Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Americans shouldn’t fight for a suicidal continent.

Four years ago, the Biden administration was working with the United Kingdom and the European Commission to pay for diminutive comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s war with the Russian Federation over territories where supermajorities of the population identify as Russian.  We were told that the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine “belonged” to Ukraine and that the only way to “preserve democracy” was to deny those people a democratic vote to join the Russian Federation.

“Democracy” also apparently requires the installation of a Ukrainian dictator, a complete crackdown on an independent press, widespread censorship of public debate on social media, the denial of religious freedom, and a brutal campaign of press-ganging men into military service to die as cannon fodder for a corrupt Ukrainian regime that launders money from U.S. and European taxpayers into the bank accounts of the West’s political and financial elites.

Just as globalists in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and across Old (and increasingly Islamic) Europe turned the “Reign of COVID Terror” into an opportunity to bilk taxpayers, enrich elites, and grow the totalitarian national security State, the same globalist scum quickly turned the Ukraine conflict into another “emergency” requiring more taxes, censorship, and public sacrifice.  All of a sudden, anything criticizing the official public policies of Western governments was labeled “Russian disinformation.”  If you disagreed with whatever the West’s vaunted “experts” said, you were dismissed as “Putin’s puppet.”  Pro tip for information warfare enthusiasts: When government authorities identify dissent as “propaganda,” that’s propaganda!

The COVID propaganda project gave us a chorus of World Economic Forum buffoons posing as national leaders all singing, “We must ‘Build Back Better.’”  When that schtick got old — or, rather, when ordinary citizens across the West started to show signs of resistance against their imperial rulers — the West’s globalists turned Ukraine’s Chief Munchkin into a “freedom fighter” battling the pernicious authoritarianism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.  The same yahoos — Biden, Trudeau, Macron, Queen Ursula, and the rest of the WEF’s rump-kissing claque — who screeched like wounded cockatoos, “Build Back Better,” now all huffed in unison, “Ukraine!  Ukraine!  Ukraine!”  It never ceases to amaze me that the day after Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” protests against COVID “vaccine” mandates came to an end, the official launch of the new hit television drama, “WAR: Ukraine,” began.  It’s almost as if Western globalists yank us commoners along by the leash from one spectacular production of nonsense to the next (just to see how much money they can steal from our pockets when their hands aren’t busy groping small children).

Some people in the U.S. and Europe were made to really care about a country that has long been considered so incorrigibly corrupt that other corrupt countries can’t help but blush.  Lemmings who had been walking around with multiple paper masks over their faces to magically protect themselves from viruses that don’t fear masks all of a sudden waved Ukrainian flags with gusto as if they could identify Dwarf-King Zelenskyy’s money-pit-proto-nation on a map!  Nobody wanted to admit that the same übermenschen from sub rosa groups such as Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission — who have made a financial killing from “green energy” and mRNA “vaccines” over the years — had simply returned to their favorite investment of all: actual killing.  War brings new taxes, new regulations, new forms of censorship, new military investment, and new ways to exploit asymmetric information for financial gains.  In short, wars bring profits!  And what better place for corrupt globalists to make tons of money than to take advantage of the corrupt swindlers putatively governing the traveling circus known as Ukraine!

The United Kingdom (still smarting from its misadventures in the Crimean War one hundred and seventy years ago) demanded that Russia hand back Crimea to its MI6-managed Ukrainian friends.  Queen Ursula of the pan-European (and increasingly Islamic) empire demanded that Russia respect the right of Europeans to overthrow any Ukrainian governments that Brussels doesn’t like (see the U.S.-E.C.-organized 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, or what Western propagandists still shamelessly call the “Revolution of Dignity”).  BlackRock and other multinational investment firms selflessly volunteered to help finance the war, purchase Ukraine’s assets on the cheap, and invest heavily in the subsequent reconstruction projects of a destroyed nation.  Google and Facebook promised to censor all public debate averse to globalists’ interests as “Russian propaganda.”

