CryptoCow 💉x 7 #Vivele-LongLiveCanada.🇨🇦

Markham Hislop (@politicalham) is a Canadian energy and climate journalist and commentator. His substack and related NYT oped are sobering realities for all regarding of which side of the 49th you are on in North America. x.com/CowCrypto/stat… x.com/CowCrypto/stat…

Carney proved you don't need to be tall or jacked to make women go crazy over you.

A US F-35 took fire over Iran yesterday and landed. The pilot walked away. That sentence contains two stories the world will argue about for years. CENTCOM confirmed the aircraft sustained damage during a combat mission over Iranian territory on March 19. The pilot made an emergency landing at a regional US air base in the Middle East. No ejection. Stable condition. The aircraft is intact enough to be examined. The IRGC claimed responsibility and released video purporting to show a surface-to-air missile tracking and striking the jet. The video’s authenticity is under scrutiny. An urgent investigation is underway. The first story is survivability. The F-35 was designed to operate in the most contested airspace on Earth. It took a hit from whatever Iranian system engaged it and the pilot brought it home. No fifth-generation aircraft has ever demonstrated that capability in combat against a state-level integrated air defence network. The F-117 that was shot down over Serbia in 1999 crashed. The Israeli F-16 downed by Syrian air defence in 2018 was lost. This F-35 absorbed damage and landed. The airframe, the flight control systems, and the pilot’s training all functioned under conditions that have destroyed every previous aircraft in analogous situations. If this is the worst outcome the Iranian air defence network can produce against the F-35, the aircraft has validated its survivability thesis in the hardest possible test. The second story is detection. The F-35’s stealth architecture is designed to minimise radar cross-section against conventional tracking radars. If the IRGC engaged it with a radar-guided system, the investigation must determine whether the aircraft was detected through a stealth deficiency, a tactical error in flight profile, or an advanced Iranian sensor capability that US intelligence had not fully characterised. If the engagement used electro-optical or infrared guidance, such as Iran’s indigenous Bavar-373 with reported EO/IR tracking or a derivative of the Russian S-300 system, then the incident demonstrates a known vulnerability: stealth reduces radar signature but does not eliminate thermal or visual signature. An aircraft flying at combat speed over hostile territory emits heat. Heat can be tracked by sensors that do not rely on radar. This is not a design failure. It is a physics constraint that the F-35 was always understood to face. The investigation will determine which story dominates. If radar detection occurred, the implications ripple through every F-35 operating nation’s tactical doctrine. If non-radar detection occurred, the implications are narrower and the countermeasures are already understood. The difference matters for every air force that has purchased or plans to purchase the aircraft. What the incident does not change is the operational tempo. The US has flown thousands of sorties over Iran since February 28. One aircraft took damage and landed. The sortie rate has not paused. Hegseth announced the largest strike package yet on the same day the F-35 was hit. The air campaign continues at scale. The IRGC will amplify the video as proof that Iranian air defences can challenge American stealth. The Pentagon will point to the pilot walking away as proof that the F-35 survives what kills other aircraft. Both claims contain truth. The propaganda war and the engineering investigation will run in parallel for months while the kinetic war continues in days. The pilot landed. The jet survived. The questions remain. And the strait is still closed. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@gtconway3d @HuffPost Here is valued paper for the current President to appear on.

Don't suggest the obvious compromise here or the Secret Service will come visit you

@guyfelicella @danriccio_ Either that or Dan's flight stopped in Winnipeg, Dan made a quick run to the Sushi stand in the food court under Portage & Main, and got a California Roll and salmon sashimi to go. Recommended by Dan Murphy.

@danriccio_ Nooooo! The sushi was on the plane ride with you from Vancouver 😂

Had Toronto sushi for the first time since moving back from Vancouver… and yeah, that one’s coming off the takeout rotation for a while.

@mhmck @4AnimalLife You know, 'Ugly American' is an understatement for the current occupant of the White House.

Canadian PM Carney visited PM Takaichi in Tokyo, treated his host with respect, and signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Japan. Trump sat with Takaichi in the White House, blathered like an imbecile about Pearl Harbor, and damaged U.S. relations with Japan.

@stphnmaher @LeftHandStu Amazing how dangerous anyone can be with only a little bit of informaton.

