This is terrible. Men, if you need help, call a family, cousin, brother, friend, neighbour or helpline. You are loved. Be kind to yourself and to one another and lift others up. The economic situation will not improve from here on…

There is a viral video going around which "suggests" that there were at least 720~ American service members KIA with the war in Iran (not injured, but actual KIA). I am not sure where people get such data or analysis but I imagine this would be a treasons act and 720~ families, spouse, parents and children would have to be in on it for this to work. Not chance you can get this many civilians to hide and not mourn their deaths. I do not buy this number but have you seen any other similar numbers going around and any data that backs this up?

This is by far the best diplomatic picture I have ever seen… Two powers. The Rising and the Risen. I don’t yet know why I find this image fascinating but it’s too good to not post.

𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗜𝘁 𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗧𝗲𝗵𝗿𝗮𝗻'𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗜𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗿𝗮𝗻'𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗜𝘁. On 23 September the United States placed Iran's entire aviation sector under sanctions. The mechanism of control is the US dollar. Treasury Secretary @SecScottBessent said it plainly: if an Iranian plane lands, you cannot fuel it, service it, or sell its tickets, or you are cut out of the dollar system. Washington calls the wider campaign "Operation Economic Outcast." Within a day the effect was visible, and it was the neighbours who delivered it. - Georgia imposed a full ban. - Azerbaijan suspended every Iranian flight. - Iraq halted flights into Baghdad. - Turkey had Mahan Air pull out at Ankara's request. - Oman cancelled the Tehran to Muscat route. - Iran Air and Mahan Air, the two carriers that tie Iran to the world, were grounded across the region in forty-eight hours. - China and Russia refused, and called the measure illegal. Washington's aim is straightforward. Isolate Iran, choke a channel it claims moves weapons, personnel and cargo, and drive the daily cost of the war onto ordinary Iranians until the pressure reaches the state. This is the "aviation front of a siege" that already runs through oil, banking and the naval blockade. The American mistake is a category error. Washington filed this under economics, a sanction, a financial penalty, a line item. It keeps its economic war and its kinetic war in separate columns. Iran does NOT. Tehran has stated, openly and often, that it treats EVERY phase as war, that even diplomacy is war carried on by other means. If diplomacy is war, an airline blockade is war, and once Iran files a thing as war it stops being the Treasury's file and becomes the military's. Iran has published its doctrine for anyone willing to read it. The declared pillars: 1. Unity of Arenas. All fronts are ONE front. A blow against any part of the Axis keeps the whole war live, an informal Article 5. 2. Reciprocity. An eye for an eye, blow for blow, to rebuild the deterrence the opening strikes broke. 3. Proportional escalation. For every strike absorbed, Iran answers at 1.5 times, to make the next attack cost more than the last. 4. Energy symmetry. If Iran cannot export its oil, no one exports through the Gulf either. The chokepoint is the equaliser. 5. Facilitators are targets. Any state whose soil, airspace, ports or bases are used to strike Iran or to enable the strike is a legitimate target. Iran has warned this for years, and acted on it when it hit a US base in the Gulf. 6. Forward defence. Keep the fighting away from Iran's own cities, through allies and depth rather than on home ground. 7. Strategic patience with a promised answer. Absorb, then retaliate at the time and place of Iran's choosing, the "True Promise" template of direct strikes. 8. Mosaic defence. Thirty-one provincial commands built to fight on if the centre is hit, so the country cannot be decapitated. 9. Asymmetric deterrence. Mass, cheap missiles and drones to offset an enemy that owns the sky. Against that doctrine, the blockade traces a clear path. The states now denying Iran fuel, landing and servicing are, in Iran's own filing, enabling an act of war against it. Pillar five does not distinguish between a bomb and a banking penalty. What counts to it is the enabling, not the instrument. By Tehran's stated logic, Baghdad, Ankara, Baku, Muscat and any Gulf capital that joins the blockade have moved from bystander to PARTICIPANT. Read or listen to the full analysis on what this means, the order of effects on the Middle East and wider region and how this shapes the next phase of the war. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!

