Lots of news from the war in Iran, much of it in video form.
One reason I do these updates is that the vast majority of MSM reporting is of such poor quality. It’s all government talking heads said this or critics of Trump said that. In other words, lazy reporting crap no one cares about.
Back before American journalists became self-licking ice cream cones, war reporting used to include maps, unit movements, logistics, combat reports from journalists embedded with U.S. units, etc. The BBC still seems to do a little of that, but I’m not seeing that from American outlets, maybe because it’s hard work. They don’t even seem to be bothering to tell ChatGPT to do it for them.
Hence these roundups to fill the gap.
As a brief snapshot of the dysfunction at the highest levels of Iranian government, here’s the President of Iran saying “Sorry about all the droning, it won’t happen again,” and the IRGC saying “Shut the hell up, you weak little bitch!”
To many, it seems like an end-of-days scenario: Qatar and Israel on the same team.
Who would have thought? In September, Israel attacked in Qatar, targeting terrorist leaders the Gulf state was housing. But here we are. After five days of war with Iran, the Iranians have succeeded in putting Israel and Qatar on the same team – to say nothing of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia – all countries targeted over the past five days by Iranian missiles and drones.
By some estimates, Iran has fired more missiles and drones at Gulf states combined than at Israel.
What Iran may have done is something Israel has long struggled to achieve diplomatically: place Israel and several Sunni Arab states on the same side of a regional conflict. By striking the Gulf states directly, Tehran has widened the war in a way that forces governments across the region to reconsider where their interests truly lie.
Within the first 48 hours, Tehran launched missiles and drones not only toward Israel but toward every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain. What might initially have appeared to be a confrontation between Iran and the US and Israel quickly transformed into something wider – a regional conflict touching key Sunni Arab states.
And it was not only countries that have agreements with Israel that were targeted – the UAE and Bahrain – but also countries that have tried to maintain good relations with Iran, such as Qatar and Oman. Even Turkey announced on Wednesday that an Iranian missile was downed as it headed toward its airspace. By going after these countries, Iran is signaling that it wants everyone in the region to formally pick a side.
Tellingly, the strikes in the Gulf states were aimed largely at civilian targets rather than solely at US bases and facilities located in those countries. The strikes went far beyond American installations and hit airports, hotels, and oil infrastructure.
Why? The conventional wisdom is that Tehran hopes to sow chaos in the region and pressure those countries now under attack to lean on Washington to call off the campaign before the situation spirals even further out of control.
Having two aircraft carriers launching strikes at Iran evidently wasn’t enough, as the USS George H. W. Bush is now poised to join the party, joining the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Gerald R. Ford. Obviously you need ships named after Republican presidents to win wars. If you had the USS Barack Obama, it could only drop pallets of cash, and the USS Bill Clinton could only hit on underage Iranian girls…
Grand Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli had issued a fatwa against President Trump, “says shedding blood of Zionists and Trump is mandatory.” Sounds like someone wants to be moved higher on the drone list.
Since Iran has hit the oil facilities on Persian gulf nations, Israel hits oil storage facilities near Tehran. Those burning symbols on this Liveuamap snapshot are where airstrikes have hit oil facilities in and around Tehran.
For all the talk of Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump has said he’s told them not to. But we have numerous reports of Israeli jets hitting targets like IRCG posts along the border and police stations in Iranian Kurdistan.
Reports of blinding Iranian satellites:
🇮🇷🇮🇱 As expected, the IDF claims to have targeted the ground control station for Iran's Russian-built Khayyam imaging satellite. I suspect that this is the first time that a satellite ground control station has been targeted in wartime.https://t.co/gL42aeVkc9https://t.co/Gx4kUodxXB
Possibly three new U.S. weapons have been seen in Epic Fury:
A black-coated Tomahawk variant, possibly for stealth.
The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). This is a new Lockheed Martin missile to replace ATACMS.
Lots of lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War and Ukraine’s use of Patriot there. Missiles are getting intercepted, but Shahed drones are still leaking through.
In addition to the B-2 and B-52, the B-1 is also hitting targets in Iran. I think this is the first war in which all the Bs were hitting targets…
Suchomimus does damage assessment on Iranian naval assets and other targets hit on both sides:
Azerbaijan closes the border crossing with Iran to cargo:
Iranian truck drivers had already started staging strikes against the regime even before the crossing shutdown. “Inside, 400,000 drivers have cut off contact and are known to be against the regime. While outside, thousands of trucks and drivers are stuck at sealed borders. This double squeeze means the collapse of the state’s control over the economy. The truck drivers mutiny is not just blocking roads. It is breaking the entire industrial backbone from steel to prochemicals, from food to logistics.”
Mark Felton asks whether Iranian missiles can hit London? Answer: Probably not.
“We can probably say that yes, Iran has at least one missile that has the legs to reach the UK [the Simorgg SLV, use to launch satellites into orbit], but not the systems to deliver a warhead successfully. At present, it is technically impossible for Iran to bombard the UK.”
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran refuses to give up its nuclear weapons program or free its own people, the liberation of Iran has begun.
The United States and Israel launched long-awaited strikes on Iran early Saturday morning, as President Trump vowed to destroy their missile capabilities, “annihilate” their navy, and ensure the nation never obtains a nuclear weapon.
Trump, in a video message released overnight that made clear the goal is regime change, urged the Iranian people to “take over your government” when the operation is finished.
“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump said. “This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. . . . This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
America and Israel reportedly plan to carry out several days of attacks, and Trump cautioned that while the administration is taking every step to minimize risks to American personnel, “we may have casualties.”
He added, “We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.” He urged Iranian security forces to lay down their weapons in exchange for immunity, or face “certain death.”
Snip.
During his State of the Union address, Trump began to make a broader case for military action against Iran, citing, as he did in his video remarks released overnight, the regime’s attacks over the past half-century against U.S. personnel in the region.
You can only tug on Superman’s cape for so long.
The United States is calling it Operation Epic Fury, while Israel is going with Lion’s Roar.
Suchomimus has compiled footage of the strikes.
Some highlights:
A strike against “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s house. The Iranian woman recording the aftermath of the strike sounds “absolutely delighted.” It was hit in broad daylight, indicating how little American and Israeli fear Iran’s degraded, Russian-sourced air defense systems.
A salvo of at least 30 tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the Mediterranean flying over Iraq en-route to targets in Iran.
