DIESEL AT RM4.90 PER LITER

 

OutSyed The Box

Monday, March 23, 2026

DIESEL AT RM4.90 PER LITER

Diesel fuel is selling at RM4.90 per liter at the pump. It is going to send prices of everything up again. The whole world is delivered by trucks and lorries that run on diesel. All construction machinery and heavy equipment run on diesel. Construction costs are going to go up as well. 

Oil price is at US$91.84 per barrel (WTI today's price in the US). Despite the Iran situation. The in-the-know people say the war plan covers SIX WEEKS and today is the 24th day of the war - four days shy of four weeks. The next two weeks will be the closing phases. 

The regime in Iran is now being run almost completely by remnants of the IRGC leadership. The latest scare yesterday was the two missiles fired by the IRGC at the American military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. It created a scare because Diego Garcia is 4,000 km distant from Iran. Implying that the IRGC has developed 4,000 km range ballistic missiles - enough range to hit Finland. 

However both missiles splashed into the sea, at some distance from Diego Garcia. This implies that the missiles did not have sufficient range. It was psy war to trick people into believing that indeed they did have long range missiles. Thus increasing pressure on the western media to push for de-escalation. The trick seems to have worked because the legacy press has been playing up the "threat to Europe" angle. 

Oil prices moved up a little. Lets see what happens tomorrow.

Some countries are facing serious economic problems - even without any help from the Iran situation. Pakistan closed its schools for two weeks. Offices and businesses in Pakistan have been told to work for FOUR DAYS only - to save on fuel consumption by the economy.   Pakistan does not have foreign exchange reserves (US Dollars) to pay for a higher oil import bill.  Plus they do not export much to accumulate foreign exchange reserves in the first place.

Indonesia is having problems too. The Indon rupiah is still crashing. It is now at 16,975 Rupiah to one US Dollar.

Here is the 5 Year chart for the Indon Rupiah vs USD. You can see it is doomed.

The Ringgit seems to be holding steady at around RM3.93 to the US Dollar. I hope it strengthens further. It will certainly help reduce price inflation of imported goods. 

The private sector economy must be grown even more to totally eclipse the goverment sector. It will help to strengthen the Ringgit even more.  

DEFEAT - Trump backs down

From the FB page of:

Nury Vittachi 

ondSopserth19g0h1m57cuh3gfthft21505thf7h7h53ll7864t80igul3hm ·

THE AMERICAN-ISRAELI ATTACK on Iran is stopping, US President Donald Trump said within the past hour.

The US army’s imminent attack to destroy Iranian infrastructure will not go ahead, he said in an unexpected post on Truth Social.

It will pause for five days, to begin with, and then the situation will be reviewed.

.

POSITIVE SPIN

Trump tried to put a positive spin on the obvious defeat by saying in his post that the pause had come about because of “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”.

But this was clearly untrue.

The Iranians had already made their peace concessions in full last month.

The real story, which can hardly be denied, is that the Iranians are undefeated after three weeks of fighting, and have the spirit to continue the battle—and Trump could not afford more pain to the US Armed Forces, or to their reputation, or to their allies, or to the global economy.

He's backing down.

Trump’s advisors clearly told him that if the stand off continued or escalated, he would personally be blamed for triggering a global recession. Even with his extraordinary talent for self-delusion, he could not face that fact.

.

TOTAL DEFEAT

The attack on Iran has been a clear failure for the US.

FAILED: The promise to fulfil Netanyahu’s 40-year-old dream to destroy Iran was not achieved.

FAILED: The achievement of regime change, which is illegal under international law, was not achieved.

FAILED: The destruction of Iran’s WMDs could not be achieved, since they never existed, as the US’s 18 intelligence agencies agreed.

FAILED: Perhaps worst of all, the opportunity to burnish the US Armed Forces' reputation as a power able to speedily conquer any enemy flopped badly. The US military, despite Israel’s help, struggled badly.

FAILED: The defeat is also a personal one for Donald Trump and Secretary for War Crimes Pete Hegseth too. They treated the attacks on Iran as if they were schoolboys playing war games—and respect, once lost, is very hard to regain.

.

IT WAS NEVER A WAR

The western mainstream press will report that the “Iran war” has temporarily paused, and may be over. But this is not accurate.

There never was a war. The US did not declare war on Iran. It made an unprovoked attack, which is something very different in international law.

By pretending it was a war, western politicians and the western corporate media can call for Iran to stop its attacks on military bases in the Gulf.

But if they described it as it really was – an unprovoked attack by the US and Israel, using a variety of bases (in the Gulf states and the UK), then the world has to see the real story: Iran was attacked and was defending itself.

