Rob Chester

ICE agents were sent to airports to “fix” TSA lines. All they’re doing is wandering around, chatting with each other, and getting coffee. Your tax dollars at work.

🚨HUGE STORY FOX REFUSES TO COVER 🚨 Trump and Scott Bessent just handed Iran $14 BILLION by easing oil sanctions. Fox spent YEARS screaming about Obama's fake “pallet of cash.” Now? Total. Silence.

@anders_aslund Indeed. More countries developing nuclear weapons is inevitable.

Trump has made it meaningless to negotiate with the US. 1. Trump decides everything that is important. 2. Trump lies all the time. 3. Trump does not recognize agreements but violate them. Conclusion: Only arms matter. All have to arm as much & fast as possible. US is lost.

BREAKING: South Korea just announced mandatory fuel rationing. Government vehicles at public institutions barred from operating one day each week on a five-day licence plate rotation. The world’s 10th largest economy, a G20 member, a semiconductor superpower, home to Samsung and SK Hynix, the country that fabricates a quarter of the world’s memory chips, is rationing fuel like Sri Lanka. South Korea imports 73 to 87 percent of its oil from the Middle East. Every barrel transits the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is closed and mined. There is no alternative route for Korean crude imports at scale. The Kospi crashed 4.9 percent on Monday before Trump’s “productive conversations” post briefly eased the panic. The won is weakening. Inflation is accelerating. And now the Energy Minister is telling government workers which days they cannot drive. Count the dominoes. Sri Lanka rationed first: Wednesdays off, QR codes at pumps, LPG vanished from southern shelves. Bangladesh followed with public holidays to conserve fuel. Pakistan imposed restrictions. India tightened allocations. Slovenia became the first EU country with QR codes and odd-even plates. Now South Korea. The rationing is no longer a developing-world phenomenon. It is migrating up the GDP ladder. The 10th largest economy. The 12th largest military budget. A US treaty ally hosting 28,500 American troops. Rationing. Those 28,500 troops run on fuel. USFK operates bases across the peninsula that require continuous diesel, aviation fuel, and generator capacity. Joint exercises with the ROK military consume thousands of tonnes of fuel annually. Every barrel of that fuel traces back to the same Middle Eastern supply chain that South Korea’s Energy Minister just acknowledged cannot sustain civilian demand. If civilian vehicles are being restricted, military logistics are under pressure. If military logistics are under pressure, deterrence against North Korea erodes. If deterrence erodes, Pyongyang and Beijing calculate. The Strait of Hormuz is 7,500 kilometres from the Korean DMZ. The fuel that deters Kim Jong Un transits a chokepoint held closed by Iran’s 140 remaining missile launchers. Kim Jong Un is watching. Every day that South Korea rations fuel is a day that North Korea’s calculus shifts. Not toward war, not yet, but toward the conclusion that the American alliance system has a fuel dependency that a single regional conflict can exploit. The US cannot simultaneously secure the Strait of Hormuz with carrier groups, deploy 82nd Airborne paratroopers to the Iran theater, accelerate the 11th MEU from San Diego, AND maintain full deterrence posture on the Korean Peninsula. Something gives. The fuel rationing in Seoul is the first visible signal of what is giving. Taiwan is watching too. TSMC’s fabrication plants in Hsinchu are counting LNG reserves in single-digit days. Taiwan imports virtually all of its energy. If South Korea, with its larger strategic reserves and diversified economy, is already rationing, Taiwan’s timeline is shorter. The chips that power every Nvidia GPU, every Apple processor, every AI training run on Earth depend on a gas supply that depends on a strait that depends on a 5-day pause that depends on a Truth Social post that Iran says corresponds to nothing. Sri Lanka. Bangladesh. Pakistan. India. Slovenia. South Korea. Six countries rationing. Three continents. One strait. The molecules do not check GDP rankings. The molecules check whether the chokepoint is open. It is not. open.substack.com/pub/xerion/p/a…

@TansuYegen No-one does it like China.

China has officially opened the world's tallest bridge in Guizhou province, cutting travel time from 2 hours to just 2 minutes.

An excellent summary of impending problems. As always, it is the poorest that will suffer the most.

Really pleased to get a full tank of petrol for £60 today... Granted it was for the lawnmower but I'm trying to keep positive...

I've been analyzing the stock market for 50 years I manage billions of dollars and I'm an expert in macroeconomics Here's exactly what will happen from here with the Iran situation: I have no fucking idea

Orban’s Foreign Minister has confirmed that he systematically informed Moscow what EU leaders talked about behind closed doors. What a disgrace.