Iran is (naturally) launching retaliatory rockets at Israel.
One of the U.S./Israeli strike targets is Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami, who has been reported killed.
Second Suchomimus video:
Highlights:
U.S. naval base in Bahrain hit by retaliatory Iranian missiles. “This seems like it may have been a waste of missiles because reports are saying that this base was largely cleared out prior to this. So America evacuated much of the imported equipment and troops and ships from here to a safer place. So there was nothing of importance here.” And geolocation shows that Iran might actually have hit a nearby mosque.
A possible successful strike in Dubai.
Also Iranian missiles being successfully intercepted over Abu Dhabi. Likely target was Al Dhafra Air Base, but nothing seems to have been hit there.
But a possible successful strike on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, though its not clear what, if anything, was hit.
“Two places hit by the US are Iranian naval bases Asaluyeh and Chabahar…Asaluyeh is a major target. This is known to be an underground storage complex for the Iranian Navy in which speedboats and coastal defense missiles are stored here.”
“Also confirmed hit was the headquarters of the IRGC, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, who are a major branch of the Iranian armed forces.” This is near Damavand, an underground complex that was reportedly hit with bunker buster bombs.
Israel reportedly hit Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, head of Iran’s judiciary courts.
A quick LiveUAMap snapshot of in-theater action:
President Trump’s announcement of the strikes:
“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.”
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating eminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
“Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.”
He covers the regime’s role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
“Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as US naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lands. It’s been mass terror and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.”
“it was Iran’s proxy Hamas that launched the monstrous October 7th attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.”
“Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.”
“It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again. They can never have a nuclear weapon.”
“They’ve rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
“Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message.”
“For these reasons, the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated.”
“We are going to annihilate their navy.”
“We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people including many Americans.”
“And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It’s a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces.”
“My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to US personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”
“But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear armed Iran.”
“We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm’s way. And we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail.”
“To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death. So, lay down your arms, you will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.”
“Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.”
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond.”
“America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
“May God bless the brave men and women of America’s armed forces. May God bless the United States of America. May God bless you all. Thank you.”
Update 2: The Taliban call on Muslims worldwide…not to support Iran.
🚨 🇦🇫 🇮🇷 🇮🇱 – 𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗕𝗔𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗠𝗘
Taliban leader Abdul Hamid Khorasani says that "Israel and Iran are one coin" and called upon Muslims worldwide to stay vigilant and not support the "infidel regime of Iran" pic.twitter.com/ndiFIJLFk9
I don’t think many people had that on their bingo card…
Update 3: Peter Zeihan weighs in, and we didn’t even have to wait a week:
He says all the Iranian drone and missile facilities were hit, and that the Israelis were ones hitting Iranian leadership. But no sign they’ve hit the Shahed production facilities…yet. And no sign of attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
His military sources are generally better than his political sources, but several grains of salt are usually in order anyway.
Update 4: Power plant on Kharg Island, the terminal for the vast majority of Iran’s oil exports, hit:
Kharg Island is Iran’s jugular.
80-90% of Iran’s crude exports flow through this supertanker terminal in the Persian Gulf. No Kharg, no oil revenue. No oil revenue, no regime. Every war plan, every sanctions package, every naval deployment in the Gulf orbits this one fact. https://t.co/E0mVmlC9eapic.twitter.com/mRuT3gTY1s
Update 5: We’re hitting Iran with clones of their own Shahed drones:
CENTCOM's Task Force Scorpion Strike – for the first time in history – is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran's Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/VYdjiECKDT
Despite some initial debate, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the airstrikes Saturday morning, Israeli officials report.
“Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in an Israeli strike on Tehran, with his body found under the rubble caused by an Israeli airstrike, senior Israeli officials were informed on Saturday evening,” the Jerusalem Post reports. “Documentation of Khamenei’s body was reportedly shown to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Update 7: Suchomimus has footage of Khamenei’s flattened compound.
Probably more on this video later. It’s Saturday and I’ve got Other Stuff that needs doing…
Update 8: Via Stephen Green at Instapundit, some Strategery:
Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Panama…it’s all interconnected and it all points to China.
As U.S. energy ramps up, and China is deprived of subsidized oil, subsidized shipping channels, freedom of navigation through sovereign waters and allies that can cause the U.S.… https://t.co/K5cmCg8xcj
Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Panama…it’s all interconnected and it all points to China.
As U.S. energy ramps up, and China is deprived of subsidized oil, subsidized shipping channels, freedom of navigation through sovereign waters and allies that can cause the U.S. problems…their global position diminishes substantially and their costs of doing business skyrocket.
Venezuela and Iran account for something like 20% of China’s oil imports and they’re getting an insane deal on it. China has a huge problem if that oil goes away.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Trump’s foreign policy seems random and chaotic, but it’s actually one of the most focused and (thus far) well executed foreign policies in at least 2 generations.
Remember back in July when the Sinologist tea-leaf readers suggested that Xi Jinping was on his way out after having lost a power struggle with PLA General Zhang Youxia? Well, that speculation was accurate except for the tiny, teensy weensy detail that the subject and predicate were reversed.
The Chinese military’s top general is being investigated for suspected serious violations of discipline and law the Defense Ministry said Saturday,
Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairs of the powerful Central Military Commission, is the latest figure to fall in a long-running purge of military officials.
Analysts believe the purges are designed both to reform the military and to ensure loyalty to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also chairs the military commission. They are part of a broader anti-corruption drive that has punished more than 200,000 officials since Xi came to power in 2012.
Another member of the commission, Liu Zhenli, has also been placed under investigation by China’s ruling Communist Party, a Defense Ministry statement said. Liu is the chief of staff of the commission’s Joint Staff Department. The commission is the top military body in China.
The statement did not provide any details on the alleged wrongdoing.
Zhang, who is 75, joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1968 and is a general from its ground forces.
The Communist Party expelled the other vice chair of the commission, He Weidong, last October and replaced him with commission member Zhang Shengmin.
Commie leader always fear rebellion in the ranks of their own military more than invasion by foreign powers. That’s why Stalin purged the top ranks of the Soviet military in 1937, a major contributing factor to the Wehrmacht kicking the Red Army’s ass in the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa in 1941. That Xi is consistently purge-happy doesn’t bode well for the CCP’s near-term chances of invading Taiwan.