Iran did so by firing missiles at the bases from which the attacks came. This is entirely legitimate within the scope of United Nations law.

The world has learned that a rogue state willing to disregard international law and cause immense damage to the economies of the planet exists.

We can use Trump's phrase, and says that a “terror regime” exists and is a genuine problem for the world.

But it was never Iran.

Pete Hegseth is promoting a nihilist cult of death

Pete Hegseth is promoting a nihilist cult of death

Jan-Werner Müller



The Trump administration is embracing violence for the sake of violence

Mon 23 Mar 2026 21.00 AEDT

‘Faithful to his master’s desire for total domination and destruction, Hegseth announces future war crimes on live TV.’ Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters


It appears that members of Trump’s cabinet get chosen not despite their endorsements of violence, but because of them. Pete Hegseth was primarily known as a dapper TV host willing to defend war crimes. Markwayne Mullin is apparently still proud of challenging a witness to a fistfight at a Senate hearing; he also refuses to apologize for “understanding” an assault on fellow senator Rand Paul. Never before has an administration so openly glorified outright killing as the current White House propaganda machine does with its obscene snuff videos of the Iran war and the destruction of small boats.

Unlike with fascism in the 20th century, there is no attempt to promote or symbolically reward self-sacrifice – it is just video game-style killing at a distance, justified not with strategic objectives, but with seemingly uncontrollable emotions (“fury” and a thirst for vengeance). And all accompanied by open admissions that basic laws of warfare will be broken. Actual soldiers with longstanding codes of honor, as opposed to the fantasy world Hegseth is creating with his cliche-ridden chatter on TV, would not punch enemies when they are down.

Trump has never hidden his desire for domination and the related willingness to have his followers engage in violence, from the call to rough up people at his rallies to the pardons of even the most brutal January 6 insurrectionists.

Hegseth and company are promoting an ultimately nihilist cult of death

During his first administration, an “axis of adults” mostly held his worst impulses in check; after the Venezuela “excursion” and the realization that people on small boats can be killed with impunity, Hegseth, and perhaps even Rubio, seem drunk on the idea that special military operations could be quick and costless in American lives – and make for great TV. Trump’s fixation on visuals and props – if I show a pile of paper on TV, it means I really have divested from my companies, or I really have a great healthcare plan – is now shared across his administration.


Trump himself appears to treat a global decapitation campaign as if it were a version of The Apprentice that includes firing live ammunition – as if he gets to remove other leaders, and as if he should get to choose the successors of whoever gets kidnapped or killed.

Historically, there is an ideology that made the glorification of violence central to their propaganda. “Long live death” was a fascist slogan; Mussolini’s movement started with veterans and celebrated them as a “trenchocracy” – an aristocracy of men hardened by battle in the trenches.

Gigantic ossuaries for the war dead – some holding the bones of as many as 100,000 dead soldiers – were meant to encourage future sacrifice; the Nazis in turn presented their youth with slogans like “We are born to die for Germany”.

It seems that Hegseth and company are also promoting an ultimately nihilist cult of death. But it celebrates killing by pressing a button thousands of miles away; meanwhile, America’s own dead are dishonored, as Trump has used their repatriation to display his Maga merch and fundraise off the victims of war.

Is anyone as ill-suited for great office as Donald Trump? Yes, Pete Hegseth – that’s why Potus likes him
Emma Brockes


Read more

Simultaneously, faithful to his master’s desire for total domination and destruction, Hegseth announces future war crimes on live TV (“no quarter”) and encourages gratuitous cruelty: “We are punching them while they’re down.” The obscene focus on “lethality” is part of this shift towards war understood as inflicting maximum destruction and pain (as opposed to achieving strategic objectives – which the administration has of course been utterly incapable of articulating).


The reality of war itself recedes because the airwaves are filled with an endless series of entertaining images and empty talk. Hegseth, fond of laughably overwrought language and alliterations in particular (“warriors, not wokesters”), seems unable to articulate anything other than cliches (“unbreakable will”) or snippets of a Christian nationalism which flies in the face of the first amendment’s prohibiting an established religion: one cannot make it a litmus test of patriotism that citizens pray for the troops on bended knees and in the name of Jesus.

The point is not to equate the two men, but one cannot help but remember how Hannah Arendt, in her highly controversial book on the Eichmann trial, described the Nazi bureaucrat: someone utterly incapable of thinking, someone who instead just produced an endless stream of hollow phrases.

