You.
Chilly Effect is sponsored by Walls's Windows, Dott and listen, yeah, now agivated an audia.
I'll tell you it's the twenty first day of January twenty twenty six, allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar. And I'm broadcasting late on a Wednesday here because usually I would have gone live at eight o'clock. But I made special arrangements. Why because I've got Larry Hancock with me, and you'll see the link to Larry's blog in the show notes. I might even provide you with a preview by sending you over to a series of articles he's writing on you know what, I'm going
to save that for two weeks from now. And you know why, because I want to talk to Larry about well, the thing that he is expert in. You can't tell me that Larry Hancock, with all the books he's written and well written, and even people that sit there and go, I disagree with this guy, they all respect his opinion. They all respect the way he's written stuff. Because he brings receipts every single time. Nothing is ever like well, I speculate this just because I'm you know, I'm Larry Hancock.
He doesn't do that. You got to check out his blog if you haven't, and if you're a longtime listener of the show, you know he's been here a while with me, and I'm so grateful that he puts up
with me. But looking at what's happening in Europe right now, and I do mean in two places right not only the issue over Greenland, and well, we're just going to take that, I guess, but also you know, Ukraine is still happening I and on top of it, we have this situation with Iran that is apparently escalating and hardly anybody's paying attention to because we're taking Greenland. Okay, this is giving me a headache because I understand that the
Trump administration is transactional. I understand that they are very results oriented. I understand the people tell me, oh, this is the change we wanted. Careful what you wish for, is all I got to say. But I need somebody to go through this with me and soberly explain to me what the national security benefits are, what the game is here. And by the way, there's always a hidden game in almost all of these issues of diplomacy. There's
triangular diplomacy. And even if you don't intend it, or you don't game it out, or you don't play four dchs, there is always the unintended results the echoes of these things later on. And I'm telling you, I can't wait until people are surprised at all that as it happens from all of these situations which are one way or
another interconnected. But again, Larry Hancock, if you look at surprise attack, shadow warfare, creating chaos, Larry, what other books would be good here to people like say, look, this is what you should study to understand the history of before we get into what this uh mess is about to make What should we do there?
Well, I'd like to say, I'd like to say surprise attack check. But since we're not surprise, we've given up surprising anybody. We we like to tell them we're going to attack them for several weeks before we actually do, just to give them, you know, a fair opportunity to be ready for us.
Uh. We used to think in terms as a operation, right, you're be be.
You know, to protect forces about But anyway, so we surprisingly political warfare, asymmetrical warfare.
This covers the.
Well, right, Okay, so national security implications, right, and the idea that you'd want operational yeah, operational security, right, hang on just a second, like immute up for a second and just let it, let it re regain the bandwidth. I don't know why we were talking, just mine before I went to air and here we go might be my end jeez. Anyway, Uh, the thing is this, you'd think that revealing these things upfront is a serious violation of that. But we're not dealing in the subtlety and
shadowy world that we were dealing in before. Because putting out the threat is also a move, because that's a way to say, well, now I'll just make deals with other people because they don't want me to make this move, or maybe they'll give me something in exchange, you know, Well, here's what we'll do. We'll let you build a base in our country instead of you taking our country, you know, things like this. That's the transact that might be acceptable
in this case or not, depending right. I mean, that's almost seems to be the strategy. I mean, maybe I'm oversimplifying this. Perhaps I'm not understanding the forty chess. What are your thoughts there, Larry?
Now, I think it does all that game it looks like it's military because we're deploying so many forces, we're consuming, we're consuming so much of our weaponry, We're expending a lot of resources right now. We expended a lot of resources that are hard to get in Venezuela. We're expending
a lot of consumables in deploying aircraft carriers. And last night I watched tracks of twelve to twenty tankers at the east and clearly those tankers are being deployed towards Iran before we're deployed, and each of those stankers would normally be dragging four fighters with it we're deployed. I saw a graft today an immense amount of resources towards Iran, and.
This is an expensive thing.
Yeah, it's lots of wear and tear on pilots, on crews, aircraft carriers. But I think it's not really part of the military is going to stand or fall by itself. This is part of deal making, as you said, it's it's out front. When when we actually go to the tack, those transponders will be turned off as they were in Venezuela, you know, but it was it's part of the deal
making up front. And I have I have to say, you know, transactional maybe okay, if you do do business this this way may be your successful tactical tactically for the short term, you know, in deal making a lot a lot of details. Deals can be a very productive in the short.
Term, right.
