(End of the American Dream)—Has the whole world gone completely nuts? Normally, South America is one continent that doesn’t have to worry about war. Unfortunately, just like so many other politicians all over the globe, the leaders of Venezuela appear to have caught a case of war fever. They are apparently quite eager to get their hands on Guyana’s oil resources, and so they held a national vote on Sunday that will determine if the government of Nicolas Maduro is permitted to invade Guyana or not…
Venezuelans going to the polls Sunday will be asked to answer an unusually provocative question:
Should their government be given a blank check to invade neighboring Guyana, and wrest away three-quarters of its oil-rich territory?
Of course they never would have held this vote if they were not pretty sure of the outcome.
Apparently there is a very old “territorial dispute” that would supposedly justify grabbing 74 percent of Guyana’s current territory…
The government of Nicolás Maduro is putting the query before voters, part of a century-old territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana that is raising tensions in the region and threatening to escalate into a shooting war.
The question will be on the ballot in a five-part referendum that, among other things, would grant Maduro special powers to invade Guyana and create a new Venezuelan state encompassing 74% of English-speaking Guyana’s current landmass. The new area would be called Guayana Esequiba.
So if Venezuela does this, would anyone intervene?
The government of Brazil has already expressed their concerns, and the Brazilian military has bolstered forces in the northern part of the country…
“The Ministry of Defense has been monitoring the situation. Defensive actions have been intensified in the northern border region of the country, promoting a greater military presence,” Brazil’s defense ministry said in a statement.
I never imagined that we would be talking about a potential war between Venezuela and Brazil in 2024, but here we are.
Could the U.S. also get involved? It is no secret that the U.S. has wanted to get rid of Maduro for a long time, but we already have our hands full with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Speaking of the Middle East, the USS Carney and at least two commercial ships were attacked in the Red Sea on Sunday…
A U.S. warship and multiple commercial vessels were reportedly under attack in the Red Sea on Sunday.
The development could signify a serious escalation in a series of maritime attacks in the Middle East linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
“We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available, later,” a Pentagon spokesman told Fox News, after the Associated Press reported on an attack on a U.S. warship in the Red Sea.
It is being reported that the USS Carney actually shot down two drones during the attacks…
The Carney responded after hearing from the Bahamas-flagged bulk carrier Unity Explorer that it was under attack by missile fire, the official said. The Carney shot down two drones during the attack, one in self-defense and another after checking on the Unity Explorer, the official said.
So who was responsible?
The Houthis in Yemen have taken responsibility for attacking the commercial ships, but they haven’t said anything about the USS Carney…
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have ambushed multiple ships in the Red Sea in recent days, claimed responsibility for attacking two commercial ships but made no mention of the Carney.
The attacks, combined with an increase in clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah near the Lebanon border, could represent steps toward an expansion of the war in the region, something the Biden administration has labored to prevent.
Will the U.S. bomb the Houthis in retaliation for this attack? We shall see.
Meanwhile, the IDF is operating “in new areas of the Gaza Strip”, and Yoav Gallant says that the ultimate goal of this operation is “the absolute elimination of the Hamas terror organization”…
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated on Saturday night that the military is operating in new areas of the Gaza Strip, adding that Jerusalem’s war objective to fully dismantle Hamas remains unaltered.
“In the last two days, we are operating in areas we have not been active in over the last month, and it will increase and intensify,” said Gallant. “This operation will reach every point that needs to be reached. We are going for the absolute elimination of the Hamas terror organization.
“We are going until we defeat them, dismantle their military capabilities and break their governing ability, and we will need to do this by adapting to the new conditions of the terrain we are fighting in. There will be intense and precise fire,” continued the minister.
After the horrific attacks of October 7th, Israel has no other choice.
You can’t negotiate with barbarians that will kill children, rape women and kidnap the elderly.
One survivor of the attacks saw “eight or ten of the fighters” raping one very unfortunate Israeli woman…
After an hour, the shift manager peeked out. ‘I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her.’
The woman was screaming ‘stop it’ he said, and begged the terrorists to kill her to put her out of her misery.
‘When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head’, he said.
The Israeli government fully intends to wipe out Hamas, and that makes major escalation of the war very likely.
On Sunday, Hezbollah once again attacked IDF forces on the northern front, and the IDF responded by conducting “extensive airstrikes” in Lebanon…
The Israeli military released footage of extensive airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Sunday following an attack by the terrorist organizations.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an anti-tank missile attack that “lightly injured” multiple IDF servicemembers. Israel responded with artillery fire and airstrikes.
IDF warplanes recently attacked a number of targets of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, including terrorist infrastructure and military targets,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari wrote in a statement. “Also, following the warnings in the north of the country, in the last hour a number of launches were detected towards Israeli territory from Lebanese territory. IDF forces attacked the sources of the fire with artillery.”
Now that the truce in the south is over, I expect more clashes to erupt in the coming days.
Hezbollah should stop while they still can, but they aren’t going to do that.
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that Lebanon will be destroyed if they continue to go down this road…
“We are acting in the north all the time against all efforts by Hezbollah to operate against us. We are eliminating terror cells, pushing them away from the border, destroying munitions. We will continue with strong deterrence in the north, and total victory in the south,” he said.
“It should be clear, we are committed to restoring security to the south and the north. If Hezbollah makes a mistake and enters into a full-out war it will destroy Lebanon with its own hands,” Netanyahu warned.
This is certainly a time of wars and rumors of wars.
We are being told that Ethiopia and Eritrea “may be heading for another war”, the Russians are advancing in Ukraine, a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan is looming, and North Korea is making all sorts of threats.
It appears that 2024 is going to be a year of war, and that is not good news for any of us.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.