Tweet of the month

@wonderofscience Science!

When a helicopter's rotors synchronize with the camera frame rate. 📽: Like tears in rain/CC-BY-SA-4.0

@mattjdh @PeterKellyBC Official chapter of Misogynists 'R Us!

The BC Conservatives:

@mark_slapinski It's Toronto.

This isn't Calgary, dumbass.

@dmacpher And an array of woodworking tools with a bushel of apples, enough for each and every member of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

I’m thankful the HoC doesn’t allow props or next Monday would be a sea of kettlebells me thinks 😆

@acoyne @jaynordlinger Think I can suggest a more appropriate tribute option for this history making President!

It's insane, is what it is.

@dmacpher Republican gerrymandering?

Neat

Twenty-one percent of all oil consumed on Earth transits the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty-seven percent of all seaborne oil trade. Twenty percent of global LNG. One third of seaborne fertiliser. And 99 percent of pharmaceutical feedstocks are petrochemical derivatives that trace back to the same naphtha, methanol, and gas that flow through the same geography. One chokepoint. Five supply chains. Four billion people downstream. Asia absorbs 89.2 percent of all crude that transits Hormuz. China takes 37.7 percent of the flows. India takes 14.7 percent. South Korea takes 12 percent. Japan takes 10.9 percent. The remaining Asian importers take 13.9 percent. Europe takes 3.8 percent. The United States takes 2.5 percent. The import dependence numbers are worse than the flow shares because they measure what percentage of a country’s total oil imports come through the strait. Japan: 73 to 87 percent. South Korea: roughly 70 percent. India: 42 percent. China: 40 to 45 percent. These are not marginal exposures. They are existential ones. When Japan loses access to Hormuz, it loses access to three quarters of its crude supply. There is no pipeline alternative. There is no domestic reserve large enough. There is no rerouting that replaces the volume. The strait is closed. Tanker traffic collapsed over 80 percent. P&I clubs voided war risk coverage. Oman crude hit $167. Dubai printed $157. Six Gulf states have energy infrastructure simultaneously damaged or suspended. Qatar declared force majeure on LNG contracts that may last five years. The CEO of Asia’s largest power buyer said there is no spare bridge capacity to replace the lost supply. The fertiliser layer is the one the market is still not pricing. UNCTAD confirms that roughly one third of global seaborne fertiliser trade passes through Hormuz. This includes urea, ammonia, sulfur, and phosphate precursors. Urea settled at $683 per ton on the NOLA market. China suspended nitrogen and potassium fertiliser exports. The two gates that control the molecule, Hormuz and China, are both closed simultaneously. The planting calendar does not wait for either to reopen. The pharmaceutical layer is deeper still. The American Gas Association confirmed that 99 percent of pharmaceutical feedstocks are petrochemical derivatives. Paracetamol requires phenol from cumene. Ibuprofen requires isobutylbenzene. Metformin requires dicyandiamide. India produces 47 percent of US generic drugs and imports 87.7 percent of its methanol from Hormuz-adjacent sources. API inventory buffers are two to three months from depletion. The medicine cabinet is connected to the same strait as the fuel tank, the fertiliser silo, and the LNG terminal. The bypass options are real but insufficient. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline can reroute 0.5 to 0.7 million barrels per day through Yanbu. The UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline offers limited additional capacity. Together they replace perhaps 5 to 7 percent of the 20 million barrels per day that normally transit. Pipelines do not carry LNG. They do not carry fertiliser. They do not carry helium. They do not carry the molecules that the downstream industries need. The American consumer sees $3.50 gasoline because WTI is insulated by domestic production. The Japanese consumer sees 73 to 87 percent of crude imports gated by a chokepoint under fire. The Indian consumer sees LPG prices rising while 85 percent of crude is imported. The Vietnamese consumer sees diesel up 59 percent with 20 days of reserves. The Sri Lankan consumer sees a QR code and a four-day workweek. Same strait. Same 21 miles. Five completely different lived experiences determined by one variable: how much of your economy transits the water between Iran and Oman. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Yes, it's real. Multiple sources (Bloomberg, Reuters, Al Jazeera, CNBC) confirm Iranian drone strikes hit Ras Laffan on March 2 and missiles on March 19, damaging QatarEnergy's LNG/helium plants. Qatar supplies ~30-35% of global helium (as LNG byproduct), production halted, spot prices doubled. Short-term risks to semiconductor fabs, MRIs, and more as inventories run low.