Will all this have an effect in legitimizing an illegal war? Hegseth has also created a fantasy world inside the Pentagon itself; instead of press conferences with critical questions and genuine answers, there is gentle back-and-forth between “the secretary of war” – a fantasy name, as Congress has not authorized changing the department’s name – and figures from the Epoch Times and LindellTV (the world according to “the MyPillow guy”).

Even with this extra layer of insulation from reality, Hegseth insisted that the press was not being positive enough about US attacks on Iran. Like with many Maga men performing puerile stunts for the manosphere, the fragile ego inside seems incapable of facing up to the reality of what has been unleashed so thoughtlessly.


Jan-Werner Mueller is a Guardian US columnist

 

Trump postpones military strikes on Iranian power plants for five days

The US president’s announcement comes after he holds ‌’good and ​productive conversations’ with Tehran.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

By Al Jazeera Staff

Published On 23 Mar 202623 Mar 2026

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he has ordered the United States military to postpone strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days after holding “good and productive conversations” with Tehran.

“I am pleased to report that the United States of America, and the country of Iran, have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” Trump posted in all caps on his Truth Social platform.

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“I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five – day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”

The latest announcement will be seen as a big relief in the region, which has been bearing the brunt of Iranian attacks, and across the world as the war on Iran has sent oil prices soaring and causing a global energy crisis.

In efforts to ease the energy prices, Trump on Saturday gave Tehran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all vessels, warning that otherwise the US would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants. Trump’s ultimatum was aimed at ending Tehran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil passes.

Analyst Mohammed el-Masry said that Trump’s announcement may be “his way of sort of giving himself a dignified exit”.

“But the question that people need to ask is what the Iranians are going to do, and what the Israelis are going to do, and to what extent might they be willing to continue the war effort against Iran without US backing, if that’s what ends up happening here.”

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall said that the Iranians will possibly climb down despite the three weeks of war. “The likelihood that they will refuse this offer from Trump is remote,” he said.

“The Iranians do not want to continue this war – they say it was imposed on them and the region.

“They have said that if there are guarantees, and further negotiations take place, and if there is no repeat of the same type of aggression or any kind of aggression against Iran in the future, and if there is a willingness to find a lasting deal, then I am sure the Iranians will not say no.”

‘Initiative’ by regional countries

Iran’s foreign ministry a statement carried by semi-official Mehr news agency said that Trump’s move is aimed at reducing energy prices and earn time to implement his military plans.

It added that there are “initiative” by regional countries to reduce tensions but that their concerns should be referred to Washington, “the party that started this war”.

Tehran denied there was a dialogue between Tehran and Washington.

Iran had said it would completely shut the strait – a transit point for about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies – in retaliation. Tehran also pledged to attack energy facilities in Israel and Gulf countries.

The de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has caused a spike in global oil prices and caused a shortage of cooking gas in several Asian countries. Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, on Monday warned that the situation in the Middle East is “very severe” and is worse than the two energy crises of the 1970s put together.

On Monday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded that if Washington went ahead with its threat, Iran would target power plants in all regions that supply electricity to US bases “as well as the economic, industrial and energy infrastructures in which Americans have shares”.

In addition, the country’s Defence Council warned that any attack on Iran’s southern coast or islands would prompt the laying of sea mines that would sever Gulf shipping routes, according to state media.

‘Substantial evidence’ of double-tap strike in killing of Gaza’s Hind Rajab

‘Substantial evidence’ of double-tap strike in killing of Gaza’s Hind Rajab

Campaign group Avaaz analyses the timeline of events to conclude that violations show Israel systematically kills first responders

Drone view of a giant sand portrait of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza in 2024, created on a beach near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK [Handout image via Reuters]

By Graham Keeley
Published On 23 Mar 2026


In the final hours of her life on January 29, 2024, Hind Rajab’s feeble voice could be heard desperately pleading with her mother and emergency workers for help, as she was trapped in a car surrounded by the bodies of six of her relatives.

After finally getting clearance from the Israeli military in Gaza City, a Red Crescent ambulance raced to save the five-year-old girl. But two paramedics were killed when their marked vehicle – whose sirens were blaring – came under Israeli tank fire. The remains of the nine victims were recovered 12 days later.

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Two years after the tragedy, a report claims this was a “double tap” attack by the Israeli army. A double-tap strike essentially means carrying out two strikes on the same target, often wounding or killing medics and civilians who are coming to the aid of people harmed in the first attack.

Analysis by the legal campaign group Avaaz has found evidence that the killings contravened international combat law under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.