However, audios have long term consequences, kind of like a blue mortgage. Well, yeah, see mortgages. Mortgages are great. Balloon mortgages not so much.
We'll see, there you go. And the one, you know, immediate consequence that's obvious is we're going to look at a National Defense Authorization Act for next year. That's going to require guess what, a higher budget, you know, because they do those every year basically under one batter or another. The military budget has to go up because guess what they wound up. They're gonna wind up spending a lot
doing all these actions. Unless I'm wrong, I can't see how you do that without spending you know, additional resources, et cetera. Plus you're gonna have to replace things that are now spent in these operations. I mean, that's just the easiest, the low hanging fruit of the extended consequences.
Unless I'm wrong, No, that's absolutely right. I mean there are consequences short term.
One of our admirals requested not to deploy I think the Eisenhower back to the Gulf again, because it's been at sea for months. You've got a crew that's been deployed without any relief that aircraft carriers not had any import maintenance, and basically said, you know, this is there's gonna be consequences for my ship and my trew and personnel retention.
This is not good.
But it didn't matter. It's going anyway in any event.
So, yeah, there are short term consequences, but I was thinking about the conquences, consequences longer term. But so to pull back, I think most of what we're seeing is, yeah, it's easy to cheer on deals when they're successful. It's harder to pull back and say, you know, okay, you and I have talked about the many, many regime change operations that the US did from Guatemala on.
I mean, Guatemala.
Was pretty much as easy and as successful as Venezuela. And by the way, now we're pretty sure regime change in Venezuela was not really regime change. We did a deal with their vice president who by the way, is on the DEA list for you know, drug smuggling and has been investigated. We did deal with her to let her and her regime essentially stay in power to sell us their oil.
The snap shot of that oil, we're going to sell it, and you know what, the transparency plan.
For tracking out actually goes back to benefit the average Venezuelan hasn't been published yet, but I would say, you know, there's you stand up and cheer about Guatemala. Oh, we free the Guatemalans from an evil dictatorship. We free the Venezuelans from the end. Then you can come back and you look at it five or ten later years later, and Guatemala ended up in the literal political genocide of tens of thousands of people over the next twenty years.
We have no idea what's happening in Venezuela, but that regime is not not committed to popular elections. It's not released most of its political prisoners, and from what I'm seeing, most of the lower level regime figures are still there. You know, they didn't immediately walk off. So the net result we're not going to see. It's, like I say, easy to stand up and cheer. Being hard nosed short term, long term court consequences another story, right.
So right, I mean, just like what we saw with those other ones and those historical regime changes perspectives, right like those other historical regime changes, what that winds up leading to is the issues in El Salvador. What that winds up leading to is the Contra situation, you know, a decade later, et cetera, et cetera, and that stuff
was the unintended consequences and led to other actions. Some of those were covert, you know again, and it's but it's almost like we're not doing any sort of covert actions. We're threatening all kinds of things. And I mean the odd thing is we have a president who's almost upset when they go, well, when are you actually going to do the attack? And he goes, I'm not telling you. I mean I saw that press clip. I found that kind of hilarious. But I mean, you know, you're signaling
all kinds of things to people in the world. I'm wondering if that's going to get anybody itchy enough, you know, to cause us more national security issues than say, you know, taking Greenland is supposed to solve. What do you think of that.
Well in Latin America and South America, and you can see again we have the history there.
Whenever we put a regime in place.
As we've done for decades and decades and decades back to the you know, early nineteen hundreds, played eighteen, it was gunboat diplomacy.
It was clear to everybody what we're doing. We wanted a regime in place that was friendly to the United States, and who doesn't want that.
But what friendly to the United States always meant was selling us your resources at.
A good deal for us, and we'll give you your the payment to the regime and how they use it, you know, let's see how it happens.
That's not our thing, we you know, and it never worked out well. And that's why lots of Latin America, you know, as always considered us, the US as a colonial power. And certainly this will not diminish that, will They nod their heads.
And go ahead and say, you bet, we'll do deals with you.
Because they're afraid of being smashed. Sure, but these are smart people, and they also know how to do deals, and they also you know, it's it's it's not let's not assume that they're simple minded. They can easily see what's going on, and other powers can see what's going on.
It's it's it's a return to that kind of relationship.
There have been periods of time when we had good relationships. It's kind of like equal trade relationships. But we keep turning around and doing this periodically to let.
Them know kind of like our real character.
And so you know, we're we're going to be back to the ugly American says, it's I don't know, check I'm old enough.
You ever heard the song Roman Coca Cola?
Yes, yes, I have.
Don't know what that means.
