There has been an outpouring of recalls in the USA due to lead contamination in the food supply. Lead showing up in food in the United States is the result of overlapping structural problems that have been building for decades, and the recalls you are seeing now are simply the system reacting after the fact rather than preventing contamination in the first place.

At the core, lead is a naturally occurring heavy metal that exists in soil and water, but human activity has dramatically amplified its presence. The legacy of leaded gasoline, old paint, industrial emissions, and contaminated irrigation systems means that farmland across parts of the country still carries trace levels. Crops like root vegetables, grains, and even fruits can absorb lead directly from soil or water, so even “clean” farming practices cannot fully eliminate exposure.

Then you have the infrastructure problem. Much of the United States still relies on aging water systems, including old lead pipes. When that water is used in food processing or irrigation, it becomes another pathway for contamination. This is not theory, we have already seen this play out in places like Flint, and the same risk exists nationwide on a smaller scale.

Another major factor is imported ingredients. A significant portion of food sold in the U.S. relies on global supply chains where oversight is far weaker. Spices, chocolate, baby food ingredients, and supplements have repeatedly been flagged for elevated lead levels because they are sourced from regions with contaminated soil or less stringent regulation. Once those ingredients enter the U.S. supply chain, they are mixed into finished products that appear safe on the surface.

The recalls themselves happen because of how regulation is structured. Agencies like the FDA do not pre-approve every batch of food. Instead, companies are responsible for their own safety testing, and regulators step in when problems are detected through inspections, whistleblowers, or independent lab testing. That means contamination is often discovered after products are already on shelves.

What has changed recently is not necessarily the level of contamination, but the level of scrutiny. Testing methods are more sensitive, public awareness is higher, and lawsuits are increasing, especially around baby food. That is why you are seeing more recalls. The system is detecting what was always there.

From a broader perspective, this fits into a pattern that governments consistently overlook. They regulate the appearance of safety rather than the underlying infrastructure. You can pass stricter rules, but if the soil is contaminated, the pipes are old, and the supply chain is global and fragmented, the problem does not disappear. It simply surfaces in cycles, much like everything else. There is a growing distrust of the food supply in America. What was once a conspiracy is now generally accepted as a fact: America’s food supply is compromised. When people begin to question the safety of basic necessities like food and water, trust in institutions starts to erode, which is why “FDA Approved” does not equate to “safe for consumption.”

The post Lead Contaminating America’s Food Supply appeared first on Activist Post.

Last week’s purchases were mostly funded via sales of the company’s STRC preferred stock.

What to know:

• Strategy bought 4,871 bitcoin for about $329.9 million last week at an average price of $67,718 per coin.
• The company has spent roughly $58.02 billion on its bitcoin at an average cost of $75,644 per coin, leaving it with about $5 billion in unrealized losses at current prices.
• With 766,970 BTC, Strategy controls about 3.8 percent of bitcoin’s circulating supply.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) added 4,871 bitcoin to its treasury over the past week at an average price of roughly $67,718 per coin, spending approximately $329.9 million, according to a Monday filing.

The purchase brings total holdings to 766,970 BTC acquired for $58.02 billion at an all-in average cost basis of $75,644. At bitcoin’s current price near $69,120, the entire position is underwater by roughly 8%, or about $5 billion in unrealized losses on paper.

Last week’s purchases were mostly funded through $227.3 million in sales of the company’s STRC preferred stock. The remainder was funded with $72 million of sales of common stock.

A CryptoQuant report last week flagged Strategy’s 30-day accumulation at roughly 44,000 BTC through late March, making it one of only two institutional channels absorbing supply at scale alongside spot ETFs, which purchased approximately 50,000 BTC over the same period.

At 766,970 BTC, Strategy holds roughly 3.8% of bitcoin’s total circulating supply of 20.01 million coins and remains by far the largest corporate holder of the asset.

The post Strategy added another 4,871 bitcoin for $330 million, with holdings nearing 767,000 BTC appeared first on Activist Post.

Even the mainstream media is now openly admitting that shortages are coming. But right now I am seeing so much apathy about the war in the Middle East and the global supply chain disruptions that are happening right in front of our eyes. So many people seem to be convinced that the war will end soon and things will go right back to the way that they were before. I really wish that was true. But the Iranians just told us that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz “will never return to its former state, especially for America and Israel”, and that means that this war is not going to end any time soon. As a result, the global supply chain disruptions that we are experiencing now are going to get far worse.

Most people living in the United States simply do not realize what is really going on out there.

All over the world, supplies of essential materials are getting very tight.

Even though this war is only a little over one month old, CNN is telling us that we could soon be facing “a shortage of nearly everything”…

One month into the war in Iran, a growing shortage of crude oil is threatening to morph into something worse: a shortage of nearly everything.

This isn’t some rumor on social media.

This is CNN.

One of the most powerful news organizations in the entire world is openly admitting that widespread global shortages are rapidly approaching.

According to CNN’s report, people in South Korea are already panic-buying trash bags, and manufacturers in Taiwan are already completely running out of plastic…

In South Korea, where people have been panic-buying trash bags, the government has encouraged event organizers to minimize use of disposable items. Taiwan has started a hotline for manufacturers that have run out of plastic, while its rice farmers told local media they may hike prices because they can’t get vacuum-sealed bags.

In Japan, the oil crisis has sparked fears that patients with chronic kidney failure won’t be able to get treatment due to a lack of plastic medical tubes used in hemodialysis. Malaysian glove manufacturers say a dearth of a petroleum byproduct needed to make rubber latex is threatening global supplies of medical gloves.

“This spills into everything very, very quickly: beer, noodles, chips, toys, cosmetics,” said Dan Martin, co-head of business intelligence at Dezan Shira & Associates, an advisory firm that helps international businesses expand in Asia.

That’s because plastic caps, crates, snack bags and containers are becoming more difficult to procure. Petroleum derivatives are also needed to make adhesives for footwear and furniture, industrial lubricants for machinery and solvents for paints and cleaning processes, Martin added.

I was floored when I first read that.

We are just a little over one month into this war.

What will things look like three or four months from now if this war is still raging?

Just about everything that we buy either contains plastic or comes wrapped in plastic.

If you sit down and think about this for a while, it will hit you like a ton of bricks.

We are in an enormous amount of trouble.

The only way out would be for this war to come to a rapid conclusion.

But that isn’t going to happen.

The IRGC is running the show in Iran, and they will not accept any of President Trump’s offers.

