Cody Shirk

**Around 15-20+ notable refinery fires/explosions have been widely reported worldwide in 2026 so far (Jan-May), including multiple in the US (Texas Port Arthur, Louisiana Chalmette, Oklahoma Tulsa, Washington), Mexico (Dos Bocas twice + Salina Cruz), India (Pachpadra), Australia (Geelong), Turkey, Spain, Taiwan, and others.** Some outlets cite over 40 incidents in a ~45-day window early in the year. Historically, major global refinery incidents averaged low double-digits or fewer per year over the prior 30 years (with occasional clusters from maintenance issues, weather, or conflicts). This year's pace in the first 5 months looks unusually elevated based on news aggregation and industry tracking. Exact totals vary by what counts as "significant."

De-dollarisation continues: This is painful for dollar bugs. So much so that they quote everything in dollars even though no part of the transaction involves dollars. They also seek to imply that Argentina had no choice but to accept the swap deal with China. They could have negotiated a deal in dollars, they chose not too. Why because trading in the dollar is highly inflationary for them. It is why de-dollarisation is the way forward. So what have they done? Argentina has drawn down once again on its swap line with the PBoC. It is using RMB to help Argentine companies pay for imports and to free up capital to seek to shore up the peso. They will also make early repayments on Argentina’s loan from the IMF. All this will be conducted in non-dollar terms.

Pet Owners: It’s time that we make pet food a little bit cheaper. This week, I introduced new legislation to get rid of the sales tax every time you buy pet food.

I can’t know whether it is ignorance, vanity, or the old imperial reflex in a brand new outfit , but I increasingly get the impression that many in the West would sooner see their own civilisation abase itself, Trump publicly humiliated, and the Iranian people left to endure clerical totalitarianism, than admit that those who actually live under such a regime may understand it rather better than those who moralise about it from a safe distance. What is striking is that when I speak to my Iranian friends, of whom I seem to have an unusual number, they are overwhelmingly on Trump’s side, or at the very least on the side of anything that might weaken the theocratic machine that rules them. Yet many Westerners, even some of my close friends , endlessly congratulate themselves on their self assumed superior moral refinement, presume to instruct these same Iranians on what is supposedly best for Iran and the world . One even posted that Iran had a sovereign right to an atomic bomb ? The conceit is astonishing. It is, in truth, an old colonial instinct: the urge to lecture a people about their own condition, to deny them authority over their own suffering, and to assume that righteousness belongs by natural right to the distant observer. The same impulse extends itself to the Arab majority of the region as well, who are also treated less as political adults than as objects upon which Western virtue may be theatrically displayed. The instinct is also old , the westerner civiliser . Beneath all the language of morality lies the same old assumption, namely that the Westerner is wiser, purer, and more entitled to judge than the people who must actually bear the consequences.

🚨 UAE presidential adviser to Reuters: “The UAE no longer needs the United States to defend it, as it proved during the Iranian aggression that it is capable of defending itself effectively.” ▪︎ “It is time to consider closing U.S. bases in the Arabian Gulf, as they are a burden on the UAE.”

🚨 HAPAG-LLOYD ON REOPENING OF STRAIT OF HORMUZ:FOR TIME BEING, WE WILL REFRAIN FROM PASSING THROUGH STRAIT