To Okinawa, With Love.
James Bond has some interesting movies in the older versions. “From Russia With Love” or “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold”. I may be mistaken, the latter may be a Le Carre fiction. This essay is a sort of a musing to the Americans stationed in Japan who now are deployed in the Middle East over a war on Middle East and Russian chokepoints that no one had predicted would raise the price of oil. We could not have predicted a war in the Middle East would cause prices of oil to rise said a classified briefing to an incredulous Trump. “How could you not have predicted it? It’s a chokepoint! You choke it, the price goes up. Hormuz has been the oldest chokepoint in war theory at West Point in any war with Iran and it’s been taught at undergraduate levels….”
I bet you not even one General would have the balls to say “Sir you mean Annapolis, not West Point”.
What’s in Annapolis?
Citadel.
I thought Citadel was a hedge fund and a TV show…
It is and they are.
What?
What?
Since I don’t know how military actually talks I make up my own codes. Why? Cause fuck you that’s why. I’ve been excluded from sports conversations since the time I got here. Easiest way to get an immigrant to leave the room. Start talking baseball statistics.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eyNzKUaQjkTCFeVbP_S0s994N_SIHmCWFWqa-QNe6gA/edit?usp=sharing
It also works I imagine in a foreign country if you’re a spy. The guys taping your conversation have no idea what the fuck you actually said.
You don’t actually need to throw people out of the country. You can simply exclude them. This sort of stuff has been going on since “friend or foe” games began over 5000 years ago. Some cultures invented words that could not be pronounced by an outsider unless you grew up learning exactly how to pronounce those words. It’s easy to create for someone a sense that they don’t belong. The opposite is much more difficult terrain.
For example: Why are there 51 states? Is there any discernible difference between the people of New York and Massachusetts? And even if there is a difference, did we need to emphasize the difference by creating a boundary? One Nation (with 51 States and) Under God. That’s all these essays are, they’re coded messages. Yet they are coded in a way to create a sense of belonging. It’s the opposite of sports pillow talk.
Some of you are reading this in foreign countries and thinking… what the fuck is this guy talking about? We’re all United. In the Arab Emirates.
How do you know it’s a guy?
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Anyway, some people had questions about why I included the USD/Yen cross in that previous post. It had nothing to do with Karl Marx. I created a video about it.. frankly, it’s not very interesting… involves interest rates arbitrage and the carry trade. I try to explain it as best as I could after watching a few crows starting at the 4:26 mark in the video.
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At the moment there are 3 developing chokepoints for oil.
1. Hormuz
2. Bab-el-Mandeb
3. Destruction of Russian Oil facilities by Ukrainians bombings.
All of them have the potential to create a vertical price of oil. Potential doesn’t translate into price but it’s worth watching. America is in one way or another involved in all three chokepoints. If you’re still using a gasoline vehicle, you might want to consider switching to a used but high quality electric vehicle before it becomes too expensive to buy gas.
Meanwhile, the fires in Oregon have now expanded to 1.5 million acres (was 1 million yesterday). For someone like me who loves trees…. this is catastrophic. If you don’t love trees, perhaps stop breathing for a minute.
This was a picture from yesterday. Today it’s probably worse.
And the war expands…. Ukraine is now striking at Iran, likely because there are probably love letters being passed between Iran and Russia across the Caspian.
A China → Russia → Iran pipeline of influence, weapons, or logistics would not surprise me at all. Chinese handheld anti-aircraft missiles have already downed a couple of US birds, which is exactly why the first post today might have been about the BEIDOU system. Here’s the fun part to speculate on: <movie> I’m not even sure our chubby guy in North Korea fully grasped the expanding scope of these ties <movie> when he allegedly met with Netanyahu.
