whole paper is a divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin.” The leak ties directly into ongoing controversies over national flags, as detailed in our previous coverage where English councils admitted spending tens of thousands to remove “unauthorised” English and Union Jack flags from lampposts. As we highlighted, leftist activist Pablo O’Hana was caught on video removing flags from a bridge in Manchester, telling a man who placed them: “that’s not what our country is.”

Freedom of Information requests revealed councils spent at least £70,000 on flag removals, with O’Hana suggesting the true cost is far higher as many incorporate it into existing budgets. Medway Council alone spent nearly £11,600 removing over 700 flags, with Labour councillor Alex Paterson calling it “money well spent” to counter “far-right agitators.”Paterson added that clearing the streets of British and English flags was essential to “make the community feel safe again,” claiming: “I think at this stage the world is divided into people who know exactly why these flags were put up and those who are still pretending they don’t know why they were put up.” The flag campaign, known as ‘Operation Raise The Colours,’ emerged amid unrest over sexual offences allegedly committed by illegal immigrants housed in taxpayer-funded hotels.

This grassroots effort, coordinated via a Facebook page with offers of transport and equipment like ladders, saw patriotic activists vowing to keep flags flying despite council interventions. The Prime Minister previously supported the right to fly St George’s flags, but the leaked documents appear to associate them with far-right protests and immigration tensions. The strategy also proposes a “special representative” to “champion efforts across the UK to tackle hostility and hatred directed at Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.” A new definition of Islamophobia is also expected, with guidance on anti-Muslim hatred.


Critics warn this could become a backdoor “blasphemy law” stifling free speech, though the Government insists it protects against unacceptable treatment. A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson declined to address the leak: “We do not comment on leaks.” This leaked strategy exposes a government more focused on policing national pride than securing borders or protecting native culture. As flags continue to rise, the pushback against globalist erosion of British identity only intensifies—proving that true cohesion comes from shared heritage, not forced suppression.

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“Assets held in Western financial institutions were no longer safe if the political winds shifted against you. That was new. That was genuinely new. And every central bank and sovereign wealth fund on earth noticed..”

• The Bretton Whoops (No. 1)

I’m pulling myself away from the Iran war coverage for a moment – don’t worry, the wrap-up is coming later today. But something needed saying first. The bombs make headlines. The economic unraveling happening quietly underneath them don’t. So before we get back to the daily carnage, let’s talk about money. It used to be funny, in a rich man’s world. The world didn’t wake up one morning and decide to distrust the dollar. It was a process. Gradually, then suddenly, as these things tend to go. Ernest Hemingway quote: How did you go bankrupt?” Two ways. Gradually …


It started with Venezuela. In 2019, Caracas asked the Bank of England to return its own gold – 31 tonnes, sitting in a vault in London, belonging to the Venezuelan central bank. The Bank of England said no. The justification was creative: London had decided to recognise a man who had never won an election as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president, so it couldn’t very well hand $2 billion in gold to the actual government. Problem solved. Maduro was a dictator, everyone agreed he was terrible, and so the consensus was essentially: who cares. Everyone filed it under “rogue state gets what it deserves” and moved on.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and $300 billion in Russian sovereign reserves got frozen overnight. Again, the justification was airtight, the villain was obvious, and the Western financial world applauded itself. What nobody wanted to discuss was the precedent. Assets held in Western financial institutions were no longer safe if the political winds shifted against you. That was new. That was genuinely new. And every central bank and sovereign wealth fund on earth noticed, even if they did say nothing publicly.

Then Trump came back. Tariffs on allies. Threats to annex Greenland. The implicit message that the post-war security architecture was now a negotiable service rather than a commitment. The dollar’s reserve currency status had always rested on two pillars: the dominance of the US economy, and the reliability of the US government as a custodian of the system. One of those pillars was now being kicked.

By the time the Iran war started, the trust account was already badly overdrawn. The petrodollar was a simple deal. The Gulf states price their oil in dollars, recycle the surplus into US Treasuries, and in exchange get American military protection. Clean, elegant, and – for fifty years – it actually worked. The US got permanent demand for its currency and its debt. The Gulf got security guarantees backed by the most powerful military on earth. Five decades of procurement scandals and DEI hires later, someone called the bluff.

