🇰🇵 A man smuggled Squid Game into North Korea on a USB drive, sold a copy to a high school student, and was tied to a post and shot to death.
The student got life in prison, his friends got 5 years of hard labor.
The Kim regime has outlawed foreign media, mandated state-approved hairstyles, criminalized sharing a birthday with Kim Il-sung, and operates prison camps where 3 generations of a family can be punished for 1 person's crime.
The madness isn’t accidental… it’s strategic.
Every escalation happened because the outside world got a little too close, and the regime knows the moment North Koreans see how South Koreans live, the whole thing starts to unravel.
40-50 nuclear warheads, 25 million people living under total information blackout, and the only thing keeping it together is fear, China's willingness to prop it up, and the fact nobody outside has wanted to pay the cost of ending it.
You can execute the smugglers, but you cannot kill the curiosity.
Eventually, that wall is going to crack.
Source: @KenLaCorte (@ElephantsInRooms YT)
🇮🇷🇺🇸 The oil market just crossed the breaking point and there's no playbook for what comes next.
The Strait of Hormuz closure knocked out 11 to 13 million barrels a day, roughly 4 times larger than any supply outage in history, and analysts at HFI Research say we are already past the point of no return.
The sequence goes like this: refineries start running low on crude, they bid aggressively to secure whatever is left, prices stop moving in a straight line and go parabolic, and then at some point demand just... collapses on its own because people can't afford it anymore.
Asia gets hit first and hardest since it depends most on Hormuz flows, and here's the brutal part: even if the Strait reopened today, actual oil deliveries to Asia wouldn't resume until mid-July.
The only thing that could offset a shortage this size would be COVID-style government lockdowns, and nobody is ordering those.
Without lockdowns, the only mechanism left is prices rising until people simply can't afford fuel anymore.
At which point the economy breaks itself.
HFI's honest conclusion: they have no idea where prices settle, and neither does anyone else
There is simply no historical precedent for what is happening right now.
Source: HFI Research
🇺🇸 THE US IS FAST-TRACKING $8.6 BILLION IN ARMS TO THE MIDDLE EAST. BYPASSING CONGRESS
Rubio invoked emergency authority to skip congressional review. Qatar gets $4bn in Patriot interceptor missiles. Israel, UAE, and Kuwait get precision guidance systems and integrated air defense worth billions more.
The reason: Gulf allies have been under sustained missile and drone attack since the Iran war began. Their stockpiles are depleted. So are America's.
Here's the part that should concern NATO:
The same week the Pentagon told Poland, the UK, Estonia, and Lithuania to expect serious delays on their weapons deliveries. The Iran war has drained US munitions stockpiles.
A CSIS study found the US has enough missiles to keep fighting Iran... but not enough to also deter China over Taiwan.
The Middle East war is being paid for with NATO's eastern flank. And China is watching.
Source: FT
💰 Baker Hughes wins LNG equipment award from QatarEnergy
Baker Hughes ($BKR) is 99% owned and controlled by the financial industrial complex (FIC)
Baker Hughes Largest Shareholders (Top Down)
✅ Vanguard Group Inc. (~12–13%)
✅ JPMorgan Chase & Co. (~10%)
✅ BlackRock, Inc. (~9–10%)
✅ State Street Corp (~6%)
✅ Capital World Investors (~4–5%)
✅ Dodge & Cox (~4–5%)
✅ Geode Capital Management (~2–3%)
✅ Capital Research Global Investors (~2–3%)
✅ Norges Bank (Norway sovereign wealth fund) (~2%+)
✅ Artisan Partners (~1–2%)
✅ Morgan Stanley (~1–2%)
Ownership by FIC category:
✅ Asset managers (Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street)
✅ Banks (JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley)
✅ Active fund managers (Capital Group, Dodge & Cox)
✅ Sovereign wealth funds (Norges Bank)
This is one contract of the thousands that will follow.
All crises like this are wealth transfers and concentrate power upwards.
I believe this crisis was a negotiated outcome between:
✅ FIC (Trump as press secretary, Chevron, Exxon, Norwegian SWF),
✅ OPEC+ (Saudi, Russia, Iran, etc.)
✅ CCP (China)
👀 Who pays the bill for the war & crisis that follows?
You pay higher prices (inflation)
Your share of national debt increases
If you can’t afford it, you sell assets until you “own nothing and are happy.”
Wash.
Rinse.