There are also reports that Xis targeting “naked officials,” i.e. those high ranking Chinese military leaders with the audacity to let their relatives live abroad. After all, the CCP never knows when having the ability to put Mrs. General’s head in a vise might be necessary as a persuasion tool.
Oh Getty Images, what would I do without your weirdly appropriate clip art?
Peter Zeihan has long argued that Xi has purged anyone with ambition or competence from the CCP ranks, leaving no potential successor in on stage. It looks like he was right about that one.
This is all good news for Taiwan and the free world. The harder Xi purges the military, the less real support he’ll have and the less likely they’ll have competent leadership to push across the Formosa Strait.
Also, I wonder if all those rumors of Youxia supplanting Xi weren’t a CIA psyop to get play on Xi’s paranoia and push him into purging competent PLA officers…
Another Peter Zeihan video, this one on domestic politics, where his insights have usually been…less than stellar. But this time it’s about how screwed the Democrat Party is, though he mostly dances around the real reasons behind their decline, instead wielding his well-worn hammer stenciled “demographics.”
“Is there a future for the Democratic Party in the United States? And the short version is ‘probably not.'”
“The Democratic Party is not what it used to be. It has been through several iterations since it was formed back in the 1800s. But in its most recent iteration, one that dates roughly back to the post-World War II environment, the party basically it it’s formed around three big pillars of voters. The first is organized labor, with capital being on the Republican side of the equation. The second are ethnic minorities with most white people edging towards the Republicans again. And then the third group is coastal elites, specifically of the white tower crowd. People who live in cities and have a very different way of looking at the world than say rural voters who are more likely to be Republicans.” On the last point, Zeihan has shifted from talking about the postwar Democratic Party to the modern one, as Democrats used to own a goodly portion of rural voters, AKA “the farm vote,” especially in the South. Look at this county by county map of the 1932 Presidential election, and you see that Republican rural counties are few and far between. By 1952, rural counties really like Ike…but not in the South, which is still overwhelmingly blue. That change accelerates with the rise of the “new left” in the 1960s and the conscious decision by the left to start pushing conservatives out of the Democratic Party. (At least that was the case in Texas, as outlined in Wayne Thorburn’s Red State.) By the 1980s the process was well underway, as seen by party switches from such politicians as Phil Gramm and Kent Hance, and was mostly complete everywhere except minority majority counties, though in Texas we’re now seeing that Democrat-to-Republican pattern repeat itself with Hispanic majority counties. Smaller cities and suburban voters were where Republicans managed to maintain a foothold during the Democrat-dominated period between FDR’s election in 1932 and Reagan’s in 1980.
“If you look at it just on the numbers, if you add up all racial minorities in the United States with all organized labor or blue-collar workers with everyone who’s living in the cities, it’s a super majority of the population. And it’s pushing 70% of the total. It should, by the numbers, not only be the dominant party, but it should be the only party in the United States. And yet and yet and yet, they keep losing elections by ever more impressive margins.” “All organized labor or blue-collar workers” is another slight of hand, as those are two ever-more-divergent categories. All across the Western world, not just in the U.S., ruling liberal elites can rarely be bothered to hide their contempt for native blue-collar workers, which seems to be one driving factor in their importing immigrant classes to supplant them.
I’m snipping the “but the world changes and politics changes” section (Cold War, digital revolution, Baby Boomers retiring) because it’s all so very non-specific to the question at hand.
“But for the Democrats, this has not been a gift. Three basic things have combined to make it nonfunctional in its current form.”
“First, those liberal, coastally educated, urban living elites, they’re not nearly as united as you might think. And more importantly, they have a hard time resonating their ideas with the rank and file of the United States.” Here’s the first time Zeihan tiptoes up to the central truth that “their ideas,” the whole panoply of radical leftwing social justice, victimhood identity politics, DEI racism, radical feminism, importing millions of illegal aliens, supporting Islamic terrorists killing Israelis, etc., are all profoundly unpopular with everyone outside the leftwing college educated urban elites who make up the ideological core of the Party.
“Most Americans do not own six figures.” Actually, they sort of do, but I think what he meant was most Americans don’t earn six figures. “Most Americans have not graduated from graduate programs. And so, the sort of tunnel vision that you can get if you’re a part of this coastal elite just doesn’t really carry out to others. And when you see people starting to protest for trans rights, that just doesn’t resonate for most of the country.” Americans were more than happy to let the confused freaks do whatever the hell they wanted to with their own bodies, but once the groomers started “transitioning” and mutilating normie children behind their parents’ backs, normie parents started hating Democrats with a deep, righteous anger.
“The second issue is racial.”
“One of the huge mistakes the Democratic Party has made over the last 30 years is to simply bet that, because birth rates were higher under Hispanics than they were under whites, that the country was going to become more and more and more leftist, more and more democratic.” That is, in a nutshell, the John Judis and Ruy Teixeira Emerging Democratic Majority theory. And it 2021, Teixeira said that wasn’t happening.
“Instead, we saw two things happening with specifically the Hispanic population. Number one, they became steadily and steadily more wealthy, which tends to put them over into the Republican camp. And second, Hispanics, especially first and second generation Mexican Americans, are very strong in blue-collar work, specifically the trades like electricity and welding and similar items. Construction. Well, the United States is going through an industrial renaissance where those skill sets are massively in demand. And so if you want to look at politics through the lens of the economic halves and halves nots, the Hispanics have become more and more in the category of the haves moving forward, so for them tax rates have become as important, if not more, for most than things like racial equality.” Except we have racial equality under the law, and republicans support a color blind society based on individualism, while Democrats want perpetual social justice ethnic grievances which well-heeled upper middle class white liberals can signal their virtue by supporting.
“And so more and more of these people have shifted over in the general direction of Trump style Republicans.”
“And the third issue is cultural. If you’re a first or second generation Mexican-American, a first or second generation immigrant from any background, odds are that where you came from is less organized than the United States and less wealthy. You came to pursue the American dream, which means you have some firsthand experience in your family of what a system with weak rule of law looks like. One of the great things that we have forgotten in this country is that most migrants have a deeper degree of religiosity than most Americans. And so when you get a Mexican immigrant or Nigerian immigrant and they come to the United States, they are far more likely to be socially conservative than, say, the social liberals of the coasts.”
