The Evening Blues - 3-19-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues guitarist Ronnie Earl. Enjoy!
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters - Blues in D natural
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
News and Opinion
Iran Is Forcing The World To Care About US-Israeli Warmongering
Westerners are about to start paying a lot more attention to the war in Iran as massive US-Israeli escalations point to a coming energy crisis set to impact the whole world.
Israel has bombed the world’s largest natural gas field in southwestern Iran, reportedly in coordination with the United States. Now that a major red line for Tehran has been crossed, retaliatory strikes have already begun pummeling the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region, with Qatar reporting that its primary gas facility has sustained “significant damage” from an attack after Iran issued evacuation warnings for energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Fuel prices are already surging. If middle eastern energy infrastructure starts taking extensive damage on top of the already hugely significant Iranian blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, this war could end up affecting virtually every corner of human civilization in one way or another.
Iran were holding back on destroying gas and oil wells at the source to avoid a global energy shock.
Israel crossed that unspoken red line today.
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) March 18, 2026
Westerners are largely apathetic about US military explosives landing on populations on other continents. But once it starts having a direct impact on their personal bank accounts, you can expect them to get a lot more interested in US foreign policy.
This war has been a bit odd for me because as an anti-imperialist peacemonger I’m not yet entirely sure what my role is in my commentary here.
Normally I’d be begging westerners to care about another horrific act by the US war machine, but as things stand it looks like westerners are going to be forced to care about this one whether they want to or not.
Normally I’d be writing furiously about how people should not support this war, but the war has exceptionally low public support already.
Normally I’d be trying to help everyone open their eyes and recognize the US warmongers for the psychopaths that they are, but the Trumpanyahu administration is openly waging an unprovoked war of aggression while constantly thumping its chest and boasting about how it’s showing the Iranians “no quarter, no mercy” and saying it can kill whoever it wants with impunity.
Normally I’d be writing about how the mass media are churning out war propaganda to manufacture consent for more US military butchery, but the mass media keep putting out stories about how the US government is lying about a war that should never have happened while Trump administration figures have public tantrums about how the media isn’t churning out war propaganda for them.
Trump Administration Goes After the Media for Negative Coverage of the Iran War#Iran #IranWar #Trump #media https://t.co/53G1E9mUaE
— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) March 16, 2026
President Trump is on social media babbling about how news outlets “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON” for not reporting on an embarrassing story about a US aircraft carrier fire the way he wants, while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his fire-and-brimstone podium sermons bitching about how “an actual patriotic press” would be framing this war in a more positive light.
Do you see what I mean? What am I supposed to do with this? Where does that leave dissident fringesters like myself? All I can do is clear my throat and sheepishly go “Uh, yeah, I uh… agree with CNN.”
With Ukraine the mass media fell all over themselves to hide the west’s role in provoking the conflict, framing Putin as an evil maniacal Hitler figure who just spontaneously flipped out and invaded a country on Russia’s border because he hates freedom. With Gaza the western press gave nonstop narrative cover to Israel’s genocidal atrocities, constantly dragging public attention into an endless conversation about antisemitism and Jewish feelings whenever opposition to the slaughter got too hot.
That’s just not happening with Iran. It’s the first US war I’ve ever seen where a big chunk of the imperial power structure just refuses to get on board. The media’s not playing along, US allies are telling Trump to get stuffed when he asks for military assistance with the Strait of Hormuz, and the public’s not buying the lies.
This is a frightening time to be alive — but you can’t say we’re in a period of stasis. Things are moving faster and faster. They might get a whole lot worse. They might get a whole lot better. They might get a whole lot worse and then get a whole lot better. But it seems a safe bet that the situation won’t remain the same.
Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Attacked World's Largest Gas Field & Iran Declares Economic War
ESCALATION: Massive strikes on Gas fields in Iran and Qatar. Trump expands WAR
Israel strikes Iran’s South Pars gasfield hours after forces kill intelligence minister
Israel struck Iran’s giant South Pars gasfield on Wednesday, marking a major escalation of the war, hours after Israeli forces killed the regime’s intelligence minister and launched some of the most intense airstrikes in Beirut for decades. The attack on the Pars site in the Persian Gulf, which Iran shares with Qatar and constitutes the world’s largest natural gasfield, prompted Tehran to warn neighbouring states that their energy infrastructure could be targeted “within hours”, and triggered furious rebukes from Qatar and other nations in the region.