The IRGC has issued their own list of demands which the U.S. and Israel can never possibly accept, and they have announced that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz “will never return to its former state” even after the war ends…

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Naval Command said in a post to X overnight that the Strait of Hormuz “will never return to its former state, especially for America and Israel.”

“The navy of the IRGC is in the process of completing the operational preparations for the announced plan of Iran’s officials for the new order in the Persian Gulf,” the statement said.

Iran wants to be given control over traffic through the Strait of Hormuz as part of any potential deal.

There is no way that is going to happen.

So the war is going to continue, and control of the Strait of Hormuz is going to have to be taken from Iran by force.

Sadly, global supplies of oil are just going to keep getting tighter and tighter, and fuel prices are going to continue to rise.

Here in the United States, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has already risen by 86 cents over the past month…

The national average now stands at $4.11 per gallon, up about 86 cents from a month ago, according to AAA. Costs are climbing across nearly every region, with some states already well above the U.S. average.

On the West Coast, drivers are seeing the highest costs, with prices reaching $5.92 per gallon in California and $5.37 in Washington. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, gas prices have surpassed $4 in several areas, including $4.27 in Washington, D.C., and $4.06 in New York.

If the war cannot be brought to a quick end, this is just the beginning.

Even more importantly, the average price of a gallon of diesel has risen by $1.45 over the past month…

Diesel has climbed to $5.61, up about $1.45 over the past month. As a key fuel for freight, shipping, and public transportation, it is particularly sensitive to refining capacity constraints and global supply disruptions.

Our farms run on diesel.

Nearly our entire trucking industry runs on diesel.

The price of nearly everything that you purchase on a regular basis is affected by the price of diesel, and so this is really bad news for all of us.

In California, the average price of a gallon of diesel has reached a whopping $7.67 per gallon…

The average price of the fuel – used to power everything from trucks to industrial machinery – sat at a statewide $7.67 per gallon Sunday, according to the American Automobile Association, also the most Californians have ever paid.

Now experts are warning the huge surge is going to hit consumers in the pocket by summer, with everyday goods set to skyrocket.

Just weeks ago, on March 2, diesel in California was $3.90 a gallon, meaning prices have doubled in a month.

Jet fuel prices are going through the roof too.

In fact, they have approximately doubled since the end of February…

Jet fuel prices, as a result, reached $195 at the end of March, up nearly $100 from the end of February when the war began. And as the war drags on, jet fuel is getting harder to come by for countries that don’t produce their own or have limited supplies.

International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Biro said during a podcast interview earlier this week that the loss of oil in April would be twice what was lost in March, resulting in a growing scarcity of jet fuel and diesel.

“We are seeing that in Asia, but soon, I think, in April or May, it would come to Europe,” he said.

Supplies of jet fuel have gotten extremely tight.

We are already witnessing chaos in some parts of Asia, and we are being warned that Europe could be next…

June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, said in a post on X that jet fuel requires specialized storage, which means there is less stored than other products, like gasoline.

“Travel has gotten a lot more expensive in Asia, with many airlines adding fuel surcharges or downright canceling flights,” she wrote. “Europe is facing imminent jet fuel supply shortages. Brace yourselves.”

If you need to fly somewhere, I would do it soon.

Flights have been canceled all over Asia, and now European airlines are starting to follow suit…

Lufthansa is also prepping for the worst, a spokesperson told Bloomberg. The company has teams developing crisis response plans, and could ground up to 40 aircraft, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Scandinavian Airlines said it would cut about 1,000 flights due to the surge in jet fuel costs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

This is not something that is going to happen someday.

This is happening now.

And even if the war ended tomorrow, conditions would not go back to the way that they were before.

In fact, Mark Zandi is warning that we might not ever see pre-war prices again…

“I don’t think we’re going back to the pre-war prices for the foreseeable future,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and among the first economists to predict the 2008 financial crisis, speaking with Politico for its report Monday. “Certainly won’t be this year, won’t even be next year. Might not be ever.”

There is no way that global energy markets can simply snap back to pre-war conditions.

Too much energy infrastructure has already been destroyed.

If Iran does not agree to make a deal before Trump’s Tuesday deadline, things will get a whole lot worse.

This is the greatest challenge to the global economy that most of us have seen in our entire lifetimes.

For now, most people living in the western world continue to believe that everything will work out just fine somehow, but reality will give them a wake up call soon enough.

The post “A Shortage Of Nearly Everything” Is Coming If The War Does Not End Soon – In South Korea, People Are Already Panic-Buying Trash Bags appeared first on Activist Post.

Gaslighting the public into supporting the slaughter of innocents is a tale as old as the state itself. If we don’t abandon the cult of personality, history is about to violently repeat itself.

While millions of people across the country gathered with their families to celebrate a day historically dedicated to the Prince of Peace, the commander-in-chief of the American empire was busy on Truth Social, outlining his next mass casualty event. In a completely unhinged Easter Sunday ultimatum, Donald Trump promised the people of Iran a “Power Plant Day” and a “Bridge Day,” threatening to reduce the country to rubble before signing off with a mocking “Praise be to Allah.” This wasn’t some empty campaign rhetoric or a tough-guy negotiation tactic; it was a promise to expand upon the horrific April 1st strike on the B1 bridge in Karaj. That highly touted “strategic victory” executed multiple innocent civilians who were simply traveling for a holiday, turning a piece of civilian infrastructure into a blood-soaked monument to American foreign policy.

To justify this blatant act of state-sponsored terrorism, the regime has deployed a level of gaslighting so absurd it borders on parody. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump claimed that the 93 million people of Iran actually want the United States to destroy their civilian infrastructure because they are “living in hell.” It is the ultimate savior complex, designed specifically to soothe the conscience of the domestic tax-paying base by convincing them that the victims of their bombs are actually grateful for the shrapnel that turns their children to ground meat. Imagine for a single second if a foreign adversary bombed the Golden Gate Bridge, slaughtered our families, plunged California into darkness, and then took to social media to brag about how they were “liberating us.” The American public would demand total war, yet we are supposed to believe the Iranian people will just sit in the debris and thank Washington for the privilege.

This arrogant delusion doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it requires a vast, compliant network of useful idiots to regurgitate the propaganda and cheer for the slaughter. Throughout history, the most brutal tyrants didn’t achieve their massive body counts through sheer force alone; they relied on enthusiastic cheerleaders who mistook bloodlust for patriotism. Stalin had his loyalists defending the gulags as necessary for the safety of the state, Mao had his zealous students enforcing the Great Leap Forward while millions starved to death, and Hitler had an entire nation convinced that national greatness superseded the lives of peaceful individuals. Today, the American war machine has its own modern equivalents in the form of social media influencers like Catturd and Gunther Eagleman, who have entirely abandoned their so-called “anti-war” posturing to salivate over the prospect of flattening a sovereign nation.

