Some 50,000 migrants have now crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the coast of North Africa. The town normally has a population of 85,000, so it’s now been swamped. Virtually all the migrants are young to middle aged men. They were encouraged to cross by their own government, which is allied with Israel, and which Israel pressured to do this. Spain has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinians, so this is revenge for that stance. It’s a deliberate attempt to destabilise the country, and the EU more broadly, since the migrants are now on EU soil and will be able to travel freely within the EU once transferred to the mainland. The Spanish government, which has been welcoming to migrants so far, has not taken any action to stem the tide. They sent medical teams since there was violence, including burning cars and invading homes, but nothing to prevent further crossings. The Spanish supreme court recently ruled that migrants arriving by sea could not be immediately sent back, and these people are arriving by swimming round the border crossing (a mere 200m swim). They’ve been instructed by NGOs as to how to gain entry, and how to navigate the legal system.

One particularly awful motivation for encouraging this kind of migration is to generate hatred towards muslims in Europe. Here that sentiment is explicitly stated by Trump ally and hatemongering zionist Laura Loomer:

Islam is not the enemy of Europe, and fomenting hatred is reprehensible, but parr for the course for the Trump regime and its hangers-on. It’s true that mass migration of people from very different cultures is extremely destabilising, and causing that to happen inevitably leads to conflict, but using this to demonise entire ethnic and religious groups is uncalled for. There has been far too much migration in too short a time over the last few years, since the major migration following the war in Syria and the fall of Libya. This has overwhelmed countries’ ability to integrate new people, and some unfortunately have no intention of integrating. The fact that such a large percentage of the migrants are military age males is also a major red flag. An excess of young men with no partners and no work creates a powder keg. For instance, sexual assaults have increased substantially.

The Moroccans are not the only group that was encouraged to cross into Europe. This has been going on for years, as the globalists seek to erase borders, dilute national cultures, and weaken people’s sense of identity. All western countries are experiencing this, and it’s being promoted by their own governments, which no longer serve their own people and see homogenisation as a benefit when it absolutely is not. The consequences are increasingly negative, but that doesn’t mean Islam should be blamed for everything. Muslims are not all interchangeable. As with any group, there are both peaceful and violent individuals. There are those who assimilate, becoming productive citizens, and those who do not. Zionists as z group have far more to answer for more recently, given the genocide they’re currently conducting and their desire to depopulate and take over virtually the entire Middle East. This will naturally generate far more refugees and much greater migratory pressure.

The world stands on the brink of WW3, with two expanding wars threatening to coalesce. The old order is breaking down, and a new one will eventually form, but the interrim is going to be violent, and possibly nuclear. Transfers of hegemonic power do not occur peacefully.

Japan has been a major engine of global liquidity for decades through the yen carry trade. After it’s bubble burst in 1989, Japan lowered interest rates to essentially zero and kept them there. This allowed for borrowing in yen for free and investing the money where yields were higher. This benefited both foreigners and the Japanese investing abroad, resulting in Japan being tbe largest holders of US treasuries. It also allowed the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to act as buyer of last resort for Japanese bonds without having to worry about interest payments. Japanese debt is the highest in the world, but mostly owed to itself, in its own currency at a very low rate, meaning the debt could be managed despite the enormous outstanding principle. Consumer prices remained flat, as did wages.

First the pandemic and now the war in the middle east have upset the balance, as both forced price rises. During the pandemic, other central banks were raising rates while Japan did not, but this impacted the value of the yen as money flooded into dollars instead. Japan tried to raise rates marginally, but this threat to the carry trade caused a minor panic, so rates were lowered again. Since Japan is not self-sufficient in essentials, it imports a great deal, including all of its oil and gas. A falling yen causes further price rises for commodities and goods priced in dollars, leading to BoJ intervention to try to protect the vale of the yen. However, buying yen merely fed the speculators who were shorting it on obvious weakness. Rising prices (ie prices denominated in falling yen ) have led to rising wages, threatening a wage-price spiral. Interest rates have since been raised again to protect purchasing power, but this both threatens the carry trade and greatly increases the cost of carrying the gargantuan debt.

Japanese bond yields, while still lower than in other jurisdictions, are still almost ten times as high as they were a mere four years ago. Unfortunately the perceived risk of holding them has risen substantially, meaning that potential buyers of Japanese debt will be demanding still higher rates. In the meantime, leveraged bets against the yen are increasing. Japan is in the unenviable position of being forced to choose between saving its currency or saving its bond market. The government wants to protect the bond market, keeping rates low enough that it can afford its payments, while the central bank wants to save the currency with higher rates. The rest of the world would like to avoid a disorderly unwinding of the yen carry trade, but such an outcome is increasingly likely. Higher bond yields are coming, meaning money coming home as the carry trade reverses and investment at home is encouraged. This will have severe effects on the global economy.

The likelihood of a fire sale of assets, including US treasuries, is rising as the burden of the huge Japanese debt rises on higher rates. The US wants to prevent this, as it would push up the borrowing cost on their own $40trillion in debt. Japan has been vassalised into the empire, so the US has leverage over it, both financially and militarily. Pressure may be placed on Japan to prevent the selling of treasuries, but their situation will break eventually anyway. If US yields on the ten year exceed 5% (currently about 4.6%), the US will find itself in an exploding debt scenario. A financial reset is coming, as the tensions in the global financial system are rapidly increasing, and limits are approaching. This could result in a knee-jerk flight to safety into the reserve currency, which would suppress the value of other currencies, including the yen. This could send prices of Japanese imports very much higher, especially for energy, and everything derived from it. The combination of skyhigh prices and the Japanese demographic timebomb, due to a chronically low birth rate, is very unfortunate. Pensions promises are very unlikely to be able to be kept as a highly indebted government tries to cope with far too few young people to fund a pension system, or other entitlements. Japan will not be the only country facing this conundrum, but it may well be the first to fall.