Located off the coast of the southern Bushehr province, the field holds an estimated 1,800tn cubic feet (51tn cubic metres) of in situ gas, accounting for about 70% of Iran’s domestic supply and a vast portion of Qatar’s exports. Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari described the targeting of the gasfield – an extension of Qatar’s North Field – as a “dangerous and irresponsible step”. The Gulf state’s energy firm said later that Iranian strikes had caused “extensive damage” at its gas hub in Ras Laffan.
Qatar’s foreign ministry condemned what it called a “brutal Iranian attack”, saying the targeting represented a “direct threat to its national security”. In a marked escalation, Iran’s military and security attaches were ordered to leave Qatar within 24 hours. Abu Dhabi said it had suspended operations at its Habshan gas facility after a separate Iranian missile attack.
As the war intensifies, fresh evidence is raising questions over the purpose of the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran. A day after Joe Kent, the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his role in protest, the US national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that Iran had made no attempt to rebuild its uranium enrichment programme since it was destroyed in the June 2025 strikes. “As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was obliterated. There have been no efforts since then to rebuild that capability,” Gabbard said in testimony to the Senate.
Israel’s strike against South Pars was coordinated with and approved by the Trump administration, the American news website Axios reported, citing two senior Israeli officials. The report said a US defence official confirmed the claim. The attack on the heart of Iran’s gas infrastructure marks a significant stepping up of US and Israeli military operations. Until now, both countries had largely spared Iran’s oil and gas sector in an effort to contain global price shocks, but oil climbed towards $110 (£83) a barrel on Wednesday as growing threats to Gulf energy infrastructure and the continuing blockade of the strait of Hormuz raised fears of further supply disruption.
How Israel Convinced Trump to Wage War Against Iran (w/ Max Blumenthal) | The Chris Hedges Report
Tulsi Gabbard tells Senate panel US strikes on Iran are strategic success
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who in 2019 was selling “No War With Iran” T-shirts, told the Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday that US strikes on Iran had been a strategic success. “I’d like to remind those who are watching what I am briefing here today conveys the intelligence community’s assessment of the threats facing US citizens, our homeland and our interests,” Gabbard told the committee, “not my personal views or opinions.”
Iran’s retaliatory strikes against the US-Israeli campaign have already killed 13 American service members and wounded approximately 200 more, cost taxpayers billions of dollars and scrambled global supply chains for oil, fertilizer and aluminum. This week, when Donald Trump asked allies to help reopen the strait of Hormuz, the call wasn’t answered.
According to the annual global threat assessment report, Iran’s conventional military projection capabilities had been “largely destroyed”, Gabbard said, and Iran’s strategic position “significantly degraded”. But, the regime appears intact, and since internal protests have been violently suppressed with thousands of people killed, if Iran survives it would probably “seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces”.
In last year’s assessment, the intelligence community determined that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran killed in a joint US-Israeli strike] has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so”. Gabbard at this hearing said that the intelligence community assesses that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan have been researching and developing new and advanced missile systems “with nuclear and conventional payloads that put our homeland within range”.
When Democratic senator Jon Ossoff asked about Iran’s nuclear program, Gabbard confirmed the intelligence community assessed it had been “obliterated” during last June’s strike – a finding she had omitted from her opening statement – and that Iran had made no effort to rebuild since. But when repeatedly pressed on whether Iran had posed an imminent nuclear threat before the strikes, she deflected. “It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said. “That is up to the president, based on a volume of information that he receives.” That answer sat uncomfortably alongside Trump’s own Truth Social video announcing the war, in which he told the American people the campaign was to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.