Oh my, what a magnificent war!  It has had everything globalists adore!  It managed to turn a mad midget who plays piano with his penis into Winston Churchill!  It justified blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines and forcing Europe’s peasants into using much more expensive “green energy”!  It excused more government money-printing and spending that conveniently inflated the value of assets owned by the 1% of the 1%!  It allowed the titular leaders of European nations to strut about on the world stage as if they were courageous military generals rallying troops on the front lines — while really doing nothing but callously dropping vulnerable Ukrainian lads into a meat grinder that has made the rich wealthier and the poor fertilizer.  European elites have demonstrated their virtue and bravery one dead Ukrainian at a time.  The whole bloody affair has had all the pomp and circumstance of old, flatulent monarchs dining on beans, broccoli, cabbage, and cheese.

European gentry never wanted a real war — one in which they might risk life and limb.  They simply wanted a war that would cause their investment portfolios to fatten up while they prattled on about bravery and sacrifice.  How do we know?  Because the moment that President Trump began incinerating the mad mullahs of Iran, Europe’s globalists tucked tail and ran…or at least hightailed it to the closest water closet for fresh underpants.

After cutting off oil production in the North Sea in the name of “climate change” and banning Russian energy supplies in the name of “democracy,” Europe depends quite a bit on Middle Eastern oil to stave off economic death.  However, Europe is also right now transitioning from a Western to an Islamic civilization.  Europe’s political elites are so afraid of Islamic immigrants that they would rather permit them to rape their youngest daughters than cause a scene.  They certainly can’t be seen going to war against an Islamic country!  Wealthy Europeans don’t mind sacrificing the continent’s peasants to mass slaughter, but they have no interest in seeing a scimitar up close themselves.  Yes, yes, best to wear the white feather of cowardice as if it were a symbol of European principle.  America’s courageous cowboys will surely save Old Europe from itself!

Except…maybe not this time.  President Trump is not happy that our so-called NATO “allies” have refused to support America’s mission in Iran.  U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer says, “This is not our war.  We will not be drawn into the conflict.”  Starmer wants to decouple from the U.S. and rejoin the E.U.  France, Spain, Italy, and the U.K. have now denied the U.S. military permission to use European bases or airspace.  Europe’s NATO members collectively insist that Iran is not NATO’s concern.

To which President Trump has appropriately pointed out that Ukraine is not a NATO member and therefore not America’s concern.  Both the president and Secretary of State Rubio believe that if European members of NATO cannot be persuaded to protect their own economic interests in the Strait of Hormuz, then it is time for the U.S. to reconsider its NATO commitments to European security.  “Allies” in name only aren’t really allies at all.  For those of us tired of Europe’s crusty aristocracy leeching off of American military muscle while habitually grousing, the possibility of cutting off the Old World’s freeloaders is pleasant news.  Americans shouldn’t fight for a continent that has no interest in defending itself.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Authored by former CIA officer Larry Johnson

During his Wednesday night speech, Donald Trump made the following claim about Iran’s air defenses: “They have no anti-aircraft equipment, their radar’s 100% annihilated, we are unstoppable as a military force.”

The White House followed this Friday, with a statement from a spokesperson, Anna Kelley, who further emphasized, “Here are the facts: Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks are down 90 percent, their navy is wiped out, two-thirds of their production facilities are damaged or destroyed, and the United States and Israel have overwhelming air dominance over Iran,” she said.

Photos widely circulating show destroyed US Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter at a base in Kuwait, which apparently took a direct hit Friday.

It appears that President Trump was a bit premature. The US Air Force had a difficult day on Friday:

F-15E (48th Fighter Wing) — Shot down in southwestern Iran. Pilot rescued; WSO still missing.

A-10C Thunderbolt II — Shot down and crashed into the Persian Gulf. Pilot reportedly recovered.

2X HH-60G Pave Hawk — Hit during CSAR mission, one crash-landed across the border in Iraq. All crew reportedly rescued.

KC-135R Stratotanker — Emergency squawk 7700 around 10:00 UTC near Tel Aviv.