Saudi Arabia has been blockading Yemen for a decade, following their long war, which the Saudis lost. They’ve been focused on preventing contact between Ansarallah (the Houthis) and Iran, but a Yemeni delegation was recently flown to the funeral of Khamenei on an Iranian plane. (This was necessary since all Yemen’s own aircraft were blown up by the Israelis.) As the plane was returning the delegation to Sanaa airport, the Saudis bombed the runway. The plane diverted to a different airfield and landed safely, but the Saudi action has reignited hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia joined the US in bombing an Iraqi militia group that’s also part of the resistance against the American-Israeli axis. These actions were extremely foolish, as the backlash has been severe. The Iraqis attacked the critical oil facility at Abqaiq, and Ansarallah bombed Saudi ports, oil storage facilities and refineries, all of which were within easy reach. The Jazan refinery is the most advanced facility of its kind in the world, producing petrochamicals as well as fuels. The damage in all cases has been significant, and will take a long time to repair. This can’t even begin while hostilities are ongoing, as they may now be for a long time.

These actions were not at all in the interests of Saudi Arabia, which begs the question as to why they would invite such obviously predictable retaliation. Following the closure of Hormuz, the Saudis had been exporting oil via a pipeline to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. Ansarallah has now closed the southern exit of the Red Sea – the Bab-al-Mandab strait (the Gateway of Tears) – to Saudi shipping. For oil exports to take the Suez route adds considerable time and cost, as much of the oil would be destined for Asia. Ansarallah has now told ships not to dock and load at Saudi ports, which would reduce the kingdom’s export potential to zero. Given that the Saudi economy is not diversified, and is completely dependent on revenues from oil exports, the country could be economically crippled.

The most likely explanation as to why the Saudi crown prince would have taken such actions emerged from an announcement by Trump that he would facilitate the development of nuclear power capacity in the kingdom, with the potential for uranium enrichment, and no inspection regime would be required. This has been a goal of the Saudis for years, and may well have been sufficient inducement for them to put themselves in harms way in the short term. Unfortunately for them, Trump added an additional requirement the next day, namely that they sign the Abraham Accords with Israel. This is a New Yok real estate technique Trump once boasted about in one of his ghost-written books – make a deal, add further huge demands, and intimidate the other side into agreeing to a win-lose deal. It remains to be seen whether this can work in international relations, vut the odds are stacked against it. Signing the accords is something the Saudis have vowed not to do unless a Palestinian state is established. The result may depend on how badly the Saudis want nuclear technology, especially enrichment, which they would be extremely likely to develop into nuclear weapons at their earliest convenience. They may, however, find their infrastructure and economy so damaged over the next few weeks that they no longer have many capacities. A round of nuclear proliferation in the region is now highly likely, as each party will be racing to secure themselves from the empire and their own neighbours.

The war has now encompassed all the Gulf states, with the partial exception of Oman, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, and potentially Syria. It appears that the US had been planning a major attack on the whole of the resistance groups, but Iran acted pre-emptively by bombing the US base in Jordan from which it would likely have begun, destroying a number of US fighter jets. So far Israel is standing aside, prefering to let the Americans do the dirty work while they avoid becoming a target. However, with the US withdrawing from damaged Gulf bases back to Israel, a concentrated and target-rich environment could be created. Israel is already concerned about the large number of US military refueling planes parked at its main civilian airport. Turkey is also keeping out of the mess so far, although it may eventually be facing off against Israel in occupied Syria.

Meanwhile in the other threatre of war, Ukraine attacked an Iranian ship in the Black Sea. This was most likely an attempt by Zelensky to curry favour with the Americans by being best friends with Israel. This would merge the two wars into one gigantic mess. The idea seems to be on hold for the moment though, as Ukraine has apologised for its ‘mistake’ in targeting the vessel. Presumably they were told to stand down, at least for now. The risk remains high, and the impact of all of this has yet to hit the global economy, but that impact is rapidly approaching.

The US has paused the Gulf war again, but not from a desire for peace. Apparently Trump was told by the US military that they lacked the necessary armaments to pursue Trump’s plan, at least for now, meaning that they need another period to rearm and reorganise before reigniting the conflict yet again. The US is attempting a controlled demolition of developing multipolarity, trying to degrade all its potential adversaries without sparking an immediate panic. It tries to over-stretch its opponents militarily, while attacking them through the financial system, arming dissident factions, providing intel and satellite imaging to its proxies, imposing sanctions to immiserate the opposing population, and hoping the government would be blamed and eventually overthrown. This worked in Syria, and is now being applied against Russia and Iran, with (so far) indirect impacts on China. The US intends to define a new “axis of evil’ to include Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea, and may stage a false flag attack to encourage Americans to support wars they currently reject.