US bases across the Gulf – Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE – were always sold as the physical expression of the guarantee. The muscle that backed the paper. They were protection. Except now those bases are targets. The countries hosting them are getting hit precisely because they host them. What once was “US military presence as shield” has collapsed and became “US military presence as a bullseye”. Medvedev put it with the particular relish of someone who has been waiting years to say it:


You can dismiss Medvedev on most things. On this one, his timing is sublime. I already cover the daily physical damage to Gulf infrastructure in my Iran series, so I won’t repeat it here. The point here aren’t the bombs. The point is what the bombs have made obvious: the protection America sold the GCC was a liability dressed up as an asset.

And increasingly it seems that the Gulf states are discussing pulling their investment commitments from the US. Not done yet. Discussing. They are not floating the possibility quietly in private rooms – they are saying it out loud, which means the market already knows which direction they’re heading. Capital won’t wait for a formal declaration. It will already leave in advance, quietly, and then when the announcement comes, everyone will pretend to be surprised…

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Make the Greeks nervous.

• Turkey Mulls F-16 Deployment To Turkish-Occupied Cyprus (ZH)

As the Iran war unfolds and has shown signs of becoming a regional conflict, one interesting question is what Turkey’s role will be – given it is both a NATO member possessing a large military and an avowed regional enemy and rival to Israel for influence. A Turkish defense ministry source has been cited in national media to say the country is mulling deployment of F-16 fighter jets to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Earlier this week a British military base hosted in EU member Cyprus (on the southern side of the island) came under attack by Iranian-made drones. This has resulted in some European military assets being moved to Cyprus, including additional British forces. But now it appears Turkey wants to make a show of doing the name for Turkish-claimed Cypriot territory.


Turkey’s Daily Sabah points out, however, that “TRNC has been incensed by Greek Cypriot’s growing military cooperation with its Western partners after the United Kingdom has allowed the U.S. to use its military base in the south of the divided island. Citing the military source, the same Turkish outlet said, “The TRNC leadership has held a series of security meetings in response to the crisis, he added, focusing on crisis management, coordination with Türkiye and the preparedness of civil defense mechanisms.” As for Turkey’s long occupation of northern Cyprus, no one else in the world recognizes its legitimacy except for Ankara. Cyprus receives backing from its EU partners, but this doesn’t go much beyond verbal censure of Turkey.

The Turkish armed forces has for years had at least 30,000 soldiers stationed on Cyprus and growing, the northern part of which it has illegally occupied since 1974. At the moment, President Erdogan has reportedly reached out to the UK’s Starmer, urging for Britain to do more diplomacy to immediately bring the Iran-US-Israel war to halt.

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Russia knows the region much better than the Americans. It’s their region.

• Kremlin: “We Are Not Neutral. We Support Iran.” (ZH)

Russia says it stands with its ally Iran, at a moment Washington officials are outraged at reports that Moscow is supporting Tehran with targeting intelligence related to US bases and Pentagon assets in the region amid Operation Epic Fury. That allegation was first reported by The Washington Post days ago. President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, the Kremlin had announced late Friday, amid the escalating US-Israeli attacks on Iran. In the call Putin expressed “deep condolences” over the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, members of his family, other senior political and military officials, as well as the civilian victims. Putin, it must be remembered, has been hosted in Tehran on several occasions and has been photographed in friendly conversations with the slain Khamenei over the years.


The Kremlin indicated further Putin reaffirmed Russia’s position that there must be an immediate halt to the conflict, and that diplomacy must prevail over use of military force. He said he’s in contact with leaders of countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as the crisis unfolds, countries which have come under Iranian missiles and drones over the past week of war. Pezeshkian for his part thanked Russia for what he described as solidarity with the Iranian people and briefed Putin on developments in the current phase of the conflict, the Kremlin said. Meanwhile, Russian diplomats are sending a clear signal on which side of the global divide they stand concerning the rapid events of the Iran war:


“We are not neutral. We support Iran.” This was the response with Russia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom was asked if Moscow is neutral regarding the Iran war… Still, Russia and China are not expected to get deeply or directly involved, and may be more content to wait and see if Washington gets sucked into a new Vietnam or Iraq-style quagmire. The question of Iranian oil exports to China still looms large, however, and there have been reports that Beijing could be mulling some kind of military escort operation for its tankers in the Strait of Hormuz – but this reporting appears speculation at this moment, and could be premature.

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