Liens du 25 octobre ( à compléter) proposés par le site Sonar21
Naked Capitalism
- Links 10/25/2026 25 October 2026
- The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Libera, Amore Mio (1975) Run Time: 1H 48M Plus Bonuses! 25 October 2026
- The Price Tags of War 25 October 2026
Nima R. Alkhorshid – Dialogue Works
- Seyed M. Marandi: Iran's Counteroffensive Crushes Incoming Attack Within Minutes 25 October 2026
- Col. Larry Wilkerson & Larry Johnson: Game Over! The Worst Military Defeat Yet 25 October 2026
- Amb. Chas Freeman: The Energy Disaster That Just Put Global Markets Into a Coma 25 October 2026
- Robert Barnes: The Defeat Is Already Here 25 October 2026
Relax, It’s Only an Exxon Valdez on Steroids
Good news from the Persian Gulf: the war is going so well that the sea itself has joined the fight. While Washington’s experts debate missile counts and the price of oil (around $115 for Brent on Friday, in case anyone in the White House is still checking), Karl Miller, who is actually on the ground in the Gulf, sent me a note this week that nobody in the briefing rooms seems to have read. Don’t underestimate the damage to the world’s crude tanker fleet, he wrote, and don’t underestimate the pollution now spreading through the Gulf and down the coast of Oman. “It’s an Exxon Valdez on steroids,” he told me. “This is a catastrophe in its own right.”
But I’m sure it’s fine. Let’s look at the numbers, just for fun.
Shooting the delivery trucks
The UK Maritime Trade Operations center has now counted 119 vessels reporting damage this year, and 77 sailors killed or injured. October is shaping up to be a banner month: Bloomberg counted at least 23 attacks on ships in or near the Strait of Hormuz in just the first two weeks, at least five of them in engine rooms, which is the maritime equivalent of being shot in the knees. Two ships sank last week. Two more tankers, the Kylo and the Riesco, went down in September. Nothing says “freedom of navigation” quite like a navigable ocean floor.
On October 9, somebody put a hole in the Gem No. 2, a 302,783-ton Very Large Crude Carrier, off the UAE coast near Umm Al Quwain. On October 22, Iran claimed four more hits on ships doing ship-to-ship transfers. Tehran’s new “Persian Gulf Strait Authority,” which sounds like a harbor commission and acts like a firing squad, says it has 122 “non-compliant” vessels on its list. One oil broker told Bloomberg that “every VLCC hit is material.” You don’t say.
Eight Valdezes to a ship
A little arithmetic for the folks at the Pentagon. The Exxon Valdez spilled about 257,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound in 1989, and Americans are still talking about it. A single VLCC carries about two million barrels. So every supertanker sitting in the Gulf is roughly eight Exxon Valdezes waiting for a drone. And the Gulf is a shallow, nearly enclosed bathtub with lousy circulation. Whatever goes in, stays in. Steroids, indeed.
We’re already enjoying the preview. This week the UAE closed the beaches of Umm Al Quwain after a slick more than 22 miles long and more than 60 square miles in area washed ashore on the Khor Al Beidah peninsula. The UAE said, with admirable understatement, that the oil was “likely coming from a VLCC struck earlier in the month.” Fishermen have been advised to stay away from the fish.
Down the coast, Oman is hosting the Caroline Bezengi, a tanker carrying about 800,000 barrels that suffered a mysterious explosion on June 8, was abandoned by its crew and then drifted aground in, of all places, a marine nature reserve near Qibliyah Island, home to humpback whales and Socotra cormorants. It started leaking at the end of June. By August the slick covered hundreds of square miles. The whales were not consulted. Across the water, Iran is mopping up its own crude spill off Qeshm Island. Everyone gets a souvenir.
But who needs drinking water?
Here’s the fun part that the war planners seem to have skipped. The Arab Gulf states don’t just pump oil out of the sea. They drink the sea. Desalination supplies about 99 percent of Qatar’s drinking water, more than 90 percent of Bahrain’s, about 90 percent of Kuwait’s, 86 percent of Oman’s, 70 percent of Saudi Arabia’s and 42 percent of the UAE’s, according to figures compiled by CSIS and the Atlantic Council. The six Gulf states run about 3,400 desalination plants, a third of the world’s capacity, and more than 90 percent of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 of them. What could possibly go wrong?