It means the Yanks are here and they're spending money and they're taking There are women great Roman Coca cola.
You know times, so let's party down. That was not a really friendly song, however it may sound.
It's like they're taking advantage of us again. Okay, but that's so that's Latin America. But I think that Latin America. Short term, we got oil. You know, we've we've established what our position is in this hemisphere. So everybody's now knows how we're playing the game again. Long term, the consequences are pretty clear because we've done this before and we know what it looked like. The consequences for NATO and Greenland are far more severe, and I think far
more severe. You actually saw it at the Median DeVos this week, and what you really saw was the Europeans raise their backs and say they are really big economic powers too. They have they own big markets, they own big purchasing, they do trade deals, and you listen to every one of their speakers stand up and say that. And I've sent a leak so you can hear some of their statements, powerful statements, far better statements than our statements.
And what they all said was they all issued an open invitation to China to invest in Europe. That is tragic.
The US owned European investment are these are friends, these are allies, and suddenly as of this week, they're looking for Chinese investment. Now, I can't think of anything. We're tragic long term.
Now, that's the big question with all that, because is it performative to get Trump to back down? So listen, we'll keep things the way they are, but you got to knock this off, or is it really a legitimate call, Hey China, listen, we're willing to talk now because these guys are not being reasonable. Come be reasonable with us and we'll work it out. Or is it, you know, again, a transactional reaction to the Trump administration's posture. That's I think that's a fair question, don't you.
Certainly it's a transactional reaction, and it appears to have worked today based on Trump's turnaround as far as tariffs. But I will tell you this, what Trump has done during the last year, constantly threatening different sets of tariffs, constantly putting on tariffs on individual products and pulling them off. That's that creates a very unstable situation for their business people. Forget about their politicians. Their politicians, I think effectively used
it transactionally. But they're they have business people. I mean, they have people who do major investments, and they do strategic business planning. And I've got to tell you, if I'm in any one one of those countries doing five ten year strategic business plans, and I have no idea what the American president is going to do this week and next week on tariffs, what would what would be in your plan? I'm going to look for more stable sources and investment. I may not get on the rooftop
and shout it. I may not say, you know, they'll just go ahead and do it there there. They have to look for stability in long term business. So yeah, politically transition actional, but business wise, I think it may be another story.
Well see, there you go, because the immediate consequences of that problem are guess what, Yeah, if China comes in and gives them anything like a friendly deal, why not deal with them as opposed to us? If we're going to be the you know, the the instability. And by the way, if you go to Larryhancock dot WordPress dot com, which you just spell Larryhancock all one word dot WordPress dot com, that's where you can follow Larry's blog and he has talked about this in addition to other things.
But I don't know if you've written all the way up to the Davos meeting about it, but it is it is something to witness. Good. Yeah, No, I have it.
I don't think I can keep up with it, Chuck, I have to kind of.
Before this show, I had to look, you know, ten different places to cratic you feel with the situation was today And at one point in my career I did strategic business planning right, And I would never hold a planning meeting under these circumstances and say, guys, you know, let's plan for this.
You know, you look at your variables, what you.
Look for, your value of cash, and you try to reject those and and for international business, terrace terras used not to be a big consideration. Now they've entered the field is a consideration, and it's certainly.
Making things more chaotic. But no, I have not written about that. That's just trying to follow it. And I think if I think you saw it today, to the well, yesterday's.
Point had gotten that the Europeans were ready to sign their trade deal with the administration. Yesterday they said no, we're not signing. We're going to back off.
And I think to some extent, they finally.
Realized their power, and they've realized the fact that signing deals doesn't necessarily mean what it used to mean, because that deal may only last.
You know, they had a deal on the table that.
We've negotiated, they're about to sign, and then over the weekend the president just says, oh, I'm going to increase at ten to twenty five percent.
How did that effect? Where's our deal? You just changed the deal. You just can't tolerate that kind of dynamic.
Well, not only that, but several times we've noticed this administration turned around and saying, you know what, we don't like the situation. We're withdrawing from some other you know, the deal we have, whatever it was, whether it was signed by a previous administration or not, and we're going to come back and give you a whole other idea. And then they don't even come back to the table. So you don't know what the Americans are going to
do at this point. They are the definition of you know, unpredictable, you know, as far now. Some people say, well, that's part of Trump's genius. Look, I don't think for a second he's the guy designing this. Okay, he loves to make the statements. But the point is, this is what they're dealing with, is we don't know what happens. Even if we make an agreement, it may not even hold right.
And there are these general agreements, and then there are all these product specific agreements.