F-16CJ “Wild Weasel” (F-16C Block 50/52, SEAD configuration) — Emergency squawk 7700 over Saudi Arabia near the Iraqi border around 15:00 UTC; later disappeared from FlightRadar.

KC-135R Stratotanker — Emergency squawk 7700 around 19:00 UTC near Tel Aviv.

It appears that Iran has no centralized air defense C2 or any kind of joint engagement zone (JEZ) anymore.

However, as evidenced by the incidents above, Iran appears to be relying on Vietnam-style guerrilla tactics of shoot-and-scoot air defense with their passive and highly tactical indigenous system… The IR-SA-7’s (pronounced “Ur-sah-seven”).

SA-7, Illustrative via Falcon Lounge

These Some are specially developed missiles that can loiter at altitude, almost like a glider, completely passive, that lie in wait for one of the US older generation fighters, tankers or other support aircraft to wander too close and then hone-in. While the US can claim “air supremacy” this does not mean that US aircraft can fly over Iran without incurring the risk of being shot down.

I wonder if the Russians are paying attention to Iran’s information operations? Iran is proving to be quite clever and creative in producing videos that take trolling to new heights.

Forget ordering a $30,000 “Bugatti” knockoff from Chinese e-commerce websites like Temu.

A private seller in Texas is now offering what appears to be a fully 3D-printed Lamborghini Aventador body on Facebook Marketplace, highlighting how 3D printing is revolutionizing custom vehicle manufacturing.

“This is a fully 3D-printed Lamborghini Aventador project that gives you a huge head start. It includes the complete body, front frame, rear frame, and monocoque already printed and sized to Aventador dimensions,” the listing stated.

The 3D-printed Aventador body is listed for $5,000. But the price jumps to $7,500 if buyers want the exterior and interior all glued together, or $8,500 if they want the frame pieces included in the gluing.

To complete the build, the seller says the body will still need to be reinforced with fiberglass, mounted to a steel frame, and fitted with a drivetrain, suspension, and interior (view listing here). 

Automotive website Jalopnik was the first to report the listing, offering its take:

I may have some ideas about 3D print strength that friends of mine call “overly conservative” or “downright anxious,” but I still don’t think I’d trust a car with a tub that’s been glued together out of various 3D prints. The seller doesn’t even specify what kind of plastic they’re using. ABS is an option, but ever-popular PLA filament will degrade under the kind of constant UV exposure that a car sees.

Well, this certainly beats the “Bugatti” knockoff from Temu.

*  *  * Order by midnight! Now with cheaper shipping

Authored by George Ramsay via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

While censorship is often the main focus of discussions about free speech, there’s a related phenomenon that can do just as much damage to a free society. Not by preventing people from saying things they believe in, but by forcing them to say things they do not.

A scoreboard shows a message declaring an indigenous land acknowledgement before an NHL hockey game between the Montreal Canadiens and the San Jose Sharks in Montreal on Oct. 19, 2021. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remior

Compelled speech requires people to use certain words or phrases, or to partake in upholding certain ideological beliefs. It is just as dangerous to free expression as overt censorship.

The constant recitation of indigenous “land acknowledgements” illustrates Canada’s shift towards enforced mass-compliance on complicated social issues. These statements have become ubiquitous in Canadian public life: at schools, workplaces, government functions, ceremonies, and sporting events. Institutions display them on websites, documents, email signatures, and social media. A busy person in Canada may come across dozens of land acknowledgements per day in various contexts.

Although framed as optional gestures of respect, many organizations now have policies mandating land acknowledgements; in other circumstances, social pressure can make them seem obligatory even if they’re not.

Land acknowledgements have morphed well beyond a simple sharing of history into something much more problematic: they have become a sort of sacred ritual with near-spiritual implications, tying certain ethnic groups to ownership over nature itself. When unpacked, there is a lot being said between the lines.