The End of the Petrodollar? How Iran War Is Reshaping the Global Economy: Author Laleh Khalili
MAX BLUMENTHAL : What Joe Kent Knows and Why He Dumped Trump
FBI probing US counter-terrorism chief who resigned over Iran war, reports say
The resignation of Joe Kent, a senior counter-terrorism official who spoke out against the US war in Iran, took a dramatic turn on Wednesday with a report that he is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over an alleged leak of classified information. The inquiry predates Kent’s departure on Tuesday from his post as director of the national counterterrorism center, where he had overseen the analysis of terrorist threats, according to Semafor and CBS News. The FBI declined to comment on the existence of any such investigation.
The report came as Kent, the first senior member of the administration to quit over the war, gave his first media interview since stepping down. Speaking to the rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson, he claimed that dissenting voices were effectively frozen out of the decision-making process that led to US airstrikes on Iran on 28 February. “A good deal of key decision makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent said on The Tucker Carlson Show podcast. “There wasn’t a robust debate.”
Wearing a blue-checked shirt open at the collar, Kent, a staunch Trump ally and conspiracy theorist, appeared at pains to not criticize the president directly. But he painted a picture of a White House in which Trump relied on a tight inner circle of advisers, sidelining officials who questioned both the intelligence and the strategic wisdom underpinning the strikes.
Kent insisted that there was no evidence that Iran was close to gaining a nuclear weapon or posed an imminent threat to the US. “There was no intelligence that said, ‘Hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack – they’re going to do some kind of a 9/11, Pearl Harbor, et cetera, they are going to attack one of our bases.’ There was none of that intelligence.”
Instead, Kent alleged, Trump’s hand was effectively forced by Israel. “The Israelis drove the decision to take this action,” he said, claiming that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials lobbied the president with claims that did not align with established intelligence channels.
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Did the Pentagon Miscalculate This War?
Partisan games proceed as Democrats pretend to have principles.
Senate votes down measure aiming to limit Trump’s war powers by 53-47 vote
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a measure that aimed to rein in Donald Trump’s power to wage war against Iran without congressional authorization. The 53-47 vote against taking up the measure fell almost completely along party lines, with no movement from earlier this month when Republicans blocked Democrats’ bid to limit Trump’s war-making power in the days after the joint US-Israeli strikes, known as Operation Epic Fury, began across Iran.
“We do not know Donald Trump’s goals. We do not know Donald Trump’s timeline. We do not know what victory even looks like in his eyes,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said before the vote, urging Republicans to support the effort to force a debate on the war. “Enough is enough.”
The senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has led several war-powers efforts, was the only Republican to vote in support of the measure, while the senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has emerged as a staunch supporter of Israel, was the only Democrat to break with his party and vote against the resolution.
“If there’s anything that is plain in that constitution, it is that a president does not have the power to unilaterally bring a nation and its treasure, to bring a nation and its men and women, into conflict without a say of Congress,” the senator Cory Booker, who led the war-powers resolution, said in a floor speech before the vote. Booker acknowledged that he would not succeed, but vowed to continue to introduce measures that would force Congress to debate and authorize military action.
He said: “Me and my colleagues will bring up these resolutions again and again and again as more and more Americans on both sides of the aisle see this war for what it is: one president’s decision.”
Iran SMASHES Saudi Arabia & Qatar's Oil Plants, DOWNS US F-35 | Ali Alizadeh
Global Energy PRICES SPIKE As Depression Looms
Israel faces stiff Hezbollah resistance as it attempts to push deeper into Lebanon
Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in intense ground clashes in at least three strategic areas in south Lebanon as Israel pushes on with its ground invasion of its neighbour, according to a Lebanese security source and residents of the affected towns. Much of the fighting was concentrated around the strategic hilltop city of Khiam, with the Israel Defense Forces carrying out an air and artillery campaign against Hezbollah fighters dug into the city. Fighting escalated there after days of clashes, with a Hezbollah spokesperson acknowledging there were “heightened clashes” on the eastern and northern outskirts of the city.
As fighting continued in Khiam, Israeli troops attempted to push into border towns in the central and western sectors of south Lebanon. A resident of the Aita al-Chaab border village said fighting was intense between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters there. A Lebanese security source said that the village was one of a number of border towns that had become the site of heavy fighting, as Israel tried to infiltrate southern Lebanon through various points along the shared border. There, they had been met with resistance by members of Hezbollah.