The war in the Gulf has recently spread in two new directions. First the US encouraged Saudi Arabia to bomb the airport in Yemen as the Yemeni delegation to Khamenei’s funeral was returning to the country. Yemen is now retaliating by blockading the Bab-al-Mandab to Saudi shipping, warning tankers not to load up at Yanbu port on the Red Sea, and bombing both Yanbu and the major refinery at Jazan. This was the most advanced refinery in the world, but it seems to have suffered substantial damage. Saudi exports of oil are now greatly reduced, compounding the effect of the closure of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia was offered a nuclear enrichment deal, which may have been the inducement to attack Yemen, but they don’t seem to have anticipated the intense backlash. Trump tried to change the terms of the deal with the Saudis almost immediately, as he previously did with the MOU with Iran, saying the deal was conditional on the Saudis signing the Abraham Accords with Israel, which they will never do. The US has also been pressuring Pakistan to declare its support for Saudi Arabis against Yemen by dangling an $18 billion stabilisation fund for the Pakistani rupee. This could compromise Pakistan’s ability to act as a mediator in the war, and could instead draw them into it. The UK has also made itself a target by allowing its bases to be used to launch attacks on Iran, for which Iran has said it will retaliate. Iran has z target list for European infrastructure should Europe be drawn into the war in the Gulf.

The second expansion appears to be occurring following an attack by Ukraine on an Iranian ship in the Black Sea. Iran has said it will retaliate. Zelensky said he’s entitled to attack Iranian shipping because Iran is an ally of Russia, and Iran provided the original Shahid drones that were developed into the very effective Russian Geran drones. This seem like a blatant attempt by Zelensky to curry favour with the Americans, draw them firmly back into both conflicts, and combine the wars. There is also pressure for a frozen conflict from Khazakstan, which has had its exports curtailed due to Ukrainian attacks on Black Sea ports used for Caspian Sea exports. If the wars do in fact combine, this could morph into full-blown WW3 very quickly. A controlled process would then cease to be possible, as wars take on a life of their own. The US has been concealing its casualty numbers, but if the real numbers are leaked, this could precipitate an uncontrolled situation domestically, quite possibly raising the risk of dramatic retaliation.

The war in the Gulf is funded through the rest of this year, although it remains to be seen if the necessary weaponry is also available, given the long timeframe for weapons production in the US. The US could easily become the party fatally over-stretched. It still believes in its own supremacy, but those days are clearly over. It still controls most of the levers of international finance, and so can still pressure vassal states to act against their own interests on pain of economic destruction, but its conventional military strength is greatly reduced. Of course this may mean it would resort to a nuclear attack. Israel could also resort to this – the Samson option – if it feels it’s about to suffer strategic defeat, and has said so since the days of Golda Meir. The US and Israeli militaries are about to be fully integrated, if the relevant bill passes the Senate, as it appears likely to do. They could collectively start a nuclear war. Netanyahu is currently on his way to the US and will likely be trying to convince Trump to escalate against Iran, as Israel will settle for nothing less than the country’s complete destruction. He typically presents ‘new intelligence’ to Trump, actually fabricated by the Israelis to manipulate him, playing on his narcissism and paranoia. So far he’s fallen for it every time, and in his greatly weakened mental state he may do so again, but that won’t solve the lack of conventional military capacity, hence the nuclear risk.

The US was once admired and envied. It considered itself a shining city on a hill in an almost messianic way, but those days are long gone. As Alistair Crooke says, the US has now come to see things as black and white, with themselves as the epitome of goodness and everyone who disagrees with them as inherently evil – manicheanism in other words. When others are seen as evil, negotiation is impossible, and deception and perfidiousness come to seem reasonsable, as the ends would be seen to justify the means. The use of weapons of mass destruction also becomes far more likely, adversaries are not see as being human, so their suffering and their lives don’t matter. The US also feels entitled to steal their territory and resources.

Trump is the worst person to be leading the US, as he’s a malignant narcissist with no understanding of any of the context or the outstanding issues. His dyslexia means he’s functionally illiterate, his inflated ego means he doesn’t listen to others, his rampant corruption is obvious, his mafia tactics of extortion and threats are damaging the w
hole world, and his rapidly progressing dementia has removed his filters, so he sounds more and more irrational and insane with each passing day. Nothing he says can be trusted, as he constantly changes his mind, sometimes in less than a day. His rhetoric makes wild swings from one extreme to the other, so no one knows what’s going on. This makes the situation far more dangerous. The Iranians have been working with a psychologist in their indirect communications with the US, as they’ve decided that Trump is clinically insane. Those communications have now ended, as they were obviously pointless. Diplomacy is now impossible.

The US pretends that it isn’t involved in the war in Ukraine, but it clearly is. It’s been supplying the weapons via the Europeans, and extorting the warmongering Europeans in the process. It also supplies the satellite targeting information and the communications technology via Starlink. It’s been encouraging the Ukrainians to destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure, and is niw destroying purely commercial targets, like Wildberries warehouses, which are Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. The goal is clearly to weaken Russia to the point of collapse, so it can be dismembered, taken over in pieces, given western puppet governance, and have its resources stolen. However, Russia is winning. Its advance has been slow, due to the nature of drone warfare, but its progress has been relentless. It’s closing in on the last fortified cities of the Donbass – Slavyansk and Kramatorsk – and there are no further fortifications between these and the Dnieper River. Ukraine is rapidly running out of manpower to press-gang, and this will remain the case even if Europe returns the Ukrainian refugees as it’s promised to do. It’s also out of air defence, and its energy infrastructure is being crippled.