BREAKING: In a single day, Trump told the world he will spend $200 billion, deploy zero troops, freeze Iranian bank accounts, invoke Pearl Harbor to Japan’s face, reverse six allies from refusal to compliance, and keep the price of oil low. All simultaneously. None of it contradictory. The $200 billion first. Trump confirmed the Pentagon supplemental and called it “a small price to pay to make sure we stay tippy top.” This comes on top of a prior $150 billion allocation. The national debt is $38.86 trillion and will cross $39 trillion before March ends. Core PCE just printed 3.1 percent, the worst in nearly two years. GDP slowed to 1.4 percent in Q4. The money funds the war. The war funds the inflation. The inflation erodes the money. The zero troops next. Trump stated directly: “No, I’m not putting troops anywhere. If I were? I certainly wouldn’t tell YOU!” Then added: “We will do whatever is necessary to keep the price low.” Reuters reports internal discussions about US ground forces on Kharg Island, Iran’s 90 percent crude export terminal. Trump publicly denies troops while privately discussing the one deployment that would give Washington direct control over Iranian oil flows. The denial and the discussion coexist because they serve different audiences: the denial serves American voters who do not want another ground war, the discussion serves the Pentagon planners who need leverage. The financial warfare. Treasury Secretary Bessent confirmed the US is observing “major defections” within the Iranian regime. Treasury is tracking and freezing leadership bank accounts. Bessent framed it as “Baghdad Bob” collapse: “We now know where the Iranian leadership bank accounts are, and those are being frozen. And we will hold them and see who comes forward in terms of defections.” He referenced Kharg Island as a potential “US asset” if oil workers refuse coerced operations. The kinetic war degrades Iranian hardware. The financial war degrades Iranian loyalty. The alliance reversal. Six countries that said this was not their war, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, issued a joint statement pledging support for safe passage through Hormuz. Germany’s Pistorius said “not our war” two days ago. Germany signed the pledge today. Trump’s “no free rides” doctrine converted refusal into compliance in 48 hours. The Pearl Harbor jab. During the Takaichi summit, a Japanese reporter asked why Japan was not told before the strikes. Trump responded: “Why didn’t you tell ME about PEARL HARBOR?!” Then: “You believe in surprise much more-so than us!” He followed with the leverage: Japan gets 90 percent of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. America stations 45,000 troops on Japanese soil. The subtext is not historical insensitivity. It is transactional clarity. Japan depends on American protection and American-secured energy flows. The Pearl Harbor line reminds Tokyo that the relationship has always been asymmetric. The price management. Bessent floated sanctions relief on Iranian oil stranded on tankers. WTI trades at a $12 to $20 discount to Brent. The American consumer is partially insulated. The Asian consumer absorbs the full war premium. Every lever Trump pulled today, the spending, the denials, the freezes, the alliances, the rhetoric, converges on one objective: degrade Iran while keeping American gasoline below the political pain threshold. Six moves. One day. Zero troops. Two hundred billion dollars. And the strait that all of it revolves around is still closed. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