This week, the Chinese President Xi will be in America meeting with Trump. So the media will be talking a lot, but none of them will be able to tell you why this is such a significant visit... So, it is an excellent opportunity to get yourself and circle of friends up to speed on what this all means for America, for the world and what the two presidents may be talking about, what are the critical issues for both and how the future may look after this visit. Truly, the below collection of my writing will help YOU become conversant in everything that is relevant to USA, China, oil, the war, Iran and Taiwan. Here is a list of HIGHLY recommended listens or reads for you to acquaint yourself with. Share it with others that may find it useful and support my work that resonates with you. Amplify this signal, let others discover it too. 1. The Great Decoupling: Why Breaking Up With China Makes Everything You Buy More Expensive. 2. History Says 75%. Six Proxies Say It Is Already Happening. 3. Iran's Oil Is Going to China: The Strategic Petroleum Reserve Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About 4. The Mecca Pact Was Built for a Vacuum That Has Not Opened Yet: China 5. Why China Will Not Let the Islamic Republic Collapse. This Is Not About Ideology. It Is About Breaking Out of a Cage. 6. China Has Been Running a Secret Naval Academy for 18 Years. The Sign on the Door Says Anti-Piracy. 7. The Double Edge: A Chinese Missile Just Landed in Yemen, Fired by Saudi Arabia, While China Also Arms Iran. 8. Saudi Arabia Learned China Can Sell You Missiles. It Will Not Fight Your War. USA It Is Then. 9. China Is Quietly Turning the Softest Bar in the Cage America Built to Contain It. Watch Indonesia. 10. The Three Gates: Iran, Taiwan, and Greenland Are ONE War. China Is the Objective. This is the top ten, there are many more analysis on the substack. Leave your thoughts and let me know if you enjoy this collection of works and displayed lie this. Signal, not noise!

Everyone wants dollars. Everyone needs dollars. The United States Dollar cannot be left alone to die. It needs to be saved by all means necessary because the entire world economic order depends on it and most people have no idea until you start to travel globally, to remote villages in Mexico, Kenya, or Pakistan. Everyone knows what it is, everyone knows it has "value" because it has become an international language of trade. The US Dollar is treated better than gold in some places. Many people save in the USD. This system needs to survive until a viable solution is found, not sure if a solution will be found, but for now, its the best thing we have... If we let it die, the entire global economy will implode and I have not had the imagination yet to run what that actually means because it is a frightening thought. Save in gold, consider land, but first research and learn about bitcoin, and make your decision accordingly. Signal, not noise!

Given this week will be dominated by the Chinese President's visit to USA, the airwaves will be dominated by who said, what and how it was said. Very few will tell you the deeper plays happening behind the scene and what it all means. With that, I have prepared the collection of my writings and analysis that I have done over the past 6 months that are absolutely critical reads or listens for you. This will give you a deeper understanding on the current state of affairs between China and USA and why it is such a critical visit by President Xi with Trump in Washington. I highly recommend you check this article out, listen or read top 10 of my works and analysis related to this visit. Link: Amplify this signal, pass it to those who may be in find value in the topic. Signal, not noise!

Everyone is talking about a diesel ban TODAY. I wrote about it for the first time back in MAY, June and JULY. The signal was strong with those 57 people who saw the post when I had about 100 people following me back then. See full analysis on what comes next in comments below 👇 Signal, not noise!

President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington, D.C. now for a state visit to the United States and Trump. This is the visit that will decide a couple of this: 1. What happens to Iran and the Existential War in the Middle East. 2. What happens to the Ansarallah Houthis in Yemen. 3. What happens to the blockades in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab Al Mandeeb. 4. What happens to Taiwan and the Asia Pacific island chains of America around China. 5. The shipping routes via Arctic near Greenland to Europe. This is essentially a meeting between a Rising Power and a Global Power and these meetings will solve or exacerbate whether we are going towards further escalation and war, or de-escalation and understanding. Too much is at stake for everyone else who are not in the room. See analysis here: Signal, not noise!

There is a viral video going around which "suggests" that there were at least 720~ American service members KIA with the war in Iran (not injured, but actual KIA). I am not sure where people get such data or analysis but I imagine this would be a treasons act and 720~ families, spouse, parents and children would have to be in on it for this to work. Not chance you can get this many civilians to hide and not mourn their deaths. I do not buy this number but have you seen any other similar numbers going around and any data that backs this up?

