Without sufficient quantities of oil, the global economy will not be able to operate normally. So the fact that the global economy is running a massive “oil deficit” right now should deeply alarm all of us. Ever since the war with Iran began, the world has been consuming far more oil than it has been producing. We have been running down commercial oil inventories and strategic oil reserves all over the planet, and now those supplies are starting to run dry. In the not-too-distant future, global demand for oil will substantially exceed what is available, and that will mean much higher prices and very painful shortages. Asia will be hit the hardest because they are more dependent on oil from the Middle East than anyone else, but we will certainly feel this crisis very keenly as well.

According to the International Energy Agency, global oil stocks are being depleted at a record pace, and they could reach “critical levels” by the middle of the summer…

Global oil inventories could hit critically low levels ahead of the peak July-August fuel demand period if drawdowns continue at their current pace, the International Energy Agency said ​Tuesday.

Global oil stocks fell by more than 250M barrels between March and May, with on-land commercial and strategic stockpiles draining at a record pace, the IEA reported.

“We’re seeing ​stock draws continuing into the summer, and with the possibility or the likelihood that we ⁠reach critical levels or historical low levels just ahead of the peak summer demand,” said Toril Bosoni, the head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division.

This isn’t a crisis that may or may not happen someday.

This is a crisis that is very real and that is rapidly approaching.

One expert is warning that we are headed for a “disaster” and that rationing could start to happen in some areas of the globe during the months ahead…

The supply situation is manageable for now, but higher summer demand in July and August likely would lead to rationing, Baron Lamarre, former head of trading at Petronas, told Dow Jones.

“The cry is that they want a deal right now because if they don’t have it three months from now, there will be a disaster,” Lamarre said.

A lot of people out there seem to think that the U.S. will be immune because we produce so much of the oil that we use.

But the truth is that U.S. oil stocks just fell “to their lowest level in two decades”…

Donald Trump’s Iran war has driven US oil stocks to their lowest level in two decades as his administration drains stockpiles to contain surging prices and exporters capitalise on the drop in Middle Eastern supply.

US government data published on Wednesday showed total stocks of crude and petroleum products such as petrol fell by 10.6mn barrels last week to 1.57bn barrels — the lowest level since 2004.

The sharp fall triggered new warnings from industry analysts that oil prices are poised to move sharply higher again within weeks.

We are running an “oil deficit” too.

It isn’t as severe as what we are witnessing in other industrialized nations, but it is significant.

Withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve have helped keep things running fairly smoothly, but the fact that in recent weeks we have seen “the largest weekly withdrawals in history” is not a good sign at all…

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is also part of the backdrop. The EIA reported that SPR inventories fell by 9.1 million barrels during the week and were 36.2 million barrels below year-ago levels. The recent drawdowns in the SPR have been the largest weekly withdrawals in history.

Gasoline inventories in the U.S. are falling too.

In fact, we just witnessed the largest February to May gasoline drawdown ever recorded…

In early February, U.S. gasoline inventories reached 259.1 million barrels. By late May, they had fallen by 47.5 million barrels in roughly 15 weeks.

In weekly EIA data going back to 1990, there is not another February-to-May gasoline drawdown that comes close. The next-largest drawdowns were clustered around 30 million barrels, and that was 15 years ago. This year’s decline is far larger.

That does not mean gasoline shortages are imminent. It does mean the market has burned through a remarkable amount of inventory before the summer driving season has even fully arrived.

If the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened, shortages are inevitable.

The only debate is about when they will hit.

One industry insider just told Politico that his company has warned “the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June”…

“We’re at dangerously low levels already,” said one industry executive who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations with the administration. “We have shared those concerns at the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June. … I hope they are paying attention to inventories right now. You’re hitting tank bottom.”

He isn’t talking about June 2027.

He is talking about this month.

Another expert is warning that we could be “looking at industrial shortages” if the situation in the Strait of Hormuz does not change by September or October…

Drained storage tanks are an “iceberg under the water,” Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said during a Council on Foreign Relations event Wednesday.

“You may not see immediately on the horizon the actual economic challenges that will be coming, because you look at the flat price and you say, ‘OK, we can muddle through this and Iran will come to terms eventually,’” Croft said. “But if we get in a situation where we have this strait effectively closed, or the strait status quo, and we’re sitting in September or October, then you’re going to be looking at industrial shortages.”

Needless to say, an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is not going to happen right away.

If the U.S. and Iran are able to eventually reach an agreement, we are being told that it could take six to eight months to fully restore traffic to pre-war levels…

A full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could take 6-8 months in the best-case scenario if an agreement was reached today, Bosoni ​said at the S&P Global Energy Middle East Petroleum and Gas Conference in London.

What this means is that global energy supplies are going to get tighter every single day for an extended period of time no matter what occurs now.

Gasoline prices will continue to rise, and shortages and rationing are looming.

We desperately need the war to end and the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened as soon as possible.

But I don’t think that is going to happen.

Instead, I think that the Great Middle East War will soon go to an entirely new level, and that won’t be good for the global economy at all.