“By reconstructing the coordination and timing around the approved ambulance mission, it shows that there is substantial evidence of a deliberate ‘double-tap’ tactic – an initial military strike followed with a deliberately timed second strike targeting emergency responders and medical personnel who arrive to help,” Avaaz says in its report exclusively shared with Al Jazeera. “The brief brings together the timeline of events up to and beyond Hind’s death, showing what Israeli forces must have been aware of at each stage, and the frequent opportunities they had to pull back from murder.

“It documents over 40 human rights violations and ties together how those violations are evidence of a double-tap attack on the hospital workers. Each violation builds to an alarming possibility: Israel is not only killing Palestinians – it is systematically killing those who try to save them. The message is clear: If the medical community tries to help, it will be extinguished.”



US lawmakers introduce Justice for Hind Rajab Act


More than 1,500 healthcare workers have been killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, including several since a so-called “ceasefire” came into effect in October.

Avaaz, building on previous investigations by Al Jazeera in partnership with the Hind Rajab Foundation and other media organisations, claims there is clear evidence that this double strike constituted a war crime. The campaign group is now urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring those responsible to justice.

At the time of publishing, the Israeli military had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
‘I am absolutely convinced that this is another case of double tap’

Al Jazeera, in partnership with the Hind Rajab Foundation, last year revealed evidence of deliberate killings.

The Israeli government initially claimed that none of its forces was present at the time, later asserting that the 335 bullet holes found in the family’s car were the result of an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters.

However, a subsequent investigation of satellite imagery and audio from that day by the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, the University of London, identified only the presence of several Israeli Merkava tanks in the vicinity of the family’s car and no evidence of any exchange of fire.

The Avaaz report highlights that the ambulance obtained permission from COGAT, an arm of the Israeli military, to go to Hind’s aid, so Israeli forces knew exactly when the first responders would arrive and the route they would take. About three hours passed between the initial shooting of the family vehicle and the attack on the ambulance, indicating the Israeli army had ample opportunity for “situational awareness, communication, and command decision-making”, the report adds.

Avaaz says the ambulance was attacked by a tank in a way that could not have been a warning shot if the military had any reason to believe it was not there to rescue Hind. Instead, the assault “points to lethal targeting”.

The Israeli army gave no warning before attacking the ambulance, previous investigations have found.

“I have taken the investigations done by a number of independent journalistic outfits. I was really struck by the evidence at the end of the whole horrendous incident,” said Sarah Andrew, legal director of Avaaz, who added that as a mother, Hind’s death made her think of her own daughter. “In particular, the kind of weaponry that was used on the ambulance, the timing and the fact that no warning was given – it immediately triggered a question in my mind, and I am absolutely convinced that this is another case of double tap.”

She told Al Jazeera: “It is something that has not had attention, and we would like to take this with [an independent legal] partner to the ICC.”

“What I have done is establish a legal framework for the previous investigation. I think it is very important that we also look at what happened to the ambulance workers as well as what happened to Hind and her family.”

The report says, “Even where an attacking force claims it suspects misuse of a medical vehicle, international humanitarian law requires warnings and an opportunity to comply before an attack can be lawful.”

Andrew said the Israeli military has yet to explain why a tank fired on an ambulance.

“We have not heard from the people responsible. I want them to appear before the ICC and hear what on earth was in their mind when they ordered 120mm tank rounds to be fired into an ambulance,” she said. “Justice is first of all bringing the light of attention into this crime and secondly seeing the persons responsible being accountable for their actions.”

Professor James Sweeney, from the University of Lancaster, who is an expert on human rights and conflict, said in double-tap attacks, the second strike is usually within five to 10 minutes.

It can also mean letting off a small explosion to induce rescuers to respond, then exploding another bomb once they are near.

“The [Avaaz] brief says that the attack on the ambulance should be considered a double tap, but usually the second attack would be within five to 20 minutes and would be considered a trick,” he told Al Jazeera. “It would seem that [in this case] the passage of time was greater, but that does not take anything away from the fact that the attack on the ambulance was so unlawful. You could see it as a form of double-tap, but it is not my normal understanding of it. But in any case, it does not take away from the fact that these were war crimes.”

The Hind Rajab Foundation said in a statement, “The double tap arguments are consistent with our analysis as well. We are continuously preparing for new filings against responsible soldiers in various jurisdictions.

“We have 24 names of responsible perpetrators. We are open to work together with Avaaz on a filing specifically regarding the attack on the ambulance.”

***

Shailoks have been and still are MORE evil than the Devil, Nazis and Kempeitai combined. Such EVIL must be removed. Bring back Shakespeare and Adolf.

Missing words read "..... the Devil's State"