The war with Iran is a joint American-Israeli endeavor, and they are clearly on the losing side there as well. The Iranians were drastically under-estimated, as the US does with all its adversaries. Trump’s attempts to force capitulation under threat of further bombing are doomed to fail. Iran is a natural defensive fortress, and it’s had decades to prepare for this war. It is going to end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The US appears to be preparing for some kind of ground war, but this will only end in a bloodbath for American troops. The Israelis are sitting on the sidelines, quite happy for Americans to die for their Greater Israel project, although their military leadership is warning that the IDF is close to collapse due to the casualties it’s taken in Gaza and is taking in Lebanon. They warn of civil war. The US has been bombing Iranian infrastructure for days since the war resumed, and Iran has been returning the favour by utterly destroying US bases in the region. The US fifth fleet is essentially hostage in Bahrain. It’s entirely possible that the US sill be driven out of the region entirely and that Israel will be destroyed. Iran is emerging as a much greater and more cohesive power than before the war, despite decades of sanctions and recent destruction of surface infrastructure. Critical facilities are out of reach of US bombs, in tunnels under hundreds of metres of granite.

Trump’s extreme narcissism will never let him admit to losing, even when it’s obviously inevitable to anyone paying attention. He always doubles down on a failing strategy, ignoring the price being paid by everyone else. His coterie of ‘advisors’ are profoundly incompetent and delusional, and are encouraging him on his disastrous path. The rest of the world is watching the previously formidable reputation of the US military collapse, which will have serious consequences, emboldening many potential adversaries. The US is now widely perceived as the new evil empire, and that is the reputation it increasingly deserves. Meanwhile the conflict is expanding into an unresolvable quagmire, now involving Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and potentially Turkey. Pakistan is trying to mediate, but may be dragged into the mess due to its military pact with Saudi Arabia over the Saudi conflict with Yemen. Many countries are now thinking of developing nuclear weapons as the only means to deter imperial aggression, and Trump has aggravated this by promising the Saudis nuclear technology, despite the Saudis having been involved in terrorism and brutality while the Iranians have not.

Both Trump and Netanyahu are facing electoral defeat at home, and both are planning either to cancel elections or to cheat to win. Both plan to defy their supreme courts if necessary. Both face severe consequences if they lose. Netanyahu would probably be jailed for corruption, and Trump would likely be impeached and convicted by a Congress that’s absolutely sick of him and the horrendous damage he’s done to the country. The empire is failing. The US is drowning in debt and run as an oligarchic casino, with no regard for the plight of its people. Israel is tearing itself apart in a mass formation. The European vassal super-state is increasingly authoritarian and is on the verge of economic collapse due to the loss of its energy supply. The Asian vassals states of Japan and South Korea are sick of American domination. They’re ultimately likely to decide that their future lies with the Russia-China-Iran axis. The empire’s eventual collapse will lead to a very messy, and bloody, interregnem. Brace for impact.

The US has become an oligarchy run by the donor class and lobbyists for Big Capital for their own profit. The opinions of the population no longer count when almost every member of Congress is bought and paid for. Votes no longer count when continuity of agenda guarantees that the same policies will be pursued no matter who takes office. Only the branding changes. The SCOTUS decision in Citizens United declared political donations to be ‘speech’, meaning that they could not be regulated because that would constitute suppression of free speech. Of course the actual speech of ordinary people is being increasingly suppressed all the time, but the big players can do as they please. This means elections are now purchased, not legitimately won. Conflicts of interest are everywhere, and are allowed to persist. Industries write their own regulatory frameworks, and there is a revolving door between industry and government, ensuring maximum freedom for industries and maximum payoffs for the individuals supposedly charged with regulating them. The concept of ethics has been completely discarded.

One of the most influential lobbies is AIPAC, which pays off most of Congress, and will dump huge amounts of money into political races to ensure that the ‘right’ person is elected, namely someone who will prioritise the interests of Israel above those of their own constituents and their own country. This is why Benjamin Netanyahu, in mid-genocide, can visit the US and receive over 50 standing ovations in Congress. Official criticism of Israel is forbidden, no matter what it does. In some states, public employees are forced to sign a declaration of support for Israel and promise not to criticise or boycott it as a condition of employment. Support for the Palestinians is not only condemned, but frequently criminalised. Strong sanctions are applied to international critics, such as the members of the International Criminal Court who brought crimes against humanity charges against Netanyahu and his defence minister, and against UN human rights spokesperson Francesca Albanese. The people who voted for America first are now sorely disappointed, as the interests of their own country are fully subordinated.

The most egregious example of Israel first is clause 219 of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), which merges the US and Israeli militaries, enshrining the right of Israel to all US military technology. A further addition by Senator Tom Cotton, section 1217, would also grant Israel access to all American intelligence. This bill, which has just been approved by the House, legalises and institutionalises the actions of former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole military secrets and passed them on to Israel, which then sold them on to the Soviet Union. Pollard had been convicted to a long prison sentence for espionage, but was pardoned by Trump and allowed to return to Israel, where he was received as a national hero and is now running for a seat in the Knesset. The Senate will now vote on the NDAA, and is expected to pass it.