You know, we've excluded this, We've excluded that. Now this week will exclude something else.
Or by the way, this week we decided that o're going to suspend this particular item for twelve months, okay. And the tariff we talked about being in place last week, we're going to postpone for twelve months, which sounds good okay, and that that is good to one, but it's not good for business planning. I got to tell you, how do you how do you use size your production? How do you size your inventories? How did how do you
side your shipping logistics? These people got to got a book freighters and air cargo.
And you need stability to do that and make it come out. Say you know you're going to have a problem. So a lot of that I think the general public is not following.
I try to follow it, Like I haven't seen anybody say that they could actually write up a statement of what the terror situation is this week right across the board on all the products to all the countries.
I know now we're collecting there's so many variables.
Well you see That's where I'm at with it. Okay. Now when you look at that, okay, there's part of the European situation, but then also Ukraine because what could have happened this week if we were really engaged with that process where it seems like Trump just went, well, you know what, Putin wouldn't listen to me, so I give up. It almost seems like that in public, you know.
And this is still a factor for Europe. I mean, you know, yeah, they've stepped up, and he says, oh, look I got him paying more in the NATO, so you know, NATO's actually doing something. But I don't know if I even need NATO, you know, like, regardless of the commitment, right.
Like, yeah, I think I think.
What's happening there is the North Atlantic Alliance presumed there was a presumption that America was under as much threat as European would you know, for the Soviet Union it would be a strategic threat, you know, and everybody needed recon together. What's happened over the last year with Ukraine is Russia has started asymmetric warfare against the Europeans, cyber warfare, sabotage, and.
The Europeans know it. I mean, if you look at how many cables have.
Been cut by Russian linked freighters, they know that they're already in asymmetric warfare. Putin is showing is trying to show them their weakness. He's not doing that to the US, So to some extent, Europe is already under attacked. The United States is not acknowledging that it's not to the level of where you invoke Article. But Europe needs knows that it needs to rearm and actually enter at least one level of combat already, which the US is not
even acknowledging. So that has fragmented the alliances extent because we're ignoring what's happening between Russia and Europe, not just Ukraine, Russia and Europe, and Europe is again, if you listen to the speeches today, Europe is buckling up its belt and going, you know, either.
Either we face up to this and form a new military alliance.
It may be built around the alliance that helped Ukraine, but Europe is facing a situation, and we have left them on their own essentially, And now we not only left them on their own because we're not acknowledging the Russian threat to them and what's going on. By the way, we're not acknowledging what's really in play.
Now we set up a picture where we're actually gonna we.
Threatened I mean he threatened to invade an ally, right, I mean that was you can't ignore them, it's sort of.
NATO. Is NATO going. How Why would NATO.
Trust the US that we threatened to invade an ally they would have to invoke I mean technically speaking, that would break their lives. I can't again, I can't think of anything or as someone pointed out, and I think if people don't understand this, over the last sixty years, we had dozens of military installations in Greenland. We posted thousands and thousands of.
Troops in Greenland.
Greenland was We've always had a major military presence there and Greenland was very receptive to it, including not just missiles, sack bases, aircraft, Navy ships being ported to surveil the sub gap that runs east of Greenland. It was always a very cooperatives There was never any question that Greenland was not a major base for US and that we were ready to protect it.
And it was a forward leading base.
By the way, I should say that for SAK this is not just a defensive base. This was for a period of time, you know B thirty six bombers and early on this was the forward leading strike place. There were even plans for major missile installations of ballistic missiles which Greenland and Denmark accepted there is nothing from a national security standpoint that they wouldn't willingly allow us to do, which raises the whole question of where in the world did this come from.
They've always been very supportive.
And someone also did an interesting CALLI despite, are the Chinese really a threat to Greenland? I don't think so, as Russia really has threat to Greenland? Probably not. But if they were, I mean, Russia has lots of icebreakers, three times as many icebreakers as we do. We're talking about needing Greenland for national security and we haven't even built a new icebreaker in ten years, and it's like, wait a minute, are we doing anything for the Arctic.
Anyway?
I just as far as national security what we have done there the consequences of this move to Greenland when it was totally unnecessary, I would argue anyone that told me differently, just the consequences for that are.
Decades long, right.
And here's the thing about it, too, is there is a long term effect that nobody's talking about at this point in time, which is that this allows China to breathe. I mean, they're basically not involved in the hostilities here on a level. I mean like everything that is, you know, in turmoil has nothing to do with China. Zero.
