Under the weather so posting will be sporadic. Back to normal
asap. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
- CP
So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, April 5, 2026
“The Everything Meltdown”: Global Supply Chains Are Collapsing And Most People Cannot Even Imagine The Pain That Is Coming"
by Michael Snyder
"When global supply chains collapse, the pain is not felt immediately. Tankers that left their destinations before the war with Iran began are still arriving at their destinations, products that were manufactured prior to the war still fill our shelves, and we are still eating food that was produced last year. So even though global supply chains are collapsing all around us, most people don’t feel it yet. But if this war with Iran drags on for months, the pain that we will soon experience will be unbelievable.
Anyone that thinks that the global economy can continue to function at or near current levels without sufficient supplies of oil, natural gas, plastic and fertilizer is just being delusional. The only way that we can avoid “the everything meltdown” is if this war ends quickly. Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened tomorrow, we will not see a return to pre-war conditions any time soon because damage that has been done to energy infrastructure in the Middle East will take years to fully rebuild.
With each passing day, the damage is getting even worse. For example, the biggest natural gas processing facility in the United Arab Emirates was just shut down following an Iranian attack…"Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facility, the UAE’s largest natural gas processing site, was shut down after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile caused a fire. The plant processes and distributes gas from the emirate’s fields for domestic use, making it a critical component of the country’s energy infrastructure. The attack comes amid a series of Iranian strikes on Gulf energy assets, including oil refineries and desalination plants in Kuwait, underscoring the vulnerability of regional infrastructure."
And just hours ago, the Iranians caused substantial damage at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex in Kuwait…"An Iranian drone attack caused a fire at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex, Kuwaiti authorities confirmed on Sunday morning. The attack caused no casualties, the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported. The facility hosts both the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Oil Ministry’s headquarters, KUNA noted."
Over the past month, we have witnessed so much destruction to vital infrastructure, and it appears that the war is going to escalate to an entirely new level this week. If President Trump follows through on his threats to destroy Iran’s power grid, the Iranians have warned that they will unleash unprecedented attacks on energy infrastructure all over the region. One energy industry insider is warning that we are facing “sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry”… “This is headed toward sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry that touches fuel, which is effectively every industry,” said Herman Nieuwoudt, president of IFS Energy & Resources.
Nieuwoudt says what we’re seeing right now isn’t a single price shock. “It’s the consequence of the largest energy supply disruption in modern history layered on top of six years of structural volatility,” he said. “These disruptions cascade through manufacturing, packaging, agriculture, transportation, and retail in ways that take months to fully materialize,” he added.
He is right. Literally just about everything is going to cost more in the months ahead. Virtually our entire trucking industry runs on diesel, and at this point the average price of diesel fuel in the U.S. has reached a staggering $5.53 a gallon…"Diesel, widely used in farming, construction and trucking, among other industries, has risen even more sharply than gas, with the U.S. average this week hitting $5.53 a gallon, up from $3.64 a year ago, according to AAA."
This is survivable, but what are we going to do when it reaches 10 dollars a gallon? Already, the average price of diesel fuel in San Francisco has surpassed 8 dollars a gallon…"For the first time on record, average diesel prices in San Francisco have surged past $8 per gallon, according to new data from GasBuddy - marking an unprecedented milestone for any U.S. city."
Maybe you don’t care about the price of diesel fuel. But you should, because the cost of diesel fuel is going to be passed along to you. Already, shipping companies are starting to impose very large fuel surcharges on their customers…"Citing higher energy costs, the United States Postal Service announced last month that it’s planning to impose an 8% surcharge on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select services.
E-commerce giant Amazon also said that, beginning April 17, it plans to add a 3.5% fuel surcharge on third-party sellers, while FedEx and UPS have also recently introduced fuel surcharges, according to the Associated Press."