The American people have become increasingly aware of Israel’s genocidal activites, and have become increasingly opposed to supporting it. This makes it politically awkward for Congress to vote every year, or more often, to send more money and weapons to Israel. Section 219 of the NDAA gets around this by removing the need for a vote and instituting a presumption that the supply will continue. It nominates an executive agent to decide all issues relating to Israel, and this person can only be overruled by the President or the Secretary of Defence, both of whom currently are arch zionists. This has been described as treason by many informed commentators. The US is handing over its sovereignty on a silver platter. Unfortunately the US is not the country is once was. It has long since morphed into an empire and now under Trump a mafia state coveting the world’s resources, practicing global extortion, and attempting to exert monopoly control over the whole world as a rentier state. It steals and kills with impunity. This kind of rampant corruption, degradation, and degeneracy is characteristic of late stage empire. Once it finally falls to overreach, as empires always do eventually, the interregnem will be violent and chaotic. Hopefully humanity will survive the period.

After dropping the gold standard, the US maintained its position through dollar recycling, where it purchased from abroad and the dollars sent to pay were invested back into US stocks and bonds. The petrodollar system is the most well known mechanism. US securities became the backbone of the financial system, with foreign central banks and private entities supporting ballooning US debt. Having off-shored its industry and lost its creditor status, the US empire needs a new strategy, and that strategy is to become a rentier economy by obtaining monopoly control over critical aspect of the global economy and charging monopoly rents to everyone else. Essentially this is an attempted takeover of the global economy by a corrupt oligarchic mafia. It’s a bold gamble for a late stage empire facing the loss of its former supremacy as rivals rise and power is shifting eastwards. The plan is being implemented, but there is no guarantee of success. In fact failure is far more likely, and a failed attempt will impose an enormous cost on the entire world in terms of wanton destruction.

The empire is currently attempting to take control of oil globally. It attacked Iran, knowing that would result in the closure of the strait of Hormuz. In the process it cut off shipments to rising powers in Asia. It’s using its Ukranian proxy to destroy Russian oil infrastructure, first refineries and now shipping. It took over Venezuela, and now controls Venezuelan oil revenues, only allowing them to be invested in the US. It had planned to do the same to Iran, and also to use Iranian frozen assets to bail out American farmers harmed by Trump’s failed tariff regime. This has not worked out as intended. It almost certainly encouraged Saudi Arabia to bomb Sanaa airport in Yemen, prompting Ansarallah (the Houthis) to close the Bab-al-Mandab southern entrance to the Red Sea to Saudi shipping, further impacting oil exports. Isolating China is a major goal.

Despite signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that granted control of Hormuz to Iran, the US moved immediately to pressure Oman into allowing for a southern route through the strait, to be under de facto American control. Iran had proposed a small fee for transit through its northern route, but the US complained this would violate the law of the sea, although various routes through territorial waters (the Dardanelles, the Panama canal, the Suez canal) already charge. Trump then announced that the US would take full control of Hormuz and charge a fee 20 times the size of what Iran had proposed. He later changed this to a demand that the countries of the Gulf invest billions of dollars into US industry instead, and said that henceforth the US would be considered the guardian of Hormuz. This is very unlikely to succeed as the US lacks the military capacity to make it happen, and Iran has the military capacity to prevent it.

The empire also wants control over information technology and the internet. It already has this to a large extent, with only China having its own independent versions of the big American platforms. A few others use the Chinese systems, but much of the world still uses American systems that allow for their populations to be propagandised, sometimes into colour revolutions and regime change if that suits the empire. Digital hygiene is very difficult for countries dependent on these platforms for much of their economic activity. The Silicon Valley techbro oligarchs are major global players, and they’ve already used their platforms to steal enormous amounts of people’s data, and have developed comprehensive surveillance and control technology that they plan to implement everywhere they can reach. Like China, they plan to impose a social credit score system for total control of the population.

The US is building out the data centres it needs for this level of control, but opposition is growing rapidly, due to the huge demand for energy and water, and the impact of noise, light and fumes. The increased demand is forcing up prices to the point where local residents cannot afford to live. One way out of this problem is for the US to partner with its vassal states in the Gulf, encouraging them to build the data centres and use their energy to run them instead of exporting it. Unfortunately for this strategy, those data centres have become targets in retaliation for the damage inflicted on Iran. The US appeared to believe its own propaganda that Iran had been defeated and would not be able to hit back, but as with control over Hormuz, Iran’s capabilities were drastically underestimated. Iran could also damage the internet cables that run through Hormuz, which would further hamper the plans of the empire to exert electronic control at a global level.

China is attempting to avoid the maritime choke points that the US empire is trying to control by building out land based connectivity in the form of railways and pipelines. These have then been bombed by the empire in its war on Iran, which is a critical hinge point in the Belt and Road initiative. The point is to prevent the formation if a coherent block of allies with the economic and military power to challenge the empire. Another American goal is to fully vassalise and then cannibalise as many of its former allies as possible, forcing them into win-lose trade and investment deals, and using their people to fight proxy wars. Dependency is to be locked in, and freedom to act in their own economic self-interest is to be a thing of the past. In earlier stages of vassalisation, some of the client states were allowed to benefit, but once they were fully captured this ended. The process is comparable to the ‘enshitification’ of electronic platforms, which only provided a good experience for users until they had become fully dependent, at which point the expeience was deliberately degraded in order to maximise profits from a captive user base. Europe, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and the Gulf monarchies have all been subjected to this to varying extents.