These partisan grifters shift their morality based entirely on whatever the current occupant of the Oval Office dictates. It proves exactly what Matt Walsh astutely pointed out all the way back in 2016, when he noted that Trump fans are “intellectual empty vessels ready to adopt whatever position Trump just took, and then abandon it as soon as he does.” They have constructed their own intellectual prison, blindly defending a leader who is so devoid of a moral compass that he cannot even make it through a single speech without contradicting himself. In a glaring example of this ideological vacuum, Trump stood at a podium on March 31st and explicitly stated, “Regime change was not our goal. We don’t want that,” only to declare exactly seven minutes later, “Regime change is what we want. It is needed.”

When you follow a hollow vessel, you inevitably become the bad guy, enabling a parasitic system that feeds off the destruction of both foreign innocents and its own citizens. Just days ago, Senator Marco Rubio had the audacity to tweet that Iran should focus on funding the well-being of its people rather than its military. Yet, almost simultaneously, Trump admitted that the United States cannot afford basic domestic needs like Medicaid or daycare because that stolen wealth must be diverted to fund the military-industrial complex. The hypocrisy is staggering; the U.S. government is actively gutting the prosperity of its own populace to finance the slaughter of people halfway across the globe, all while lecturing its victims on fiscal responsibility.

None of this violence occurs in a vacuum, and the people cheering for it are completely ignorant of the declassified history that directly led to the current hostilities. The brutal Islamist government currently ruling Iran is not some spontaneous manifestation of evil, but rather the direct blowback of the 1953 CIA-led coup known as Operation Ajax, where the U.S. and Britain overthrew a democratically elected prime minister to install the Shah. We bribed politicians, staged false flags, paid protesters, and effectively destroyed a westernized society to secure foreign oil interests, planting the seeds for the radical 1979 revolution. We are the architects of the very “hell” we are now offering to liberate them from through high explosives. And, we have all but guaranteed an even more extreme government for the people of Iran since the inception of this war.

I understand the insidious nature of this propaganda because I used to be a willing participant in it. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was entirely submerged in the cult of neoconservatism, acting as little more than a passive reverberator who took the daily talking points from the mocking birds in the legacy media and treated them as gospel while ignoring very solid arguments against them. It took years to deprogram myself from that nationalist brainwashing and realize that the state does not love me, nor does it possess any moral high ground. Once you anchor your worldview to the non-aggression principle—the simple idea that you do not initiate force against peaceful people—the fog clears, and you see the empire for exactly what it is… a murderous group of child predators who weild hypnotic power over society because they know exactly how to pit us against each other so we never point the finger back at them.

When your entire belief system is based on the premise of “do no harm, take no shit,” you never have to backtrack to see if you are being a hypocrite. The most dangerous part of any regime isn’t the tyrant standing at the podium, but the thousands of empty vessels laughing and cheering from the front row. If you find yourself “loling” on social media at a terror campaign waged against a civilian population, you are not on the side of liberty, and you are not putting America first. You are just another disposable cog in a child-murdering machine, too blinded by hero worship to realize you have become the very evil you claim to despise.

Thankfully, the mask has slipped so far that a massive wave of former supporters are finally breaking the spell and waking up to the reality of what this administration has become. They are realizing that Trump has done the exact opposite of the anti-war, anti-establishment platform he campaigned on, transforming into the ultimate despot at the helm of a global terror regime. History is a graveyard of cults who traded their principles for proximity to power, and every single time, it ends in catastrophic bloodshed. We must reject this march to war and embrace voluntaryist solutions built on peace, because no politician is coming to save us, and liberty will never be delivered on the tip of a missile.

The post The “Liberation” of Hell: Trump’s Iran Ultimatum and the Death of “America First” appeared first on Activist Post.

Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett has claimed that the United States ruling class knows of extraterrestrial beings and is in contact with them. Burchett added that these beings do not pose a threat to humanity; however, if the U.S.  releases “what I’ve seen, you’d be up at night worrying about it.”

Burchett has emerged as a leading voice on the disclosure of files regarding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), pushing for greater government transparency on the matter. He did clarify that there isn’t an immediate danger of the extraterrestrial beings.

“I don’t think we’re in danger of this. I mean, these things exist as I think they do, and they could have destroyed us with the blink of an eye, I just don’t see that,” he stressed, according to a report by RT. 

In February, US President Donald Trump announced plans to order the Department of War and other agencies to release government files related to UAPs and UFOs due to “tremendous interest.”

Pentagon: We’ll Soon Learn If Aliens Are Real

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed that the American public would learn whether his department holds records proving the existence of aliens, but cautioned against expecting a swift release.

Will Aliens Trigger the Next Financial Crisis?

Burchett has further alleged that various agencies, including NASA, have been “lying” about what they know about alien beings and claims that many files on the subject remain undisclosed. “I’ve been briefed by just about every alphabet agency there is, and if they released what I’ve seen, you’d be up at night worrying about it,” he said.

Why would anyone worry about this if these beings are not a danger to humanity, as Burchett claims?

Over two years ago, in March 2024, the Pentagon said it had no proof that any unidentified aerial phenomena are in fact alien technology, adding that many cases involved weather balloons, spy planes, satellites, and other routine activity.

The post U.S. Lawmaker Claims Rulers Are In Contact With Extraterrestrial Beings appeared first on Activist Post.

The U.S. is pitching new rules for stablecoin issuers to treat them like every other financial firm that must maintain armor against illicit uses.

What to know:

• The U.S. Department of the Treasury is about to issue proposed rules that would set standards for stablecoin issuers to battle money laundering and sanctions violations.
• According to a summary of the proposals first reported by CoinDesk, the Treasury’s FinCEN and OFAC arms will pursue a joint rulemaking that sets out how issuers would have to comply with last year’s GENIUS Act, including setting up controls to prevent illicit transactions and to be able to freeze and reject suspicious activity.
• The effort would defer to the issuers’ understanding of their own businesses and suggests that any issuer maintaining a robust system of controls shouldn’t have to worry about future enforcement actions.

Afirm issuing stablecoins in the U.S. would have an array of new duties to head off criminals and keep government watchdogs informed about malicious actors, according to rules proposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury that were first reported by CoinDesk.