Stuff doesn’t just show up on your doorstep or in the stores by magic. It takes fuel to move stuff around, and so all of the stuff that you buy on a regular basis is about to get more expensive. And that is really bad news, because even before the war we were already in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis.
In many areas of the U.S., the price of a pound of ground beef is now higher than the federal minimum wage…"The cost of a pound of ground beef has hit a major threshold. Depending on where you shop, the grocery staple likely costs more than the federal minimum wage. Money analyzed ground beef prices at seven of the most popular grocery chains across the U.S., finding that 1 pound of the typical 20% fat ground beef costs between $6.49 and $8.96. Organic, grass-fed and leaner varieties tend to cost much more."
On the other hand, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 per hour. In 1988, you could get a pound of ground beef for about $1.30. This is what happens when you destroy your economy. And now the war in the Middle East is going to make things much, much worse.
Just about everything that we buy either contains plastic or comes wrapped in plastic. Unfortunately, the war with Iran is severely disrupting global plastic supply chains…"Plastics are core to the modern economy, and a troubling new Bloomberg report indicates that several producers of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) have declared force majeure, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain heavily disrupted.
For context, MEG and PTA are the two primary feedstocks used to produce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyester fibers. These petrochemicals are critical to the production of everyday consumer goods that make life in the developed world convenient, including plastic bottles, food packaging, clothing, home furnishings, and a wide range of consumer and industrial goods.
More specifically, MEG is used in the production of polyester yarn, polyester staple fiber, PET resin, and PET film. It also plays a critical role in antifreeze, coolants, adhesives, coatings, and enamels. In other words, MEG and PTA are foundational petrochemical building blocks for the modern economy. Any sustained disruption to these flows would be detrimental to the global economy." I really wish that this wasn’t true, but our economy simply cannot function without plastic.
So what are we going to do now? Every industry on the entire planet is going to be affected by the supply chain disruptions that are occurring. In India, the textile industry has been “completely paralyzed” by this war… "Apocalyptic economic fallout. NHK confirms Trump’s disastrous war has completely paralyzed India’s massive textile industry. With 90% of their LPG imports choked off at the Strait of Hormuz, HALF A MILLION workers just lost their jobs. The global supply chain is collapsing."
If this war keeps going for an extended period of time, things will only get worse from here. In other words, enjoy this moment, because this is the best that conditions are going to be for quite a while.
Personally, I am more concerned about global food supplies than anything else. According to the United Nations, the number of people around the world experiencing “acute hunger” was at the highest level ever recorded even before this war erupted. Now farmers all over the northern hemisphere can’t get the nitrogen fertilizer that they desperately need because it is locked up in the Middle East…"Fertilizer is the link between energy and food. Natural gas is not just a fuel; it is the primary feedstock for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers through a process developed over a century ago called the Haber–Bosch method. Natural gas goes in, ammonia comes out, ammonia becomes urea, urea gets spread on cornfields in Iowa and wheat fields in Kansas and rice paddies in Asia. About 80 percent of nitrogen fertilizer production costs are attributable to natural gas. When the Strait of Hormuz is practically shuttered, you do not just block oil tankers and LNG carriers. You block the ships carrying urea and ammonia that the world’s farmers were expecting to receive this spring.
The numbers are sobering. The Persian Gulf region accounts for roughly a third of globally traded urea exports and approximately 25 percent of ammonia trade. Qatar’s state fertilizer company - QAFCO, considered the world’s largest urea supplier - shut down its plant when gas was cut. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers have seen exports stall. China, the other major global fertilizer exporter, has restricted outbound shipments to protect its domestic supply. These two supply sources together represent a substantial share of the global market, and both are simultaneously constrained."
For now, we are still eating food that was produced in 2025. So everything still seems fine. But in the not too distant future, annual crops such as wheat, barley and corn are going to be much more expensive. Meanwhile, crops that do not have to be planted every year such as olives and grapes will not be seriously affected. Nitrogen fertilizer must be applied at the proper time or it won’t work. If the Strait of Hormuz opens up this summer, it won’t be possible to reverse the crop losses that we are facing. We need the Strait of Hormuz to be opened immediately, but that simply is not going to happen."