Yeah, and if you've got a good point, especially in terms of dollars. We keep wondering how China can build this immense navl I mean, China is building a United ground and air and navy.
Capability far and excess of us. Or did they get all the money?
Well, one of the reasons is they're not spending all the money on operations that we are. They're not they're not deploying forces around the worldld they're not consuming ammunition and weaponry. They can focus everything on construction.
Yeah, this is the military. This is the military phase. Yeah, sorry, Larry, this is the military phase in my mind. You could tell me I'm wrong also, but to my mind, this is the military phase of what we brought. Aready seen happen in manufacturing with China? In consumer manufacturing, they did the same thing already where they stayed out of the fray. They just built their infrastructure. Come on in, We'll give you the cheap rates. Let's go. You just got to
cooperate with the Chinese government. And you know, an international businessman has no problem whatever kind of government. They have a technique to deal with them, So come in and deal with us. We're not involved in bombing people. We're not doing these things. Yes, we want to take over you know, this one little piece of territory near us, but outside of that, we're not doing military actions.
You know.
Yeah, we're suppressive to our own people. We got slave labor, that's fine. But they built an economic machine and manufacturing and even a middle class in China during the time that we were involved in guess what, the War on Terror. So my point is that now you're seeing the military phase of this, and they're going to build an immense
military power while we're sitting here doing all this. I'm thinking, while we're expending all these resources, shuffling troops all over the place and doing this, it just seems to me as though, Okay, whatever those benefits are, we better be ready to respond, because you're going to have a massive military ready, okay, with again, you know, a population larger than ours, a group of people that are going to be a little more dedicated to to you know, survival
than us. We got a problem here that they can build nights and quietly while we're sitting here squabbling with our allies, squabbling with and we haven't even gotten to the Middle Eastern element here yet, which I'd like you to cover, because this is all going to interact with. You know, nothing happens in a bubble. You've heard that phrase.
International diplomacy doesn't happen in a bubble either, So you know he's doing this with Okay, so we could see China could come in and offer a better deal, so they could tell us take our tariffs and stuff them. And that's fine, Okay, fine, we'll just do it without them.
I get it. But after a while, I mean, you know, what are you doing except fueling this thing that's sitting there building up its resources while not expending them in squabbles on three different, three distinctly different geographical locations on the planet. Or am I just out of my mind thinking this way?
Well, and one would have to wonder.
It's sort of like, okay, I mean, morally, you can't question the thought that, you know, we hate to see the Iranian government killing thousands of its citizens. That's terrible. There's no reason not to be disgusted about that. But are we not equally disgusted about other regimes around the world that routinely do that? And are we going to intervene in every single one of them? I mean, not that we haven't or the past try to do that,
never terribly effective. But at what the quandary that I have is, how can you be so personally, morally, you know, engaged with the regime in Iran when you're ignoring Russia trying to phrase tens of thousands of Ukrainians to death this winter?
Well, just ignore that.
There's that, and it's what, Well, the majority of the population still alive in Iran probably doesn't remember the shaw on the Slavaka anymore either. You know that guy? Remember that guy? Okay, you know, we sort of installed that guy. Uh, you know, let's bring him back their king and oh, by the way, let's train their death squad their secret police, because that's what the Savak was. Okay, but I think maybe that generation has aged out, maybe they're all dead,
they don't remember that. But now they're looking at this new, weird existential threat from the United States. I don't know, you know, what do you think?
And politically it's kind of fascinating because and by the way, way not that I don't politically one of the huge arguments about former administrations was Libya and other regimes in Africa.
We remember the period of.
Time when we were looking for, you know, a new wave of democracy across Africa, a new wave of democracy across.
Oh I don't know, the crimea all of.
The former Soviet We were really excited because it looked like democracy was taking hold, and.
We put a lot of money into that.
We supported democratic movements. And then we got to Libya and it's like Glibya had a civil war, and there was this huge outcryft why are we intervening in the Libyan civil war?
Okay?
And our only excuse was we're on the side of the people and we're for democracy.
I won't say it's about it, but I shouldn't say excuse.
Our reason was where, and that was, let's just say that that was widely opposed by one of the political parties. You know, it's not our business. It's not our business to be the world's policeman. It's not our business to engage in military over affairs overseas that are strictly political. We may not like it, but that's not our job. And there's not a single protest about Iran.
You know.
No, we're terribly offended by the fact that they've got a brutal, illegal, dictatorial government that's beheading people with acxes.
I don't like that.
But if we don't like that, we need to suddenly go, Okay, we now redeclare that we are the world policeman and we will pick you know, where's our checklist, like how many thousands of your people do you have to kill this month before we send in our police force?