Desalination plants have a small design quirk: they need clean seawater. When an oil slick reaches an intake, the plant has to shut down or risk wrecking its membranes and filters. We’ve run this experiment before. In 1991, Saddam Hussein dumped oil into the northern Gulf and trashed Kuwait’s desalination capacity, and Kuwaitis got running water four days a week, with the rest delivered by truck. Even a humble algal bloom in 2008 and 2009 shut plants in Oman and the UAE for up to two months. Imagine what eight Exxon Valdezes could do.
And the backup plan? The UAE’s own water-security planning envisions about two days of stored supply under normal demand. Two days. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, the countries that depend most on desalination, have what analysts politely call “insufficient storage.” Plants have already been hit directly: a strike in Bahrain in March cut water to as many as 30 villages, and Kuwait and the UAE have reported damage too. So the strategy appears to be: keep shooting at tankers in a shallow sea full of desalination intakes, and hope the wind cooperates. In the Gulf summer, a city without water is not an economic inconvenience. It is an evacuation.
Supertankers: now priced like space travel
Meanwhile, the world has discovered that you can’t actually move oil without ships. Who knew? In early January, chartering a VLCC on the benchmark Middle East to Far East route cost about $30,000 a day. By early October, according to Poten, it cost $1.3 million a day, a modest 43-fold increase. On October 8 it hit a record $1.4 million a day. For a few days this month, Bloomberg noted, renting a supertanker cost more than launching a rocket into space. Freight alone now adds about $33 to the delivered price of a barrel. In January it added $1.73.
Why? Partly because ships keep getting sunk, burned and sent to the repair yard from a fleet that had zero spare capacity to begin with. Partly because, with Hormuz restricted, tankers are stuck shuttling and pumping oil from ship to ship in the Gulf of Oman, a process the head of Vitol called “very inefficient” before observing that “there is really not quite enough shipping to go around.” And partly because shipowners have developed an irrational reluctance to sail a $100 million ship full of two million barrels of crude into waters where Iran keeps a target list. Cowards, all of them.
And the winner is…
Now for the punch line, courtesy of Miller. When the smoke clears, the country sitting prettiest on the water will be Russia. For years, while Washington and Brussels were busy sanctioning Russian oil, Moscow and its friends were quietly buying up tankers, mostly older midsize ships, to build the so-called shadow fleet. Ukraine’s government counted 1,337 of them as of February. Western capitals called it a sanctions-evasion network. In a world that suddenly can’t find enough tankers, it is called a fleet.
And the West has already come crawling. In March, the U.S. Treasury temporarily lifted restrictions on selling Russian oil sitting on detained tankers, for the sake of “stability in global energy markets.” This month, the President of the United States personally negotiated a deal to buy Russian diesel. Four years of sanctions, followed by asking Putin for fuel. Bravo.
To be fair, the shadow fleet has its own charms. The tanker leaking all over Oman’s nature reserve, the Caroline Bezengi, is believed to be one of Russia’s: old, opaquely owned and, by most accounts, insured by somebody’s cousin. So the shadow fleet is both Russia’s trump card and a floating environmental time bomb that nobody is accountable for. Naturally, the bill for that lands on the beaches of Oman and the UAE, not in Moscow.
So let’s review. We have shot up the world’s supertanker fleet. We have turned the Gulf and the coast of Oman into an oil-slicked bathtub. We have put the drinking water of tens of millions of people at the mercy of the wind and a few seawater intakes. And we have handed the biggest stock of spare tankers to the one country Washington spent four years trying to sanction into oblivion. Miller summed up the outcome for the rest of the world in a word I can’t print in a family publication. I’ll paraphrase: when this settles, Russia comes out on top, and the rest of us are in very deep kimche. Mission accomplished.