The fighting came as Israel amassed troops along the border, bringing four brigades and columns of tanks ahead of an expanded ground invasion of south Lebanon. The Israeli military said that it had started a “limited ground operation”, as the political echelon discussed expanding the campaign. ...
The latest hostilities are a contest between Israel’s airpower and Hezbollah’s guerrilla fighters. Experts said the ground fighting in Lebanon was now centred on strategic axes, in particular Khiam, which could determine Hezbollah’s ability to fight off Israel’s invasion. “Khiam sits on a high plateau overlooking the Hula Valley and along key routes leading west towards the Israeli border,” said Ahmad Beydoun, a researcher at TU Delft specialising in open-source investigations of armed conflicts.
Israeli control of the hilltop would cut off Hezbollah’s supply lines to its fighters in south Lebanon. “Control of Khiam divides the central and eastern sectors south of the Litani [River], disrupting connectivity with the Bekaa valley,” Beydoun said. The Israeli military has targeted civilian infrastructure in south Lebanon to further cut off supply lines, hitting bridges crossing the Litani and major roads leading south. It has also struck medical centres and emergency workers, attacks that were designed to degrade the conditions of life in south Lebanon, rights groups said.
Professor Pape: Why Iran GROUND INVASION IS Likely COMING
Russian oil tanker heading to Cuba amid US economic blockade
Hundreds of thousands of barrels of Russian oil are heading to Cuba, according to maritime tracking data, as the communist island suffers blackouts under a US economic blockade and Donald Trump threatens to take it over.
The sanctioned Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin loaded 730,000 barrels of crude in the Russian port of Primorsk on 8 March, and on Wednesday at 1600 GMT was in the eastern Atlantic, bound for Cuba, maritime analytics firm Kpler said.
Its data showed the Russian-flagged vessel, owned by the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot, was scheduled to unload at the Matanzas oil terminal on the north of the island about 23 March.
Trump declared on Monday that he expects to have “the honour of taking Cuba”, claiming that he could do “anything I want” amid US negotiations with Havana over the country’s future.
New York high school student released after 10 months in ICE facility
A New York high school student who was detained at an immigration courthouse in May last year, sparking national outrage, was released on Wednesday. Dylan Lopez Contreras, 21, of Venezuela was a freshman at Ellis Prep academy, a Bronx public school dedicated exclusively to students who have recently arrived in the US. It was the first widely known instance of a public school student being arrested by federal immigration agents.
On Wednesday, he was released from the Moshannon Valley Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, after 10 months in detention. ... He arrived home on Wednesday evening, according to his lawyers.
Contreras’s arrest last year shocked his community, and previewed the Trump administration’s indiscriminate approach to immigration enforcement. In an essay he wrote for the Guardian from Moshannon Valley, Contreras said that his life in detention was “uncomfortable, stressful and monotonous”.
“Nothing can undo the injustice of denying Dylan even a modicum of due process, stealing his liberty and personal autonomy, and snatching away the precious time, education and experiences he’s been forced to miss for nearly a year of his young life,” said Kate Fetrow, associate supervising attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) and a member of Contreras’s legal team. “His release today is a momentous step in the right direction as we continue to fight to restore justice for Dylan and his family.”
Democrats walk out in protest over ‘outrageous fake’ Epstein briefing from Pam Bondi
Democrats on the House oversight committee walked out of a closed-door briefing from attorney general Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein files on Wednesday, leaving what California congressman Robert Garcia called “an outrageous fake hearing” after Bondi refused to commit to honoring a subpoena to testify under oath.
The committee voted to subpoena Bondi earlier this month, with five Republicans joining Democrats to demand that the attorney general answer questions about the justice department’s failure to properly release files from the federal investigations into Epstein.
Bondi and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the justice department’s handling of millions of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation. But less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats walked out in protest of the arrangement.
Speaking outside the hearing room, Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said: “We asked her multiple times, are you going to come and speak with us under oath? She would not say yes. Filibuster, filibuster, filibuster, would not say yes.”