A joint proposal from the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) outlines the deep controls that stablecoin businesses would have to put in place, including abilities to “block, freeze and reject” transactions and internal protections to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act that governs most of the U.S. financial system.

In one of the most significant moves yet to implement last year’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act — the first major crypto-sector law for the U.S. — the two arms of the Treasury Department that police illicit finance are setting out a tailored approach for stablecoin firms, which will be opened for a public comment period and potential revisions before it’s finalized. But the agencies are also sending a message of deference to the industry, suggesting the companies understand their own hazards best.

A summary of the joint proposal said it’s focused on effectiveness “and that financial institutions are best positioned to identify and evaluate their money laundering, terrorist financing and illicit finance risks.” The department’s effort contends that a firm that’s running appropriate money-laundering preventions is generally safe from enforcement actions unless it’s showing “a significant or systemic failure to maintain that program.”

On that money-laundering front, FinCEN would expect stablecoin issuers’ programs to be able to halt specifically flagged transactions and to know where to devote “more attention and resources toward higher-risk customers and activities.” When the U.S. authorities are pursuing a specific target, the regulated issuers subjected to this proposed rule would have to scour their own records for any activity tied to individuals or entities flagged by FinCEN.

Also, the issuers will be expected to act as allies in the agency’s pursuit of entities identified as “primary money laundering concerns.” As recently as 2023, the agency had sought to tag crypto mixers such as Tornado Cash under that label, though earlier this year, the Treasury Department reversed course to suggest that mixers could serve legitimate and legal privacy uses.

On the sanctions front, OFAC would require stablecoin issuers run risk-based safeguards for stablecoin activity on primary or secondary markets, and the policies must spot and reject transactions “that may violate or would violate U.S. sanctions.” Sanction missteps — including past flagrant violations — have been a critical concern of crypto industry detractors, including recent scrutiny focused on the world’s biggest exchange, Binance.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that his department’s latest efforts “will protect the U.S. financial system from national security threats without hindering American companies’ ability to forge ahead in the payment stablecoin ecosystem.”

The crypto industry and its stablecoin leaders — including Tether, Circle, Ripple and the firm partially owned and controlled by the family of President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial — have been awaiting regulation that helps further establish their bespoke assets as safe and reliable. Some tensions remain in the wider crypto community, which has had a tumultuous relationship with governments since its beginnings, when its founding principles aimed to keep cryptocurrencies outside of government control.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector remains a space that seeks to cut away intermediaries and maintain direct interactions, but the illicit-finance controls for that arena are still unresolved in the ongoing negotiations among the industry, securities sector and lawmakers over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in the U.S. Senate. While the Treasury’s stablecoin proposal and others from U.S. financial regulators are beginning to sketch out the guardrails, wide swaths of crypto activity still need to be addressed.

Earlier this year, a third arm of the Treasury — the independent Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that regulates national banks and trusts — proposed its standards and procedures for issuers it’ll watch as the primary federal regulator. This week, its sister regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. did the same with a largely parallel proposal.

The GENIUS Act is meant to go into full effect by 2027. Well before that, firms have been pursuing charters and partnerships to get involved in stablecoins. The Trump-tied World Liberty, for instance, applied for a charter as a trust bank in January and manages the USD1 stablecoin.

The company is under fresh scrutiny this week after reportedly being unaware that its AB DAO partner was involved in a project with potential ties to Cambodia’s Prince Group, the target of major U.S. investigations, sanctioning and the seizure last year of a record $14 billion in bitcoin. Those types of business relationships at stablecoin issuers would be under stringent new industry-managed controls in the Treasury Department’s proposal.

UPDATE (April 8, 2026, 16:11 UTC): Adds release of proposals by the Treasury Department.

The post U.S. Treasury proposes demands that stablecoin firms be set to police bad transactions appeared first on Activist Post.

What will the costs of the latest round of illegal, ill-fated U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East amount to? Some of the toll is already clear. Washington has squandered billions of dollars on a reckless war of aggression against Iran. A merciless campaign of aerial bombardment has driven millions from their homes. American and Israeli airstrikes have rained destruction on 10,000 civilian sites and already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and Lebanon. Among the dead are more than 200 children, many killed in a U.S. strike on a girls’ school, a war crime that evokes the grim precedent of such past American atrocities as the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam or the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in Iraq.

The latest war has also dealt a potentially fatal blow to our already battered democratic institutions. It’s a war neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public. Instead, it was launched by a president who refuses to submit to the law or heed the will of the people, claiming in true authoritarian fashion that he is the law, and that he alone embodies the popular will.

Such democratic backsliding has, however, been decades in the making, a predictable result of longstanding imperial impunity. Yet we may rapidly be approaching a point of no return. Even George W. Bush, in launching his catastrophic wars of choice in the region, sought to manufacture consent and present the case before the United Nations. Today, there is neither the pretense of legality nor of legitimacy.

The costs associated with this latest criminal war, measured in human lives; the misappropriation of national resources; and the erosion of the rule of law will only continue to mount. Yet there is also a less visible, less immediate price tag for such wars. If the history of American interventions in the region offers any guide, the full bill will likely not become apparent for months, years, or even decades. When it finally arrives, however, it will carry a familiar name: blowback.

For that reason, it’s important at this moment to recall the lessons Washington appears determined to forget. From Afghanistan to Iran, Iraq to Libya, the record is unmistakable. Yet as long as the historical amnesia that grips this country’s political establishment remains unchallenged, the same cycles of escalation and reprisal will undoubtedly persist in the years to come, threatening to once again draw the United States (and much of the world) ever deeper into the abyss of forever war.

Oil and the Engine of Empire

While the post-9/11 “war on terror” is often invoked as the starting point of U.S. militarism in the Middle East, the roots of conflict there stretch back nearly a century. The violence and instability unleashed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, represented less a rupture with the past than a continuation of long-established patterns of U.S. policy. The seeds of the forever wars had, in fact, been planted decades earlier in the oil-rich soil of the region.

Direct American involvement began in the previous century in the years between the First and Second World Wars. By that point, petroleum had become not merely a valuable commodity but a strategic necessity for sustaining a modern industrial economy. The vast oil reserves discovered in the United States had propelled the American economy to global prominence and played a decisive role in fueling the Allied war effort during World War I. Yet policymakers in Washington understood that domestic reserves were finite. As petroleum became synonymous with power, economically, militarily, and politically, the United States increasingly turned abroad to secure new sources.