The era of free trade is over. It was only promoted while it was of benefit to the US, as it had previously been promoted because it was of benefit to the British empire. Now, as during the Great Depression, is increasingly an era of sanctions, trade wars, neo-mercantilism, and gunboat diplomacy. In the 1930s, this caused trade to collapse by 66% in two years. Now the globalised world is vastly more dependent on trade, and the complex supply chains that have developed. These have already been compromised by the war in the Gulf, and the situation will get very much sorse if the Red Sea is closed to more than just Saudi shipping, as fully 60% of global goods shipments take this route. The empire intends to control both the passage of goods and the flow of money in return by weaponising the financial system that it largely controls. It has the ability to throttle the economies of non-compliant countries, destroy their currencies, and wreck their banking systems. It already sanctions many countries, although this has sometimes acted to increase the development of self-sufficiency rather than achieving the empire’s desired behaviour change. Russia is a prime example of this, as is Iran to some extent.

There are many looming failure points in the empire’s strategy for global domination. It’s military is not the exceptionally powerful force it once was. It has not been on the winning side of a major war since WW2, which was primarily won by the Russians. It’s bullied many small countries since, but has not faced a peer competitor for a very long time. It consistently underestimates its adversaries, as it regards them as inherently inferior. The world can see that it has been humbled by Iran for exactly this reason. It lacks sufficient naval assets to control enough vital maritime chokepoints. It’s stockpile of missiles and interceptors is substantially depleted, and it lacks the surge capacity to produce more in time. It’s military industrial complex maximises profit rather than battlefield effectiveness, so it’s weaponry tends to be overly complex and too fragile. Its military mindset is outdated, and much of its equipment is obsolete as a result. One only needs to look to Russia and Ukraine to see how modern drone warfare operates, but the US has not learned these lessons.

The US is financially dominant, but also mired in $40 trillion of unrepayable debt. It’s attempting to address this through the issuance of stablecoins backed by US treasuries, pitched at the retail level worldwide. If this succeeded, it would destroy most other currencies, and the commercial banking system, and would distribute support for US debt to the entire population. Stablecoins would also be fully programmable, exactly like the central banks digital currencies (CBDCs) that people are beginning to understand and oppose. They would form a major part of the technological control framework that the techbro oligarchs have in mind, as they could be programmed in accordance with social credit scores, and could be turned off in order to punish dissent.

A financial reset is coming anyway, as the financial system is at the end of a credit cycle. The legal framework has been rewritten to confer super-priority in bankruptcy on the owners of derivatives contracts, which would deprive everyone else of financial assets. The planned asset tokenisation system is then intended to come for the physical assets as well. However, all of this requires a huge increase in complexity, and the ability to implement and maintain complexity is a function of surplus energy, and the global energy system is being destroyed. The empire believes it can conduct a controlled demolition of the global economy and end up the last man standing in control of everything that remains. However, wars are not controllable, and neither is the utter chaos that could easily result from collapsing supply chains. War and chaos are likely to take on a life of their own. No plan survives first contact with an enemy, and the plans of the empire rest on very shaky foundations and a great deal of hubris. The deliberate destruction currently underway will leave a much poorer and more disconnected world in its wake. Empires never die quietly, but this is the first time a failing empire has possessed such destructive capabilities. A dark period in human history is approaching.

Every other generation or so, humans rediscover the magic of leverage, once the consequences of the last time have been forgotten. Leverage allows for outsized gains during expansion periods, but at the cost of increased risk, because it also creates outsized losses during contractions. Investors in the South Korean stock market are currently learning this the hard way, and they won’t be the only ones. As Andrei explains, in South Korea one is expected to have a good job and a house by a certain age, but house prices are now out of reach for young people. They’ve turned to the stock market – the Kospi – as their only option to accumulate wealth, and they’re employing a great deal of leverage to do it.

The South Korean market is highly concentrated in tech, with two companies – Samsung and SK Hynix – comprising 56% of the entire market. Until three weeks ago, it was the best performing market on the planet (up 200% in a year), driven upwards by enthusiastic, and highly leveraged, investors all taking the same bet – that AI spending would never fall. Then it occured to some people that AI spending MIGHT drop, which was enough to cause a crisis of confidence. As selling began, leveraged ETF accounts began to get margin calls, meaning that their margin debt was now too high in comparison with the value of their portfolio, so they would have to put up more cash or sell some assets. If they couldn’t put up cash, the broker would automatically sell assets at whatever price was available. As selling pushes down prices, more accounts get margin calls, which pushes prices down further. See the film ‘Margin Call’ to see how this works. The unwinding of leverage pushed the market down by 25%, and 10% of accounts were wiped out. The slide was only halted, probably temporarily, by the market being closed on a national holiday. There’s still a great deal of leverage left to unwind, and some contagion has already spread to other Asian markets. It could easily spread much further.

The US market has many of the same vulnerabilities. Traditional margin loans at brokerage accounts now represent 4.5% of GDP, which is the highest in history, although this greatly under estimates the true degree of leverage due to the many other forms of it available today. These are not tracked, so the true degree of leverage is unknowable. The top ten stocks of the S&P comprise 36% of the market, and they’re all tech-related companies taking the same side of the bet, as in South Korea. One company’s spending is another’s earnings in a giant loop of imaginary value. AI companies are spending like drunken sailors on chips, models, and data centres and being rewarded by investors for it, but these companies are all unprofitable. The mania will not continue forever, and once the confidence bubble is pricked the cascade of unwinding leverage will begin.

Peaks in margin debt are generally followed by a substantial crash. The hangover is proportional to the party that preceded it, and this has been the largest financial party in history. The market has become a gigantic casino. Now the insiders are looking for an exit strategy, which is what happens when they think the growth phase is over and they want to unload the remains on to an unsuspecting public. A record number of IPOs are planned, at skyhigh valuations that cannot be remotely justified. SpaceX managed to find its exit liquidity in the form of ordinary people’s pension funds, after rigging the rules of the NASDAQ, but the rest may not be so lucky. Watching for a fall in the capex of Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta could provide an early warning if the coming cascade.