“Our Republican colleagues say: ‘Is this not enough? Why don’t you want to speak to her now?’ We want her under oath because we do not trust her. Why don’t we trust her? Because she’s a liar,” Frost added. “Look at how that judiciary committee went. She was spying on members of Congress when they were in the DoJ looking at the documents unredacted … Look at what she’s done, as far as not putting documents related to Donald Trump on the website.”
Kash Patel admits under oath FBI is buying location data on Americans
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has started buying location data on Americans, Kash Patel, FBI director, said under oath at the Senate intelligence committee worldwide threats hearing on Wednesday. Patel’s admission came in response to a question from the senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is a longtime opponent of the warrantless surveillance of Americans. Wyden told Patel that his predecessor, Christopher Wray, testified in 2023 that the FBI did not at that time purchase location data derived from internet advertising, although he acknowledged that it had done so in the past. “Is that the case still?” Wyden asked. “And if so, can you commit this morning to not buying Americans’ location data?”
“We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” Patel responded.
“So you’re saying that the agency will buy Americans’ location data,” Wyden said. “I believe that that’s what you’ve said in kind of intelligence lingo. And I just want to say as we start this debate, doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the fourth amendment. It’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information. This is exhibit A for why Congress needs to pass our bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Government Surveillance Reform act,” Wyden said, referring to legislation he is working to pass to rein in surveillance.
While law enforcement must get a judge-authorized search warrant to obtain location data directly from telecom companies, government agencies have instead been able to buy such information from private data brokers.
Google co-founder spends $45m in fight against California billionaire tax
A Google founder has more than doubled his financial contribution to the fight against a proposed wealth tax in California. New filings with the state show that former Alphabet president Sergey Brin donated $25m to a Super Pac dedicated to blocking the tax on top of $20m he had already given.
Brin is not alone among Google’s top brass in upping his financial stake in the campaign against the ballot proposal. The company’s former CEO Eric Schmidt donated $1.02m, adding to a previous $2m contribution.
The tech titans are battling the California Billionaire Tax act, often referred to simply as the billionaire tax. It’s a proposed ballot measure that would require any California resident worth more than $1bn to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state. It’s sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, and is still in the signature-gathering phase.
If the measure reaches the ballot and gains voters’ approval, the tax would apply to billionaires based on their residency as of 1 January 2026. For Brin, worth about $247bn, the bill would likely be upwards of $12bn. That stipulation appears to have caused him and several other billionaires to leave California at the end of last year. Brin relocated to a $42m estate on the north-eastern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and his Pac donations show Reno as his address. Schmidt’s filings show his address as West Hollywood.
Schmidt also donated to Building a Better California in January, with a $2m contribution, making his total just over $3m to the Pac. The former CEO has also given $1.04m to another Super Pac fighting the billionaire tax called the California Business Roundtable.
Along with Schmidt’s contribution, the California Business Roundtable has also received donations from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel ($3m), Ring founder James Siminoff ($100,000) and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen ($750,000). Building a Better California has also gotten money from Larsen ($2m), along with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu ($2m) and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison ($7m). Several prominent venture capitalists have also shelled out to both Pacs.
Emergency Lawsuit Filed to Stop Trump Admin Meeting That Could Drive a Whale Species to Extinction
An environmental organization is suing to stop the Trump administration from illegally convening a meeting that could allow oil and gas companies to drive an extremely endangered whale species to extinction.
On Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity filed an emergency lawsuit against Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in a federal district court in Washington, DC, seeking to block him from convening the Endangered Species Committee, more commonly known as the “Extinction Committee,” on March 31.
This committee is sometimes referred to as the “God Squad” because its members have the power to grant exemptions to the Endangered Species Act that can result in the extinction of imperiled species.
Led by the interior secretary, it has seven total members who can vote to override regulations. Five of them are senior executive officials: the secretaries of agriculture and the Army, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Each affected state also receives a delegate to the committee, but they collectively receive just one vote. Five votes of seven are needed to grant an exemption.
In the federal register, Burgum announced earlier this week that the committee would meet at the end of the month “regarding an Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of America oil and gas activities,” referring to the Gulf of Mexico by the name preferred by President Donald Trump.