Michael’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books, you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 30, 2026, that the United States will no longer “subsidize” the defense of “wealthy” allies, reviving the long-running dispute between Washington and NATO’s European members over military burden-sharing. According to an official statement by the Department of War, Hegseth said, “The era of the United States subsidizing the defense of wealthy nations is over. We need partners, not protectorates. We seek alliances built on shared responsibility, not dependency.”

Hegseth linked the policy shift to the Trump administration’s broader strategy of redirecting military resources toward the Indo-Pacific to counter what he described as Chinese “hegemony” in the region. During a question-and-answer session following his address, Hegseth referred to the existing 2% of GDP defense spending target as “freeloading.” The remarks align with leaked Pentagon guidance, reported by NaturalNews.com, that the U.S. will focus on deterring China and homeland security while urging NATO allies to increase their own contributions [1]. Hegseth, a former Fox News host tapped by President Trump to lead the Defense Department [2], has consistently argued that European allies must take on greater financial responsibility.

Background on NATO Spending Targets

NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, a target that all 32 members met for the first time in 2025, according to NATO’s official figures. However, the United States still accounted for approximately 60–62% of the military bloc’s total defense spending last year. Last year, NATO members agreed to work toward spending 5% of GDP on defense and security by 2035, including a core defense target of 3.5%.

The gap in contributions has been a persistent point of contention. Former President Barack Obama said in a 2016 interview that “free riders aggravate me,” calling on members to spend more. Hegseth’s framing of the 2% threshold as “freeloading” reflects a broader Trump administration position that wealthy European allies should shoulder a larger share of the defense burden. Separately, President Trump signed a record $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026, allocating $800 million for Ukraine while pressing European nations to boost their own military budgets [3].

European Reactions and Disputes

The push for higher spending has drawn sharp criticism from several European leaders. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the 5% of GDP target “unreasonable” and “counterproductive,” according to a report from RT. Belgium and Slovakia have also raised concerns over the scale of the increase. The dispute has expanded beyond military spending as some EU governments resisted Washington’s requests related to the U.S.-led military campaign against Iran. Spain has opposed the military action and refused to allow U.S. forces to use joint bases for offensive operations, while France and Germany have called for diplomacy.

“Go take your oil,” became a refrain among allies wary of supporting U.S. attacks on Iran that could leave them exposed [4]. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in April 2026 that he did not want NATO to “split” over the war on Iran [5]. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul affirmed that Germany remains more closely aligned with the United States than with China, citing NATO’s Article 5 and the U.S. nuclear umbrella as cornerstones of European security [6]. The Trump administration has retaliated by reviewing troop reductions in Germany, with a potential withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. service members [7].

Indo-Pacific Strategy and Conclusions

Hegseth framed the policy shift as part of a broader strategic rebalancing toward the Indo-Pacific. He emphasized that the U.S. seeks “alliances built on shared responsibility, not dependency,” and linked the demand for higher allied defense spending to countering Chinese influence in the region. The Trump administration’s focus on the Indo-Pacific includes shifting resources away from Europe and toward deterring China, as outlined in the leaked Pentagon memo [1].

U.S. President Donald Trump later criticized NATO allies over their response, calling it “pretty shocking” that countries that support America’s objectives “don’t want to help.” Hegseth has previously signaled that the U.S. will not deploy American troops to Ukraine and urged European allies to increase their own defense spending [8]. As the Pentagon reviews its global force posture, the message from Washington is clear: wealthy allies must either invest more in their own defense or face a reduced U.S. military presence.

References

1. 1. NaturalNews.com. “Pentagon memo suggests US will not defend Europe from Russian aggression prioritizing China and homeland security.” April 1, 2025.
   2. Trends-Journal-2024-11-19.
   3. “Trump signs record US war budget with $800 million for Kiev.” December 19, 2025.
   4. Sean Mathews. “‘Go take your oil:’ Nato fissure erupts over Iran as allies brush off US.” Middle East Eye. March 31, 2026.
   5. Middle East Eye. “German leader says he does not want Nato to ‘split’ over war on Iran.” April 9, 2026.
   6. Laura Harris. “Germany says US remains its closest partner despite tensions.” NaturalNews.com. February 4, 2026.
   7. The New American. “Trump Pushes Europe Troop Reductions, Yet His Hands Are Tied.” May 1, 2026.
   8. Belle Carter. “US signals reluctance to send troops to Ukraine urges European allies for more support.” NaturalNews.com. February 15, 2025.
   9. Pete Hegseth-2. “Modern Warriors.”

Explainer Infographic

The health department in Milwaukee said that it is taking appropriate steps to monitor the situation and will continue working with public health partners as needed.

Previously, both Brazil and Italy ruled out Ebola in suspected cases. There are currently no cases in either country. It appears that the United States will soon be in this same boat, taking safety measures out of an abundance of caution.

Brazil And Italy RULE OUT Ebola In Previous Suspected Cases

None of these are even being labeled as “suspected” cases at this point, and health officials have clarified that there are currently no suspected Ebola cases in Milwaukee and no public health threat to residents.