Here is my recent conversation with retired Russian General Gurulyov:
My Transition Protocol conversation with Mr. Z:
Chatted with Nima today about prospects for renewed US strikes on Iran:
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Guardian: Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping meeting will divide the world into spheres of influence
From VZ, Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to hold a summit with US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping has devastating consequences for the rest of the world, writes the British newspaper Guardian.
The UK is freaking out!
Record Tanker Rates Cripple U.S. Crude Oil Flows to Asia
From the MSM Oil Price.com.
Oil tanker freight rates have surged tenfold amid the Iran war, with shipping crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Asia costing up to $80 million per voyage.
Asian orders for U.S. crude have plunged 50%, potentially pushing November shipments to their lowest level in seven years.
Record shipping costs are reshaping global oil trade, boosting premiums for nearby crude while forcing U.S. and African producers to offer steep discounts.
Tough to check that point-by-point with Miller.
Petroleum was always a tough detail….
Chevron Moves to Take Over Russia’s Most Prized Iraqi Oil Field
Chevron moves closer to taking over Iraq’s giant West Qurna 2 oil field, securing exclusive negotiation rights following U.S. sanctions on Russia’s Lukoil.
West Qurna 2 could double production to 800,000 bpd, with Iraq reportedly expecting Chevron to unlock the field’s substantial untapped potential.
Washington is seeking to regain influence over Iraq’s vast oil reserves, challenging years of expanding Russian and Chinese control.
“Political Earthquake” Rocks British Columbia: Conservatives Win Election For First Time Since 1928
Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson, set to become premier, pledged to double natural gas production by 2032 and more than triple it by 2035.
His party plans to revive the province’s oil and gas industry and seek renewed investment from companies that exited its LNG sector, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Woodside.
Russia/China/Iran are civilizational states
They hold much of the earth’s resources
They’re somewhat self sufficient
They’re mostly contiguous
Their people are educated and value honor
And they’re lead by mature adults
They will survive – and build a more just world
Great one in your own voice. Thanks for keeping me updated on all the probs, haha.
Deep Kimchi – that’s nothing!
Swedes Continue Delivering Their National Dish To AFU – Thinking It’s A Big Help
MRE’s of surstremming are considered a national delicacy in Sweden
Hint – fermented fish. The Swedes do have a sense of humor, after all!
Temporarily? Which means restrictions will resume.
This goes to show that the conflict with Russia has something deeper behind it.
It’s the same thing that pushes the US to implement policies that are detrimental to its interests in the Middle East.
https://tinyurl.com/war-on-russia-a-zionist-plot
The price of dancing with the devil.
And part of the sky-rocketing (or is it space-rocketing?) increase in the cost of shipping, are the exceedingly high wages now demanded by sailors to crew these ships. A job that is becoming pretty dangerous, though maybe not as bad as a mercenary in Ukraine.
Some twenty years ago I chartered many ships for North Sea work. Supply vessels ran out at 8 to 15,000 uS dollars on long term contract and spot market ships 15 to 40,000 uS dollars a day depending on availability, plus fuel and lubes.
Anchor handlers about half as much again. One cost 150,000 a day, yes the only one available – thankfully only for ten days!
One company I was using was building a new vessel that ran out to 200 million uS.
A mega tanker costs 30,000 uS today? Larry C’s milage is different to mine. Just an observation.
A very good article!
That a country with the institutional development of the U.S. should have:
-a television clown as Secretary of War
-an inexperienced son-in-law and a crony corporate lawyer handling the most complex diplomatic affairs
-the father of his daughter’s husband serving as a special envoy for North African affairs.
And this is just at the surface level, visible to anyone. Frankly, this speaks poorly of Trump and his administration.
With such a de-professionalization, where is the U.S. heading?
Miller summed up the outcome for the rest of the world in a word I can’t print in a family publication.
Russia comes out on top, and the rest of us are in very deep kimche.
There are quite a few kids here, alright 🤣🤣🤣
Is it just me, or do I trace some subtle sarcasm in Larry’s latest missive? 😉
Keep ’em coming, Larry!