Jim Kunstler, "April 2026 Eyesore"
"April 2026 Eyesore"
by Jim Kunstler
"Behold: the proposed Donald J. Trump Presidential Library coming in for a landing on Biscayne Boulevard, Miami a few years hence. It is already catching a lot of TDS flak, and deservedly so, for its gilded grandiosity - including a gigantic golden statue of “47” himself inside somewhere, and the gold “Trump” brand logo plastered on the 47th floor. Mr. Trump has always been comedian, and this monument is, at least partly, a bit of trollery against his millions of hate-inflamed detractors, a 47-story middle finger (with a smile). All of that is too self-evident to belabor.
Don’t expect this library to house many books, either. Rather, the building is a combo temple/ museum, filled with artifacts and objects of worship, like the jumbo jet (of various Air Force Ones) to be installed in the ground floor entrance.
The more curious aspect of this project is its manifestation as a skyscraper. Such megastructures are just now going obsolete all over the world, and the world is stuck with them. Working from home, or the corner cafe, or just about anywhere, killed the need for organizing office work in this manner, and artificial intelligence is apt to sweep away countless middle-management, information handling jobs in any case. Another skyscraper is just not what the world needs these days.
So, you’d also have to ask: aside from exhibit halls, study rooms, and auditoriums, what the heck else is expected to occupy the many other floors of the building? Document storage makes more sense in low-slung structures (filing cabinets are heavy) or underground, with elaborate climate-control. Is the plan to offer some upper floor market rental space to companies who might want to locate at a “prestige address?” But, we’ve already established that the traditional office milieu is on its way out.
The answer probably is that building skyscrapers is just what DJT did in life, besides being president of the USA twice. It’s what he knows how to do, and this scheme reflects on the triumphs of his prior career in real estate development. Really, it’s just another Trump Tower, perhaps, ultimately, another Trump hotel for folks who want to bask in the glow of the Golden Golem of Greatness and his legendary doings. The final joke is that it’s being financed with the awards from the various lawsuits Mr. T has won against the old legacy media giants who defamed him over years. For all that, we say GO, MAGA!"
"The President's Prophet, and the Pentagon's High Priest Predict Armageddon!" (Excerpt)
"The President's Prophet, and the
Pentagon's High Priest Predict Armageddon!"
by David Haggith
Excerpt: "This may start off sounding like an Easter religious piece, but it’s not. It’s just that Trump’s presidentially appointed prophet evoked Easter this week to boost the president and his war, so I think even readers who normally have no interest in Easter will be interested in this revelation of the religious cult that originally empowered Donald Trump to the White House (both times) and that now nurtures and drives his zeal on a daily basis for the present war with Iran.
When I say “cult,” I’m not being derogatory, I am using the word according its actual definition: "A religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader."
No leader is more powerful in the world today or more authoritarian than Donald Trump, who does everything now by decree and who is also certainly charismatic with his huge love for large public rallies and for creating daily drama in the media whenever he can, and big shows that are always centered on himself.
While there is no doubt that Trump alone rules MAGA, he is bizarrely guided by his high priestess of the White House, Paula White‑Cain, who is a self-declared prophetess, regularly claiming she speaks for God. White-Cain merits attention because she holds an actual office in the White House, putting her in influence at the top seat of global government, and Trump seriously listens to her spiritual counsel and basks in her frequent flowing praise at a level of adoration and is empowered by the large audience she has captured.
During the present Holy Week, White-Cain presented a disturbing reason for all of us to take a serious look at her position in the White House and at her prophecies when she stirred up considerable backlash by speaking at an Easter lunch at the White House on Holy Wednesday, comparing the persecutions and “betrayals” endured by Donald Trump to those of Jesus Christ.