Stepping out of line on land acknowledgements can set off a variety of hostile reactions, ranging from social condemnation to significant legal consequences. Geoffrey Horsman is a biochemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. As a parent of three children in the local school system and a member of his local school’s parent council, he noted the growing politicization of the regional school system. Of particular concern was the practice of opening every meeting with a land acknowledgement, which took up valuable time and reinforced what he considers a divisive premise.

“I don’t think there is anything good that can come out of the idea that a certain ethnic group are the true inheritors of this land,” Horsman said in an interview. But when he raised his objections about the practice, he encountered immediate resistance. In a series of meetings with Waterloo Region District School Board staff, he was told that even discussing the issue was off the table. He has since brought a legal case against the board.

Catherine Kronas, the mother of a student attending Ancaster High Secondary School in Hamilton, Ont., actually lost her position as an elected member of her school council last year after she politely disagreed with land statements being read out loud before meetings. “School councils should decide what gets said in their meetings, and we shouldn’t have to recite something mandated by the government,” she told me. Kronas was reinstated only after threatening legal action.

Horsman’s and Kronas’s cases are both about indigenous land acknowledgements, but the issues they raise run deeper. They could have been challenging any form of imposed ideological speech. In fact, many Canadian governments and institutions are developing a worrying track record of legally enforcing ideological language on a number of topics.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, for example, recently levied an astonishing $750,000 fine against Barry Neufeld, a former school board trustee, after he was critical of the integration and facilitation of transgenderism within public education. Neufeld says he will appeal the fine, which clearly aims to punish him financially for expressing his lack of belief in what the tribunal seems to think is an unquestionable truth.

Compelled speech, or compelled support for any position, quells discourse and creates a type of moral injury. Whether you support the notion of land acknowledgements or not, there is a contradiction at the core of the concept: how can words be respectful if they are coerced?

Most Canadians consider themselves polite, kind, and caring, a usually laudable set of characteristics that has lately been weaponized. How might we begin to move on from the current cultural climate of tension and towards a freer and more relaxed Canada?

Retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht has some suggestions. In an interview, Giesbrecht agrees that today’s land acknowledgements “create a divisive form of belief in which some people only have rights as ‘settlers.’” To shift this situation, he offers a list of possible ways Canadians can object to compelled speech. His list includes making a written complaint, standing up and objecting in public, walking out of a meeting, and using legal channels to challenge attempted ideological coercion.

The future of a prosperous, functional, united Canada depends on being able to say what you believe and having the freedom to remain silent when you do not. This Canada can and must be restored. Next time you encounter a belief you do not feel eager to participate in, consider abstaining or politely pushing back. If we all resist these pressures, it will no longer be an act of bravery to conduct oneself genuinely and truthfully.

George Ramsay is a recent kinesiology graduate from Victoria, British Columbia. This is an edited version of his grand-prize-winning entry in the 3rd Annual Patricia Trottier and Gwyn Morgan Student Essay Contest first published by C2C Journal.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Over the past two weeks we have been chronicling the increased rate of crossing across the “blockaded” strait of Hormuz as a growing number of ships from friendly nations – whether untolled Chinese tankers or toll-paying Indian, Japanese and Korean vessels – have been making the passage. And as traffic through the Hormuz strait has been picking up in the past week, the seven-day rolling average for transits on Friday reached the highest since the war started, according to Bloomberg.

More vessels are crossing, including those with no clear links to Iran or China, as nations negotiate with Tehran to get their ships through. Transits over the past day were led by liquefied petroleum gas carriers, including one headed to India and others with Iranian affiliations.

Per Bloomberg calculations, a total of 13 ships have crossed since Friday morning, with 10 exiting the Persian Gulf and three entering from the open seas, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. To be sure, that’s still a trickle compared with the numbers before the war began on Feb. 28: in normal times, about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait every day.

Recent crossings included a French container ship and a Japanese-owned LNG tanker, seemingly the first such transits since the war began. It’s not clear whether those journeys were a result of diplomatic outreach or negotiations by shipping companies and their intermediaries.