Cherry Picking News of Today:
Yesterday, a Storm Shadow missile struck the PJSC Proton-Electrotex in Oryol of Russia. This is the third Russian military-industrial facility struck by Storm Shadow missiles.
Ukraine struck Belgorod in Russia vith a massive drone attack, resulting in casualties.
Ukraine also attacked Rostov Oblast, the Republic of Adygea, Stavropol Krai, and Krasnodar Krai, with UAV alerts and warnings issued in nearly every district.
Elon Musk: The Armed Forces of Ukraine broke Starlink’s terms of service by using it for offensive drone strikes. SpaceX closed that loophole last week. Using the civilian service to kill people has never been allowed, while Starshield, the military version, is controlled by the US government.
The Russian Ministry of Defense: Russian air defense destroyed 1297 Ukrainian drones, 1 Storm Shadow cruise missile, and 4 Neptune long-range cruise missiles.
Russian drones struck the Vantovy Bridge over the Dneipr River in Zaporizjzja.
A Russian drone struck warehouse in Stare Selo, Rovno Oblast of Ukraine. https://t.me/intelslava/96932?single
The “Epicenter” warehouse in Kharkov of Ukraine was completely destroyed by a strike by Russian drones. https://t.me/intelslava/96934?single
Russian drones hit the 330/110/35 kV Electrical substation in Vinnitsa western Ukraine.
Iran’s Kish Island is experiencing a complete blackout.
Russia dismisses reports of an evacuation of Russian nuclear Specialists and Diplomatic staff from Iran, insisting that their work continues as usual. The fake news arrives allong with reports of a possible new US-Israeli attack on Iran.
China notified the UN Security Council and IAEA that UN Security Council Resolution 2231 has expired, and warns that sanctions and military action against Iran will escalate tensions, urging a return to diplomacy while defending Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy.
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband: Britain is stepping up diplomatic efforts to end the US-Israeli war on Iran. The conflict is driving up energy bills, food prices, and inflation. Britain cannot afford further economic damage.
Europe is Burning:
800.000 people marched through Paris yesterday protesting against the rising cost of living. The announced Demonstrations led to a new wave of riots, and streets are once again engulfed in fire, smoke, and looting. https://t.me/intelslava/96926
French Police arrested nearly 1,000 people during the nationwide protests.
The French media “Blast” has published a letter from French PM Sébastien Lecornu, dated October 22, ordering France’s main telecom operators to block social media upon his instruction. In 2024, Paris also blocked TikTok in New Caledonia during the unrest, before France’s top court ruled against the government.
Mass protests are continuing in Tirana of Albania. On Saturday, demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at police and set dumpsters and trash bins on fire. Police responded with water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets. More than 300 people, both protesters and police officers, have been injured in clashes since mid-October. https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/196199
There were protests in Italy over the cost of living which escalted into confrontations with the police in Bologna, Rome, Turin and Florence. The Protesters in Turin burn a portrait of Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. https://t.me/intelslava/96947?single
Riots and looting also took place in Barcelona of Spain.
Albania appointed an artificial intelligence system named Diella as a cabinet-level minister.
Prime Minister Edi Rama introduced the AI avatar to oversee public procurement and tenders to target corruption.
Albanian actress Anila Bisha sued the government for using her voice and likeness without her consent.
Widespread corruption, Kushner’s Lagoon and Flamingo’s .
Get this :Albania riots to remove PM Rama for corruption who appointed an AI anti-corruption minister.
That last paragraph pretty much sums it up. One would think our political leaders would have at least a “simple” brain, but in reality, they have “no brain at all”.
I’m glad I watched all Larry’s video with the RET GEN. 🫡
I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson, but I have to strongly reject your theory that oil and fuel leaking from bombed tankers and vessels are harmful to the environment.
If that were true, surely the environmental activists would already be chaining themselves to something, holding emergency press conferences, and declaring a planetary catastrophe. Environmental agencies would be issuing urgent warnings every five minutes demanding an end to the war.
To be honest, I’m surprised they haven’t used these oil spills to demonize Iran yet. But I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we see a heartbreaking photo of an oil-covered polar bear, accompanied by an emotional speech about Iran’s crimes against the environment.