“We have all of these things happening at the same time, changing our idea of identity, and the net result is a lot of factions that used to be core to the Democratic coalition are now toss-ups. Hispanics were as likely to vote for Trump as they were likely to vote for Harris. Same for people under age 30. The youth are now in play as well.” No mention of why this might be the case, or why social justice, open borders and Covid lockdown policies are all widely unpopular with “the youths.”
“You pull this all together and at the moment it is absolutely impossible for the Democrats to win any big election unless there’s something else very big in play. Does this mean that the Democrats are dead forever? Not quite what I’m saying. What I’m saying is they can no longer count on winning by the numbers. There has to be another issue out there that motivates.”
Most of the the reasons Zeihan are correct (or at least correct enough), but save Hispanics, there’s very little deeper analysis of why all these various, formerly solid demographic have fallen away from the Democrat fold. And the answer is that the ideas promulgated by the ideological core of the Democrat Party are deeply unpopular. From mutilating children in the name of transsexism to importing millions of illegal aliens to legalizing shoplifting to putting repeat offenders back out on the street, there seems to be no 80/20 hill social justice-infected Democrats aren’t willing to die on.
In a way, the scarcity of details Zeihan provides on the manifest unpopularity of the Democrat Party is less notable than the fact he did a video noticing them at all. After all, a large portion of his bread and butter is speaking at various functions for those same “liberal, coastally educated, urban living elites” that he says are out of touch with much of America. That he can even tiptoe up to the truth indicates that the widespread unpopularity of Democrats has finally so established itself as consensus inside-the-beltway wisdom that it’s no longer taboo to talk about.
But the same thing that’s making the Party so wildly unpopular (the ideological capture of the Party’s core by radical social social justice) is the same thing that prevents the Party from being able to self-correct. The hard left is now so firmly entrenched in the urban centers that make up the Party’s shrinking base that they’ve nominated (and have a puncher’s chance of actually electing) a jihadi commie as mayor of America’s largest city.
A political party exists to win elections, but the Democrat Party’s social justice-infected insane wing is focused on taking complete control away from the corrupt wing, not only for the graft, corruption and patronage, but also to actively foment revolution against capitalism and “fascism” (i.e, anything that stands between their own will to power and complete control of the country). And they’re willing to lose election after election until they achieve that goal.
As the Party shrinks, it becomes ever more shrill and leftwing, and as it becomes ever more shrill and leftwing, the Party shrinks. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, a purity spiral Democrats seem incapable of escaping from.
Maybe by 2050 or so, an elderly Zeihan can post a holographic lecture on how social justice drove Democrats the way of the Whigs…
Russian lawmakers have proposed introducing food ration cards across the entire country in response to rising prices, claiming the idea has a “healthy foundation”, the Moscow Times wrote on Dec. 15.
Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets, endorsed the idea of reintroducing food vouchers reminiscent of those used in the Soviet Union – the proposal, initially suggested by the Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast governor.
Aksakov believes the initiative should be expanded nationwide. The Russian official stated that food vouchers would help “support socially vulnerable groups,” though he did not specify a potential monthly allowance for these cards.
“As of Dec. 9, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development reported annual inflation reaching 9.2%, the highest level since February 2023. However, alternative metrics indicate significantly higher figures,” the publication noted.
Food ration cards in Kaliningrad Oblast are set to roll out in 2025, targeting pensioners with incomes below the subsistence minimum.
On Dec. 10, it was reported that the Kremlin had significantly increased military spending amid a catastrophic collapse of the ruble. The Russian government has allocated unprecedented funds for the war against Ukraine.
For 2025, Russia’s budget includes a 25% increase in military spending, bringing it to 13.49 trillion rubles ($175.37 billion). Military expenditures will account for 32.5% of the budget, an unprecedented level since the Soviet era. By comparison, during the first year of the war against Ukraine, the government spent 17% of its budget on the military. In 2023, this figure rose to 19%, and the 2024 year’s allocation stands at 29.5%.
And how is the rest of the Russian economy doing? The parts supporting the war are doing great, but the rest is overheating due to inflation and crumpling under the load of high interest rates.
Interest rates are expected to hit 23% this month.
Despite the high interest rates, inflation isn’t going down, running at an official rate of 9% (and unofficially much higher).
Food staples are up even more, from 12% for bread to 74% for potatoes. Stores are locking up butter to prevent theft.
Russian business bankruptcies are up 30%.
Russia’s rail system can’t afford preventive maintenance due to higher interest rates.
Russia’s current low unemployment is driven by government spending on its war economy, and its not sustainable.
The military sector is sucking in more and more manpower, leaving fewer and fewer workers for other sectors of the economy hit by higher labor costs, higher interest rates, and higher inflation.
Unequal distribution of the gusher of war economy money is screwing the poor even harder.
Even Putin says Russia needs another million workers.
“There is a shrinking number of people who can keep Putin’s war machine running.”
Speaking of Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression, just how is that going? Given that Russia now has 63-year old recruits, I’ve got to guess not that well.
Also, two Russian oil tankers sank in the Kerch Strait, reportedly because they were river going vessels, and thus not rated for seaborne stresses. That suggests that Russia’s oil transportation capability is in serious trouble.
Also in serious trouble: Russia’s arms export industry, thanks to how poorly their arms have performed in Ukraine.
Finally, largely (though not entirely) unrelated to the Ukraine quagmire—
—is the collapse of Assad’s Syria, an important client state for Russia:
Russia is in a pickle getting its men and equipment home, because it can’t overfly nations hostile to it (most of them), it can’t sail ships home through the Bosporus (Montreux Convention), and it probably can’t get them all the way home up to its Baltic ports because it can’t refuel and resupply at hostile NATO ports (I wonder if a combination of Mediterranean African ports and at-sea resupply could get the job done). Plus Russia has been resupplying its mercenary army supporting Africa’s League of Assholes (Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso) from Syria, and Assad’s fall puts the entire operation in jeopardy.
The stresses on Russia are only going to get worse moving forward. For all the talk that Trump is going to bail Russia out, Volodymyr Zelenskyy evidently doesn’t think so. Plus one of Trump’s key negotiating tactics is to threaten whatever the other party holds most dear to force them to agree to a deal. And given Russia’s numerous manifest weaknesses, Trump is going to go into talks with an awful lot of leverage points…
One wonders if Vladimir Putin knew that not only would his three day “special military operation” in Ukraine drag on for at least two and a half years, but that Ukraine would launch a successful invasion of Kursk oblast, if he might have reconsidered ordering it.