Outbound traffic included five bulk carriers and one oil-product tanker joined the four LPG tankers in exiting the Persian Gulf since Friday morning. Three of the bulkers and the fuel tanker sailed on Saturday morning. Apart from the Indian LPG vessel, the others are linked to Chinese or Iranian interests.

On the inbound side, two LPG carriers and one fuel tanker with Iranian affiliations were among the inbound transits recorded since Friday morning.

But while traffic is slowly but surely rising, a potential gamechanger for energy flows and oli supplies through Hormuz was unveiled today when the Iranian military said major oil producer Iraq is exempt from shipping restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Brotherly Iraq is exempt from any restrictions we have imposed on the Strait of Hormuz,” Iran’s military spokesman said in an Arabic-language video statement published by state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

The declaration has the potential to unleash as much as 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil cargoes. An Iraqi official, however, cautioned that the usefulness of the exemption will depend on whether shipping companies are willing to risk entering the strait to collect cargoes.

Source: Commodity Context

It’s not immediately clear if the exemption will apply to all Iraqi oil or just the nation’s tankers, or indeed how it will be enforced.

Separately, officials in Iran’s Khuzestan province said the Shalamcheh international border crossing with Iraq has reopened after a brief closure. Lofteh Derokvandi, deputy governor of Khuzestan and special governor of Khorramshahr, told Iran’s state news agency IRNA that crossings had resumed for pilgrims and traders, with commercial activity continuing without disruption.

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Strait of Hormuz has been called the jugular vein of the world’s oil supply, and as Operation Epic Fury continues, Iran continues to have a chokehold on the critical supply route.

About one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas is typically shipped through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.

But Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels have brought traffic through the strait to a virtual standstill since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28.

In March, just 220 vessels transited the strait, according to data from maritime analytics platform Marine Traffic. Prior to the war, thousands of ships traversed the waterway each month.

These actions have caused oil and gas prices to surge. Brent, a global benchmark for oil prices, has risen firmly above $100 a barrel overseas. The average gas price in the United States has surged past $4 per gallon.

Here’s a look at how much oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz and where it goes.

An average of 20 million barrels of oil and refined products flowed through the narrow gateway between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran each day in 2025. That’s roughly 25 percent of the world’s sea-borne oil trade, according to a February analysis from the International Energy Agency.

The strait is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, with shipping lanes just two miles wide in each direction.

The vast majority of crude oil and condensate—a natural gas byproduct—went to Asia (91 percent), according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis based on Vortexa tanker-tracking data from the first half of 2025.

Of those Asian nations, China and India absorbed about half of the crude moving through the strait—37 percent and 14 percent, respectively—followed by Japan and South Korea at 12 percent each. Sixteen percent went to other countries in Asia and Oceania.

An Indian-flagged tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas that transited the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran war remains docked at an offloading terminal in Mumbai, India, on April 1, 2026. The strait is a key global shipping route through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes. Punit Paranjpe/AFP via Getty Images

The United States and Europe remained marginal buyers, receiving just 3 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Roughly three-quarters of crude oil travel by tanker ship through the strait came from Saudi Arabia (38 percent), Iraq (22 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (14 percent). Iran shipped just 11 percent.

Crude Oil Exports Transiting the Strait of Hormuz, 2025

Additionally, the strait accounts for nearly 20 percent of the global liquefied natural gas trade. Qatar, the world’s largest gas exporter after the United States, represents 93 percent of that volume.

In 2025, Asia received almost 90 percent of the liquefied natural gas flowing through the strait. Europe received just over 10 percent.

Of Asian countries, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan sourced almost two-thirds of their total liquefied natural gas supplies via the Strait of Hormuz last year.

A police speedboat patrols the port as oil tankers and high-speed craft sit anchored near the Strait of Hormuz in Muscat, Oman, on March 30, 2026. Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels have disrupted traffic along the vital waterway, which previously carried about 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade, according to the International Energy Agency. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

Dependency on Gulf Nations

Japan (57 percent), South Korea (55 percent), and India (50 percent) relied on the Gulf nations for at least half of their oil and gas imports in 2024. China sourced roughly 35 percent of its supplies from the region.