“People Are Hiding” During Ebola Outbreak, Making Containment Difficult

The department noted that it monitored 39 low-risk contacts during the Ebola outbreak between September 2014 and June 2016. None of those individuals were confirmed to have Ebola, according to a report by WKOW27, a local ABC News affiliate. 

The health department also said it is following the same response plan used for any communicable disease, including procedures such as regular communication with individuals being monitored and coordination with state and federal public health partners.

There are no cases of Ebola in the United States right now.

The US also has a plan to build an Ebola facility in Kenya. The US now has tents erected as a part of the field hospital at Laikipia Air Base in Laikipia County. The US has created the facility rapidly in spite of protests and a court order blocking its construction.

Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday ‌said his government was doing “the right thing” by allowing the United States to set up an Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya.

Modern economic life no longer unfolds within reality as it emerges from human action. It operates within a constructed order that substitutes itself for real processes. Governments do not engage with the economy as it is lived and experienced. They act upon abstractions that stand in for it. What is presented as analysis is in fact a replacement.

Modern central banks often justify monetary policy decisions by targeting inflation indexes that no longer reflect the real cost of living experienced by individuals. While official statistics may report stable inflation, housing, food, energy, and debt burdens continue to rise for ordinary people. Economic policy, therefore, begins responding less to lived economic reality and more to statistical representations of it.

This transformation follows the logic of simulacra. Economic representations no longer describe reality but precede and structure it. The map no longer reflects the territory; it produces it. What once served as representation has become autonomous, generating a system in which the real appears only as a residual effect.

This shift develops through stages tied to the displacement of genuine market processes. Initially, economic signs emerge directly from exchange. Prices, money, and categories reflect real interactions between individuals. Meaning is grounded in action.

The erosion of genuine market truth into a baseless fabrication, stripped of real reference, mirrors the sign-order’s four distinct stages: beginning as a faithful reflection of reality, progressing to a perversion, then masking reality’s absence, and culminating in pure hyperreality. This transition aligns with the three historical orders of simulacra, moving from the premodern First Order of simple imitation to the modern Second Order where copy and original blur, and finally to the postmodern Third Order where simulation entirely precedes and constructs reality.

As intervention deepens, these signs lose their referent altogether. Indicators and aggregates present themselves as if they originate from the market, yet they are products of imposed structures. What appears as knowledge is no longer derived from action but constructed within a detached framework.

At the final stage, signs refer only to one another, and the economic system becomes entirely self-contained. The distinction between reality and representation collapses as the latter replaces the former, leaving no external referent for the system’s operations.

In Austrian terms, this distortion of knowledge means that intervention corrupts the information needed for coordination. Prices and interest rates become false signals, creating an interventionist calculation problem where policy responds to indicators generated by prior policy. Economic life thus unfolds within a closed circuit where the simulation precedes the conditions it claims to measure, and the system operates entirely within its own logic.

The consequences are visible across core economic concepts. Inflation is no longer understood as a monetary process linked to the expansion of the money supply; it is reduced to an index, a statistical artifact whose meaning shifts with methodology. Growth is treated as a numerical target rather than a process of capital accumulation driven by savings and time preference. Employment is no longer seen as the outcome of individual choices within labor markets, but as an abstract category detached from actual relations. Economic knowledge becomes the circulation of these constructs, severed from causal explanation.

This process represents a fundamental substitution rather than a mere misinterpretation. The prevailing system does not simply provide an incorrect description of economic life; it replaces it with a self-referential structure entirely detached from action. What results is a state of hyperreality, where the proliferation of simulation inevitably culminates in state Socialism. This regime, along with its corporative extensions, constitutes the final logical conclusion of the neoclassical abstraction.

Neoclassical economics provides the formal language for this condition. Uncertainty is transformed into calculable risk. Action disappears, replaced by optimization within predefined constraints. Preferences are fixed, knowledge is assumed, and equilibrium is treated as given. The entrepreneurial process, with its uncertainty and discovery, is excluded entirely.

What results is a system that is internally coherent but externally empty. It does not explain economic life. It abstracts from it completely. It is a closed construction that requires no reference to real human action.

Praxeology rejects this from the outset. As articulated in Human Action, economics begins with the fact that individuals act. They choose, evaluate, and pursue ends using scarce means. This is not an assumption or a model; it is the starting point of reality.

From this foundation, all economic phenomena follow. Prices are not constructs imposed on reality; they emerge from exchange. They convey knowledge that cannot exist outside the market process. Coordination is not simulated; it occurs through these interactions.

The market is therefore not an approximation; it is the only real economic order. It does not represent coordination; it is coordination. Any attempt to replace it with an external framework or through mathematical models destroys the very process it seeks to improve.

Intervention operates as substitution. It overlays artificial structures onto real processes and displaces them. When authorities attempt to direct production or control prices, they do not correct the market. They impose a different order, one that exists only within its own constructed logic.

Monetary policy illustrates this process clearly. According to Austrian business cycle theory, economic crises do not originate in the market itself but in prior monetary intervention. Central-bank credit expansion artificially lowers interest rates below their market level, encouraging investment projects and patterns of production unsupported by real savings or actual consumer time preferences. What appears as prosperity is therefore sustained by distorted monetary conditions rather than genuine economic coordination.