Ukraine’s Kursk incursion continues to take territory in Russia.
A lot of observers (myself included) were puzzled by what endgame Ukraine is seeking in Kursk. So here are a couple of theories.
Peter Zeihan thinks the invasion is to cut off supplies to the city of Belgorod (one of the two major logistical hubs for Russia’s war effort).
“No one invades Russia on a whim.”
“The problem that the Russians have always had expanding for Moscow is that there’s no logical place to stop that’s within a thousand miles of them. So they expand, they conquer some minorities, they occupy them, they try to Russify them, they turn them to cannon fodder, and they throw them in the next line of minorities. They continue this process over and over and over and over and over until they eventually reach a geographic barrier that they can actually hunker down behind.”
“It works until it doesn’t. And what we’re seeing with Russia right now is that the demographic decline among the Russian ethnicity is so high that within a few years they’re going to be having problems occupying their own populations.”
“The incursion that the Ukrainians have made into Russia proper isn’t all that impressive from a territorial point of view. Basically in the last two weeks the Ukrainians have invaded Russia proper. They’ve taken over about a thousand square kilometers in the province of Kursk. And the question is why, and what is next.”
“They have already destroyed the three permanent bridges over the river Seym, which is a east-west river that cuts through Kursk province, and by doing that they’ve made it very difficult for the Russians to reinforce the territories around where this incursion has been.”
“The Ukrainians are currently expanding on at least four different axes, northwest, northeast, north and east, and in doing so they’re basically looking to swallow, at least temporarily, about half the province, about 6,000 square mile.”
“The thousand square kilometers that the Ukrainians have captured so far is greater than the entirety of what the Russian army has achieved in the Donbas in the last 18 months.”
Ukraine has taken out all the bridges, leaving Russians to use pontoon bridges for resupply, which are much more easily destroyed. And, as Suchomimus has shown in his recent videos, they seem to be rebuilding those bridges in the same spots, presumably because they’re the only suitable spots for building them, making it that much easier to take them out.
“I have always identified the city of Belgorad as one of the cities that the Ukrainians have to neutralize if they’re ever going to win this war, because it’s the tip of the spear for Russian forces. This is where, in the northern theater, all of their armies and all of their artillery are concentrated, because it’s at the end of the logistical lines. It’s a big rail and road hub. Well, if the Ukrainians are capable of basically taking the southern half of Kursk province, they take out most of the infrastructure that feeds into Belgorad.” Maybe, but there’s a whole lot of territory to take before Belgorad gets cut off.
“This took the Ukrainians scraping up the last of their reserve units, along with some advanced units that were training with NATO for future operations. I don’t think they’ve got a very deep bench beyond this.”
Invading here has allowed Ukraine to outflank Russia’s deep system of trenches, minefields and artillery. “The Ukrainians have been able to basically locate a battlefield that plays to their strengths rather than the Russian strengths and they’re kicking some serious ass.”
“The problem is they just don’t probably have enough men to fully take advantage of it, but neither do the Russians have the men necessary to eject the Ukrainians. Russia is also nearing the end of what they can scrape up through conscription of ethnic minorities. “The cupboard is getting dry.” They’re also extremely low on capable leadership (such as it is). Putin “just assigned one of his former bodyguards to run the operation in Kursk, and you can imagine how well that’s going.”
“What we’ve seen them do in the last two weeks is basically mobilize every military force that they have left in the country, which is not a lot.”
“They haven’t been able to find the 30,000 to 70,000 troops that they need in order to retake Kursk, and with the bridges gone they can only approach from the east, so the Ukrainians are having a bit of a heyday at the moment.”
The biggest fallout of the Kursk incursion is a dog that didn’t bark. “Nukes haven’t flown. Throughout this war, the Russians have, at every stage, identified a series of red lines, saying that if you cross this line we’re going to nuke Washington and Warsaw, Berlin and Paris and London and the rest, and at every stage it’s turned out to be a bluff. Well, now the Ukrainians have crossed the international border in force. They have castrated the Russian military in the area.”
“The Russians are showing an inability or an unwillingness to go to that level, and that tells me that the conservatism in Western capitals about challenging the Russians is about to evaporate. Because if the Ukrainians can do this without that sort of counter reaction, then pretty much every Russian threat to this point is meaningless.”
Next up: The Russian Dude, an anti-Putin and anti-Ukrainian War YouTuber who fled Russia just as the first conscription orders were coming down. He thinks the Kursk invasion may be a way to force Putin into calling up a second general conscription, something he has been loath to do since the first was so unpopular.
“The initial reaction to Ukraine’s move into Kursk was mixed. Many, especially those in the Russian military establishment, dismissed it as a mere PR stunt or a psychological operation, a distraction intended to draw attention away from other fronts. But as the days progressed, it became clear that this was no mere show of force. The Ukrainian Army was committed, and their objectives were far more strategic than anyone had anticipated.”
Even “Z propagandists” in Russia are admitting that ejecting Ukraine from Kursk oblast will take time. “This was a wakeup call. The country’s military and political leaders had long been accustomed to dismissing Ukrainian operations as inconsequential. The belief was that Russia’s superior military power would always be enough to repel any significant threat. But the events unfolding in Kirsk challenged this assumption.” Even some of the most pro-war Russian milbloggers began to express doubts.
“Russian president Vladimir Putin is facing a very scary decision. For years Putin has positioned himself as a strongman, a leader who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. But the events in Kursk revealed the limits of his power. The Russian military, once his unstoppable force, was now struggling to respond to a determined and well-coordinated Ukrainian offensive.”
“Putin’s dilemma is rooted in the fact that he has few good options left. The Russian military is stretched thin, its resources depleted by years of sustaining conflict the invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to be a quick and decisive victory, has instead turned to a grinding war of attrition. And now, with the Ukrainian forces pushing into Russian territory, the weaknesses of the Russian military are becoming more apparent than ever.”
“One of the key indicators of this is the absence of a new mobilization effort, despite the heavy losses Russia has suffered. Putin has not ordered a new wave of conscription [because] another round of mobilization would likely would like destabilize his regime. The last call-up in 2022 was deeply unpopular, sparking protest and unrest across the country.”