The Middle East emerged as a critical frontier in that search, drawing the region ever more tightly into the orbit of an expanding American empire. In 1933, Standard Oil of California secured an exploratory concession with the conservative monarchy of Saudi Arabia. The agreement created the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), laying the groundwork for the 1945 U.S.-Saudi oil-for-security partnership that would become central to Washington’s future influence over the region’s geopolitical order.

Over the years, the insatiable thirst for oil only drew the United States ever deeper into the region. By 1953, American intervention assumed more overtly coercive forms. That year, in coordination with British intelligence, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s popular prime minister, who had committed a cardinal sin in the emerging Cold War years. In 1951, he presided over the nationalization of his country’s oil industry in an effort to return sovereign control of its resources to the Iranian people by wresting them from the exploitative grip of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the precursor to British Petroleum.

Despite his staunchly nationalist rather than communist credentials, a fact understood in Tehran, London, and Washington, Mossadegh would then be cast as, at worst, a dangerous proxy of the Soviet Union and, at best, a threat to regional stability (as in, American hegemony). The coup that followed ended Iran’s fragile democratic experiment, secured continued access to Iranian oil for Western companies, and restored the Shah of Iran to power. His regime would then be sustained by a steady outward flow of oil and a nearly endless influx of U.S. weaponry. With CIA backing, his secret police, SAVAK, would terrorize and torture a generation of Iranians.

Yet Washington celebrated this new arrangement, claiming that Iran had been transformed into an “island of stability,” and a cornerstone of the “twin pillar strategy,” in which Washington would outsource regional Cold War policing to compliant authoritarian allies in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Such subversion of nationalist movements and support for despotic monarchies, as well as the increasingly unequivocal backing of Israel, would generate intense backlash. Among the most visible early expressions of that was the 1973 OPEC oil crisis, demonstrating how U.S. policy in the Middle East could reverberate domestically.

But the first unmistakable case of blowback arrived in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution. In that country, discontent had been simmering beneath the seemingly stable façade of the Shah’s rule for years. When the monarchy collapsed after months of protests and repression, the Islamic Republic would fill the political vacuum, drawing on the theological language of Shi’ism and the political rhetoric of opposition to the Shah, the United States, and Israel.

In the U.S., those developments were largely stripped of their historical context. Americans were instead cast as the innocent victims of irrational fanaticism. Why do they hate us? was the refrain that echoed across the Western media and the answers offered rarely confronted the long history of intervention and exploitation. Instead, they defaulted to a supposed civilizational conflict with Islam, which was portrayed as inherently antagonistic to “Western values.”

Such explanations obscured an uncomfortable reality — that the U.S. had repeatedly undermined democracy across the region (as well as in other parts of the world) to advance its own interests. As a Pentagon commission report in 2004 acknowledged, the problem was not that people “hate our freedoms,” as President George W. Bush had reductively claimed, but that many “hate our policies.” In other words, the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001, were the ultimate, if deeply disturbing, expression of blowback.

Revolution and Counterrevolution in the Persian Gulf

Those widely resented policies from Washington were reinforced by its overreaction to the 1979 upheaval in Iran. That country’s new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, sought not only to transform Iranian society internally but envisioned the Islamic Republic as the opening move in a broader anti-imperialist struggle across the Middle East. For Washington and its reactionary regional allies, the specter of such potential revolutionary contagion posed a profound threat.

In January 1980, in an attempt to contain the Iranian regime, President Jimmy Carter articulated a new foreign policy position that placed the U.S. on a collision course in the region. The Carter Doctrine declared the Persian Gulf a “vital interest” of the United States, warning that any attempt by an outside power to gain control would be repelled by “any means necessary, including military force.” In that fashion, Washington asserted an explicit claim to a protectorate thousands of miles from its shores. The United States, Carter made clear, was prepared to send soldiers there to ensure uninterrupted access to oil.

The strategic reorientation that followed proved violent and far-reaching, while marking a shift away from East and Southeast Asia as the principal theaters of Cold War conflict. As Andrew Bacevich observed in his book America’s War for the Greater Middle East, if you were to measure U.S. involvement by the number of troops killed in action, the transformation was striking. From the end of World War II to 1980 almost no American soldiers were killed in the region. Since 1990, however, virtually none have been killed anywhere except in what Bacevich termed the “Greater Middle East.”

Measured in American lives alone, the subsequent costs would number in the thousands. Measured in civilians killed across the region, the toll would be vastly greater. Over the past several decades U.S.-led or -backed wars have contributed to the deaths of millions of people and the displacement of tens of millions more, producing one of the most devastating population catastrophes since the end of World War II.

Proxy Wars and the Escalation Trap

The American shift toward the Middle East ensured that the United States would become deeply entwined in a cascade of conflicts. As regional actors moved either to defend a fragile status quo or exploit the upheavals that followed, Washington began instigating new conflicts in the region.

In Baghdad, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein opposed the new government in Tehran on ideological and strategic grounds. The emergence of a revolutionary Shi’a state next door threatened his Sunni-dominated Ba’athist regime that ruled over a Shi’a majority in Iraq. At the same time, Saddam sought to exploit what he perceived to be Iranian weakness, pressing longstanding revanchist claims to the oil-rich borderlands of southwestern Iran.

Saudi Arabia viewed these developments with similar alarm. In the capital Riyadh, policymakers feared that revolutionary Shi’ism might threaten the legitimacy of the kingdom’s Sunni Wahhabi monarchy. The call for a Shi’a revolution also raised concerns about unrest in its oil-rich Eastern Province, where Shi’a workers faced economic exploitation and near colonial conditions. Similar anxieties reverberated across the other Gulf monarchies.

The United States responded by doubling down on support for the remaining pillars of its regional order, Saudi Arabia and Israel, while seeking to contain and roll back the perceived threat posed by Iran. Still interpreting regional upheaval through the prism of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers also expanded their involvement elsewhere. In Afghanistan, the CIA launched the largest covert operation in its history, channeling weapons and support to the Afghan mujahideen resisting the Soviet Union’s occupation of that country that began in December 1979.

The Soviet intervention itself was shaped by the shockwaves of the Iranian Revolution. Leaders in Moscow feared a militant Islam on their southern flank that might embolden similar currents within Muslim-majority regions of the Soviet Union.

In Iraq, the U.S. publicly tilted toward Saddam Hussein while simultaneously engaging in illegal weapons sales to Iran, with the funds received being rerouted to bankroll another American-backed war in Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Civil War, worsened by Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, created the conditions for the rise of Hezbollah, which presented itself as a defender of marginalized Shi’a communities against Israeli military aggression and sectarian violence.