When these distortions culminate in crisis, governments and central banks typically respond with additional interventions intended to stabilize the system through asset-price support, bank bailouts, monetary stimulus, and deficit spending. Yet these policies do not eliminate the underlying distortions. They prolong and intensify them by preserving structures created during the artificial boom and delaying the liquidation and readjustment necessary for recovery.

Neoliberal policymakers—constantly attempting to fix perceived “market failures” out of fear of a recession—overlook the fact that recessions are necessary for economic cleansing and readjustment; instead, the simulation takes precedence over reality. Intervention, therefore, becomes increasingly self-referential as policymakers react to distortions generated by earlier policy with further rounds of monetary and fiscal management. Economic signals cease to reflect voluntary exchange directly and instead become shaped by accumulated layers of intervention reproducing one another.

As this process continues, the system sustains itself through the constant production of new constructs. When outcomes diverge from expectations, the framework is not questioned; it expands. The simulation intensifies, hyperreality replaces reality, and state socialism becomes a normality.

Praxeology breaks this closure by restoring the link between economics and action. It reintroduces a referent that cannot be simulated. Action is irreducible; it cannot be replaced by signs or models.

There is nothing to correct in the market as such. Coordination emerges from voluntary interaction. Disorder appears only when this process is displaced. An economy cannot be governed through representations detached from action; it can only exist through the actions of individuals themselves.

The waters of the Pacific Ocean are getting extremely warm, and that could provide fuel for an immensely destructive climate event that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Even the United Nations has issued an ominous warning about the El Niño event that is in the long-term forecast, because it will have a dramatic impact on every man, woman, and child on the entire planet.

We are being told that there is more than an 80 percent chance that El Niño conditions will arrive by the end of next month due to rapidly warming equatorial waters in the Pacific. Meanwhile, an unprecedented “9,000-mile marine heatwave” has developed in the North Pacific. Many experts are concerned that the confluence of those two factors could produce a “Godzilla El Niño”…

The chance of an El Niño event emerging by July is now over 80 percent, which will likely make 2026 one of the hottest years on record. At the same time, an exceptionally large 9,000-mile marine heatwave has been forming in the North Pacific since the end of 2025. These extreme warming events are now evolving together across the Pacific. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the warm water will fuel a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño, potentially prolonging marine heatwaves, disrupting fisheries and ecosystems, and intensifying global climate impacts well into 2027.

The “9,000-mile marine heatwave” in the North Pacific is absolutely astounding climate scientists.

At the same time, the warming in the equatorial waters where El Niño events normally develop is at a level that we haven’t seen since at least 1877…

The temperature of the ocean in the equatorial waters where these El Niños form was predicted to be 3 degrees Celsius above average. Experts are saying that this is a level of heat in the Pacific Ocean that hasn’t been recorded since 1877.

I have written about the “Super El Niño” that started in 1877 before.

That “Super El Niño” was one of the primary reasons why 50 million people starved during the Great Famine that stretched from 1876 to 1878…

This El Niño, they say, could rival the intense event of the late 19th century that triggered “the Great Famine” on a global scale, killing millions of people. And its scythe sliced through southern Africa.

“The 1876-78 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe, including parts of Asia, Nordeste [Northeast] Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity,” a team of scientists said a decade ago in a ground-breaking paper presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

3 percent of the entire population of the world starved to death during those years.

Today, 3 percent of the entire population of the world would be 240,000,000 people.

In 1982 and 1983, we experienced the most severe “Super El Niño” of the 20th century…

In 1982–83, the most intense El Niño of the 20th century caused extreme weather events throughout the world, including floods in the American Pacific and in the southern United States, and droughts in north-eastern Brazil and Indonesia. It also caused a very mild winter in the mid-latitudes of Europe, Asia and North America.

That “Super El Niño” sparked a horrific famine in eastern Africa that wiped out a very large proportion of the population…

A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985.[4] The worst famine to hit the country in a century,[5] it affected 7.75 million people (out of Ethiopia’s 38–40 million) and left approximately 300,000 to 1.2 million dead. 2.5 million people were internally displaced whereas 400,000 refugees left Ethiopia. Almost 200,000 children were orphaned.

Now we are being warned that the most powerful “Super El Niño” of all time could potentially be ahead of us.

We could see insanely hot temperatures all over the world this summer, and we are being told that we are likely to see severe drought conditions “in southern Africa, Australia, India, the Indochina Peninsula and Oceania”…

Easterly trade winds across the equator, meanwhile, are replaced by bursts of westerly surface winds. Those pile warm waters against the western shores of South America. That suppresses cool ocean upwelling from below, which is needed to bring nutrient-rich waters closer to the surface. That starves baitfish and means poor fish harvests for dependent countries in Central America and the Pacific coast of South America.

Drought, meanwhile, is likely in southern Africa, Australia, India, the Indochina Peninsula and Oceania. Southeast Asia, meanwhile, could see above-average rainfall and more flooding.

