This week’s title comes from a substack essay by “Bianka” of “waronomics” entitled, “The Age of Abundance is Over.” She makes the point that with today’s AI and robotic-driven global manufacturing, coupled with “just in time” replenishment of stockpiles, rather than warehousing, the world is being set up for a devastating economic collapse when the global supply chain breaks down from unreliable electricity and disruptions to the fragile worldwide trade and transportation network. Although she has precious little understanding of the resilience of peacetime markets, her predictions will mostly come true from another factor she doesn’t understand—the role war will play in the near future. Ultimately she is wrong about it being already “over” but it is getting close to being over, in part because of Trump’s continuing mishandling of the unnecessary Iran war, which is impacting oil, fertilizer, and LNG shipments around the world. Think what would happen with a war with China which supplies about 80% of key industrial and consumer goods to the West. Hardly anything we consume in the US doesn’t have some Chinese components which will cease to flow when WWIII begins. Bianka’s essay is a good reminder to us all about the importance of preparing against the inevitable and severe shortages to come. To receive a free, one-time copy of the Brief, along with options on how to subscribe, click on Request a sample on the left
Also:
Trump’s Iran War Drags On
The War Against RFK Jr. and the MAHA Vaccine Movement
Trump pauses strikes: Trump said the US paused attacks to give diplomacy a chance but warned military action will resume if talks fail.
Iran denies that it pushed for talks: Tehran denied any direct negotiations with Washington, while saying its response remains "attack for attack."
Saudi Aramco targeted: Houthis claimed fresh strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities, with reports of fires at the critical Abqaiq oil processing complex.
Fragile pause holds two days: The US-Iran military pause entered a second day as mediators continued backchannel efforts to revive negotiations.
Without voter fraud, Deep State Democrats lose and lose big in the midterms. They are fighting every way they can to keep the cheating going. The Trump Administration is threatening fines and jail time if the Dems in Blue States “Refuse to Cooperate to Secure Elections.” It is so bad that Harvard PhD and political expert Dr. Jerome Corsi says President Trump must “Stop Voter Fraud or Lose the Republic.” The fight is going to get much more intense and violent before the midterm elections in November. Alex Newman says, “Voter integrity is one of the arenas where this fight to the death is taking place. We are going to determine in the not-so-distant future if the Deep State and those who hate America and our Constitutional Republic are going to control the most powerful military and most powerful economy in the world, or are ‘We the People’ going to exert control over the government we created to protect our liberties? It will be a fight to the death. There is no option these two can end up with control of the government. We have a long fight ahead.”
The emergency application comes after a federal appeals court held that the president’s executive order would confuse and possibly disenfranchise voters.
American military commanders are choosing not to intercept some Iranian projectiles that are off course or not expected to hit U.S. forces amid a diminishing munition supply.
The Iranian attacks particularly on US bases in Jordan have been especially fierce of late. Also there are ongoing concerns of dwindling anti-air defense missiles in the Gulf and the region. Fresh weekend NBC news reporting has highlighted these growing problems, and has gone so far as to say that US commanders are having to ration Patriot missiles.
With Fauci's personal diaries now public, Tulsi Gabbard's last-day document dump on the record, Ralph Baric stripped of his NIH grants and placed on leave by UNC, and Fauci himself scheduled to appear under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this Wednesday at 8:30 a.m., Kennedy's remarks are worth revisiting.
Here's what he said:
"He [Fauci] funded Ralph Baric to develop a technique called seamless ligation. And that is a technique for hiding the engineering project."
On July 24, Senator Rand Paul’s committee published two documents that have not been reported in any depth.
The first is Fauci’s personal diary, 1,141 pages, running from late 2019 through his retirement in December 2022. It is partly a journal and overwhelmingly a scrapbook: he pasted hundreds of articles about himself into it, frequently in full.
The organizers of the parade have made a public statement admonishing anyone who points out that the attack once again proves that Muslim immigration into Europe is a problem. They assert that the attempted mass murder should not be used to "create division" and at no point did they cite Islam as a potential motivating ideology.
Welt newspaper reported that Ballout had convictions for grievous bodily harm and violent coercion, but more recently appeared to have been radicalised as an Islamist extremist.
He was arrested in Lebanon for trying to join Islamic State in Syria and planning a terror attack.
Trump's order to hold fire was given several hours after an Omani delegation arrived in Tehran Friday for talks on a new arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Two regional sources with knowledge of the negotiations said progress has been made in the talks and that an agreement between Oman and Iran could be reached over the weekend.
More color:
Trump's decision reflects both his willingness to provide more space for diplomacy and a recognition that — short of a return to major combat operations — the current level of U.S. strikes has reached the limit of its effectiveness.
If Trump orders a return to strikes, the U.S. military can mobilize on relatively short notice.
The U.S. military is still preparing plans for a possible return to major combat operations, but Trump hasn't given orders to move in that direction, the sources said.
For the celebration, we have opened all the content of our “America's 250th” history and civics hub—a site we created for this special milestone. Free access will remain until July 31 for nonsubscribers, so take the opportunity to share it with those in your circle.
every inhabited continent is running below its recent average for area burned this year, with Africa, the Americas, and Europe at record lows.