“Many Russians who had previously been indifferent to the war suddenly found themselves directly affected and the backlash was significant. Putin knows that another mobilization would likely provoke a similar response, potentially undermining his hold on power, but without new recruits the Russian military is running out of manpower.”
“Russia’s defense industry is struggling to keep up with the demands of the war. Missiles fired at Ukrainian cities bare markings from 2023 and 2024, indicating that they were produced recently. This suggests that Russia has managed to bypass some of the sanctions imposed by the West to acquire the components needed to build these weapons. But it also means that there is no surplus. Every single missile produced is immediately sent to the battlefield. The same is true for other military equipment like tanks, drones, and ammunition.”
Everyone who could be tempted by a sign-up bonus has already joined, even though they keep increasing. “If you do announce another round of mobilization and start grabbing people from the streets and sending them to fight in Ukraine for free, well, I don’t think that’s going to sit well with these people.”
“While Russia grapples with these challenges, Ukraine’s western allies have been surprisingly quiet, in a good way.”
“This raises the question: Have they finally realized that Putin’s ability to escalate the war further is limited? The answer appears to be yes. After nearly two years of watching Russia’s military strategy unfold, it seems that western powers have concluded that Putin is already operating at his maximum capacity.”
“Now Western leaders seem more willing to allow Ukraine to use the weapons as it sees fit. The focus has shifted from preventing escalation to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself and reclaim its territory.”
“Ukraine is now receiving more advanced technology, including long-range missiles and sophisticated drones. These weapons are designed to not just defend against Russian attacks, but to strike deeper inside Russian-held territory, disrupting supply lines and targeting key military objects.”
Thus far Putin has avoided seriously conscripting soldiers from the only two areas of the country he cares about: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ukraine’s Kursk gambit may force him into doing so, possibly triggering his downfall.
Ukraine has allegedly struck the NIP-16 space communications and tracking facility in Crimea. According to reports, the attack was conducted on Saturday (June 22), using U.S.-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles.
This attack was one of two carried out by Ukraine over the weekend into the Crimean Peninsula. These come just over a month since the United States gave Ukraine the go-ahead to strike into Russian territory using U.S.-made weapons.
The first attack over the weekend targeted the space communications facility with approximately 20 radar dishes. Some of these were combined in large fixtures with eight dishes.
Low-resolution satellite images obtained by the War Zone (TWZ) appears to confirm that the NIP-16 facility was indeed attacked, as claimed. However, due to the image quality, it is difficult to determine the exact extent of the damage.
We’ll get to that in a minute. Snip.
After Russia seized it following the 2014 takeover of Crimea, the facility was handed over to its Aerospace Forces, which then began modernizing it, as reported by the Ukrainian Defense Express (UDE) news outlet.
“As of 2017, reports stated the center had received ten new systems, and the upgrading was still proceeding,” UDE explained. “The initial plan was to spend 1.8 billion rubles on the reconstruction of one radio telescope alone: at the exchange rate of that time, cost about $28 million,” it added.
The Kyiv Post reported that Russia is now using it for ballistic missile early warning, looking towards the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia. Others have postulated that it may be used for GLObalnaya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema in Russian (GLONASS), Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).
We’ve got a pretty good idea what was hit because the after satellite photos are already available:
Starting at the top right where the signs of burning are, there’s a pair of laser rangefinders. Moving down around them and in the central area of damage a six meter radom and a five meter radom. And in a bottom bit of damage some items I don’t understand: parabolics on a gimbal, one of them is called, who I’m sure appeared at Glastonbury last year [it’s a radar dish that came move around, like the ones in the Very Large Array]. An M 6 meter case grain [I suspect he means a 6 meter gain antenna], and a 15 meter retractable radar.
Plus “Three new structures which were built since October 2020 the bottom one built in March or April 2021 during Russia’s military buildup.”
OK, let’s talk about GLONASS. According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), GLONASS has an accuracy range of 4.46–7.38m, which is fine for nuclear weapons, or to track positions of planes and ships, or to hit most buildings, but falls woefully short of tactical battlefield accuracy. During the Desert Storm, U.S. generals would brag that military band GPS would let a cruise missile target an individual M&M in a bowl. Even if we’re limiting Ukrainian access to military band GPS, Civilian GPS + differential GPS (basically using fixed ground tower signals to provide higher accuracy) is probably at least an order of magnitude more accurate than GLONASS.
Differential GPS was something the Russians were going to try to bring online as part of a constellation upgrade, but the Ukraine war (and the sorry state of Roscosmos) might have sidelined that goal. On the other hand, the only scheduled Russian space launches for the rest of this year are all for upgraded GLONASS K1 sats, so maybe that’s the one thing they’re still doing.
Peter Zeihan thinks this move has the Russians way screwed.
“You use a deep space system to basically keep track of all your satellites in orbit and communicate among them and to the ground. And since satellites typically are [orbiting], you need several of these stations around the world in order to provide good coverage.”
“The Russians have never had that, because the Russians have never had a series of allies that they can trust on a global basis. So they have four of these networks within the Russian Federation and that’s it and apparently one of them was completely destroyed within the last 36 hours.”
“It pretty much is the end of the Russian civilian space program. It was already floundering and wasn’t economically viable, especially with the advent of SpaceX because the Russians used to use their old ICBMs as launch vehicles. Basically you use one of them and then it’s gone and then you use another one you keep doing that until they’re all gone and, well, they’re all gone now unless they actually want to go into their active reserve they were using the ones that were decommissioned after the end of the Cold War, so they’re no longer cost effective at all.” I’m not sure that this is true, as all recent Roscosmos space flights have used the Soyuz-2 rocket, whose development split off from ICBM development a long damn time ago.
“Second, military satellites. Most military satellites, like most civilian satellites, are whipping around the planet, and now the Russians have lost one quarter of what was left of their capacity to track and communicate with them. That’s going to provide a real problem for the Russians in terms of satellite communications. Not to mention anyone who was looking at getting the Russians to launch and maintain a military satellite for them now has to find someone who is not Russia to maintain it.”
“And if your goal was to get away from the United States, there just aren’t a lot of options here, because the Chinese don’t have a good network for this either. So basically you’re down to Europe with the Airbus Consortium or the United States.”
“Third and perhaps most significant moving forward is, with the loss of this the Russians are losing the ability to not just keep tabs on their satellites but but to get good telemetry for things like repairs. And if the Russians lose the capacity to do that, then their GLONASS, system which is their equivalent of GPS, starts to fall offline.”