Here in the United States, we could see a lot less rain than normal in the Midwest, and temperatures in the heartland could be 3 to 6 degrees above normal.

In other words, it would be horrible growing weather.

Our farmers are already facing much higher diesel prices, much higher fertilizer prices, and a multi-year drought that never seems to end. Now a “Godzilla El Niño” could be on the way, and the World Meteorological Organization is telling us to brace for the worst…

The World Meteorological Organization is warning that this summer’s El Nino event could be the worst yet. Compounded by fertiliser shortages, inflation and rising oil prices, these shocks threaten to push an already fragile food industry to the brink, and the impact will land squarely in consumers’ shopping baskets.

Coming into this year, the number of people around the world experiencing acute food insecurity was already at the highest level ever recorded.

And now a “Godzilla El Niño” could absolutely devastate food production in many of the areas around the world that grow the four crops that account for 60 percent of all global calories…

Global food security relies heavily on a highly concentrated supply chain. Just four crops, wheat, rice, maize and soybeans, account for over 60% of ​global calories. While localised regional shortages are typically balanced by other markets, a global El Nino triggers teleconnections: simultaneous weather anomalies across different continents that cause correlated crop failures. And ​this systemic drop in supply leads to direct price increases at supermarket tills.

In this country, where do we grow most of our wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans?

Everyone knows that it is in the heartland, and the heartland of this country is about to get hit by a climate sledgehammer.

Of course, we all still have to eat, and so demand for food is not going to go down.

Since there won’t be as much food produced, that means that prices are likely to spike…

Because demand for basic staples is inelastic – consumers must eat regardless of cost – even small supply deficits cause disproportionate price surges. Scenarios for this El Nino indicate price shocks of 10% to 50% across core ‌commodities, with highly ⁠exposed crops, including rice, palm oil, sugarcane and coffee, potentially experiencing surges of 50% to 100%, or more.

In the past, price shocks struck one commodity at a time. A simultaneous, cross-category surge means consumers will be hit harder and broader than ever before.

If you think that food prices at your local supermarket are high now, just wait until you see what they are like in the future.

What will struggling American families do if basic staples that they purchase on a regular basis suddenly go up by 50 percent or more?

Of course, conditions will be much worse in many impoverished nations around the globe.

In some cases, there simply won’t be nearly enough food to feed everyone.

We really are facing a nightmare scenario, and the vast majority of the global population is completely and utterly unprepared for it.

Michael’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com, including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books, you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The vote, however, was largely symbolic, with most mainstream media outlets reporting that it has no real teeth to hold Trump back from using military force in Iran.

A bigger issue for the US is that Iran continues to claim that no negotiations are even taking place. The House war resolution vote occurred after a big flare-up this week in new tit-for-tat fighting, which involved Iran sending more missiles and drones at Gulf states, especially Kuwait. The reference by Trump to “final negotiations” was possibly a ploy, and enough of one to get oil prices to react, with a drop in crude.

ZeroHedge reported that Trump’s new strategy appears to be nothing more than waiting things out.

President Trump has told aides privately that he would consider ending the ceasefire with Iran if Tehran kills American troops, U.S. officials said, insisting that the weekslong pause in airstrikes remains intact despite a steady stream of violent skirmishes.

The president’s reluctance to reignite the war suggests he might be willing to withstand smaller flare-ups for weeks—or even months—to avoid a broader conflict in the Middle East. –ZeroHedge

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the tit-for-tat attacks as purely defensive in nature and not a renewed outbreak of full-scale war.  “They are happening in response to an Iranian action,” Rubio said in a House hearing Wednesday. “If they don’t shoot at those ships, we don’t shoot, but we have to respond.”

It is interesting that the US continues to call this battle “self-defense,” when it started the whole thing by attacking an Iranian-flagged tanker.

Iran Attacked US Military Assets After the US Struck An Iranian Tanker

Trump also apparently believes a ceasefire with Iran means that the US is just shooting in a more moderate manner.

With rhetoric like this, we wouldn’t expect an end to this war anytime soon, and a reduction in gasoline prices would be highly optimistic at this point.

• • Russia produces 15,000 FPV drones daily, a 30-fold increase from 2023.

• • Drones have evolved from reconnaissance tools to independent strike forces in Ukraine.

• • Russian aviation production surged 117% year-on-year, dominated by low-cost FPVs.

• • Moscow’s drone boom drives 16% defense sector growth amid sanctions and labor shortages.

• • Ukraine warns Russia aims to produce 7.3 million FPVs by 2026, intensifying the arms race.

Russia’s military-industrial complex has achieved a startling milestone in drone production, with First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov revealing that Russian companies can now churn out 15,000 first-person-view (FPV) drones per day. This figure, Manturov noted in a Kommersant interview, marks a dramatic leap from 2023, when the same volume required an entire month. The shift underscores a fundamental transformation in modern warfare, as drones evolve from reconnaissance tools into independent strike forces.