Additionally, Taiwan imported 40 percent of its oil and gas from the region in 2024, while Pakistan sourced more than 81 percent of its oil and gas imports from the Gulf area.

Some African countries, such as Mauritania (76 percent), Uganda (61 percent), and Kenya (55 percent), relied on the Gulf for more than half of their fuel.

Meanwhile, nearly 96 percent of Iranian oil and gas exports through the route in 2024 were designated for one destination: Pakistan.

In Europe, roughly one-third of the energy imports for Greece (35 percent), Lithuania (32 percent), and Poland (30 percent) originated from Gulf countries.

North American reliance on Gulf energy remains minimal, however. The United States received 10 percent of its imports from Gulf nations, and Canada received 5 percent.

Commuters ride past an oil tanker along a street in Islamabad on March 28, 2026. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has risen above $100 per barrel, while gasoline prices have climbed above $4 per gallon. Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images

While regional producers have sought alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz, these options have struggled to serve as adequate replacements.

Saudi Arabia, for example, maintains an east-west pipeline that can move approximately 5 million barrels of oil a day to the Red Sea. However, the Abqaiq–Yanbu pipeline system has a maximum capacity of 7 million barrels. This terminal is already heavily used and cannot replace the strait.

The United Arab Emirates has an oil pipeline that bypasses the strait—the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline—but it has a capacity of only 1.5 million barrels per day.

As for Qatar’s liquefied natural gas, there is no alternative route.

The strait is effectively a single point of failure for Gulf exporters, as no alternative pipeline routes can replace the volumes that move by sea.

When are these people going to learn to just leave the kids alone?

A Tennessee library board has voted 8-3 to remove its top librarian, Luanne James, after she refused to carry out an order to relocate hundreds of LGBT-themed books, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and feminist propaganda books from the children’s section of six Rutherford County branch libraries.

James was initially ordered to relocate books containing far-left ideology from the juvenile/children’s sections to the adult sections of libraries.  The board cited concerns that the books promoted “gender confusion,” contained LGBT themes/characters, sexual themes, feminist topics, DEI, social justice and related content.

The decision stemmed from a broader state review of thousands of materials prompted by a Tennessee Secretary of State letter and federal guidance on gender-related content. 

Actions within red states to transfer woke propaganda out of children’s spaces in school libraries and public libraries accelerated after viral complaints by parents who have read some of the horrific selections out loud at board meetings across the country.  Activist librarians have become a plague, disregarding the age and innocence of the children involved for the sake of a cult-like political ideology. 

UNREAL

A speaker was SHUT DOWN and REMOVED by security at @HoustonISD school board meeting after reading from a p**nographic book available to kids in the school library

Too graphic for a room of adults but totally ok for kids in school!

Make it make sense pic.twitter.com/pkVUG53dgV

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 27, 2026

When the school board is angry at parents for calling out the smut they have in their children’s school library instead of being outraged over the content of the books themselves, it’s time to replace the entire board.

This rightfully furious parent reads texts from a book in… pic.twitter.com/o3zKxkXoAG

— One Bad Dude (@OneBadDude_) February 4, 2026

Beyond the overtly sexualized selections being planted in kids libraries across the US, there are numerous books teaching gender fluid theories with no foundation in scientific evidence, as well as books promoting critical race theory which twists history to fit the far-left narrative of “systemic racism”. 

Luanne James had argued during the Rutherford Board hearing that moving the books to adult sections would violate First Amendment protections and go against her professional responsibility.  Keep in mind, these books were not censored or thrown out by the Rutherford Board; children are simply required to ask their parents for permission to borrow them from the adult section of the library.  This is not a violation of the First Amendment.

Parental rights supersede children’s access to content.  Legally and morally, James and library directors like her are simply in the wrong, but they know this. 

“I stand by my decision and I will not change my mind,” James said during the meeting.  After the vote, her attorney read a statement on her behalf calling the firing unlawful.  “Librarians should not be used as a filter for political agendas,” the statement said. “I stood up for the right to read, standing for the citizens of Rutherford County.”   