You know?
Because so that's what we're doing in Iran. And these are like three totally different situations. And that's why I would argue that there can't be anything other than a transactional strategy because we're treating them all totally different. Iran is the you're you know, you're being brutal and terrible. So we not just we, but we and Israel are
going to crush you. And the narrative as of today that I'm here and I can't swear to this is that one of the reasons, you know, Trump said that he was going to intervene in arn a week ago. One of the things that I'm hearing is Israel said, no, don't do that yet, because we need more air defense missiles, we need more air stuff in place, because when you do that, they're going to attack with it.
Don't attack them until we're prepared. We'll go with you.
We'll both get together and totally destroy them. But we need more missiles first, and we have been shipping missile systems Israel.
This week, right and last I saw according to troop deployments, I mean, and there's like thirty thousand American troops within striking distance of Iran if they want to get serious.
This afternoon, looking at the charts for the last week, we have been deploying forces like mad East, like I talked about those tanker right, So it looks like you know, and one of the things the way it's being managed is he's simply saying, well, they didn't hang people last week, so I'm not doing it. But when they when they go overboard, we'll do it. And it looks to me like that's just just a timing thing, you know. Then he'll declare they did something. But that's what really troubles
me is again, what is the rationale? Did Congress really say that, you know, as we're Paul enough to declare war against because this is not to be a police action.
This is going to be a full scale strike.
The attack on the Atomic Center was at least a targeted attack, but in any event, completely different scenario. That's why it makes it when you ask the question what is the strategy, it's sort of like, if there is one, it's so deep, I haven't seen one, and it just looks purely transactional.
That's my point about these three areas. Basically we're talking about okay, which is, you know, let's just boil it down. You got your Middle Eastern area, which, by the way, it's acceptable for the regime in Syria to be just by now, even though you know, I could have swore that one guy was supposed to be like an ISIS leader, wasn't he anyway? You know, pay no attention to that. I don't think anybody even uses that term anymore, you know.
But you have Iran in the Israel circumstance, you have what's happening in Ukraine and Europe, and you have what we got going on in South and Central America. So I don't see how this strategically makes any sort of reconcilable sense according to the ways of doing things before. But again, lots of transactions can be made out of this. Uh, but are they going to be to our better.
Let's get back to China.
Let's get back to China for a minute and think about this at This is just something that has occurred to me. One of the things that does link all of these things together is control of oil.
Not Greenland.
Okay, fine, that's the but Iran and Venezuela, and if we do put regimes in place where in both countries where you know, we no longer has to sanction sales because they're selling to whom and when we want them to, which is literally what we said about Venezuela, We'll we'll take your oil and we'll tell you who to sell to what you know, everything other than what price, I guess,
and I'm not sure about that. But if if we essentially take control of the oil coming out of South America, the oil coming out of the Mid East, you know, China has been a major buyer of oil from Venezuela, from Iran, right, and my thought is that China is going to be forced to the huge reserves of oil have now been discovered off the Philippines, and my guess is that you may scare China to the point where China moves to protect itself by controlling those oil reserves.
And up to now, you know, they've been able to get oil globally, so why tap the reserves.
They're just kind of claiming this territory. They're not really producing out of it, you know. But if we get to the point where they clearly realize that somehow we have managed to control the world's oil supply to a large extent, we.
Scare them into doing something we really don't want to see them do. Long term.
Yeah, that.
Oil is one common.
Thing about both of those and I can understand why, you know, the administration would want oil to be as cheap and gasoline is to be as cheap as possible. But again, there are long term consequences of these things that are strategic, so that may be.
Transactional as well.
Certainly, gaining control of oil that we didn't have control before is a strategic play. It it's a strategic play. I just hope we aren't playing it strictly tactically. You know what's good for the next two years, you know, Oh, wait a minute, we didn't look at what the effect would be ten years down the line.
Well, it's like in a poker game. It's not always good to bankrupt the guy sitting next to you because you could use them to play off of the other who's got a bigger, you know, bank And that's what the problem is here is, Look, if we end up taking okay, you take absolute control of Venezuela's oil, but that's a long term problem because it's not like crude. It's not going to come up easy. So there's that problem.
Then you take into account the other oil interest over there in Iran who even knows at this point, because you know, we had all these sanctions against them, right, so their oil was going places, but it wasn't going to the places that we were getting it from. So we're gonna end up with again a different kind of product if we even took that all. Right, now, if that all happens.