By 1986, after escalating regional violence and spill-over, the administration of President Ronald Reagan took a step that paved the way for what would, in the next century, become Washington’s “War on Terror.” In April of that year, Reagan launched airstrikes in the dense heart of Tripoli on the home of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, holding him responsible for acts of non-state terrorism abroad, including support for armed movements from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Irish Republican Army.

That operation marked a significant escalation in the region and its justification would later be formalized as the Bush Doctrine: the claim that Washington could wage preemptive war anywhere against any state accused of supporting terrorism inside its country or outside its borders. That doctrine was no less illegitimate, illegal, or dangerous in the 1980s than it would become two decades later. As Daniel Ellsberg observed then (a point he would continue to press throughout his life, including after President Barack Obama ordered similar strikes on Libya in 2011), it seemed that the U.S. had “adopted a public policy of responding to state-sponsored terrorism with U.S. state-sponsored terrorism.”

In each instance, deeper involvement in the region produced deeper backlash. The U.S.-backed Afghan jihad helped give rise to Al-Qaeda in 1988 and paved the way for the Taliban’s seizure of power in 1996 and the failed 20-year American war in Afghanistan. The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the Gulf War of 1991, which laid the groundwork for the criminal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The instability that followed not only expanded Iran’s regional influence but contributed to the emergence of the Islamic State. In Lebanon, the power vacuum that Hezbollah came to fill resulted in the 1983 barracks bombing in Beirut, the deadliest day for U.S. Marines since Iwo Jima.

The Lesson Not Learned

The pattern is difficult to ignore, despite our government’s persistent efforts to do so. Many of the actors Washington came to identify as its principal adversaries emerged either in direct response to U.S. policies or had themselves once been cultivated by Washington in pursuit of short-sighted strategic aims. In case after case, conflicts initiated or intensified by the United States appeared to subside, only to reemerge in new, more volatile forms. Intervention produced instability; instability served to justify further interventions; and the cycle only repeated itself thereafter.

There is little reason to believe that Donald Trump’s war against Iran will prove any different. By now, the historical record should make that clear, which is why we must oppose the violence being carried out in our name, as it is wrong, criminal, and immoral. We must oppose it for the sake of our common humanity, but also for our own sake.

After all, history tells us one thing: when we wage unjust wars that terrorize distant populations in far-off lands, the violence rarely remains confined there. Sooner or later, in one form or another, it returns. Violence begets violence, and imperial war has a way of boomeranging back upon those who initiate it. We reap what we sow; the chickens, in time, invariably come home to roost.

Copyright 2026 Eric Ross

The post The Price of Empire and the Costs of War on Iran appeared first on Activist Post.

Israel preys on civilians as it receives deep wounds from the Lebanese Resistance

A family home in Baalbek bombed by Israel without warning on the 18th March 2026. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The memory of victories following harsh periods of endurance has created a popular certainty that scenes of rubble are merely preludes to reconstruction, and that what has been destroyed will be rebuilt with greater dignity. This certainty rests on the “credibility of the resistance,” which has demonstrated, in prior instances, the truth of its slogans—particularly the promise that “it will return better than before.” Dr Mohammad Aloush for Al Akhbar,

Baalbek is the largest city in eastern Lebanon. In November 2024, Israel issued a city-wide evacuation (80,000 population), leading to widespread panic as thousands of people tried to flee. Later in that month a shaky ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was agree upon, the next morning the Al Qaeda march against Damascus began. Since November 2024 Israel has violated that ceasefire thousands of times with daily drone assassinations, occupation of Lebanese territory, bombing of civilian infrastructure including schools and hospitals and an endless pressure for Hezbollah to disarm – supported by Saudi Arabia, the new Al Qaeda regime in Damascus, Washington and Tel-Aviv.

This ancient Phoenician city is the cradle of some of the world’s best preserved Roman ruins including the Temple of Bacchus. Baalbek was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. Seeped in history and the remnants of Roman civilisation, this city has been the target of Zionist violence and savagery on many occasions since the establishment of the barbaric Zionist genocidal project in the early 20th Century – incubated by the British in cooperation with the Rothschilds.

The Baalbek site is thought to have originally been Phoenician, with settlement dating back as far as the 3rd millennium BC. In the 1st millennium BC the site was chosen as the site for a temple dedicated to the God Baal, from which the city takes its name. In the year 334 BC Alexander the Great conquered the Near East and the city was renamed Heliopolis, a name which was retained by subsequent Roman conquerors – Helios, Greek for sun and Polis, Greek for City – ‘City of the Sun’. [Brief History of Baalbek]

Like so many other towns and cities relentlessly targeted by ‘Israel’, Baalbek has long history of resistance against occupation and colonialist projects through the ages. Added to this, Baalbek is situated alongside the abundant freshwater source of Ras Al Ain. Waters from the Ain-Juj spring, nine kilometres away, were drawn into Baalbek by canal. These two big sources feed into the Litani and Aassi Rivers that flow in opposite directions in the Bekaa. For Israel, a primary resource hunt in the region is for water sources – Golan territories, southern Syria, Jordan, the Litani River in Lebanon and perhaps the Euphrates in Iraq should the David’s Corridor comes to fruition linking southern Syria to Iraq via Syria’s eastern border.

Recent attacks on Baalbek civilians

On the 2nd April I went to Baalbek to see two sites recently bombed by Israel without any evacuation warning. Civilian homes reduced to roof crags and rubble landscapes dotted with personal belongings of the dead and injured.

A child’s toy truck among the remnants of the home they used to play in. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The first house we visited had been the home of the Al Haj Hussein family. Mahdi Al Haj Hussein was murdered alongside his wife, Alia and their young son Ghadi. One child survived, Karim Al Haj Hussein was hospitalised after rescue from the rubble and intense heat that he described in his later interviews. The neighbouring house also lost a young child and her mother. According to our guide, the neighbours had called to see if it was safe to come back to their home. Upon arrival the little girl and her mother had rushed next door to see their friends. That was when Israel decided to strike at the heart of both families.

The image of the child victim of the Zionist airstrike in Baalbek. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The following short report from Al Jazeera follows the recovery of young Karim and his adoption into his Uncle’s family after losing his entire family and friends:

As Lebanese journalist and mother of three, Marwa Osman, wrote at the time:

War crimes by Israel are not slowing down, they never do. They are escalating, becoming more brutal, more indiscriminate, more devastating with each passing day.

When we left this scene of murder for the next we passed under banners depicting the young family torn from life by the Zionist war jets.

The following photo was also published on the day of the attack depicting a young, happy family with no ties to any military units or activities. They were brutally exterminated just for their existence in this place of history and civilisation.