From reconnaissance to strike force

UAVs have long been viewed as auxiliary assets, used primarily for surveillance and limited strikes. But Russia’s war in Ukraine has accelerated its evolution. Manturov credited battlefield lessons with reshaping the role of drones, stating, “UAVs have become an independent strike force capable of tackling a wide range of tactical tasks.” This reclassification reflects a broader trend: FPV drones, once dismissed as low-cost novelties, now dominate frontline combat. Their affordability and adaptability have made them a linchpin in asymmetric warfare, where attrition and saturation attacks can offset superior enemy firepower.

The production revolution

The surge in output is a direct response to the demands of the Ukraine conflict. In April, Russia’s aviation industry—encompassing both manned aircraft and drones—saw a 117% year-on-year increase in production, according to Bloomberg data. This growth is driven largely by FPV drones, which cost a fraction of traditional combat aircraft. By comparison, Russia has delivered only 64 Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets and 12 Su-27 combat aircraft to its military since the war began, while producing millions of drones.

As Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), observed, “FPVs have become a dominant feature of ground fighting, making force buildup hazardous for kilometers on either side of the front line.”

The drone boom has become a cornerstone of Russia’s wartime economy. Despite broader industrial challenges such as labor shortages, sanctions, and financial constraints, drone manufacturing has thrived. The Moscow Times reported that Russia’s defense sector expanded 16% from January to April, with drones accounting for a disproportionate share. This success is partly due to their simplicity: FPVs require minimal training to operate and can be mass-produced using off-the-shelf components.

Ukraine’s response and the arms race

Ukraine’s military chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, has warned that Russia plans to manufacture 7.3 million FPV drones and 7.8 million payloads in 2026—a rate of roughly 20,000 units per day. This projection suggests Moscow aims to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses through sheer volume. Yet Ukraine, too, has emerged as a global leader in autonomous drone technology, leveraging artificial intelligence and AI-driven systems to counter Russian advances. The conflict has thus become a proving ground for the next generation of warfare, where algorithms and machine learning dictate battlefield outcomes.

The implications of Russia’s drone revolution extend far beyond Ukraine. As FPVs grow cheaper and more lethal, they democratize military power, enabling smaller nations to challenge traditional superpowers. The U.S. and its allies, meanwhile, face a dilemma: should they invest in counter-drone systems, or risk ceding technological ground? In 2024, President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia aimed to produce 1.4 million drones that year, signaling Moscow’s ambition to redefine the rules of engagement, although it remains unclear whether that target was met.

The future of war is drones

Russia’s drone production surge gives us a glimpse into the future of warfare. As Manturov put it, the Ukraine conflict has “cemented the status of UAVs as a key element of modern warfare.” The ability to mass-produce lethal, autonomous systems at unprecedented scale could tilt the balance of power in conflicts worldwide. For now, the battlefield is a drone graveyard, where the cheapest machines become the most dangerous.

WHO Chief Swears Ebola Outbreak “Can Be Stopped”

Koskei said that people in the areas affected by the recent outbreak are afraid that they will be isolated and quarantined if they report their symptoms to health officials. “If I suspect that I have Ebola, I may not go to the hospital for fear of being isolated. This is also compounded by family members or community members hiding this person and not reporting [symptoms].”

“It is intense when you see people dying and people around you are infected,” Koskei added.

Ebola, unlike a cold or the flu, spreads through contact with bodily fluids. Without treatment, some infections could be fatal. Someone with Ebola disease may start getting sick around 2 to 21 days after initial contact.

Accoridng to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, people with Ebola disease may experience “dry” symptoms early in the course of illness. These symptoms may include fever, aches, pains, and fatigue. As the person becomes sicker, the illness typically progresses to “wet” symptoms and may include diarrhea, vomiting, and unexplained bleeding.

Uganda Closes Borders To DRC As Suspected Ebola Cases Are Now Over 1000

Patients who end up dying from Ebola, which is a hemorrhagic disease, usually develop more severe symptoms early in the illness. Patients who survive may have a fever for several days and begin improving about 6 days after symptoms started.

Containment of this outbreak has proven difficult as health officials scramble for any possible way to advance tracking and tracing methods.

• • U.S. Senate hearing scheduled for June 2nd will investigate biological mechanisms by which COVID-19 vaccines may increase cancer risks

• • A systematic review of 69 studies published in Oncotarget identified possible safety signals linking vaccines to leukemia, lymphoma, breast, and lung cancer

• • A South Korean study of 8.4 million people found a 27% higher overall cancer risk and statistically significant links to six cancer types among vaccinated individuals

• • British oncologist Dr. Angus Dalgleish has told Parliament he witnessed long-stable cancer patients suffer aggressive relapses after third or subsequent booster doses

• • Multiple scientists scheduled to testify have faced censorship, including retracted papers and social media restrictions

A U.S. Senate hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon will feature testimony from oncologists and researchers who say scientific evidence suggests COVID-19 vaccination may be linked to increased cancer risks. The hearing, titled “Plausible Mechanisms of COVID-19 Injections Causing Cancer and Attacks on Scientific Publications,” comes as multiple large-scale studies and clinical observations have raised concerns that warrant further investigation. Sen. Ron Johnson, chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, will lead the hearing at 2:30 p.m. EST as doctors and scientists present findings that they say have been suppressed by medical journals and social media platforms.