Yeah, if you take the shadow fleet out of the equation and remove a lot of Russia's ability to explore a whale, you know, we kind of think, oh, the shadow fleet thing is, you know, something separately, but that really to a large extent is it's it's removing Russian exports too, So that this if there's any strategy in all of this, and this doesn't include Greenland. If there's any strategy that links all of it, it's controlling oil.
And I think, you know, given the current administration's total focus on oil for energy, uh, and really the disregard of any other energy source than oil, you know, that may be the game that's in play that just because it's it's like it's in hand now.
It's something that we can control.
Now.
It's not futures.
It's just let's let's make a play for the energy resources available to us, and if we control it, we've got a strategic win for X number of years at least.
Yeah. But here's the thing. Is it bringing down the price for anybody's heating oil right now? Prime time? Is it doing it?
No?
Is it bringing down the gas price?
No?
Is it bringing down any price?
No.
See, here's the thing. We're not seeing the benefits here, not on the ground, not in America.
We didn't build any more refineries, and I thought that they're really I don't call it humorous, but I just kind of shaped shook my head when I heard it last week. It's sort of you know, when when the oil companies who are pushing back on the Venezuelan and like, we don't want to pump a major investment in there.
It's kind of like you.
Guys haven't built any new refineries in a long time either, right, Yeah, And the exchange that was had was, well, they're going to do this for the good of the country because it will reduce the price of gasoline.
My immediate thought is.
Does corporate America really do things like that these days? You know, are they really going to make some move that's going to reduce their income and are they're like all their boards are hyper patriotic and they're going to give them salary increases for doing that. I think they're going to look at their price points and their cost of investment and return.
You know, I think they're business people.
It's kind of funny because after that exchange, the president said, say, well, you know, these are really business people. I'm going, yeah, yes they are, and reducing the price of their product is not necessarily their first choice.
Right.
So anyway, Larry, what else is there to take from all this, Because, like I say, this is just a whirlwind of stuff going on, and I think we are coming to the right idea here, is that there is an emerging sort of strategy that you could say regarding oil. Now, whether it's the why strategy or not, is something that time is going to tell us here, because again, if China has an idea that they're going to get strapped down because they don't have access to energy, they're going
to punch a hole somewhere and get it. And you know what kind of hole are they going to have to punch? Is the question? Is it going to be a business punch or is it going to be a military punch? Is it going to be something else where? We have to respond because look, Philippine territory is supposed to be what a protectorate of ours?
Not?
Right? So you know what are we looking at here? Yeah?
I think the takeaway of all of this is that we've got to step back and it's easy to be a cheerleader, you know. I again, everybody knows I'm like pro military and it's okay, it's easy to be a cheerleader.
When you see how well our forces performed in Venezuela.
That's great, and I you know, they are extremely competent, extremely professional, and it's easy to be a cheerleader and kind of step back and say we can take anybody in.
The world, you know, But then the question that you have to ask is what's the consequence of that? I mean, that's like the stool.
Youard bully saying they're bigger and they have the ability to get money from anybody on the school ground.
Is that does long term? How does that work for you?
It work for you know, first through fifth grade, but you know, is this a long term strategy? Are you going to are people going to love you for this? Are you going to have relationships long term? To me, there's a sports metaphor. It's sort of like, well I got all the way to the finals, but along the way I broke my quarterback's leg.
Everybody's out. You know.
The good news is we got to the finals. Wait a minute, what were the consequences?
I just we shouldn't. We shouldn't.
I saw a.
Picture today that I thought was appalling, and I would tell everybody in the room, you people are idiots.
I'm sorry.
Personally, it was a people, a number of art congress people and administrative They had made a cake of greenland and they we're cutting pieces apart, and the whole message obviously, we can do whatever we want to do to anybody when we want to do it, and that's insane that just all of us know people that are like that, and you have to ask yourself, does that ever come out good in the long term. Yeah, it's fun and you can beat your chest, but you know, think about that.
For a minut Yeah, but I can't. I can't. I can't tell you how many.
Times about everybody, what every foreign right say, what about every foreign country that saw images of that little cake cutting incident?
Yeah, they think about us now exactly. I was just gonna say to you, I can't tell you how many times I saw a bully, right, you know, a guy who was just bigger than everybody else do quite well for a little while until guess what happens? Three guys figure out, you know, if we all go at him at once, he's going down.
You know.
That's that's the way that works. And this is what I'm wondering. If anybody's you know, really taking this in, like, you know, can we take Greenland? Probably? Is this wise to do? Is any other friendly, cooperative place going to look at this and go, you know, what, they took Greenland? We might need to prepare ourselves to deal with they come to take us, you know, is this wise again?