Mahdi Al-Haj Hussein was killed alongside his wife, Alia, and their son, Ghadi.

A four storey apartment block bombed by ‘Israel’ at dawn. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The second strike happened one week earlier in another area of Baalbek, at 3.05 am, without any warning – just as people would be waking up for Suhoor the pre-dawn meal before the daily fast during Ramadan. Here, the Zionists targeted a four-storey apartment block comprising eight family apartments.

The building was in a complex of civilian housing, originally built for the Lebanese military, now occupied only by civilian tenants. In this attack thirty civilians were injured and nine killed. Among these victims were three families, a mother, a father and five children. One man had returned from another sector of the province because he was told it was safe. He was killed in the blast.

Ahmed lives in the house opposite the misshapen metal and concrete remains of the building. He came to speak with us. He said there was no evacuation warning, people were sleeping and unsuspecting. The compound is 100% civilian, not even a hunting rifle could be found among the inhabitants. He was a simple man who goes every day to Dahiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut, also a daily deathtrap under Zionist bombs and drone strikes, to gather bread which he then sells in Baalbek.

Cars buried under the rubble of the Zionist airstrike. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

Visibly shaken he told us that one memory will not leave his mind – he rushed to the bombed building immediately after the strike. He saw one little boy pinned under three floors of concrete, his hands outstretched pleading with Ahmed to pull him out, crying “I don’t want to die”. As Ahmed approached he could see the little boy’s older brother trying to pull the first boy back into the cavity so he could escape the dungeon of debris and dust.

Ahmed said the Civil Defence came immediately, to rescue the dead and injured – Zionist war jets were still in the skies above them, at low altitude but he said, this time no double tap to murder the paramedics and destroy ambulances. It took two full days to retrieve all the bodies, one child was found with his head missing.

At one point, Ahmed sent the young girl in the battered van alongside him to bring cakes and snacks for us from the local shop. We protested, he insisted, the kindness and generosity that sears the heart in this region – despite everything or perhaps because of everything they have experienced and witnessed, humanity takes precedence over anything else.

As Dr. Mohammad Aloush says “Moral superiority of humans over technology: A deep belief that “humans” are the source of power and the origin of victory, and that enemy technological superiority cannot settle a struggle of wills as long as humans decide not to break.”

A shoe discarded, a child’s swing twisted and bent, a cooking stove flung atop the warped metal frames and concrete blocks, buried and burned-black cars – all that remains of these lives. People, civilians now displaced, homeless rejected by many in case they are targeted again. Where do they go? How do they start again? How do they grieve, heal, process the trauma while Israel still stalks the skies above them? Nobody can answer these questions but what is certain is that nothing will end this reign of terror except the Resistance and their allies in the region including Iran.

As Ahmed said “Israel is doing this to turn us against Hezbollah but we know our enemy”. Killing civilians, murdering or raping and abusing children is not a sign of strength, it is the ultimate sign of weakness and impotence. These are the death throes of a genocidal entity that knows it cannot defeat such a people however much blood it spills, however much cruelty it deploys to bring them to their knees.

Dr Mohammad Alloush:

The resilience of the resistance environment is neither “accidental” nor temporary; it is the result of profound sociological and psychological construction, making humans on this land inseparable from the terrain of confrontation. It transforms “material weakness” into “historical potency” and proves that attempts to break willpower are mere “plowing the sea.”

The stark reality remains that this environment does not practice resilience as an act but embodies it in its highest human manifestation, where the distance between self, land, and cause disappears, and the entire human bloc becomes “a sacrifice” to the inevitable certainty of victory and survival.”

(Illustration and words by Alaa Karaki-translated from Arabic)

If you cut off the roads of the South, we will plant a thousand new roads in the earth.

I am the son of Baalbek when the chants rise from stone,

the son of Dahiyeh when dawn rises from the ashes.

I am the son of the North when the winds grow fierce,

and the son of the South when steadfastness hardens.

We are the thread that holds the country when it begins to unravel,

the bridge when every other bridge has fallen.

We stretch our hands across the fire, and the distances grow closer than the pulse of the heart.

No night can stop us,

no waiting can exhaust us.

For whenever the darkness deepens,

we become the light and the road begins with our steps.

****

I will be working on the ground every week going forward and maintaining a ‘war diary’ of all my visits. Please do consider subscribing and supporting my work, your support is really essential. Thank you to all who already do. xx

The post The Killing Fields of Lebanon as ‘Israel’ Lashes out Against Civilians appeared first on Activist Post.

We all sit down with BettBeat Media to add invaluable context to the genocidal project in West Asia and Persia, led by Washington and the Zionist cult, with British puppeteers in the shadows. We discuss the portrayal of the wars for survival in this region from Western outlets, the lack of cultural perspective and civilisational understanding with some of the conclusions being reached.

This was an open minded debate from people who are on the same page but who disagree on some aspects of the world war that is now playing out. Thank you to Bett Beat for hosting.

****

Please do consider subscribing. This work cannot happen without your support xx

The post Iran war: A Grand Imperial Fantasy? | Vanessa Beeley, The Last American Vagabond & Myriam Charabaty appeared first on Activist Post.

When global supply chains collapse, the pain is not felt immediately. Tankers that left their destinations before the war with Iran began are still arriving at their destinations, products that were manufactured prior to the war still fill our shelves, and we are still eating food that was produced last year. So even though global supply chains are collapsing all around us, most people don’t feel it yet. But if this war with Iran drags on for months, the pain that we will soon experience will be unbelievable.

Anyone that thinks that the global economy can continue to function at or near current levels without sufficient supplies of oil, natural gas, plastic and fertilizer is just being delusional.

The only way that we can avoid “the everything meltdown” is if this war ends quickly.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened tomorrow, we will not see a return to pre-war conditions any time soon because damage that has been done to energy infrastructure in the Middle East will take years to fully rebuild.

With each passing day, the damage is getting even worse. For example, the biggest natural gas processing facility in the United Arab Emirates was just shut down following an Iranian attack…

Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facility, the UAE’s largest natural gas processing site, was shut down after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile caused a fire. The plant processes and distributes gas from the emirate’s fields for domestic use, making it a critical component of the country’s energy infrastructure. The attack comes amid a series of Iranian strikes on Gulf energy assets, including oil refineries and desalination plants in Kuwait, underscoring the vulnerability of regional infrastructure.

And just hours ago, the Iranians caused substantial damage at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex in Kuwait…

An Iranian drone attack caused a fire at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex, Kuwaiti authorities confirmed on Sunday morning.