While she did not say (nor appear to believe) that Donald Trump is the second coming of Jesus Christ (a common denominator of a number of fringe cults over past decades), she has called the White House “holy ground” and also said that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God” - not because she is claiming Trump IS God but because she believes he is divinely directed by God as one appointed by God to carry out what she and other self-proclaimed prophets in this movement claim are God’s divine mandates.
These imperial mandates are apocalyptic in nature, and the Dominion Theology they are based on is the theology that drove the crusades, the inquisitions, and other religious wars - the belief that Christians are to rule a global empire as Christ’s stand-ins until he returns. It has long been the most dangerous belief on earth because people have never handled that power well. Her comparison of Trump to Christ with words Trump clearly basked in as he stood behind her hit such a level of obscenity that her brief speech raised religious rebuffs all over the world.
What I want to call attention to is how her words this week reveal a seriously dangerous cultic core of MAGA. Not only has this group, which is the heart of MAGA, ensconced White-Cain, a televangelist and leader in the charismatic movement, in an office in the White House; but it has infused the Pentagon top brass with an actual outspoken drive to bring on Armageddon in order to facilitate the return of Jesus Christ! I mean “outspoken” in the sense that numerous military leaders have been reported during the Iran War as actually using Armageddon as a call to arms against Iran. We’re going to look at both White-Cain and the Pentagon’s new High Priest Hegseth’s apocalyptic crusade, and note that they are the ones deploying the terminology of apocalypse. White-Cain’s official title is Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office. (You can read more about her in the following article beyond just the part I present below from her brief talk.)
That is why I say I am not using the word “cult” in the pejorative way it has often been used when we hear people talking about all of MAGA as being the “Trump cult.” This core group really is a cult with an office in the White House. Her words this week reveal how truly twisted around the person of Donald Trump as their charismatic leader—like ivy around a great tree—this religious core MAGA group is: (I use the word “core” because, while she leads a following that has been the heart of MAGA since its inception, empowering Trump with millions of Christian voters, I realize she does not speak for all of MAGA any more than for all Christians. Far from it.)
Here is what she said on Holy Wednesday in anticipation of Easter: "With the president standing behind her, and to whom she turned to address personally, White-Cain said: “Jesus taught so many lessons through his death, burial and resurrection. He showed us great leadership, great transformation, requires great sacrifice. And Mr President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our lord and savior showed us,” she said."
"But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you,” she said. “God always had a plan: On the third day, he rose, he defeated evil, he conquered death, hell and the grave. And because he rose, we all know that we can rise. And sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up,” she added. "Because he was victorious, you are victorious. And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this: because of his victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hands to,” she said, finishing to applause." The president responded by smiling and said “thank you.”
This is the kind of crowning glory any narcissistic megalomaniac would crave to feed his tiny walnut of an ego that seeks to expand its withered center into a larger-than-life projection of what he wants to believe he is. Her words don’t quite deify Trump, but they come awfully close by saying that anything he does (most particularly right now in the war against Iran, which was her context) will be made victorious by God because Trump has suffered just like Jesus did. At other times, she has told the president and all those gathered at her meetings that Trump is God’s “anointed.”
Full, most disturbing article is here:
"Happy Resurrection Day"
Burnland, "Les Disciples"
"Happy Resurrection Day"
by Patti Johnson
"He is risen!" The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection. This iconic work captures the dramatic moment when Peter and John, having heard Mary Magdalene’s astonishing news that Jesus’ tomb was empty, race toward it in a surge of hope and disbelief. I chose this painting because I was deeply moved by Burnand’s portrayal of the Apostles’ intense expressions. Their eyes are wide with urgent, hopeful questioning: “Could it truly be? Our Savior lives?” The raw emotion in their faces, combined with the dynamic sense of motion, makes this one of the most powerful depictions of Easter morning."
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter!
o
Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, "Amazing Grace"
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A must-view video! Turn sound on.