Interestingly, they also seem to have given Russia a free pass. Over 2.5 million tons of munitions have been expended, causing massive destruction, yet apparently none of this is enough to make environmentalists even flinch. At least
1.5 million deaths? No problem. Twenty pensioners die of heatstroke in Paris? A global emergency.
Also the world were practically celebrating every time Ukrainians posted footage of Russian oil refineries or fuel depots going up in smoke and asked to blow up more 😂. The same enthusiasm was on display when Tehran was literally engulfed in black smoke following American bombing raids.
And I’m not even kidding about this last part: recently a scientific “study” emerged suggesting that penguin shiat contributes significantly to global warming…this is what worries the “scientists”
Blowing things up is the more direct approach to reducing global fossil fuel consumption, the thing the greens are after. Fuel storages in the west get depleted, refining capacity is reducing, tankers sink to the bottom of the ocean and if everything goes right, the entire middle-east will be on fire and not supply the world with oil for the foreseeable future.
Short term environmental catastrophy for a long term change in energy consumption. They believe a sharp drop in supply will push for alternatives.
It’s a war on fossil fuel, politics by other means.
it’s okay if people freeze to death in winter
main thing we can’t blow more CO2 into the air
although CO2 is not what is causing temperature and climate to shift
Those who started the war and caused all the damage are on the hook–no others. In a Just world, the reparation owed by the guilty would be in the trillions.
👍
‘Mates rates?”
Means America Gas Again
Making America Gas Again
More America Gas Again
Measure America Gas Again
Measuring America Gas Again
MAGA
A must get this shirt, sweatshirt and suit and tie.
Laugh, Love, Live
dennis hanna
A summary of recent developments in the Middle East as we wait for hostilities to restart between USrael and Iran any time soon: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/calm-before-the-storm
I wrote a paper on the Exxon Valdez debacle back in University. No joke. They did hit the spill with dispersant and fought over effective means of dealing with the spill.
The fact remains they did attempt to clean up thee spill and the wildlife (with volunteer help)
It sounds to me like what Larry is describing makes the Valdez salad dressing compared to what the area has been hit with, but after reading the post below it sure does lead to hope.
There are two very big, very important differences between Alaska, where the Exxon Valdez ran aground, and the Persian/Arabian Gulf.
Personal experience:
1985 Kuwait oil pier: Fish under the pier so close together you could almost walk across them.
1986: Ship drags anchor over 40″ crude oil pipeline. Major spill. Zero fish under the pier that summer.
1987: Fish returned, much fewer in number, maybe 20% to 30.
1988: Fish back to normal.
The oil on the beaches will be cleaned up quickly. The ecosystem’s feeding frenzy will take care of most of what does not get washed ashore, and, yes, there will probably be a few tarballs, but then, there have always been tarballs i the Gulf, particularly on stoney beaches.
Oil spills in the Gulf are problems. not catastrophes
👍
Maybe, but the war is just beginning, and we are not even talking about radiatios fallout, yet.
Very interesting. 🫡
natural asphalt lake in Venezuela
but nothing new
remember the Deepwater Horizon??? Seems like everybody has forgotten about that already… guess it’s not convenient to talk about the ultimate world-ending oil catastrophe that did not end the world
The earth does not have a problem with oil ( a natural fucking product ) but people sure do.
👍
These ship owners and ship captains must be learning compromised. If I touch a hot stove once, I tend not to touch it again. If one ship gets blasted going through the strait without permission and everyone knows about it, I would think that no one would try the same trick again. What is wrong with these people?
They are greedy!
Their stocks are doing well, though, with great dividends: DHT, INSW, LPG. etc.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well I guess the main thing is that this monument to Exxon Valdez in the Gulf region is no where near Mar-a-Lago or the coast of Florida.
What an eyesore for golfers to start with.
85 years ago Germany sunk a lot of tankers off the east coast of Florida. The tar balls are still coming in to the beach sometimes.
And they were tiny tanker days by comparison.
And at least then the US was against fascism and Nazism and didn’t start the war by invading Poland.