Manias are not new. People become irrationally exuberent about a certain thing, as they did over railways in the late 1800s, or radio in the 1920s, they over-invest on hype, and then lose their shirts. The new technology that had been the focus does go on to shape the future, but the profits don’t go to those who built it. They go to those who built businesses around it after the crash. In this case though, that is unlikely to happen. The graphics cards in those data centres have a lifespan of very few years, then they need to be replaced. That means the expenditure would have to happen again and again. The data centres themselves are extremely controversial, as they blight the areas where they’re built with constant noise, fumes, and light pollution, as well as consuming so much power and water that people’s bills are skyrocketing. Continuing to build these enormous facilities is increasingly likely to lead to social unrest, which could halt the spending, and trigger the cascade. The moment of truth might not be that far in the future.

The UN has declared that the planet is in global water bankruptcy, or permanent depletion, and that this requires centralised governance at the global level. They want real time monitoring and control of all water sources, and all uses of water worldwide. Existing water rights are to be eliminated, and use is to be tracked and limited. All of this will be discussed at a major water conference in December, and a new bureaucratic system is to be introduced to manage a framework analogous to carbon credit trading. This is in keeping with moves to centralise control over all other resources, as the billionaire class has been trying to do for a long time. Previous attempts to grants rights to capital over people have been made before, with the failed MAI treaty (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) from twenty five years ago, and later attempted agreements like the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership). These were defeated, but this time the technology exists to enforce control at this level. What likely doesn’t exist is the energy necessary to run such a complex system, at least not for very long.

Fresh water availability is an important issue, especially when it comes to the overuse of ‘fossil water’, meaning acquifers that refill far more slowly than the rate at which they’re currently being drawn down. Scarcity of fresh water is definitely a problem in arid regions, and it’s a problem addressed with energy – energy to pump up ground water, energy to pump water from place to place, or energy to desalinate seawater. When both energy and fresh water become limited, mass migration may occur. This issue was discussed here in detail back in 2014.

Physical Limits to Food Security: Water and Climate – Applied Systems Thinking

In part one of this series, we looked at finance as a major causal factor in the development of food insecurity. The boom and bust cycles that result from over-financialisation are, however, only one aspect of a food crisis already present for many, and looming for many more in the years to come. Finance can, and does,

This attempt to seize control of a vital resource comes at the same time as a huge boom in the construction of the data centres neccesary for the technology to operate, and these data centres use huge quantities of both water and energy. Telling people that they must conserve every drop of water while allowing data centres to use and contaminate vast quantities of it is patently unreasonable, but the billionaire class has no interest in being reasonable. Their interest is in accumulating ever more wealth and power at the expense of the rest of the population. A water credit trading system, with tokenised water rights on a blockchain, would simply allow wealthy parties to buy up the water rights of the poor, who may have no choice but to sell theirs in order to afford other necessities. This would institutionalise inequality to a far greater extent than at present, and inequality is already worse than it was in the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century.

Farms and rural homesteads would see their wells metered, and rainwater collection could be banned, as it already is in some arid areas like the American west. They would likely lose out to data centres in a bidding war for water credits. This could force rural people deprived of access to water into the 15 minute cities that the financial elite have long been planning. The cost of the necessary infrastructure is estimated at $6.5 trillion, and that cost is very likely to be imposed on those least able to pay.

The changes, although a global initiative, are being pushed through at the local level. Local politicians are much less likely to understand the big picture their actions are helping to create, and the public will not be expecting a devious global power grab to be implemented by their local council. Here in New Zealand, all this is being implemented through a scheme originally known as Three Waters, where control over water resources is being given to a new water bureaucracy, with a great deal of power accruing to local Iwis (Maori leadership groups). The cost for New Zealand alone is said to be $185 billion, for a country of 5 million people. This is on top of the huge debts out government incurred during covid ($65billion before covid even arrived in the country). We are now in a debt trap, and debt traps are used to seize control of the debtors’ resources in lieu of payment of unrepayable debts. Creditors take everything. If this is implemented, Kiwis will find themselves tenants in their own country, and the same pattern will play out in many other countries as well if the billionaires get their way. New Zealand is planned to be a hub for data centres, due to our renewable energy. This would then raise the cost of that energy for all local people in the area, as it has done everywhere data centres have been built. They would be positioned along the grid lines below.

Data centre concerns: Living next-door to NZ’s first hyperscale facility

New Zealand will soon build its first hyperscale data centre in Invercargill. The Datagrid project promises to bring new jobs to Southland, with efficient te…

This is part of the digital control system being planned by the billionaire oligarchs who aspire to total control of everything, especially the essentials of life. Ordinary people are supposed to own nothing, and be forced into subscriptions for access to anything at all. It begins with digital ID. Without that, the surveillance and control systems cannot work at the level of the individual. In other words, digital ID must be resisted at all costs. Those attempting to impose this are on a tight timetable, and they are already behind on implementation. If the energy system collapses due to the war, and supply chains go with it, the opportunity to introduce such complex measures may be lost, and this attempt at extreme centralisation may fail like its predecessors. It needs to fail, because extreme centralisation always causes massive destruction and loss of life. Unfortunately that is one of the goals of the oligarchs. We need to collectively prevent them from achieving it.