The Center for Biological Diversity said Burgum was seeking to override a requirement for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico to drive boats at safe speeds in order to protect the nearly extinct Rice’s whale from strikes.
These whales, named after the cetologist Dale Rice, who first recognized them as distinct from other whales in 1965, were not formally recognized as a new species until 2021.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, only about 51 Rice’s whales remain after BP’s catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which devastated their population.
Last May, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion concluding that their continued existence—as well as that of other whale and sea turtle species—was under threat from boat strikes, since Rice’s whales spend most of their time in the top 15 meters of water, which often puts them on a collision course with oil vessels.
The agency issued guidance requiring oil industry ships to travel at slower speeds in the eastern Gulf, saying that if they were followed, lethal collisions would be “extremely unlikely to occur” and that the species would be protected.
The Extinction Committee could override this rule, but it has only been convened three times in its history, and not since 1991, when then-President George H.W. Bush used it to open up timber harvests in the Pacific Northwest that endangered the habitats of spotted owls, which were considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The Extinction Committee is invoked so rarely because the circumstances for its use, as outlined in law, are extremely narrow: It can only be convened within 90 days of a biological opinion by the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service concluding that a federal action is likely to jeopardize a species. They must also determine that there is no “reasonable and prudent alternative” to the action the government plans to take.
In its lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity says that neither of these criteria has been reached, since the Fisheries Service issued its opinion 10 months ago and already established a reasonable alternative: slowing down the boats.
Fuel rations and no air conditioning: south-east Asian nations race to conserve energy
In Thailand, news anchors ditched their jackets on air as the government called on the public to reduce their use of air conditioning to save energy. In the Philippines, many government workers are now operating on a four-day week. In Vietnam, officials have urged employers to allow staff to work from home.
Across south-east Asia, governments are scrambling to find ways to conserve energy and shield the public from soaring costs as war in the Middle East causes what the International Energy Agency has described as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Asia, which relies heavily on imported energy, much of which passes through the strait of Hormuz, is acutely affected by the crisis. In the Philippines, which depends on the Gulf for 90% of its oil requirements, the government is introducing cash handouts for drivers of public transport vehicles, and has told government agencies to cut electricity and fuel use by between 10 and 20%.
On Tuesday, the Philippine senate granted the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, emergency powers to temporarily suspend or reduce excise taxes on oil, but has warned it is unclear how long the crisis will last. “We are victims of a war that is not of our choosing,” Marcos said earlier this month. “But we control how we will protect the Filipino,” he said, as he announced a series of energy-saving measures.
Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam – large net importers of oil and gas that depend on Middle East supplies – are major economies especially vulnerable to price rises, according recent analysis by Eurasia Group. Many countries in the region have introduced temporary subsidies and price caps, though Eurasia Group warned in its analysis that budget pressure make subsidies “difficult to maintain beyond one to two months”. Diesel subsidies are costing the Thai government more than 1bn baht (£22m) a day.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Larijani's killing will destroy Iran war off-ramps for Trump
War On Iran: Energy War Moves From Disruption To Destruction
Jonathan Cook: BBC’s Protection of Israel on Trial
Personal Consequences Of The Iran War
Trump CRASHES OUT Over Oil Field Strike, Joe Kent RESIGNS, Tulsi PUNTS, Cuba Convoy -w/ Katie Halper
A Little Night Music
Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters- It's My Soul
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters - You Give Me Nothing But The Blues
Ronnie Earl - Linda
Ronnie Earl - T-Bone Boogie
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters - Baby Doll Blues
Ronnie Earl and The Broadcasters - Cristo Redentor
Ronnie Earl - Blues For Otis Rush
Jimmie Vaughan & Ronnie Earl - Texas Flood
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters - Okie Dokie Stomp
Comments
China Loses Chance of Being the First Country
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.... to lose a 5th gen fighter in combat.
evening pluto...
heh, lookee there, trump is winning again.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. Been waiting for the Rus
to send oil to Cubam I hope it is well defended/protected.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
it will be interesting to see if the russians sent an escort for the tanker, otherwise i would not put it past trump to interdict the tanker.
i guess we'll see, i hope that cuba gets some relief.
have a great evening!