Repeat.
https://t.co/BkC328reFW
🇨🇳 🇺🇸 Trump: We need $2 billion a day to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
China's FM Senator: But the Strait of Hormuz was already open before the war? The root cause of this disruption is your illegal military operations against Iran.
You have created a Global Crisis OUT OF NOTHING
Pre-crime meets Big Brother: The Dutch government has proposed new legislation allowing the police to monitor and collect citizens’ online activity without any suspicion of a criminal offence, so they can target those they think might be rabble-rousers at protests/rallies to *prevent* public disturbances. For now, this includes ''only'' public posts, but the responsible minister has already expressed he wants to extend it to private messages and group chats. Totally normal of course, in a liBEraL DEmOcRaCY.
🇪🇸Spain's PM called Israel's new law what it is. Apartheid.
Israel passed a law. Palestinians get the death penalty for killing Israelis. Israelis do not get the same for the same crime.
Sánchez: "Same crime, different penalty. That is not justice. It is one more step toward apartheid."
Source: @sanchezcastejon
The sun was free. They sold you SPF 50 and a vitamin D deficiency.
Sleep was free. They sold you an app, a pill, and a wearable that tells you your sleep was bad.
Walking was free. They sold you a treadmill, a fitness tracker, and a £180 pair of trainers.
Fasting was free. They sold you meal replacement shakes and the anxiety that skipping breakfast would wreck your metabolism.
Cold water was free. They sold you a £3,000 plunge barrel and a podcast episode about it.
Silence was free. They sold you a meditation app with a premium tier.
Animal fat was cheap. They sold you seed oils, then supplements to replace what the animal fat contained.
Tallow was cheap. They sold you a seventeen-step skincare routine and a clinical trial proving your face needs ceramides.
Meat was cheap. They are currently selling you the idea that you shouldn't eat it.
The 20th century removed access to everything the body needs to function.
The 21st century is selling it back, one subscription at a time.
Your great-grandmother had none of the products.
She had all of the things.
🇮🇱 Israel has been in a near-constant state of war or high alert since its founding.
From the 1948 war and the displacement of ~750,000 Palestinians (the Nakba), through the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 Six-Day War, multiple Lebanon wars, repeated Gaza conflicts, and now the direct war with Iran, conflict has shaped much of its history and identity.
Whether you see it as necessary self-defense in a hostile region or the result of expansionist policies and over-reliance on military power, one thing is clear: Israel has rarely known long periods of genuine peace.
The big question many are asking right now is whether this cycle can ever be broken, or if perpetual conflict has simply become the norm.
Source: @trtworld
I could talk about the most shocking demographic change statistics all day long, but when I think about what is happening to Europe, I don’t think about numbers; I think about the fate of our people.
I think about Lisa († 17), Théo († 18), Jet († 17), Alex († 14), and all the other children who were betrayed by their governments, stabbed by immigrants, and then stabbed in the back again by our legal systems that let their murderers get away with it.
🇺🇸🇮🇱 Fmr CIA Officer John Kiriakou:
"There are 10,000 documents [related to the Kennedy assassination] that are never going to be released [by Trump].
Because every single one of them points directly at Israel.
[JFK] was actively trying to disrupt the Israelis from acquiring nuclear technology.
They decided they had to take him out."
Source: @WorldByWolf
🚨🇮🇷 BREAKING: Iran just made the one threat that could bring the Gulf to its knees
Iran's military headquarters warned that if its energy infrastructure is attacked, all energy, IT, and desalination facilities belonging to the U.S. and its allies in the region will be targeted.
Desalination.
That's the word that matters most here.
Gulf nations get most of their drinking water from desalination plants.
One report estimated that hitting Saudi Arabia's Jubail plant alone would force the evacuation of Riyadh's 8.5 million residents within a week.
Trump just gave Iran 48 hours to open Hormuz or he starts destroying power plants.
Iran just responded by putting a target on the one thing Gulf nations can't survive without: clean water.
Source: @sentdefender
BREAKING:
🇺🇸🇮🇷🇮🇱 Iran's demands for ending the war according to al-Mayadeen:
1) Guarantees not to repeat the war.
2) The closure of all US military bases in the Middle East region.
3) The US and Israel to pay full compensation to Iran.
4) US and Israel to end wars on all fronts in the region, including on all pro-Iranian groups.
5) Impose a new legal regime on the Strait of Hormuz.
6) Hand over elements from 'hostile media' to Iran.