The US empire is fighting a war against the rise of multipolarism, because it desperately wants to cling to a supremacy that it’s already lost. If it can’t control the whole world, then it seems to have chosen to burn it all down and hope to be the last man standing. The general assumption is that the US wants the strait of Hormuz open, but everything it’s done suggests the opposite. It had to be known that closure of the strait would be the result of imperial aggression, then the insurance industry shut down passage, and finally a naval blockade was added in the Gulf of Oman. If actions are taken that will obviously have a certain impact, and that impact then occurs, one has to assume the result was intentional. Trump himself may be stupid enough not to realise that, but he’s merely a puppet of big capital, and they’re not that stupid.

The two wars going on are essentially part of the same conflict. The point of both is to weaken key members of the new power structure – a Russia, Iran, China axis at the core of BRICS. These are land powers attempting to create connectiviy corridors that avoid the maritime choke points potentially controlled by naval powers. The empire is now bombing those connectivity corridors as it tries to prevent these countries from gaining control of the heartland, as Halford Mackinder called it.

Energy is the key factor the empire is trying to control. NATO-controlled and NATO-armed Ukraine is methodically destroying Russia’s energy infrastructure with long range drone strikes. It’s hitting refineries, storage tanks, and tankers of the shadow fleet. These cannot reasonably be defended. Russia is returning the favour in Ukraine, but has not targeted the factories in Europe that are producing the missiles and drones given to Ukraine on behalf of the empire. So far it’s focused on power plants, nodes in the power grid, and gas stations in eastern Ukraine. Its caution is allowing its critical infrastructure to be attrited, but the alternative if it attacked NATO directly would be WW3. The Russian population is beginning to demand that their government finish the job. If Putin were somehow removed, his successor would likely do exactly that, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Iran is the key hinge point connecting Russia and China, and it has control over the strategic asset of Hormuz, hence it was always going to be a target of the empire. The US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) apparently meant to end the war, but actually just to buy itself some time, and keep the oil price under control for a while longer with a promise of peace. The US never intended to honour the terms it agreed to, just as it never intended to honour the Minsk agreements with Russia. The empire has no honour or integrity, can never be trusted, and no longer cares who knows this.

The day after the MOU was signed, the US violated the first clause requiring Israel to end hostilities in Lebanon by signing a conflicting MOU with the Israel and the Lebanese puppet government allied with Israel. The second MOU allowed for Israel to remain in Lebanon indefinitely. The US has since violated every clause. The original MOU granted control over Hormuz to Iran, with the understanding that no transit fees would be charged during the 60 day negotiation period. Iran made it clear that ships must ask permission and must follow a specific route or there would be consequences. The US immediately started encouraging ships to use a different route outside of Iranian waters, and those ships were fired on. The US then used this as an excuse to begin bombing Iran again, saying that Iran violated the MOU when it had not. The US is now bombing civilian infrastructure and ports in the area around Hormuz, potentially with a view to a future ground incursion, although Trump has indicated that such an incursion would involve proxies rather than American troops. The empire likes to send proxies to their deaths, as it’s been doing in Ukraine for years now.

The empire is attempting to throttle energy supply to Asia with their Iran war, specifically to halt the rise of China, although it’s also gaining leverage over energy-importing countries in the region. It will try to use that leverage to turn these countries against China, and may try to use some of them to fight new proxy wars. The Philippines, South Korea, and Japan have all been vassalised for decades already, and Taiwan is a point of contention, largely due to its monopoly on the production of the most advanced computer chips. The US wants that production to relocate to Arizona, but this is proving problematic. Cutting off Hormuz deprives Taiwan of helium and liquified natural gas (LNG), both of which are essential for chip production, possibly intended to incentivise the move to the US.

The empire knows it cannot control the world as it once did, but it will not decline gracefully. The US appears to believe it’s an energy super power, and that it can deprive its rivals and become a global supplier to those its trying to control. This is, however, delusional. The US is a net importer of oil, specifically it’s dependent on imports of the longer chain hydrocarbons necessary for the production of diesel, aviation fuel and bunker fuel. It’s already reaching tank bottom after selling off its strategic reserve in an attempt to keep fuel prices down before the midterm elections. Fuel prices are about to spike, and the US cannot prevent this.

It’s possible that those on the side of multipolarity are taking the advice of Sun Tzu to never interrupt you enemy when he’s making a mistake. They may be deliberately allowing the US to overreach itself, exploiting its mistaken belief in its own omnipotence. The US is mired in Thucydides Trap, as China pointed out to Trump when he recently visited. The strategy for China, Russia, and Iran may be to simply wait out the empire until it collapses under the weight if its own debt and delusions of grandeur. Russia and Iran are largely self-sufficient, and China has enormous stockpiles of essential commodities. China also controls the rare earths that the US would require to produce more weapons, and it’s banned their export.

The world is in a very precarious position, with nuclear powers each feeling that they find themselves facing an existential threat. The US, or its attack dog Israel, would be the most likely to escalate to the point of using nuclear weapons. Israel refers to this as the Samson option. They’ve said since the time of Golda Meir that if Israel is about to fall, it will take the world with it. The US has a first strike doctrine, and thinks it can win a nuclear war. Russia has the dead hand system, that would fire everything they have if the government were eliminated or they faced strategic defeat. China may have a similar doctrine, although they haven’t said so. The odds of events continuing in a very dangerous direction are growing by the day. No failing empire has ever had the ability to take down the world before.