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🚢 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 ‘Crisis even bigger than Covid’: American business owners are barely getting by

Between shipping disruptions, the lack of containers, high costs because of what’s going on in the Red Sea and higher fertilizer costs, we have this period of disruption that we’ve never encountered before,” said Vojta, who founded the national coffee distributor more than three decades ago. “There’s just so much uncertainty.”

Around the country, American business owners across myriad industries say they’re in a similar boat. A closely watched monthly survey from the Institute for Supply Management raised eyebrows earlier this month after several business leaders compared the current business climate to the pandemic.

Massive disruptions and price instability are forcing businesses to make impossible decisions. They have no idea how to plan, and their inflation-wary customers are in no mood for more price hikes.

“This is a bigger problem than Covid, for sure,” said Jack Buffington, director of the supply chain program at the University of Denver. “This is completely different. This is an energy problem.”

The Trump administration has tried to frame the Iran war as a temporary economic blip — and once resolved, rebounding inflation will quickly reverse itself. But the historic supply chain struggles that America’s business owners face show why resurgent inflation will not be easily resolved – even if the war miraculously ended tomorrow

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/20/economy/covid-diesel-supply-chain

https://archive.ph/ENCKs

⚡️🇺🇸🛢 – Except for a brief period of around six months following the start of the war in Ukraine, Trump's claim is categorically false. Oil and gas prices right now remain higher than at almost any point during Biden's presidency.

Others, like diesel, have reached historic highs under Trump.

@GeoPWatch

⚡️🇺🇸🛢 – Trump claimed gas prices were higher under Biden.

Gas prices were much higher under Biden than under “TRUMP.” So were almost all other prices. President DJT

@GeoPWatch

🇺🇸⚡️ — One U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin, Texas, southern USA shot 28-year old Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in his vehicle today. Footage shows an ICE agent blocking his vehicle and firing multiple rounds, with no initial attempt to provide medical aid afterwards contrary to usual law enforcement procedure.

It is unclear what caused this confrontation to occur. Perez is in serious but stable condition, according to Austin's mayor Kirk Watson who also condemned the shooting. Perez is also in ICE custody while being hospitalized.

@PatriotFrontSightings »
🇺🇸 Thomas Rousseau is appearing on Warpaint podcast by Kim Coulter tonight.

▶️Watch the podcast here.

🇺🇸 🇸🇦 🇾🇪 Trump decided against ordering U.S. airstrikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis for now, after briefly telling the Pentagon to prepare strikes following a personal appeal from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to administration officials cited by the New York Times. Most of Trump’s inner circle reportedly opposed opening another front in the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/us/politics/trump-yemen-houthis-red-sea-iran.html

https://archive.ph/nMIsQ

📎 Faytuks Network

🇺🇸🔼🛢 – Average diesel prices in the U.S. have topped $6.50 per gallon for the first time in recorded history, as disruptions related to the war in Iran continue to reverberate in oil markets.

@GeoPWatch

📝 🇪🇹 🇸🇩 Woofers on X: We are on course for a terrible war in Ethiopia with dramatic regional consequences and I feel like it’s hardly getting any attention. The Tigray War saw the TPLF cut off from the outside world, smashed between Eritrea and the Ethiopian federal government. Now, the relationship has changed and the TPLF has friends in Asmara. The Sudanese Armed Forces are also eager to lend support, part of a longstanding relationship only strengthened by Ethiopia’s blatant support for the RSF.

Should the alliance between the TPLF, Fano and OLA hold together and should they be able to coordinate their actions (both in doubt long term) then there is a serious possibility that Addis Ababa loses control over vast portions of the country. If the ONLF can muster forces, it can throw the Somali region into disarray.

Though the OLA’s capacity to hold ground is in question, their widespread presence across Oromia means that federal forces are stretched thin.

Should a full war be launched, it will be the most serious crisis in Ethiopia since the civil war during the Cold War period. More serious than the Tigray War of just a few years ago.

📎 Woofers

⚡️🇺🇸 – The man shot in Austin by ICE is "in serious but stable condition" following a gunshot injury to his torso.

The city's governor, Kirk Watson (Dem), said:

"A person being shot on the streets of Austin by someone purporting to be law enforcement, particularly when it’s ICE, is something that causes me to be unhappy and angry. [...] While I’m unhappy and I’m angry about it, I’m not surprised at all.”

@GeoPWatch

⚡️🇺🇸 – Some footage of the incident, which took place around 90 minutes ago.

@GeoPWatch

#BREAKING
⚡️🇺🇸 – A man was just shot and injured by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in north Austin, Texas.

Agents opened fire against a man that, per reports, tried to driven away from an ICE SUV blocking the road; it remains unknown if the man was the target of an operation.

He is reportedly in a hospital and "alert", with no word on his condition.

@GeoPWatch

🛤 🇧🇾 🇷🇺 Belarus has reactivated an abandoned railroad line called the Druskininkai Branch Line which dead-ends at the Lithuanian border near the Latežeris Local Border Control Post. This brach line was built in 1934 off the Warsaw-St. Petersburg main line at Porechye

Belarus' oldest railway station (1862). It reached Druskininkai, Lithuania but was abandoned in Lithuania in 2000 due to that country's geopolitical shift toward Europe after the break up of the Soviet Union. The portion in Belarus remained intact but was unused.

Recently however tracks were renovated and a roadway extended from it to the Lithuanian border right at the Suwalki Gap (circled in the attached) map. Kaliningrad is in the upper left, Belarus lower right, Poland at lower left, and Lithuania and upper right.

This is right next to the Latežeris Local Border Control Post which was closed after ruzzia invaded Ukraine. As part of the Baltic Defense Line project, the Lithuanian military heavily fortified the unused Latežeris crossing with defensive blockades, including anti-tank "dragon's teeth" and counter-mobility barriers.

There also appears to be a former Soviet installation of some kind right next to the site where the reactivated railroad line is located.

📎 The Cold Wars