“Now there are already parts of the world that don’t have very good coverage all that often, but if you remove meaningful launch capability and monitoring capability and maintenance capability from the Russian system (losing one more radar system would probably do that) then you’re talking about the Russians losing the capacity to use precision guided munitions using geographic tags, that would be an end to things like, say, glide bombs, which are the newest military innovation that the Russians have used, basically dropping one to two to three ton bombs from within Russian territory and then having them glide and hit targets. If you lose their ability for satellite communication that goes away.”
I think Zeihan slightly overstates the problem for Russia, or more specifically immanentizes the crisis more than is warranted, especially in relation to the Russo-Ukrainian War. First, GLONASS precision wasn’t exacting to begin with, so its ability to hit tactical battlefield targets was questionable. Second, it takes time for sat global positioning errors to add up, even if you couldn’t use one of the three other stations for measurement and precision correction. Third, Russia hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of precision munitions in this war, the overwhelming majority of their weapons seem “dumb” anyway, and changing that has been made harder by sanctions. Finally, Russia could pull a sneaky end-around and relying on GPS as well as GLONASS for any precision weapons (as many civilian devices, including iPhones, have the capability to use) and the US has evidently retired “Selective Availability” for GPS.
My suspicion is that the GLONASS damage will be secondary to the destruction of whatever military radar capabilities Russia added to NIP-16, and which were evidently taken out by the strike as more battlespace preparation for the arrival of Ukrainian F-16s in theater later this year.
Here’s Peter Zeihan to state what conservatives knew a decade ago: Venezuela is headed for collapse.
It’s just over 6 minutes long, so even though I’ve excerpted it, you might want to watch all of it to listen for the one word Zeihan doesn’t say.
“Under 20 years of ridiculous mismanagement and theft by the governments of Hugo Chavez and now Nicholas Maduro, the state’s broken.”
“Basically we’ve had two decades of the governing authorities literally stealing everything that wasn’t stripped down, and then getting a wrench and getting a lot of the stuff that was stripped down [I think he means “strapped down”], to the point that they simply didn’t just confiscate materials they stripped it of equipment and melted it down or sold it for parts and there’s really nothing left.”
“So the country that used to have the highest educational levels in Latin America, the country that used to have the highest standard of living and the most cultural achievement, is now teetering on the verge of being a broken state, a failed state.”
“Roughly 1/3rd of the population that has out migrated since uh the last 6-7 years.”
“In calendar year 2022 and calendar year 2023, the Biden Administration did a partial lifting of sanctions on the regime, basically saying that if you start working in the direction of free and fair elections, we will allow investment to come in to stabilize the energy sector and get some more oil out of the ground. Uh, we’re going to trust your word for it, and then we will reassess when we get closer to elections in 2024.”
I bet everyone reading this can figure out exactly how well that worked out. “We’ll just take your word that your three card monte game is on the level.”
Chevron came in and got oil output up to a million barrels a day.
“But in the last several weeks it’s been clear that the government of Maduro has no intention of having real elections.” You don’t say. What you mean is “It’s been clear for decades that Venezuela’s socialist thugs have never had any intentions of holding free elections.” Only and idiot would think otherwise.
But the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to increase oil production in the rest of the world to help Biden’s reelection chances, while supressing oil production at home. “There’s a lot of things about that that are inconsistent.” You don’t say.
Oil production is now under three-quarters of a million barrels and falling.
“The really high-end stuff, the stuff that was part of the outcome of Venezuela being such a successful state, left a long time ago, and in bits and pieces ever since the the middle management and the secondary skill set and now there’s really nothing left.”
“People like to talk about the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians coming, in but they don’t have any experience in this sort of oil patch, so we are probably going to see a collapse of what’s left of the output this year and early in the next year.”
“One of the many, many, many, many, many mistakes that Chavez and Maduro made is they hated the United States so much, and their spending was so crazy, that they started pre-selling their oil specifically to China and to a lesser degree to Russia. ‘We’ll take X number of billions of dollars from you now and we will pay you back with raw crude in the years to come.’ Well, what that means is that the Venezuelans are already not getting money from the oil that they produce.”
“So we are going to see this collapse, and as that happens, the ability of getting even a modicum of foreign currency to pay for the 80% of their food that they now import because they destroyed their agricultural sector is on deck.”
“So the famines of the past, the dislocations of the past, the migrations of the past these have all just been the appetizer course, and over the next very few years we’re going to see the full collapse of Venezuelan society.”
Leave it to the Biden Administration to enable foreign leftist enemies for temporary political gain.
Did you notice the word missing from Zeihan’s analysis?
I haven’t been updating every twist and turn of the Evergrande collapse, but we’re going to look at it again because this Peter Zeihan video has a fairly staggering statistic. He asserts that there are 1.5 BILLION (with a B) unoccupied housing units in China. Even though we already knew about the ghost cities, that’s like an entire ghost nation for a China that was already headed down the economic crapper.
“A Hong Kong court has ruled that China’s largest property development group, Evergrande, is bankrupt and needs to be broken up. This is something that the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort on the last two years not happening.”
“There’s two big things that dominate the Chinese economy. The first is something I call hyperfinancialization: The idea that the government both de facto confiscates the savings of the citizen population so it can only go into projects funded by Chinese State Banks, as well as massively expanding the money supply to a tune of like almost triple what we have here in the United States.”
“It’s a public stability political control approach to finance. It’s not about profit, it’s about throughput, because throughput requires a lot of bodies.”
“Number one, you get companies like Evergrande, who gorge on all this bottomless supply of debt to build build, build, build, build, even if there’s no demand.”
“Second, you get a population who knows that their private savings is almost worthless, because the Chinese government is forcing them to keep it in the state banks, and they want to put it into a hard asset that preferably the state can’t control. And if they can’t get their money out of the country, then the next best thing is a hard asset in the country, which typically is property.”
“You have somewhere probably in the vicinity of 1.5 billion units in the country that have never been lived in, never will be lived in. So you’re talking about 100% overbuild, conservatively. Some estimates say it’s as high as three billion, which is just so far beyond stupid.”
“How many vacant homes are there now? Each expert gives a very different number, with the most extreme believing the current number of vacant homes are enough for 3 billion people,” said He Keng, 81, a former deputy head of the statistics bureau.