The attack caused no casualties, the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported.

The facility hosts both the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Oil Ministry’s headquarters, KUNA noted.

Over the past month, we have witnessed so much destruction to vital infrastructure, and it appears that the war is going to escalate to an entirely new level this week.

If President Trump follows through on his threats to destroy Iran’s power grid, the Iranians have warned that they will unleash unprecedented attacks on energy infrastructure all over the region.

One energy industry insider is warning that we are facing “sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry”…

“This is headed toward sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry that touches fuel, which is effectively every industry,” said Herman Nieuwoudt, president of IFS Energy & Resources.

Nieuwoudt says what we’re seeing right now isn’t a single price shock.

“It’s the consequence of the largest energy supply disruption in modern history layered on top of six years of structural volatility,” he said. “These disruptions cascade through manufacturing, packaging, agriculture, transportation, and retail in ways that take months to fully materialize,” he added.

He is right.

Literally just about everything is going to cost more in the months ahead.

Virtually our entire trucking industry runs on diesel, and at this point the average price of diesel fuel in the U.S. has reached a staggering $5.53 a gallon…

Diesel, widely used in farming, construction and trucking, among other industries, has risen even more sharply than gas, with the U.S. average this week hitting $5.53 a gallon, up from $3.64 a year ago, according to AAA.

This is survivable, but what are we going to do when it reaches 10 dollars a gallon?

Already, the average price of diesel fuel in San Francisco has surpassed 8 dollars a gallon…

For the first time on record, average diesel prices in San Francisco have surged past $8 per gallon, according to new data from GasBuddy—marking an unprecedented milestone for any U.S. city.

Maybe you don’t care about the price of diesel fuel.

But you should, because the cost of diesel fuel is going to be passed along to you.

Already, shipping companies are starting to impose very large fuel surcharges on their customers…

Citing higher energy costs, the United States Postal Service announced last month that it’s planning to impose an 8% surcharge on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select services.

E-commerce giant Amazon also said that, beginning April 17, it plans to add a 3.5% fuel surcharge on third-party sellers, while FedEx and UPS have also recently introduced fuel surcharges, according to the Associated Press.

Stuff doesn’t just show up on your doorstep or in the stores by magic.

It takes fuel to move stuff around, and so all of the stuff that you buy on a regular basis is about to get more expensive.

And that is really bad news, because even before the war we were already in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis.

In many areas of the U.S., the price of a pound of ground beef is now higher than the federal minimum wage…

The cost of a pound of ground beef has hit a major threshold. Depending on where you shop, the grocery staple likely costs more than the federal minimum wage.

Money analyzed ground beef prices at seven of the most popular grocery chains across the U.S., finding that 1 pound of the typical 20% fat ground beef costs between $6.49 and $8.96. Organic, grass-fed and leaner varieties tend to cost much more.

On the other hand, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 per hour.

In 1988, you could get a pound of ground beef for about $1.30.

This is what happens when you destroy your economy.

And now the war in the Middle East is going to make things much, much worse.

Just about everything that we buy either contains plastic or comes wrapped in plastic.

Unfortunately, the war with Iran is severely disrupting global plastic supply chains…

Plastics are core to the modern economy, and a troubling new Bloomberg report indicates that several producers of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) have declared force majeure, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain heavily disrupted.

For context, MEG and PTA are the two primary feedstocks used to produce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyester fibers. These petrochemicals are critical to the production of everyday consumer goods that make life in the developed world convenient, including plastic bottles, food packaging, clothing, home furnishings, and a wide range of consumer and industrial goods.

More specifically, MEG is used in the production of polyester yarn, polyester staple fiber, PET resin, and PET film. It also plays a critical role in antifreeze, coolants, adhesives, coatings, and enamels.

In other words, MEG and PTA are foundational petrochemical building blocks for the modern economy. Any sustained disruption to these flows would be detrimental to the global economy.

I really wish that this wasn’t true, but our economy simply cannot function without plastic.

So what are we going to do now?

Every industry on the entire planet is going to be affected by the supply chain disruptions that are occurring.

In India, the textile industry has been “completely paralyzed” by this war…

Apocalyptic economic fallout. NHK confirms Trump’s disastrous war has completely paralyzed India’s massive textile industry. With 90% of their LPG imports choked off at the Strait of Hormuz, HALF A MILLION workers just lost their jobs. The global supply chain is collapsing.

If this war keeps going for an extended period of time, things will only get worse from here.

In other words, enjoy this moment, because this is the best that conditions are going to be for quite a while.

Personally, I am more concerned about global food supplies than anything else.

According to the United Nations, the number of people around the world experiencing “acute hunger” was at the highest level ever recorded even before this war erupted.

Now farmers all over the northern hemisphere can’t get the nitrogen fertilizer that they desperately need because it is locked up in the Middle East…

Fertilizer is the link between energy and food. Natural gas is not just a fuel; it is the primary feedstock for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers through a process developed over a century ago called the Haber–Bosch method. Natural gas goes in, ammonia comes out, ammonia becomes urea, urea gets spread on cornfields in Iowa and wheat fields in Kansas and rice paddies in Asia. About 80 percent of nitrogen fertilizer production costs are attributable to natural gas. When the Strait of Hormuz is practically shuttered, you do not just block oil tankers and LNG carriers. You block the ships carrying urea and ammonia that the world’s farmers were expecting to receive this spring.

The numbers are sobering. The Persian Gulf region accounts for roughly a third of globally traded urea exports and approximately 25 percent of ammonia trade. Qatar’s state fertilizer company—QAFCO, considered the world’s largest urea supplier—shut down its plant when gas was cut. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers have seen exports stall. China, the other major global fertilizer exporter, has restricted outbound shipments to protect its domestic supply. These two supply sources together represent a substantial share of the global market, and both are simultaneously constrained.

For now, we are still eating food that was produced in 2025.

So everything still seems fine.

But in the not too distant future, annual crops such as wheat, barley and corn are going to be much more expensive.

Meanwhile, crops that do not have to be planted every year such as olives and grapes will not be seriously affected.

Nitrogen fertilizer must be applied at the proper time or it won’t work.

If the Strait of Hormuz opens up this summer, it won’t be possible to reverse the crop losses that we are facing.

We need the Strait of Hormuz to be opened immediately, but that simply is not going to happen.

The post “The Everything Meltdown”: Global Supply Chains Are Collapsing And Most People Cannot Even Imagine The Pain That Is Coming appeared first on Activist Post.