The evidence mounts: Cancer signals in large populations

The hearing will feature a systematic review of 69 studies and reports published in the journal Oncotarget by Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University, and Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser of Tufts University. Their review identified mechanisms — including spike protein effects and DNA contamination found in some COVID-19 vaccine types — that might trigger cancer development.

A two-year study of 8.4 million South Koreans published last year found a statistically significant link between COVID-19 vaccines and six cancer types: breast, colorectal, gastric, lung, prostate and thyroid. The study also identified a 27% higher overall cancer risk among vaccinated individuals.

A 2025 study of nearly 300,000 Italians found cancer hospitalizations were moderately higher among COVID-19 vaccine recipients, with particularly increased risk of bladder, breast and colorectal cancer. Additionally, a U.S. Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division report tracking non-Hodgkin lymphoma in active-duty service members between 2017 and 2023 found a significant increase in some lymphomas during 2021, the year COVID-19 shots became widely available.

Clinical warnings: “The signal is screaming”

Dr. Angus Dalgleish, professor emeritus of oncology at City St. George’s, University of London and one of the United Kingdom’s leading skin cancer specialists, recently warned members of British Parliament that he has witnessed long-stable cancer patients suffer aggressive relapse after receiving a third or subsequent COVID-19 booster.

Dalgleish first observed the pattern among his skin cancer patients in 2022. Since then, international research has confirmed his concern, he told Parliament. The body’s T-cell response can become suppressed after a third vaccine dose, Dalgleish explained, and the spike protein and lipid nanoparticles can induce microclots — a particular danger for cancer patients already predisposed to blood-clotting disorders.

“In my opinion, this is no longer a hypothesis,” Dalgleish said. “The data are in. The mechanisms are understood. The signal is screaming. It is time to act.”

Censorship and retraction: Scientists face pushback

The hearing will also address how scientific publications on COVID-19 treatments and vaccine safety have been suppressed. Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterologist and microbiome researcher scheduled to testify, has faced multiple retractions of peer-reviewed publications years after their initial publication, with no public explanation from Springer Nature, the German-owned publisher that retracted her work.

Hazan’s research had explored connections between the microbiome, long COVID, and vaccine injury. The retractions occurred after the Springer Nature Research Integrity Team approached her directly, bypassing the journals’ editors.

El-Deiry reported that LinkedIn censored him when he posted information from his recent paper on COVID-19 vaccines and cancer, removing the post and labeling it as misinformation.

A pattern of scientific suppression

This hearing occurs against a backdrop of ongoing tension between researchers raising vaccine safety concerns and institutions that have sought to limit such discussion. The resistance to acknowledging potential cancer links echoes earlier suppression of evidence regarding vaccine injury and breakthrough infections.

The European Commission now faces a court order to disclose all COVID-19 vaccine procurement information, and multiple countries have launched investigations into excess mortality during the pandemic period. The PANDA team’s comprehensive multidisciplinary review concluded that COVID-19 risks were overstated and vaccine safety signals were extremely concerning — conclusions that have been largely ignored by mainstream medical authorities.

The World Health Assembly continues negotiations on a global pandemic accord scheduled for December, despite objections from critics who say such agreements could further centralize control over public health decisions.

A reckoning for vaccine policy

The Senate hearing represents the highest-level official examination of potential cancer links to COVID-19 vaccination to date. With witnesses including a Brown University cancer center director, a pediatric oncologist from the Netherlands, and a prominent British cardiologist, the testimony could reshape public understanding of vaccine risk-benefit calculations. The historical pattern of delayed acknowledgment of adverse effects — from thalidomide to Vioxx — suggests that today’s dismissed concerns may become tomorrow’s accepted findings. Whether this hearing leads to policy changes or further investigation remains uncertain, but the mounting evidence demands scrutiny that has been absent from public health discourse.

The socialists who have been taking over the Democratic Party lately have a problem—the state and local jurisdictions where they are able to seize power still have to compete with rival jurisdictions that are still relatively friendly to private property and capitalist businesses. The principal targets of egalitarian fury, namely possessors of great wealth, are strongly incentivized to escape from dystopian hell-holes created by socialists to saner locales. Even those who aren’t so clearly targeted as objects of envy suffer from the effects of economic and social decline and are also incentivized to leave.

Even worse from a socialist perspective, the US Constitution restricts what a state or local government can do in terms of seizing private property. The owner of any property taken for public use must be compensated, so a local socialist enterprise can’t get around the problem of having to raise capital (and later to cover the inevitable losses associated with socialist production) with the help of government funding. However, a government’s power to tax only applies within its own jurisdiction; rich people aided by clever lawyers can figure out how to break their tax “nexus” to an oppressive jurisdiction in order to shield themselves, their businesses, and most or all of the associated wealth in other, much less extortionate jurisdictions.

Two jurisdictions where mass flight from Democratic misrule is unmistakable are California and New York City, both of which have lately experienced a net emigration of more than 100,000 residents per year. While lower-tax states like Texas and Florida are well-known destinations for such blue state refugees, in the case of New York City, even the just slightly less overgoverned New Jersey has become a magnet for a lot of former New Yorkers—it takes a lot for a true Gothamite to suffer the indignity of making that move.