“That estimate might be a bit much, but 1.4 billion people probably can’t fill them,” He said at a forum in the southern Chinese city Dongguan, according to a video released by the official media China News Service.
That’s people, not homes. Still, even if you cut it in half, to 750 million vacant condos, that’s a huge number. That’s the equivalent of 30 empty Shanghais.
Back to Zeihan:
“Evergrande going down means that their debts aren’t going to be serviced anymore, and the physical assets they have are going to be parceled up and foreign investors are going to be coming in seeing what bits that they can get.” Any foreigners investing in Chinese real estate need their heads examined.
“These things are things that the Chinese Communist Party would not normally allow to happen, so there’s a couple ways that this can go, none of them are good.”
“Option number one is we follow a western style bankruptcy and restitution program where this system is broken up and a lot of their assets are sold at pennies, maybe dimes, on a dollar.”
“You can count on private citizens being up in arms. I mean, the best estimate I’ve seen out of China is at 70% of total private savings is wrapped up in real estate, and most of these assets are worth no more than 10 cents on the dollar.”
“You have a fire sale of the single largest player which controls one sixth of the market, holy shit, things are going to get real very, very, very quickly.”
“Option number two is that the Chinese step in and abrogate the Hong Kong ruling. Now legally this cannot happen, but the Chinese Communist party is not really big on legal details when it comes to Hong Kong in particular.”
“Then Evergrande goes on some sort of state drip and everything with the system just kind of limps on, with the understanding now that Hong Kong has no legal authority over its own holdings, which will start an exodus of what few international firms are still there.”
“Regardless how this goes, don’t expect anything in the market to get better.”
“Evergrande may be the biggest player in this market, but it is by far not the only one who’s been doing stupid things like this, building condos that have no demand or running it like a Ponzi scheme. Every development company in the country basically operates this this way, and the second and third largest players in the industry are state-owned.”
“Even if all of a sudden this place were run by a bunch of Austrian economists, it’s too late.” Because of the one-child policy, there simply aren’t enough people of home-buying age.”
“I don’t want to say anything overly dramatic as ‘This is where it all starts to fall apart,’ because we’ve had a lot of things like that go down in the last 18 months. But this cuts to the core of what enables the average [Chinese] citizen to actually support the government, and there’s no way we move forward from this without a lot of side damage.”
The Chinese economy is already sucking. If the housing oversupply is really as bad as Zeihan makes out, China is in for an economic upheaval that makes 1929 look like a mild case of the hiccups.
It’s hard to report on Houthi rebels telling U.S. armed forces to “bring it on” and keep a straight face. It’s like Steve Urkel declaring he’s going to kick Mike Tyson’s ass, or Bambi vs. Godzilla.
I mean, their video features a Northrup F-5, a plane introduced to service in 1964 and last manufactured in 1987. It would be very, very unlikely to defeat an F-15, much less an F-35, which would probably splash it from 50 miles away with an AIM-120 and be back in time for breakfast.
I’m a bottomless well of Skiffy pop culture references.
And the rest of their air force (or what little of it survives after Saudi air strikes) is old (and probably ill-maintained) Soviet crap of the type that got smoked by F-15s during Desert Storm more than 30 years ago.
Beyond that, the Houthis probably only have the shitty drones Iran sells to Russia, and the even shittier rockets they give to Hamas, and neither of those will get the job done, either.
So: Yeah.
So instead of the laughable idea of direct Houthi-U.S. military confrontation, let’s turn to Peter Zeihan (yeah, him again) to talk about who the biggest losers are in the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. (Hint: It’s not the U.S., or Israel.)
“Militants in Yemen are launching a combination of low-grade ballistic missiles and drones at commercial shipping in the Red Sea. And that’s led the 10 major shipping companies of the world to basically suspend operations in that area, and either tell their ships to wait [until] the threat passes, or simply sail around the Red Sea completely, which means going all the way around Africa for the Asia-Europe run.”
“Here we have basically a bunch of drug-adled militants, some of the world’s least competent ones, operating from some of the world’s least valuable land in Yemen, probably at the instigation of the Iranians who are their primary supporter, because this is a little conflict that is a needle in the side of Saudi Arabia cost them very little.”
“This is is not a formal shutting down of trade, this is more of a heavy annoyance.”
It’s not the danger of being sunk deterring traffic, it’s the dangerous of losing insurance for going into a zone of conflict.
Who’s hurt worst by all this? First, China. “Roughly 30% of all global containerized traffic [goes through Suez], and the biggest single chunk of that is Chinese exports to the European Union…it increases the sailing distance by 1/3rd to 2/3rds, and that means you need 1/3rd to 2/3rd more container ships to maintain the same flows. So we’re going to see a lot of pinches in the supply chains for finished goods.”
“In an environment where consumption is basically seized up in China and all they have left are exports, it’s also going to make it a little bit easier for the Europeans to put trade sanctions on the Chinese for product dumping.”
The Saudis might find it a bit more difficult to ship crude to Europe, but there are some ways around that.
Then there’s Russia: “Because of a lack of infrastructure, Russian crude had to be exported through the same port points on the Black and Baltic Sea, but it had to be then shipped through the Mediterranean through Suez through the Red Sea across the Arabian Sea to India, southeast Asia and China.”
“Well, that is barely an economically viable route now, which is one of the reasons why the Russians are typically selling their crude at a $20 to a $30 a barrel discount. But if Suez is closed, then they can no longer send these small tankers through it, and these small tankers don’t have the reach to go all the way around Africa.” I find the last assertion dubious, as they are surely ports in Africa they can resupply and refuel at, especially since I don’t think any countries in Africa have signed up for sanctions against Russia.
“So you’re looking at something like 1.5 to 2 million barrels a day of Russian crude that might finally actually be stranded if this isn’t solved pretty quickly now.”
Russian insurance update: “You have some Russian players, some Indian players, and some Chinese players who have started started to offer indemnification insurance. So we might get this really colorful situation where the real shipping companies stop using Suez and the Red Sea, but these shadow companies that have never had to pay out start using it and then we get to find out what happens if an Iranian-backed militant Force hits a Chinese Indian or Russian ship.” Good times, good time…
I also have to wonder if there are mercenaries Ukraine could hire to carry out letters of marquis and reprisal on Russian ships…