JUST IN: An Iranian ballistic missile impacted the Bazan oil refinery complex in Haifa today. The IDF described the damage as consistent with shrapnel from an intercepted projectile or limited direct impact. Iran claimed a direct hit. Fires were reported. Damage was minor. No injuries. No major leaks. Pipelines and transmission lines took shrapnel. Firefighters contained the blaze. Israel’s largest refinery, roughly 197,000 barrels per day and 40 percent of national refining capacity, remains operational. Compare what Iran did to Israel’s energy infrastructure with what Iran did to everyone else’s. UAE. Shah and Habshan. Zero production. Full suspension. Kuwait. Mina Al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah. Both refineries burning. Operations suspended. Qatar. Ras Laffan. Extensive damage. Force majeure. Seventeen percent of global LNG capacity impaired for three to five years. Saudi Arabia. Eastern Province refineries and SAMREF at Yanbu hit. Twenty percent output cuts. Bahrain. Partial force majeure. Iraq. Southern fields cut 70 percent. Power grid losing 4,500 megawatts. Six Gulf states. Devastating, sustained, infrastructure-destroying strikes on civilian energy facilities that supply the world. One Israeli refinery. Minor damage. Contained fires. No outage. The disparity is the doctrine. Iran has launched ten or more major barrages against Israel since February 28. Hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Beersheba. Israel’s multi-layered air defence architecture, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow, has intercepted the overwhelming majority. Fourteen to nineteen Israeli civilians have been killed. Roughly 3,500 injured. The Tel Aviv Savidor train station was hit. Residential buildings damaged. Power outages occurred. The human cost is real and the civilian suffering is genuine. But the energy infrastructure is intact. Haifa is operational. The Ashdod refinery is undamaged. Israeli power generation continues. Desalination plants run. The lights are on. Now look at the Gulf. UAE desalination is threatened by the Shah shutdown. Qatar’s entire LNG export system faces half a decade of impaired production. Kuwait’s two largest refineries are simultaneously compromised. Iraq cannot keep its electricity running because the gas that powered it came from the same South Pars field that Israel struck. Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the world’s most concentrated oil production zone, absorbed direct hits. The Mosaic Doctrine was written to inflict maximum economic damage on the countries that hosted the war, not the country that launched it. Israel’s air defences intercept 90 to 96 percent of incoming projectiles. Gulf air defences are effective but the targets are larger, softer, and more numerous. A refinery spans kilometres. An LNG train is a precision-engineered cryogenic facility that shatters under blast overpressure. A gas processing plant operating at thousands of pounds per square inch cannot absorb shrapnel the way a military hardpoint can. Iran knows it cannot destroy Israeli energy infrastructure through Israel’s air defences. So it destroys everyone else’s. The Gulf states hosted the bases. They are paying the energy bill. Israel launched the strikes. Its refinery took minor shrapnel. The market reads “Haifa refinery hit” and spikes Brent three to five percent intraday. The actual supply impact is near zero because the refinery is still running. The Gulf supply impact is catastrophic and worsening daily. The headline and the molecule tell opposite stories. The headline says Israel is under energy attack. The molecule says the Gulf is. Iran’s message is not aimed at Israel’s refinery. It is aimed at the six governments whose refineries are actually destroyed. The message: your ally’s air defences protect its energy. Your air defences do not protect yours. The arrangement costs you everything and costs them shrapnel. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

BREAKING: Four oil prices. Four different markets. The widest divergence in crude oil history. Oman crude futures hit $167 per barrel. Dubai crude printed a record $157. Brent settled at $110 to $112. WTI traded $96 to $108. The spread between Oman and WTI is now $60 to $71. That gap is not noise. It is the distance between a barrel trapped inside a war zone and a barrel sitting in a tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma. The physical barrel and the paper barrel are no longer the same commodity. Oman prices the molecules that must transit Hormuz. WTI prices the molecules that never touch it. Every barrel between those two numbers is a barrel whose price depends on which side of 21 miles of water it sits. The American consumer pays one economy. The Asian consumer pays another. Both exist simultaneously on the same planet, priced by the same commodity, separated by an insurance void and a gate operated by sealed packets. The consumer economies are already splitting along the same line. Vietnam. Diesel up 40 to 59 percent since February 28. Gasoline up 30 to 44 percent. Reserves cover roughly 20 days. The government cut tariffs and urged remote work. Twenty days measured from onset means the buffer expires before March ends. Australia. Petrol up 70 cents per litre, from $1.56 to $2.26. Analysts warn another 40 cents is possible. Australia produces crude but refines abroad. The refined product was processed in a Gulf that is simultaneously burning and uninsured. Sri Lanka. QR codes at fuel stations. Fifteen litres per car per week. Five litres per motorcycle. Four-day workweek mandated. Schools closed Wednesdays. LPG raised. The country that collapsed in 2022 under a fertiliser-linked foreign exchange crisis is rationing fuel under a system designed for exactly the dependency its geography makes unavoidable. India. LPG and cooking gas raised. Eighty-five percent of crude imported. Sixty percent from the Middle East. A sustained closure creates a dual shock: volumes fall while costs rise simultaneously. The Reserve Bank faces the same stagflationary trap as the Fed. The mobility layer is fracturing alongside the fuel layer. Gulf air cargo collapsed 79 percent in the first week. Jet fuel surged 58 percent. Airlines cannot hedge a physical absence of kerosene at airports that source from Gulf refineries now burning or suspended. IndiGo and Akasa imposed surcharges of 199 to 2,300 rupees. Vietnam Airlines warned of fuel shortages from April. Emirates and Qatar Airways face long-haul disruptions and Easter cancellations. The kerosene was refined at Mina Al-Ahmadi, Ras Laffan, and SAMREF. All three are offline. Ninety-five countries have reported petrol price increases since February 28. The number arrives from Al Jazeera. It means the strait has repriced daily life on every inhabited continent. The American driver filling up at $3.50 per gallon does not feel the same crisis as the Vietnamese driver paying 59 percent more for diesel or the Sri Lankan motorcyclist standing in a QR code queue on a Wednesday when the school is closed and the office runs four days. The strait did not raise one price. It created two economies. The insulated economy runs on domestic production, strategic reserves, and WTI at $96. The exposed economy runs on Gulf imports, voided insurance, and Oman at $167. Both share a planet. They no longer share a price. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