If you're flying out of JFK today, don't....

@BrandonStraka Literally nothing will resolve this quicker.

Delta Air Lines shuts down its special congressional fast-track service as the DHS shutdown continues. Calls grow to end perks for lawmakers. Members of Congress should wait in the same lines as everyone else.

The line at IAH may become a new type of microsociety. Babies will be born in the line. They’ll grow up knowing of nothing outside the line. The line will develop its own language, its own culture

I have a flight in two weeks. I’m leaving for the airport now… is that enough time?

A crying baby on a plane is an even better litmus test than the shopping cart. If it genuinely makes you angry, you have no empathy. No compassion. No soul. No ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You are the epitome of what's wrong with the modern world.

🚨FYI if you’re trying to fly out of IAH: my daughter has been in TSA line there for 8hours now and still not through security. Missed flight. Sleeping at airport to make sure she doesn’t miss her rebooked flight tomorrow am. Nightmare.

Incredible isn’t it.

BREAKING: The Strait of Hormuz is no longer closed. It is no longer open. It is something the world has never seen before: a permissioned corridor run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, priced at $2 million per vessel, payable in yuan. Three ships transited in the last 24 hours. Three. Out of a pre-war average of 60 per day. Total throughput: 310,000 deadweight tonnes. Three percent of normal. Four hundred vessels are waiting outside the strait right now. One hundred and fifty tankers. One hundred and twenty bulk carriers. One hundred and thirty others. Waiting for permission from the IRGC Navy to enter a 5-nautical-mile channel between Larak and Qeshm islands inside Iranian territorial waters. This is how the gate works. A vessel operator contacts approved intermediaries with IRGC connections, submitting full documentation: IMO number, ownership chain, cargo manifest, destination, crew list. The intermediaries forward the package to the IRGC Navy’s Hormozgan Provincial Command for sanctions screening, cargo alignment checks that prioritise oil over all other commodities, and geopolitical vetting. The toll is approximately $2 million per tanker. For a VLCC carrying 2 million barrels, that is $1 per barrel. Preferred currency: yuan. If the vessel passes, the IRGC issues a clearance code and route instructions. Upon approach, VHF radio hail, AIS verification, patrol boat escort. One ship at a time. Through the narrowest channel of the most important waterway on Earth. Iranian crude is still flowing. Approximately 1.1 to 1.5 million barrels per day, mostly to China, at near pre-war levels. Iran’s own oil transits the strait it controls. The blockade applies to everyone else. Iran is simultaneously the gatekeeper and the primary beneficiary. The toll funds the IRGC. The IRGC maintains the gate. The gate generates the toll. The circle is self-sustaining. Now look at what is NOT transiting. Fertiliser. Gulf nations supply 49 percent of the world’s exported urea. Ammonia requires the natural gas that Qatar declared Force Majeure on and that Iranian strikes disrupted at South Pars. Effectively zero fertiliser vessels have received approval through the permissioned corridor. The IRGC is prioritising oil because oil generates revenue. Fertiliser does not. The molecules that feed four billion people are trapped behind a gate that only opens for molecules that fund the gatekeeper. The yuan preference is the structural shift that outlasts the war. Every tanker that pays in yuan instead of dollars establishes a precedent. Every precedent weakens the petrodollar architecture that has governed energy trade since 1974. The IRGC is not just blocking a strait. It is building an alternative payment rail under live fire. The $2 million toll in yuan is not a fee. It is a proof of concept for a post-dollar energy settlement system, stress-tested in the most extreme conditions imaginable: a three-front war with the world’s largest military. The world’s central banks are trapped by the same strait: the Fed cannot cut, the ECB is hiking, the BOJ is tightening. Six countries are rationing fuel. Japan’s 10-year yield hit a 27-year high. Slovenia has QR codes at the pump. South Korea is barring government vehicles one day per week. And behind all of it, 400 ships wait outside a 5-nautical-mile channel for a clearance code from the IRGC Navy, payable in a currency that is not the dollar. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply. Controlled by a VHF radio call and a yuan transfer. The strait did not close. It changed ownership. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@shanaka86 Good job Trump holds all the cards.

This is absolutely the right call. Every airline should suspend specialty services for members of Congress until this is resolved. They can wait in line with the rest of us.

@jdpoc Good God. What a mistake.

It’s never a good look when a football team aligns itself with any political party. It’s a bloody terrible look when a football club aligns itself with hatred xenophobia, islamophobia, and homophobia.