Everyone is talking about a diesel ban TODAY. I wrote about it for the first time back in MAY, June and JULY. The signal was strong with those 57 people who saw the post when I had about 100 people following me back then. See full analysis on what comes next in comments below 👇 Signal, not noise!

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗣𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗼𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝗶𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗿𝗮𝗻. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗪𝗮𝘀 𝗔𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲... Pistachios and oil are the same story told but 40 years apart, and both are about Iran and the United States. Through my form of strategic realist lens I understand them as one move... The entire American pistachio industry grew from a single Iranian seed. In 1929 a US Department of Agriculture collected pistachio cuttings in Iran. One selection, named Kerman after the Iranian city it came from, is still the backbone of the California crop. Iran had grown pistachios for thousands of years and was the world's producer without rival. Then came the 1979 revolution, then the sanctions, and Iran lost the American market nearly overnight. California started growing and producing pistachios and eventually fully filled the consumer demand. In 2008 the United States passed Iran to become the world's largest pistachio producer, and today it grows close to HALF of the world's supply while Iran sits near a quarter. A billion dollar American industry was built on the back of sanctions on Iran, from a seed borrowed out of Iranian soil. The same script now runs on oil and gas, in real time. In the spring of 2026 the United States hit record LNG exports, most of it routed to Europe, at the exact moment the fighting and the blockade at the Strait of Hormuz were cutting Qatari gas and Gulf crude off from the continent. Trump paired the blockade with a sales pitch, telling the nations squeezed most by the Existential War in the Middle East and by the closed Straits to buy American oil instead. That blockade does two jobs at once, a military one and a commercial one, and the second will outlast the first. Through my form of strategic realism the pattern resolves into a military and economic doctrine that many have not called out, and it runs the same way every time. Sanction or blockade Iran (or any other country that you want to take over their industries), choke a commodity it lives on, let American producers move into the demand it leaves behind, and Iran's market share contracts in a way that does NOT spring back when the shooting stops. The advantage is structural and it outlives the war. They ran it on pistachios across four decades. They are running it on oil and gas now. Everyone is well aware that the entire American pistachio industry and its success was born out of the sanctions on Iran. If we just swap the "pistachio" for "energy" and the California grower for a Texas gas executive, and the sentence still holds. Same logic, different commodity, different century. Iran built the pistachio from a seed. America borrowed the seed, sanctioned the farmer, and took the market. Iran sits on and manages one of the largest oil and gas reserves on earth. America is now blockading the lane it ships through and offering itself as the replacement supplier. None of this was ever only about weapons or enrichment. It is about who controls what the world eats and what the world runs on, and sanctions are the cheapest way to take a rival's market and hold it. We need a new economic theory looking at "Sanctions Capitalism" to study and conduct a deep dive on this. You can read or listen to the full analysis here: If you are keen to support my work, you can become a paid subscriber on Substack. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!

This is a dangerous escalation for the Existential War of Middle East. This photo is a message to Iran and Yemen’s Ansarallah Houthi that a coalition is getting ready. This photo was taken in NYC UN General Assembly in USA yesterday. It is the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt. It is a dangerous message because I have been writing about this for months now that eventually Egypt WILL be forced and dragged into the war because of its trade route via Bab Al Mandeeb and the Suez Canal being impacted due to the war, and the other three are members of the Mecca agreement, and the Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement. They are not there to have Arabic coffee, they are signalling of what is coming. Link to full analysis below 👇 in comments. On a side note, Arabic coffee is delicious. 🤷‍♂️ Signal, not noise!

If you zoom ALL the way out on a map, the Sudan Civil War is another strategic front between Izz r ael and Iran for access to the Red Sea. I am over simplifying it but essentially, since the signing of the Abraham Accord, the expectation was that Sudan would align fully with Izz r ael. It did not. Sudan went to Iran and purchased Iranian made drone technologies and capabilities to diversify its military arsenal. That did not go down well with Izz r ael. So essentially, here are the wants and needs of each from 40,000 foot view. 1. Iran wants and needs another port access which is Port Sudan in the Red Sea to reinforce its grip hold on the Red Sea via Port Sudan and Ansrallah Houthis in Yemen. Iran also wants Izz r ael to NOT get influence or access there as that would pose a threat to Ansrallah Houthis influence in the Red Sea. As a result of this, the American gov issued a statement this week saying they no longer recognize the Sudanese government because they essentially violated the Accord with Izz r ael. 2. Izz r ael wants to prevent the Sudanese gov from giving access to the Port Sudan to Iran and wants its own capabilities there to monitor and run operations against Houthis across the water against Yemen, from Port Sudan plus it wants and needs access to secure its own supply and trade route in the Red Sea. It's not a civil war exactly, it's another proxy war and a regional war with another angle. If you start analyzing with this knowledge, the actors, the methods and the strategy all starts to click for you. Either you are in all the way with the Izz r aely Abraham Accords, or you are all the way out into a war zone. No middle ground. Signal, not noise!

𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗦𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗕𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿, 𝗧𝗮𝘅𝗽𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. Since this war started in March, I have argued that the American farmer has been one of its biggest losers, and he keeps getting handed "fakchievements," (fake achievements), flooded across the airwaves at his expense, all talking points with ZERO follow through and no accountability. This is NOT the first time either. Over the summer, when the Trump administration was pushing to "unfreeze Iranian funds", the pitch to the American farmers was that "lifting sanctions would make American farmers RICH", because Iran would be "FORCED" to spend that money buying American food. Iran rejected it outright and said, yeah no thanks, we will take the cash! Tehran wanted its frozen funds released to it, in cash and upfront, and its own negotiator said plainly THEY WERE NOT GOING TO BUY American farm goods from USA. It was never going to happen, and it never did. The farmer got a headline, made to feel important and worthwhile for a news cycle and then no purchase order ever came from Iran. ZERO. Just talk. Now fast forward to 21 Sept, Today, now, @POTUS Trump announced again a "massive" deal to buy potash from Belarus, and said the price would be "substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers." No one asks HOW???? How could this actually happen? What are the mechanics? The United States imports about 90% of its potash, and close to 90% of that comes from Canada, by rail, straight across the formerly friendly border. Belarus is landlocked. Its potash used to move out through Lithuania until Lithuania SHUT the port on it, so today it moves through Russian Baltic ports. Russia is sanctioned. Belarus is a staunch Russian ally of Putin. Washington quietly lifted its own sanction on Belarusian potash back in December of 2025, after Minsk released a batch of prisoners, so the American door is already open but the European Union has not lifted anything nor do they plan on doing so. Belarusian ore is cheaper at the mine. But then you ship a landlocked, EU sanctioned commodity out through Russian ports, insure it through a war and a sanctions regime, sail it across an ocean instead of railing it down from Saskatchewan up north from Canada, and add the importer's margin on top, call it 25%. Your purchase cost is one number but YOUR LANDED cost at the receiving port is another number entirely. WHO do you think pays the difference? Trump? Nope. The American taxpayer. The American consumer at the grocery shelf. And the American farmer walking into next year's planting, because most farmers will NOT absorb a rising potash bill. They apply less of it on their crops because it costs so high, or they plant less, and a short application this spring is a smaller harvest next fall and less harvest and you have now created a scenario where both Farmers are making less money, less produce and foods to harvest and therefore inadvertently created a potential scenario of food shortages. Potash is potassium, the K in the N-P-K on every bag of fertilizer. A crop CANNOT build grain without it. It runs the plant's water use, hardens the roots and the stalk, moves the sugars up into the seed, and buys resistance to drought and disease. It sets the size of the yield and the quality of the crop together. Corn and soybeans across the much of the USA run on it, spread on the soil at planting, bought in the dead of winter for the spring. Price it out of reach in January and the 2027 crop is smaller before a single seed goes into the ground. There is a method here. The Iran food payday that never arrived, and now a Belarus potash bargain with NO way to ship it, are the same move aimed at the same audience, and the bill always arrives at the same address. Call it what it is, a psychological operation run on the American farmer and the American public. The Farmer unfortunately has been the biggest loser of this war since its first month, and every one of these headlines costs him again and again. Call your local farmer and make arrangements to purchase whatever they sell locally, wherever you can. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!

War is terrible for business AND commerce. War is ‘also’ phenomenal for business and commerce. Both statements are true; only if you are tuned into both signals at the same time. If you know, you know why wars do not end, they just evolve from one category of competence to the next. Signal, not noise!