Ironically, leftists tend to wrap themselves in the constitution when they are challenged on giving children politically charged propaganda to read.  But when parents read these materials out loud in board meetings, those same leftists have them silenced and removed from the proceedings. 

The woke left survives by hiding within legal loopholes, double standards and blatant hypocrisy.  They thrive by targeting the easily manipulated minds of children and teens for early indoctrination.  It is becoming clear that many people working within the public education system are only there to carry out this agenda.  Their priority is not the children, their priority is the proliferation of “the message”.     

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Prices for retail diesel and gas have each risen by over a third ($1.30+ and $1.00 per gallon, respectively) since the launch of Epic Fury. Americans learned in the 1970s that Middle East conflict means energy pain, and that lesson has been reinforced through every subsequent Gulf crisis. This time, however, the more consequential threat to American household budgets is not the fuel pump. It is quietly moving through the global fertilizer supply chain, and it will impact hundreds of millions of Americans who depend on the food that comes out of the ground each fall.

Oil tankers and high speed crafts sit anchored at Muscat Anchorage near the Strait of Hormuz, in Muscat, Oman, on March 30, 2026. Elke Scholiers/Getty Images

The distinction between fuel and food inflation matters. America’s position in the natural gas market—specifically liquefied natural gas (LNG), the fuel at the center of this conflict—is stronger than it was even a few years ago. The United States is now the world’s largest LNG exporter. Our domestic production runs at over 109 billion cubic feet per day. Our export terminals are running near full capacity. As substantial portions of Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex have been taken offline and the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to tanker traffic, European gas benchmarks have surged more than 60 percent and Asian spot prices have nearly doubled. The American benchmark, Henry Hub, has barely moved. The Energy Information Administration expects it to average around $3.80 per million BTU for 2026—roughly where it was before the war began. The paradox of being the world’s largest LNG producer is that we cannot easily move our gas to the global market when terminals are already at capacity, which means that global gas scarcity does not drain our domestic supply. On natural gas, the moat holds.

The story on fertilizer is different, and it deserves attention.

Fertilizer is the link between energy and food. Natural gas is not just a fuel; it is the primary feedstock for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers through a process developed over a century ago called the Haber–Bosch method. Natural gas goes in, ammonia comes out, ammonia becomes urea, urea gets spread on cornfields in Iowa and wheat fields in Kansas and rice paddies in Asia. About 80 percent of nitrogen fertilizer production costs are attributable to natural gas. When the Strait of Hormuz is practically shuttered, you do not just block oil tankers and LNG carriers. You block the ships carrying urea and ammonia that the world’s farmers were expecting to receive this spring.

The numbers are sobering. The Persian Gulf region accounts for roughly a third of globally traded urea exports and approximately 25 percent of ammonia trade. Qatar’s state fertilizer company—QAFCO, considered the world’s largest urea supplier—shut down its plant when gas was cut. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers have seen exports stall. China, the other major global fertilizer exporter, has restricted outbound shipments to protect its domestic supply. These two supply sources together represent a substantial share of the global market, and both are simultaneously constrained.

For American farmers, the timing is the cruelest part. Urea prices at the New Orleans import hub jumped more than 30 percent in the first week of the war, and by late March had risen roughly 77 percent from their December 2025 levels. Spring is the season when the largest volumes of fertilizer move into the country. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins acknowledged that approximately 25 percent of American farmers had not yet purchased fertilizer for the planting season when the Strait closed. Those farmers are now facing input costs that look nothing like what they budgeted. The American Farm Bureau wrote to President Donald Trump calling for relief, and the image painted—a farmer who a few months ago could buy a ton of urea for the equivalent of 75 bushels of corn now needing 126 bushels for the same ton—captures the arithmetic of the squeeze.