Britain started the war by conniving a defence treaty with Poland that gave Poland the courage to mistreat the German population located in German lands that were given to Poland after WWI. This Polish behaviour and the Poles refusal to return German lands to Germany then resulted in Hitler’s invasion.
Great Britain also gave Czechoslovakia to Germany on purpose to make it strong enough to wage war against the USSR. Their goals were the destruction of Germany and the weakening ot the USSR (27M deaths). They were wildly successful, but lost their empire to the US.
👍
On the other side of West Asia the IDF and rampant “settlers” are destroying olive groves hundreds of years old and spraying the land with glyphosate when they have no indigenous women and children to slaughter.
https://basirapress.org/2026/02/06/israel-glyphosate-lebanon/
👍
They have also authorised the creation of a hundred more illegal settlements on West Bank lands to be populated by the criminally sick and deranged settlers, mostly from America, I believe.
👍
I wonder if the number of 1,337 for the Russian shadow fleet isn’t a prank pulled by Ukraine on Karl Miller.
.
It is an elite number…
😂😂😂
The Ukrainian government’s catalog, maintained by its intelligence services, listed 1,337 ships as part of the shadow fleet as of February 2026. By the end of 2022, the fleet stood at over 600 ships, of which roughly 400 were crude oil tankers. By December 2023, independent estimates placed the figure between 1,100 and 1,400 vessels. The fleet has more than doubled in size in three years.
https://www.shipfinex.com/blog/shadow-tanker-fleet
Very interesting. 🫡
Appreciate the sarcasm, but most people here understand who’s responsible, and the gulf states didn’t help themselves by aligning with the US in this exercise, in spite of western pearl clutching and blaming it all on Iran. The coverups and blame shifting aren’t going to resolve the west’s or America’s problems as accepting a move downwards on the global status totem is totally unacceptable to the power centres in Washington (and its owners). I guess Europe will be awash in a new wave of refugees which should accelerate the demise of not just the EU but the viability of some nation states.
I smell xenophobia against refugees in your comment.
And I detect the stench of wokeness in yours.
It’s the stench of decline from a homogeneous society into a fragmented one.
It’s all part of elite plans to extract more wealth from the people.
Hardly, it’s just fact of compounding stupidity often called blowback.
This is one of your best, Larry. Thank you. As someone with background in environmental engineering although I was a technician, I was as aware of the environmental effects as much as the war. They go hand in hand.
Everything you described about the stupidity and pollution has been consistently excellent. When you wrote about ships and engine rooms you proved your diligence. I know because I’m a grandson of a Merchant Marine Sea Captain, my father and both uncles were sailors. My Dad’s father owned a seagoing tugboat fleet.
I’ve been inside desalinization plants. Some also double as power plants.
You know your shit!
Don’t be daft.
Kimchi, frequently misspelled as kimche, is a traditional Korean side dish made from salted and fermented (intentionally rotted) vegetables. Yuck.
In deep kimchi is an American military slang expression meaning “in deep shit” (which accurately describes rotten vegetables if you ask me!).
You don’t know what you are talking about.
Cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, and sourdough, among many other staples in global cuisine, are byproducts of fermentation.
It’s not rotting. Wine and most spirits (alcohols) are produced via fermentation.
Kimchi is no more weird than kefir or yogurt, which are fantastic foods for bolstering our gut microbiomes with naturally derived prebiotics.
👍
I recently learned that their bacteria produce serotonin. Fermented foods literally lift your spirits.
MAC AND CHEESE YUMMMMMMY
👍👍👍
Hopefully people read this.🫡
There are many kinds of kimchi, not only the cabbage-pepper kind, and it is a traditional method for storing food to last through winter and spring. In a traditional Korean meal and in parts of China, the table is set with a large number of various kinds of kimchi. Of course, every diner has a bowl of rice. My favorite was ‘mul kimchi’ made of fresh greens.
We all know what kimchi is. That is, those of us in California.
And why ordering Dim Sum, say no fat!
So do I having Korean, Chinese and Amerasian relatives. None of us still live in the land of fruits and nuts.
It’s all beef and corn now?
(Delicious for sure).