(1449) Just starting to come back from not so good, as happened yesterday.
23. A book at bedtime
Just in case you’ll be needing something to read:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/75288/75288-h/75288-h.htm
22. DAD at 1368
a) Man in court over police stabbing 24th January 2008
A Somali translator was remanded in custody today after appearing in court charged with stabbing a police officer and his dog.
Essa Suleiman, 26, of Boundary Lane in Camberwell, south-east London, is alleged to have inflicted grievous bodily harm on Pc Neil Sampson as he responded on January 3 to a 999 call reporting a knife attack in Swindon, Wiltshire.
b) 30/04/2026. The suspect being held after Wednesday’s Golders Green knife attack is 45-year-old Essa Suleiman from south-east London, the BBC understands
Earlier, it emerged he was referred to the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme in 2020
Is this the same person?
21. For anyone choosing hurricane alley
20. Yet another
19. Miscarriage v abortion
18. Fun future for the west and for mankind
17. Wolf has an interesting chart
16. Steve on the oil chokepoint
… and implications … it’s Last Refuge on X:
“You might have seen the report of the UAE making a surprise announcement to exit OPEC effective in 3 days, on May 1st.
THREE DAYS!
The background story here is only just now beginning to sink in.
If the UAE exits OPEC that means it no longer has limits on oil production. That means effective immediately they can start pushing oil to the Fajairah port terminal, which is beyond the Hormuz chokepoint.
This announcement comes on the heels of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying last week the U.S. was likely to provide increased currency swaps to the UAE in order to help offset the mid-east oil crisis.
– US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that a number of allies in the Gulf region and in Asia have requested currency swap lines from the United States to help deal with energy shocks and other fallout from the Middle East war.
Bessent told US senators that both the US and the United Arab Emirates would benefit from a proposed swap line that President Donald Trump said he was considering on Tuesday.
Bessent did not name the countries making such requests, but told a US Senate Appropriations subcommittee budget hearing that such facilities would help stabilize financial markets amid turmoil from the Iran war.”
The UAE can bypass the Hormuz chokepoint, and Saudi Arabia can pump oil to the Red Sea via their
If Trump keeps the blockade against Iranian oil shipments in place, the UAE and Saudi Arabia can fill the global oil void; however, they need to get outside the OPEC restrictions to do it. Thus, the UAE exiting OPEC makes strategic sense both now and in the geopolitical longer term.
In the short run the UAE, and potentially other GCC member states, needs financial stability as the switch is done. Enter Scott Bessent with the currency swap lines for the UAE.
Brilliant planning.
Iran just lost all their leverage.
Oh, and Iran cannot look for help/support from Russia because Trump/Bessent just took that card off the table:
– “The Trump administration on Friday reversed course and extended a waiver on sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products amid the Iran war, just days after a top Cabinet official said the U.S. would not be doing so.
A license allowing countries to purchase Russian oil from Friday through May 16 was posted on the Treasury Department’s
“So, the UAE increases oil output (exits OPEC) no Hormuz problem. Saudi Arabia already has a big max output (OPEC) and pumps west. While Russian oil (OPEC) is unsanctioned and flowing to Asia.
All of this activity done in petrodollars.
Yup, Iran just lost all their leverage.
Sometimes necessity is the mother of ingenuity.”
……
All right … difficulty here for redaction/copyright is that many are still not on X, therefore they can’t see it. Not being sure if this also appears at his blog, the question of usage and attribution arises. Link is in comments (sidebar).
As for the premise, not all in comments there agreed … they were of the opinion that the pipeline was already at full capacity. I need to read it all again.
18. Fun future for the west and for mankind – as you travel past those former food producing fields, now smothered in photovoltaics, spare a moment to think about how weathering causes heavy metals to leach out of them and into the soil beneath. Not for a thousand years could you again grow food in those fields.