That squeeze has limits that should be acknowledged. The majority of American farmers (an estimated 75 percent) did lock in their fertilizer before the outbreak of war. American agriculture is large, diversified, and resilient in ways that smaller or more import-dependent agricultural economies are not. The domestic natural gas that feeds American fertilizer producers is cheap by global standards, and domestic producers have a meaningful cost advantage over Gulf competitors at current prices. Buffer stocks exist. Markets will adjust. Other supplier nations will expand.

For American consumers, the impact will be real but delayed and partial. Commodity markets are already pricing in some reduction in crop yields globally. Global grain and oilseed production that depends on fertilizer applications made this spring will be affected by how long the disruption lasts. The food price consequences of a bad planting season arrive on grocery shelves six to twelve months later, not tomorrow. This is not a moment for panic. It is a moment for attention.

It is also an indictment of a supply chain that was allowed to grow dangerously concentrated in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The same mistake was made in Europe by dependency on Russian pipeline gas, and the European Union spent four years trying to unwind it. The dependence on Gulf fertilizers accumulated quietly over decades, driven by the same logic: the gas was cheap, the production was efficient, the ships kept running. The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint.

Food inflation will be visible later this year, although not nearly as severe in the United States as in the rest of the world. There is reason for optimism in the American position. We have the natural gas, the agricultural infrastructure, the fertilizer production capacity, and the market depth to weather this disruption better than almost any nation on earth. The war will end, the Strait will reopen. Crops will be planted. Some of the disruption will prove temporary. What should not be temporary is the lesson about dependence on a single chokepoint for one-third of a food input that has no short-term substitute. The Haber–Bosch process feeds 8 billion people. Allowing the ships that carry it to bottleneck through a strait only around two dozen miles wide in a war zone is a risk that was hiding in plain sight.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The New York Post reports that former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio secretly traveled with his girlfriend and a far-left activist group, alleged to have links to the Chinese Communist Party, to attend an “emergency” meeting denouncing the U.S. It’s a 180-degree turn for the former Democratic mayor of NYC, long a symbol of American capitalism, even as the image of the metro area deteriorates under Zohran Mamdani’s socialist rule.

Source: New York Post 

A source told the NYPost that de Blasio jetted off with members of CodePink, a Marxist propaganda network linked to Chinese billionaire Neville Roy Singham, to attend an “emergency” meeting called Nuestra América to denounce the U.S. and all foreign policy in the West by the Trump administration, including the US capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January.

Source: New York Post 

“It’s not that Bill de Blasio does not know CodePink is a CCP front group, it’s that he is so desperate for relevance and validation that he does not care,” a Democratic operative told the outlet, adding, “It’s really bottom-barrel stuff that he has to pal around with a bunch of anti-American nuts no one actually takes seriously.”

Source: New York Post 

The meeting of socialists was organized by Progressive International, an umbrella group that aspires to “eradicate capitalism everywhere” and includes CodePink among its members.

According to a recent report by The New York Times, Singham resides in China while maintaining a long record of supporting radical-left nonprofits that oppose U.S. interests and align with foreign adversaries.

Singham, who is married to activist Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink, has been alleged by House Republicans to be a major financial backer of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has organized nationwide protests, including unrest in Los Angeles.

These far-left nonprofits frame U.S. foreign policy as illegitimate while defending authoritarian regimes. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) function as the political activation channel, translating activist energy into electoral and legislative influence on behalf of foreign powers.

The Trump administration has identified CodePink and the “Singham network” as vectors of Chinese propaganda in what is viewed as asymmetric warfare.

In fact, we recently penned the note “Is There A “Cuba Connection” Behind The Radicalization Of America’s Nonprofit Left”…

Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer told us earlier this year, “Singham’s anti-American villainy became clear with his financing of the violent Black Lives Matter uprisings — to Communist China’s delight. He is absolutely in bed with the CCP.”

If you want to understand why the radical left appears to hate America and seeks to destroy capitalism and the nation from within, it is not difficult to see that these ideas are rarely developed organically. More often, they are shaped and reinforced by outside influences – like meetings and workshops attended by de Blasio.

This chart above helps explain why the radical left has become so radical.