One of the consequences of such flight is that as the tax base shrinks, the pressure on committed socialist ideologues to extort whatever wealth remains even more rapidly (before it too flees from their grasp) mounts. Likewise, there is also pressure to tax things that have previously been left untaxed and might still be within reach, thus pushing the envelope of whatever forms of soaking the rich are permitted by the US Constitution.

Socialist-minded Democrats, insistent upon plundering the formerly-Golden State and the shrinking Big Apple, are now caving into such fiscal pressures with absurd proposals for various forms of wealth taxes. A California voter initiative that has qualified for the November ballot, sponsored by a branch of the far-left Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and supported by socialist-friendly Democrats like Congressman Ro Khanna (whose own net worth happens to be a mere $232.7 million according to one estimate), features a one-time 5 percent tax on the net worth of any resident of the state and their spouse whose net worth is $1 billion or more, calculated as of January 1, 2026. Some analysts believe that the effective tax rate on wealth could be much higher than 5 percent, though there are also doubts about whether the retroactive imposition of the tax on those who left California prior to the election would be constitutional. If the initiative does get both voter and court approval, the state government would grab about $100 billion (out of an aggregate net worth of $2 trillion) from roughly 200 billionaires.

The New York City tax proposal—jointly announced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul—aims at taxing a much narrower category of wealth, namely non-rental homes, condominiums, and cooperative living units that are not the principal residence of their owners and that are worth more than $5 million (this real property surtax being pretentiously labeled a “pied-à-terre” tax). The value of these second homes would be taxed additionally at an annual rate ranging from 0.5 percent up to 4.0 percent for units valued above $25 million and would initially raise about $500 million per year for funding Mamdani’s planned municipal socialist enterprises. On April 15, Mamdani posted a gleeful, envy-ridden video promoting the new tax while standing outside a $238 million penthouse owned by Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and CEO of the multinational hedge fund Citadel LLC.

At a May 5 Milken Institute event, Griffin condemned both the California and New York City tax proposals. He noted that sparking a mass exodus of business leaders implies that the politicians involved are making it clear that they “don’t welcome success” and are “pushing away people who believe in the merits of capitalism, in the merits of a free society, and in the importance of education” from their jurisdictions. Griffin is correct, of course.

What the socialist wing of the Democratic Party really wants is a national wealth tax that the “rich” can’t run away from quite so easily, as existing taxes can’t pay for existing welfare state mandates plus the interest on the existing public debt, let alone all the additional handouts, socialist enterprises, and other economic burdens that they want governments to inflict upon producers. Abolishing profits logically implies that the crushing of individual success must be escalated without limit to totalitarian extremes everywhere.

Mamdani and Khanna object that the “rich” owe their superior earnings to government interventionism and that their superior wealth gives them the power to exploit everybody else. Even if some self-described socialists balk at honestly acknowledging what the abolition of profits actually leads to, they still demand “social justice” in the form of compulsory wealth transfers as a moral imperative to fight inequality.

Murray Rothbard pointed out the folly of egalitarian attempts to impose uniformity upon mankind, treating humans as if they were interchangeable ants:

If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person’s uniqueness — the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable — that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society.

But it’s not just individual uniqueness and personality development that is at stake:

If freedom is a necessary condition for the full development of the individual, it is by no means the only requirement. Society itself must be sufficiently developed. No one, for example, can become a creative physicist on a desert island or in a primitive society. For, as an economy grows, the range of choice open to the producer and to the consumer proceeds to multiply greatly. Furthermore, only a society with a standard of living considerably higher than subsistence can afford to devote much of its resources to improving knowledge and to developing a myriad of goods and services above the level of brute subsistence. But there is another reason that full development of the creative powers of each individual cannot occur in a primitive or undeveloped society, and that is the necessity for a wide-ranging division of labor.

Material success based specifically upon profit-seeking capitalism matters because the socialist alternative can’t produce the goods. To the extent wealth is acquired by peaceful, productive means, we need the success of billionaires, particularly when their wealth takes the form of investments in capital goods that make everybody else’s labor and natural resources vastly more productive and remunerative. While many socialists see the disaffection of “economic royalists” (as Khanna hatefully labeled the billionaires fleeing California) as a feature and not as a bug of their tax proposals, they have no substitutes for the lost physical and human capital.

Moreover, taxation never cures injustices. Though some wealthy people do obtain unjust gains through government interventionism, it doesn’t follow that all wealthy people are therefore guilty and should be punished with additional taxes—rather, the just solution is to abolish the interventionism.

A wealthy exploiter needs a corrupt, rights-violating state in order to have any opportunity to grow richer by buying market-warping privileges, immunities, and subsidies from it. Justice means fighting such concentrations of malevolent political power, not fighting concentrations of wealth. Not only is it crazy to think that governments can replace profit-motivated producers in production, but it is also even crazier to think that further empowering already-corrupt politicians helps the little guy.