So again, look, time will tell it is transactional. Like you said, that's a great takeaway, and it is a great way to kind of, you know, sus it out and understand that there may be a strategy here. But is it long term? I don't see how it can be. Perhaps we're entering into a time Larry, where you know what, the world has changed, right, you know, so we need to change with it. But it just doesn't make enough sense to me to seem like something that's going to
get us, you know, stability ten years from now. I think we're going to be feeling these problems ten years from now still.
Well yeah, and even if it was just a deal, Chuck, we all know that we've all been in deals and deals both parties.
Really, if it's going to be a long term relationship, you don't ice cut a deal.
And if somebody walks away feeling like they've really been screwed, they're not going back. Right, You're gonna buy a car there again, You're gonna have lunch there again. You know, deals assume that everybody may not get exactly what they want, but they all walked away with something that's being different than the bully thing.
Okay, maybe if it's on the playground. I did a deal.
Here, here's my quarter, now protect me from the other kids. But a deal has to have something for both sides. The way we're kind of approaching deals at the moment doesn't feel that way. So even if we're just deals, it doesn't feel up, doesn't feel quite right.
There you go. And again, guys, look, I obviously always tell you, you know, I recommend all of Larry's books for sure, but also go over to Larry Handcock dot WordPress dot com and check out his blog. And you know what, next time I get together with Larry, I'm actually hoping to talk a little uh little Lee Harvey
Oswald with him. Uh maybe maybe some stuff like that, because he's been writing a series of articles uh that jfk Fax has published, and I do want to get into that with you, because you've said some interesting things
in those articles that I didn't quite expect. Larry, honestly, Uh, I I must have I I really, I must have missed something in The Oswald Puzzle, which is another book I highly recommend, but I guess I got to give it another read because I was like, wait a minute, is this new information because it was a little a couple of new things.
Yeah, go ahead, there is some new information in there. There's some new information that's going to be coming out in the uh the uh next version of the Oswald Puzzle. Will we added a couple of chapters. Uh or Yeah, there is some new information. But chuck before I forget it, since they're going to be looking at my blog. The most recent thing I posted this evening was a link to Stuart Wexler is going to be appearing before the Lunar Panel tomorrow giving testimony and taking questions about MLK
document releases. And you know, for those that they're interested in the Keen assassination, that would probably be pretty interesting to follow. It should be on c SPAN. Certainly, it will be streamed from the link on my blog, and I sent you a copy of the link so that it's it's getting hard to follow everything.
It's like, okay, what is today? What was yesterday?
Right? And look, I will publish that and that'll be around what time did you say on the It'll be the twenty second of January.
Yeah, yeah, it'll be the twenty second, and I think it starts at ten eastern.
Yeah.
Well, wait a minute, maybe it starts at eight eastern. I know it's nine indural for me, So let's let's just say that people can figure the time zones.
There you go.
We'll give them give them a time no problem.
Nine central means ten eastern, so that is where you'll be able to catch it. And I guarantee it'll be on either C Span one, two or three. Uh, depending on their programming schedule that day.
Uh.
But uh, you know the Lunar panel now focusing on MLK document releases. I think they're done with JFK, by the way, but I guess we'll see.
Uh.
But but either I think they're done with JFK. I think there might be an RFK hearing. There has not been, but I think they're done with JFK. I think they're done with UFOs. I think you know, this will do MLK. I think it's a If there's anything added, it might be one on RFK.
There you go. So again, Yeah, check out Larry's blog. I'll give you guys all the links in the show notes that that Larry dropped me, including the link to Stu Wexler's testimony tomorrow. And I want to talk to Stu, by the way, just let him know I'd love to talk to him, especially after he does his testimony. I certainly would love to speak with him next week. If
he has time, I'll do it. You know, I'd like to discuss that experience, because you know, it was like difficult to get anybody from the panel to talk to me last time when they did JFK stuff. So but but Stu, you know, I've always supported his work as well when he was co authoring with you, and even
stuff that he wrote on his own. Stu is an amazing researcher and and and somebody who you know is probably one of the most underrated guys out there as far as you know historical excavation, let's put it that way. But again, I'm happy to talk about about and to Larry Hancock. I recommend all of his books, and I can't wait to see this update at Oswald Puzzle. But maybe that's what we'll talk about in two weeks. Until then,
I am ocelly. You are the effect. I've been with Larry Hancock for almost an hour tonight here on a Wednesday, and hopefully you got something out of it.
Thank you.
M M.
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