Those are remarkable statistics. They don't mean wildfires have disappeared or that smoke isn't a serious public health concern. They simply demonstrate that the broader wildfire picture is very different from the one often portrayed in daily news reports.
Everything from roads to bridges to tunnel entrances have also be restored at surprising speeds, which also suggests the US bombings have had a rallying effect among civic workers and the broader population in support of the nation and the government.
WSJ offers but one example as follows: "Near Kangavar, in western Iran, satellite imagery from Planet Labs in March showed two tunnel entrances and an access road damaged by airstrikes aimed at blocking access to an Iranian missile base. Within weeks, imagery from Airbus revealed a neatly paved road leading to freshly excavated entrances."
These types of defense tech gatherings occur semi-frequently, are somewhat secretive, and typically involve American and European defense companies demonstrating new weapons systems, particularly in the realm of drone warfare. These events also sometimes involve the Ukrainians showing off their own advancing capabilities to international customers.
NBC News has noted, "Wildberries, whose banking arm had sanctions imposed on it by the European Union this week over its financial contribution to the Russian budget, plays a central role in Russia’s consumer economy."
"Its targeting by Ukraine appears to be part of Kyiv’s attempts to ensure ordinary Russians feel the impact of the war which has raged on Ukrainian territory for more than four years," the report adds.
Institutions built to prevent atrocities eventually face the question of what they actually protect. For the United Nations, voting patterns, internal investigations and its own decisions this year no longer support the fiction of neutrality. An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once - a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light.
Institutions built to prevent atrocities eventually face the question of what they actually protect. For the United Nations, voting patterns, internal investigations and its own decisions this year no longer support the fiction of neutrality. An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once - a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light.
The United States has sanctioned a senior UK-based Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) official alongside six other individuals and entities that it said provided material support to terrorist group Hamas.
There you have it. The Black Nutritionist herself liberates epigenetic wisdom stolen from her people’s genome by the colonizers: you should literally eat whatever you want all the time because nothing matters and ‘broccoli is the same as a Three Musketeers GMO bar because everything is a social construction.
It’s a very postmodern take on diet.
Sophie Cunningham, one of the WNBA’s biggest stars, is standing up to protect women’s sports and is saying she opposes allowing men who identify as women to play in women’s sports.
The House rejected an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday that would codify President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender-identifying people from military service.
Four Republicans joined Democrats to kill the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), by a slim margin of 212-217. The four Republicans who voted with Democrats are Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) — who both represents districts that voted for Kamala Harris — and Reps. James Moylan from Guam and Kimberlyn King-Hinds from the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Kremlin will no doubt take the ongoing threat and targeting of Wildberries' hubs very seriously. Reuters has reviewed that "Together with smaller rivals, Wildberries and Ozon sell goods and services worth the equivalent of 8.5% of Russia's gross domestic product. They provide jobs for 4 million people, or more than 5% of the country's workforce."
Lavrov underscored in the meeting "the unacceptability of further arming" Ukraine and accused European countries of pursuing Russia's "strategic defeat."
The Kremlin has of late warned the West of its growing direct involvement in targeting Russian energy sits as part of Ukraine's long-range drone operations, which have unleashed serious damage on oil production and export infrastructure.
For his part, Trump downplayed the blockade, claiming it hasn’t started yet. “So far, it hasn’t happened, might happen, but we take care of things,” Trump told reporters while meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office.
More Tanker Attacks: Iran-backed Houthi militants said they targeted two Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea
Trump ultimatum: Trump vowed the US will strike an Iranian bridge or power plant after every Iranian attack on shipping.
Iran responds: The IRGC threatened to hit Gulf energy infrastructure if Iranian infrastructure is attacked, saying it will cut off electricity among US allies.
Latest Gulf missile attacks: Iran claimed attacks on US-linked targets in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
Nuclear tensions: Iran denied nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain, calling US claims a 'fabricated pretext' for attack.
Oil climbs: Renewed Gulf attacks and shipping threats continued to lift oil prices.
officially, nobody knows anything yet. Siad's lawyer told Reuters that "Daniel Siad never stopped proclaiming his innocence" - and that her client died of a heart attack. To AFP, she was more careful, saying that if it was a heart attack, the strain and anxiety of the case will have played its part. The autopsy, presumably, will referee. And if that first statement sounds familiar, it should: when Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in 2022, his lawyers announced that "Jean-Luc Brunel never stopped declaring his innocence." The French defense bar evidently keeps the line on file.
Dramatic footage posted on X shows what appears to be a Russian Geran-4 jet-powered, one-way attack drone striking a passenger train in Ukraine.
If authenticated, the footage shows just how rapidly drone warfare is evolving beyond conventional two-stroke power plants toward miniature turbojets that sharply increase speed, compress warning and response times, potentially render many existing small-drone interceptors ineffective, and accelerate the overall tempo of combat across modern battlefields.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi will become Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, replacing Oleksandr Syrsky. The move follows days of protests and speculation over a shake-up in the country’s military leadership.
They show CBP flagged Daszak as "an extremely high person of interest," built out a formal targeting event, and then stood down two days before his flight at the request of the FBI's New York Field Office.