BREAKING: Qatar’s Prime Minister stood at a podium today and delivered one sentence that will fracture Gulf alliance architecture for a generation: “Everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is.” He did not name the country. He did not need to. The Arab diplomatic vocabulary has a grammar for this. When a Gulf leader says “everyone knows” without naming, the audience fills the blank. The X discourse filled it within minutes. The interpretation was dominant and immediate across Arabic-language accounts, with Gulf analysts and Arab media converging on the same reading. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Foreign Minister, called for an immediate halt. His full statement: “This war needs to stop immediately. The aggression needs to stop immediately. Because everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is, and dragging the whole region into this conflict is dangerous.” He described Iranian strikes on Qatar as a “dangerous miscalculation” and “betrayal.” He urged restraint from all sides. Consider the position this man occupies. Qatar hosts Al Udeid Air Base, CENTCOM’s forward headquarters, the nerve centre of Operation Epic Fury. American bombers launched from Qatari soil. Iran retaliated against the LNG facility down the road. The same government that provided the runway for the war is now absorbing the economic consequences. QatarEnergy declared force majeure. Ras Laffan sustained extensive damage. Seventeen percent of Qatar’s 77 million tonne capacity is structurally impaired. CEO Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters repairs could take three to five years. Twenty billion dollars in annual revenue is offline. The Prime Minister of a country that enabled the operation is publicly questioning who benefits from it while his national energy company faces half a decade of impaired production. That is not ambiguity. That is a fracture. The fracture runs through the entire Gulf alliance system. Saudi Arabia hosts Prince Sultan Air Base and absorbed Iranian missiles on Riyadh. The UAE hosts Al Dhafra and lost Shah and Habshan to zero. Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet and declared partial force majeure. Kuwait hosts Camp Arifjan and is watching two refineries burn. Every host provided the military infrastructure. Every host is absorbing economic retaliation. And the most outspoken just asked, on camera, whether the country benefiting from degrading Iran at zero direct cost is the same country whose allies are paying the full price. The market implications are immediate. If Qatar’s political establishment is signalling frustration with the cost-benefit distribution of this war, the assumption that Gulf states will indefinitely absorb strikes while providing bases becomes fragile. A frustrated host is a conditional host. Conditional basing changes the calculus for every military planner who assumed Al Udeid was permanent. The LNG implications are structural. A multi-year force majeure on contracts to Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China is not a delivery delay. It is a repricing of the global gas map. JERA’s CEO said there is no spare bridge capacity. Asian spot LNG doubled to $24 to $25 per MMBtu. European TTF surged 68 to 85 percent. BASF and Yara are cutting fertiliser output. The facility that feeds them may not fully recover until 2029 or later. The diplomatic signal and the infrastructure damage are now the same story. Qatar’s PM is not merely commenting on the war. He is repricing Qatar’s willingness to absorb its consequences. The country that houses the command centre and the country that exports 20 percent of the world’s LNG are the same country. And its leader just told the world, in one sentence, that the arrangement may no longer be worth the cost. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…